Chicago Public Schools has overhauled its policy for students experiencing homelessness and youth without legal guardians, aiming to strip away bureaucratic hurdles that have long kept vulnerable kids out of classrooms. The changes, approved unanimously by the Chicago Board of Education, let students without a parent or legal guardian enroll themselves in school and eliminate the requirement for parent signatures on both self-enrollment and transportation consent forms.
District officials said the revisions are meant to make CPS more proactive in providing assistance, rather than simply reacting to families once they show up in crisis, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The updated policy also broadens who qualifies for support, now explicitly covering children and youth lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, students living in motels, emergency shelters, garages, or cars, and migratory children living in qualifying situations. Simone Moseley said the revision seeks consistency and equity so that care and resources are not dictated by zip code.
Under the district's Students in Temporary Living Situations program, families and youth who identify as homeless must be enrolled the same day they present themselves at the school zoned for where they are staying, per the policy update dated August 27. The federal McKinney-Vento law guarantees immediate enrollment for students experiencing homelessness, and the updated CPS policy also swaps out the word “homeless” in many instances, reflecting language advocates say reduces stigma.
Private Spaces and Dedicated School Advocates
Schools must now dedicate private spaces where students can seek help, a shift Moseley said allows families to share details of their circumstances with dignity. The district will also fund dedicated advocate positions at schools with 75 or more students in temporary living situations, with those roles responsible for case management and intensive support. The latest agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union outlines the responsibilities of those dedicated advocate positions, and the union contract also aligns a stipend provision for school liaisons, who will receive additional pay based on how many homeless students are enrolled at their schools under the new policy.
Those liaisons coordinate resources for students experiencing homelessness, and the updated policy makes it easier for students in temporary living situations to identify school contacts for help. Once enrolled, students in unstable housing situations have access to technology devices, fee waivers, transportation priority, and extracurricular activities. The Chicago Teachers Union pushed for many of these staffing commitments during 2024 contract negotiations, when it demanded dedicated resources for up to 15,000 unhoused students, according to reporting from The Nation.
A Crisis Larger Than Shelter Counts Show
Moseley said more CPS students were living in shelters than ever before due to an influx of migrant families, even as the district's overall homelessness numbers have shifted. CPS students living in shelters, cars, parks, and motels reached more than 8,400 at the peak in 2024 before decreasing to around 2,300 more recently. CPS had at least 22,000 students experiencing homelessness during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness, and the district's homelessness rate of 6.8% that year exceeded the national rate of 3.2% reported by the National Center for Homeless Education for 2023-24 by more than double.
That gap exists partly because federal law defines homelessness far more broadly than shelter or street counts suggest. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act includes children in “doubled-up” living arrangements with friends or family, a category that accounts for roughly 76% of unhoused public school students nationwide, according to The Fulcrum. That broader definition helps explain why CPS's counts, which grew from 17,773 identified students in 2021-2022 to 26,800 by 2023-2024 according to Cornerstone Community Outreach, dwarf point-in-time shelter tallies used elsewhere.
Building on Three Decades of Policy Fights
CPS first adopted a standalone policy on educating homeless children in 1996 and previously updated it in 2016 following advocacy from the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness, which pushed this latest revision as well. Under the Illinois Education for Homeless Children Act, districts must immediately enroll homeless children even without medical or academic records, and regional superintendents must appoint impartial ombudspersons to resolve enrollment or transportation disputes. Advocates also urged CPS to align its updated policy with Illinois House Bill 5407, ensuring charter schools within the district waive fees for STLS students under the same rules applied to traditional CPS campuses.
The policy shift follows Mayor Brandon Johnson's 2023 mayoral transition team report, which urged CPS and City Hall to coordinate support helping roughly 20,000 homeless students secure stable housing. Nationally, more than 1.2 million K-12 public school students experience homelessness each year, facing markedly higher rates of chronic absenteeism and lower graduation rates than their housed peers. Whether Chicago's procedural changes translate into steadier attendance and academic outcomes will likely depend on funding and staffing capacity at individual schools going forward.
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