Homeless families are often invisible in the communities where they live, though more than 50,000 families with children experienced homelessness last year and over 1 million school-age children were identified as homeless in 2020, according to the National Center for Homeless Education.
The homeless population most visible to society at large is single adults. And the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of “homeless” — people living in shelters or places not meant for human habitation — excludes most families, who are usually unsafely “doubled up” with other families or relatives.
But homelessness can have a huge impact on students. Among other negative consequences, children who experience homelessness have lower high school graduation rates and higher rates of chronic absenteeism, which can lead to weaker academic performance. And not graduating from high school puts young people at greater risk of becoming homeless.
Federal law — the McKinney-Vento Act — requires that homeless children (including those “doubling up” in others’ homes) receive educational services, and mandates that every school district have a homeless education liaison to help students get what they need. But a national assessment of homeless liaisons found that many are stretched and lack adequate time to their jobs. Their capacity to understand each child’s unique circumstances is limited and their ability to coordinate needed services constrained, advocates say.
How Schools Can Help
While meeting the needs of homeless students is a tremendous challenge, schools are also uniquely positioned to help, advocates say.
“Schools, because children are their clients, can hone in on children as people,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, which advocates nationally for homeless youth policy. Teachers can recognize signs of unstable housing: children falling asleep at their desk, poor attendance, a lack of reliable transportation and past enrollments at multiple schools. Kids may also be hungry and have a hard time focusing. School — where they can receive free breakfast and lunch — may be the most stable part of their lives.
Guidance for teachers who have homeless students emphasizes sensitivity and stability. Students may lose school supplies, so keeping extras in the classroom can be helpful. The guidelines advise teachers to make accommodations for absences and learning regression, as students may not attend school consistently or do their homework regularly.
In many districts, teachers can refer homeless children to a central office where families can be connected to food, housing and transportation support. In many cases, however, the district cannot do much more than provide a list of available services.
[READ: Understanding School-Based Mental Health Services.]
“We don’t go to the school, but we do collaborate with school staff,” says Esther Rivera, program manager of Denver Public Schools’ Homeless Education Network. In Denver, families that need assistance can receive vouchers for motels and food. Students are also offered transportation to school.
Partnering With Housing Support
Partnerships between school districts and housing agencies have the potential to stabilize children’s lives.
In Vancouver, Washington, the school district began working with housing support agencies after a local crisis in 2014, when more than 150 residents of the Courtyard Village apartment complex were evicted.
Over 100 families, including nearly 90 children, reached out for help, triggering a massive response from service agencies and forging a lasting collaboration between the local school district and housing support agencies, which helped 75 families find new homes.
“We were thrown into a community crisis together, which cemented our partnership,” says Charlene Welch, a spokesperson for the Council for the Homeless in Clark County. “The Courtyard Village situation helped us learn how to work with a school district on housing matters.”
Today, Vancouver Public Schools acts as a liaison between families and local shelters and service providers. The district provides students with transportation to school and helps identify homeless students, so the Council for the Homeless can help find them and their families housing.
“We know that experiencing homelessness and housing instability when a person is young can lead to future instability,” says Sunny Wonder, deputy director of the Council for the Homeless. “It’s so important to stabilize young people to ensure they don’t experience homelessness in the future.”
An Innovative Collaboration
In the long term, Duffield says that what is needed is ” a combination of safe and stable housing with supports for two generations, parent and child, to become self sufficient.”
That’s the idea behind Stable Homes Stable Schools, a partnership between the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County and the city’s school district, housing authority and YMCA. The program, which began in 2019, works with homeless families who have young school-age children to find housing and to provide adults with job support. The goal is to create stable environments so that the children will have better school attendance and performance.
“We very specifically look at how kids are doing and to help us prioritize, because we do need to prioritize who we reach out to,” says Charlotte Kinzley, manager of Homeless and Highly Mobile Student Services for Minneapolis Public Schools. “Experiencing homelessness is always hard, but it doesn’t affect all kids the same way. If a child hasn’t been at school for over a week and we can’t get ahold of the parent, then the situation is affecting this child more than in another family.”
Stable Homes Stable Schools works with schools to identify homeless children in kindergarten through second grade. If the families are interested, the district makes a referral to the housing authority, which screens the family for potential support finding housing.
Funded by grants, the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, the program assists families with rent for up to four years. Adults receive job training and counseling support through the YMCA, along with childcare for school-age and younger children.
Last year, the program helped stabilize housing for more than 1,300 families including about 3,700 children. Each family is connected to a support specialist, who helps set them up in their new home, hook up utilities and shop for food and other essentials.
The program is being evaluated by the University of Minnesota Resilient Communities Project to assess its impact on students and families, but early outcomes are positive.
“We have seen an improvement in attendance and behavior,” Kinzley says. “One of the reasons it has worked so well is that it has stayed student- and family-focused.”
Expanding School Partnerships
Programs like Stable Homes Stable Schools are critical, says Duffield, but rare.
Such collaborations require vision and leadership that don’t exist everywhere. Funding is inadequate to identify and support homeless students. And districts faced a huge challenge identifying and tracking homeless students during COVID-19. When most schools closed and instruction took place online, many lost contact with families who were homeless or housing insecure.
Still, there are encouraging signs. School-based homeless liaisons in Boston Public Schools, for example, support families with school-age children by linking them with housing services through the Homeless Education Research Network. Federal funds to support these partnerships during the pandemic are bearing fruit. Some states, including Arkansas, Maine and New Hampshire are using the money to strengthen ties between schools and housing agencies to support homeless students.
Supporting these partnerships is the key, Duffield said, to connecting homeless children and their families with all of the resources available to them, from housing, food and clothing to tutoring and school supplies.
“That’s the trick,” she said. “We need to elevate these examples of districts that are putting energy into partnerships, because now districts have the funds to get things going.”
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How Schools Serve Homeless Students originally appeared on usnews.com
