Every school in Plantz’s district has a box of supplies such as children’s underwear, toiletries, and wedding dresses, and she always finds ways to de-stigmatize the process of getting these items to students in need. looking for. At River Valley High, it’s kept in the Raider Room (named after the school’s mascot) and has a shower. She lets the kids in and out to do various school-related chores so that visiting the room isn’t seen as a sign of poverty. When one of her students, a cheerleader, stopped coming to school because housing was unstable and she couldn’t get her hair done in the morning, Plantz gave her her $14 straightener. from her Walgreens and placed in the Raider Room. “Get off the bus and go straight to the shower and do her hair there,” she said. Last December, after her mother showed up at the ward office saying her boyfriend had set fire to everything she owned, including the paperwork needed to register her three children, Plantz went to her office and grabbed her wallet. and took her mother to Walmart. : She bought each child two of her clothes and a coat so they could go to school the next day. She signed up one of her children for counseling and left her mother with a gas card and a list of possible apartment rentals.
Learn more about US schools and education
- Drop-off outfit: As the kids return to the classroom, style-passionate parents are looking for ways to feel a touch of chic on the way to school.
- Look to the sun: Public schools are increasingly taking advantage of solar energy savings to upgrade facilities, support communities, and raise teacher salaries. In many cases, there is no cost to the taxpayer.
- High school football: Supply chain issues have delayed helmet production and coaches across the country are struggling to find protective gear for their teams.
- shortage of teachers: The pandemic has led to urgent searches for teachers in some areas, but not all school districts are suffering from shortages. Here are the factors.
The McKinney-Vento Act supports small annual grants to support these types of efforts, but most school districts do not receive them. The application process can be cumbersome. In addition to requiring school districts to appoint liaisons, the law also waives the address requirement for admission or allows students to remain at their home school if their families are forced to move. , is supposed to eliminate barriers to education. However, these provisions are not widely understood and evenly enforced.
Few data track homeless people in rural areas across the country, and in most cases it is McKinney and Wendt’s liaisons that fill the gap, if at times imperfect. For example, in Montana he saw a 145% increase in the number of homeless students in 2018. This is not because more children are suddenly homeless, but because her McKinney-Vento coordinator across the new state stepped up her efforts. The demographically similar school districts right next to Plants report fewer than 10 homeless students per year. And across Ohio, 1.8% of her students reported experiencing homelessness in the 2019-20 school year. This is an admission that her Valerie Kunze, assistant director of the Ohio Department of Education’s Vulnerable Youth Program, is underestimating. “There are places reporting 0 percent, but there are no 0 percent,” she told me.
However, despite its many flaws and inconsistencies, the McKinney-Vento liaison report compiled by the Department of Education represents an important and rare effort to quantify the problem of student homelessness, especially in rural areas. represents. DOE’s definition of homelessness is broader than, for example, that used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and better captures what homelessness is typically like for rural youth and families. Blake’s family lives in a cramped camper on a hill or the family sometimes doubles in unseen and dangerous conditions as opposed to life on the street or in a shelter. In 2019, the last reporting year before the pandemic, HUD’s annual “point in time” counting of his nights found 53,692 parents and children experiencing homelessness. Using data from McKinney and Wendt’s liaisons, DOE counted 1.4 million school-age children as homeless during the same school year.
When schools closed due to Covid, so did a key way to identify and help children experiencing homelessness. His McKinney-Vento Liaison National Survey, conducted by School House Connection and the University of Michigan in 2020, estimated that about 420,000 homeless students disappeared from rolls without tracking or assistance.
This number is one reason Congress has allocated an unprecedented $800 million in aid to homeless students as part of the American Recovery Plan Act. For the first time, many school districts that had never received a McKinney-Vento grant found themselves suddenly, albeit temporarily, infused with resources and given broader authority over how they were used. rice field. Some schools have purchased motel rooms, while others have hired consultants to help families navigate the housing system. When the first round of her two promised ARPA funding reached Plants’ district in the spring, she launched a range of projects with a view to what’s still left when the funding runs out. Considered and decided on new supply shelves for clothing and toiletries. A washing machine that she can put in an inconspicuous place. “Kids have used them in the house in the field, but you have to ask permission and it’s very noticeable,” she said.
Lisa Brooks, director of the Ohio Coalition’s Youth Initiative on Homelessness and Housing, also had the long term in mind. launched a program to directly train school staff on how to support For her, the opportunity to expand her production capacity on that scale was thrilling, but she worried about what would happen if her funding ran out. “While this was a response to one crisis, the pandemic, a national crisis of homeless students is ongoing,” Brooks said. “Sandra Model is not sustainable. There can be no champion in the district where he is the only champion.”