Navigating student transportation complexities for students experiencing homelessness is a constant challenge for school districts, especially when it comes to funding McKinney-Vento transportation and navigating the evolving policy landscape. Our recent webinar hosted with District Administration, “Getting Vulnerable Students Where They Need to Go: Solving Today’s Attendance and Transportation Challenges,” tackled these pressing issues head-on.
Our Co-Founder and CEO, Joanna McFarland, was joined by Barbara Duffield, Executive Director of SchoolHouse Connection, a leading nonprofit dedicated to advocating for youth experiencing homelessness. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act was a central topic of discussion, with a focus on the difficulties school districts encounter when arranging transportation for students who have unstable housing.
The webinar also highlighted how flexible, on-demand transportation options can significantly boost attendance and academic success for these at-risk students. Practical strategies, ranging from comprehending federal mandates to implementing effective solutions, were shared to help districts take immediate action.
This blog post summarizes the essential points from our webinar, giving you a comprehensive overview of the key strategies and insights shared. Read on to learn how to effectively address McKinney-Vento transportation challenges and boost attendance for your most vulnerable students.
Want to listen in on the full discussion?
Watch the webinar recording here.
Webinar Key Takeaways
The Number of Students Experiencing Homelessness Is Growing
The webinar opened with data that many districts are seeing firsthand: The number of students experiencing homelessness increased 14% in the 2022–2023 school year, continuing an upward trend that shows no signs of slowing.
From HopSkipDrive’s own data, we’re seeing this growth accelerate. We’ve recorded an almost 5,000% increase in rides for students eligible for transportation under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act since 2020. Our recently released 2025 State of School Transportation Report found that 55% of school administrators are concerned about their school or district’s ability to provide reliable transportation for students experiencing homelessness, and nearly half expect specialized transportation needs for students to continue to increase over the next five years.
When we polled webinar participants about whether students experiencing homelessness present unique challenges for their transportation teams, the response was overwhelming: 83% confirmed they’re dealing with this challenge right now.
Finding and Serving Students Experiencing Homelessness
In recognition of the widespread nature of this issue, Duffield walked through the McKinney-Vento Act to paint a full picture of what districts are legally required to do for students experiencing unstable housing situations. The law, which has been in effect since 1987, aims to remove barriers to education that housing instability creates. It applies to all school districts — whether they get McKinney-Vento funding or not.
As Duffield explained, the centerpiece of the legislation is the ability for students to stay in their school of origin “to make school that oasis of stability when everything else in a child’s life is upside down and when they’re in turmoil.”
A few important things were noted about identifying students who may qualify for McKinney-Vento transportation:
It is crucial to understand which students qualify for McKinney-Vento transportation, as this population is largely invisible. According to school-provided data, 75% of students experiencing homelessness are temporarily staying with others. These “doubled-up” living situations are often hidden, making it difficult for districts and schools to identify these students and provide necessary services and support.
The broad federal definition of youth experiencing homelessness includes any child without a consistent, fixed, and adequate nighttime residence. While some students live in shelters or transitional housing, these resources are often unavailable or at capacity in many communities. Other youth experiencing homelessness live in hotels and motels. Unfortunately, the number of unsheltered individuals — though still a minority — is increasing.
This includes displacement, like natural disasters. McFarland cited a recent relevant example: the displacement of thousands of Los Angeles families due to the wildfires that occurred in January of 2025. A significant number of these families were eligible for McKinney-Vento transportation, yet many were unaware of this crucial fact.
Transportation Is Critical to Supporting Attendance
In all of the situations outlined above, reliable transportation is crucial to supporting consistent attendance for students experiencing homelessness. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act includes three specific requirements for districts:
School of origin transportation: To maintain educational stability, transportation to and from a student’s original school must be provided for the entire time students are without stable housing — and through the end of the academic year when they obtain permanent housing.
Comparable transportation: The same services other students are receiving must be provided to students experiencing homelessness.
Barrier removal: Any transportation obstacles to attending classes or participating fully in school activities, including extracurriculars, must be addressed.
McKinney-Vento Program Funding Remains Intact
Given current concerns about federal funding, Duffield reassured attendees that McKinney-Vento is a bipartisan piece of legislation with strong support. Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have voted to protect and preserve the McKinney-Vento program, keeping it intact as a distinct program funded at current levels.
Chronic Absenteeism Disproportionately Affects Students Experiencing Homelessness
Moving beyond how the McKinney-Vento Act works, there’s another issue directly connected to student homelessness and transportation that many schools are grappling with: chronic absenteeism. When we polled webinar participants about chronic absenteeism, 87% said it’s a major problem in their district. Data shows that students experiencing homelessness have much higher chronic absenteeism rates than other populations, including economically disadvantaged students. Duffield emphasized that this outcome is not insurmountable.
“We do know from our work with school districts across the country that there are school districts where the attendance rate of homeless students meets or exceeds other students. So it’s a problem we can do something about, and transportation is a critical part of that solution.”
—Barbara Duffield, Executive Director, SchoolHouse Connection
Traditional Transportation Systems Can’t Keep Pace
The logistical and financial complexities of serving a highly mobile student population often exceed the capabilities of conventional bus routes and schedules. McFarland discussed what she’s been hearing from school districts about the challenges involved in arranging transportation for students experiencing homelessness. Some of the many reasons touched on about why getting these students to school is anything but simple include:
These students are constantly moving: Their addresses can change with little or no notice as their housing situations change. Schools are constantly trying to keep up, but they often don’t even know when a student has moved.
Complicated transportation logistics: School districts are grappling with bus driver shortages, complex routing scenarios, and budget constraints. Students experiencing homelessness have highly individualized transportation needs, which places a huge burden on school transportation teams.
Buses aren’t set up to manage school of origin requirements. While educational stability is the goal, temporary housing may be miles away from a student’s school of origin, sometimes in another district. It’s difficult for traditional school bus routes to adapt to handle these long one-off trips.
Parents can’t always fill the transportation gap. When schools can’t fulfill student transportation needs, the burden of getting kids to school often shifts to families — but families experiencing housing instability may not have access to a personal vehicle. Public transportation may not be viable given multiple transfers or long commutes, and it also may be unsafe for students to navigate alone.
Some districts try creating “McKinney-Vento routes” that collect all homeless students district-wide, but this approach can backfire. Kids may end up having to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and spend two hours on a bus. While this technically counts as “providing transportation,” excessively early and/or long commutes may actually cause kids not to show up.
“Sometimes transportation can exacerbate chronic absenteeism because it takes time to catch up to a student’s address. Many times with bus routes, it can take up to a week to get a route set up for a student. By the time that route is set up, that student may have moved again and that might mean that student is not in school for a week while they’re waiting for that transportation to be set up.”
—Joanna McFarland, Co-Founder and CEO, HopSkipDrive
Solutions Tailored to McKinney-Vento Needs
Traditional school bus routes, designed for fixed schedules and locations, often fall short of meeting the unique and unpredictable transportation needs of students experiencing homelessness. Supplemental transportation solutions are specifically designed to address these challenges, offering the flexibility and responsiveness required to ensure a stable education for every student.
McFarland outlined how supplemental transportation can help districts meet every student’s needs, and why it is especially effective for vulnerable students:
Flexibility is key. Highly mobile students need transportation that moves with them. Supplemental school transportation complements existing transportation options, filling in gaps and enabling districts to accommodate last-minute route changes. If a student moves late at night, they can still have a ride to school the next day. HopSkipDrive can even handle multiple address changes in a single day.
Small vehicles make more sense. School bus routes with only four or five kids aren’t an efficient use of a 72-passenger vehicle. Supplemental transportation lets districts pay for what they actually need rather than sending out buses that are half empty.
Communication supported by technology helps everyone. Real-time updates shared via an app or text message prevent no-shows caused by miscommunication about address changes. When parents can easily report address changes, it saves districts money by ensuring they are not sending vehicles to the wrong location — and gets students who have relocated back to school faster.
McKinney-Vento School District Success Stories
School districts working with HopSkipDrive are successfully addressing the unique transportation challenges faced by students experiencing homelessness. McFarland highlighted how, by adopting flexible and innovative transportation solutions, these districts are not only improving attendance but also significantly impacting student well-being and academic success. Each district found different ways to make HopSkipDrive’s supplemental transportation and/or RouteWise AI™ offerings work for their specific situation.
Detroit Public Schools Community District was seeing increased McKinney-Vento transportation needs and chronic absenteeism for vulnerable student populations. They expanded beyond their existing bus fleet to incorporate small vehicles and other alternative transportation modes. Using this approach and other tools in their toolkit, the district saw chronic absenteeism drop 14 percentage points between 2021–2022 and 2023–2024 — a huge reduction at a time when many districts are seeing numbers go in the opposite direction.
Riverside County Office of Education’s Alternative Education Community School Program supports middle and high school students who have been expelled from their home districts. Students typically stay in the program for about 50 days — but they don’t always have guaranteed busing for the program, which creates a transportation barrier. After partnering with HopSkipDrive to improve attendance, rates for students in foster care enrolled in this program went from 29% to almost 79%.
Denver Public Schools faced increased McKinney-Vento enrollment, school closures, and budget cuts. The district used RouteWise AI™ — HopSkipDrive’s student transportation intelligence platform — to rethink their routes and optimize for buses and small vehicles. Matching each student with the best-fit vehicle enabled the district to better respond to new student identification and McKinney-Vento transportation needs during the school year.
Moving Forward With McKinney-Vento Transportation
As our recent webinar illustrates, districts have more power than they might think to solve transportation challenges for students experiencing homelessness. The solution isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach; it’s about building a flexible, responsive system that meets the unique needs of every student, ensuring they never have to choose between a stable ride and a quality education.
As McFarland noted, districts that implement flexible solutions often discover they’ve optimized their entire transportation system in the process. Rather than serving vulnerable populations in isolation, the goal is creating systems that work better for everyone.
Interested in exploring how HopSkipDrive can help support McKinney-Vento transportation for students in your district?
