Keeping Homeless Kids in School

With more students losing their housing, can districts help them stay in class?

Brian Lesteberg for TIme

After moving to a shelter across town last fall, Ty'jhanae Walker, 7, still attends the Minneapolis school that is lending her a violin. Her bus ride takes an hour each way.

Right now, nearly 1 in 10 children attending public school in Minneapolis is homeless. Read that sentence again.

As Wall Street tries to right itself, the global economic crisis is punishing many of the youngest Americans. Preliminary nationwide figures indicate that there were nearly 16% more homeless students in the 2007-08 academic year than in the previous year. And the number of homeless students continues to climb as more parents face foreclosure or the unemployment line. Of some 1,700 school districts surveyed this fall in a separate study, 69% said they had already counted at least half as many homeless students...

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