Homeless student numbers increase in Kane County

There are now more homeless students in Kane County schools than last year, according to numbers released Thursday.

Despite the increase, officials believe social stigma is still causing an underreporting of the true population.

Last year the county had 1,600 students identified as homeless. With about two months of the school year remaining, including summer school, the county has identified 1,629 homeless students.

Deb Dempsey, coordinator of homeless programs for the Kane County Regional Office of Education, said some of the total are students who remain homeless from last year, but many students are becoming homeless through foreclosures or a parent's inability to pay rent because of job loss.

When a student moves in with other relatives, they are still considered homeless. As a result, Kane County has students who commute to local schools from Chicago by train.

The transportation, as well as school supplies, breakfast and lunch, medical and legal assistance and several other forms of help are paid by Kane's regional education office from federal grant money.

Identifying homeless students and keeping them in the local school helps break a potential cycle of homelessness before it starts, Dempsey said. Numbers seem to show at least the education part of the strategy is working.

Reading scores for students in the homeless program increased 6 percent from 2005 to 2009. Math scores for the same period are up 8 percent.

Dempsey said half the challenge is identifying homeless students. Most students don't willingly report themselves as homeless because of the social stigma attached to it, she said.

“You say that ‘H' word and it's, ‘Oh, I'm not homeless,'” Dempsey said. “But you have to point out, under the law, they are. We use free-lunch count as a good barometer of homelessness. But we also have to teach school districts to identify these kids so they don't fall through the cracks. This is a mandate that's very underfunded. There's only one person at every school district who does this job. The manpower is not there.”

County board members seeing the numbers encouraged Dempsey to make the identification process a regular part of the school enrollment.

Dempsey said the enrollment process is a major factor in homeless students dropping out. All districts ask for a lease, mortgage, utility bill or a similar form to prove residency. A homeless student, even living with a relative, usually doesn't have such proof, Dempsey said.

“It scares the potential students away if they can't provide that information,” Dempsey said.

Almost no school district in the county takes the additional step of asking a student if they are homeless when they can't provide that residency information, she said. If a student meets the legal definition of homeless, the district is supposed to enroll the student, Dempsey said.

“We get a lot of district secretaries who say, ‘Well, you're telling me to enroll them, but my boss is telling me something else,'” Dempsey said.

“We're hosting a series of administrator workshops now and trying to create a climate of acceptance in school buildings for these kids.”