Educators are trained to keep an eye out for the sometimes subtle but profound warning signs of a growing issue in Tulsa County schools: More than 5,000 students are experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness.
The most common indicators include wearing the same clothes days in a row, backpacks stuffed with personal belongings, showing up early and staying late.
“We don’t have students coming to us and saying, you know, ‘we’re homeless’ or ‘I’m homeless,’” said Myriam Puleo, homeless education liaison at Union Public Schools.
Every district has the same challenge, Puleo says, of finding the students who stay quiet about their homelessness due to fear and shame. But schools across the county are getting better at identifying them and providing support.
“We see a lot of sad situations, a lot of desperate situations, a lot of situations that we don’t always have, I’m not even going to say always — we don’t have the answers for,” Puleo said. “But the only thing that we’re able to offer is hope.”
In the last three years, a growing number of public school students in Tulsa have identified themselves as homeless under the federal government’s definition — lacking a “fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.”
During the 2024-2025 school year, at least 5,005 children across the county fit that definition, or about 4% of the total student population across 14 districts. That’s an increase of more than 2,000 students since the 2022-2023 school year. Educators and advocates agree the true number is likely much higher.
“Just because they haven’t come in contact with a social service agency or are, you know, chronically homeless and living on the street or in shelters, doesn’t mean that this is a sustainable option for these 5,000 students,” said Maggie Hoey, president and CEO of Lindsey House, a Tulsa shelter for women and their children.
Hoey works closely with the homeless education teams at schools and says agencies like hers should pay close attention to how schools track and identify these families.
“This number, to me, is really an indication of people who are on the brink of ending up within chronic homelessness,” she said.
While Tulsa Public Schools and Union each have two full-time staff members supporting these students, it’s an added responsibility for counselors or administrators at smaller school districts.
“I do think some school districts are doing a better, more thorough job of counting,” said Beth Edwards Svetlic, assistant executive director at Youth Services of Tulsa. “All of those data points are with an asterisk, you know, probably a significant underreporting of those young people.”
No one really knows how many students are experiencing homelessness in the county, Sveltic says, but rising rent, cost of living and federal cuts to social services are increasing rates of housing insecurity for minors and adults alike.
“We often describe them as living in the shadows,” she said. “But the need for families has not gone away.”
Increasing access, fighting stigma
The majority of Tulsa County children experiencing homelessness are in TPS, where rates have doubled annually since 2022. TPS records show 820 students disclosed they were experiencing homelessness that school year. That number was up to 1,560 the next and 3,008 last school year — nearly 9% of the district’s total enrollment.
“I don’t think there was an increase in the number of students that (were) experiencing housing instability,” said Twanna Johnson, homeless education coordinator at TPS. “I really do believe it was, we as a district are coming together and doing a better job of identifying and supporting.”
Students experiencing homelessness are protected across the United States by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. It is a federal law that ensures children who lack secure housing still have equal access to education and makes funding and accommodations available for public schools to support these students.
This definition includes students living in motels, trailer parks, campaign grounds or with family or friends due to financial hardship. It can apply to unaccompanied teenagers living in their cars or families who lost their shelter due to natural disasters.
Johnson says this definition of homelessness is much more broad than those used by other government agencies — such as the City of Tulsa, which recorded only about 100 minors experiencing homelessness in 2025 — and families aren’t aware that they could qualify for support.
When students are identified under the federal law, staff can then assist them with a wide range of hurdles, like waiving some enrollment requirements, helping students get state IDs or debit cards and filing federal student aid forms.
To make this easier, Johnson first embedded a student residency questionnaire in the TPS 2023 online enrollment form in English, Spanish, Hmong and Chuukese. Now it’s part of regular back-to-school paperwork.
Like Union, TPS trains administrators, teachers and support staff in identifying signs of homelessness. Increasing communication across school sites has ensured siblings are identified and supported together.
Johnson’s colleague, Melissa Vowell, has built partnerships with local agencies, posting information about protections for homeless students at housing support hubs to educate more families. The district also monitors eviction dockets to proactively catch even more families.
“I think a lot of the stigma is that they’re afraid of saying anything because they think (the Department of Human Services) or anything else is going to be involved,” Vowell said. “Our main concern is safety for the student, first and foremost, and getting them into school.”
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