The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
The number of Ohio students reported to be experiencing homelessness has steadily increased in recent years and is back to pre-pandemic levels, but those statistics are likely an undercount.
More than 25,500 students were reported to have been experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year — 1.5% of Ohio’s total student population, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
But a little more than half of Ohio’s 611 school districts reported having less than 10 students experiencing homelessness during that same school year, according to ODEW.
“In a district where there’s a dedicated person who’s able to really invest their time in this work, and has the ability and support to do so, you’re likely going to have increased identification, and so that’s one of the reasons the numbers can be challenging,” said Amanda Wilson, of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio.
School districts are legally required to have a homeless liaison through the McKinney-Vento Act, but the liaisons typically have other roles in the districts as well. The McKinney-Vento Act, a 1987 federal law, supports the enrollment and education of homeless students by making sure homeless youth have access to a public education.
“You might have really high identification in one district because the liaison has increased capacity, and lower identification in another district where the liaison doesn’t have as much capacity,” Wilson said. “And that may not necessarily reflect what’s happening in the community, but it’s reflecting more the capacity of that person to be able to do identification and enrollment.”
Laurie Hall has been working for New Philadelphia Schools for 19 years and has been the district’s homeless liaison for the past four years. She is also the preschool director, the special education preschool director and the federal coordinator for the district.
“So many kids come with sad stories that can keep you up at night,” she said. “The one thing that I can do is pray for the families.”
These Ohio school districts had the highest percentage of homeless students during the 2023-24 school year, according to ODEW.
- Morgan Local Schools — 9.3%
- Mt. Healthy City Schools — 9.1%
- Fayetteville-Perry Schools — 8%
- Cincinnati Public Schools — 7.6%
- New Philadelphia City Schools — 7.5%
Identifying students experiencing homelessness can be tough.
“If you say, ‘Are you homeless?’ They’re probably going to say no, but then if you find out more information about what the family is experiencing, they’re doubled up, they’re moving a lot from friends and family members,” Wilson said. “There’s things that definitely may qualify that student for services and support.”
Ohio students experiencing homelessness are chronically absent at a rate of 58.6% — more than double the state rate of 25.6%, said Trisha Barnett, ODEW’s homeless education program coordinator.
“Under the McKinney-Vento Act, there is a provision that states that any absence that is due to the student’s homelessness would be considered excused,” she said.
The COVID-19 effect
The number of Ohio students experiencing homelessness dropped when the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools during the 2020-21 school year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the number of students experiencing homelessness declined during that time.
Since school buildings closed in March 2020 for the remainder of the school year, it likely means students experiencing homelessness weren’t being counted and might not have been logging on for school.
“It was harder for educators and liaisons and folks that are in their students day-to-day lives to be able to be in that same level of contact with families, to really be keeping track of what their situations were,” Barnett said.
The number of students experiencing homelessness has steadily increased since the 2021-22 school year.
“We’re increasing that identification and enrollment again, which is really positive, but also that means families are struggling more,” Wilson said.
Some of the American Rescue Plan funding Ohio received went toward students experiencing homelessness, which helped identify those students, Barnett said.
The number of Ohio students experiencing homelessness, according to ODEW:
- 2023-24 school year: 25,550
- 2022-23 school year: 24,046
- 2021-22 school year: 21,586
- 2020-21 school year: 21,118
- 2019-20school year: 24,193
Morgan Local Schools
About 9% of the 1,500 students attending Morgan Local Schools experienced homelessness last school year, according to ODEW.
“It breaks my heart when you see kids having to deal with this,” said Anita Eldridge-Metz, the district’s homeless liaison. “It’s really difficult to fathom what it’s like to worry about where you’re going to sleep at night on a regular basis.”
A fifth of students experiencing homelessness in the district were chronically absent last school year — meaning a student missed at least 10% of school days, Eldridge-Metz said.
“I expected it to be a lot higher than that,” she said.
This is Eldridge-Metz’s fortieth year with Morgan Schools. She has been the district’s homeless liaison since 2020 and also serves as the secondary director of instruction & curriculum.
“We’re a small district, lots of people carry additional responsibilities on their plate, and mine just happens to be the homeless liaison,” she said.
The district’s enrollment officer has the biggest impact on identifying students experiencing homelessness, Eldridge-Metz said.
“There are some trigger questions that help that person identify where the student is living,” she said. “The question will be ‘Where are you living?’ or ‘Are you living with somebody else?”
Most of their students who are identified as homeless are living in doubled-up arrangements, Eldridge-Metz said.
“That means that you have multiple families sharing one dwelling,” she said. “We also have a lot of students who live in what I would call substandard housing. So that means they might be living in a travel trailer or some kind of a storage shed or a converted garage.”
There are no homeless shelters in Morgan County. If a student is in temporary housing outside of Morgan County, the school district doesn’t have the means to transport them, Eldridge-Metz said.
Every building in the district has a closet and a place with extra hygiene supplies that health aides and school secretaries give to students as needed.
“This is primarily for our students who have been identified as homeless, but, certainly, if we have any other child who needs any of these items we want them to be able to provide that to any student who needs it,” Eldridge-Metz said. “When you live in a rural, relatively poor community, a lot of times it’s not just the homeless kids that need resources or need supplies.”
Cincinnati Public Schools
Cincinnati is the state’s second largest school district with about 35,000 students and 7.6% of their students experienced homelessness last school year, according to ODEW.
“If you are constantly just trying to figure out where you’re going to sleep at night, what you’re going to eat, where you’re going to go, you’re always in a fight-or-flight response state, and so it does become really hard to reach that space where you’re able to learn and really focus and prioritize education,” said Rebeka Beach, who manages Project Connect, the district’s program that serves children and families experiencing homelessness.
Project Connect — which serves about 4,000 students a year — helps arrange transportation, gives out school supplies, provides emergency hotel stays, offers tutoring programs, and has social emotional groups, among other things.
The attendance rate last year for students in the district experiencing homelessness was between 75-80%, Beach said. The district also has a school counselor who works specifically with seniors experiencing homelessness and the graduation rate for those students was 79% last year, Beach said.
“We work really closely with our transportation department to re-route our students quickly, but sometimes they’re so transient that that’s not possible, especially for our families who are staying in hotels or who are night to night, going to different areas of the city in their cars to sleep,” she said.
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