{"id":33954,"date":"2021-04-22T04:00:05","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T09:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=33954"},"modified":"2021-06-11T14:00:31","modified_gmt":"2021-06-11T19:00:31","slug":"how-oklahomas-only-school-for-children-experiencing-homelessness-fought-through-the-coronavirus-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2021\/04\/22\/how-oklahomas-only-school-for-children-experiencing-homelessness-fought-through-the-coronavirus-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"How Oklahoma\u2019s only school for children experiencing homelessness fought through the coronavirus pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 100%; height: 170px; margin-bottom: 20px; border-radius: 10px; overflow:hidden;\"><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 170px;\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https:\/\/player.captivate.fm\/episode\/2ffbb008-45b1-4f7e-acd1-88dcbdd73339\"><\/iframe><\/div><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Susan Agel always knew distance learning wasn\u2019t going to work for her students.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She\u2019s President of Positive Tomorrows, Oklahoma\u2019s only school geared toward students experiencing homelessness. And distance learning wasn\u2019t really cutting it.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe know that for the children that we serve, it&#8217;s really important for them to have face to face school,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last spring, they made it work. Teachers and case workers even visited students where they lived to do welfare checks. The school became more of a warehouse to distribute meals and other supplies across Oklahoma City, where Positive Tomorrows is located.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe thing that&#8217;s weighed heaviest on me is just making sure that everyone&#8217;s safe, that everybody&#8217;s getting fed and that, we&#8217;re doing what we need to do, taking care of what we need to do, but that we&#8217;re doing it in a safe manner,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s meant a strict mask mandate for all students, staff and visitors. It also meant spreading out.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Positive Tomorrows\u2019 building was completed in 2019 and was designed to grow its student body to fill a capacity of more than 200. Now, there are a little less than 100 students in the\u00a0 space.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The measures seem to have paid off. The school has only had to quarantine one classroom over the course of the school year and other positive cases appear to have come from outside the school.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In fact, many of the challenges the school faces come from the larger effects of the coronavirus, Agel said.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_33956\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-33956\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Positive-Tomorrows-672x448.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Positive-Tomorrows-672x448.jpg 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Positive-Tomorrows-1920x1280.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Positive-Tomorrows-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Positive-Tomorrows-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Positive-Tomorrows-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Positive-Tomorrows-620x413.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Positive-Tomorrows-1620x1080.jpg 1620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy Positive Tomorrows<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Positive Tomorrows School<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3><b>Helping the whole family<\/b><\/h3><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The economic wreckage of the pandemic left many parents of the schools\u2019 students in even more precarious financial situations. And Agel said neglect is on the rise.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Students are only supposed to spend a couple years at Positive Tomorrows. The elementary and middle school is designed to help families break the cycle of poverty and return their children to traditional public schools. At Positive Tomorrows the social services some families might rely on from several agencies all come from the school, said Kelly Berger, director of family support.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cHere all the programs are interconnected,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That means the building isn\u2019t just for students. There are resources to help families find housing and jobs. There are showers and laundry machines families can use. There are transportation services. But Berger said COVID-19 threw that into flux.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWell, my normal job went on, as usual, trying to help families, you know, overcome homelessness, get and stay housed,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many of the students\u2019 families worked in the service industry so many lost their jobs, Berger said. Positive Tomorrows had to take several actions to help them.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt becomes very challenging without support, so we had to figure out how can we safely get out there and still support them and get them to those basic needs so they can keep their appointments, find a place to live, get their rent paid in a way where we were also not exposing our staff to any unnecessary risk,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_33957\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-33957\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom-672x504.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"504\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom-672x504.jpeg 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom-1920x1440.jpeg 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom-150x113.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom-620x465.jpeg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom-1440x1080.jpeg 1440w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2021\/04\/Sue-Gill-Classroom.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy Positive Tomorrows<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Positive Tomorrows Elementary School teacher Sue Gill teaches in her Oklahoma City classroom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3><b>A teacher\u2019s burden<\/b><\/h3><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A significant amount of the individual work fell on elementary school teachers like Sue Gill. She visited her students regularly last spring when school closed and has been in the classroom since the fall when Positive Tomorrows reopened.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt was a little scary,\u201d she said. \u201cBut our leadership and everybody had worked tirelessly over the summer to try to get this going so that we could be back in person.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The school\u2019s mission meant there were unique risks. It also meant that reopening was top priority. Positive Tomorrows couldn\u2019t wait and see if in person schooling was safe. They had to be one of the leaders.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And since coming back the fears of in person learning\u00a0 melted away. Gill says students are wearing masks and taking everything in stride as they try to make the most of a difficult situation. And all that hard work has paid off.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe have learned a lot from them and I know all the staff has because just being around them, it was just the medicine we needed after being cooped up for months,\u201d Gill said. \u201cAnd it just made us more determined to make it work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Susan Agel always knew distance learning wasn\u2019t going to work for her students.She\u2019s President of Positive Tomorrows, Oklahoma\u2019s only school geared toward students experiencing homelessness. And distance learning wasn\u2019t really cutting it.\u201cWe know that for the children that we serve, it&#8217;s really important for them to have face to face school,\u201d she said.Last spring, they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":33955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33954"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34078,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33954\/revisions\/34078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}