8,828 students. No permanent home. Orange County’s struggle to keep homeless kids in school

By Christie Zizo 

For Kimberly Bravo, school mornings don’t start with a drive to campus.

Sometimes they start with a long walk, or a phone call to her mom, hoping she has gas money.

“I don’t feel like I’m a mom to my full potential because I can’t really be there for them,” Bravo said. “I can’t go pick them up if I don’t got gas money today.”

When we first met Bravo and her partner at SALT Outreach in Orlando, they’d been homeless for more than a month, moving between hotels, shelters, and sometimes sleeping outside.

The couple does what they can to provide for their kids, including their three school-aged children who have attended Orange County public schools.

Their latest bout with homelessness started after she and her partner lost their apartment.

They were already living paycheck to paycheck. Then he lost his job, and the rent went up.

“We were already stretched thin, and then the rent jumped. We just couldn’t keep up,” she said.

So they moved from hotel to hotel, draining what money they had.

“We pay $2,000 and $2,500 a month for a hotel, you know? And I’m just like, it’s ridiculous because realistically, we got to pay two months of rent with that,” Bravo said.

However, Bravo said this is the vicious cycle once you have an eviction on your record.

Bravo said she would also apply for apartments — those applications cost money. And even though she was up front about her eviction, some complexes would still take her money, then deny her application.

“I feel like in Florida, once you have an eviction on your name, like you’re considered a felon,” she said. “I feel sometimes like a felon sometimes, you know?”

A growing population in schools

Bravo’s situation is a reality for families across Central Florida.

Data obtained by News 6 from Orange County Public Schools shows the district identified 8,828 homeless students last year, up over 50% since the 2019 school year.

Christine Cleveland, OCPS senior administrator from homeless and migrant education, said the county has the largest number of homeless students in Florida.

“Most of the time when we think of homelessness, we think about the panhandler on the street,” Cleveland said.

Federal law identifies homelessness for school-aged children as any student who does not have a stable, fixed housing situation from day to day. That could mean living at a shelter, living in a car, or living in a hotel.

It could also mean “shared housing,” which is a temporary situation where a family is living with other people. It could mean renting a room in a house with other families. It could mean couch surfing.

Most of OCPS’ homeless students are living in hotels or sharing homes: about 72% live in shared housing, and about 16% live in hotels or motels.

“Overall, we’re seeing more students qualify for the program,” Cleveland said. “So it’s just that there’s a lack of affordable housing. Many of our families are paying for hotels. They might be paying for a shed in somebody’s house, but they don’t have running water, no bathroom, no kitchen. So they’re paying money to people and they have a job, the problem is they can’t go anywhere else because they can keep enough money to get a deposit, which oftentimes is two times the rent, and then also pay that rent.

“And so it’s just this vicious cycle for them living months, a month on their paycheck,” Cleveland continued. “So one hardship, it could be anything, their car breaks down, a medical situation, a family member needs something specific in order to actually live. All of those things can put them out of maybe what we call our shared housing or hotel situation into that literal homelessness.”

Many of the schools with the greatest number of homeless students are located close to clusters of extended stay hotels and motels, like along Lee Road or Orange Blossom Trail. But almost every Orange County school has at least one homeless student. The average school has about 33 homeless students.

Part of the reason is the district is required to make every effort to help a student stay in their school of origin, so their education is not disrupted even if their home life is.

That means the district will help students get to school who have to suddenly move across the county, or even outside the county.

“If we have say a student who is attending a school in Hunter’s Creek area, but then they become homeless and end up in a hotel in Osceola on 192, we are still able to keep them at that school in the Hunter’s Creek area in Orange County and just transport them back and forth because we want to keep the school stability,” Cleveland said.

But Cleveland says not every student can get transportation, especially if they live within the designated 2-mile school zone.

‘What’s so important about school?’

Bravo and her partner spend much of their time pounding the pavement, applying for jobs and housing. They don’t have a car, so they are living close to homeless services in Downtown Orlando. But that’s too close to schools in the area, so she doesn’t qualify for school buses.

So sometimes the kids get to school. And sometimes they don’t.

“And when that adds up, it’s like, ‘oh, why have your kids missed a month of school?’” Bravo said.

Missing school means learning is disrupted. And it can take an emotional toll on the kids who may internalize shame or even bullying for their situation. It can be a big burden for little shoulders to carry.

“The kids sometimes coming to us like, ‘What’s so important about school?’” Bravo said. “‘It’s important, honey, you know, you got to go because they’re going to teach you. You got to learn.’ You try to find the reasons to give them to keep going.

“But they’re like, ‘well, we get bullied, but people always tell us we stink, or people always tell us our clothes are dirty, or we don’t have cool shoes.’ And so it’s kind of been the schooling aspect of this situation. I feel like it’s been harder than even the homelessness.”

Those comments hurt, especially for children trying to learn while living in survival mode.

Cleveland said this is why it’s important for students to be identified as homeless. That’s usually done by parents through a student survey on the OCPS website, or by teachers and social workers at the schools who are trained to recognize the signs and reach out to the parents.

Students have to be reidentified every year.

[TABLE: Homeless student programs in Central Florida school districts]

One big issue they run into is parents who are afraid they will lose their child if the school finds out they are homeless. Cleveland says that would only happen if there is evidence of abuse or neglect.

“We don’t have housing for everyone,” Cleveland said. “And so it’s understandable that if given the option of being on the street or in a car, you might choose the car, or if you have the street, you might just be in a tent. But we at least can try to give food and clothing and something to keep warm. Tell you where to go if there’s a hurricane coming in or cold weather and try to get that information, but we can’t do that if we don’t know where people are or how to support them.”

Cleveland’s office helps parents where possible with other needs. The Kids Closet, for instance, gives students clean clothes, hygiene items and school supplies, all funded through private donations.

In the past, they’ve even been able to help with grocery gift cards, gas cards, field trip costs, yearbooks and more, so students can have a normal school life, despite their homelessness.

Homeless students who graduate get help from the state with going to college, and the district also offers scholarships to provide essentials to those new college students they’ve helped through school.

But all of that requires help from private donors, something that has dwindled over the last few years, even as the need goes up.

“When we get additional funding and supports, we might also even be able to help the family as a whole. Things like grocery gift cards, so that is only possible because of donors that we are able to give a grocery gift card to say Aldi or Publix for a family so that they can get some fresh fruit or vegetables,” Cleveland said.

For Kimberly’s family, without a home or a car, the time spent trying to get out of their current situation is a constant juggling act. Schooling becomes another ball that might easily get dropped.

“We’re both good, hard workers,” Bravo said. “We’re both looking for a job. We just end up trying to pick jobs that are closer. But then everything that’s close has already been taken up by people who are residential here, you know.”

She knows her kids feel the weight of it all. This summer, they went to stay with her mother while she kept up the search.

“Sometimes they say they’d rather be out there sleeping with us, because they don’t want us to go through it alone,” Bravo said.

Since News 6 met Bravo in July, they’ve been able to secure transitional housing with the help of SALT Outreach.

Meanwhile, Cleveland is getting ready for a new school year and a new group of homeless students.

If you want to help OCPS care for its homeless students, head to the district’s Homeless Education website or here to donate.

Christie Zizo

Christie joined the ClickOrlando team in November 2021.

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2025/08/06/8828-students-no-permanent-home-orange-countys-struggle-to-keep-homeless-kids-in-school/