Transportation of the Homeless at
All Costs to School Districts

By Clare Adrian,
Special to School Transportation News

In the amount of time it takes to drive from San Diego to Los Angeles - roughly two to three hours depending on traffic - a homeless child may be sitting on a school bus.

And that's just one way.

Many homeless children must board their bus as early as 5:30 a.m., and it could be at least 12 hours later before the bus drops them off at the homeless shelter. Those extra hours are required by the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act to get the child to and from the school of first enrollment for the current school year.

And depending on where the child's family resides next month, next week or even tomorrow that time could grow.

Pauline Gervais, the transportation director at Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Thornton, Colo., wonders if the money, effort and time necessary to bring that ride to fruition could be better spent.

"Granted that stability of going to the school of origin is the only thing they have stable in their lives," she said. "But three or four hours on the bus is not a positive part of a child's education day."

Gervais and others concur that a more direct use of resources might be to focus on affordable housing so families are not evicted in the first place.

Going the Extra Step

For now, school districts must continue to rally around each homeless child to assure success in school. Many are responding to the call, as sited in a 2004 congressional report on homeless student transportation from the U.S. Department of Education-funded National Center for Homeless Education.

Diana Bowman, director of NCHE and report author, said most school districts have eased into providing transportation for the homeless students so they stay in their school of origin.

"When we look at schools where things seem to be working the best, there are very strong collaborations and partnerships between the homeless education program and the transportation department," Bowman said. "These are people on the phone trying to figure out, when a homeless child comes into the district, the most expeditious and cost-efficient way to provide transportation to the school of origin. That kind of communication and commitment tends to make things work well."

She added that school administration should coordinate with the local homeless liaison, who in turn communicates with the appropriate person in the school's transportation department. Arrangements should then be mapped out in template to avoid re-inventing the process for each homeless child.

A transient population does present varied circumstances, each one with a unique set of difficulties and costs for which school districts must scramble to fund. Limited funding from the federal mandate itself must cover all the school-related needs of the homeless student, so it's up to school districts to absorb the cost of transporting across district lines.

"There are no borders when transporting homeless students," Gervais added.

The San Diego City Schools has transported children back to their resident programs even prior to the McKinney-Vento Act. Alexandra Robinson, director of transportation, said of particular concern is Daylight Savings Time. Most shelters require residents to leave by 7 or 8 a.m. and don't reopen their doors until 5:30 or 6 p.m. There often is a several hour period when children have no place to go, since parents aren't allowed back in the shelter during the actual business work day. So Robinson collaborates directly with local social service agencies to determine an appropriate stop placement. The district transports anywhere from seven to 80 homeless students per week on any of approximately 520 buses, traversing 13 million miles annually on 92 contracted routes. Robinson affirmed that addresses of the homeless can change on a daily basis.

The district transports a total of 22,000 students a day out of a total enrollment of 136,000.

It is no secret that school district resources are limited, so management of those resources becomes crucial when transporting homeless children. Bob Sterkel, transportation routing manager for the Denver Public Schools, said he devotes up to 60 percent of his work load to homeless management, in conjunction with the initiatives of the liaison in the local Title I office. Guy Champlin, the district's executive director of transportation, said his department has to be as flexible as possible and uses a combination of transportation modes, including the pass component of the Regional Transportation District.

"Where possible we get kids on existing buses, some in Yellow Cabs," he explained. "Whenever we have to put a bus on the road, it's at great cost because we're not resourced for (homeless transportation). We do the best we can with the resources and demands we have on our system, but it's very stretched and limited and a difficult balancing act for us with the options we have."

Taking the Lead

St. Paul (Minn.) Public School system is one of the national model school districts sited in the congressional report. The program runs smoothly enough, according to Becky Hicks, program coordinator for the school district's Student Placement Center . Yet there are problems in serving the more than 1,000 homeless students out of approximately 42,000 transported. The biggest barrier, said Hicks, is staffing accordingly.

"Because there are certain times of year that we are using every single resource for the homeless that we have available in terms of drivers and vehicles, we have to figure out if we should ask drivers to work overtime, or hire more staff," she said. "It's very unpredictable as to how many we are going to need because on any given day, we might get 10 requests, then three days no requests, and then get hit again. There is no pattern to it at all."

The school district owns 22 buses and15 vans. It contracts with private companies in the Twin Cities for 370 additional school buses and is currently purchasing four new vans for several reasons, including helping with homeless in the district. Hicks' priority options are to determine the transportation plan for each child.

"Our first step is to put the child on an existing route, if possible. Secondly, we extend an existing route, even if it's for another nearby school. The third option is to set up an alternative route where we use a district van and driver and set up a route for that particular child," she said. "If all those resources are used then we cab the child or use bus tokens."

Eric Taylor, Houston Independent School District's director of transportation, identified 35 students during the 2004-2005 school year that the district transported to other districts, or with which it was sharing the transportation burden. That number was set to skyrocket with the influx of tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

"We are lucky to have a lot of cross district transportation, so we are already traveling all over the place," Taylor said. "Of our 500 (regular education) routes, about 350 of them are dedicated to moving kids to specific magnet or vanguard type programs throughout the district. So I find a bus that is traveling close by and that bus will drive across the line on its way to or after its final destination to get the child where needed."

Taylor's biggest problem in crossing district lines is acknowledging where the children need to go in the first place and locating all the schools in neighboring districts. Many have different bell times, and getting them from those locations back to the shelters in the Houston district. That's where the networking with other districts comes in, he added.