Schools in Prince George’s County were among those where students experiencing homelessness struggled to access resources they are entitled to, according to Maryland State Department of Education records for the 2022-2023 school year.
Tyrone Turner / DCist/WAMU
This article first appeared on Center for Public Integrity and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
A federal law promises to provide homeless children with equal access to education, but it’s up to schools to see that through. In Maryland, some school personnel doubted families’ claims of homelessness, according to summaries of disputes from the 2022-2023 school year disclosed to the Center for Public Integrity by the state’s education agency.
The disputes arose in a few Maryland school districts where advocates previously argued that the federal law, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act,, was not being followed.
In the 2000s, the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center filed several lawsuits challenging how some of the state’s largest school systems — including Prince George’s County and Baltimore County — implemented the federal law. The cases ended with a series of settlements where the school districts committed to reforms designed to improve services for homeless students.
Debra Gardner, the legal director of the Public Justice Center, said the new Maryland dispute records, though limited, suggest state personnel “appear to be very knowledgeable and very timely in dealing with these...
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