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When Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, heard that the federal budget passed by Congress could eventually eliminate funding for the Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) Program, she immediately worried about how it would impact the unhoused students her organization champions.

The cut could strip money from the liaisons who work in every school district in the U.S. to make sure that unhoused students have everything they need to ensure consistent school attendance — whether that’s clothing, counseling, food, medical care, transportation, tutoring, or a connection to subsidized housing programs.

By all accounts, these are important, life-saving, and far-reaching programs. They also have a proven track record.

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The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act has authorized EHCY since 1987 and presently serves approximately 1.4 million unhoused pre-K to 12th-grade students. The Trump administration has made clear that it hopes to make EHCY part of a block grant allocated to the states to cover 18 separate education programs — a policy shift that has been widely condemned by educators. Moreover, the total amount states receive could drop from $6.5 billion to $2 billion under a proposal that could be voted on by Congress sometime this fall.

“The last time McKinney-Vento was updated by Congress was 2015,” Duffield told Truthout. “We’ve seen great improvements in the decade since because the bill became much more explicit in addressing school stability. It made clear that if a child wants to remain in the same school, even if they are staying in a shelter, living doubled-up with another family, or have moved to another county, they have the right to do so and must be given transportation to make this possible. The bill also explicitly included pre-school children in the provision of services.”

The results, she said, have been dramatic: Chronic absenteeism has plummeted, and student graduation rates and standardized test scores have risen.

But, she warns, making EHCY part of a block grant could undermine — or even reverse — these gains.

“If states and localities do not have a targeted requirement to make sure unhoused kids remain in school, and get the concrete supports they need, it usually does not happen,” Duffield said. “The McKinney-Vento liaisons have been the open door to school services.”

The so-called Big Beautiful Bill Act and the consolidation of programs into block grants would be disastrous, she said. “If the federal government does not mandate that school districts maintain the outreach and support necessary for this population, many unhoused kids will languish. This is especially cruel because the number of unhoused families with children has been consistently rising throughout the country.”

Joe Willard, the former policy director of HopePHL, a Pennsylvania advocacy group that supports unhoused students in the Keystone state, is now a consultant to the organization. Since 2015, he says, school staff in his state have made great strides in........

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