North Carolina mother sues school district for kicking her homeless kids out of class - eviltoast

A woman in North Carolina is suing a school district, alleging officials forced her children to switch schools while they experienced homelessness.

The suit from the mother, identified as K.L., claims Gaston County Schools; Lisa Phillips, state coordinator for Education of Homeless Children; and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction failed her children when the district forced the children to leave their original schools while already facing the trauma of homelessness.

The 17-page lawsuit filed on Jan. 26 states K.L. was evicted from her residence in September 2023 while her children were students at New Hope Elementary and Cramerton Middle School.

With two children and nowhere to go, the suit states the disabled veteran mother switched both children to car riders while searching for steady housing. While the family remained in the same city, they were not located in the same school zone following the eviction.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    159
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    9 months ago

    The mother is a disabled veteran.

    I’m not super pro-military or anything, but a veteran, especially a disabled veteran, deserves to be taken care of by the country they sacrificed for.

    Obviously, the school deserves to be sued for what they did, but those kids should never have been homeless in the first place. They should have been housed by the U.S. military on the military’s dime.

    • MagicShel@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      58
      ·
      9 months ago

      The military certainly has the money. Build a single less B-1 (or whatever the new hotness stealth airplane or destroyer is) and you could probably house every single homeless vet. Maybe every homeless person. Idk but those things are insanely expensive.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        48
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        9 months ago

        The F-35 program cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion.

        But hey, at least they fly well enough for us to give them to Israel I guess…

        • dumpsterlid@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          35
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          Don’t be so naive, we need to spend all that money to protect Americans from global threats such as lack of affordable healthcare and affordable housing.

          Wait

          checks notes

          Sorry we need to spend all that money to protect Americans from looks closer… there is something scribbled here does it say “axis of evil”? Next to it someone wrote “Iran” then scribbled it out and wrote “Iraq” and then it looks like it was scribbled out a second time to write “Iran” again?…

          …Oh ok there we go it also says “Islamic Extremists”, well that is a good reason! Jeez after Bin Laden it has just been one ground invasion after another of jihadi ground troops on American shores. Thank goodness we didn’t spend that money on stupid government handouts. Remember when San Francisco didn’t build enough shore cannons to blow up ISIS landing boats and now that whole part of the country is gone? sigh and the liberals were SURE painting the cannons with LGTBQ colors was going to save them…

          You know what really pisses me off as a conservative though? No one in this country respects veterans. Every time I go to get on a plane and the airline invites veterans to come on first, I clap beaming like the proud patriotic American that I am. When I look around though people around me are sometimes just on their phones and ignoring this opportunity to honor our veterans. Kids these days don’t even care about veterans and if you start honoring the service of our veterans with empty platitudes around millennials they don’t even respond they just want to talk about dumb shit like how we should at least give veterans free healthcare or affordable housing or childcare support.

          Why does that shit matter? What do you think veterans want the government to just give them healthcare for free after they have fought so hard for the privilege of having to buy healthcare from corporations hellbent on cutting every single cost they can, quality of health services be damned? I feel like millennials just want to live in a communist hellscape where even the hospitals and schools are government run.

          Those veterans fought for our country, don’t spit in their face by offering a hand to them, this is the proud and free land of the bootstraps where anybody can make it so long as they can make it. If you see a homeless veteran on the street, share a smile with them knowing that they not only fought for the freedom of you to succeed but also for them to fail and thus balance is preserved in this wonderful land of god.

        • cygnus@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          9 months ago

          This is 100% false. Pure disinformation. The $1.5T figure is for all costs associated with the program through to the aircraft’s end of life in the year 2070.

          • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.one
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            16
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            9 months ago

            I mean…Why the hell are we sparing 1.5 Trillion dollars of our future income on jet fighters when we won’t spare even 10% of that on our own fucking people at home without a god damned 3 ring circus about how much we’re already spending?

            Do you not see the hypocrisy here?

            • cygnus@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              6
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              9 months ago

              No, I don’t. Lots of other countries have a decent military AND good social supports. You guys can walk and chew gum at the same time.

              • denshirenji@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                9 months ago

                For the life of me I will never understand why we would want to gut our military. Talk softly and carry a big stick. You don’t have to agree with the engagements that we have been in to understand why we need a strong military for defense and to make sure the world knows it. This can be squared WITH veteran and other social safety net programs. No reason not to have both.

                • cygnus@lemmy.ca
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  ·
                  9 months ago

                  Exactly! Look at Ukraine, for example. I bet they wish they had a stronger military in 2013, or 2021. I can only assume the rabidly anti-military folks are incredibly naive, or bad actors.

                  • denshirenji@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    9 months ago

                    In all fairness, I do think there is something to be said for rampant military spending. Big defense contractors could be doing what they do for a fraction of the cost. The doesn’t mean eliminating the military. I’m not even sure who’s down voting me either. I’m like, “We should have both a military and a safety net” and everyone gets mad for different reasons I guess. One because I want a military and the other because I think homelessness shouldn’t exist. We have the resources. For example, in my downtown area there are a slew of "abandoned’ buildings still in good repair. Why aren’t we using those buildings for housing?

                  • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    9 months ago

                    We wouldn’t even have need of soldiers if there weren’t any soldiers to begin with.

                    They are a solution to a problem they caused themselves.

          • skulblaka@startrek.website
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            9 months ago

            Or, hear me out here, we could spend $1.5T over 45 years to house the homeless. That’s $33.3 billion dollars each year, every year.

            • cygnus@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              9 months ago

              How about how cereal boxes keep getting smaller but the price stays the same? That has about as much to do with military procurement as your comment.

    • protist@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      9 months ago

      I’m being honest here, there’s actually a ton of housing support for homeless veterans. She’ll have to take action to access that help of course, and that doesn’t negate the trauma of getting evicted the entire family is experiencing, or the school district making it worse

      • sebinspace@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        9 months ago

        I don’t know if this makes me a radical communist or something, but in my opinion, if you’ve served in the military, especially if you’ve become disabled during your time, you shouldn’t get assistance paying for a house.

        Your house should be bought and paid for. 110% subsidy, to help pay for things that will inevitably be imperfect with the property; electrical issues, corroded pipes, outdated HVAC, security, CO detectors, etc.

        • Fishbone@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          9 months ago

          And you shouldn’t have to jump through a thousand hoops design to prevent access at every step of the way.

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      9 months ago

      especially a disabled veteran

      Why is a veteran more deserving of care than a teacher, a firefighter, a nurse, a construction worker, or literally any one else serving their community? Is it because they kill people and destabilize countries at the behest of corporations?

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      9 months ago

      It states they were residing outside the school zone, so they were staying somewhere or other. Since when was it even the schools choice? Taxes and school districts are set up that way. It sucks, but I don’t see how it’s the school’s fault. The mom must have informed the school where they were statlying at it would have been illegal for the school to not make them change.

      • Hazor@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        Depends on district policy and state/local law. E.g., in my kid’s district a parent can request for their child to attend any school of the same grade within the district if space is available, but parents have to provide transportation if it’s not the zoned school. For the district where we lived previously, a family moving out of zone could request that students be allowed to keep attending their current school through the end of the year.

        Per the article, both state and federal law allows these kids to continue attending the same school in such situations. It’s the school’s fault because, even if their district has no such policies, the clear and obvious course would be to seek an exception until policy could be addressed to align with the law. Instead, they simply refused to meet with the mother.