NYC’s homeless students need more funding, transportation support, advocates say

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It’s been six months since Dorainy Santos and her two sons moved from Pennsylvania to a homeless shelter in the Bronx, and her kindergartner still hasn’t started school.

Santos first visited her neighborhood public school, where officials told her they couldn’t accommodate the 5-year-old, who has autism and requires a smaller class. They referred her to the city’s District 75 programs for students with complex disabilities.

Santos then spent months waiting, finally getting a spot after contacting the nonprofit Advocates for Children for help. But the school is 35 minutes away from her shelter, and Santos is now waiting on the school bus service the city promised.

“Because my son isn’t going to school, I can’t start my job search” and begin earning income to rent her own apartment, Santos, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, said in Spanish. “And it has limited my son too … I need a professional who can educate him on an academic level.”

Cases like Santos’ — where children in the city’s overburdened shelter system struggle to enroll in or regularly attend school — remain all too common, advocates say.

Last school year, 63% of the roughly 65,000 students who lived in homeless shelters were marked chronically absent — meaning they missed at least 1 in 10 school days. That’s more than double the rate of students with permanent housing, according to newly released data from Advocates for Children.

Many students in shelters routinely face long commutes, transportation delays, and frequent moves during the school year, pushing them further behind academically, families and advocates say.

In response, some advocates are pushing both the state and city governments to step up funding and coordination of services for homeless students.

At the state level, both the Assembly and Senate included in their budget proposals changes to the state funding formula that would drive additional money to districts with large shares of homeless students. Those proposals would bring anywhere between $93 million and $486 million additional dollars to New York City, where roughly 1 in 7 students was homeless last year, according to estimates. Advocates are pushing Gov Kathy Hochul, who did not include the funding shift in her proposed budget, to adopt it.

In city government, advocates say there’s far too little coordination between the various agencies — including the Education and Social Services departments — that have a role in overseeing homeless students, creating unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles for families.

“Only bold leadership from City Hall can bring the urgency and coordination needed to ensure students who are homeless can get to school every day and access the educational support they need to thrive,” said Jennifer Pringle, director of Advocates for Children’s Learners in Temporary Housing Project.

“Far too often, our students in temporary housing are left behind without the resources and supports they need to succeed,” schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement. “Under this administration, we will work to tackle those longstanding issues head on.”

Samuels said he supports the increase in state aid and that the city has a “robust network of interagency partnerships” to help address chronic absenteeism and educational outcomes for homeless students.

Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, added that the administration is “expanding outreach programs we know work” and improving coordination between the Education Department and other city agencies.

Transportation barriers drive down school attendance

The barriers keeping homeless students from regular school attendance aren’t new. Many families wind up in shelters far from their kids’ schools, forcing them to endure long commutes or transfer schools midway through the year, upending relationships and academic progress. And despite their legal entitlement to school bus transportation, families in shelters often end up waiting weeks or more for yellow bus service to start, advocates say.

Roughly 1 in 5 families in shelters were living in a different borough than their youngest child’s school last year, according to city data. A spokesperson for the Department of Social Services, which oversees family shelters, noted that figure has ticked down in recent years and said the agency reaches out to families with long commutes whenever a shelter placement closer to their school opens up.

Still, roughly 20% of children living in shelters switched schools at least once last year, more than four times the rate of students in permanent housing, according to data from Advocates for Children.

Some of those challenges have compounded in recent years as the city’s shelter system saw an influx of tens of thousands of new migrant families. The city erected dozens of emergency shelters and introduced policies meant to limit families’ shelter stays, which may have increased the churn for families and schools.

Over the past year, as the city’s shelter population has declined, officials have closed some of those emergency shelters.

All of that disruption and dislocation can be detrimental to students’ academic progress, advocates say. Just 33% of homeless students in grades 3-8 scored proficient on state reading tests last year, compared to 60% of students in permanent housing, according to the data.

City officials have made some efforts to boost support for homeless students in recent years, including extending pandemic emergency funding for Education Department staffers who work in shelters and launching a program that pairs homeless students with adult mentors to improve attendance.

But kids like Santos’ continue to slip through the cracks.

She urged the city to focus on hiring staffers with the skills and empathy to quickly help families in shelters with challenges like finding special education spots and arranging bus transportation. That way, she said, kids like her son won’t “fall behind so much waiting at home.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org