62 9.13.20
high heels and was sweating from the physical
eff ort of it.
Wilson and Mitchell didn’t know under what
circumstances the girl moved to one of the near-
by shelters, and they didn’t know much about
where she was before. Wilson told me: ‘‘What I
do know is she doesn’t like to feel a sense of loss
and can’t handle disappointment. And I know
that as soon as she de- escalates from her anger,
she apologizes and asks: ‘Are you still proud of
me? Do you still love me?’ and wants to be held.’’
Earlier that week, the girl was playing musi-
cal chairs in the gym. When the music stopped
and she lost her chair, she got angry and started
screaming and hyper ventilating. But she was able
to use some breathing techniques that Wilson had
taught her and calmed down within minutes. ‘‘The
whole episode was very short,’’ Mitchell said. ‘‘It
was a massive improvement from the fall, when
it took all hands in the building to manage her.’’
The girl had told Wilson that she prays at night
that Wilson will remain at P.S. 401. That morn-
ing in the cafeteria, she looked at me, following
Wilson and holding my notepad, and then back
at Wilson. She asked Wilson in a panicked tone,
‘‘Are you leaving?!’’ She thought I might be train-
ing to take over Wilson’s job. The girl was also
the only child in the school who remembered
Mitchell’s birthday — she gave her a Little Debbie
Honey Bun and a $1 bill.
When most of the students had fi nished break-
fast, Mitchell headed to the front of the cafeteria
with an air of gravitas. She reminded the chil-
dren: ‘‘We are in the homestretch of the year.
Let’s end strong. We are at the fi nish line. It’s been
a while since we sent a strong, loud message to
everyone in Brownsville: Everyone needs to wake
up to what we are!’’
A group of older girls started pounding on
hand drums, and the cafeteria came to life chant-
ing: ‘‘We are 401! Our school is on the rise, work-
ing hard to win the race! No time for nonsense!
No time to waste!’’
Mitchell implored the students to repeat
after her: ‘‘Say: ‘I am great! Nothing can stop me
from my greatness!’ ’’ The girl with the beaded
hair screamed back at the top of her lungs, eyes
shining happily.
After breakfast, Reginald Le Rouge, the coordi-
nator, went upstairs to a room where he reviews
attendance records for the day. The offi ce was
fi lled with boxes of phonics books, and an old
lavender- color rotary phone hung on one wall.
Le Rouge was wearing a red polo, khakis and boat
shoes. He made his fi rst call to a family at one of
the shelters down the street and off ered to walk
down the block and take the child to school if
the parent could meet him halfway. ‘‘You can still
make it — we can change attendance before 11,’’
he said hopefully.
Around 10 a.m., a school aide brought in a boy
who looked to be about 9 or 10, with messy hair,
who had arrived at school late and then acted
out in class. ‘‘What can we do better?’’ Le Rouge
asked. ‘‘You were not only late today; you also got
yourself kicked out of class two times.’’
While the boy was there, Le Rouge tried to
follow up on his nearly two dozen absences.
Le Rouge had previously gone to the Brooklyn
shelter that was listed as the boy’s home address
to speak with his parents, only to fi nd that the
family had been moved to a shelter in the Bronx.
‘‘Why weren’t you here Monday?’’ he asked the
boy, who looked at him blankly. ‘‘What happened
the day before yesterday?’’ Le Rouge asked again.
‘‘I had to go with my uncle to get eye surgery,’’ he
said. ‘‘Your sister was not here either,’’ Le Rouge
said. ‘‘Yeah, she helped him walk because he
couldn’t see with his eye.’’
‘‘Attendance is really important,’’ Le Rouge
said. ‘‘You have to be here every day. Did the
surgery take all day?’’
‘‘No, it took 15 minutes,’’ he replied. ‘‘But I
couldn’t come to school after because the doctor
was all the way in the Bronx.’’
‘‘Even if you want to help a special person in
your life, you can come to school after, OK?’’
Le Rouge told him.
After Le Rouge entered the day’s attendance
data, he did a circuit through the halls, checking
in with students who had missed school recently.
Children in the hallway also came to him look-
ing for a hug, just as they did with Wilson; he tried
to redirect them to fi st bumps. ‘‘Acknowledgment
is huge in this school, huge,’’ he told me.
Le Rouge peeked in on the kindergarten
class where three-quarters of the students were
homeless and found a girl sitting apart from
her classmates looking morose. He asked her
to come out to the hallway, crouched down and
addressed her gently. ‘‘I came to see how you are
doing,’’ he said. ‘‘You weren’t here on Monday.
Do you know why you weren’t here?’’ The girl
rubbed her eyes and shook her head no. ‘‘Are
you OK?’’ Le Rouge asked. She shook her head
no. ‘‘Did you eat today?’’ The girl looked blankly
at him. ‘‘OK,’’ Le Rouge said uncertainly. ‘‘I’ll be
back in a little to check in with you.’’ He sent her
back to her classroom.
His next stop was to follow up with a fi fth-
grade boy, a twin who had lived in one of the local
family shelters for fi ve years, to fi nd out why he
most recently missed school. Le Rouge tried to
keep it light. The boy was a Stephen Curry fan,
and Le Rouge had bought a Curry jersey, which
he kept in his offi ce. He had told the boy that if
he came to school for one full week at any point
that year — fi ve consecutive days — he would give
the jersey to him. But so far, the boy had not been
able to earn the jersey. LeRouge told the boy: ‘‘I
want this jersey out of my offi ce before the year
ends. I’m not a Golden State fan!’’
P.S. 401 shares a building with a K-8 charter
school, Leadership Prep Ocean Hill, which has
higher test scores than P.S. 401. It also has far
fewer homeless students enrolled, despite itsidentical proximity to the shelters. About one
in 10 students at Ocean Hill are homeless, com-
pared with more than one in four at P.S. 401.
Mitchell told me that sometimes P.S. 401’s more
stable families transfer their children upstairs,
where they are better shielded from the chal-
lenges that the very poorest and most transient
students bring.
Mitchell, whom I had mostly seen imploring
children to chant that nothing can stop them,
suddenly seemed weary. Speaking of the kin-
dergarten class in which three- quarters of the
students were unstably housed, she said: ‘‘We’ve
been working so hard to prepare them for the
fi rst grade, and I would love to keep them. Will I
have them in September? No. I will have a totally
new crop of children. We have no ability to trans-
fer what we are working so hard to do, because
we are starting over every year with a completely
new group of students.’’When the pandemic closed schools, Mitchell
went to the two shelters that are zoned for P.S.
401 and run by Win to hand out gift cards for
groceries. At fi rst, that second- grade girl didn’t
show up online, and Mitchell worked with shelter
employees to help her get connected. The chal-
lenges of ‘‘at home’’ learning for the city’s many
children without a home have worried advocates
for homeless children since March, when they
unsuccessfully campaigned to get access for all
homeless students to regional enrichment centers
set up by the city for children of essential workers.
A national survey of 600 public- school teachers
conducted in May by Educators for Excellence
about the eff ects of school shutdowns on their
students found that only 21 percent of teachers
said homeless students’ needs were often met.
The New York City Department of Education has
not released information about engagement in
online learning for students in temporary hous-
ing. In May, I spoke to Chris Caruso, the Offi ce
of Community Schools senior executive director,
and he would tell me only that the average rate
of interaction for all students in the city was 88
percent (a number the Department of Education
later updated to 86 percent), which can mean just
a single interaction each day. ‘‘We have a caring
adult checking in with students who are living
in homeless shelters,’’ he said, ‘‘connecting with
these students around access to technology.’’
Christine Quinn, Win’s president, said her
shelters set up informal centers where children of
essential workers could do their remote learning
while their parents worked. Over all, she said, the
city’s approach to homeless students during the
pandemic has been ‘‘nothing but broken prom-
ises.’’ She noted that this summer, when many
struggling students were to be enrolled in sum-
mer school and when schools that serve children
with severe disabilities have a six-week session,
Department of Education iPads could not access
the internet; a new login was required. ‘‘There