An advocacy group that counts the growing number of homeless students in New York City every year released a new brief Monday underscoring a need for more support for these 154,000 children in local schools.
The report from Advocates for Children of New York found that 63% of students living in shelters are chronically absent, and 1 in 5 are forced to transfer schools — disrupting their education mid-school year. Just one-third of all homeless students — in shelters or other forms of temporary housing — score proficient on their reading exams, widening an achievement gap with students in stable housing.
The findings, advocates say, demonstrate the need for Gov. Hochul and the Legislature to pony up more funding for students who are homeless in the upcoming state budget, which was due last Wednesday but is still being negotiated.
“It is long past time for the state to update its education funding formula to recognize the significant needs of students who are homeless,” Maria Odom, executive director of Advocates for Children, said in a statement.
“As Gov. Hochul and the Legislature negotiate a final budget, they must ensure that the Foundation Aid formula does not continue to shortchange districts like New York City that have high rates of student homelessness.”
Foundation Aid, the state’s primary formula for funding public schools, distributes aid based on student need and other factors. The city’s school system receives regular increases through that formula, including a 3.5% boost next year included in the governor’s draft budget released in January.
But Foundation Aid as it’s currently written has no weights for homeless students, who advocates say require more funding, on top of that provided for the average student living in poverty. And the city is already on track to receive a smaller increase than expected after changes made to the formula last year turned out to be bad news for local schools.
Halimatu Dukuray, a mom of three sons living in a Bronx shelter, knows how difficult it can be to get her children to school.
Before a recent transfer, her family was first placed in a Brooklyn shelter, from which her two school-aged kids had to travel two hours and across boroughs to get to the classroom. The older of the pair once fell asleep on the subway, waking up at the end of the line. The youngest, a teenager, had two hip surgeries and fell during a bad-weather day.
“Sometimes, if outside’s very cold or there’s snow outside, he’s not able to go to school,” Dukuray said. “If we are close to the school, that made them easy to go to the school.”
“The only thing I want is a permanent place to live, me and my children. To live our life.”
About 18% of families in the city’s shelters are not placed in the borough of their youngest child’s school, according to city data.
Both the state Senate and Assembly have proposed adding a weight for students in temporary housing in their one-house budgets; plans city Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels has publicly backed in recent budget hearings. The Daily News reported last week the head of the upper house’s New York City Education Committee, state Sen. John Liu (D-Queens), expected some version of the proposal to be included in the final state budget.
The Assembly’s plan, in particular, would funnel $486 million into local schools, according to an analysis by the city’s Independent Budget Office. A similar proposal in the Senate, which suggested a smaller weight, would send an estimated $93 million to the city.
Any changes to Foundation Aid must also be negotiated with Hochul, who did not push for education funding reforms in her January plan. Pressed on further improvements, the governor, the first to fully fund the formula, frequently points to her record on education funding, including a $2.2 billion increase in Foundation Aid for the city since she took office.
Meanwhile, in some ways, the problem of homeless students not receiving a quality education is growing worse.
The share of students living in shelters who transferred schools mid-year was 1.5% higher in 2024-25 than it was the previous year, even while the rate for students with stable housing stayed the same, according to the report.
On both English and math exams, the proficiency rates of students living in shelters were less than half those of their classmates. The results were an improvement compared with their test scores the prior school year. But because all proficiency rates went up, the reading gap between students who were and were not homeless actually grew larger, from 24 to 27 percentage points.
There was no progress in closing the 26-point achievement gap in math, either, the data showed.
“The Mamdani administration is expanding outreach programs we know work,” Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the mayor said in a statement. “We must ensure every young New Yorker has a real chance to succeed.”
“We will work to tackle those longstanding issues head-on,” Samuels said in a statement.
“As chancellor, I have made my position clear — I strongly support an additional weight to the Foundation Aid formula specifically for students in temporary housing and foster care, as well as increased weights for our multilingual learners and students with disabilities. I commend our partners at Advocates for Children for supporting these asks.”