The New York Times Magazine 63was no coordination with D.H.S.,’’ she said, ‘‘so
none of us knew this was happening. The staff
was trying to fi gure out how to get students
back online. The D.O.E. said, ‘We forgot to notify
people about this change.’ They’ve been nothing
but Keystone Kops as it relates to homeless kids
doing virtual learning.’’
The challenges that homeless students face
with remote learning are one reason de Blasio
has advocated a partial reopening of schools. He
said in a statement forwarded by a Department of
Education spokeswoman: ‘‘These kids were top
of my mind the entire time our city was debating
school reopening. We had to do it for them.’’ He
continued: ‘‘We can’t operate out of a place of
fear when it could mean everything for a child
who has little to nothing. That’s the reality. We
owe it to them to do better.’’
In August, roughly 30 organizations that work
with homeless children and families wrote a let-
ter urging de Blasio to off er in- person instruction
to homeless children or give them access to a
space where they can get support with remote
learning, as well as provide transportation. The
letter noted that shelter rules prohibit leaving
even older children in shelters during the day
while parents work and that more than half of
families are placed in a shelter in a diff erent bor-
ough from their youngest child’s school.
At the end of August, Randi Levine, the policy
director of Advocates for Children of New York,
expressed disbelief about the lack of planning
for homeless students. ‘‘It’s shocking how little
is in place for students in shelter,’’ she wrote in
an email. ‘‘Many are starting the school year with
no internet for remote learning, no bus to get
to school and no child care for days when their
parents are working. At a time when the city
should be doing everything possible to support
students in shelter, it is instead letting them fall
even further behind.’’
When my own son started kindergarten four
years ago at our Brooklyn neighborhood public
school, a solid city building where vines creep
around the recess- yard fence, it was a big begin-
ning, a step into the wider world. He became a
citizen of the city, shepherded by its crossing
guards, fed its lunches, schooled in its many cele-
brations — the Chinese New Year, Easter and Eid.
He learned to pledge allegiance to our country,
and four times a year he was drilled in surviving
a national sickness — school shooters.
And he reported that he had made a best
friend, J, a boy with bright eyes and a calm, easy-
going demeanor who was, his teachers told us,
‘‘incredibly sweet.’’ J was repeating kindergarten
because he had completed his fi rst try while still
struggling to read, and so he had a few adult teeth
poking bunny- style out of his smile. My son, by
contrast, was one of the youngest students in
the class, an early reader, with what the parent-
ing euphemizers call a ‘‘spirited’’ temperament.
Sometimes when he played with children who
had similar dispositions, it got volatile — hands
slammed under blocks, bitter tears over losing
— but with J he found balance.
The two took care of each other. If my son got
a better prize from a red supermarket machine,
he would gladly give it to J. When I went with
the boys and some friends to Legoland, my son
came charging off a play structure, red in the
face and crying, looking for me. J intercepted
him, put an arm on each of his shoulders as if
to steady him and spoke a few words. Then they
ran off together.
J lived with his 8-year-old sister and his mother,
Mae (Mae asked that I use her middle name and
her son’s fi rst initial to protect their privacy), on the
top fl oor of a modest house opposite a cemetery
where some of J’s great- grandparents are bur-
ied; his family is Hispanic and Italian. J’s mother
moved into the small apartment after J’s father left
her when J was 2. The elderly woman who owned
the building gave her the apartment rent-free in
exchange for helping out with chores.
Mae had dyslexia and crippling anxiety, which
made it hard for her to take mass transit. But she
was going to counseling and was also enrolled
in a job- training program. She got by on food
stamps and public assistance and made her life
work, cooking cornbread on a hot plate because
her apartment’s ancient stove didn’t work. She had
raised fi ve older children, who were in community
college or working jobs around Brooklyn, and they
helped out with J and his sister when they could.
One of her older daughter’s boyfriends took J to
get haircuts in Sunset Park; that daughter got the
children winter coats. Mae had spent the previous
year going through the arduous process of getting
her daughter, who is also dyslexic, placed in a pri-
vate school for children with learning disabilities,
where she was now thriving. And in his second
run of kindergarten, J was getting a lot of extra
help and was reading well. He was a popular kid,
generous and kind and self- possessed.
J’s family’s apartment faced a street that trucks
rumble loudly through at all hours. It was not a
desirable place to live as recently as 10 years ago,
but as gentrifi cation galloped through Brooklyn,
it devoured that corner as well. New owners
moved into a house down the block from J’s a
few years ago, painting the exterior a shade of
charcoal. Mae said that developers then off ered
to buy her landlady’s building.
Mae received a notice of eviction before
J’s fi rst-grade year. She qualifi ed for a housing
voucher for $1,515. She went through lists of land-
lords who supposedly accepted the vouchers and
found numbers not in service and dead ends at
every turn.
Mae worked with the offi ce of a city council-
man and a public- interest lawyer to get a stay on
her eviction to continue apartment hunting. She
applied for aff ordable housing, which is awarded
through a lottery, but she was not chosen. Sheorganized folders of documentation and paper-
work so she could jump on any opportunity that
came along. She stayed up nights crying and had
to leave her job- training program because deal-
ing with her housing situation was a full-time job.
Eventually, Mae began moving things in plaid
plastic zippered bags to the basement of one of her
older children’s jobs. She called a local shelter every
day for two weeks to see if she could be placed near
her children’s schools, but she says no one ever
picked up the phone or returned her calls.
J cried when he had to give up his little gray
dog because pets are not allowed in homeless
shelters. He cried when his PlayStation and train
table got packed up. At school pickup, he showed
me toys he made out of paper and school supplies
to take home to play with in his now- empty room.
On the day Mae was told the marshals would
come and give her the fi nal eviction notice, she
kept the children home from school so they could
go straight to the PATH intake center with the
fi nal notice.
Mae had J stay with a relative to avoid wit-
nessing the formal eviction, but her daughter
was too anxious to be away from her mother, so
she stayed in the apartment waiting, whistling
at birds from her bedroom window, a favorite
stuff ed animal zipped into the front of her hoodie
to take with her to PATH.
Although Mae had submitted medical docu-
mentation that she suff ers from panic attacks on
mass transit, the family was placed in conditional
housing in a shelter in the Bronx, more than an
hour by subway from both children’s schools.
She would not be able to attend therapy, which
was also back in Brooklyn. And Mae says she was
told that the conditional status could take 10 days
or more, which she had not anticipated, and that
during that time, the Department of Education
would not provide a school bus.
Ten days came and went. Mae said her daugh-
ter spent the fi rst few days taking pictures of baby
rats on glue traps in their living space in the shel-
ter, marveling at their long snouts and tails. Then
her school fi gured out a way to get a bus to the
Bronx; the ride took 2½ hours each way. But the
Department of Education could not get a bus to
take J back to our sons’ school until the family
had an offi cial shelter placement, so after two
weeks without school, Mae reluctantly enrolled
him in the local public school. She went to a store
to get curtains to make the shelter living space
more like a home.
When J’s sister got sick with strep throat, Mae
discovered that her thermometer was packed in
one of those plaid bags in Brooklyn. Her pedia-
trician was in Brooklyn too, so they went to the
emergency room. The city called to say that it
had found a potential apartment for the family,
but Mae could not take her daughter to view the
apartment — she was vomiting violently at this
point — and shelter rules prevented Mae from
bringing anyone into the (Continued on Page 65)