HARTFORD — As a new school year gets underway, administrators are grappling with how to best serve a steady number of students in the Hartford School District who have been experiencing homelessness.
Since the district started tracking the student homeless population in 2010, there have been roughly 50 students experiencing homelessness between pre-K and grade 12 at any one time, Assistant Superintendent Noel Bryant said at a joint School Board and Selectboard meeting Wednesday night, which tackled homelessness and a number of other topics. That figure, which represents just under 3% of the student population, includes students who are living in hotels or with someone else in Hartford or in a different community.
Though it is not yet known if that number will change this year, the district has not addressed some needs of homeless students, including at least one increasing financial hurdle for administrators, officials said at the meeting.
“My goal is specifically working for these kids who still have enough gumption to come to school and they are homeless,” said School Board member Nancy Russell, who sits on the Hartford Community Coalition and is the district governor of Rotary District 7870, which covers parts of Vermont and New Hampshire. “That touches me in so many ways.”
Much like Bryant does in her daily work, Russell is working to secure a grant through the rotary that might fund such items as washers and dryers that can be installed in the schools so children who are homeless can do their laundry.
The school currently has showers for those students and uses federal money to purchase clothing, school supplies and food, including food items to send home on the weekends, among other things.
But the largest need the district has, which is much bigger than the district itself, is affordable housing to get these children into stable residences, Bryant said.
“Families are really struggling to find housing,” she said.
A challenge the Hartford School District is facing specifically is the mounting cost to transport students who were enrolled in Hartford schools, but now live in another community because that’s where they could find housing, or who were enrolled elsewhere and now live in Hartford.
A federal law, the McKinney-Vento Act, requires that school districts provide transportation in such cases in part to make sure that children experiencing homelessness have “continuity in education,” and the cost is split by the district where the student lives and the district where the student attends.
“In the last 18 months, we have seen this explosion in the cost of transporting kids,” Bryant said. “It is exceedingly expensive.”
She used the rough figure of $160 a day per student to transport them to and from where they are now living. Bryant said she could only guess why the cost is impacting Hartford more than in years past but said it could be related to the town’s large number of hotels, which people experiencing homelessness can get vouchers to stay in. If a student who had been attending a Lebanon school now resides at a hotel in Hartford, for example, the Hartford School District must split the cost to bring that student to school in Lebanon, Bryant said.
In addition to providing a stable education, Superintendent Tom DeBalsi said an idea behind the law and the expense is to have such children and their families return to Hartford when they find housing so that the students can finish their education in Hartford.
“Those kids need it more than anyone,” DeBalsi said.
Selectboard member Alan Johnson said he was shocked at the transportation cost.
“How can we not afford to house these kids in town? We are paying more to drive them back and forth. … We could build them a house with that money,” Johnson said.
Russell, who moved to the town in 1997, said it was only last year that she learned how significant the issue of homelessness was within the district of about 1,800 students. Since then, she and many others in the community have made strides to tackle it.
Similar to Hartford, the Mascoma Valley Regional School District has an average of 3% to 4% of students who fit the homelessness criteria, which amounted to 37 students last year, Superintendent Amanda Isabelle said. The Claremont School District sits higher with an average of 10% of students — about 110 students last year — experiencing homelessness, school social worker Courtney Porter said.
Hartford School Board Member Michelle Boleski also raised the topic of adult homelessness in town, something she called concerning.
People close to the topic said in July that they had noticed more people who were homeless. In addition, Mike Chamness, a co-director for UVGear, an organization that helps homeless residents, said in July that the number of people seeking emergency camping gear in the Upper Valley also has increased this year.
Chamness, who was appointed chairman of the newly formed Hartford Committee on Homelessness on Thursday at its inaugural meeting, said the need still exists, and at least one request for camping gear comes in daily.
“It is still consistent,” he said.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.