A woman in North Carolina is suing a school district, alleging officials forced her children to switch schools while they experienced homelessness.
The suit from the mother, identified as K.L., claims Gaston County Schools; Lisa Phillips, state coordinator for Education of Homeless Children; and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction failed her children when the district forced the children to leave their original schools while already facing the trauma of homelessness.
The 17-page lawsuit filed on Jan. 26 states K.L. was evicted from her residence in September 2023 while her children were students at New Hope Elementary and Cramerton Middle School.
With two children and nowhere to go, the suit states the disabled veteran mother switched both children to car riders while searching for steady housing. While the family remained in the same city, they were not located in the same school zone following the eviction.
The mother is a disabled veteran.
I’m not super pro-military or anything, but a veteran, especially a disabled veteran, deserves to be taken care of by the country they sacrificed for.
Obviously, the school deserves to be sued for what they did, but those kids should never have been homeless in the first place. They should have been housed by the U.S. military on the military’s dime.
The military certainly has the money. Build a single less B-1 (or whatever the new hotness stealth airplane or destroyer is) and you could probably house every single homeless vet. Maybe every homeless person. Idk but those things are insanely expensive.
The F-35 program cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion.
But hey, at least they fly well enough for us to give them to Israel I guess…
Don’t be so naive, we need to spend all that money to protect Americans from global threats such as lack of affordable healthcare and affordable housing.
Wait
checks notes
Sorry we need to spend all that money to protect Americans from looks closer… there is something scribbled here does it say “axis of evil”? Next to it someone wrote “Iran” then scribbled it out and wrote “Iraq” and then it looks like it was scribbled out a second time to write “Iran” again?…
…Oh ok there we go it also says “Islamic Extremists”, well that is a good reason! Jeez after Bin Laden it has just been one ground invasion after another of jihadi ground troops on American shores. Thank goodness we didn’t spend that money on stupid government handouts. Remember when San Francisco didn’t build enough shore cannons to blow up ISIS landing boats and now that whole part of the country is gone? sigh and the liberals were SURE painting the cannons with LGTBQ colors was going to save them…
You know what really pisses me off as a conservative though? No one in this country respects veterans. Every time I go to get on a plane and the airline invites veterans to come on first, I clap beaming like the proud patriotic American that I am. When I look around though people around me are sometimes just on their phones and ignoring this opportunity to honor our veterans. Kids these days don’t even care about veterans and if you start honoring the service of our veterans with empty platitudes around millennials they don’t even respond they just want to talk about dumb shit like how we should at least give veterans free healthcare or affordable housing or childcare support.
Why does that shit matter? What do you think veterans want the government to just give them healthcare for free after they have fought so hard for the privilege of having to buy healthcare from corporations hellbent on cutting every single cost they can, quality of health services be damned? I feel like millennials just want to live in a communist hellscape where even the hospitals and schools are government run.
Those veterans fought for our country, don’t spit in their face by offering a hand to them, this is the proud and free land of the bootstraps where anybody can make it so long as they can make it. If you see a homeless veteran on the street, share a smile with them knowing that they not only fought for the freedom of you to succeed but also for them to fail and thus balance is preserved in this wonderful land of god.
Wake up, babe, new copypasta just dropped
This is 100% false. Pure disinformation. The $1.5T figure is for all costs associated with the program through to the aircraft’s end of life in the year 2070.
I mean…Why the hell are we sparing 1.5 Trillion dollars of our future income on jet fighters when we won’t spare even 10% of that on our own fucking people at home without a god damned 3 ring circus about how much we’re already spending?
Do you not see the hypocrisy here?
No, I don’t. Lots of other countries have a decent military AND good social supports. You guys can walk and chew gum at the same time.
For the life of me I will never understand why we would want to gut our military. Talk softly and carry a big stick. You don’t have to agree with the engagements that we have been in to understand why we need a strong military for defense and to make sure the world knows it. This can be squared WITH veteran and other social safety net programs. No reason not to have both.
Exactly! Look at Ukraine, for example. I bet they wish they had a stronger military in 2013, or 2021. I can only assume the rabidly anti-military folks are incredibly naive, or bad actors.
Or, hear me out here, we could spend $1.5T over 45 years to house the homeless. That’s $33.3 billion dollars each year, every year.
But how does that immediately make Boeing richer? Think of their poor earnings.
Well, if Boeing built housing under contract for the government, they could make money that way.
How about the 2.3 trillion dollars spent in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with the Taliban?
How about how cereal boxes keep getting smaller but the price stays the same? That has about as much to do with military procurement as your comment.
True, people paid for it with inflation and stagnant wages
I’m being honest here, there’s actually a ton of housing support for homeless veterans. She’ll have to take action to access that help of course, and that doesn’t negate the trauma of getting evicted the entire family is experiencing, or the school district making it worse
I don’t know if this makes me a radical communist or something, but in my opinion, if you’ve served in the military, especially if you’ve become disabled during your time, you shouldn’t get assistance paying for a house.
Your house should be bought and paid for. 110% subsidy, to help pay for things that will inevitably be imperfect with the property; electrical issues, corroded pipes, outdated HVAC, security, CO detectors, etc.
And you shouldn’t have to jump through a thousand hoops design to prevent access at every step of the way.
No, that shit should have less friction than the physics lessons you took in high school
The military is too busy misplacing and spending all their dime on things to hurt the poors.
especially a disabled veteran
Why is a veteran more deserving of care than a teacher, a firefighter, a nurse, a construction worker, or literally any one else serving their community? Is it because they kill people and destabilize countries at the behest of corporations?
It states they were residing outside the school zone, so they were staying somewhere or other. Since when was it even the schools choice? Taxes and school districts are set up that way. It sucks, but I don’t see how it’s the school’s fault. The mom must have informed the school where they were statlying at it would have been illegal for the school to not make them change.
Depends on district policy and state/local law. E.g., in my kid’s district a parent can request for their child to attend any school of the same grade within the district if space is available, but parents have to provide transportation if it’s not the zoned school. For the district where we lived previously, a family moving out of zone could request that students be allowed to keep attending their current school through the end of the year.
Per the article, both state and federal law allows these kids to continue attending the same school in such situations. It’s the school’s fault because, even if their district has no such policies, the clear and obvious course would be to seek an exception until policy could be addressed to align with the law. Instead, they simply refused to meet with the mother.
Can we at least agree that people should never be homeless? No?
Can we at least agree that disabled people should never be homeless? Still no?
How about veterans? Once again no.
Disabled veterans with children? Believe it or not, also no.
Can we agree that the wealthiest country on Earth shouldn’t have these problems?
Laughs in late-stage capitalism.
But think about those poor workers who won’t be able to supply billionaires with yachts? What about their kids huh!?!
No child should go hungry or miss out on an education. We have the resources to treat people better.
Would you think of the CEOs’ yachts?
Tbh, the fact you even mentioned veterans is really fuckin weird to most people.
What makes them any more deserving than anyone else? Because they killed brown people for oil money?
Just shows the level of brainwashing going on
It’s not that I think veterans are better people or anything. It’s just that if I were to literally risk my life for some organization (such as the US government), I would expect that organization to show some fucking gratitude when I need help.
I really don’t see why making their own decisions to risk their lives for money makes them any more deserving than a single mother or what have you
In fact, you could argue that the single mother is more deserving of everyone’s help because all she did was exist; she didn’t participate in destabilising half the planet
Am I not correct?
I’m probably not the best person to make this point because I would never join the military, but if anyone is joining for the money, they’ve got to be monumentally stupid because the money isn’t that good, especially for what they have to deal with. People join because they want to “serve their country” and be part of something larger than themselves. They don’t see themselves as destabilizing the planet or anything like that–quite the opposite.
I don’t see military service as particularly noble, but it’s what people in the military are taught to, and more to the point, it’s the truth according to the US government. I’m just asking for Congress to legislate as if they believe their own propaganda. Well, really I’m asking them to take care of everyone in need, but if they would at least serve the people who served them, it would be a start.
MANY people join for college tuition and medical care. The number joining out of sheer patriotism or wanting to “serve their country” is much smaller than you think.
I suppose you’re right. It’s fucked up what we make people do just to get what a lot of countries give away for free.
It functions better as a foot in the door. R’s love* veterans (*on paper). Get them benefits and work from there.
Incremental progress baby. It’s unsatisfying and miserable, and still better than the alternative.
This is heartbreaking. Alone the fact that there is such a thing as “homeless children” is heartbreaking. The US really needs some help.
Nah, we good, we have god, guns, and nukes. 🫡🇺🇲
I hope you’re sarcastic
Shitty thing is that we have to even guess.
Split representation in the House (72-48 in the state and 7-7 at the federal level, R favor), a 5-2 split in their supreme court (R favor) and 2 republican US senators (30-20 state level in the Republicans favor) is the reason why. Stop voting Red and your state won’t be so shitty towards people
The ones voting R are okay with this outcome as long as others get hurt. Even if innocents get hurt
Until it affects them personally, then they become very sad.
Then they become
very sadpissed at the Democrats for letting it happenFtfy
Depends on who shouts the loudest I guess.
And then when their shortsighted policies affect them they blame “the government” as if it wasn’t the very people they elected that caused it.
With two children and nowhere to go, the suit states the disabled veteran mother switched both children to car riders while searching for steady housing.
What the fuck does “car riders” mean in this sentence?
Probably indicates that they won’t be riding a school bus to school and will be dropped off and picked up by car.
This sounds like a clear violation of the McKinney-Vento Act.
I believe the problems stem from public schools being funded indirectly by real estate values. That means you’re discriminated against if your parents are poor. That the school makes it so explicit by kicking the children out as soon as possible is not just cruel, it’s stupid too.
Laws in the US are so cruel to the poor. It is effectively apartheid.
if she didnt live in the school’s district then her kids need to attend a different school, seem pretty simple
Which would be a violation of the McKinney-Vento Act.
But were her kids kicked out for being homeless or were they kicked out for being obnoxious disturbances? The title makes it seem like her kids are being kicked out of school for being homeless. And why was she evicted from her residence?
were they kicked out for being obnoxious disturbances?
It’s nice how you immediately jump to victim-blaming with absolutely no context.
The title makes it seem like her kids are being kicked out of school for being homeless.
Because that was the point of the article.
And why was she evicted from her residence?
Wholly irrelevant question.
I’ll explain what likely happened given what was in the article:
She was kicked out of her house. Her children therefore did not live in the school district. The school administration decided to kick them out of school for not living in the district.
Are they following the letter of the law? Probably. Could they be more compassionate and flexible? Definitely.
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The McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act requires districts to allow homeless students to attend their school of origin, regardless of the family having an address in the school district.
Assuming the facts are true as alleged, and barring any substantive evidence not yet known, this is probably why they’ll win their case.
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They didn’t just lie down in the street and die like homeless vermin are supposed to do.
Big fucking /s for any morons out there
I can’t speak for everywhere in the US, but where I live you have to have a physical residence in the school district in order to attend that school. If you don’t, you may be able to attend but you have to fill out forms and the district can reject you if they don’t have space.
They clearly already had space, so that excuse is out.
To play devil’s advocate here:
It’s hypothetically possible they didn’t. If the school is required to enroll every student in its district regardless of its capacity, the school could have been overcrowded already. Kicking out two students may still have left them overcrowded and thus given them justification to deny their admittance on residency status.
(To be absolutely clear, I don’t think this is what happened, but it’s also not an impossible scenario either. But as the school won’t comment now that there’s pending litigation we only have the mother’s word as to what happened, and even though we have no reason to not believe what she is claiming, it should still be remembered that you can allege pretty much whatever you want when filing a civil suit.)
I posted this as a reply to someone else, so copying here too. It’s not they “may” be able to attend, federal law says they must be able to attend and be provided transportation.
The McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act requires districts to allow homeless students to attend their school of origin, regardless of the family having an address in the school district.
The point is for school to be one less difficulty for children in what is an already difficult event.
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The paperwork isn’t the point, I was just clarifying the process a parent would have to go through to admit their child to an out-of-district school under normal circumstances (i.e., not the one in the article).
Having actually read the summary now, my point is moot since it says they were no longer in that school zone.
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You sound like the exact kind of person who would blame homeless children for being innocently kicked out of school.
Why do you use social media?
You didn’t even need to click on the link. It’s right there in the last paragraph OP posted.
With two children and nowhere to go, the suit states the disabled veteran mother switched both children to car riders while searching for steady housing. While the family remained in the same city, they were not located in the same school zone following the eviction.
I imagine it was because they no longer technically had a mailing address in the district. Would have been a nice thing if the school district had let it slide, at minimum until the start of summer vacation but they decided that wasn’t the priority. Better ten kids not get an education vs one poor kid get a good one is our motto apparently.
the McKinney-Vento Act. Already covers this. They are simply choosing to ignore it
The law is whatever you want it to be ever since Roe v. Wade was gutted. A clump of cells has more rights than a woman. My dead body will have more legal rights than 52% of our citizens.
Congratulations, you’re both incredibly dumb and an incredibly shitty person.
