Education Leads Home’s State Partnerships on Student Homelessness bring together governors’ offices, housing providers, educators and community organizations from around the country to take action toward overcoming child and youth homelessness through education. Through these dynamic partnerships, each state team will research and implement new approaches to address the most urgent needs of children and youth experiencing homelessness in their state. The State Partnerships on Student Homelessness are a nonpartisan initiative to promote proven, effective practices and policies that can be replicated by communities and states nationwide.

In this inaugural year of its State Partnerships, Education Leads Home (ELH) awarded grants to six states — California, Kentucky, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington — through a competitive process. ELH will provide ongoing support to maximize the Partnerships’ impact in those six states and across the nation.

By working directly with state leaders to develop and implement strategic action plans, and creating an innovative and collaborative “learning lab” of best practices from birth through postsecondary education, ELH’s State Partnerships will promote educational achievement and help break the cycle of poverty and homelessness.

State Partnership goals include:

• improving access to high-quality early childhood education;
• expanding existing host home programs for unaccompanied youth;
• piloting school-housing partnerships to facilitate high school graduation;
• improving the use of existing federal funding to increase state-level staffing capacity and local supports for students experiencing homelessness; and improving state policies and practices to address challenges including chronic absenteeism, suspension rates, and high school credit accrual.

State-specific summaries may be found below.

California: California’s grantee team, co-led by the Office of the Governor, the California Department of Education, and the Center for the Transformation of Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles, will explore not only where students experiencing homeless are, but also what types of school-related services are being provided to students and their families. The state plans to use this landscape analysis to devise and implement a more coordinated and comprehensive strategy for ensuring prevention and support efforts serve the academic, social, emotional, and health needs of students experiencing homelessness, from birth to career.

Hawaii: Hawaii’s grantee team is co-led by the Office of the Governor, the Hawaii Children’s Action Network, and the Executive Office on Early Learning/Hawaii Head Start Collaboration Office, and includes representatives from the Hawaii Departments of Education and Health, the University of Hawaii Center on the Family, PATCH Hawaii, and Ka Pa‘alana Homeless Family Education Program. The project will help operationalize and support a recently-developed Hawaii Early Childhood State Plan to increase the enrollment of young children experiencing homelessness in early care and education programs and services within their communities and to support their healthy growth and development. Activities are designed to assess barriers to enrolling children into programs, incentivize early care and education providers to enroll more homeless children, encourage shelter providers to support this endeavor, and increase access to and use of childcare subsidies by families experiencing homelessness.

Kentucky: Kentucky’s grantee team is co-led by the Office of the Governor, Erlanger-Elsmere School District, and Covington Independent Public School District, with support from the Kentucky Housing Corporation, Welcome House of Northern Kentucky, and Brighton Center. The team will support increased capacity for and the development of training initiatives for regional businesses and other community partners to improve identification of students experiencing homelessness and provide them with trauma-informed services. The team will also will provide one-time homelessness prevention supports to at-risk families identified by the schools, including utility assistance payments, rental application fees, security deposits, and short-term rent or mortgage assistance.

Nevada: Nevada’s grantee team, co-led by the Office of the Governor and the Nevada Department of Education, aims to help school districts strategically budget their Title I set-aside dollars to enhance the support they provide for students experiencing homelessness. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, all local educational agencies that receive Title I Part A funds must reserve funds to support homeless students. The team also will create state-level guidance and procedures to reduce chronic absenteeism and dropout rates, and increase graduation rates, of young people experiencing homelessness.

Oregon: Oregon’s grantee team, co-led by the Office of the Governor, the Departments of Education and Human Services, and Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, seeks to significantly improve the high school success of unaccompanied homeless students by helping communities replicate Second Home, a successful host home model that partners with school districts and mediators from a community-based dispute resolution center. The team will increase programmatic awareness, solicit host home volunteers, and rally financial support throughout the state, with the ultimate goal of connecting eligible students with family hosts and increasing collaboration among schools, housing providers, and community-based organizations. The current Second Home program has enabled its students to earn a 96% graduation rate, while the overall four-year graduation rate for homeless students in that same district is only 49%.

Washington State: Washington’s grantee team, co-led by the Office of the Governor and Building Changes, will research and evaluate the state’s early learning policies to promote the participation of young children experiencing homelessness in early learning programs. As part of this process, the team will partner with the Washington State Association of Head Start & ECEAP (the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program) to convene a stakeholder meeting and distribute surveys to early learning and housing providers across the state. These activities and additional research will culminate in a policy analysis and recommendations to support young children and their families experiencing homelessness.

For more information on the SPP project or ELH, please contact Katie Brown, ELH Program Manager, at katie@schoolhouseconnection.org.

Sponsors

Deutsche Bank
Raikes Foundation
The California Wellness Foundation
Education Counsel