---
title: "One Tutor at a Time: How School on Wheels Lifts LA's Homeless Students"
description: "For more than 30 years, an LA nonprofit has matched volunteer tutors with children experiencing homelessness — a steady weekly hour that, for students like the ones who graduated this spring, can change the course of a life."
category: "Los Angeles"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/los-angeles
author: "Simone Bishop"
published: 2026-06-29T05:38:42.000Z
updated: 2026-06-29T05:38:42.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/one-tutor-at-a-time-how-school-on-wheels-lifts-la-s-homeless-students
tags: ["education", "homelessness", "nonprofits", "Skid Row", "Los Angeles", "volunteering"]
---
# One Tutor at a Time: How School on Wheels Lifts LA's Homeless Students

For more than 30 years, an LA nonprofit has matched volunteer tutors with children experiencing homelessness — a steady weekly hour that, for students like the ones who graduated this spring, can change the course of a life.

Every week for years, a tutor showed up for Mariam Zaki — through homework, through exams, and through the kind of housing instability that can pull a young person's life out from under them. This spring, she walked across a stage and collected her high school diploma. The two finally met in person at her graduation.

## A steady hour in an unsteady world

That relationship — reliable, warm, built on nothing more than a shared hour of learning — is what [School on Wheels](https://www.schoolonwheels.org/about/) has been creating since 1993, when a retired teacher named Agnes Stevens founded the nonprofit with one goal: make sure a child experiencing homelessness doesn't also lose their education.

"This is the person that every Saturday, I would meet up with to finish my homework," Zaki told [ABC7](https://abc7.com/post/school-wheels-skid-row-nonprofit-helping-los-angeles-homeless-students-is-changing-lives-tutor-time/19392197/).

## From Skid Row across the region

School on Wheels provides free, one-on-one tutoring to K–12 students experiencing homelessness across Southern California. Its volunteers meet students in shelters, motels and transitional housing, and at the organization's Skid Row Learning Center in downtown Los Angeles. The group says it works across six Southern California counties and hundreds of partner sites, serving roughly 2,300 students a year with the help of more than 1,200 volunteers, and hands out thousands of backpacks filled with school supplies — because getting to class takes more than a tutor.

The need is stark. By the organization's accounting, students experiencing homelessness are far more likely to repeat a grade and to drop out than their housed peers, and graduate high school at sharply lower rates — gaps that compound across a lifetime.

## "One thing I knew was solid"

For Jada Allen, who worked with her tutor for more than three years — first online, then in person — the constancy was the point. "Even if stuff was going on, that was one thing I knew was solid," she told ABC7. She graduated this spring with a college acceptance in hand, one of several School on Wheels students who finished high school in 2026 despite experiencing homelessness and are now headed to college or the military.

The organization says its model produces measurable gains: after a stretch of consistent weekly tutoring, a large share of students improve their assessment scores by a grade level or more.

## A waitlist, and an ask

Demand outpaces supply. The group says hundreds of students are waiting to be matched with a tutor. Volunteers can work with students in person at partner sites or online, meeting them wherever they happen to be — which, for many, changes often. The commitment is modest: a regular hour or two, and the willingness to keep showing up.

As Mariam Zaki's graduation suggests, that can be enough to bend a life toward something better. Information on volunteering or donating is available at [schoolonwheels.org](https://www.schoolonwheels.org/about/).

## Sources

- [Skid Row nonprofit helping LA homeless students is changing lives one tutor at a time](https://abc7.com/post/school-wheels-skid-row-nonprofit-helping-los-angeles-homeless-students-is-changing-lives-tutor-time/19392197/)
- [About School on Wheels](https://www.schoolonwheels.org/about/)