LOS ANGELES — It's back to school at Aviva's Wallis House, a 42-bed shelter for women and children experiencing homelessness. Logan Mendoza is five years old and about to start kindergarten. His sister, 12-year-old Nicole, is going into seventh grade.
"Sometimes when the teacher says, 'You have an amazing daughter. I'm so glad she came here,' I want to cry, not because I'm sad, because I'm happy. I'm happy to hear she's a good student," their mother, Glenda Mendoza, said.
It's an element of normalcy that can't come soon enough. After all, it wasn't long ago that they escaped domestic violence, lived day-to-day out of a hotel, and were turned away from new schools, as they lacked some of the documents needed for enrollment.
"They tell me, I need more documents like a proof of address, a birth certificate, but I didn't have it in my hand because I left everything in the apartment," Mendoza said.
Amber Rivas, president and CEO of Aviva Family and Children's Services, says that's often a challenge with the 20 school-age children they currently have under their roof.
"Many families just come to us with the clothing on their backs," Rivas said. "They haven't been mainlining all of their documents, birth certificates, identification cards, and that can be a real barrier to getting kids enrolled. They don't have copies of transcripts from their last school."
Vaccines can also be an issue. Idalia Landaverde and her kids were just released by immigration officials after fleeing from El Salvador. She is a nurse and brought the documents needed to enroll them, but they're still waiting on some immunizations. She thought it would mean her son wouldn't be able to enroll in school.
"I didn't think it was going to happen because I know there are some requirements like vaccines," Landaverde said in Spanish.
LAUSD reported 9,410 homeless students during the 2022-2023 school year, according to California's Department of Education. LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says this year, that number is on the rise.
"We have about 12% to 13% more kids that have been identified as homeless than last year," Carvalho said at a recent back-to-school event.
But education experts like UCLA professor and former Compton school teacher Tyrone Howard say that's an undercount.
"I think the numbers are probably higher than they get reported," Howard said.
Howard, who has studied and published reports on homeless students and the barriers to accurately counting them, says the pandemic distorted the numbers because it made it harder to track kids through online learning and accurately identify their living situation.
LAUSD identified 17,084 homeless kids during the 2018 to 2019 school year. A year later, that number had dropped by more than 10,000, with LAUSD reporting 6,677 homeless students during the 2019-2020 school year. The numbers increase slightly in the years after when more students return to in-person classes in 2021-2022 (7,514 homeless students) and 2022-2023 (9,410 homeless students).
Homelessness, however, has only increased in LA County since 2018.
This undercount in the number of students experiencing homelessness has repercussions on funding, Howard said.
"If we actually had an accurate number of students who were unhoused, it would give us a way for us to think of what kind of supports schools would need to support those students because, in many instances, the funding is not anywhere close to what the need is for those students," he said.
That's why the support from Wallis House and its donors are essential, from helping homeless students navigate the bureaucracy regarding enrollment through letters and advocacy to providing them with school supplies.
"Education is a pathway out of poverty, so it's certainly a priority for us here at Wallis House and at Aviva," Rivas said
These efforts help kids like Nicole Mendoza thrive. She is starting this school year with a 3.8-grade point average.