They may sleep in hotels, shelters or on the sofas of friends or relatives.

In the United States, a growing number of children are going to school homeless — today the total is more than 1 million.

The Georgia Department of Education said the population of homeless students in the state in 2009 was 23,724. That's up from 15,700 the year before.

And the number has been steadily increasing since 2006, when 13,311 homeless students were identified in Georgia.

Deon Quinn, operations analyst for the DOE's Homeless Education Program, said the faltering economy has hit many families hard and could be driving the increase.

In Hall County Schools, the number of homeless students rose from 27 in 2009 to 53 the past year. But the figures in Gainesville City Schools show a different trend. The numbers dropped from 81 students to 28, according to a report by the state DOE.

Quinn cautioned the numbers are probably low, as homeless children are traditionally hard to track. Some go unaccounted for because their families are embarrassed to let people know their status.

"School districts are moving away from saying ‘homeless' to ‘families in transition,'" Quinn said.

There are also issues with the way students are coded, he said.

School systems are required by the federal McKinney-Vento law to tally their homeless students to ensure they receive the same educational opportunities as their peers.

The law covers children whose families are living in homeless shelters, in weekly pay hotels or doubled up with other relatives.

But Quinn found problems with coding in several school systems at a conference earlier this year.

"The conference was for student information system (employees) and we found that a lot of them didn't know how to identify homeless students. That's one thing we talked about," Quinn said.

Gainesville Superintendent Merrianne Dyer said the district has a new way of coding homeless students this year, which accounts for the shift.

If families have lived with relatives or friends for more than a year, the school system is no longer reporting them as homeless, Dyer said.

"Those who have merged their house together have had time to get support around them and are not in crisis," Dyer said, adding that the district reports students in shelters or motels. "We want to get resources to people who are recently homeless and really need the resources."

School systems rely on federal funding that is allocated through McKinney-Vento and community resources to provide services for homeless kids.

"We have a team of people working together to look at what barriers a family has," Dyer said.

Quinn said school can be a secure and stable place for many homeless students.

"It takes away from everything else they're going through and allows them to step away from worries outside of school," Quinn said. "They have the opportunity to be around peers and things we take for granted. For many kids, the only time they eat is at school."

To help make the enrollment process easier for homeless students, Gainesville and Hall County schools revised their policies this year.

Dyer said before a student enrolls certain documents are required, such as a birth certificate or proof of residency in a city.

"In the previous guidelines, students were given a certain number of days to get those things together," Dyer said.
However, gathering those records, especially for families from out of state, can be a challenge, she said.

In the new policy, the school systems enroll the student, then seek documentation later.

"The intent is to get a homeless child in school and keep them in school as much as possible for learning continuum and safety," Dyer said.

Besides using funding, Hall County and Gainesville have forged community partnerships to help families and students who are struggling.

Dyer said one resource is Good News Clinics, which offers free medical care to homeless people.