Education Week - April 28, 2021 - 8

As Schools Weigh How to Use New Aid for
Homeless Students, Finding Them Is Step One
Districts will soon have a fresh surge
of federal aid to help support students
experiencing homelessness, many of
who have lost a key source of stability
they find in schools as they face pandemic-related challenges presented
by remote learning, quarantines, and
strained family networks.
But the same pandemic-related circumstances that have created urgent
new needs for homeless students have
also made them more difficult to identify, district leaders told Education
Week.
" Prior to the pandemic, school was
the safest, most stable place in the lives
of children and youth who are homeless, " said Barbara Duffield, the executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, an organization that advocates for
students experiencing homelessness.
" It was the place for noticing what was
going on in their lives and for educators
to do something about it. It's not like
things are better. It's that we can't find
them. "
Seasoned educators can often recognize the signs that a student may be
slipping into homelessness: Showing
up to class repeatedly without supplies
or a sudden change in bus ridership
might indicate their family had to move
quickly due to eviction or income loss.
After an unprecedented year for
U.S. schools, many of those opportunities for face-to-face interactions
have been hampered by changes
in schoolwide routines. And, as the
COVID-19 pandemic affected job
stability across many sectors, many
families who had previously rarely
interacted with public support programs may not realize their children
now qualify for federally mandated
supports, district administrators said.
The fresh challenges build on a
problem that was growing well before
COVID-19 caused mass school closures. A record 1.5 million students were
identified as homeless in 2017-18, according to the most recent federal data.
And school leaders say that number has
certainly grown in the time since.
The challenge of identifying those
students presents great urgency for
school districts' homelessness liaisons.
They must also prepare to use new federal funds efficiently in the long term,
even as they plan for a potential wave of
newly homeless students when federal
officials quit renewing a moratorium on
housing evictions. That order, which is
currently set to expire June 30, has been
extended several times, and educators
don't know how to predict the volume
of upheaval in their communities when
months of unpaid rent come due for
families.
" I have a knot in my stomach over
what is going to happen when all of this
lifts. I'm very worried, " said Heather
Anderson, the transitional student services coordinator for the Paducah, Ky.,
school district. " We are building the
plane in the air. "

Recognizing those challenges, Congress required a significant portion of
K-12 aid provided through the American
Rescue Plan to support the identification, enrollment, and school participation of children and youth experiencing
homelessness. The $800 million included for those purposes is eight times
what schools will get this year through
the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Program, the federal program
that helps schools meet the needs of
homeless students that may create hurdles to success in school.
More flexibility sought in use of
funds

As they await federal guidance on
how to spend the new aid, McKinneyVento coordinators around the country have pushed officials for maximum
flexibility in how states can distribute
the funds and how schools can use
them. They'd like greater freedom to
collaborate with community organizations in meeting students' needs. And
they've also pushed other federal agencies to target fresh relief aid-like funds
for emergency housing assistance-in
ways that can provide the most benefit
to homeless students.
A bipartisan group of senators wrote
to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel
Cardona April 9, encouraging flexible
use of the new funds " beyond what is
typically allowed " under the existing
federal homeless education program.
Schools should be encouraged to prioritize " wraparound services " that help
meet students' emotional, behavioral,
and family needs that may affect their
ability to learn, said the letter. Signers
included Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a
Republican who led efforts to target the
relief aid; Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat and chair of the Senate
education committee; and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., its ranking member.
In a typical year, qualifying schools
spend federal funds on items like tutoring, field trip fees, and transportation
to keep students in the same school,
even if their family moves outside of its
boundaries. The most-flexible-use category allows liaisons to address practical barriers to student attendance, like
a need for new shoes or a coat to walk
to school in cold weather.
Casey Gordon, the homeless services coordinator for a cluster of districts around Grand Rapids, Mich., has
already adapted her approach during
the pandemic. She's bought wireless
hotspots and car chargers for computers to allow students to do homework
in parking lots.
Anderson, in Paducah, bought a
van to deliver tablets and meals to
unhoused students and to distribute
donated supplies. The van contains
" everything you need to be a human
being, " she said, adding that giving
a child a bottle of lotion or a pair of
shoes can help maintain a personal
connection when they aren't learning
in-person.

8 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 28, 2021 | www.edweek.org

Rogelio V. Solis/AP

By Evie Blad

A student receives free meals delivered by a school bus in Fayette, Miss. During the pandemic, buses that once
transported students now deliver meals and internet access. Virtual learning has made it more difficult to identify
students at risk of homelessness.

Britney Gibson, the student services coordinator for Johnston County
schools in North Carolina, has used
community contributions to help cover
things she might not be able to pay for
with federal funds. The district uses an
app that allows community members
to meet the needs of anonymous students and their families by ordering
items via Amazon.com.
As she awaits word on how new federal funds can be used, Gibson hopes
for maximum flexibility to pay for
things that might not seem immediately related to education. For one family, a simple car repair helped a young
mother get her children to school, she
said. But that's not an allowed use of
current funding, and it's not something
that can be bought on Amazon.
" There are some things I just can't
figure out how to pay for, " Gibson said.
Ben Ruch, the homeless liaison for
Polk County schools in Bartow, Fla.,
says he wants to focus the new funding
on expanding current mental health
and academic supports for students,
rather than creating new programs. He
wants to expand tutoring services, offering more remote options and new
time slots for students who may work
part-time jobs during typical hours.
That's particularly important after a
year when educators are concerned
many students, homeless or not, may
not have had time to cover all of the
course material for their grade level,
he said.
Ruch, who formerly managed a
family housing shelter, said he feels
urgency in keeping students on track
academically.
" The parents who I had the most
difficult time helping were those who
hadn't graduated from high school, " he
said. " I see our program as one of the
best chances of helping those students
end that cycle of homelessness. "

That's why coordinators around the
country want to move quickly to identify students so that they can help them
participate in summer learning programs, even as they chart longer-term
uses for new funds during the next academic year.
Using funds for housing prompts
debate

What's less clear, and more debated
among homeless liaisons, is whether
schools can or should use the new
funding to help pay for housing itself.
Advocates for low-income students
say that schools could stretch their
dollars further by helping families
connect with outside community and
government agencies.
They point to other relief aid, provided to the Department of Housing
and Urban Development, as a more
effective way to address the need for
housing itself. In a March 30 letter, a
group of advocacy organizations urged
HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge to ensure her agency doesn't tie too many
strings to those funds so that they can
more easily reach children at risk of
homelessness.
At issue: HUD typically uses a narrower definition of homelessness than
the Education Department, which
includes children who are staying in
motels, shelters, or " doubled up " in
friends' homes, sleeping on couches
as a make-do fix while their parents
search for housing.
The American Rescue Plan allows
HUD to distribute new housing aid
under the definitions used by other
federal agencies, including the Education Department, potentially opening
up access to students who may have
otherwise gone without. Regulations
for how that funding should be spent
should encourage housing organiza-

tions to cooperate with school districts
to ensure they meet families' needs effectively, the letter to Fudge said.
That broad definition of homelessness is part of the reason some families
don't enroll their children in supportive services. They might not realize
they qualify.
" A lot of our families in Johnston
County think that homelessness
means you are sleeping under a
bridge, " Gibson said.
Even as federal data showed the
number of homeless students hit a
record high, advocates said they knew
there were many more who hadn't
been identified. During the pandemic,
schools around the country have reported lower numbers of qualifying
students. SchoolHouse Connection
estimates about 1 in 4 students experiencing homelessness have fallen off
of their district's radar during the upheaval.
Melinda Dyer, who coordinates
homeless student services for Washington state, said districts will have more
success both identifying and supporting homeless students if they use new
aid to hire social workers and staff. She
hopes that the funds can also be used
in part to help beef up state and interdistrict efforts to track and support students as their families move.
The stakes are high for children
and for their schools, said Duffield, of
SchoolHouse Connection. She hopes
that, if schools find effective ways to
spend the new aid, it can help make
the case for a more permanent funding increase in future federal budgets.
" This is unprecedented opportunity
to show what investment can do and
to show what this program can look
like in the future, " Duffield said. " As
much work as it took for advocacy,
implementation is going to take even
more work. "

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Education Week - April 28, 2021

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