More than 1,000 of this region's students are homeless. How are they addressing it?

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Fayette County, Kentucky, Public Schools has spent more than $1 million in the past four years to help the more than 1,000 kids and their families who are homeless, while the city of Lexington spends about $400,000 a year to assist unhoused children.

But a local teachers union says that’s not enough, especially considering much of the money was federal coronavirus funding that has since dried up.

“Up to this point, our local government and school district have largely relied on federal pandemic relief funds as a Band-Aid approach, to prevent even more families from being unhoused and to provide resources within the classroom,” said James Woodhead, a community organizer with KY120 United-AFT.

The Fayette County school system recorded 1,097 children who qualified as homeless during the recently concluded school year, according to KY120. To boot, rents in Lexington continue to rise, placing even more children and their families at risk for homelessness, the group argued.

Both the school system and city need to give more attention to this problem in their annual budgets for the fiscal year that began July 1, KY120 said in a written release.

“Neither budget appears to adequately prioritize and address the significance of the affordable housing crisis,” the group said.

The number of children counted as homeless in Fayette County Public Schools has remained largely the same over the past several years. The U.S. Department of Education has a different definition of homeless than the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees annual counts of homeless people throughout the country.

Under federal education guidelines, students who are living with relatives or friends are counted as homeless. Federal housing officials do not count people...