Advocates for homeless youth are asking Pennsylvania to start investing state money into a federally funded program that helps K-12 students struggling with homelessness.

The request, made by several organizations as part of National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, may be the first budget request of the 2025-26 fiscal cycle, but it certainly won’t be the last.

The number of homeless students is increasing Pennsylvania Department of Education The (PDE) reports “speak to our housing crisis in Pennsylvania and across the country” and “reflect both the increasing instability facing young people and the limited resources available to support them,” he said. Press conference on Wednesday.

The funding request was coordinated by a group of more than 50 youth charities operating in Pennsylvania and surrounding centers. PDE’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth (ECYEH) program. This program was designed to bring Pennsylvania into compliance with the federal McKinney-Vento Act, which requires states to provide continuing education to homeless students.

The state’s ECYEH program has historically been funded by approximately $5 million per year in federal funds (the last state budget included a $6.5 million federal pass-through), which are then distributed to regional coordinators.

Joe Willard of HopePHL, a Philly-based human service agency, noted that many school district programs using ECYEH funds have been supported by federal pandemic relief dollars in recent years.

But those funds are about to expire, and Willard’s agency and others are now asking for the program to be supplemented with $10 million in state money; That’s a relatively small slice of Pennsylvania’s general fund budget, currently at $47.6 billion, but that amount will grow even more. We will have to compete with hundreds of other priorities in the coming fiscal cycle.

The question for nearly 46,000 homeless students in the latest PDE survey is: “Are they worth $217 to get a high school diploma?” He represented Rep. Izzy Smith-Wade-El, D-Lancaster County.

“It’s our job to have their back,” Smith-Wade-El said.

PDE’s data reflects both the real problem of homelessness and the difficulty of measuring it. The number of homeless students in schools dropped in the 2020-21 school year; This was likely due to reporting issues as COVID-19 kept students physically away from schools where they could receive homelessness assistance.

But the numbers quickly rebounded, reaching 46,714 homeless students statewide in the 2022-23 school year; this was much higher than the last pre-pandemic number of 37,930 for 2019-20.

Some of the largest increases are in counties that are home to the state’s mid-sized metros. Dauphin’s number of homeless students increased from 1,557 in 2019-20 to 2,373 in 2022-23, and Berks’s increased from 1,849 to 2,961.

“This is every district’s problem. Somewhere in your district there are students experiencing homelessness,” said Cumberland Valley School District Director of Student Services Doris Hagemann.

Hagemann said Cumberland Valley currently works with about 80 homeless students, but that number varies seasonally; The district was 136 in the PDE’s last official count.

The primary goal of school districts and support agencies is to ensure that students attend the same school even if their living situations vary. While some students live in shelters, most are “couch surfing,” staying with friends or relatives for short periods of time.

Schools can use ECYEH funds for many purposes, including helping homeless students get mental health help, phones to contact teachers and counselors, or even helping with laundry.

“We’re trying to level the playing field so that these kids have the same opportunity as students with stable housing,” Hagemann said.

Most importantly, funds can assist with transportation. The best way to ensure homeless students graduate is to keep them attending the institution they were originally enrolled in, even if they move frequently, but this can be a logistical nightmare.

Homeless students often stay with friends or relatives out of district, or even in another district, and districts coordinate with each other to help relocate transient student populations, Hagemann said. Students who enter the shelter system often stay in shelters in Harrisburg, Carlisle or even Shippensburg and must be bused to the Cumberland Valley.

“Getting kids somewhere is one of the biggest hurdles,” Hagemann said. “We can do magic when we bring them to school.”

Wednesday was the last session day of 2024 for both the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the state Senate. The legislature will return in January and Gov. Josh Shapiro It is expected to present its 2025-26 budget proposal in February.