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It’s May in Indianapolis, and cheers from families celebrating seniors crossing graduation stages nearly drown out the roar of engines circling the track. Despite this incredible forward momentum, there is so much holding unhoused students back from the futures they can achieve.
Thousands of students facing homelessness balance the stress and trauma of instability with academics each day.
Jay started over three times this year because he changed schools each time he had to move. Roselly works 30 hours each week to support her family. Tristan became his younger brother’s only caretaker after his mom’s hospitalization.
Each day, these Brightlane Learning seniors are forced to stay focused on the needs in front of them, which makes graduation, stability and the future ahead less certain than it is for so many of their housed peers. In fact, students experiencing homelessness are 87% more likely to drop out of school than their housed peers.
Yet this May, Brightlane Learning celebrated 22 housing-unstable seniors representing 11 different Indianapolis high schools who are moving on to college, trade school and employment. These young adults are moving closer to the stable futures that every person deserves because of their own resilience and dedication.
But they aren’t doing it alone. Students succeed when communities wrap around them, collaborate intentionally, and center the voice and needs of each student at every age and every stage because students should not have to overcome instability alone.
I have had the gift of tutoring Alex, a fifth-grade student. When I first met him, he was a quiet third grader who had learned to expect frustration from school. Basic math felt like a wall he couldn’t climb. Reading was something he avoided because it reminded him of what he thought he couldn’t do. But beneath the struggle, there was this spark of sharp curiosity, a sense of humor and determination.
Each week I worked with Alex, that spark grew. He started sounding out words with more confidence. He began to see patterns in multiplication. The first time he finished a chapter book, the light in his eyes was undeniable. Today, he knows all his multiplication facts, and he reads stories with characters he talks about like friends. In the tutoring space, he is thriving. It’s not because the work suddenly became easy, but because he has a place where he feels safe, supported and seen.
Outside of tutoring, life is harder. His family faces housing insecurity, and he carries the weight of instability into the classroom, impacting his belief in what he is capable of achieving. Alex’s family has navigated some unbelievable challenges in the past year, and his struggles are signs of a child navigating circumstances far bigger than he should ever have to.
What’s different between his family and mine isn’t love or effort or commitment. It’s resources. It’s the community support I grew up with and that my kids are growing up with yet so many Indianapolis children and young adults don’t have access to.
Funding cuts at a state and local level are impacting critical programs that support child care, food access, school transportation and resources for unhoused students. Communities must take responsibility for student success. When key supports disappear, the only solution is working together to create additional supports.
Graduation season helps me celebrate the resilience of students facing challenges no one should have to experience. It also helps me see and celebrate the resilience of the schools, community organizations and individuals who will never give up and continue to find a way.
Every student who walks across a graduation stage despite housing instability reminds us what is possible when a community refuses to give up on its children.
The question now is whether we will continue building the kind of Indianapolis where more students get that chance. What we choose to do now will shape whether a fifth grader who is still realizing what he can achieve will someday walk across a graduation stage, too.•
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Coker is CEO of Brightlane Learning.
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