By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer

The Osceola County School District once again received a grant to help homeless students have access to a quality education.

The 2010-11 grant is for $100,000 and is part of a three year grant project period that began in July 2009 and ends June 30, 2012.

Meredith Griffin, the Families in Transition director and liaison between homeless students and the School District, said the number of students in transition, temporarily living in a motel or hotel, living with relatives or in a shelter, campground, car or abandoned building, continues to grow.

In December, Griffin counted 1,161 transitional students; on Jan. 27, the number was 1,246.

The largest population of homeless students live in hotels and motels along U.S. Highway 192, so many that the district now has 61 school bus stops along the corridor to transport the students to and from school.

“It’s not a crime to be homeless,” Griffin said. “Just because you live in a hotel doesn’t mean you’re a neglectful parent.”

Annual funding from the Education of Homeless Children and Youth Project grant depends upon what the money is used for and the amount of funding the district receives from the state.

According to the grant, Griffin must use it for direct school-related expenses, including backpacks, school supplies, after-school tutors and uniforms. But she also uses the grant funding to help these students have access to field trips, caps and gowns for graduation, prom dresses and speciality shoes, such as cleats.

Those expenses considered non-school-related, such as sports shoes, are often just as important as the other expenses, Griffin said, as she spoke of a talented track athlete whose mother could not afford speciality running shoes due to their transition status.

Griffin also provides the students with emotional and mental health services and aims to eliminate enrollment delays, reduce absenteeism and increase student achievement of these students. These services directly help Osceola County students in pre-kindergarten to 12th grade.

Although the grant cannot be used for them, Griffin also tries to help what she calls her “invisible kids,” or children, from newborns to age 5, who are not yet in the school system.

“Those kids are invisible until a sibling brings them to my attention,” Griffin said.

For more information on the Families in Transition program, call 407-870-4983.