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After making a concerted effort in recent years to improve support for students experiencing homelessness, the Mountain View Whisman School District has identified nearly 200 children who qualify for services under a federal youth homelessness law.
This fall, roughly 4.2% of Mountain View Whisman students are receiving support through the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which ensures homeless children have access to public education. The law requires school districts to actively identify students without stable housing and provide services so that they can enroll in and attend school.
Mountain View Whisman has a much higher proportion of McKinney-Vento students than neighboring districts. Last school year, 0.5% of students in the Sunnyvale Unified School District and 0.3% of Los Altos School District students qualified for McKinney-Vento services.
Geoff Chang, Mountain View Whisman’s director of federal, state and strategic programs, attributed the district’s higher percentage to the effectiveness of its systems for identifying homeless students. As a result of these efforts, Chang thinks the district may be close to having an accurate count of students eligible for McKinney-Vento Act services.
“I do suspect that the systems that we have set up to identify and serve McKinney-Vento students in our school district may be more developed than in the neighboring school districts,” Chang said.
Students who qualify as homeless under the McKinney-Vento Act are those who “lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence,” according to the law. This includes children who are sharing housing with other families or staying in motels, trailer parks, shelters, transitional housing or cars because of economic hardship or loss of housing.
In recent years, Mountain View Whisman has seen its population of homeless students increase, going from 89 in the 2017-18 school year to a peak of 270 students in the 2023-24 school year, according to state data. Based on an internal count this September, which was presented at an Oct. 2 school board meeting, the district identified 193 McKinney-Vento students.
Chang stressed that the number of McKinney-Vento students “have historically fluctuated quite a bit over the course of the school year as families’ situations change.”
The current decrease comes even as the city of Mountain View has seen a 56% spike in homelessness over the last two years, according to data released this summer. Chang attributed the divergence between district and city trends to the fact that most of the Mountain View’s homeless population lives in RVs, whereas the majority of the district’s homeless students are doubled or tripled up with other families in apartments.
Providing targeted support for homeless students
The McKinney-Vento Act provides specific protections for homeless students, including assistance enrolling in school, transportation to and from campus, and free meals. Students without stable housing often face greater barriers to being able to attend classes and succeed academically, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a non-profit homeless advocacy organization focused on the education system.
In Mountain View Whisman, McKinney-Vento students have higher absenteeism and suspension rates, as well as much lower test scores than the overall student body.
Last school year, the district saw a 17.8% rate of chronic absenteeism among McKinney-Vento students, which is lower than it has been in recent years but still higher than the 10.8% rate for Mountain View Whisman students overall, according to state data. A student is considered chronically absent if they miss at least 10% of school days.
When it comes to standardized test scores, just 12.2% of homeless students scored advanced or proficient in English language arts, compared to 65.6% of non-homeless students. In math, 9.6% of McKinney-Vento students scored proficient or advanced, compared to 61% of all other students.
Funding for the district’s McKinney-Vento services, which include staff and an activities and resource center, comes from the federal government. District administrators have expressed concerns over whether or not this funding will continue under the Trump administration. While money for the current school year has already been received, funding for the 2026-27 school year has not yet been finalized, Duffield said.
“Without this program, children and youth who are homeless don’t have access to any other funding or programs,” she said. “It’s imperative that this program be preserved because it truly is the door opener.”
Duffield described the McKinney-Vento Act as having a long history of bipartisan support, adding that the lack of a high school degree or equivalent is the “single greatest risk factor for continuing to be homeless as an adult.”
“If we really want to do something to prevent adult homelessness, we have to prioritize identifying and supporting children who are homeless and particularly making sure that they have every opportunity to succeed in school,” Duffield said. “It is both prevention, and it’s a direct intervention to help them and their family not be homeless anymore.”
These efforts are carried out by Mountain View Whisman’s McKinney-Vento liaisons, which is a position that the federal law requires every district to have. Priscila Bogdanic and Eduardo Rios Pacheco, the district’s two liaisons, connect families with resources and community services, monitor attendance, communicate with parents and guardians, and intervene during disciplinary issues, Chang said.
“First and foremost, they are advocates,” he added.
Most of them are undocumented or have parents who are undocumented. Will be more as Palo Alto cleans up their RV situation.