Assisting students who fall through the cracks

High school students today worry about the usual things: grades, homework, sports, friends and love, among others. Yet for some students, finding a place to sleep is at the top of that list.

Sparrow’s Nest of Northwest Montana, a nonprofit organization based in Kalispell, has addressed this issue for five students, opening a five-bedroom home in Whitefish last month.

More than 318 homeless students were under the age of 18 in 2013, or 30 percent of the total homeless population in the valley, according to a study done by Flathead Homelessness Interagency Resource and Education. It’s not a widely publicized issue, and hard to visualize because it’s not something these students go out of their way to share.

“It’s tough to put numbers on it,” said Jerramy Dear-Ruel, Executive Director of Sparrow’s Nest. “Essentially we do not know numbers, and I believe there’s more out there than we figure. It’s an invisible population. When these kids are in high school, they’re not shouting out saying, ‘Hey, I’m homeless.’ It normally doesn’t happen that way, they want to draw as little attention to themselves as possible.”

The Sparrow’s Nest home offers each student a furnished bedroom with a twin bed, a dresser and a desk. Downstairs is a large kitchen, a living room, a dining room, a computer lab and study area and a recreation room. A resident manager lives on-site. Staff members also work night and weekend shifts alongside the resident managers.

“Every single hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, there is supervision. These kids aren’t hanging out on their own,” said Laura Kochis, treasurer of Sparrow’s Nest.

Sparrow’s Nest initially began in 2013 when the daughter of Marcia Bumke, board chairperson, came home from Flathead High School around Christmas and told her parents about two classmates who had nowhere to go. The Bumkes offered up two free bedrooms and took the students in.

A donated building in Kalispell was to be the first home for unaccompanied high school students, but St. Peter’s Lutheran Church offered a different house in Whitefish that could start taking students sooner. The rent is paid by the donor, so Sparrow’s Nest only pays for utilities, insurance and maintenance at the house, along with staff pay and food costs.

Most of the furniture in the house was donated, and a seven-passenger van was just given to be used for trips to and from Kalispell for free counseling services as well.

“They’re grateful for whatever is given to them,” Kochis said. “They’ve been abandoned by the people who are their parents or guardians and were supposed to be responsible for them, and they’ve just been abandoned through really no fault of their own.”

“They’re like most kids I know, they come from two parent families. They just want to have a chance. I don’t know how they do it. They fall through the cracks. If they have a drug history or trouble with the law, there’s federal and state money to help them, but if they’re following the rules they fly under the radar.”

Students work through a three-tiered application process in order to become a resident at the house. First, a referring individual or organization reaches out to Sparrow’s Nest and receives an application for the student. The application covers medical and criminal history, and the applicant must answer a few essay questions. Then Dear-Ruel sits down with each applicant for a one-on-one interview, where they go through the application in depth and have an open discussion about a variety of topics. Dear-Ruel said he then hands each applicant a blank piece of paper and asks them to write down 15 to 20 goals they’d like to accomplish within a year’s time.

“Some are as simple as wanting to learn how to cook, to wanting to get a driver’s license, wanting to graduate high school and wanting to go to college. Some of them are very small, others are getting married and having kids,” he said.

After the interview, the applicant visits the home for a tour. They also sit down with the resident manager to talk about likes, dislikes, food preferences and how they would handle problems with other residents. The Sparrow’s Nest board goes through each application and selects five to live in the home. It’s five less students facing homelessness, Dear-Ruel said, but those who aren’t chosen still leave with nowhere to go.

“There’s more of a need than what we can meet,” he said.

Over the course of the year, Sparrow’s Nest workers try to help make some of those initial goals a reality. If a student wants to continue their education at Flathead Valley Community College, for example, Sparrow’s Nest will aid in finding housing and figuring out class scheduling.

“We want them to be successful and become a contributing adult, and helping them through the difficult times they’ve had. Some of these kids come from just horrendous circumstances that they have powered through,” Kochis said. “These kids are determined to get their high school diploma, because they have seen full force what it’s like to be homeless, and they know if they don’t have that diploma, this will be their life, they will continue to be homeless. They don’t want that.”

For more information on Sparrow’s Nest, visit sparrowsnestnwmt.wordpress.com or call 406-309-5196.