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ARC Project reports countywide services for houseless youth: 300 contacts, 255 students identified as homeless, and ongoing transportation support
Summary
Belinda Torres of the ARC Project briefed the board on services for houseless children and youth, including summer outreach, backpack and holiday-gift distributions, transportation assistance and housing referrals.
Belinda Torres, who oversees the ARC Project drop-in center, told the board the program provides basic-needs services for houseless children and youth across Coos County and described recent outreach and service metrics.
Torres said the ARC Project serves as a drop-in center offering laundry, showers, hygiene items, clothing and transportation assistance for students facing housing instability. She said the group identified 50 most-at-risk children for summer followup, organized a countywide backpack distribution that produced about 350 backpacks and coordinated a holiday-gift drive that yielded roughly 500 wrapped presents.
Key numbers and services Torres reported about 300 client contacts so far this school year and said the project has recorded approximately 255 students in grades K–12 who qualify as homeless under program tracking for the school year. She said the ARC Project has arranged special busing for many families; typical monthly taxi/special-busing costs average about $500–$600, with one month reaching $1,500. She said the program helped around 26 families obtain transitional housing so far this year.
Partnerships and funding Torres described collaborations with school staff across Coos Bay and North Bend, volunteer groups that supported a backpack event and local partners who provided gifts and meals for holiday programs. She noted Rotary is considering a $10,000 transportation donation and that the ARC Project coordinates with alternative youth housing and host-home programs.
Board questions and next steps Board members asked whether the ARC Project tracks academic outcomes and attendance; Torres said the project has seen improvements in graduation rates for youth who stay connected with services but that she has not yet compiled a detailed attendance analysis and agreed that adding attendance correlates would “bring it to the next level.”
Ending Torres thanked the district for autonomy and collaboration and said she will pursue more outcome tracking and data to show service impacts on attendance and academic measures.
