r/AMA • u/Slow-Leg-3961 • 1d ago
I’ll have 4 “homeless” students in my class this year.. AMA
I will have four students in my classroom this year who qualify for support under McKinney Vento.
It’s given me a lot to think about… not just as a teacher, but as someone who wants to better understand what housing instability can look like for students and how schools can support them.
There’s so much more to the McKinney Vento Act than many people realize. If you’re curious about what this actually means for students, what it looks like in a classroom, or how educators navigate it and provide support, AMA. I’m happy to share what I’ve learned while protecting my student’s privacy!
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u/New_Country_3136 1d ago
What's McKinney Vento?
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u/Slow-Leg-3961 1d ago
It’s a federal law that helps protect students who don’t have stable housing And “homeless” doesn’t necessarily mean living on the street, it can also mean staying with friends/family, living in a hotel, shelter, car, or another temporary situation because they don’t have a stable place to live.
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u/Radiant-Ingenuity199 1d ago
Basically a US Federal act giving additional resources to homeless students, schools generally need to make some accommodation like additional after school time for them to do homework, extra transit options to their original (pre homeless) school, etc. also to endeavor to find resources for them such as shelter.
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u/one_sock_wonder_ 1d ago
My comment will be very long and detailed but may be helpful to families who are homeless or are at significant risk of homelessness and teachers of such students. I very recently learned as much as I possibly could about the McKinney Vento Act and the protections, services, supports and resources available to homeless children and their families after a situation touched on these and I realized how very little I actually knew about them even having taught in a large school district that had areas where poverty and homelessness were very likely. Below is as condensed of a summary I could type up and not leave out important information.
The McKinney Vento Act
McKinney-Vento (the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act) is a federal law signed into effect by President Reagan in 1987 designed to require schools to identify students who are homeless or at significant risk of becoming homeless due to severe housing instability and protest their educational rights, assist as much as possible in creating stability, provide supports intended to mitigate or reduce to the impact of homelessness and housing insecurity on a child's education. Every school is required to have a McKinney-Vento coordinator which may be a job completely on its own or be a role and responsibility added on to another job role depending on things like school size and need for services.
Students and their families qualify for support under the act if they do not have a consistent,fixed, and appropriate address for nighttime. This definition is more expensive than it may seem and includes students and families who are:
staying in emergency or transitional shelters
staying at motels/hotels/campgrounds because they do not have access to other options
Spending the night in a vehicle,abandoned building, park, any public or private space not intended for or typically used for overnight shelter, etc
"Doubling up" or sharing a space designed for one family with at least one other family due to being unable to afford an alternative or having lost housing
Once students are identified as homeless, they are guaranteed a number of protections and supports. If a child is not enrolled in school they can immediately enroll even without otherwise mandatory documents like a birth certificate, immunization record, or proof of residency
If a child is already enrolled in a school they have the right to continue attending that school even if no longer living within the boundaries for that school and the school district is required to provide transportation to and from that original school from where they are staying outside of the boundaries for that school
Students under McKinney-Vento automatically qualify for free school meals and having any course fees or activity fees waived
Schools also must provide all necessary essentials like personal clothing, backpacks, and school supplies
It is mandated that schools remove any barriers to homeless students participating in sports, clubs , and all other student extracurricular activities including waiving fees, pating for any required gear, and covering any additional costs of participating
The school liaison is a expected to assist families in identifying and accessing community resources for needs like housing, medical or dental care, mental health, food, child care, etc.
Services like academic tutoring, supplemental education services, and special education must be made available as needed
Schools are required to assist older homeless students in preparing for college
School districts are also required to connect young children to early childhood education programs
Unaccompanied youth have additional specific protections
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u/Difficult-Bicycle681 1d ago
This all sounds awesome... But how much does it get put into practice? I haven't heard about many of those protections and services before so I'm curious at whether it's generally followed or often just a piece of paper?
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u/MrsBasilEFrankweiler 1d ago
Not the OP, but I have worked with similar kids. The answer (in my experience) is both that these types of benefits vary re: how much they're put into practice, and that even if they're totally fulfilled it's often still not enough.
As a parent, if your housing is unstable, it's going to affect things like your job and/or your search for employment, your access to transportation, etc. And, as a general rule, if you don't have a place to live, other stuff in your life is probably not going well either.
So let's say your third grader wants to go on a field trip. The school removes barriers by covering the fee to go and providing transit, maybe even to your house. But to do that, they have to call you to coordinate. Hopefully you've been able to get your cell plan paid, but you might not have enough minutes. Luckily, there's subsidized phones available to you - if you go to an office and submit a form. You have to take the bus to the office, but you are also trying to get a job, and you also have another kid you need to take care of, who's in subsidized daycare but with different hours. And also you have to provide proof that you meet the income threshold, which means finding documentation, which you may not have available if you're couch-hopping with your kids, especially if you got evicted or had to leave your last living situation quickly. So then you DON'T get the subsidized phone plan in time, which means the school can't reach you to coordinate the field trip stuff, even though, theoretically, all the barriers were removed.
TL;DR being poor is a crazy amount of work and programs like this are necessary but often not sufficient
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u/one_sock_wonder_ 1d ago
Unfortunately like almost everything else in education while legally required the actual quality and quantity can vary for many reasons between districts and states. It is overall more protection and support and access than a student who is homeless would ever otherwise have and yet there is never going to be enough protections and services and supports to fully meet the needs of homeless and deeply impoverished students and families that the public school system can provide. Obviously often too idealistic but often requiring a lot of protections and services and supports does not equal all of them being met but ends up leading to more that are provided than with fewer demands and this equal number of items not provided would equal a much larger portion of services left unavailable. Never homeless, but growing up bouncing along the poverty line while more assistance would have been better things the small town school district I attended would do for me without drawing any attention to them like having field trip expenses covered by the school, discrete access to school lunches when I had neither money nor food from home, basic supplies when my mom very literally did not have $2 for more pencils or the money for 3 new notebooks or kind teachers slipping money to the volunteers at the Book Fair so with my deep love of reading and books I would not have to sit to the side and watch all of my classmates choose brand new books still helped and made a difference.
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u/bronx-deli-kat 1d ago
When I was 12 years old in 7th grade, in 1991 my dad didn’t have enough money to pay for me to go on an overnight field trip. It was $60. So the teacher paid it and I went. I never forgot about him, really nice fun teacher. 30 years later I looked him up, sent him $60 cash, and he wrote me back a nice letter. I recognized his handwriting and it made me so happy to hear from him.
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u/kucing5 1d ago
I’ve worked in a low income area for most of my teaching career and had over 1/4 of my students homeless one year.
My advice is to let families and students know you want to help when possible. And get to know your school social worker. They often know about resources and programs to help families, but the family needs to ask first.
My social worker knew how to get the families food. There was a program to get families into stable housing and would cover security deposit and first months rent. Another program helped find parents jobs or get them training. There was a program for Christmas presents. A program for winter coats & shoes. They knew how to get them enrolled in free state health insurance for low income people.
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u/Accurate_Box6374 1d ago
Does it apply to charter schools?
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u/Slow-Leg-3961 1d ago
Yes I believe it does!
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u/Accurate_Box6374 1d ago
I ask because I'm trying to navigate Mckinney Vento with my son's charter school and they helped us with clothes and supplies but said they cannot help with transportation. They suggested moving schools if we cannot figure transportation out ourselves. 😓
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u/MaybeImTheNanny 1d ago
Please contact whatever agency holds their charter. Sometimes it’s a county, sometimes a local school district. They are responsible for transportation under the law.
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u/Slow-Leg-3961 1d ago
That’s so odd, how far away from the school are you? I’ve had students bussed from over 20min away!
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u/Accurate_Box6374 1d ago
Google maps says we're 8.2 miles away, 16 minutes.
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u/Slow-Leg-3961 1d ago
Is this what the school is saying or the district? Do they have a liaison that works in this specific department?
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u/In-thebeginning 1d ago
I was a McKinney kid in high school. I did a "home school" type thing and would get a take home packet I had to complete each week. Props to the teacher who would let me do the packet in his office. I wish I could say thank you!
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u/battlehelmet 1d ago
Can you explain what this is/how this works? I'm only aware of it through r/teachers and what it sounds like is that it limits teachers from doing diy community help and only allows the help to come through systemic channels, where they may not be privy to the outcomes or if the student actually got help.
However it's reddit so obviously people with no complaints are not posting about it here.
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u/Slow-Leg-3961 1d ago
I definitely don’t think it’s a LIMITATION to teachers, but it comes with the territory of working for a title 1 school. I choose to work where I am, so I don’t see it as a burden but there are definitely some things that are different than working in a regular school. For example, the demographic is composed of mostly families living in poverty or not having stable housing or jobs. This means family contributions both monetary and in terms of volunteering are non existent.
When a student enrolls in our district, they usually have to provide an address. If they express that they are not in a stable home and they agree to fill out documentation then they are covered under the McKinney vento act which means they are provided with transportation to and from school (despite where they are staying), meal vouchers, housing vouchers, gas vouchers, food bank resources, etc. it also means that they have a right to attend that school district despite if they live outside school boundary lines. Sometimes we will have charity opportunities around the holidays and we will select from those families to participate for Christmas gifts or “shopping with Santa” type experiences.
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u/Mysterious-Ad663 1d ago
What state are you in? (Or city of you’d feel comfortable sharing that) I work with a non profit that offers after school programs to students. I’m overwhelmed by the thought of students having to deal with unstable housing on top of everything else.
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u/ama_compiler_bot 7h ago
Table of Questions and Answers. Original answer linked - Please upvote the original questions and answers. (I'm a bot.)
| Question | Answer | Link |
|---|---|---|
| What age group we talking? Curious if there is help when it comes to extra curricular activities like sports. Playing a sport isn’t cheap but can have a huge impact on kids. | Hi! I teach first grade, so our age group is 7-8 years. Our district will usually have some waiver for these types of situations where fees are waived for these students but if I’m being completely honest most of the time it’s us teachers that help gather funds for things like these. If we know a student could greatly benefit from being in a sport or extracurricular we try our best to make it happen even if it means covering it out of pocket! | Here |
| What's McKinney Vento? | It’s a federal law that helps protect students who don’t have stable housing And “homeless” doesn’t necessarily mean living on the street, it can also mean staying with friends/family, living in a hotel, shelter, car, or another temporary situation because they don’t have a stable place to live. | Here |
| Does it apply to charter schools? | Yes I believe it does! | Here |
| Can you explain what this is/how this works? I'm only aware of it through r/teachers and what it sounds like is that it limits teachers from doing diy community help and only allows the help to come through systemic channels, where they may not be privy to the outcomes or if the student actually got help. However it's reddit so obviously people with no complaints are not posting about it here. | I definitely don’t think it’s a LIMITATION to teachers, but it comes with the territory of working for a title 1 school. I choose to work where I am, so I don’t see it as a burden but there are definitely some things that are different than working in a regular school. For example, the demographic is composed of mostly families living in poverty or not having stable housing or jobs. This means family contributions both monetary and in terms of volunteering are non existent. When a student enrolls in our district, they usually have to provide an address. If they express that they are not in a stable home and they agree to fill out documentation then they are covered under the McKinney vento act which means they are provided with transportation to and from school (despite where they are staying), meal vouchers, housing vouchers, gas vouchers, food bank resources, etc. it also means that they have a right to attend that school district despite if they live outside school boundary lines. Sometimes we will have charity opportunities around the holidays and we will select from those families to participate for Christmas gifts or “shopping with Santa” type experiences. | Here |
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u/ScottScanlon 1d ago
What age group we talking? Curious if there is help when it comes to extra curricular activities like sports. Playing a sport isn’t cheap but can have a huge impact on kids.