Our overarching goal is always to help children k-12th grade, who are homeless with their education. The most important element of that goal: our tutoring program. Our volunteers are the very heart of our organization. They come from all backgrounds and professions to spend at least an hour each week teaching, mentoring, and assisting the educational life of a homeless child. Hundreds of tutors meet their students at our Skid Row Learning Center but the vast majority travel to where the children live in a service area that spans more than 2,500 square miles. Together last year, they provided more than 100,000 hours of focused educational support to over 3,624 homeless children. The importance of just one caring adult for at-risk youth has been documented by studies of resilience, and positive support from teachers (a group in which we count our tutors) is related to greater educational success of their students. Supportive relationships are known to be critical for youth development; they provide an environment of reinforcement, positive modeling, and constructive feedback for physical, intellectual, psychological, and social growth. By matching volunteer tutors with students experiencing homelessness over the course of a year, we are providing these kids a chance to break the vicious cycle of homelessness through education, and showing them positive role models and mentors whose influence can last a lifetime.

In order to achieve our Strategic Plan, we created a number of action plans and strategies to govern the expansion of our tutoring services: 1. Add additional staff members to recruit, conduct outreach and match homeless students with volunteers. Target special populations of volunteers - high school students, higher-aged and retired individuals, home-bound and long-distance volunteers who can participate in online tutoring. 2. Create partnerships with organizations to leverage our scope and deepen our impact. Share resources and costs with synergistic organizations who provide services and products we cannot.. 3. Enhance our core program through the design, development, and implementation of a digital learning environment, a combination of online learning and one-on-one tutoring. We will supplement our traditional tutoring methods with the use of technology, including online tutoring, adaptive learning and assessment programs, and educational apps.

We are extremely fortunate in the extent of our human resources capabilities. First, we benefit from a committed and active Board. Several Board members have strong relationships with outside funders and have used those relationships to spark site visits that led to proposals and funding. One Board member uses his extensive connections to get us not only financial donations but also services. One Director hosts holiday parties at his beachfront restaurant for hundreds of homeless children each year, giving them a rare chance to enjoy a carefree day in a setting that is completely foreign to too many of them; another represents a beacon of hope and inspiration for the entire South Los Angeles community and provides regular introductions to organizations that solicit volunteers on our behalf. All our directors are deeply committed to our mission and do what they can to support and further our goals.
These leaders are a wonderful complementary asset to our staff, the key members of whom have all been with us for more than 10 years and have extensive business knowledge and experience working with homeless students. Our Executive Director has over 30 years of for-profit and nonprofit business and programmatic experience.

Our long-term partnerships with hundreds of shelters, large and small school districts, social service agencies, corporations, major and family foundations and universities and colleges throughout our service areas contribute in every way to strengthening and deepening our impact on the education of homeless students.

Quantitative measures will continue to drive us: are we meeting our goal of tutoring 4,000 students over the year; are we meeting our goal of expanding the use of Digital Learning to increased numbers of students; have we increased outreach to students outside the shelter network; have we improved volunteer training? That said, we also have strategies to ensure the qualitative success of our work. First, we will continue to regularly survey parents, students and volunteers to measure academic, behavioral and other outcomes. More importantly, we now have a real opportunity for measuring our outcomes, which relies on the tracking tools embedded into the adaptive software of our Digital Learning Initiative. While these tools focus on individual change, we can finally document improvement on an aggregate level: the program has indicated that 93% of the 203 students who used the software for six months or more showed academic improvement – and 44% jumped one or more grade levels.

In 2019 we tutored 3,200 students, distributed over 7,400 backpacks and school supplies, hosted 2,464 volunteers, tutored in six counties in Southern California. Our remarkable, dedicated volunteers continue to change the lives of our students, providing them not only with educational help but also friendship, stability, and support during a time of great anxiety and fear. School on Wheels is the only organization in Southern California exclusively dedicated to the educational needs of children devasted by homelessness. There are many organizations that serve children, but these tend to provide basic services (shelter, food, clothing) and refer to us to provide the educational ones (indeed, we currently have working relationships with more than 175 shelters). There are also many organizations that focus on education, but these serve all children who are struggling and do not address the particular needs of children experiencing homelessness. Our impact is based on the fact that we focus on the specific barriers that stand between children and the education they need and deserve to escape a life on the streets, providing both the concrete assistance and emotional supports that research (and youth who are homeless themselves) have identified as important to their ability to stay in and do well in school. Every year we grow and work towards our goal of helping more homeless students. Unfortunately, the number of homeless children keeps increasing, so too does the need for School on Wheels!