Excerpt from the article:
The McKinney-Vento Act is the primary funding source for homeless students, but the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness says it constantly hears from school districts that say they don’t have enough money.
So, the coalition started looking at Title I, which is a federal program that sends out billions every year to low-income schools. Schools are allowed to use it to help homeless kids, but are they?
Alyssa Phillips is the coalition’s senior education attorney.
“We realized,” she said, “that some school districts were spending so little, like 88-cents-per-student-experiencing-homelessness under Title I.”
The coalition’s analysis found more than 100 Illinois school districts were underfunding homeless student services with Title I. That includes Rockford Public Schools, Freeport, LaSalle 122 and many more.
Phillips says it’s not just that schools weren’t spending much, it’s that nobody — not school districts, not advocacy groups — seemed to know how this money was being spent.
