Increasing school stability for students experiencing homelessness: overcoming challenges to providing transportation to the school of origin
Diana Bowman
2004
Underscoring the importance of school stability for children and youth experiencing homelessness, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Act, reauthorized as Title X, Part C, of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, requires that school districts provide transportation to enable children and youth to remain in their school of origin (the school a student attended when permanently housed or the school in which the student was last enrolled). Although this mandate increases the complexity and expense of pupil transportation, school districts have developed resourceful strategies to provide children and youth experiencing homelessness transportation to their school of origin. In order to provide ideas to school districts that experience challenges to implementing the mandate for transportation to the school of origin and those that seek additional implementation strategies, in 2003-2004, the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE) interviewed local homeless education liaisons and pupil transportation directors from eight school districts that have instituted a variety of approaches to ensuring that children and youth experiencing homelessness receive transportation services to their school of origin.
