A dingy fleece blanket is draped over the fish tank to keep the kids from watching TV in the reflection of the glass when they are supposed to fall asleep.
At bedtime, the four oldest — Jaquan, Matthew, Jazmine and DeArShay — take the blankets and pillows stuffed in the shelves beside the motel bed and lie on dirty, torn carpet. They have bedbug bites on their arms and legs.
Their mother will pick the black insects off their skin in the morning. She squeezes them and they pop.
The children’s parents, who sleep in the queen-size bed with 2-year-old Jamisha and 3-year-old Jonathan Jr., tell the older kids to roll toward the wall and the fish tank, to turn their backs to the television when it’s time to sleep.
A skinny yellow tabby named Barack finds an open spot to curl up in this room at the King’s Inn, which is the farthest thing from any place anyone royal would sleep. The screen on the window is torn along the bottom, a cloth tacked up as a lone curtain for privacy. The parking lot where the kids play is strewn with Doritos bags, empty pop cans and cigarette butts.
It is from this Aurora motel room that three of Peggy Monroe’s six children walk to school each morning.
The family of eight has lived here for 10 months.
The children are homeless under federal education law. The three oldest are among the 23,300 homeless children attending Colorado schools, and that’s not counting homeless babies and preschoolers, or the children who move from town to town with their families and don’t go to school.
To read the three-part series by reporter Jennifer Brown, photographer Joe Amon and videographer Mahala Gaylord go to: http://extras.denverpost.com/homelessstudents/
Comments (1)