Educators Face Rising Number Of Homeless Students

The Christian Science Monitor (4/13) profiles Sarita Fuentes, the "co-principal and CEO of Monarch School, a San Diego-based, public K-12 institution that exclusively serves homeless students." Monarch is "one of a small number of schools across the country that serve students affected by unstable housing conditions. These schools, along with other schools nationwide, are seeing a growing number of students who are homeless." The Monitor points to the impact that the recession has had on homelessness, and cites statistics from San Diego indicating "there were 13,204 homeless students countywide during the 2009-2010 academic year. Joel Garcia, co-principal at Monarch School says the school has seen about a 74 percent increase in enrollment in the past three years."