AUSTIN (KXAN) – With more than 70,000 students, Austin Independent School District is the largest school district in Central Texas.
About 1,000 of those students are experiencing homelessness, according to AISD data.
KXAN requested data about students in AISD experiencing homelessness from 2019 to 2025 back in December.
At that time there were 1,368 students who were experiencing homelessness in the district.
The number of students can rise and fall through the year, as this population does move from time-to-time, and it can happen unexpectedly.
Since 2019, the numbers of students experiencing homelessness has increased and decreased from year-to-year, but overall the numbers have remained above 1,200 students.
The McKinney-Vento Act is a federal law that ensures homeless children and youth have access to public education just like their housed peers.
Districts around the state keep track of these at-risk kids and also keep tabs on where they are staying.
According to the McKinney-Vento Act, students are considered homeless if they are unsheltered, living in a motel or hotel, living in a shelter or transitional housing, or if they are doubled up with other families in an apartment or home.
In 2025, AISD had about 35 students who were unsheltered, about 280 students were living in shelters or transitional housing, about 70 students were living in motels or hotels and more than 970 students were doubling up — which is where multiple families are living under one room.
There are many students across the state that go unidentified, though, some have no idea that there is help available.
“All this comes down to strong relationships between educators and students, and making sure we know where, one, where all our kids are coming from; and, two, they have to feel comfortable opening up when there is some kind of difficulty in their home life.”
A closer look at the data shows the majority of the schools with high numbers of students experiencing homelessness are in north, east and south Austin.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
