When an apartment complex in south DeKalb County closed suddenly this fall, it burdened social service agencies that scrambled to find alternative housing for the impoverished tenants.
It also forced a school to shift from its focus on education. Jennelle Savoy, the social worker at Flat Shoals Elementary School, heard that some of her students lived in the trash-strewn compound, but she was unprepared for the actual number: around 50.
Flat Shoals and other schools packed with poor students highlight a challenge for teachers as poverty rises outside school doors: how to provide extras services that can put the poorest students on a stable footing so they can learn. It’s a foreign problem for middle class schools, but politicians across Georgia will likely have to grapple with it when the General Assembly starts Jan. 9. Gov. Nathan Deal is expected to propose a sweeping overhaul of the state’s decades-old school funding formula, with differing implications for schools based on the number of low-income households they serve.
It is a critical question to answer because researchers at the University of Georgia have found through brain scans that impoverished children whose families received extra help grew into adults with “greater volumes” in regions of the brain that are tied to memory, learning and coping with stress.
But it does not come cheap.
You can read in the full story what some of the prospects are for money for extra programming at myAJC.com
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