CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) has released a preliminary report on the population of children experiencing homelessness.
The report, which was the initial work of a legislatively directed study to review provided services, identify service gaps or barriers, and recommend statutory changes needed to overcome the service gaps or barriers, showed data from school year 2015 to school year 2021.
Melanie Purkey, the executive director of the state Department of Education’s Office of Federal programs presented the information in front of the state School Board of Education on Wednesday.
“If you look at the total at the end, we did drop about 900 students in the count from the 2019-2020 school year to 2020-2021,” she noted.
9,508 students were reported to be experiencing homelessness during this school year, down from 10,417 last year. Purkey said factors to the drop may include virtual schooling and schools have not communicated with students are on their current status while remaining on virtual education.
Purkey also said one school system, Jefferson County, showed a drop of 400 students experiencing homelessness because of miscommunication on how to define the situations. Jefferson remained the county with the highest number of students experiencing homelessness at 788. Kanawha County was second with 749 students.
VIEW: WVDE homelessness report for 2020-2021 school year
The WVDE broke Primary Nighttime Residence into four categories for a student experiencing homelessness: doubled-up, shelters, unsheltered and hotels/motels.
Doubled-up: Sharing housing of other persons due to economic hardship, loss of housing or other reasons (such as domestic violence)
Shelters: Transitional living shelter, domestic violence shelter, youth shelter, or family shelter
Unsheltered: Including living in cars, parks, campgrounds, temporary trailers including FEMA trailers, or abandoned buildings (substandard housing)
Hotels/motels: Hotel, motel, or similar accommodations
The data showed the majority of students in the state, 86.7%, are experiencing doubled-up residence.
“When people hear students experience homelessness, they think they are living on the streets and they are not. They are living in doubled-up situations, multi-family situations where it’s still considered inadequate because the space and accommodation don’t meet the needs of all the people living in that situation,” Purkey said.
7.4% of students are in shelters while the another 5% are unsheltered or in hotels/motels.
The WVDE is working in collaboration with the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources to conduct the study. The preliminary report and latest counts of students experiencing homelessness can be found on the McKinney Vento section of the Department’s website.