Homelessness (McKinney Vento)
Children and youth who experience homelessness have the right to receive a free, appropriate public education, ensured by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Improvements Act of 2001. This law requires schools to remove barriers to enrollment, attendance and success for homeless students.
The services provided under McKinney-Vento provide families the opportunity to maintain education stability for their student, which is key to their educational trajectory and success. One of the priorities of the act is the provision of transportation services to allow students experiencing homelessness to remain in their school of origin, which is defined as the school that the student attended when they first experienced homelessness.
Homelessness-Definition
Subtitle VII-B of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (per Title IX, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) defines homelessness and provides protections under the federal law, as follows:
The term "homeless children and youth": A. means individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence; and B. includes:
- children and youth who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; or are abandoned in hospitals;
- children and youth who have a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings
- children and youth who are living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing (Per Title 24–Housing and Urban Development– Federal Preference: Substandard Housing Section 5.425), bus or train stations, or similar settings
- migratory children (as such term is defined in section 1309 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) who qualify as homeless for the purposes of this subtitle because the children are living in circumstances described in clauses I and II below
- unaccompanied homeless youth (UHY) who meet the homeless living situations listed above AND are “not in the physical custody of parent or guardian”
Foster Care
Students in foster care have been placed by a county entity into a licensed foster care home, emergency shelter/foster care home and/or a familial foster care home.