The Learning Curve: County Sees Surge in Homeless Students Even As Funding is in Question

For the first time in half a decade, the county’s annual homeless census showed a decrease in the number of people staying in local shelters and living on the streets. Countywide, there was about a 7 percent decrease in homelessness. That elicited relief from leaders who’ve long grappled with a steady beat of bad news on the front.  

Local education officials, on the other hand, were not treated to such good news. 

Over the past year, the number of San Diego County students experiencing homelessness has shot up by 1,535 students, according to newly released enrollment data. That’s about a 10 percent increase.  

At the same time, budget crises at the city, county and district level – and the expiration of Covid recovery grants – have put funding to help those students at risk. That trend is a big step in the wrong direction for educators who serve those students.

A different definition: One of the likely reasons for the discrepancy is that schools are working from a different definition of homelessness than municipalities. The McKinney-Vento Act is the federal law that lays out schools’ definition of homelessness and requires districts to offer added support to students who qualify. Under that definition, children who live in a shared residence, hotels, trailer parks and other transitional accommodations are categorized as homeless.  

Counts like the annual homelessness census often don’t include people in those living situations.  

But that broader definition is a more accurate description of homelessness for families that schools often try to help said Susanne Terry, homeless liaison for the San Diego Office of Education. 

 “What we know in education about family homelessness is when you have children and become homeless, the first thing you do is look for a family or friend who can take you in, so you don’t have to have your kids on the streets,” Terry said.  

Big increases in some districts: The number of students experiencing homelessness dropped at most San Diego County districts, according to data from the California Department of Education. The countywide rise was fueled by significant increases at a handful of districts like the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sweetwater Union High and Vista Unified.  

When it comes to raw numbers, about two thirds of the countywide increase came from San Diego Unified. Between 2023-24 and 2024-25, the district reported a 16 percent increase. That amounts to an increase of 1,053, bringing the district’s total number of students experiencing homelessness to 7,492. 

The largest increase percentage-wise, however, came from the Chula Vista Elementary School District, where the count of students experiencing homelessness more than doubled, from 495 to 1,027. 

Some of those eye-popping increases are likely due to districts getting better at counting students experiencing homelessness, Terry said.

A 2021 law changed how schools tally homeless students, requiring staff to ask all families if they have stable housing. Before then, many schools only distributed housing questionnaires to families if they thought they may be homeless, Terry said. Those kinds of inconsistent policies likely led to a persistent undercounting of homeless students. 

A budget crunch: Even given the increases, funding to support homeless students will likely only get thinner. That’s because the federal pandemic-era Covid recovery grants that pumped billions of dollars into schools, including dedicated funding for homeless students, have now expired.  

Over several years, those grants pumped about $98 million in funding to support homeless students into 92 percent of California’s districts. The grants also incentivized local educational agencies to collect more accurate information about how many of their students face homelessness and what they can do to address it, reported EdSource.  

“With that money school districts all had an opportunity to see what it could really look like to support kids when you’re funded,” Terry said. 

How districts used funds varied widely. Some improved data tracking measures while others provided transportation. Terry also saw districts use the funds to hire a dedicated point-person on homelessness. 

Now that the money’s gone, districts will likely have to revert to placing these responsibilities on an existing employee’s plate, Terry said. 

“I realize the money was in response to Covid, but this was money we’ve all needed for a long time, especially in homeless education,” Terry said. “What we’re going back to are districts that are doing what they can” 

No other pot of money is coming to fill the gap. There is no state funding reserved for supporting homeless students, though efforts to change that are underway. There are also big questions about what schools will get from the feds in the upcoming budget. 

The Trump administration’s pledge to dismantle the Department of Education has spelled potential trouble for federal homelessness funds. After all, the department oversees the disbursal of those funds. And even if the department isn’t axed, some educators worry Trump may try to withhold the funding or lump it into block grants that would no longer require the money goes toward homeless students. 

“All of it keeps me up at night. I think that the dismantling of the [Education] Department and or the dismantling of the program — the funding for the program — is probably my biggest concern right now,” Terry recently told NPR. 

County Office of Ed Says Funding Figures in The 74 Million Article Misleading 

In my last newsletter, I wrote about a piece in the education news outlet The 74 Million that compared how much local agencies’ educator pay was keeping up with their per pupil funding. It found that, in many cases, funding was far outstripping staff pay.  

One of the agencies I highlighted was the San Diego County Office of Education, which had a yawning gap between funding and pay.  

The picture that paints is entirely inaccurate, Samantha Womack, spokesperson for the San Diego County Office of Education, wrote in an email. 

While the piece characterized the agency’s funding as coming out to $685,00 per pupil, it actually only receives $25,000 per student, she wrote. That’s because the agency is far more than just a school district. It also provides services, training and oversight to the 42 other districts around the county. The database the county office was included in also didn’t account for additional compensation like retirement or health benefits or adjust for inflation, she wrote. 

“Less than 3 percent of the total budget represents (average daily attendance) funding to provide direct services to students,” Womack wrote. “More than 50 percent of our budget is un-spendable as either direct pass to districts, district funds, or excess tax.”  

What We’re Writing  

A decade after a major overhaul that added more classes to San Diego Unified’s graduation requirements, the district created an alternate graduation pathway that waters them down. That may mean that some students who go down that path won’t have taken the classes needed to be accepted into college by the time they graduate.   

A new grand jury report found a handful of faults in San Diego Unified’s bond program. Among them: district officials had “consistently failed to inform” voters of bond-induced tax rate increases and hadn’t provided detailed lists of projects prior to elections.  

Richard Barrera has an almost mythic status in San Diego County. He’s the district’s longest-serving board member and has had a hand in many of its most significant transformations. Now, he’s setting his sights on a higher office: California’s superintendent of public instruction. I spoke to him about why he’s running and how he would approach the new gig.