Homeless students at Abraxas High School in Poway should find life a little more orderly since the campus received a grant to install a shower and laundry facilities for their use.

The school received a $25,000 county grant for the facilities, which will enable students to clean their clothes and themselves on campus. The facilities will help students who are sleeping on a couch or in a car establish a stable routine and fit in better with classmates, Abraxas Principal Alain Henry said.

“If a kid hasn’t showered in a couple days, everybody knows,” he said. “Or if you’re wearing the same clothes, or they’re not clean, by having a place where kids can get a shower and get their clothes clean, it normalizes things and removes some of the stigma that makes coming to school and focusing more difficult.”

About 1% of students in the Poway Unified School District are classified as “youth in transition,” Henry said. At Abraxas, the district’s continuation high school, 14% of students fall into that category, which broadly means they lack a stable place to live.

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