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Principal Ashley Fly has three offices in the Exeter School District, which serves a small community in rural southwestern Missouri. This might seem excessive in a district of just over 330 students, but it reflects the many hats she wears to keep the school running.
Fly is also the district’s athletic director, transportation director, high school counselor, foster care coordinator and softball coach.
“When you hold as many job titles as I do, you get to have as many offices as you want to have,” said Fly, who also coordinates the school’s services for students who are experiencing homelessness in this community of about 750 residents.
The McKinney-Vento Act requires all school districts to appoint a liaison to ensure students experiencing housing instability have uninterrupted access to public education — including waiving admission requirements to enroll children in classes and providing transportation so they won’t have to change schools if their housing status changes.
But in small, rural school districts like Exeter, those homeless liaisons often have another full-time job to juggle with their designated role.
Even the best-resourced school districts find it challenging to identify students experiencing homelessness and ensure they receive federally mandated services. The nonprofit Center for Public Integrity found in 2022 that roughly 300,000 students across the country are likely homeless and missing out on services they are entitled to.
Research shows that youth experiencing homelessness have higher rates of absenteeism, lower academic performance and graduation rates lower than youth who have stable housing.
As part of the series Unhoused/Unschooled, The Midwest Newsroom and its partners found that homeless students eligible for enrollment, transportation and academic support in many rural school districts are not getting these services because the districts are undercounting students without stable housing and not applying for available funds.
At the same time, small can be an advantage when it comes to the task of identifying students who are eligible for benefits. Fly said Exeter’s size allows her staff to build tight-knit relationships with families, ensuring students don’t fall through the cracks.
“If I walk down the hallway, I would have a connection with any of these kids and be able to tell you probably what is going on in their home,” Fly said. “If they are a McKinney-Vento, and they’re not getting the resources, it’s a very short time till we find out.”
Knowing every kid’s name
About 70% of the Exeter School District’s students qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program, which means their household income is at or below 185% of the poverty level. A family of four that earns $40,560 a year or less is eligible for free meals and a family earning $57,720 or less is eligible for reduced-price meals.
Nearly 10% of Exeter’s students — about 25 during the 2022-23 school year — experience homelessness in some form, which includes living in shelters, motels or trailer parks, or staying with friends or family in what’s called “doubled-up” housing.
Fly said the district identifies some families as homeless when they try to enroll children and don’t have proof of residence. She can then ask families about their living situation and connect them with resources.
Unlike some McKinney-Vento program officials in urban areas, Fly said, she doesn’t have to focus on reaching out to students throughout the year to determine where they’re living.
She knows “every kid’s name” in the pre-K through 12th-grade school district. And if a student has a bad night at home, she said, she can read it on their face when they walk through the door.
“It’s a small town, so you hear different things,” Fly said. “It could be that a family lost their home over the weekend, or they were kicked out of their rental and they moved in with such and such.”
Fly said students experiencing housing insecurity in her community don’t look like most people’s perception of homelessness in larger cities — like living on the street or under bridges. Most of her students who qualify for federal services share housing with other families or move back in with grandparents or other family members. In Missouri, schools identified 34,565 students as homeless in the 2022-23 school year — and 29,148 are considered doubled up.
Fly said the number of homeless students in the Exeter School District jumped during the COVID-19 pandemic as frightened families moved in with each other or high school kids decided to move out on their own.
That number dropped off, but is starting to increase as the cost of living rises.
Tim Jordan, the Exeter School District’s superintendent, said the small district’s administrators, teachers and counselors wear many hats because there are not enough people to designate one person or even a team to a single role, like some larger, urban districts do.
Jordan said they narrow down who will serve roles — like the McKinney-Vento liaison — based on administrators’ strengths and availability. Other rural districts decide based on who has the most student-facing role, like a school counselor or special education director.
He said there’s a learning curve for coordinators to understand everything that the federal law requires, including meeting a certain amount of training and workshop hours.
“It is just naturally embedded in their job, as far as working with kids and building relationships with families and those community resources,” Jordan said.
Other rural school districts in Missouri have similar experiences identifying students experiencing homelessness. Towns are small, so it’s easy to tell when apartment buildings start to crowd, a family is displaced or new families move in.
Merlyn Johnson is superintendent of Cassville School District, just 12 miles east of Exeter. He now leads a district of about 1,800 students, but previously was the high school principal at a district of 400 students. As the school’s McKinney-Vento coordinator and full-time bus driver, he said he knew where every child lived and their living situation.
“There’s just that over crowdedness, or just so many to oversee, there are people lost in the shuffle,” Johnson said. “The small communities do a better job of making sure kids aren’t left behind.”
An ‘invisible’ population
Homelessness for young people in rural areas is harder to spot, according to researchers at Chapin Hall, a policy research center at the University of Chicago. Rural communities may not have homeless service providers or transitional housing programs, so there might not be obvious places for people to congregate when they experience housing instability.
Erin Carreon, a researcher at Chapin Hall, said young people experiencing homelessness might be couch-surfing, sleeping in vehicles or living outdoors in a more secluded space than in an urban environment.
But she said a lack of services can disincentivize them from coming forward.
“If there’s no services in the community, there’s less reason to make it known that you’re experiencing these challenges,” Carreon said. “There may be a stigma, but not the service to support you, or you may not be aware of that service.”
Carreon said school employees can play an important role in identifying young people experiencing homelessness, but they face challenges. Employees might not know the signs if someone is homeless when they don’t fit stereotypes of appearance or hygiene.
Uncharged laptops, chronic tardiness and lack of attendance are other possible signs of homelessness that teachers and staff look for during the school year.
In Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri, hundreds of public school districts reported having zero students who are experiencing homelessness even though other measures of poverty suggest otherwise. In Missouri, 111 of 518 school districts reported zero homeless students.
Carreon said that in focus groups with youth from different rural communities, many didn’t know that their school had someone designated to support them as they faced housing instability.
“It’s a question of, ‘How do we raise community awareness around homelessness in rural areas, and also equip schools to be able to connect young people with services and to identify them?’” Carreon said.
Carreon said it can be challenging for rural communities to compete with urban areas for funding opportunities, in part because it can cost more to serve young people in rural areas because they’re so geographically dispersed.
The McKinney-Vento Act provides federal money to states to distribute to school districts for free transportation, academic support and fee waivers. However, each state in the region covered by The Midwest Newsroom provided fewer than 5% of its K-12 school districts with McKinney-Vento funding.
Making it work
Many school districts set money aside for students with unstable housing through federal Title I funding, including the Exeter School District. Title I provides money and sets requirements for services for low-income students.
Still, Carreon said resources and staffing may limit school districts from serving and identifying more students.
Jordan, the Exeter School District’s superintendent, said it’s a challenge to fill out applications and reach deadlines for federal grants, but his small team makes it work because it’s what is “best for kids.” It’s also difficult for staff to juggle responsibilities while serving different resources.
“It’s hard to try to wear all those hats at once and do everything well, but at the same time, the person that does that has the perspectives of all those other pieces and parts and how they work together,” Jordan said.
Jordan said there’s still always a danger of students falling through the cracks. He said students may worry that embarrassing information about their living situation may get out. Other district leaders said families may also try to shield that they are struggling.
Families living near the Lake of the Ozarks might also choose to live off the grid, according to Johnson, making it difficult for school liaisons to determine if their living circumstances are intentional and what resources students need.
Carreon said young people experiencing homelessness often seek support in informal networks, such as faith-based organizations or adults in the community.
Leaders from rural schools in Missouri said they rely on community partners and churches to help support families with resources including food pantries, clothing and transportation. They also receive community donations to support students
“When a family’s hurting, the neighbors know and people know and they communicate that, and the schools and the churches and the civic organizations band together to try to help people out,” Johnson said.
Reporting for this series in Iowa and Nebraska showed similar reliance on community members and nonprofit organizations to support students experiencing homelessness as well as their families.
Fly said she suspects her job serving homeless students differs from those in urban areas. Her families’ living circumstances change more sporadically throughout the year, while larger districts may handle daily changes with so many students.
School leaders say they’ve heard misconceptions about rural schools from other school district administrators. Some think that fewer resources means student learning suffers, and that poverty is only an urban issue.
Fly said some people may not know the benefits of a small school, like how close-knit they are.
“A lot of them get the family feel (here),” Fly said. “They may not have a great family life at home, but at school, they get that.”
Daniel Wheaton contributed to this story.
MORE: Find other stories in this series
The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative and enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR.
There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here.
METHODS:
To tell this story, reporter Jodi Fortino spoke with superintendents in rural areas, McKinney-Vento liaisons and researchers on youth experiencing homelessness.
She spent a day at the Exeter School District, talking with staff and observing the school environment. She also reviewed state and regional data about student homelessness.
Data journalist Daniel Wheaton requested counts of students experiencing homelessness from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. He built the map showing the number of students in each school district who qualified for McKinney-Vento support in 2022-23 as well as the percentage of students who qualified for free and reduced lunch.
REFERENCES:
- McKinney-Vento Act
- Unhoused and Undercounted
- Rural Communities Need Funding and Support to Address Rural Youth Homelessness
- Homeless Children & Youth
- The Education of Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness: Current Trends, Challenges, and Needs
- Known, Valued, Inspired”: New Evidence On Students Experiencing Homelessness
TYPE OF ARTICLE:
News: Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.