A School for the Homeless
VELSHI: Homelessness is a huge problem in California. With high unemployment, rise in foreclosures, more families are finding themselves on the streets and they are struggling to keep their kids in school. There's one school now where homeless students make up the entire student body. CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reports.</s>CHASE KNAUL, STUDENT, MONARCH SCHOOL: My name is Chase Knaul. I have my mom and my little sister. This is my horrible neighborhood. My brother's wife has kicked us out of his house. This is where we came to seek shelter.</s>MICHAEL YOUNG, STUDENT, MONARCH SCHOOL: Hi. I'm Michael Young. Some people over there, I feel very sorry for them. I'm real tired right now. Tired but I have to go to school and get an education to get a better life.</s>THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're in the heart of San Diego where Monarch School is located. What make this school so unique is that the entire student body is homeless. (voice-over): Sarita Fuentes is principal at Monarch.</s>SARITA FUENTES, PRINCIPAL, MONARCH SCHOOL: Historically, we have always hovered at a hundred students. And we went up to 165 students last December?</s>GUTIERREZ (on camera): A lot of this due, of course, to the economy.</s>FUENTES: Yes, absolutely. And for the first time ever, our population, the face of the homeless student changed because we receive students that had actually lost their home due to foreclosure.</s>GUTIERREZ: How difficult was it to uproot your life to move here and then to become homeless?</s>KNAUL: It was very hard because I had just turned 9 and I had to leave my best friend. We don't get to like see each other grow up.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chase, give me one.</s>GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Monarch students are taught by credentialed teachers. They also get free tutoring to make up for any gaps in their education, and free medical and dental care, and simple things to make life better, like new shoes, a place to shower, and a laundry room to wash their clothes. (on camera): Were you treated differently by other kids when you went to the other schools?</s>YOUNG: Kind of.</s>GUTIERREZ: How?</s>YOUNG: Like teasing.</s>GUTIERREZ: What would they say to you?</s>YOUNG: Like bum or something.</s>GUTIERREZ: Did they actually call you a bum, knowing that you were homeless?</s>YOUNG: Yes.</s>GUTIERREZ: That's a terrible thing. That's very mean. How did that make you feel?</s>YOUNG: Sad, mad.</s>GUTIERREZ: What did you tell them?</s>YOUNG: Like if they were in my situation, they wouldn't be saying the same thing.</s>KNAUL: That's my mommy. She loves me a lot. Every day we have to wake up about 5:00 in the morning and then we had to be out of here by 7:00. On the weekends, we had nowhere to go, and if it was raining, we'd just be sitting somewhere under a tree trying to keep dry.</s>GUTIERREZ: What do you want to do when you grow up?</s>UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: Be the president of the United States.</s>GUTIERREZ: You want to be the president?</s>UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: Yes.</s>GUTIERREZ: What do you like studying? What are you good at?</s>KNAUL: Math, science, and handwriting.</s>LORI MCCALLOPS, CHASE AND FANNIE'S MOTHER: Those parents they came, picked up their kids, and took them home. She didn't have that.</s>GUTIERREZ: Do you think kids get embarrassed?</s>MCCALLOPS: Oh, I'm sure that they do. Oh, yes, I'm sure that they do. I know they must be.</s>GUTIERREZ: Did your kids ever come home?</s>MCCALLOPS: No, they would never say that to me. They know I was doing everything I could to try to make everything.</s>YOUNG: Some kids for their birthday, they go to Chuck E. Cheese or something. Us, we just have like not even a birthday party. When I get older and get like a job and everything, I want to buy a house and have my mom move in with me and like I take care of her.</s>GUTIERREZ: What do you want with Mike?</s>KIFFINI GARY, MICHAEL'S MOTHER: I'm hoping that he'll remember this and see how important it is. Like half this stuff here, I don't think I would have to go through it had I had a proper education.</s>GUTIERREZ (voice-over): Having experienced so much loss so young, homes, friends, even family, parents say Monarch is giving their children something no one can take away.</s>KNAUL: Monarch has given me a program. Steel bands, I really love it. They've given me a technique and talent.</s>GUTIERREZ: Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, San Diego.</s>VELSHI: It's 43 minutes almost after the hour. Let me bring you up to speed on some of the developments of our top stories. After 16 years in prison, these two Mississippi sisters were released earlier today on the condition that the one on the left donate a kidney to the one on the right. Listen to this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're free.</s>VELSHI: That's them leaving prison. The state Department of Corrections says they are no longer a threat to society. The governor noted that the cost of dialysis was a substantial expense for the state. We expect to hear from the sisters at a news conference just a few minutes from now. We learn that the nation's jobless rate dropped last month to 9.4 percent. It's down from 9.8 percent in November. One hundred and three thousand new jobs were added to the economy -- that was short of expectations. For all of 2010, though, the United States added 1.1 million jobs and that's the best year for hiring since before the recession started in 2007. While any gain is good, gains like these do not keep pace with population growth, and they certainly don't replace the 8 million jobs that recession wiped out. New York City emergency workers criticized for their slow response to the recent Christmas blizzard will get a second chance to prove themselves. Another snowstorm albeit one that is a lot smaller has begun charging across the eastern states. Snow is predicted as far south as Georgia by the end of the weekend. Many Northeast airports began reporting major delays this morning, including LaGuardia, Philadelphia, and Newark. Delays are expected throughout the day in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Well, the Queen of Soul talks about her health, sort of. I'll explain what I mean after the break.