SchoolHouse Connection's Testimony to U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee

Increasing Educational Opportunity for Homeless Children and Youth

This is posted verbatim with the permission of SchoolHouse Connection.

FY26 Senate LHHS Testimony

Barbara Duffield, Executive Director

SchoolHouse Connection

United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies

United States Department of Education

McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program

“Increasing Educational Opportunity for Homeless Children and Youth”

SchoolHouse Connection is a national organization working to overcome homelessness through early care and education. We work in partnership with schools, parents, youth, and communities to ensure that children and youth experiencing homelessness have full access to quality learning, birth through higher education, so they will never be homeless as adults, and the next generation will never be homeless. This testimony supports a request for $200 million in FY 2026 funding for the McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program, administered by the U.S. Department of Education.

Homelessness disrupts the lives of children and youth in rural, suburban, and urban communities, but is more hidden in rural and suburban communities. Schools are often the only source of support for homeless students in rural and suburban areas. In the 2022-2023 school year, 1.37 million students nationwide were identified as homeless by public schools.^[1] This represents a 14 percent increase over the previous year. More recently, a confluence of crises–an affordable housing crisis, an addiction crisis, and a mental health crisis–is contributing to unprecedented levels of homelessness. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reported a 39% increase in families staying in homeless shelters or visibly on the streets in 2024, which was the highest of any population and the second consecutive year of increase.^[2] Events like hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and economic downturn often push families into homelessness.

Homelessness creates unique barriers to educational access and attainment. Homeless families and youth may not be able to meet enrollment paperwork requirements; they move from place to place, often with little notice. Other barriers include lack of transportation; lack of supplies; hunger, fatigue, and poor health; and emotional crises/mental health issues. As a result of these barriers, homelessness has a negative impact on academic achievement that is over and above poverty. Nearly half (48%) of students experiencing homelessness in the 2022-2023 school year were chronically absent, a rate that is 12 percentage points higher than other low-income students, and 22 percentage points higher than all students.^[3] The 2021-2022 national average high school graduation rate for homeless students was 68 percent, which is 13 percentage points below other economically disadvantaged students, and nearly 19 percentage points below all students.^[4]

Youth without a high school diploma or GED are 4.5 times more likely to experience homelessness later in life, making lack of a high school diploma/GED the single greatest risk factor for experiencing homelessness as a young adult – and making education a critical prevention strategy.^[5]

The EHCY program is the only federal education program that removes barriers caused by homelessness. Under the EHCY program, every school district must designate a liaison to help identify children and youth experiencing homelessness, ensure school access and stability, provide direct services, and coordinate with community agencies to meet basic needs. EHCY subgrants are used for outreach and identification, enrollment assistance, transportation, school records transfer, immunization referrals, tutoring, counseling, school supplies, professional development for educators and community organizations, housing and service navigators, early childhood support, and assistance transitioning to postsecondary education. No other federal program has the responsibility for and expertise in finding, engaging, stabilizing, and serving students who experience homelessness.

The EHCY program has a long history of bipartisan support, from its enactment by President Reagan in 1987 through several bipartisan reauthorizations, including most recently by the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. Over the past thirty-seven years, it has received varying levels of funding increases regardless of which party controlled one or both chambers of Congress.

An unanimous, bipartisan amendment to the American Rescue Plan provided $800 million specifically to increase the identification and school of enrollment of homeless students through the American Rescue Plan Homeless Children and Youth (ARP-HCY) program. The ARP-HCY program allowed more than 60% of LEAs to receive dedicated support for homeless students. A federally-funded independent study of the ARP-HCY program found that, in its first full year and a half of implementation, ARP-HCY funds led to improved student outcomes.^[6] The study found that LEAs that received ARP-HCY funds increased the identification of students experiencing homelessness, while at the same time reporting reduced rates of chronic absenteeism, higher 4-year graduation rates, and gains in reading, mathematics, and science proficiency. Many LEAs returned to or improved upon pre-pandemic performance levels. These findings are especially significant because a considerable portion of ARP-HCY subgrantees saw consistent increases in all key academic measures – even while serving a greater number of homeless students. Final outcomes for the entire ARP-HCY period are likely to be even stronger, demonstrating the power of investing in targeted assistance for homeless students.

At the current funding level, only 21% of local educational agencies (LEAs) receive EHCY subgrants due to lack of funding, which limits the ability of schools to identify homeless students and ensure their access to school. The likelihood of underidentification is much higher in LEAs without dedicated homeless education funding. Of the 3,566 LEAs that identified no homeless students in the 2022-2023 school year, 94.5% did not receive EHCY funds. However, 25% fewer LEAs identified no homeless students in 2022-2023 compared to 2021-2022, likely as the result of receiving ARP-HCY funds.

In addition to under-identification challenges, many children and youth experiencing homelessness attend schools that receive no dedicated support to meet their unique needs. Nationally, nearly half of all students identified as homeless —681,770 students — attended an LEA in the 2022-2023 school year that did not receive any dedicated funding to support their needs through the EHCY program.

President Trump’s FY2026 budget proposal calls for eliminating funding for the McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program. The proposal claims that schools could choose to use funds from a newly created block grant to serve homeless students, but there would be no requirement to do so. As we saw with previous pandemic recovery funding, states and school districts typically do not direct resources toward homeless students unless dedicated funding is set aside for this purpose. The reality is that eliminating funding for the EHCY program would undermine critical protections that allow homeless students—including those displaced by natural disasters—to:

• Remain in their original school, even after moving outside its attendance boundaries;

• Receive transportation assistance to ensure consistent school attendance;

• Enroll in school without typically required documentation, which is often lost or unavailable due to frequent moves; and

• Access help from school district homeless liaisons, who are responsible for identifying homeless students, enrolling them, and connecting them with community resources.

Eliminating EHCY funding also would prevent homeless children and youth from accessing early childhood and postsecondary education. School district homeless liaisons play a vital role in ensuring enrollment in Head Start, Early Head Start, early intervention services under Part C of IDEA, and local preschool programs. Homeless liaisons also make determinations for purposes of FAFSA eligibility under the FAFSA Simplification Act, thereby allowing homeless youth to qualify as independent students for financial aid.

For these reasons, Congress should maintain the EHCY program as a distinct federal education program, and appropriate $200 million for the EHCY program in FY2026.

---

[1] https://www.ed.gov/media/document/student-homelessness-america-school-years-2020-21-2022-23

[2] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-AHAR-Part-1.pdf

[3] Source: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan. Data retrieved from Ed. Data Express Chronic Absenteeism Rate, data group 195 and 655 and NCES Table 204. The percentage for economically disadvantaged students chronically absent is an estimate based on the number of economically disadvantaged students chronically absent divided by the total number of free and reduced price lunch eligible students in the United States. These two groups do not necessarily define economic disadvantage in the same way.

[4] https://www.ed.gov/media/document/student-homelessness-america-school-years-2020-21-2022-23

[5] https://www.chapinhall.org/wp-content/uploads/ChapinHall_VoYC_Education-Brief.pdf

[6] https://www.ed.gov/media/document/arp-hcy-national-outcomes-summary-109427.pdf