Homeless students in Alaska and across the country could lose access to additional help

This article was originally published in Alaska Beacon.

Alaska school districts risk losing access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funding earmarked for homeless students if they cannot commit to spending it by the end of September.

The money was included in a federal law providing pandemic relief, and national advocates have been pushing for Congress to extend the deadline as it became clear the money might not be spent.

It’s unclear how much Alaska districts could lose. Alaska districts have spent nearly 70% of their $2.3 million increase, leaving more than $700,000 unspent, according to national data updated Aug. 1. The Department of Education and Early Childhood did not respond to a request for the most up-to-date figure or whether districts are on track to spend the balances.

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U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, worked on an amendment to the 2021 American Rescue Plan that secured $800 million nationwide for homeless students across the country. Alaska districts received about eight times their usual annual funding.

The National Conference of State Legislatures called on Congress to extend the deadline for spending the money under the terms of a long-standing federal law, known as the McKinney Vento Act, aimed at ensuring homeless children have access to education.

Barbara Duffield, executive director of the national advocacy group SchoolHouse Connection, said the NCSL ruling is significant, even if it is likely too late for a congressional extension.

“Unfortunately, the window for that extension is gone,” Duffield said. “Not because of a brave, intelligent, grassroots fight, but because of all these other dysfunctions in Congress.”

He said the resolution did more than call for an extension; it showed the importance of funding across all states and territories.

“This is a testament to a group of state legislators who said we should have had more time and that going forward, we need to prioritize investing in this population,” Duffield said.

The most recent state data shows that more than 3,000 Alaska students are homeless, and that the number has been increasing in recent years. Most of those students live with another family, but about one-fifth live in shelters and 10% are homeless.

According to SchoolHouse Connection research, increased funding and programs often lead districts to identify more homeless students. Data shows that the actual number of homeless students is often 50-100% higher than the official school count.

The Anchorage and Kenai school districts used the money to hire additional staff to work with homeless students. The Anchorage School District’s Children in Transition Program used its additional funding to hire two full-time employees for remote sites and five part-time employees at high schools who are there to support students on campus and connect them to services. David Mayo-Kiely runs the program, which has been running since the 1990s and has 10 staff members.

“They monitor attendance and grades. They are there to be another ally for these students, someone they can turn to,” she said.

These roles are important because of how homelessness can negatively impact students in school. Homeless students have about twice the rate of chronic absenteeism as their housed peers, which is known to be detrimental to academic performance. They are also nearly 30% less likely to graduate than their housed peers, according to the National Center for Homeless Education.

The ASD program also spent money on internet hotspots for students, professional development for staff and supplies. Mayo-Kiely said the district will leave only a small amount of money unspent.

“The funding has been wonderful for us,” she said. “We were interested in having extended funding, but we had been planning all along that this funding would expire at the end of this calendar year.”

And she said the funding will have a lasting effect, even if it expires at the end of the year: The investment in staff demonstrated how important those “partners” on campus were to students, so now the district is using money from other grant programs to continue funding them.

The NCSL resolution urging Congress to extend the deadline was a priority for Sen. Löki Tobin, an Anchorage Democrat and chair of the Senate Education Committee, after the Alaska Legislature failed to pass a similar resolution drafted by her office. Tobin is a member of NCSL’s Standing Committee on Education.

“Our hope with this resolution is to say, ‘Could we continue to use McKinley-Vento funds in this way, hiring additional support staff to provide comprehensive services for the entire family?’ and also to think about how we might set aside some of the remaining funds to continue to provide services to students through the 2025-2026 school year,” she said.

The pandemic-boosted funds also have more flexible spending rules that mean districts can spend them on transporting students to the same school even if the student’s address changes — for example, if they move to a friend’s family home or start living in a shelter. Districts can temporarily waive certain enrollment requirements to make sure a student starts on time, and even help with school supplies.

“We have a significant increase in young people experiencing homelessness that continues, and we know that it’s not going to be an easy fix,” Tobin said. “Particularly with the lack of affordable housing in the Anchorage area, with some instability and low wages in some of those entry- and mid-level positions. So we really anticipate that this population will continue to need additional resources and attention.”

Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network funded by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact editor Andrew Kitchenman with questions: [email protected]. Follow Alaska Beacon on Facebook and X.