Advocates for homeless kids call separate schools unfair

<b>Report says chance at normal relationships is preferred</b> <br><br>WASHINGTON - At Thomas J. Pappas Elementary school in Phoenix, pupils learn to read and count. They also get new clothes if theirs

Wednesday, February 2nd 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Report says chance at normal relationships is preferred

WASHINGTON - At Thomas J. Pappas Elementary school in Phoenix, pupils learn to read and count. They also get new clothes if theirs are tattered and dirty, onsite medical care, breakfast and lunch. Also, they get boxes of food from the school's pantry to take home to their families.

Despite such efforts, however, advocates for the homeless contended in a report released Tuesday that Pappas and other schools for homeless children across the country unfairly segregate their charges. The schools violate a 1987 law aimed at educating more than a half-million homeless youngsters by depriving them "of the chance to develop normal relationships with their peers," the report said.

"There is no reason why homeless children should not be in the same schools as everyone else," Sarah McCarthy, a staff attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, said in releasing the report.

A trend toward teaching homeless children in shelters, community centers and separate schools is the latest in a list of barriers to such children's legal rights to an equal education, the report said.

Thomas Corwin of the Education Department said separate schools are not in direct violation of the law, but they're not the ideal.

"We are very much in agreement with the general spirit of the report," he said, including many of the advocates' recommendations for changing the law this year.

Suggested changes include requiring a homeless specialist in every district and informing homeless parents of their rights. Mr. Corwin, who keeps track of homeless student issues for the department, said Congress has repeatedly turned down administration requests to increase funding to help homeless students.

Almost 50 schools such as Pappas educate homeless children separately, many in little more than one-room school houses, the report said. The first was established in 1984 in Utah.

The report, based on a 1998 survey of homeless service providers and advocates, also charged that long-standing school district policies requiring proof of residency, immunization records and documents from other schools place unfair burdens on homeless families.

Almost eight in 10 of the surveyed organizations that provide services for the homeless said their clients' children could not ride district school buses because they lacked permanent addresses.

The Education Department says the number of homeless children out of school has been reduced to 12 percent from 50 percent in 1990.

Many school districts contend the separate classes and schools help homeless children by giving them additional social services that regular schools can't afford and by protecting them from the ridicule of more affluent pupils.