08/04/2026
Wisconsin….we need this!
Dollars can't identify a student who's doubled up or living in a motel. Trained staff can. And California has made a $116 million investment to do exactly that.
As SchoolHouse Connection's Executive Director Barbara Duffield tells EdSource, identification is the foundation everything else depends on:
"Whether it's community school funding or other funding that California's providing for its students, if homeless students aren't identified, if they don't have regular transportation, a way to get to school, has somebody who's attending to all those other needs — they're not going to be able to benefit from those other investments."
She sees this funding as bigger than California alone, sharing that this investment will, "signal to other states that there's a way forward, but also that, within California, this is one-time funding that will help really show policymakers and educators that this needs to be the new normal in California. Because there's no indication that homelessness is going to be down significantly in the next couple years."
She points to the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth program, the federal Covid-era funding that showed what's possible when schools have dedicated resources to find and support students experiencing homelessness, as a guide for what comes next:
"I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned from ARP-HCY. How the funds go out, what they can be used for, how the actual disbursement is being tracked. All of that from the get-go."
Read the full EdSource piece on what this funding means for California's homeless liaisons and the students they serve: https://edsource.org/2026/california-schools-allocate-dedicated-funding-to-identify-homeless-students/762013
