School Bus Transportation News at STN Media

Lobbying Efforts Needed

Report Outlines Best Practices of Homeless Transportation; Schools Call for Federal Assistance with Unfunded Mandate

By Ryan Gray | Senior Editor

GREENSBORO , N.C. - A study completed last fall makes nine recommendations to school districts nationwide regarding best practices for ensuring transportation of homeless students to their school of origin.

Where schools are to get the money is another question.

"It should be stronger in its request of the federal government to support the mandate," said Pauline Gervais, director of transportation for the Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Thornton , Colo. "Taking money from the class room I think that is a tragedy."

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Existence Act, last reauthorized in 2001 as Title X, Part C of the No Child Left Behind Act, requires all school districts to provide transportation to the last school student attended or in which they were enrolled before becoming homeless. The report's r ecommendations are based on interviews with local homeless education liaisons and pupil transportation directors from eight urban school districts across the country.

A 2000 report to Congress on homelessness estimated that 930,232 school age children are eligible for transportation services, which School Transportation News estimates to equate to 360 million student rides annually. As of 2003, some 1.35 million total children were homeless in the United States . Diana Bowman, director of U.S. Department of Education funded National Center for Homeless Education, said that figuring the exact numbers of homeless students is troublesome because the numbers tend to be "grossly under-reported."

"Part of it, for any range of reasons, it's hard to get an accurate count," she said, citing daily changes in the sheer number of homeless families due to the current paycheck-to-paycheck survival cycle, their migratory patterns and for the fact that many parents don't want to disclose their financial situation. She also said many families are in such a state of transition that they simply forget to enroll their children in a new school.

For those children still enrolled, cost plays a major role in the ability of the school district to meet these unfunded federal mandates.

"It's been really difficult to come up with costs of (homeless) transportation," said she said. "The difficulty is it is rally hard to pin down what costs are attributed. It's hard to nail down what that extra cost is."

She explained that many school districts simply "make it happen" with regard to providing required homeless pupil transportation services, whether that be by adding additional bus routes and purchasing more buses, or contracting with taxi or other public transit services.

Best Practices

From the transportation operations surveyed, NCHE reported that federally mandated Local Education Authorities (LEA) should increase lobbying efforts before local and state lawmakers to increase awareness of the growing problem.

"That really seems to be the key from the districts that we surveyed," Bowman said. "In many cases when groups are looking at the needs of homeless kids, they don't consider transportation and how important it is for children to stay in their school. What happens is in a lot of cases where the legislature body or local school boards become aware of needs develop legislation and policies that mirror the McKinney-Vento Act. Being congruent is key. It gives greater support for making sure work gets done."

The report found that schools must establish strong networks of community support by involving local social services in a partnership with local shelters, group homes and community agencies to clarify roles and expectations.

When a homeless program is developed at the school district level, it should work closely with the school's transportation department to ensure proper training is available to increase team sensitivity to the specific needs of homeless students. And because homeless students are apt to move frequently, strong relationships should exist with nearby school districts and local liaisons.

Other recommendations also included establishing: formal procedures for equity, transparency and consistency of homeless programs; local policies to support federal legislation; and databases and a system for data collection. In addition, the report found that schools must keep in mind costs and seek economical and creative solutions while retaining flexibility of bus routes, value safety above all and inform policy makers of the need for school stability for highly mobile children.

Bowman said the NCHE is looking very closely at the growing number of homeless families and, as a result, children. An emphasis is too often placed on rectifying the problem of what she termed "the chronically homeless," those who take to the streets for any number of reasons, including drug and alcohol abuse and mental health problems.

"This doesn't take into account trends and conditions that affect homeless families in terms of how schools address these children," she added. What has helped, thanks to McKinney-Vento, is that homeless liaisons are now required in every school district to make sure needs are met.

"The biggest difference is the children are getting the support they need from the school system," she said.

But at a price.

How to Fund?

The report gave good strategies to schools for forming homeless transportation procedures, such as raising the point that more funding and guidance is necessary from the federal government, said Gervais in Colorado , but it was done so "after the fact."

"The information provided talks about school districts with pretty good resources for homeless shelters. We don't have homeless shelters within our district," she said. "We have no structures in place to support homeless families. The impact in costs is incredible."

Like most school districts, Adams 12 doesn't budget specifically for homeless transportation, instead relying on "creative" programs like utilizing before- and after-school programs. It costs the district about $230 a year to transport regular students on general education buses, but about $100 a day to transport homeless students on those same vehicles.

That doesn't include money spent by other homeless agencies, which often pay for transit bus passes to get homeless kids to school or reimburse the parents with gas vouchers, should the parent own a vehicle. But the study failed to address the dilemma schools run into when such services are unavailable, Gervais said.

Her district spent $10,000 on one homeless family just for services rendered in August through December of last year because that family had to move multiple times to different shelters. She said urban school districts are often better equipped to provide services because homeless shelters are more apt to exist within the district's boundaries. But suburban districts often house the school of origin, so they might have to run buses across three different districts to pick up the student. That could result in a student starting the day before 6 a.m. and not taken home until after 5 p.m. when a bus is available.