154K NYC public school kids are homeless, grim data reveal
A record-high 154,000 public school students — nearly one in seven — were homeless across New York City during the last school year, grim new data revealed Monday.
The shocking figures compiled for the Advocates for Children of New York’s annual report come in the aftermath of the migrant crisis that began flooding city shelters and services in spring of 2022.
The unparalleled numbers, obtained from the New York State Education Department, marked an all-time high of homeless kids in the largest public school system in the country — but continued a decade-long trend.
“Every year for the past decade, more than 100,000 students in our public schools have been homeless,” said Jennifer Pringle, project director at Advocates for Children.
Of the 154,000 children without a home during the 2024-2025 school year, more than 65,000 were forced to spend at least one night in a Big Apple shelter and roughly 7,000 were living in motels, the report found.
If the total number of homeless city kids made up their own school district, it would be among one of the 20 largest in the country, the report said. There are about 900,000 students total in the city’s public school system.
“This year alone, we’ve worked with families whose children already missed an entire month of school because of the lack of coordination between the shelter and school systems,” Pringle said.
“There are now more students who are homeless in NYC than the entire Dallas public school system.”
The latest number of homeless schoolkids marked an increase of about 12,000 from the 2023-24 academic year, and a spike from the 119,320 students without a home tallied in 2022-23, according to previous reports.
The city has grappled with a massive influx of migrant families flooding the shelter system in recent years, but it wasn’t clear how many of the homeless children accounted for in the latest report are migrants.
A spokesperson for the city Department of Social Services said the record-high number of homeless students was at least partly attributable to the migrant crisis.
“We recognize that quality education is not a privilege but a right for every child in New York City, and we work diligently with our partners at NYC Public Schools and our shelter providers to, whenever possible, minimize disruptions that can negatively impact a child’s education,” a DSS-DHS rep said in a statement.
Roughly 67% of students living in the shelters were chronically absent from class, the Advocates for Children of New York report found.
More than half of all students in temporary housing and two out of three kids in shelters missed at least one out of every 10 school days, the data show.
Just 22% of students in grades 3 through 8 who were staying in shelters scored proficient on the New York State English Language Arts (ELA) and math exams, according to the report.
The overall rate of student homelessness rose, too, in every borough compared to the previous school year — with schools in the Bronx and Manhattan having the highest numbers, per the report.
In the wake of the grim findings, AFC’s executive director, Maria Odom, called on the next Big Apple mayor to make homeless public school students a priority.
“Education is key to breaking the cycle of homelessness, but our City is currently failing students in shelter,” she said.
“Ensuring students who are homeless receive the support they need to be successful in school must be a top priority for the next Mayor, who must lead a citywide, cross-agency effort to break down bureaucratic silos, reverse these alarming trends, and ensure students experiencing homelessness can get to school every day and receive the educational support they need to succeed.”
