FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — The number of Forsyth County Schools students lacking adequate housing has grown 2 percent since the 2022-23 academic year.
Homeless Education Liaison Kim Pluhar presented the school district’s annual Homeless Youth Council update at a formal Board of Education meeting March 19.
The Homeless Youth Council is a group of community leaders who facilitate resources for youths experiencing homelessness in Forsyth County.
As of the presentation, Pluhar said there were 1,044 students in the district’s McKinney Vento program, up from the 1,020 students recorded at the end of the 2022-23 school year.
There were 610 students in the program in 2019-20.
McKinney Vento, a federal, state and local program created during the Reagan administration to address attendance issues related to homelessness, identifies homelessness as the lack of fixed, adequate or regular nighttime housing.
The program defines homelessness from an educational perspective and differs from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The program counts student homelessness as those living in shelters or those living with multiple families in one home due to economic hardship, which is called “doubling up.”
“Our numbers of doubled-up families have grown significantly,” Pluhar said. “And we’re not only doubling up, tripling up — last year, we talked about quadrupling up — now we’re quintupling up due to the lack of affordable alternative housing options.”
Since the beginning of the year, she said the school district is seeing one to two address changes daily, and doubled-up families are moving every two to three weeks.
“So that is a different trend, and that is a different face of homeless education this year,” Pluhar said.
McKinney Vento also defines homelessness as being unsheltered or living in accommodations that are not…
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