Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education has issued guidance, including a report and a fact sheet, for schools on the provisions and implementation requirements of the McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youth program, reauthorized with passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
- The Washington Post reports the guidance emphasizes the need to support preschool-aged homeless students, who make up a large portion of the more than 1.3 million homeless students identified during the 2013-14 school year.
- Changes and updates to the McKinney-Vento Act cover how homeless students should be identified and how schools should coordinate with outside service providers, protect student records, remove enrollment barriers and provide school stability for homeless students.
Dive Insight:
The number of homeless children in U.S. public schools has nearly doubled since the 2006-07 school year. This is in part because more students are actually homeless, but it also reflects improved identification. Most students who are homeless live with their families, but the number of students who are unaccompanied has more than doubled to nearly 100,000 students, many of whom fall on the LGBT spectrum, according to the National Center for Homeless Education.
Every state and local education agency must identify a liaison to fulfill duties of the McKinney-Vento Act. Many districts ask this liaison to serve a number of other roles, diminishing his or her time to focus completely on homeless students. This, while presumably a financial necessity, is not ideal. Still, teachers, counselors and other school leaders should also be trained along with the McKinney-Vento liaison to recognize signs of homelessness and support students accordingly.