Homeless CPS students head to college
June 16, 2011|By Erin Meyer, Tribune reporter
Like many recent high school graduates, Miguel Noyola and Michael Young are preparing to start college in the fall.
Noyola plans to study to be an automotive technician, and Young wants to apply to the nursing program at Truman City College in Chicago. Both share something few of their future college peers will be able to fathom — they have experienced homelessness during their high school years.
"I can't wait to go to college and start my career," said Noyola, 18, who graduates from Edwin G. Foreman High School on Friday. "All my mother ever wanted for me was for me to be happy and go to college."
Noyola is one of five Chicago Public Schools students who accepted college scholarships from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless on Thursday at Loyola University Law School.
The students are among thousands of CPS students every year who lack stable housing, officials said. Of the 15,500 students enrolled this school year, more than 3,000 have no parent or legal guardian, according to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
Most do not fare as well as the five who got scholarships from the coalition.
"They usually end up homeless due to some tragedy," said Ashley Allen, a member of the group's scholarship selection committee.
Despite living in shelters or crashing with friends while getting little or no parental support, some students still make it through high school, Allen said.
"These young people always found a way to keep going and make it through high school when there are so many who don't," said Allen, 28, who spent her high school years moving between shelters in Charlotte, N.C. "What motivated me was the fear of that being my life forever."
Young said the problems that left him wondering where he would sleep at night wound up working in his favor. As a senior at Senn High School, Young brought up his grades and started studying the Bible.
Since its inception in 2004, the program has awarded 25 scholarships worth $65,000 to CPS students who experienced homelessness in high school.
If the students earn satisfactory marks as college freshmen, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless extends the award.
Daihana Estrada, a 2010 scholarship recipient, just finished her freshman year at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"My mother and father got deported," said Estrada, who is studying political science with ambitions to become an immigration lawyer. "My graduation they were not there, my 18th birthday they were not there. I don't want people to experience what I went through."
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