HOMELESS PROGRAM
The Lowndes County Board of Education provides homeless education services to students who meet the criteria for homeless services. Homeless students are not denied participation into any program or services provided to other students. No distinction is made between homeless and non homeless students. Students are selected to participate in programs based on specific criteria of the program for which they are seeking to participate.
Homeless children and youth will be provided the opportunity to receive a free and appropriate public education regardless of their residency status. The program will ensure that these students are afforded equal access to academic and other services that will allow them to meet the same challenging state achievement standards as non-homeless students.
The program provides procedural guidelines to ensure that homeless students are not denied enrollment due to lack of registration documentation at the time of enrollment. Homeless children and youth, including preschool age children, will be enrolled immediately pending obtainment of the necessary documents. The school counselor will assist parents, guardians, or unaccompanied youth in obtaining the proper documentation.
The program provides for the homeless liaison who will ensure program implementations and coordinate efforts to ensure that homeless children and youth, including preschool age children, are provided the opportunity for academic success.
HOMELESS POLICY
The Lowndes County Public Schools adheres to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (Subtitle-B- Education for the Homeless Children and Youth), reauthorized in January 2002. Lowndes County Public Schools ensures educational rights and protections for children and youth experiencing homelessness. Homeless students will not be prohibited from enrolling in school due to barriers such as:
- Residency Requirements
- Lack of Social Security Card
- Lack of Birth Certificate
- Lack of Immunizations or Record of Immunizations
- Legal Custody Requirements
- Transportation
- Language Barriers
- Disabilities
HOMELESS STUDENT DEFINITION
For the purpose of identifying homeless children and youth, the Lowndes County Public School System shall use the McKinney- Vento Act’s definition of homeless children and youth. The Act defines homeless children and youth (twenty-one years of age and younger) as:
- Child or youth without a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. This includes students who are:
- Living with a friend, relative, or someone else because they have lost their home or their family is having temporary financial difficulties;
- Staying in a motel, hotel, campground because they have nowhere else to go;
- Living in a shelter;
- Living in places not ordinarily used for sleeping, including cars, parks, public places , abandoned buildings, bus, or train stations;
- Students on their own due to:
- Asked to leave home by a parent;
- Left home with consent of parent;
- Have no formal custody papers while parent is in jail, or some other facility;
- Students who have lost their homes due to disasters, fire, storms, earthquake, etc.
- Migratory children who qualify as homeless because they are living in circumstances described above.
The term unaccompanied youth includes a youth not in the physical custody of a parent or guardian. This includes youth living in runaway shelters, abandoned buildings, cars on the streets, or in the other inadequate housing, and children and youth denied housing by their families (sometimes referred to as “throwaway” children and youth), and school-age unwed mothers, living in homes for unwed mothers, who have no other housing available.
The school of origin is the school that the child or youth attended when permanently housed or the school in which the child or youth was last enrolled.