Bootstrap Blues

Abstract

Meet David*. In mid-January, he came to the small town Iowa elementary school where I work. David has attended more schools in the two years since he started school than I have in my lifetime. In fact, the school he just moved from only has four days of attendance listed on his record. David moves so often because he’s homeless. His situation is not what we may stereotypically think of as “homeless”—you wouldn’t see him on the streets or even in soup kitchens. Instead, David stays with his mother, and they couch surf from one home to another from week to week. David and his mother are part of a mounting statistic that tells us that 41 percent of the homeless population includes families