The Monarch School in Barrio Logan, just east of downtown San Diego, has a plan to help change the way unhoused students are taught in schools around the region and possibly all over the country.
On October 10 at the annual Raise Up for Monarch fundraiser, the school will unveil Monarch Nexus: Center of Training and Innovation, launching a program that seeks to inspire change.
“San Diego created something so proprietary that the rest of the world could benefit from knowing how we operate,” Monarch School CEO Afira DeVries says. “An ordinary kid not managing complex trauma is going to decide, ‘You know what? I’m going to be an artist…an athlete.’ Those paths get presented normally, comfortably and confidently.”
Various studies cited by Monarch, where 100% of students are unhoused, show that being unhoused significantly impacts learning retention and increases post-education barriers, like gaining stable housing.
Nearly 60% of students self-reported a feeling of a “fair” or “poor” job of support from their schools.
“The beauty about Monarch School–the beauty of this place is when everyone here is dealing with similar circumstances, nobody has to feel limited by them,” DeVries says.
Based on 35+ years of experience, the Monarch School Project has successfully targeted solutions for stabilizing the unhoused student demographic in San Diego.
It was originally named The P.L.A.C.E. (Progressive Learning Alternative Center for Education) in 1987. Founder and teacher Sandra McBrayer noticed a commonality affecting her students’ learning ability and attendance: homelessness.
The school is the result of a public-private partnership between the nonprofit Monarch School Project and the San Diego County Office of Education. DeVries became its CEO four years ago, at a time when the pandemic made regular operation difficult.
The campus reopened in April 2021 with limited capacity; by August, it was full. Later that year at the annual fundraiser, The Chrysalis: Monarch Center for the Arts was announced. It became operational a year later in 2022.
Today, the school serves approximately 300 youth and families year-round.
Students get a regular, competitive academic course load, as well as classes that focus on life skills like cooking and financial literacy.
There’s a hallway on the second floor dedicated entirely to mental health and counseling. With the help of donors, Monarch School has three licensed and four associate clinicians on staff for any student needs, free of charge.
Outside the classroom there are clubs, sports, student organizations and arts performances.
In the school lobby, a flatscreen TV displays students’ “Odes.” Rainbow-colored paper cranes are strewn about the atrium; paintings of tunas–a donor’s request–line the wall next to various CIF awards in the gym.
It’s eccentric, sure, but student pride is on display.
At the Chrysalis, students and their families are able to attend classes like “Adult Fusion Modern Dance/Hip Hip,” “Music (ages 0-5 w/caregiver)” and “Playback Theatre Troupe.”
Students often perform here alongside larger fundraising events.
“Our kids are competitors,” DeVries says. “[Our job] is to create space for our students to dream about their potential career futures and expose them to career and college opportunities. If we don’t, they’re just going to continue to fly under the radar.”
Monarch School still faces challenges with funding. Amazon shopping list donations to Monarch School’s Butterfly Boutique, which students access on a regular basis, are running low. Specifically, feminine hygiene products, belts, socks, underwear and plain color T-shirts are needed.
County funding provides Monarch School students with the same academic rigor and course load as other schools–sometimes even providing more opportunities than their counterparts. Donors help to fill in the gaps city funding can’t fill.
More than $5 million is spent each year to keep doors open and operations going year-round, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m..
Within the last few years – especially since DeVries signed on – expansion via donorship and volunteering has been a propeller for growth.
“Our students learn how to drive, or they can learn how to swim,” DeVries says. “If we didn’t offer those skills and learning opportunities here, they could very well enter into adulthood without ever seeing the beach or touching a steering wheel!”
These pathways have proven to be incredibly beneficial for students.
“[One alumni’s] entire family attended the Monarch School; and she went on to acquire her college degree,” DeVries says. “She watched the rest of her siblings finish high school and go on to college and stabilize the entire family. They’re no longer struggling with the condition of homelessness as an entire family unit because they systemically, one by one, moved into adulthood to establish a sense of internal identity. It’s not easy in a community like San Diego, where housing costs are so astronomical.”
Housing insecurity continues to be an issue in San Diego. Mayor Todd Gloria’s homeless ordinance has drawn criticism. Some say it criminalizes homelessness rather than responding to its root causes.
“It’s extraordinary–the way that policy is often well intended and complicates matters,” DeVries says.
With the rise of Gloria’s encampment bans, the count for unsheltered people should be lowering–but it isn’t.
Many cities across the nation are also finding ways to approach homelessness with varying degrees of success. DeVries hopes that Monarch School’s success will be able to be modeled in other parts of the state and nation. More details will be revealed on October 10.
The Nexus program doesn’t aim to replicate Monarch School’s brick and mortar. It aims to provide education to other communities – in areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco – where the unhoused student population is highly concentrated and use their existing infrastructure to create plans that work specifically for them.
The Nexus Program has already made headway and inspired other schools in some parts of the country.
A start-up charter school in Los Angeles; a private school that has transformed itself in Oklahoma City. A school district from Arkansas has signed up for Monarch School Project’s Nexus program.
The Nexus Project is like the flower that grows between a crack in the sidewalk. “There are a lot of complicated webs related to policy and ineffective advocacy and California is beautifully positioned to do better around this,” DeVries says. “We’re the [fifth] largest economy in the world. But it requires the right advocacy and we’re not there yet.”
In the meantime, DeVries identifies three things that people can do to help on a micro scale: support the unhoused community and network of social care providers; volunteer and donate; and advocate.
“Volunteer,” DeVries says. “Volunteer to learn about the issues that are impacting and perpetuating the issues of homelessness in our region. And speak to those issues because people in these conditions cannot advocate for themselves… They’re not at the policy level.”
Issuing city ordinances to clean up the streets is not a solution, she says. “This isn’t just about the optics, right?” DeVries says. With the Nexus Program, she’s seeking to spread the word about realistic solutions that stabilize families and individuals. Class is in session. SDSun
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