DOE gets deadline to track homeless

The Feb. 19 order comes about a week after Gillmor sided with three homeless families who sued the state for allegedly failing to provide them an adequate education under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987.

The act, which gives Hawaiʻi about $200,000 a year in federal grants for homeless programs, mandates schools to offer transportation for homeless students and allows children whose families are displaced by homelessness to enroll in the campus they were attending before, even if they move outside the district.

Olive Kaleuati, one of the plaintiffs in the class-action suit, has said she was forced to pull her two sons from Leihoku Elementary after moving to a shelter by Kamaile Elementary in Waiʻanae. Kaleuati said she was not aware she could have kept her sons at Leihoku, and education officials acknowledged in court they do not ask families if they are homeless to avoid “stigmatizing” children.

But in expecting families to voluntarily tell schools they are homeless, the Education Department is essentially “ignoring” them, said Lawyers for Equal Justice attorney William Durham, who filed the suit with the American Civil Liberties Union.

“You have to at least ask them if you are going to identify them,” he said yesterday. “As these families are identified, the department will no longer be able to routinely deny homeless children these services by claiming that they are ignorant as to their whereabouts.”