 Forty-eight charter schools and the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) stand to lose nearly $3 million in support for the thousands of students and their families who experience homelessness during the school year. HopePHL's school-based programs, such as Thrive, depend on these critical funds to provide the best support to students.
These funds were provided by the American Rescue Plan (ARP) via Pennsylvania’s ‘Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness’ (ECYEH) program. The ECYEH program is the only federal education program that removes barriers to enrollment, attendance, and reduces truancy caused by homelessness. The schools used this money to expand their capacity to provide staffing, train school personnel, and provide direct services like short-term housing support, uniforms, transportation, motel stays, summer programming, school supplies, and more. WHAT ADVOCATES ARE ASKING FOR: Advocates are asking Mayor Parker and the Philadelphia City Council Assembly for $3 million in General Funds to continue much of the expanded support for students experiencing homelessness. We are meeting with City Council and members of the Parker Administration to convince them of this needed support. ACTION ALERT: Contact the Mayor and City Council and ask them to “Fund homeless education by investing $3 million.” Contact Mayor Parker: Mayor’s correspondence form | Office of the Mayor | City of Philadelphia Contact City Council: Use their websites to send your message: Council Members - Philadelphia City Council (phlcouncil.com) Learn more about our school-based programs here
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 A family’s homelessness can be prolonged for longer periods of time by a lack of childcare.
HopePHL’s Building Early Links for Learning (BELL) project works to help parents and homeless housing provider agencies find high-quality childcare, navigate through applications, and much more. However, the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the number of available early learning programs. Numerous efforts at the national, state, and local level are working to get the early learning system back to pre-COVID levels, but long-term systemic problems like low staff wages, inadequate number of subsidies, and a lack of infant/toddler childcare hinder the system’s recovery. The Federal Reserve’s Early Care and Education Work Group has produced a series of reports on the status of childcare as it relates to its mission of sustainable employment. This paper is a summary of its most recent report, which can be found here. Who should read this paper: HopePHL is summarizing the report for the homeless housing system, other human service systems and policy makers because the availability of childcare affects all industries. In addition, there are numerous advisory councils and coalitions preparing early childhood education (ECE) policy work to offer to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania General Assembly, Philadelphia’s future Mayor, and current and future City Council members. Information in this paper serves to add to the body of knowledge about ECE to a non-ECE audience.
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