State lawmakers more than doubled the funding for a program that helps homeless students and their families across Washington connect to housing and services, answering advocates’ calls for greater financial support.
The Homeless Student Stability Program grew by $4.6 million to total $9 million — an unprecedented increase for a 7-year-old program whose funding has generally hovered around $4 million. Some districts have used this money to boost graduation rates for homeless students, in a state that receives some of the lowest federal funding per homeless student yet has one of the largest populations.
Prior to the pandemic from 2018-2019, the state reported nearly 40,000 homeless students.
Homeless students face some of the greatest disparities in graduation rates and are suspended and expelled much more often than their housed peers. In addition, homeless students are more likely to be homeless as adults.
The Legislature also increased the Washington Youth and Families Fund by $1 million — from $4 million to $5 million. Advocates at Building Changes — a nonprofit working with school districts and organizations in Washington to advance strategies to better support families and students experiencing homelessness — were asking that both programs increase to $10 million, citing an increased need across the state for further family and student homelessness support.
“We are so excited and grateful about the increases,” said Liza Burell, managing director of programs at Building Changes.
The nonprofit also manages the grant distribution of the Washington Youth and Families Fund. Burell said that in the last grant cycle, organizations requested 13 times more in funding than what was available in the youth and families fund.
The Homeless Student Stability Program saw such a large funding increase this year because it’s been effective and, at the same time, because lawmakers recognize there’s still a huge need, said Sen. Christine Rolfes, head of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, worked on budget negotiations during the final days of the legislative session.
“You want to know that the taxpayer dollars that you’re investing are actually being spent well, and are having an impact,” Rolfes said. “It’s just a program that maybe more than many others, you can see the outcome.”
North Thurston Public Schools showed how these dollars can be effective. After receiving Homeless Student Stability funding, administered through Washington’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, North Thurston was able to expand its student navigator program, which has full-time staff dedicated to supporting the needs of homeless students. And since its launch more than six years ago, the district has reported remarkably improved graduation rates for its homeless teens compared with other districts.
In the 2020 to 2021 school year, North Thurston reported an 81% homeless student graduation rate, putting it 22 percentage points higher than the state average.
Leslie Van Leishout, director of student support for North Thurston Public Schools, came up with the student-navigator model and wrote the grants to make it happen.
She said that this large boost in funding demonstrates a change in understanding the needs of homeless students and what’s at stake if a student doesn’t receive appropriate help.
Rep. Jake Fey, D-Tacoma, sponsored the initial bill to establish the Homeless Student Stability Program in 2016, modeling the program from a partnership in his district between the Tacoma School District and the Tacoma Housing Authority, which worked to connect families to stable housing using federal housing vouchers.
“The idea being the kids, if they’ve got a stable housing situation, their learning ability will be improved,” Fey said.
The program’s funding is broken into two chunks and distributed to two separate state departments. The Department of Commerce receives funding and administers the money to community organizations, which then partner with schools. And the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction receives slightly more than half of the funding and administers it directly to school districts, like North Thurston.
Van Leishout said it’s still unclear whether current Homeless Student Stability Program recipients will benefit from the increase in funding.
Burell said that the $1 million boost to the Washington Youth and Families Fund should allow them to fund at least one or two more organizations that provide homeless services to families and homeless youth and young adults. Typically, the grant program received about $4 million every two years and that was usually enough to fund six organizations’ requests, Burell said.
Burell said that the pandemic spurred lawmakers to think more about the needs of homeless students and families than in past budget sessions.
“Whether it was news about eviction prevention or eviction moratoriums or ‘how do we actually keep people safe in congregate shelters,’ I think conversations just started to include a bigger understanding of what living in instability might mean and how that impacts everything,” Burell said.
The boost in funding for OSPI’s portion of the program comes in a one-time amount, whereas the Department of Commerce’s boost is long term. Rolfes said one-time funding boosts are common and that they’ll look to the program’s results in two years to decide whether to maintain these higher levels.
Van Leishout is grateful to see the program’s budget more than double, but said there’s still more needed.
“To help them break the cycle of homelessness, generational poverty, mental health and substance disorders. To assist them to be able to have a future, to have a 13-year plan when they graduate from school and to close that gap from housed and unhoused students,” Van Leishout said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Liza Burell’s name.