Homework assumes you have a home. An increasing number of students don’t
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Homelessness among students nationwide continues to increase by double digits, putting them at greater risk of dropping out, and suffering from physical, social and emotional health issues. School districts are recognizing the problem and stepping in with possible solutions.
By the numbers
In the 2023-2024 school year, public schools nationwide identified more than 1.5 million students who were experiencing homelessness. The nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection, citing government data, says that’s a 12.6 percent increase from 2022-2023 and a 28.5 percent jump from 2021-2022, the highest on record.
The Ohio Department of Education says for the 2024-2025 school year, there were 3,399 unhoused students enrolled in Hamilton County schools, or 3 percent of the student population. For Montgomery County it was 859, or one percent.
Records show Black students are 80 percent more likely to experience homelessness and Latino/a students are 36 percent more likely.
The government says children are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. The news publication Education Week calls it a “Tsunami of Homelessness,” and says the number of homeless families with school-age children rose 16 percent in the 2022-2023 school year and unaccompanied homeless children and youth were up 15 percent.
At least 25 percent of students experiencing homelessness dropped off the radar during COVID and it took months for school districts to locate them.
Homeless creates barriers to education
Homelessness can lead to chronic absenteeism and lower graduation rates, as statistics show.
On average, states identified 48 percent of identified unhoused students as chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year.
Just 69 percent of students facing homelessness in the 2022-2023 school year graduated. That’s 13 percent below other low-income students and 18 percent below all students.
University of Cincinnati Chair and Academic Director of the Center for Real Estate Gary Painter, studied homelessness in Los Angeles youth from 2008 to 2017 and found duration and timing matters for outcomes.
For example, even after students become housed, they continued to score lower on state tests and miss more days of school than those who had never been homeless. However, after they were identified as homeless and received services for a few years, their academic performance and attendance stabilized.
SchoolHouse Connect reports, “When barriers are removed, homeless students can and do succeed in school, which is their best protection against future homelessness.”
Approaches taken by Cincinnati and other school districts
The nonpartisan nonprofit organization Learning Policy Institute studied five school districts, including Cincinnati Public Schools, on their approaches to support students who were unhoused.
It gathered and reviewed public documents, including financial and staffing data and conducted interviews with homeless program staff. The organization says the study “was designed to help us better understand the assets and needs of students experiencing homelessness and what districts are able to do to address these needs.”
The school districts leveraged partnerships to provide:
- Food and hygiene products, clothing and school supplies.
- Transportation, as required by the McKinney-Vento Act.
- Academic support with tutoring and summer programs.
- Physical and mental health services.
- Specialized support for unaccompanied youth, like embedded staff at a local youth shelter.
- Support for families including childcare, counseling and transportation.
To pay for these services, Cincinnati Public Schools and others used a mix of federal, state, district and private funding.
The organization recommends federal and state policymakers adopt policies that help eliminate child poverty and keep families houses, Congress revise McKinney-Vento to simply consider families that participate in SNAP and more.
Possible solutions
This spring Cincinnati Public Schools opened a safe sleep lot at Taft Elementary, offering a secure place to stay, access to restrooms, showers, laundry, meals and charging stations. Brick by Brick’s Hernz Laguerre Jr. reports how it’s working.
Cincinnati got the idea for the safe sleep lot from the City of San Diego. The 19th news publication reports the city partnered with Jewish Family Service in 2017 to convert the first of four parking lots into safe sleep lots for anyone who is homeless, has a vehicle and registers with a social service provider.
Like Cincinnati, San Diego offers a parking space, restrooms and on-site security. In addition, it has housing navigation, job training, and contacts for mental health and substance abuse treatment. The concept is proving effective.
A 2024 study found forty percent of those who slept at a safe lot in San Diego between March 2020 and November 2021 were able to move into more stable housing. That compares to the national average of below 34 percent. And residents in the safe lots preferred them over emergency shelters. Here’s one example of how a client named Jim benefited. When he came to the lot he was unemployed but over the next month he got a job, saved money for a deposit and was able to move into a studio apartment.
SchoolHouse Connection has other possible solutions:
- Provide a nurse manager to homeless students with chronic illness.
- Host small group lunch meetings to talk about mental health.
- Be creative with transportation like faith-based organizations that have vans and collaborate with medical transportation services covered by Medicaid.
- Provide ongoing training, coaching and support for all school staff to build a positive school climate.
- Collect data and implement early warning systems to be intentionally responsive to students experiencing homelessness.
- Take a team approach to attendance by getting teachers, office staff, the school nurse, bus drivers and food service employees to interact with students before a child starts missing a lot of school.
Limitations
While helping the unhoused, schools face a variety of challenges including funding. The five districts studied by Learning Policy Institute said there wasn’t enough money. In addition, restrictions on McKinney-Vento (a federal law supporting the enrollment and education of students who are unhoused) limited how they could help. Insufficient staffing was another problem.
Learning Policy Institute also reports, “District staff in our study were unable to address the root cause of students’ challenges: lack of stable housing.”
Looking ahead
Suburban Lexington-Fayette County Public Schools is considering starting a safe sleep lot. The president of the teacher’s union is asking the district to establish one that mirrors Cincinnati’s program.
And the idea is catching on at the collegiate level. California’s Long Beach City College is providing one of its parking lots to students who need to sleep in their car. The lot has access to restrooms, showers and WiFi.
The Guardian also reports “Some students in Minnesota even live in a nursing home in exchange for a very low monthly rent and volunteering to help senior citizens do things like troubleshoot tech and go shopping. At Howard Community College in Maryland, they curl into sleeping pods during the day.” All agree these accommodations are only Band-aids and don’t get at the root cause of homelessness.
How do we combat homelessness? Will creative programs like data analytics gain traction that try to prevent eviction upstream? Will the government embrace preventative solutions in the wake of Housing First cutbacks? Will programs in the new federal housing law like increasing housing in Opportunity Zones and supporting whole-home repair programs make a difference? We want to build community around context and solutions in our cities. Your feedback is very important to the effort, as we continue to dig deeper into the responses to some of our most pressing social issues, including the housing crisis. Click on the green button to take a short survey to help reinforce and refine our work. Thank you.
Ann Thompson – Host, Producer
Over the last thirty years in Cincinnati, Ann Thompson has brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her reporting. She has reported and anchored for WVXU, WKRC, WCKY, WHIO-TV and Metro Networks and freelanced for NPR, CBS and ABC Radio. Her work has been recognized by the Associated Press and she has won awards from the Association of Women in Communications and the Alliance for Women in Media. She is a former News Director and Operations Manager. Ann has reported from India, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Belgium as part of fellowships. Ann thinks of the Brick by Brick project as “journalism for good.” She serves as host and producer. Ann lives in Anderson Township with her husband Scott. They have two boys. Jake graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2022 and Kurt attends West Point.
