Getting Homeless Students to Class Saps Edmonds School District Budget

Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a two-day report about the growing number of homeless students in Edmonds. Today, read about the effect on the Edmonds School District, and the psychological toll homelessness has on young students. Tomorrow, learn how homelessness is affecting Edmonds Community College students. Patch partnered with Investigate West for this report.

One Edmonds School District student rides the bus to class each day from Arlington. Another begins the daily trip to school near Seattle’s Boeing Field. They spend hours every weekday on Puget Sound area roads and highways, enduring commutes that most adults would detest.

The school district, in turn, invests thousands of dollars in the long distance hauls. This year, they will spend $386,866 on seven out-of-district bus routes. Since state revenue covers just $125,000 of that amount, and a federal grant provides only $14,647, the rest of the money must come from the general district funds.

“A lot of money is being taken out of the classroom,” said Craig Christensen, transportation director for the Edmonds School District.

Yet as expensive and logistically difficult as the long distance routes are, Edmonds School District officials have no choice but to provide the transportation. The students are homeless. By federal law, these students are entitled to continue their education at whatever school they’d been attending, even if they now reside hundreds of miles away.

School stability

The Edmonds School District and other districts around the state are grappling to find funding for homeless student transportation in a time when budgets are increasingly dire. The mandatory busing program in the Edmonds School District began eight years ago. At that time, the federal No Child Left Behind Act went into place, and one portion of the act reauthorized the original McKinney-Vento Act, which dates back to 1987. According to the legislation, public school districts around the country must identify homeless students and guarantee transportation to them, regardless of where they end up spending the night. (Note: The original version of this story included the wrong year for when mandatory busing began in the Edmonds School District.)

Being homeless can affect how children learn, can lead to depression, and can be misdiagnosed as learning disabilities, labels that stick with a child for years. (See this related story.)

“The main goal of identifying kids is so they can stay in their school of origin, so they have consistency with their peers, teachers and educational progress,” said Melinda Dyer, program supervisor for Education of Homeless Children and Youth for the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

A small 2006 pilot study by the Washington State Department of Transportation found that while homeless kids typically had lower grades and Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) scores than non-homeless students, the grades and scores were better among those homeless students who got to stay in their original schools.

Homelessness grows

A report released in December shows 21,826 homeless students statewide in the 2009-2010 school year, a 30 percent increase in three years, according to Investigate West, which partnered with Patch for this story. That reporting period compares the numbers of homeless students reported in the 2006-2007 school year, before the recession began in December of 2007, to the most current full year, 2009-2010.

For the Edmonds School District, transportation demands have only increased every year since McKinney-Vento came into existence. As the economy soured and more families struggled to pay rent or mortgages, homelessness in Edmonds rose. The district counts 414 homeless students in attendance this school year. That’s a 23 percent increase from the 2009-2010 school year, when 317 students identified themselves as homeless, and up nearly 78 percent from 233 students 2006-07.

“I think a big part of it is the recession,” said LeAnne Brisbois, the homeless student liaison for the Edmonds School District.

The growing number of homeless students continues to strain the Edmonds School District’s budget. The district received a $22,000 federal grant to provide school supplies, scholarships and transportation to homeless students, but the sum is a small fraction of what’s needed. Only $14,647 of the grant went to busing.

“The grant was just a drop in the bucket for transportation costs,” Brisbois said.

‘Logistical nightmare’

On the transportation end, coordinating among all of the homeless families requires a serious staffing and financial investment. Edmonds School District Transportation Coordinator Tracie Chandler spends four hours every day figuring out how to get homeless students to school. Every day, she receives emails with updates on where the students are living, be it in a shelter or with friends or families. (Click here for a look at where Edmonds students were living in 2009-10.) On a recent week, she coordinated transportation for a girl in Everett who stayed in four different places in five days.  

The Edmonds School District now has seven buses dedicated entirely to homeless students, up from five last year. Another six buses transport both homeless and general population students. District Transportation officials say they regularly take 168 homeless students to and from school.

Since all school districts in the state are impacted by McKinney-Vento, various strategies have been put into place. The Everett School District hired 17 cab drivers to transport students in small groups.

“It’s a logistical nightmare,” Christensen said.

Last year, the Edmonds School District tried driving 149 homeless students with a combination of buses and cabs, but this year they gave up the taxis completely, figuring they weren’t economical. Some days, some of the bus routes end up serving as few as two or three students. Other buses collect more kids but spend hours on the road.

“I question whether a kid being on the bus for almost two hours is really the best use of money,” Christensen said. “We think this is a very inefficient way of doing it.”