Students in Temporary Housing Funds:
Summer Planning Beyond Supplies
Why STH Funds Should Be Part of Summer Planning
For school leaders, summer planning often focuses on staffing, schedules, curriculum, enrollment, and unfinished operational tasks from the prior year. But one group of students should be at the center of summer planning conversations: Students in Temporary Housing, often referred to as STH.
Students in temporary housing is a broad label. It can include students living in shelters, transitional housing, doubled up with relatives or another family, or navigating other forms of housing instability. The circumstances vary, but the educational risk is often consistent. Students experiencing housing instability are frequently overrepresented in the very data categories school leaders are trying to improve: chronic absenteeism, academic underperformance, course failure, behavioral referrals, and suspension data.
That is why Students in Temporary Housing funds should not be viewed only as a compliance requirement or an emergency supply budget. They should be treated as a strategic planning tool.
The end of the school year does not end a student’s need for support. In many cases, summer is the moment when schools can pause, review the data, identify patterns, and design targeted supports before another year begins. For students in temporary housing, that planning can make the difference between another year of reacting to barriers and a year of coordinated academic, attendance, and family support.
The Common Misconception: STH Funds Are Only for Immediate Needs
Many principals understand that STH funds can be used to address immediate needs: school supplies, uniforms, clothing, transportation barriers, hygiene items, or other essentials that help students participate in school.
Those uses matter. A student cannot focus on learning if they do not have basic supplies, reliable transportation, or what they need to feel prepared and included.
But there is a common misconception that STH funds are only for those immediate needs. As a result, schools may overlook allowable and highly needed academic supports, including tutoring, extended learning time, summer learning opportunities, family outreach, and other services that help students access educational opportunities.
This matters because students in temporary housing are not only facing material barriers. They are often facing academic disruption.
A student who moves between shelters, changes schools, misses instructional days, or lacks a quiet place to complete homework may need more than a backpack. They may need consistent tutoring. They may need small-group support during the school day. They may need summer enrichment that prevents further learning loss. They may need an adult who notices when they are absent, follows up with the family, and helps reconnect them to school.
The goal is not to choose between supplies and services. The goal is to make sure the spending plan reflects the full set of student needs.
What Strategic STH Spending Looks Like
Schools that use STH funds well usually do not wait until the purchasing deadline to decide how to spend them. They begin with student needs, not available line items.
A strategic approach might include:
1. Know Your STH Allocation Early
The first step is simple but often missed: school leaders need to know their STH allocation.
Before deciding what to purchase or what services to fund, principals and their teams should ask:
- What is our current STH allocation?
- How much did we spend last year?
- What did we spend it on?
- What spending directly addressed student needs?
- What spending happened late because we were afraid of losing the money?
- What needs went unaddressed because we were unsure whether a use was allowable?
This review can help leaders distinguish between essential spending and reactive spending.
If a school consistently uses STH funds for supplies, that may reveal real need. But if funds are repeatedly moved into supply purchases at the end of the year because the school is afraid to spend them elsewhere, that is a planning problem.
2. Partner With the School-Based STH Liaison
Every school leader should know who their school-based STH liaison is and include that person in planning conversations.
The liaison is often closest to the enrollment, transportation, family communication, and resource coordination needs of students in temporary housing. They can help identify eligible students, surface barriers that may not be obvious in academic data, and connect families to school, city, or community resources.
The STH liaison should not be brought in only when there is a crisis. They should be part of the planning table when the school is deciding how to use STH funds, what student groups need support, and what barriers are preventing students from attending and succeeding.
A strong summer planning conversation might include the principal, assistant principal, STH liaison, attendance team, parent coordinator, guidance staff, and any academic intervention leads.
3. Use Data to Identify the Right Students and Supports
STH spending should be targeted.
One concern with using funds for broad assemblies or large group events is that the support can lose its focus. A school may spend the money, but the students most impacted by housing instability may not receive the sustained help they need.
Instead, school teams can review:
- Which STH students were chronically absent?
- Which students failed one or more core classes?
- Which students were below grade level in reading or math?
- Which students had repeated behavior incidents or suspensions?
- Which students changed schools, shelters, or transportation routes during the year?
- Which students missed summer programming because of enrollment, communication, or transportation barriers?
This data can help schools design supports that are more targeted and more defensible.
For example, a school might identify a group of STH students who struggled in math and had inconsistent attendance. Instead of waiting until the fall, the school could use summer to plan tutoring, small-group intervention, attendance outreach, and family communication that begins early in the year.
4. Consider Academic Services, Not Just Supplies
Supplies may be necessary, but they are rarely sufficient.
If students in temporary housing are showing up in academic risk data, schools should consider using STH funds for academic services that directly support learning. That may include:
- Tutoring during the school day
- After-school academic support
- Saturday intervention
- Summer enrichment
- Small-group instruction
- Push-in classroom support
- Reading or math intervention
- Family engagement tied to attendance and learning
- Academic progress monitoring
At PRACTICE, we have seen schools use STH funds strategically by placing Education Champions in classrooms or intervention groups with high populations of STH students. When students receive consistent supplemental support throughout the year, they often become more confident academically, participate more, and show up more often.
That is the kind of outcome school leaders should be planning toward: not just spending the funds, but using them in a way that improves the student experience.
5. Plan for Attendance Barriers Before Attendance Becomes a Crisis
For students in temporary housing, attendance barriers are rarely simple.
A student may be placed far from school. A family may be navigating a shelter transfer. A parent may be managing multiple children in different schools. Transportation may be inconsistent. Communication may be difficult because phone numbers change or families are overwhelmed.
If schools wait until a student is already chronically absent, they are already behind.
Summer planning gives leaders a chance to ask:
- Which STH students had attendance concerns last year?
- Which families may need transportation support before school begins?
- Which students need early outreach before the first day?
- Who will follow up if a student misses the first week?
- What communication channels work best for each family?
- What community partners can help remove barriers?
Attendance support should be part of the STH spending conversation because attendance is the gateway to every academic intervention. A student cannot benefit from tutoring, small-group instruction, or enrichment if they are not consistently present.
6. Document the Rationale Clearly
One reason schools underuse STH funds for services is fear. Leaders worry that tutoring, enrichment, or other supports may be questioned later, so they default to purchases that feel safer.
The solution is not to avoid services. The solution is to document the rationale clearly.
For each major use of STH funds, schools should be able to explain:
- Which student need was identified
- Which students or student group the support was designed for
- How the support connects to educational access or academic success
- Why the support was reasonable and necessary
- How the school will monitor participation or impact
- What role the STH liaison or support team played in identifying the need
This kind of documentation protects the school and keeps the focus on students.
It also helps leaders move away from last-minute spending. When the rationale is clear, schools can feel more confident using funds for services that directly address academic and attendance needs.
Avoid the Purchasing Deadline Trap
Every year, some schools reach the purchasing deadline with unspent STH funds. Sometimes the funds are moved into supplies because leaders are afraid to lose the money or be questioned for not spending it. Other times, the money is not fully allocated because the school was unsure what was allowable.
The result is that students may not receive the services they need during the year.
That is the trap school leaders should avoid.
Last-minute spending may satisfy a budget requirement, but it does not necessarily solve a student problem. Strategic planning starts earlier. It asks what students need, what barriers are showing up in the data, and what supports will help students participate in school more fully.
If a student is chronically absent, behind in reading, disconnected from school, or struggling because of instability outside the classroom, a box of supplies alone will not close that gap.
A Summer Planning Checklist for School Leaders
As school leaders prepare for the upcoming year, they can use the summer to answer these questions:
- Do we know our STH allocation?
- Have we reviewed how we used STH funds last year?
- Did our spending match our students’ academic, attendance, and family needs?
- Which STH students need targeted support before or at the start of the school year?
- Has our school-based STH liaison been included in planning?
- Are we considering services such as tutoring, intervention, enrichment, and family outreach?
- Are we avoiding broad activities that do not directly support the students most impacted?
- Do we have a clear documentation process for why funds are being used?
- How will we monitor whether the support is working?
- What needs to be in place before the first day of school?
Final Thoughts: STH Funds Should Follow Student Need
Students in temporary housing need holistic, ongoing support. Their needs do not pause when the school year ends, and neither should school planning.
For school leaders, the opportunity is to treat Students in Temporary Housing funds as more than a compliance obligation. These funds can help schools remove barriers, strengthen attendance, support family communication, and provide the academic intervention students need to succeed.
The question is not simply, “How do we spend the money?”
The better question is, “What do our students in temporary housing need in order to attend school consistently, feel supported, and make academic progress?”
When schools begin there, STH funds become more than a budget line. They become a strategy for serving some of the students who need us most.
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