The school year is only half done and primary and secondary schools in the area are already running out of grant money to support unhoused and precariously housed families.
Districts and educational institutions annually seek funds that can help with everything from finding permanent supportive housing to getting clean clothes. Often, grants are restrictive, allowing spending for one purpose and not another.
Money for rent and utility assistance can be particularly sparse for schools. In Illinois, the Department of Human Services’ Homeless Prevention Program [HPP] covers these costs, and organizations — including educational bodies — can apply annually.
This year in McLean County, demand has soared, as more families face financial uncertainty, and the Regional Office of Education [ROE] — covering DeWitt, Livingston, Logan and McLean counties — is out of HPP funds, said the ROE’s homeless liaison Kayla Arnolts.
"We received $80,000 last [academic] year, and I was still able to support families from July through June," she said. "This year, that just won't be the case."
In just 100 days, she said the ROE spent all $110,000 it received.
“And the calls don't stop,” she said. “Families still need help, so it's really difficult now to receive those calls and send people off to various referrals and hope that other agencies do have their funding.”
The McLean County Center for Human Services [MCCHS] — another recipient of HPP funding with coverage for the area — said it will also run out of funds soon.
For people like Arnolts who are working to help students and their families, speedy spending is a catch-22.
On the one hand, Arnolts said the ROE gave lots of individuals — 182 to be exact — much-needed assistance during the first semester of the 2024-25 school year. In Bloomington-Normal alone, that includes 13 families at District 87 and 19 families at Unit 5. For some, the funds they received may be how they kept a roof over their heads that month.
On the other hand, until the new fiscal year starts in August 2025, the ROE, school districts and community partners will need to get creative about how they can help families.
By the numbers
Across all four ROE counties at the end of last school year, schools identified roughly 700 students as homeless under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Roughly half come from McLean County. Per federal guidance, that total includes any student “lack[ing] fixed, regular or adequate housing.” So, a student without a house, whose guardians are struggling to pay one utility bill, or who is living with another family — also referred to as “doubling up” — are all McKinney-Vento eligible.
As of Dec. 31, schools identified just under 600 McKinney-Vento students. At the same time in the previous year, that number was at 533, a 13% increase.
Several factors may contribute to that rise. Enrollment fluctuates, financial circumstances change. It can also be a sign of increased efforts to identity kids in need, which Arnolts said is a good thing.
Historically — and nationally — McKinney-Vento students are underreported, either because schools aren’t always identifying students, families don’t realize they qualify and a host of other reasons, said Kristal Shelvin, lead homeless liaison at Unit 5. There’s also people’s perceptions of “homeless,” a word Unit 5 tries to avoid.
“’Homeless’ brings to mind lots of images… and a young person and their family may not describe themselves in that way,” said Shelvin, also the district’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion. “They may say, ‘I'm not outside. I go to a place — I may go to a different place, but I go to a place at night.’”
While the number of McKinney-Vento students could remain steady as the second semester progresses, Arnolts said it’s more likely the rising trend will continue.
Unit 5 sees increase
Either way, Arnolts said Unit 5 is a good example for how reporting should work. In 2024, she said for the first time in her tenure, Unit 5 outgrew District 87 in identified students — which makes sense given respective student population sizes.
“They are partnering with families to help them, and that's the kind of thing that families talk about: ‘Yeah, the district was there for me. They helped me,’” Arnolts said.
Shelvin, who leads McKinney-Vento work in Unit 5, said improving identification efforts is important to the district. There have been multiple trainings on how to do it and best practices, and she said there will be more before the year is over.
“We need to be able to be a liaison to services that help reduce the barriers that keep kids from coming to school,” she said. “As an educational organization, that's our job, is to make sure that we can get kids here and that their housing situation does not become a barrier.”
Unit 5 has also added another homeless liaison, Claye Vogelsang, who’d already been working in the district as a family coordinator — a similar role that both said plays a vital part in helping the district identify and assist unhoused youth.
His main job, Vogelsang said, is to create relationships, both with families and community partners like MCCHS that can provide services and support where the schools cannot. But the schools do a lot, he said. They do their best to provide as many resources as possible, using community member support through social media posting for in-demand items, and generating a supply.
“As long as the families and students that need the things get them that that is our main focus,” he said. “And if we're able to provide those things without reaching out to somebody else that just takes stuff off their plate and allows them to do the great things that they do.”
The bigger picture
At a time when everyone seems strapped for funds and resources, that can be a blessing.
The lack of immediate and apparent funding for pressing needs including rent demands “is a concern” for Unit 5, Vogelsang said — and for the ROE, according to Arnolts — but the people doing the work don’t stop.
“We can’t,” he said. “People are depending on us.”
School districts say they want a database that can point educators to resources and referrals, so Arnolts said she’s building one. Vogelsang and Shelvin said Unit 5 is continuing to connect families to agencies that have funds and provide non-financial assistance while looking for more money — because that will always be an issue.
"It's not just about money, because oftentimes we don't have money to give out to families, but it is about being certain that we can do something connecting and connecting and connecting," Shelvin said.
In the meantime, Vogelsang said they still celebrate on occasion.
“It can seem like it’s a downer, but that’s just the world we’re living in right now,” Vogelsang said. “We just have to focus on the small wins and the fact that we’re helping. I don’t care if it’s one family in a six-month period. I don’t care. That one family was helped and they may not have been in years past.”
