U.S. schools identified over a million students — 2.2% of all learners — as homeless in 2020-21, the most recent school year for which data are available, according to a 2022 report. But even those figures undercount the issue as thousands of districts reported zero homelessness, a telltale sign they are failing to identify youth in need of help.

Students experiencing homelessness have lower overall attendance, standardized test scores and high school graduation rates than any other peer group. The limited data that exist suggest roughly the same share of youth in rural areas like Vermont experience homelessness as in urban areas, but with far less of a social support system.

Vermont has the second-highest per capita rate of homelessness in the nation, lower only than California’s, according to a December 2022 report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. At the same time, the Green Mountain state provides temporary shelter to a higher share of its residents without homes than any other state, with 98% safely indoors on a point-in-time count from last year.

“We’ve got a brutal [housing] affordability crisis in Vermont right now,” U.S. Sen. Peter Welch told The 74 in an email. The legislator said he is proud of his state’s efforts to shelter homeless families, but hopes school staff can also be part of longer-term solutions.

Once the Kingdom East school district knows a student is experiencing homelessness, its transportation staff continues to play a key role in supporting the child. If they’re living at a shelter or motel, the busing director alters the routes so that the student is the first pickup and last dropoff to avoid outing them as homeless to their peers. At the end of the day, district guidance counselors hand off backpacks full of clothes and food to bus drivers who discreetly give them to children in need when they step off.

“They’re backpacks and people don’t think anything of it,” transportation manager Darlene Jewell said.

Kara Lufkin, the homeless liaison for the St. Johnsbury school system, which neighbors Kingdom East, uses MV Learning, a Michigan-based company that trains school staff on how to spot the signs of homelessness. The company provided training videos to her district’s transportation fleet.

“It’s really just an awareness of what are some things to look for … that could potentially mean a student was homeless,” she said.

Read the full article about homeless students by Asher Lehrer-Small at The 74.