How This Classroom on Wheels Is Meeting Oakland's Unhoused Kids Where They Are

From a distance, the lime-green vehicle with wide awnings looks like a fancy food truck.

But the tricked-out RV has all the necessities of a preschool classroom, including a short toilet and sink, carpeted play area and cabinets full of building blocks, musical instruments and art supplies.

One recent morning, the mobile classroom was parked near a recreation center in Oakland’s Chinatown.

Outside, staffers rolled out rugs and laid out books, toys and snacks before gathering a group of children for a singalong. A flat-screen TV hanging on one side of the RV showed “Sesame Street,” but the roughly two dozen toddlers were more interested in chasing bubbles and playing at the sand table.

Since its launch in November, this preschool on wheels has been going to homeless shelters and city parks in Oakland in an effort to keep more children enrolled in Head Start and Early Head Start programs, which serve children from lower-income families. The stop in Chinatown gives parents who signed up for Head Start’s home visiting program a chance to socialize and get information about their children’s development.

Previously, many children weren’t showing up consistently or on time, and a significant number inevitably dropped out, particularly those who didn’t have a stable place to live.

This most recent school year, 78 out 423 Oakland families — or more than 18% — who qualified for Head Start, experienced homelessness, according to Everardo Mendoza, the program’s recruitment and enrollment coordinator. These families can’t afford rent on their own, he said, so they tend to “double up or triple up” in small apartments with other families or sleep in shelters or their cars.

It’s a way to meet kids and families where they are, Mendoza said.

“We didn’t want families to be dropping because they don’t have control of their housing situation,” he said. “We wanted to follow them to wherever they go and continue to provide the services that they need.”

Mobile classrooms are increasingly being deployed in places short on accessible and affordable preschools.

In Colorado, a preschool on wheels rolls up to Denver neighborhoods with few child care options and a bilingual preschool on wheels called El Busesito serves Spanish-speaking families in the Roaring Fork Valley. The city of Las Vegas and a nonprofit in Philadelphia also provide half-day early learning programs in their mobile classrooms.

Oakland’s $530,000 investment in its mobile classroom is helping the city meet the growing demand for Head Start. There are more than 400 families on the waitlist for the program, according to the city’s Head Start program director, Diveena Cooppan, who said the program has wrestled with finding enough workers and facilities.

“A facility where we could have that space for all those classrooms, from infants to preschool, is ideal but rare and hard to find,” she said. “So this model is actually more cost-effective than [operating a center].”

Throughout Alameda County, almost 700 families are experiencing homelessness, according to a January point-in-time count survey — down 17% from two years ago. But experts say that’s likely an undercount because families with young kids often get overlooked, as they are more likely to sleep in motels, their cars or on someone’s couch, as opposed to on the street or in a shelter.

“That’s why we call it hidden homelessness,” said Erin Patterson, director of education initiatives at SchoolHouse Connection, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., focused on youth homelessness. “And so it really feels like we are ignoring this whole portion of the homeless population.”

SchoolHouse Connection estimates that in California, only one in six infants and toddlers experiencing homelessness are enrolled in early childhood development programs like Head Start.

It’s a heartbreaking statistic, Patterson said, because these are the kids who need it most.

“For an infant or toddler to be experiencing homelessness and not knowing where they’re going to sleep during a time when they’re supposed to be potty trained and have routine and consistency, that’s difficult enough,” she said.

Programs like Head Start offer a range of support for unhoused families, from free diapers to access to educators who are trained in caring for children affected by trauma.

“Everything the parent or the adult in the situation is experiencing in terms of trauma, the child is also experiencing,” Patterson said. “Babies experiencing homelessness carry trauma. They feel stress, but they can’t articulate it with words yet. And so that’s why it’s even more critical to get interventions and supports to them as early as possible.”

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who leaned on Head Start services for her son when she was a single mother experiencing homelessness, called the city’s new mobile classroom a “huge game changer.”

“Just because your family is going through some housing issues or housing insecurity doesn’t mean that the resources for your children should stop,” she said at a news conference announcing the program last November. “It actually means that you need it more.”

The mobile Head Start classroom currently serves families who signed up for home visits but may not have a steady place to live.

The rest of the mobile classroom’s spacious interior includes a kitchenette, a health-check station and a computer area — equipped with its own server— where parents can access the Internet to work on job or housing applications.

“We know that in a lot of different areas that we are in, there may not be access to technology, so we want to ensure that’s not a barrier to families,” said Shelley Taylor, who oversees Head Start facilities for the city.

Staffers also use the space to conduct developmental screenings.

Shi Li Zhong, who came to the mobile classroom event in Chinatown, said she didn’t know her older son had a speech delay until he was enrolled in Head Start when he was almost 2 years old. A caseworker referred her to a speech therapist, and she said her son is now starting to talk more.

“There were a lot of things I didn’t know,” Zhong said about being a first-time parent.

She came to this event with her second son, who is almost 1, to give him a chance to interact with other children and for her a chance to build community.