In West Texas, two towns are separated by 70 miles of sand and scrub trees. However, that’s not all that sets them apart. One has a school district with over 2000 students; the other’s district has only 700. During the same school year, the larger district was able to identify only one student that met the McKinney-Vento criteria for homelessness; the smaller district identified 23. By the end of the school year, the larger district had spent none of their Title I set-aside money; the smaller district had not only spent all their Title 1 funds, they had to amend their application and increase their set-aside amount by $500. Their homeless student population had so many needs that the smaller school exhausted their funds before everyone’s needs were met. While demographics might account for some of the differences between these two districts and how they utilized their available resources, one undeniable factor is that the smaller of the two has Ken Baugh as their homeless liaison.

Mr. Baugh, who also serves as Director of Special Services at Hawley ISD (HISD), is the first to admit that he wasn’t looking for more responsibilities when he was asked to identify and serve the local homeless student population. Nevertheless, he willingly added the new duties to his already full plate. Ken’s philosophy has always been that when you take on a job, do it right. Consequently, he began learning all he could about his new post and the challenges he would face. He attended training seminars at the Region 14 Education Service Center. He read articles and laws relating to homelessness and discovered that the definition of homeless includes students who are doubled up with other family members for economic reasons. Ken knew that several HISD students were living under these conditions, so he visited the THEO website where he found PowerPoint presentations that explain the McKinney-Vento Act and outline the responsibilities each school district has to uphold its mandates. At a staff in-service meeting, Ken used the PowerPoint material to inform teachers of what he’d discovered. Soon after, the reality of the community’s homeless situation began to take shape: several students were living with their grandmother because their mom was in prison and their dad lived in another state; another student was living with a former step-parent because there was no place else to go; an unaccompanied youth with no guardians in the district needed to be enrolled but had a reputation as a trouble-maker. Ken quickly became an advocate for the student, who was enrolled the next day. Another case involved a single mother with three young children who was doubled-up with another family. When she needed antibiotics for two of her children, Ken worked with a local community agency to get the prescription filled until the paperwork for Medicaid could be completed. Such interventions fell within Ken’s job description but also consumed large amounts of time. To make his liaison duties more manageable and to involve the school community in identifying and serving their homeless students, Ken made certain that school secretaries, child nutritionists, and the transportation staff were aware of the rights of students enduring homelessness.

One day Ken received distressing news from a teacher about yet another homeless family. The night before, a family of six (dad, stepmother, and four children) had lost their home and all of their possessions in a fire. The situation was made even more tragic by the fact that the children’s mother and a sibling had been previously killed in a fire. Ken alerted the school community, and a fund was immediately set up. Teachers and staff members donated money to purchase clothes and necessities for the children, and the school district dipped into their Title I funds for school supplies. Ken himself took the school-aged children shopping to purchase the items. The next morning, he drove to a nearby community where the family was staying and transported the students back to the school of origin. The arrangement continued for several weeks before Ken was able to arrange for the students to ride to and from school with a district employee who lived in the same community as the family. Ken continued to check with the school counselor to see how the students were doing emotionally, and he encouraged teachers to let him know if additional tutoring was needed to help the students keep up with their assignments. Ken’s professional responsibilities didn’t provide time for the efforts he made, but he made time anyway. “If you do this job right, you can’t help but feel an emotional tie to these homeless students,” he says. “They do not choose their circumstances, but they have to try to succeed in spite of them. The school can be a fortress and a place of safety for them. We can’t let them down.”

Any school district looking for the right person to fill their homeless liaison position would be very fortunate indeed to find one as committed as Ken Baugh of Hawley ISD.