ABSTRACT
The challenges faced by school districts concerning homeless students include how best to serve the students’ according to their needs as the homeless student population continues to grow. For this reason, many homeless students do not receive the resources and opportunities available to them, resulting in poor academic achievement. As an unaccompanied youth, Camila was eligible to receive the maximum amount allowed by the federal Pell Grant, as well as many financial need-based scholarships. The experiences and challenges of the homeless students were quite similar. One of the biggest challenges that counselors face, in regard to homeless students, is the fact that the students' situations may be inadvertently unknown. Each school district has regulations and policies regarding homeless students. As soon as Camila's counselor was aware of her housing situation, she contacted the liaison for homeless students, who was able to provide services for the sisters to make sure they could finish school and realize their goals of attending college.
