Nearly three-quarters of children who live in shelters are chronically absent from school in New York City. One primary reason? Kids often have a very long commute from the shelter to the classroom.
The number of students in temporary housing rose by about 3 percent, a daunting figure that does not include the thousands of migrant children who have recently entered city schools.
The data, compiled by Advocates for Children of New York, shows that about 104,000 students across the city’s public school system suffered from homelessness in the last school year, which stretched from September 2021 through June 2022. That’s a 3.3% uptick as compared to the 2020-2021 school year, when 101,000 students were identified as homeless by the advocacy group.