The number of homeless public school students in New York City reached an all-time high of 119,320 last school year, according to new data released Wednesday, as migrants crossing the southern border continued to flock to the city.
Since last summer alone, more than 30,000 new students in temporary housing have enrolled in city schools, including some 12,000 in the last five months who were not reflected in the data.
The statistics — which include children in shelters, hotels, relatives’ homes and other transient places — illuminate the challenges for Mayor Eric Adams’s administration in handling the rise in homeless students. They are uniquely vulnerable, dropping out at steep rates and often missing school. New York City’s homeless student population is now larger than the entire traditional public school system of Philadelphia.
As the system’s overall enrollment shrinks, the rise in homelessness among children means the issue has touched more schools. Now, about 1 in 9 New York City students are homeless. Some areas of the city have been especially hard hit, however. In one section of the Bronx, more than 22 percent of students were homeless.
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