A light in the dark
By: Unc Greensboro
Tags: Higher Education, Homeless, Homelessness, Children, Youth

UNC Greensboro awarded $15.6M to help boost education resources in 3 states

In the past year, 552,830 people experienced homelessness on a typical night in the U.S. Roughly 33% of those are families with children. In North Carolina, home of UNC Greensboro (UNCG), nearly 9,500 people experienced homelessness on any given night.

Just 20 minutes north of UNCG’s main campus is the SERVE Center and the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE), which has been a part of the university since 1998. As the technical assistance and information center for the federal Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program, NCHE assists state coordinators for homeless education in all 50 states, operates a national hotline, collects and disseminates data, and conducts regional and national presentations on homeless education.

Nationally, approximately 1.5 million children and youth have been identified as homeless (2017). But homelessness in the United States can take on different forms. Families might be staying in a shelter, or spending nights in a car. Or maybe they’re couch hopping, relying on the kindness of friends and family and bouncing from home to home at a moment’s notice.

In schools, it’s not easy to identify young people in these situations at a glance. Homeless students often go unnoticed and, as a result, lack the educational resources they desperately need.

The McKinney-Vento Act grants specific rights to homeless children and youth, such as immediate enrollment in school, transportation, free meals, clothing, school supplies and tutorial services. NCHE works with coordinators and liaisons nationwide to make sure homeless youth have access to these resources.

Before NCHE was formed, virtually no data and no standards related to identification and support existed. The result was countless children with untapped potential falling further and further behind in school.

“When we stepped in, there was no central depository of information on how to serve homeless children and youth,” says Diana Bowman, who served as the center’s director from 2000 to 2015. “There wasn’t anything that guided individuals on how to follow the law and best serve this population. And there was nowhere to go when they were running into challenges.”

So what now?

The U.S. Department of Education is doubling down on their efforts to provide resources to this population of students, but perhaps more importantly, to the educators that meet them everyday.

UNCG’s SERVE Center has been awarded a five-year, $15.6 million grant to operate a regional education center for the next five years. This center will work with state education agencies, school districts and K-12 schools to improve student academic performance and close achievement gaps.

In July, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the SERVE Center $5 million to assess the dual-enrollment programs that let North Carolina students earn college credit while they’re still enrolled in high school. The Education Department awarded the SERVE Center a $6.2 million grant in September that will keep the National Center for Homeless Education at UNCG for another five years.

The work will be led by George Hancock, who serves as executive director of the SERVE Center and director of NCHE.

“Children are children. They want to learn and they want to be engaged. If you can find a way to light that spark, it doesn’t matter where they come from.” — George Hancock

For more information about SERVE, visit serve.uncg.edu. To learn more about NCHE, visit nche.edu.gov.