okay welcome everyone and good afternoon, my name is Dantel Proctor from the
National Student Attendance Engagement and Success Center. Welcome to today's
session, Homeless Education 101, a primer on supporting the education of children
and youth experiencing homelessness. Please allow me to share some brief
details about the session. Today's presenter is Christina Dukes. Christina
is a federal liaison for the SERVE Center in the National Center for
Homeless Education where she provides face-to-face and online training and
technical assistance to state coordinators and homeless education.
Today's session will last for approximately 45 minutes and is being
recorded. We'd like to encourage everyone to utilize the chat function at the
bottom right hand corner of your screen to submit questions or comments for our
presenters please be sure to select everyone from the drop-down box to
ensure that your comments and questions are seen by me and our speakers. You may
submit your questions throughout the presentation and we will leave time at
the end to address them to address as many questions as possible. If we do not
have time to get through all of the questions we will reply to all
participants by email within the next five to seven business days. All
participants have been placed on mute to avoid background noise, please do not
unmute yourself, instead refer to the chat function on the right side of the screen
if you have a question or comment. Following the Q&A portion of our session
there will be a brief poll. Your participation in these polls is very
is extremely important to helping us better share our presentations and
ensure that we are delivering content to you in a way that best suits your
needs. We greatly appreciate your feedback to these questions. Before I
hand the session over to Christina I would like to remind folks of the
upcoming webinars that will be held in November. More information and
the link to the register for these is included on the last slide of this
presentation. Also I would like to share with you the mission of the national
student attendance engagement and Success Center.
The mission of the center is to disseminate evidence-based practices and
build and facilitate communities of practice to help students attend every
day be engaged in school and succeed academically so that they graduate high
school prepared for college career and civic life. Christina I hand it over to
you now. Thank you Dantel and welcome everyone to today's session. As Dantel
mentioned we're going to be looking at the issue of homeless education and in
particular the first part of the session today will be sort of an overview of the
field of homeless education who are the people involved a little bit about our
program and the supports that are available to children and youth
experiencing homelessness and then the second half of the presentation will
focus specifically on the issue of chronic absence among homeless students
and as towards the end of my slide you'll see that NCHE recently released a
brief specifically on this topic and many of the points that you see in
today's presentation are included in that brief so if you want sort of a
principal handout so to speak or resource for more information please do
check out our brief a little bit more about NCHE, we are the US Department of
Education Technical Assistance Center for the federal education for homeless
children and youth or EHCY program and as you can see on the slide we provide a
number of resources and supports to the fields for people working with children
and youth and families experiencing homelessness so please visit our website
we invite you to call or email our helpline if you have homeless education
related questions you can download or order a hardcopy some of our products
join us for a webinar join our listserv for periodic announcements or of course
follow or like us on social media.
So let's look first at the overall field of homeless education program the people
and the supports that are available to students experiencing homelessness so a
little bit about the EHCY program we are authorized under subtitle 7b of the
McKinney-Vento homeless assistance act but we were most recently reauthorized
or amended by title 9 Part A of the every student succeeds act so the
McKinney-Vento Act is a broader federal law that provides a variety of supports
and services for people experiencing homelessness but that little education
subtitle subtitle 7b focuses specifically on education for children
and youth experiencing homelessness and so whenever we're reauthorized it
happens whenever the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is reauthorized
under the law every state must appoint a state coordinator for homeless education
and that will be out of your state Department of Education that person will
be out of that the State Department and then every district must appoint a local
homeless education liaison now if you don't know who your state coordinator is
or your local liaison we invite you to visit our state resources web page, click
on your state and you'll see the state coordinators contact information and a
link to local liaison contact information. In terms of the funding so
each year states receive annual EHCY allocations and they are proportional to
the state's title one Part A allocation each state will retain a portion of its
funds its allocation to conduct state level activities for most states they're
allowed to retain up to 25% of their EHCY allocation and then they'll distribute
the remainder of their EHCY funds to districts through a competitive sub
grant process. Now what that means is that not every school district receives
dedicated McKinney-Vento funding in fact only around 20% of school districts
receive that dedicated funding and yet all school districts
across the country are required by federal law to comply with the
McKinney-Vento Act. For those of you who maybe are new to the issue of homeless
education or you don't have a lot of experience working with children and
youth experiencing homelessness you may wonder do we really need a specific
program or a specific law and so we wanted to provide you with some context
that students experiencing homelessness really do face some unique and acute
challenges and barriers when it comes to accessing education so students
experiencing homelessness have higher rates of special education needs mental
and physical health issues school absenteeism and we'll talk about that
later in the presentation grade retention and dropping out of high
school and they do as I mentioned face unique challenges and barriers and we'll
talk about some of those for instance lacking documentation that often is
required for enrollments and then also ensuring that these children and
youth have access to education and supports for school success can play a
really key role for them and making sure that as they move into adulthood they're
prepared for financial stability and also to break the cycle of poverty and
homelessness.
So who exactly is homeless well our statute includes a definition of
homelessness and I will say it may be a little bit broader than common
conceptions of what homelessness looks like but this this definition which is
the definition that is used by US public schools really is a true representation
of where families and youth experiencing homelessness seek shelter when they lose
housing so the McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children and youth as
individuals who lack a fixed regular inadequate nighttime residence and
that's the general guiding phrase of our definition of homeless and then the
definition continues and provides a number of types of living arrangements
that do qualify as homeless because they're not fixed regular and adequate
the first is what is awesome called informally doubling up but the actual
legislative wording is sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of
housing economic hardship or a similar reason around 75% of the children and
youth who were identified as homeless during the 1516 school year do fall
under this category and then also children and youth living in motels
hotels trailer parks or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate
accommodations now before we continue in the definition
I'll mention that under our statute it's the local liaison who has both the
authority and the responsibility of determining eligibility so as we're
going through this definition you don't need to feel like you have to be an
expert on all the nuances and ends announce but if you can just get a
general concept it'll help you know if you're working with a student hey this
student might be McKinney-Vento eligible let me reach out to the local liaison to
make a referral alright continuing with the definition living in emergency or
transitional shelters living in a public or private place where people are not
supposed to sleep and that would include cars parks public
spaces abandoned buildings substandard housing transit stations or similar
settings and then finally migrant children not as a whole or categorically
but if they're living in the circumstances described in the
definition a couple of other important pieces so our program also serves
unaccompanied youth and these are you children or youth whose living
arrangement meets the definition of homeless but who is also not in the
physical custody of a parent or guardian a more informal way to say that is this
is a student who's experiencing homelessness on his or her own not under
the care of a parent or guardian also prior to ESSA the McKinney-Vento
definition of homeless did include the phrase awaiting foster care placement
but this was removed by EPSA in December 2016 with the exception of a handful of
covered States Arkansas Delaware Maryland and Nevada
and in those states you will remove a waiting foster care placement from your
definition on December 10th of this year but also noteworthy is that under SF all
children in any stage of child welfare involvements are eligible for new school
stability supports that are included under title and Part A of the statute so
they're not exactly like McKinney-Vento protections but they're very very
similar including school of origin right
for those of you who again you may be new to this definition and you're like
really doubled up or you know really motels and so yes and the reason is
that shelters right when people often think of okay who's homeless I think of
people staying in homeless shelters or maybe staying in public spaces or in
unsheltered location like a car a park you know on the streets and that is a
form of homelessness but for families and youth it often is more complicated
than that so first of all shelters often quite
simply are just not an option a lot of communities don't have homeless shelters
they're usually concentrated in population centers so urban areas or
maybe suburban areas and that means that a lot of communities simply don't have
that safety net or if they do have a shelter a lot of times they're full so
what we see is that many times shelters must turn away people who are seeking
assistance because they simply don't have the capacity to serve them also
shelters do have state limits so if a family is able to get into a shelter
they may only be able to stay for 30 days 60 days or 90 days and depending on
the circumstances that cause their homelessness the issue may not be
resolved in time and so they're back into that cycle of looking for a place
to stay and bouncing around and finally families and youth may hesitate to enter
the shelter system they may have concerns about safety and privacy so
what we see is a lot of times families or youth will look for any other
alternative of where can I stay because we've just lost our housing so where can
I go can I stay with the neighbor can I stay with the relative do can we scrape
together the money maybe I don't have first last and security and utilities
deposits but maybe I can scrape together enough from a side job to get us into a
low cost motel and yet a lot of times those arrangements simply don't last
families are you to end up staying with the name
are many times they're asked to leave because people aren't prepared to take
responsibility long term for another family or youth and the presence of
another family or youth can change household dynamics it can lead to
overcrowding different sleeping arrangements and so what we see is
that a lot of times those Arrangements simply don't last
in terms of causes of homelessness largely especially for families
homelessness is a financial issue many communities lack affordable how did
housings parents may struggle with making enough money to afford the cost
of living in their area so low paying jobs or a single parent or single income
household so if anything happens to the ability of that wage earner to bring
home the check right that can lead to that can really destabilize a family or
disabilities that may affect a breadwinners ability to work for youth a
lot of times family conflicts or even abuse or violence can bring about a
separation between a youth and his or her parents and then finally I remember
seeing a video an awareness video once that showed two women they were adult
women who they were LGBT identified as lesbian and one of them sort of
spoke to what a turbulent period of time it was in her life after she revealed
that to people she loved but she had enough support around her that as she
went through that surveillant time and maybe broken relationship she was able
to through a broader social network find stability but maybe for youth or a
family who whatever for whatever the reason losses housing such as the cases
the other woman in the video if they don't have a network of support that is
that has the resources to take them in and support them during their crisis
they may end up homeless and so to summarize that point many families are
you to wind up homeless just have either no network of support to help them when
they fall on hard times or an under-resourced network of support
let's talk about the rights of McKinney-Vento students and we could
do an entire webinar just on these two slides so we'll keep it high level
knowing that you can ask questions as needed so McKinney-Vento students have
the right to well actually I should say requires school
districts to remove barriers to full school participation for McKinney-Vento
students and that could be barriers related to fees fines absences and
really any number of other issues McKinney-Vento students are required or
are entitled to immediate school enrolment even if they're lacking
documentation that is normally required so proof of residence proof of
guardianship previous school records and even if they missed application or
enrollment deadlines during any period of homelessness McKinney-Vento students
have the right to school stability or school selection which means that they
can either continue if they become homeless
and move around they can continue attending the same school their school
of origin or they can enroll immediately in the local school near where they're
staying now there is an individualized student best interest determination in
terms of school selection but the statute the statutory wording actually
sort of tips the scale by saying that school districts should presume that
continuing to attend the school of origin is in a student's best interest
unless this is not what the parent guardian or unaccompanied youth wants
if it's deemed to be best for a student to stay in the school of origin the
district must provide transportation to and from the school of origin and also
new under ESSA school districts must provide homeless youth with assistance
for receiving partial or full credit for coursework that they completed
satisfactorily at a previous school and the point of this is that what can
happen sometimes to youth experiencing homelessness through no fault of their
own is that as they move around if they're moving schools the new school
may not again prior to would not have know much do they can we give them credit
if they only did part of a course were a part of the course at the previous
school or what if their coursework is a little different than ours and so what
ESSA does is requires school districts to grant partial or full credit if the
students completed the coursework satisfactorily that previous school
we see the new language under ESSA regarding local liaisons and school
counselors assisting youth experiencing homelessness with prep preparing for and
transitioning to college also homeless youth are entitled to free school meals
and they don't have to fill out the normal household application or prove
income once the local liaison has identified a student for McKinney-Vento
services they are automatically eligible through a streamlined certification
process also homeless children youths are categorically eligible for title one
support and that can include receiving support through what's called the
district homeless set-aside which is a setting aside of funds of title impart a
funds at the district level that can be used to support homeless students
including funding the local liaison position or funding transportation to
the school of origin and then also for McKinney-Vento students with special
education needs there are some particular provisions under the
individual individuals with Disabilities Education Act that ensures continuity of
services and comparable services even as a student may be moving between school
districts or states you
all right so we're not going to do a formal poll but I want you to just kind
of maybe jot down your answers or note them mentally so which of the following
statements are true select all that apply
students experiencing homelessness can attend any school in the district where
they are living students experiencing homelessness don't
have to fill out household meal application to get three school meals
unaccompanied you don't have to include parents' information on their FAFSA or
none of the above so have a moment think about that and in
just a second I'll show you the correct response
all right so and I'm realizing I didn't go into a lot of detail about that FAFSA
piece though so students experiencing homelessness don't have the right to
attend any school in the district where they're living just the local school or
the school of origin and the statute actually provides definition for those
terms and it is true though that students experiencing homelessness don't
have to fill out the meals application to get free school meals and
unaccompanied youth which again those are youth living in homeless situation
so their living arrangement meets the definition of homeless but they're on
their own and they do qualify as independent students when they fill out
the FAFSA which means they don't have to include parents' information and their
aid package their federal aid package for college is based only on the
student's income and assets so that was basically a blitz of the field of
homeless education so I'll pause for a moment and turn it over to Dantel is
going to share any questions you've typed in
right um somebody did ask how can you tell if a student is actually homeless
and they said that excuse me they said that they've run into cases where people
use other people's addresses to register their children for school right so
first of all there are certain things the school district has the
responsibility of identifying homeless children and youth and some strategies
that school districts will use number one they may use an enrollment
questionnaire as part of the excuse me a housing questionnaire as part of the
enrollment packet which will screen for possible eligibility and then if there
is any sort of gray usually the local liaison or other personnel trained by
the local liaison will follow up with the family or youth just to say hey I
have a few questions I wanted to see what supports your child may be
eligible for I may ask you just a few questions and so they'll ask a few
questions to see to get a good understanding of the family
circumstances now for family also sorry a couple of other things school
districts are required to post publicly information about the rights of homeless
children and youth and so families or youth may see that information in school
or in the community and so we'll contact the local liaison so usually there's
sort of a discussion and confirmation process that happens but it would not be
appropriate a student who uses another family's address would not be deemed
McKinney-Vento eligible
thank you and another question came in they asked how about natural disasters
and wildfires unfortunately I'm not sure what that was referring to though I saw
that question pop up I think that was asking about when would a family
or youth who lost their housing to natural disaster or wildfires be
considered eligible and I'll just take us back very quickly so the short answer
is possibly depending on the circumstances so natural disasters are
not specifically named in the McKinney-Vento definition of homeless
and yet families and youth who are displaced or lose housing because of a
natural disaster could be considered McKinney-Vento eligible and really it's
going to depend on where does the family land right if they if they're able to
secure fixed regular and adequate housing right so it may depend on the
resources that the family has if a family has lost housing and they don't
have the resources to go to another place that would be considered fixed
regular inadequate instead maybe they end up doubling up temporarily until
they can get back on their feet or staying in a low cost motel they
would be considered McKinney-Vento eligible so it's really about where did
they land if they lost their housing and then the last question that came in says
in rural locations what if you can't find an acceptable transportation method
to keep a student in their school of origin well the short answer and
this is not you know my thinking this is the authority of statute as passed into
law by Congress there really is no option for a school district to say we
can't do it right I do think it can be more challenging in rural areas we
actually put out a publication specifically related to meeting school
of origin transportation requirements in rural areas and so there are some
creative methods that we suggest in there and so if you're interested in
more information you can email me and I'll send you that publication but
admittedly it can be more challenging in rural areas but there's really no way
for a school to just be like you know what we can't do it
right we have another question that came in it says what if a family's home is
flooded but insurance is putting them up in another home while repairs are made
right so probably they would not be McKinney-Vento eligible because the
reality is that the McKinney-Vento active is a pretty small program and
it's not I don't think it's really intended or equipped to mitigate every
tough circumstance or even every circumstance of residential mobility but
having said that um a lot of times some of those great cases you've got to ask
additional questions like how long it is the family expected to be there is this
just a week and they'll be back in their home or is this expected to be sort of a
long-term thing so I would want to know a little bit more information and yeah
and of course also remember that you'll want to speak with your local liaison
because your local liaison is going to have the ultimate sort of
determination on that I'm noticing them tell we probably should keep going in
the interest of time or did we have a number of other questions you think we
need to take now that was actually the last question
all right perfect so we'll keep going and then we'll have one other Q&A at the
end of the session I do want to say though I appreciate your questions it
let's me know you're engaged and so I just want to make sure I don't
completely miss out on time to cover the second section here but we'll stop again
for questions so sort of an homage if you will to the fact that I know the
national student attendance engagement and Success Center does quite a bit of
work on the issue of chronic absence I did want to take part of our time
together today to focus on this issue among students experiencing homelessness
so just so we're all on the same page chronic absence is when a student misses
10% or more of the school year for any reason whether it's excused or unexcused
so it's not the same thing as truancy it's missing school for any reason
and again this is pulling from the research that we did and sort of the
research that's out there in the field that informed our chronic absence brief
at MCH E but some of the top reason before or the top causes of chronic
absence are physical and mental health issues housing instability competing
responsibilities and misconceptions about the importance of attendance and
homeless students could struggle really with all of these issues so homeless
children and youth just by virtue of being low-income a lot of times don't
have great or conserve consistent access to health care and so they may be
dealing they may be sticker more often or dealing with asthma but not be able
to get proper treatment or even have dental issues that would cause them to
miss school and then housing instability you know as a family or use is kind of
bouncing around especially a family who's homeless and is trying to find a
place to stay that can easily bleed into a student missing school and then for
competing responsibilities this can come into play for instance youths
unaccompanied homeless youth who are pretty much on their own maybe
couch surfing staying somewhere trying to get a job trying to become
self-sufficient and so they're working but trying to go to school and
sometimes other what life responsibilities win out and sometimes
parents may just not know you know when your child misses school they're really
they really can be set back and so make sure that you're making every effort to
have them in school every day
now it's not a complete surprise given the multiple challenges that
homeless children and you deal with that students experiencing homelessness are
chronically absent at a rate that is at least double that of the overall student
population and this comes from research from a variety of sources though out of
the state of Utah New York City and several other sources which again are
cited in our chronic absence brief but interestingly in terms of how a state or
districts may look at this issue and consider how to respond or structure
interventions data from the Florida Department of Education indicate that
chronic absence may be concentrated in a subset of schools with 50% of all
chronically absent students in Florida being concentrated in only 15% of
schools and so by using data states can really zero in okay where is this the
biggest issue because maybe that's where we really need to target our efforts
this comes from data from the New York City Department of Education our public
school district I guess I should say chronically absent elementary students
experiencing homelessness repeated the same grade at over three times the rate
of students experiencing homelessness who missed fewer than five days of
school so what we see is that while experiencing homelessness in and of
itself is a risk factor for how a student does in school our homeless
students who attend school regularly fare much better than homeless students
who are chronically absent
now interestingly and this was as I was researching for the brief I saw it okay
we know there's a clear benefit for students what about for school districts
and attendance as you guys may know effect funding for school districts and
so and the citations for these little bits of information are included in the
brief that I mentioned but by Rhian gauging 51 chronically absent students
as students a Colorado School District's increased its funding by three hundred
and fifty thousand dollars because as you as you know schools are paid based
on attendance and when schools are present or excuse me students are
present in their seats
by contrast and this was a news article out of the San Diego area during the
2009-2010 school year Public Schools in San Diego County forfeited over a
hundred and two million dollars in state funding due to student absences and so
in addition to all the reasons that it's the right thing to do for student
outcomes and for the well-being and and school performance of students to do
everything possible to get kids in school every day there's also a
financial incentive for school districts to make sure that that students are
attending regularly
so what can schools do to support regular attendance and some of what
you're going to be maybe similar to what you've heard on other presentations on
this topic but just to recap looking at data is so important right so for
instance in the case of Florida where they know that a large concentration of
chronic absence is concentrated and it's a relatively small number of
schools that's going to let them know hey if we want to start offering
particular intervention we know where we need to target them because we know
where the issue is biggest same thing on maybe a more student an individual
student level like if you know that children and youth who are in foster
care or children and youth who are experiencing homelessness they're really
struggling to be in school every day we need to we're going to use our data
and know where to target interventions and when to intervene so if you're
looking at when are we seeing a student start to miss school you need to
intervene early but you're only going to be able to do that if you're tracking
and knowing who's missing school
although there are lots of ideas and we detail I because in in at a greater
degree in our brief so if you want to take a deep dive again please check out
our brief but there are lots of student level interventions that districts are
using to promote regular school attendance and that includes working
with students and families through mentoring or prompt follow-up once a
pattern of absence is noticed offering before and after programming that may
draw students to be in school incentivizing school attendance like I
don't know if I have a particular idea but I know as I as I was reading some of
the very creative things that school districts do it can be prizes it can be
a dance it can be any number of things that schools are doing that are going to
want kids to their they make kids want to be in school every day so that they can
be rewarded for that also for a low income family to maybe
don't have access to regular health care providing school-based dental and health
services is a way to help students be healthier and hopefully be in school
then more regularly instead of missing school for untreated health issues and
also school should be considering do we have policies that may be inadvertently
decreased student attendance for instance might there be a time when
instead of for excessive absences or tardiness instead of out-of-school
suspension I guess depending on the level a may be in-school suspension or
some other kind of discipline that keeps the student in school and engaged rather
than maybe shooting the school in its in its foot right like okay we have a
student who's not attending school so because of that is a discipline we're
going to keep them out of school and that's probably not going to do well for
the student or the district so there's any other way to address that issue
through a policy change or a practice change that might be a good next step
also consider leveraging community support through partnerships so
partnering with homeless shelters partnering with social services or even
local public transit and media I remember learning some of the things
that New York City Public Schools does to encourage school attendance, they have
celebrities who are willing to kind of join with the schools like I remember
Whoopi Goldberg and a couple of major NBA stars who recorded messages that
it's sort of like a robocall right but the school district calls the family or
the student and it's there it is a celebrity on the line being like hey
we've issue at school come back to school and or signs on public transit
that talked about the importance of having you know your children be in
school every day
and then finally and this is what I would say is especially particular to
the field of homeless education some of the McKinney-Vento acts requirements are
aimed at regular school attendance and school stability right though instead of
a student having to move through schools and dealing with all that disruption
they can stay in the same school and continue attending uninterrupted even if
they lose housing and move to a different area they have transportation
to the school of origin to make sure they're there every day things like that
free school meals right so to draw kids to school to make sure that they can
have regular meals and then also as of the 1617 school year school districts
are required to collect and report data on chronic absence among students
experiencing homelessness homelessness so within a couple of years we're going
to see a national level data set from the Department of Education on this
issue which we're imagining will bring greater attention to it right so if it's
not measured it's not paid attention to but now we're going to see it measured
and we're thinking it will bring about greater attention to this issue
so that's it for our slides I'm going to turn it back to Dan tell for any
remaining questions you may have okay now we move on to answering some of
your questions that were submitted during the presentation everyone should
feel free to continue to submit their questions using the chat session or the
chat feature during this time I'll also remind everyone to please remain online
following the Q&A session to take part in our feedback poll your participation
in this process is extremely important to our future events and we do have one
question so far Christina someone asked some families live in transitional
housing for two to three years is there a point where this living arrangement
isn't considered homeless anymore so this actually is a pretty clear issue
the Department of Education has said that transitional housing which usually
lasts 12 to 24 months doesn't see the McKinney-Vento definition of homeless
and so while they're in that transitional housing they would be
considered homeless the only thing that I would say is a lot of times school
districts conflate eligibility with the issue of school selection so for
instance if it's known that a family has lost housing and is now in transitional
housing and they're expected to be there for a period of time or maybe they've
already been there for a year and they're expected to remain at the
beginning of a school year a school district could talk with the family and
say hey would it make more sense at this time for your child to go ahead and
enroll in the local school let's talk about what may be in the child's best
interest at this time so eligibility is a separate decision and the first
decision that needs to be made which then would be followed by school
selection but the short answer is as long as the child is in transitional
housing they would be McKinney-Vento eligible
all right thank you Christina we haven't had any more questions come
in just yet well I'll go ahead and do one more quick slide to provide
additional information there's the link you can download our in-school every day
addressing chronic absenteeism among students experiencing homelessness
that's a new brief that we just released about a month ago or really you can
check out any of our other briefs we have briefs on transportation immediate
enrollment the role of the local liaison all all different types of topics
related to homeless education so please do check those out
and I guess with that back to you Denzel weather for more questions or if you're
ready to close us out there are no more questions so if it's okay with you
Christina we can move on to the polling sure sounds good okay so at this time we
would like to encourage everyone to participate in a few quick polling
questions related to this session your responses are completely anonymous so
please answer honestly and help us find ways to improve our approach and content
offerings in the future we sincerely appreciate your feedback we should see
that on the screen on the right side of your screen now
you
also just you guys know I'm max I'm practicing your feedback so feel free to
be completely honest just wanted people to know that
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