Homeless Education Investment Makes The News

Advocacy Works!

(Pictured l. to r. is Melissa Tsuei of HopePHL, Tarek Mackason and Tianna Gaines of Eddie’s House, Quadirah Locus of Valley Youth House, Phila City Councilperson Isaiah Thomas, Phila School District Superintendent Tony Watlington)

We are sharing yesterday’s press conference news coverage announcing that the School District of Philadelphia will invest $2.3M for homeless education support and continue the capacity created by the American Rescue Plan through to June 2025. Here are the links to the news coverage:

MSN (Inquirer): https://bit.ly/3Yopc6w
NBC: https://bit.ly/3UxlkiC
ABC: https://bit.ly/3UxTpin
KYW Radio: https://bit.ly/3UpV6i0
Yahoo: https://bit.ly/4f70I9c

This is important because it proves that the School District believes it needs to do more to support students experiencing homelessness and is putting its money toward that belief. It suggests that a District contracting out to trusted community-based organizations who have expertise in housing, social services, and case management is effective in stablizing a student’s life while homeless and/or housing insecure.

This is a great example for Pennsylvania’s 499 school districts and 100+ charters, as well as school districts throughout the nation, to replicate.

Most of all, this success demonstrates that advocacy is a good investment for private foundations and corporations. Our organizations have been advocating for many years to raise awareness, share data, and educate policy makers. The ARP dollars gave us a sharper focus, and for the past eighteen months many of us have been sharing with policy makers the potential success if using the new dollars wisely. We have a statewide coalition that has been educating the PA General Assembly and the Shapiro Administration, and a local coalition to talk to City Council and Mayor Parker’s Administration. A Lancaster County state legislator, Rep. Ismael Smith Wade-El, and a Philly City Council person, Isaiah Thomas [and his staff!], heard our arguments and became our legislative champions. We continued communicating with them and their colleagues, sometimes weekly, sometimes bi-weekly. We issued policy briefs, analyzed and shared data, organized meetings, ran social media campaigns. This took time, and it worked.

Still more work to do, but the School District of Philadelphia has new resources to continue supporting the 10,000+ children and youth who experience homelessness in our fair city, and several community-based organizations will continue to support many schools who have high numbers of students experiencing homelessness.