Suburban schools — for decades a beacon, attracting city dwellers — are now feeling the effects of poverty, too.

“Since the downturn of the economic system, what was there,” Rebecca Gardner said of poverty, “has become much more severe very quickly.”  Gardner, who started her career as teacher, then worked in support services at the State Education Department for 27 years, now is on the faculty of the Capital Area School Development Association.

Now 64, she was in her teens when she was first exposed to poverty, helping with a Cornell nutrition survey in the Adirondacks. “I walked into homes with earth floors, where children slept on piles of clothing and didn’t have food every day,” she said.

Last year, she did a training session in Sharon Springs where a panelist told of visiting a home with an earthen floor where the children slept on piles of clothes. “It’s not gone,” she said of poverty.

What’s new is poverty is no longer concentrated just in urban or rural areas. The Brookings Institute published “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America” in 2013 that discovered a noteworthy trend — more poor people in metro areas lived outside of big cities than within them. The Brookings study brings into focus problems with social services in spread-out suburban areas.

Schools across the state and locally are just starting to grapple with the reality of suburban poverty.

“I’ve seen every nook and cranny of New York State,” said Gardner. “There is not a single school district in New York that doesn’t have their barrio,” she said, using the Spanish word for neighborhood.

Gardner was inspired two years ago when she heard a keynote address by Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch, describing the poor barrio where she grew up, near the Mexican border in Laredo, Texas. “Niskayuna, North Colonie, Bethlehem, they all have a barrio,” said Gardner. “Everybody’s barrio has grown significantly in the last eight years.”

Guilderland is no exception.

“We’ve had an uptick in the number of students the State Education Department calls economically disadvantaged,” said Superintendent Marie Wiles.

In 2007-08, five percent of Guilderland students were economically disadvantaged; by last year, that percentage had nearly tripled, to 14.9 percent.

The numbers used to be determined by students who received free or reduced-priced lunches; the federal income eligibility guideline for the upcoming school year is $11,770 for a household of one, with $4,160 added for each additional household member.

“Now there are other triggers,” said Wiles, naming programs like WIC (a nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children) and HEAP (the Home Energy Assistance Program that helps people with heating and cooling costs) that alert schools to students who come from poor families.

Altamont Elementary School has the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged students — 26.5 percent — of Guilderland’s five elementary schools. Pine Bush Elementary has the lowest, at 6.2 percent. Lynnwood’s percentage is 15, Guilderland Elementary’s is 16.6, and Westmere’s is 17. The percentage of economically disadvantaged students at the middle school is 16 and at the high school is 13 percent.

At last week’s presentation of the school report card, based on data from state tests, several administrators said that poverty was a factor in student scores.

Large numbers of poor families is a new phenomenon for local suburban districts. With the Great Recession, said Gardner, “A lot of people lost jobs and homes, something they never imagined happening. They are shell-shocked, ashamed, frightened. They don’t know what to do and are hiding that.”

Additionally, a younger generation is choosing urban living; after 60 years in decline, populations in Capital Region cities saw increases in the 2010 federal census. A University of Virginia study, “The Changing Shape of American Cities,” mapped important shifts in the last two decades. The “donut” shape of many American cities in the 1990s, with wealthier residents in a booming suburban ring around a decaying core, has given way to a “new donut” with three, rather than two, rings.

Many city centers have attracted young, educated, high-income residents as poverty migrates outward, creating an “inner ring” of urban and early suburban neighborhoods around the core — in that ring, incomes have fallen and education rates are stagnant. Beyond the inner ring, an outer ring of newer and larger suburbs continues to grow.

This may account for the difference in poverty rates between Westmere Elementary School, 17 percent, close to the city of Albany with many smaller homes built after World War II, and Pine Bush Elementary School, 6 percent, in an area of Guilderland with many large new homes. The Altamont Elementary catchment area, 26.5 percent, draws from the rural edge of the Helderbergs, bordering Berne-Knox-Westerlo, a rural school district with 33 percent economically disadvantaged students.

Gardner’s children attended schools in North Colonie, a district she said has an influx of residents from Albany who were dissatisfied with the city schools. Some districts, too, she said, naming Bethlehem, have a reputation for good special-education programs, and attract families of students with disabilities.

“People that teach in North Colonie have had high percentages of kids from homes where they are taken on vacation, have resources, are read to, and on and on and on,” said Gardner. “They have had very little experience working with kids without those advantages. They are used to kids succeeding...They don’t understand poverty.”

Suburban poverty is different than urban and rural poverty, which are widely recognized, said Wiles. “It’s hidden,” she said. “There’s such a stigma to it families will do anything to mask their poverty. It’s different than in a rural community or urban setting where that’s how things are. In Guilderland, when you’re surrounded by people who have a lot, you’re more sensitive.”

She gave an example. “Just today, I had a request for a high school trip on a chartered bus as part of a class. Before I clicked OK, I emailed the teacher to see if there was a plan for parents who can’t pay. She said, ‘They can tell me. We have a fund set aside.’”

Wiles asked, “What if I’m a student and don’t want to go to my teacher and say, ‘I don’t have $100?’”

She concluded, “There is sensitivity in general at our school, but is it enough?”

Simulated poverty

At the end of July, 29 Guilderland administrators participated in a poverty simulation exercise presented by CASDA. The 60 conference participants were placed into family units or were assigned roles as community members — bankers, doctors, police, social workers.

Wiles was given the role of a 20-year-old with a 1-year-old child. She lived in a household with her 9-year-old brother and their father, played by Demian Singleton, Guilderland’s assistant superintendent for instruction. The household had no mother.

“Every 15 minutes equaled a week,” explained Wiles. “I had to get my little one to day care, get to work, and try to fit in college classes. “Our mom was gone and our dad was trying to hold it together.”

The goal was to get through the month. A facilitator would hand out cards describing various problems, like a car had broken down, or a boy broke his arm.

“Life happened,” said Wiles. “By the end, I had made it to school once, to my job just a couple of times. We never had the cash we needed to pay rent. My brother stole, to pawn stuff for cash. It was stunning. We were all frustrated. It was hard to access the help in any integrated, meaningful way.”

Wiles concluded, “It was horrible.”

The program, said Gardner, came from a community action group in Missouri, which offers a kit for $2,000, complete with roles and props.

Part of the value of the exercise is to increase sensitivity, said Wiles. She said of educators, “We think, if parents valued school more, it would be great; they should come to open houses and conferences, and help with homework.

“We learned how hard it is to get rent for the house, to feed the family, to get to a job — you don’t have hours in the day to come to an open house or to log on to track the progress of your student.”

Wiles said that educators need to ask themselves, “Are we tuned into those needs and ready to respond?” She also said, “We have to ask how our economically disadvantaged students are doing in school.”

Guilderland administrators have recently looked at records and found correlations between students from poor families, linking them to lower attendance and lower grades than their wealthier counterparts.

“We need to dig more deeply and take some kind of action,” Wiles said. “We may need to think differently about meeting needs of students with disabilities,” she said, as there may be a disproportionate number from poor homes.

Raising awareness will most likely start with school leaders, Wiles said. While it is still in the planning stages, she said, “The principals want to do something similar for staff.”

“Teachers often don’t have a clue of what it really means to be a child coming from poverty,” said Gardner. “The simulation provides a huge a-ha moment. Then you take the next step: What can we do about it?”

Frontlines

Teachers are on the frontlines in the war against poverty.

Gardner believes that, often, even teachers who have worked for years in schools located in poor communities don’t fully understand what their students are coping with.

Gardner worked for three years in an inner-city school in Schenectady. “I gathered data on poverty and presented it to teachers and blew them out of the water,” she said. “They had no idea,” she said, of the child-abuse rate, the effects of lead poisoning, the lack of immunization, or the frequency of fetal alcohol syndrome.

“All over this country, teachers don’t understand kids in poverty and can’t help them. I’m very furious,” said Gardner. “It didn’t start eight years ago. Teachers don’t know how to help.”

An approach she considers “cutting edge” is that developed by Eric Jensen. His approach has been used successfully in South Colonie at the Roessleville Elementary School, under the leadership of Principal Marybeth Tedisco, Gardner said. “She uses the red book, which has the research, and the blue book, which has the practical strategies.”

Roessleville teachers were asked to describe children they had seen suffering from poverty. “The book series matched what they had seen and took them to the next level — what can you do in the classroom?” said Gardner. “It’s a beautiful example of really digging deeply to capture teachers’ interest.”

Tedisco said the percentage of students living in poverty at her school has increased dramatically over the last decade from about 29 percent to 45 percent this year getting free or reduced-price lunches; the South Colonie school has 343 students in pre-kindergarten through fourth grade.

Working through a site-based school committee, Tedisco said, “As things got worse with the economy, our staff wanted to look for ways to address the changing population....We needed to find the best ways to support our families living in poverty.”

Tedisco worked with Valerie Lovelace at CASDA who “helped us do staff meetings.” The staff uses Jensen’s two books, which, Tedisco said, “Helps families in the community and helps kid build necessary tools.”

She explained, “Students of poverty come to school without the skills they need...things like self-regulation, attention skills, motivation. It’s because their basic needs aren’t being met.”

Since her staff began the program last year, she said, “The biggest difference is a change in mindset of the staff. They no longer look at a student as not doing things they need to do. They see the student doesn’t have the skills. We put ourselves in other people’s shoes. We see that people are doing the best they can. We find support for families so kids can build the skills they need.”

As well as academic support, this includes physical support: Roessleville Elementary provides snacks, clothes, toiletries and school supplies to students who need them. This year, too, the school will work with Parsons Child and Family Center in Albany to provide social support for students with mental-health issues.

“We support the whole child,” concluded Tedisco. “It’s an ongoing goal; we’re going to continue year after year.”

One of the major tenets of Jensen’s theory is that, beginning at birth, the attachment formed between a parent and child predicts the quality of future relationships with teachers and peers, and plays a leading role in development of such social functions as curiosity, arousal, emotional regulation, independence, and social confidence. Except for the six “hard-wired emotions,” Jensen posits, every emotional response must be taught.

“Cooperation, patience, embarrassment, empathy, gratitude, and forgiveness are crucial to a smoothly running, complex social environment like a classroom,” Jensen writes. “When students lack these learned responses, teachers who expect humility or penitence may get a smirk instead, a response that may lead teachers to believe a student has an ‘attitude.’”

He believes, if students have been deprived of these essential lessons, the school must teach them.

Jensen offers practical “action steps,” for example, on respect.  “It is fruitless simply to demand respect from students,” Jensen writes.  “Many just don’t have the context, background, or skills to show it.”

Instead, he offers six alternatives, such as avoiding directives in favor of offering choices, modeling adult thinking, avoiding demeaning sarcasm, disciplining through positive relationships rather than exerting power, sharing decision-making in class, and giving respect to students first even when they seem least to deserve it.

In his practical guide, Jensen lists seven ways children raised in poverty differ from middle-class students: health and nutrition, vocabulary, effort, cognition, relationships, distress, and hope and the growth mind-set.

“Hope is a powerful thing,” Jensen writes. “Research suggests that lower socioeconomic status is often associated with viewing the future as containing more negative events than positive ones...If students think failure or low performance is likely, they’ll probably not bother to try. Similarly, if they think they aren’t smart enough and can’t succeed, they’ll probably not put out any effort.”

If teachers believe certain students have a fixed amount of “smarts” they can’t increase, the teachers’ beliefs will influence engagement and learning. He advises teachers to provide prompt, actionable, and task-specific feedback.

Rather than telling a student, “Don’t feel bad you didn’t finish,” a teacher is advised to say,  “Stick with this...You can do this. Your mind is a powerful force to help you reach your goals.”

Role of the community

“Be sensitive and kind and giving if you can,” is Wiles’s advice for the community at large.

“From an academic sense, it’s a conversation we will have in the upcoming months. That’s not to say our classroom teachers and social workers aren’t tuned in. When David Soares,” she said, referring to the Albany County district attorney, “drops off 50 backpacks, we know who to give them to. But it’s not systematic.”

The district employs eight social workers; their primary role in the school, Wiles said, “is to offer direction on resources....They can help people navigate the system.”

A point driven home during the poverty-simulation exercise, she said, was, “There are plenty of resources out there. But it’s hard to access them in a timely and meaningful way.”

Wiles raised her hand at the end of the exercise session to make the point that “it would be powerful to do this with our legislators who fund these services.”

She described the convoluted array of services as “almost counterproductive.” Of the role she played as a 20-year-old in a poor family, Wiles said, “Here I’m a school superintendent and can’t get to school. We had a roomful of educators who were stymied.”

She concluded, “This is really the start of our conversation. It’s important, if we care about all kids, we need to think about all in the kids in our care. You have to work harder; we’re committed to that.”

Gardner suggested that, besides the sort of help institutions like schools or churches offer the poor, individuals can make a difference.

“Parents can help other parents — drive someone to a doctor’s appointment, invite a child for play dates, share winter coats,” she advised. “People need to know that other people care,” she said. “That’s huge. It helps them have hope.

“They’re born into this, or thrown into this. They lose hope. They don’t believe things will change, that life will be positive. They need to have a positive vision for the future.”