McKinney-Vento

Homeless McKinney-Vento

The McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program is to ensure that all homeless children and youth have equal access to the same free, appropriate public education available to other children and to help them graduate ready for careers, college, and community.

A group of young students in a classroom, attentively looking to the side while seated at their desks.

About our McKinney-Vento Program:

The McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program and Title I Part A provide students experiencing homelessness with protection and services to ensure they can enroll in and attend school, complete their high school education, and continue on to higher education – their best hope of avoiding poverty and homelessness as adults. The “Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015,” strengthens and improves these programs and the education of over 1.3 million children and youth experiencing homelessness, from early childhood through high school graduation.

Who Qualifies for the McKinney-Vento Program:

The law defines a homeless student or youth as any of the following:

  • A child or youth without a fixed, regular, and adequate residence

  • Living with a friend, relative, or someone else becuase they lost their home or can’t afford a home

  • Staying in a hotel or motel

  • Living in an emergency or transitional shelter or a domestic violence shelter

  • Staying in substandard housing

  • Living in a car, park, public place, abandoned building or bus or train station

  • Living in a campground or an inadequate trailer home

  • Abandoned in a hospital; or living in a runaway or homeless youth shelter