Beth McCullough ’86 is on the Front Lines of Homeless Education with Roadmap to Graduation Program

Before 2001, there weren’t many students reported homeless in Lenawee County.

However, Beth Friedline McCullough knew there were, plenty of them, in fact, when she started as the homeless liaison for Adrian Public Schools more than 11 years ago.

“Some people politely said, ‘We didn’t have homeless people until you came.’” McCullough said. “I said, ‘That’s not true. It’s just because nobody counted.’”

Last year, more than 600 students were reported homeless in Lenawee County. The 1986 Siena Heights University graduate has made it her mission to make sure these students are counted—and count. Since she helped start the unique Roadmap to Graduation program more than seven years ago, 87 percent of those homeless students go on to attend college—and 100 percent graduate. In fact, two of her 13 students last year were valedictorians of their graduating class.

“This is for seniors who are on track to graduate,” said McCullough, who works with Catholic Charities to place homeless students—most of whom are 17 and 18 years of age—into foster homes during their time in school. “When you take a kid out of poverty and put him basically into a middle class home, you learn all of these unspoken rules that you didn’t know.”

McCullough often works as a social “translator” between students and the host families to help ease the transition, which can be difficult at times. One student didn’t want to put clothes in a dresser because if he needed to leave in the middle of the night, he could just grab two black trash bags (one for clean clothes, the other for dirty) and go. The compromise: shelving. Shelves allowed him to see all of his clothes but still keep them organized.

“I learn something every single week,” McCullough said. “Poverty teaches some very interesting things.”

Most of the students in these situations were put there by family issues, including incarceration and domestic violence.

“Hopefully (students) go to somebody’s house. But that doesn’t always happen,” McCullough said. “I have kids sleeping outside this year. … One kid lived in three different places during the school year. This is her stability. This is her home. This is where she is going to see the same people every day. It’s probably the safest place they can be.”

McCullough, who taught in the Montessori program after graduat- ing from college before becoming a therapist, instructor and domestic violence shelter director, pulls several pieces together to form the Roadmap program. Catholic Charities is already licensed to place children in homes and also provides a small stipend to host families. She also works with outside agencies to provide counseling for these students, as well as help with the legal issues and paperwork.

And it is her job to make sure the students trust her and the program —not an easy task. She calls the numerous students who visit her meager-looking office on the back side of the high school “a parade of pain.”

“Sometimes I have to sit down and say ‘Good things happen in this office. This is really all worth it.’ … (We are) dealing with hard questions. Hard situations.”

However, McCullough said the payoff is well worth it.

“If you put them in a stable environment, it’s amazing what happens,” she said of the homeless students. “The Roadmap to Graduation is cheaper than prison. It’s cheaper than a shelter. It’s cheaper than a dropout. It’s a lot of bang for your buck.”

While McCullough’s position is funded thanks to a government mandate, the Roadmap program is another matter. Resources are “maximized” thanks to the continued role of Catholic Charities and by keeping the parameters of the program focused on older high school students. But she said the students themselves are why the program is ultimately successful.

“The kids I’m working with absolutely can drop out of school and they don’t,” she said. “They sleep outside and come in the next day. Those are incredible kids. They will sit there and tell you plainly, ‘I have to graduate and I have to go on to college, because it’s the only way I can do better than what my parents offered me.’ And they get that.”

McCullough and her program are gaining national notoriety. Last year she presented at a national conference on homeless education, and also testified at a Congressional caucus on homelessness. She said Siena Heights mentors such as Sister Eileen Rice and Sister Anthonita Porta were instrumental in developing her passion for social justice.

“They said to go out and change the world, and I did,” she said. “My prayer in the morning is ‘I’m reporting for duty.’ Siena taught me that.”