Elmore: Supporting homeless students requires partnership, not shifting responsibility
Letter to the editor
Recent discussions surrounding homelessness and student support in Alachua County have sparked an important community conversation. Following County Commission Chair Ken Cornell’s letter encouraging the School Board to review underutilized facilities as part of broader homelessness efforts, many residents are asking what role schools should play in addressing the growing challenges facing vulnerable children and families.
As someone running for Alachua County Commission District 4, I believe this conversation deserves both compassion and practical thinking.
No child should ever fall through the cracks in a county with as many existing resources as Alachua County already has available. Students experiencing housing instability deserve support, dignity, and every opportunity to succeed in the classroom.
Schools absolutely can and should help remove barriers that interfere with learning. Across the country, many school systems already provide practical student-focused resources such as food pantries, clothing closets, hygiene supplies, mentoring programs, transportation assistance, laundry access, and connections to community services. These kinds of efforts help students maintain stability and stay engaged in their education.
The federal McKinney-Vento Act was designed to ensure homeless children have equal access to education, and those protections remain critically important.
But we also have to recognize that schools were never intended to function as long-term housing agencies.
Teachers, administrators, and school staff already carry enormous responsibilities. While schools can help support students facing hardship, the long-term responsibility for homelessness solutions must continue to rest with County government, housing agencies, nonprofits, and the taxpayer-funded programs specifically created to address these issues.
This should not become a situation where responsibility is shifted from one public system to another. Instead, County leadership should focus on ensuring existing homelessness resources are coordinated effectively and prioritized for children and families who are truly in crisis.
Compassion works best when everyone contributes within their proper role:
- Schools supporting students,
- Nonprofits supporting families,
- Faith and community organizations helping where they can,
- and County leadership ensuring housing programs are accountable and effective.
The goal should always be to help students succeed while protecting the core educational mission of our schools.
Alachua County families deserve thoughtful solutions that are compassionate, practical, and sustainable. I believe our community is capable of doing both.
Van Elmore, Candidate for Alachua County Commission, District 4
The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Assertions of facts in letters are similarly the responsibility of the author. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.
I’ve said it before: Lil Kenny should question the County’s empty spaces before he starts questioning the school district’s.
On another note, and specifically in reference to your statement that “Schools absolutely can and should help remove barriers that interfere with learning” — I hope that includes the suspension and/or expulsion of children who contribute to an unsafe learning and work environment for both our children and school staff.
Agreed…..out with the thugs.
Look….the kids are already getting free meals at the schools year round on our dime. The parents are eligible for Section 8 housing, free healthcare, free food, free education for their kids, and a host of other subsidies and benefits. Enough is enough or none of them will ever become self sufficient with that plethora of benefits. And there in lies the dilemma as a certain party is OK with dependency and want to soak the haves to keep their dependent supporters voting for them.
Agree with you 100% as long as the government handouts is keeping food on the table a roof over the head the parents will never get a damn job and work for a living
Perceived wrongs tend to narrow attention — the aggrieved person rehearses the offense repeatedly (rumination), which keeps emotional arousal elevated and crowds out empathy for others. Over time, this can harden into a worldview where others are seen as threats or adversaries.
Emotional dysregulation
Unresolved grievances sustain chronic low-level anger, resentment, or humiliation. These emotions are socially corrosive: anger triggers approach-aggression (hostility, confrontation), while humiliation often triggers withdrawal and social avoidance — both push people away from healthy connection.
Take note of how issues like this are framed. Normal people don’t say “homeless students”. We would say homeless children or people or minors etc.
The city and county government didn’t just randomly start blaming the school board for their own failures. They both want the school boards pot of money to pay for this mess…not their own precious monies.
This is piss poor political strategizing at its finest and many can see through it.
The city and county also realize that the eventual property tax reform legislation will completely slash their revenue streams while not really bothering the school system’s funding.
These people have no shame. They will coordinate to steal money before they admit failure and correct course.
No mention anything about encouraging personal responsibility and taking care of yourself…
just dependency on taxpayer money…
free school, free lunch, free place to live…
Having and raising children is a big personal responsibility…
Don’t breed em if you can’t educate and feed em.
It’s the parent’s job to feed & educate their kids!…” It takes a village to raise a child “is a worn-out commi slogan.
I’m sure the parents receive a government check, section 8 free housing, food stamps, free public school costs the property tax payer $22,500/year for each kid in the public school system..
Why work when you can dump your kids in the public school daycare system and get $100k in taxpayer assistance while the parents sit in AC at home watching TV, smoking cigarettes or weed, drinking booze, doing meth or crack, & eating potatoe chips while I work and be a productive citizen?
Personal responsibility, friends, family, & church are key! If the kids have bad parents, the kids should be put in a loving, caring, foster home where they can live, learn, grow, and become productive tax paying members of society, not be a tick on it.
If grievance-driven withdrawal or aggression “works” (avoids pain, gains attention, or forces compliance), it gets reinforced. Over time, it becomes a default social strategy — even in situations where no real grievance exists.
“Homeless” funding is just the beginning. Ward and Kenny want to dump non-school programs onto school budgets because the state is planning to cut homestead property tax revenues. So now Dems think they can just transfer all their homeless magnet budgets to schools. To keep attracting generational poverty to a college town 🤡💩👺👿👹
And they exaggerate the number of homeless, saying there’s “over 900 children” when the official count including adults (and including other counties besides Alachua) is just over 600, most of whom are in shelters. Quote from the official annual count: “ The official 2026 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count results for Alachua, Bradford, Dixie, Gilchrist, Levy, and Putnam Counties surveyed 613 individuals experiencing homelessness across North Central Florida, including 414 individuals residing in sheltered settings and 199 individuals identified through unsheltered surveys.”