On March 28th, the Trump Administration announced that it would halt – effective immediately – final payments of federal aid to states and school districts intended to help students recover from the pandemic.

Included are funds specifically targeted to children and youth experiencing homelessness – American Rescue Plan Homeless Children and Youth (ARP-HCY) funds. ARP-HCY funds were the result of a bipartisan, unanimous amendment that recognized that homeless children and youth were disproportionately harmed by school closures and the disruption of the pandemic. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle affirmed that without targeted assistance, these students would struggle to come back to school, to attend, and to succeed.

While the pandemic may be over, its lingering impact is not – nor is the crisis of child and youth homelessness. Public schools identified nearly 1.4 million students experiencing homelessness in the 2022-23 school year, a 14% increase over the previous year. Many states are reporting double-digit increases for the 2023 and 2024 school years. 

Bureaucratic challenges and lack of attention from federal, state, and local educational agencies created the need for a longer timeline to invest ARP-HCY funds. To our knowledge, nearly half of all states applied and were approved for extending some ARP-HCY services for homeless children and youth through March 2026.

Despite the challenges, ARP-HCY funds have been very impactful. An independent federal study found that in its first full year and a half of implementation, ARP-HCY funds helped school districts increase the identification of students experiencing homelessness, while at the same time decreasing chronic absenteeism and improving academic outcomes. Many LEAs returned to or improved upon pre-pandemic performance levels.

The decision to halt payments for ARP-HCY funds will cause immediate educational disruption for children and youth experiencing homelessness. It will halt contracted services, such as transportation, that are essential for very basic access to education. It also will stop services that help mitigate the impact of homelessness on education, such as mental health and after-school programming. Real harm will result. In sum, inability to provide services funded by ARP-HCY pulls the rug out from school district efforts to stabilize the education of homeless students and enable them to fully recover from the educational losses caused by the pandemic. And without an education, these students are at much greater risk of continuing to experience homelessness as adults.

SchoolHouse Connection urges the Administration to honor the work of states and school districts by allowing final ARP-HCY payments to be made for the remainder of the calendar year. State and local education agencies have already provided detailed justifications – they should be allowed to serve students as planned.