Life Challenges

"Too often we fail to address social, psychological and emotional needs, and we compound the challenge by focusing narrowly on academic achievement as measured by test scores. The good news is that if we focus on creating the right conditions, we have strong evidence that all children, regardless of their income, race, language or circumstances, can learn and achieve."

~ Pedro Noguera, Dean, USC Rossier School of Education

Alongside these important academic moments of 3rd grade literacy and 9th grade math success, we identified one more area of huge importance: the moments of greatest risk due to non-academic factors and life events that dramatically impact a student’s chance of success or failure. If a student (or their family) experience housing or food insecurity, immigration problems, foster care, disabilities, substance misuse, or interaction with justice systems, we know they are statistically much more likely to be knocked off a path of success creating higher dropout rates, and worse academic and job prospects.

Challenges outside the classroom profoundly impact a student’s ability to succeed in school. Housing instability creates profound challenges for students, disrupting sleep, mental health, access to study spaces, and even the ability to attend school in clean clothes. Food insecurity affects one in seven children in California and climbs to almost one in three children in certain counties. Students who come to school hungry or don’t have a home to go back to at the end of the day have little ability to concentrate on schoolwork, and small interventions at these key moments can make a huge difference.

Source: California Department of Education

Similarly, mental health crises and issues of substance abuse—including those issues stemming from trauma, neglect, or exposure to violence— can manifest in chronic absenteeism, behavioral challenges, and academic disengagement. These issues are not peripheral; they are central barriers to educational success. If unaddressed, they derail students’ paths to graduation. The Center for Disease Control found that “4 in 10 students (40%) had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness and 2 in 10 students (20%) seriously considered attempting suicide.” Mirroring the national trend, 45% of California youth between the ages of 12 and 17 report having recently struggled with mental health issues (according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research), with nearly a third of them experiencing serious psychological distress that could interfere with academic and social functioning. Meanwhile, 65% of California youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment due to lack of access to services. 

Battery Powered has a history of supporting young people. Check out our past issue briefs and grantees in the Mental Health, Opportunity Youth, Public Education, and Youth Uplift themes.

Programs that integrate social services directly into schools are one highly effective way to address these barriers. For example, organizations like Communities In Schools and Seneca Family of Agencies embed care teams in schools to connect families with essential resources, from housing support to mental health services and bring existing resources from the community into our school system. Early warning systems, used by nonprofits like Attendance Works, enable educators to identify and intervene with students at risk of chronic absenteeism, providing critical supports before the problem spirals. Additionally, flexible wraparound services offer immediate help during crises, such as providing temporary housing for a displaced family or ensuring students have access to meals during school breaks.

These crises are solvable. Evidence shows that when students receive targeted support during moments of instability, their engagement and academic performance improve. Addressing these non-academic challenges is not optional if we want to keep students on track for graduation. It is essential, not only for individual success but also for ensuring schools and communities function as engines of opportunity and equity. 

We see promising grant opportunities in this area such as:

• Care team models to identify students at moments of risk and provide solutions to students at key moments of need, and offer holistic wraparound services for families in crisis.
• Targeted interventions for chronic absenteeism, including early prediction models and wrap around services such as transportation support and family outreach.
• Novel partnerships between schools, social service providers, and nonprofits to identify students most at risk and address the needs of students at potential and active moments of crisis.