Joletta Edwards knows firsthand that school staff don’t always know what homeless students need.
She recalls the moment when a staffer came into her son’s classroom, introduced herself as the caseworker in charge of the homeless and highly mobile program, and asked for her son by name — in front of all his classmates.
“The next call I got was them trying to get him to come out of the bathroom because he was in there crying, because the lady set his business out like that,” Edwards said.
Over the past two years, Edwards and other parents who have experienced homelessness in Minneapolis Public Schools have banded together to form a parent advisory council. They provide input to the district on resources for homeless families and have created professional development training for staff. They’ve spoken at school board meetings, presented at conferences, and met with legislators.
For Edwards and her peers, the group has provided them with a sense of empowerment: by sharing their experiences, they can create change.
“I can do something,” Edwards recalls thinking as she joined the group. “Our voice can be heard.”
But now, they worry their work will lose momentum. As part of its budget-cutting process, Minneapolis Public Schools plans to split the department serving homeless and highly mobile students in two and eliminate the position of the director leading the department.
To Edwards and her peers in the parent advisory council, the cuts feel like an attempt to reduce the power they’ve built over the last two years.
“It’s like they’ve taken away our voice,” Edwards said.
More than 3,200 Minneapolis Public Schools students experienced homelessness at some point during the 2023-2024 school year, according to district data — nearly 10% of all students enrolled, and a 30% jump from the previous year. The number of homeless students in the district has doubled since 2021, when numbers reached a 10-year low during the COVID eviction moratorium.
Federal law requires schools to provide support to students experiencing homelessness, but that level of support can vary from one district to another. Minneapolis Public Schools has developed several innovative programs to support these students.
The Stable Homes Stable Schools initiative, a partnership between the city of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, and Minneapolis Public Schools, provides short-term rental assistance to the families of elementary students experiencing homelessness. The parent advisory council for homeless and highly mobile students is believed to be the only one of its kind in Minnesota.
Now, parents fear that restructuring the department will undermine that innovative work and make future progress more difficult.
In a statement, the district said that these changes would have minimal impact on students and families.
“MPS is prioritizing direct services to students and families,” the statement said. “While there will be organizational structure changes, this should not have any impact on the services to students and families.”
The district also said it did not anticipate any changes to the work of the parent advisory council, including its professional development sessions for staff.
But the parents on the council are skeptical.
“We are like a wolf pack,” said John Vang, one of the parents in the group. “Once you take away the alpha, everything becomes disorganized.”
‘She cannot be replaced’
The parents credit Charlotte Kinzley, the district’s director of homeless and highly mobile student support services, for inviting parents who had experienced homelessness to a meeting in 2023 and creating a parent advisory council.
Since then, they’ve formed a community — and found their voices.
“It’s because of Charlotte,” Edwards said. “She got me so motivated, it’s crazy.”
“The motivation and the ability to see that I am somebody and that my voice matters has been a true lesson that I could give to really Charlotte,” said Dominique Buffett, another parent in the group.
But under the budget changes, Kinzley will lose her position. The person who replaces her will be a manager, not a director. And the Stable Homes Stable Schools program will become a standalone department, which parents worry could lead to less coordination with other homelessness services.
A counseling position will become half-time instead of full-time. And programming weeks will be reduced; each employee has had their staff time reduced by two weeks.
Kinzley told Sahan Journal she did not understand the changes. “I’m really disappointed to not get to continue to do this work,” she said.
The changes to the department serving homeless and highly mobile services come as Minneapolis Public Schools faces a $75 million budget deficit, out of a total operating budget of nearly $800 million. Overall, the district plans to cut staffing by about 400 full-time positions.
At an April 22 school board meeting, Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams explained that the district had attempted to focus cuts on administrative positions, eliminating about 14% of positions at the central office. She stressed that the cuts came out of necessity and were not a reflection on any person’s value.
Though the district said it did not anticipate “significant changes to the programming offered to students or families,” it acknowledged there might be some changes.
“Work that has previously been done centrally may need to shift to building-based staff,” the statement said. For example, school staff may now be responsible for reviewing credits and transcripts for students receiving homeless and highly mobile services.
Overall, these changes will save the district about $72,000 — about 5% of the departments’ combined $1.5 million budget. The district said cuts in this area were aimed to make up for the loss of $100,000 in federal COVID relief funding, which expired last year.
But parents said they did not understand how cutting Kinzley’s director position and replacing her role with a slightly lower-paid manager could help with the budget.
“She cannot be replaced,” Edwards said. “Not even at a higher salary.”
Minneapolis Public Schools declined to specify how much money it would save by downgrading the director role to a manager. However, it said the decision to switch to a manager position was “not solely financial.”
“MPS is moving closer to standardizing departments hence the decision to consolidate some positions, adjust titles, etc. This work happens in partnership with collective bargaining groups,” the district said. “Schools utilize predictable staffing as a model based on a school’s size. MPS is working towards an administrative version of predictable staffing.”
Sharing experiences, creating resources
Under Kinzley’s leadership, the group has created resources for parents experiencing homelessness and developed training sessions for staff.
Though the federal McKinney-Vento Act requires schools to provide services to homeless students, parents aren’t always aware of their rights under the law — and schools are not always aware when families become homeless.
Vang, who lost his home in the 2011 north Minneapolis tornado, said he joined the council because he had not known his rights under the law.
“I didn’t have any way to access the McKinney-Vento Act. I didn’t understand that there was the McKinney-Vento Act,” he recalled. “My wife and I had to navigate through all this ourselves.”
Edwards expressed similar sentiments. “I didn’t know any of that,” she said. “I didn’t know that they had any programs or anything. I had no help at all. It was extremely tiring, taking my kids to school, going to the doctor, going to the county and then trying to make it back to the shelter before dinner time. And there was never dinner saved.”
The McKinney-Vento Act allows students to stay in their same school, even if they are staying outside the area, and provides transportation to get them there — including a taxi or Uber if needed. But before they knew they had the right to these services, several parents in the group described hours-long bus rides on top of all the other stress that accompanies homelessness.
Some members of the group have compiled resource lists so parents can know what is available to them. Kinzley said the group had become a key “sounding board” for her, helping set priorities for the homelessness and highly mobile department. “I didn’t realize how much I needed it until it existed,” she said.
The group has reviewed enrollment questionnaires to better track homelessness and edit websites to make information more accessible to families.
And they’ve also started professional development sessions for staff. Their ultimate goal is an all-day mandatory professional development session for all staff. So far, they’ve held a few shorter sessions for smaller groups of staff. In those trainings, they describe the shame and stigma that comes with homelessness, and explain the signs school staff should look for.
“With our stories, we’re able to express different angles, different outlooks, different perspectives from what we’ve struggled through, to help all of our staff see and be more understanding,” Buffett said. “Nobody can be 100% perfect in this area, but I do believe that we can come to a better understanding and better place mentally and emotionally for our students.”
Buffett had a child whose grades slid from A’s to F’s once the family lost their housing. It can be difficult for children to share with school staff what’s going on at home, she said.
“I just want staff to know there are signs to look out for for homelessness,” Buffett said.
Another key issue the parents cover during professional development: treating children with discretion and dignity. Several parents shared similar stories to Edwards, in which school staff outed students’ homelessness status to their peers.
Edwards recalled another occasion, when she was late bringing her daughter to school because of an issue with a bus from a shelter. The teacher did not allow her daughter to eat her breakfast.
“She took my daughter’s cereal and told her that time for food was over. And then she opened the cereal at her desk and proceeded to toss them back like sunflower seeds or popcorn after she took it from my child,” Edwards said. “So my child was not able to eat, but the teacher ate it.”
‘Warmth and curiosity’
Kara Lattu, a school social worker at Washburn High School who attended one of the professional development sessions, told Sahan Journal in March that she was excited to hear from parents who were willing to educate her on their experiences with homelessness. A theme of compassion stood out to her, she said, noting that some of the parents had shared stories about feeling harmed by school staff.
“It’s a good reminder of how powerful even a small interaction can be for helping someone feel welcome and included in your community,” she said.
Allison Young, a school counselor at Andersen United Middle School, also found it valuable to hear directly from caregivers. As part of her job, she checks on students who are chronically absent. In the professional development session, she heard how much of a difference it made when staff called with “warmth and curiosity” to ask why a student wasn’t at school, and see if there was anything they could do to help — instead of an accusatory, judgmental tone.
She also learned that it’s better to ask direct questions.
“Prior to this panel, in some ways, I shied away from being really explicit about asking questions related to homelessness and asking questions like, do you need this resource? Do you have food at home?” Young said. “And the majority of the caregivers said they appreciated having a direct conversation about it.”
Lattu could see how much it meant for these parents to find their voice and community. She hoped these parents would continue being a voice to lead Minneapolis Public Schools forward, she said.
Kinzley said she believed the parents would continue to do “really good work.”
“While I do see the role I played in bringing people together, all I did was set the table,” she said. Bringing the parents’ thoughts together and finding pathways for them requires some facilitation, she said. But the parents have by now become an established group.
“The power and beauty of the group exists in the members, and so that doesn’t have to change,” she said.
Not all the parents are convinced.
“I’m scared that it’s not going to look like that by the end of next year,” Edwards said. “I’m scared that we’re not going to accomplish as many things like PD [Professional Development] Day.”
Buffett, however, said she was still determined to make professional development happen. She spoke at her first school board meeting in January. Now she’s mulling a future run for school board.
“There’s going to be an all-day PD Day if my life depends on it,” she said. “I’m going to keep fighting, because of the drive that she’s put in.”
The school board will next review the budget in a May 13 meeting. They will vote on a final budget on June 10.
