SPECIAL REPORT
and home, and pay for gas or gift cards or for mileage reimbursement to parents who can drive their children. Duffield defined “wrap around support” as anything that
directly supports academics, adding that rules governing the use of ARP-HCY funds have allowed school districts to become more creative in how they are applied. “You can buy vehicles, [pay for] car repairs, pay for
drivers dedicated to specific purpose, and you can hire transportation coordinators,” Duffield said. “The fact that it is more flexible allows districts to support what will work well for their community and their school districts.” Duffield commented that money to hire drivers is a plus. “But of course, having funds to hire and [identify] people to take those jobs are two different things,” she said. She also cautioned that ARP-HCY funds are finite and a one-time award so school districts should use them strategically to employ only those solutions they can sustain on their own.
The Great Lakes Solution Following a recommendation outlined in the School- House Connection’s summary playbook, Charlotte
Safe. Reliable. Efficient.
Kinzley, manager of homeless and highly mobile stu- dents for Minneapolis Public Schools, said her district sought the advice through SchoolHouse Connection sponsored surveys of caregivers, students, school staff and community partners “to learn more about what types of support were most useful in supporting students to fully engage in school during a period of housing instability,” she said. Kinzley noted that particular attention was paid to the
responses of students and their families on the most pressing barriers to their education. A major theme was the importance of consistent, reliable transportation during an episode of homelessness. “In order to best utilize this additional funding, we
gathered information from those most impacted by homelessness as they are the experts needed to design the solutions,” Kinzley said. “Our survey was sent to care- givers, middle and high school students who had been identified as homeless-highly mobile (HHM) in the past two school years.” Specifically, Kinzley said that 80 percent of caregivers of high school students and high school students them-
Transporting students with disabilities, those in foster care, and
children experiencing homelessness to and
from school every day, isn’t just something we do, it’s something we’re passionate about.
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