GREENFIELD, Mass. — A large gray and white stuffed elephant sits conspicuously on a chair in the principal’s office at Newton School. “The elephant in the room,” Principal Melodie Goodwin calls it.

“It represents all of the homeless children living in Greenfield hotels who are attending Newton – the issue no one seems to want to talk about,” said Goodwin.

She said the number of hotel homeless students fluctuates daily, but hovers right around 50 and has for the past year. Currently, about one in five students attending Newton School is homeless, she said.

“Many of them are so very far from home,” she said. “It’s just sad.”

Newton has had between 220 and 230 students attending over the past year, said Goodwin, who had to hire two new teachers last year to keep up with the demand.

MANY END UP IN HOTELS

“It’s incredible,” she said. “And no one is addressing the real problem – people need jobs.”

Goodwin said one homeless father was forced to quit his job and come to live in a Greenfield hotel with his children after his wife died of cancer.

“Those children had to deal with the loss of their mother and with having to come to a strange place and live in one room in a hotel,” Goodwin said through tears. “They were taken away from their family, their support system, their doctors and put in a place they’d never been while still dealing with personal tragedy. That’s terrible.”

Goodwin said Newton has welcomed students from the Springfield area, the Boston area, from out of state, as far away as Florida, and even one from Sudan. She said some attend for just a few days or weeks, while others are there for a few months and a few finish out an entire school year.

She said this is all because Massachusetts is a “right to shelter” state.

According to the state Department of Housing and Community Development, the agency overseeing the placement of homeless families in hotels, the state law guarantees a right to shelter for any eligible family in need, which means there is not a maximum number of homeless families for which the state provides housing.

The problem, Housing Undersecretary Aaron Gornstein said, is where to house homeless families once the available space in emergency shelters runs out.

Many of them end up in hotels – sometimes one or two parents with two, three or four children – and many times far from their communities.

STATE ‘CAN’T HOUSE THE WORLD’

Goodwin said schools, by law, must accept students living in their town, even if they are living in a hotel room.

She said it’s never-ending, because every time the school says “goodbye” to one family, another one – or two – takes its place.

“We educators don’t like that these kids are living in hotels – no one does – but I guess it’s better than living on the street or in a car,” she said. “The problem is, Massachusetts can’t house the world and it seems like that’s what’s happening at this point. There has to be a better way.”

Goodwin said she has one mother who is desperate to get her children back home to their extended family and support system, but has no job and no way to find one out in eastern Massachusetts while living in a hotel in western Massachusetts.

She said very few of the families living in Greenfield hotels come from Franklin County.

STUDENTS ‘TRAUMATIZED’

“Most are far, far from home,” she said. “You always hear when it comes to buying a house that it’s ‘location, location, location,’ but that isn’t being considered when it comes to these people and that’s just not right.”

Goodwin said most, if not all, of the children she sees are traumatized.

“Some are traumatized just because of their current situation,” she said. “Others have the trauma of ending up in a hotel in a strange place compounded by a bad situation at home.”

She said the homeless students that attend Newton are tired, hungry and scared.

“Some are afraid to sleep because of what they see or hear outside of their rooms at night,” she said. “Some report loud arguing and some report actual fights – people are fighting over gas cards. Moms are fighting with each other because they are all sharing such a small space. They are seeing things they shouldn’t be seeing.

“I asked the school psychologist if she thought some suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Goodwin. “The psychologist said, ‘No, they are in traumatic stress.’ “

She said families were using the school’s playground in good weather, but the town had to erect a fence to keep people off the school grounds when school wasn’t in session because it was becoming a party spot. She said the school and town hated to lock people out, but it had to be done.

CONFINED TO ROOMS TO PLAY

“We were finding needles and condoms and empty alcohol containers and all sorts of things we didn’t want on our playground,” she said. “We felt bad closing it, but had no choice. Our homeless students called it ‘the park.’ “

Goodwin said her heart breaks to think that her homeless students have a very small concrete playground at the back of the hotel, and that’s about it for play space. And even that isn’t a true playground because there are no play structures there.

She said she’s been told by homeless parents that their children aren’t allowed to run up and down the halls of the Days Inn on Colrain Road or Quality Inn on the Mohawk Trail – the two hotels currently serving as homeless shelters – so they are pretty much confined to their rooms to play.

“The good news is that we have a good relationship with local social service agencies, so the children are getting the school supplies they need,” said Goodwin.

“The bad news is I was working with 12 different state Department of Children and Families caseworkers at one point. That kind of speaks to the situation these children are coming from.”