According to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, homeless youth are defined as “individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” Within WHS alone, there are currently six homeless students.

“The homeless situation has increased since I began as a counselor here,” guidance counselor Katie Sandoval said.

Despite the heightened presence of homelessness, each homeless student comes with their own story.

“All situations of homelessness break my heart,” guidance counselor Kelly Richard said. “Natural disasters, unemployment, troubles within families…my job is just to help them continue their education regardless of what is going on.”

The first step to helping homeless students is establishing their needs.

“Once we figure out that a student is homeless–whether it’s because of a new enrollment or we learn a student is no longer living at home–we call the student in to see what they need,” Sandoval said. “From there we will call in the school’s social workers, Anthony James or Lindsey Jasper. They can help them with receiving food stamps, health insurance and making sure that they have an adequate place to stay.”

Jasper started working as a social worker for the School District of Washington four years ago. Since then, she has helped students with issues ranging from a bad day to hunger from lack of food on a regular basis. To accommodate for the growing needs of homeless students, she has worked with Washington to develop several programs.

“The Backpack Program started my first year here,” Jasper said. “We realized that there were a lot of kids that came to school on Monday morning hungry. They came to school not having dinner the night before or breakfast that day and were expected to focus on their schoolwork.”

While the School District of Washington provides qualifying students with free and reduced breakfasts and lunches during the week, the backpacks are a way to subtly supply students in need of food with meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner over the weekend.

“This year alone we have given out 1,747 bags of food,” Jasper said. “We are hundreds of bags over from where we were last year.”

The district offers many other resources to allow homeless students to continue their education in school. Among those is a way to get there.

“The homeless coordinator, assistant superintendent Dr. Judy Straatman, and her secretary Chris Marquart help to provide transportation for homeless students who are staying with friends or relatives residing outside of the district to get to school,” Jasper said.

As a community, many other resources are available to those coping with homelessness.

“Due to tax dollars in Franklin County, we have a lot of free resources that our taxes have paid for already. There’s free counseling, substance treatment, hygienic products…” Jasper said.

Services are also offered to allow homeless students to pursue college as an option.

“If you’re a senior, you can apply for college and mark that you are homeless if you meet the government’s definition,” Jasper said. “That opens up a lot of different resources and assistance for college.”

For easy access to these resources and guidance along the way, the student must share his or her situation with a WHS faculty member.

“Sometimes kids are really scared to come and tell somebody,” Jasper said. “There could be a lot of reasons why they should be scared.”

Regardless of the reasoning behind the anxiety, Sandoval advises that the student make the school aware.

“If somebody is struggling with a situation, are no longer staying at home and are having to stay somewhere else, seek some support,” Sandoval said. “Whether it’s from a school-based social worker, counselor or administrator, there are some things that could be put in place to help and people around that know how to do that. You don’t have to go through this alone.”