Around 28,000 students are enrolled this year in Lafayette Parish schools, representing a huge range of interests and talents, socioeconomic backgrounds, foundational experiences and future goals.
The vast majority of those students also have one thing in common: They have a stable, secure address to go home to each night.
But every year, some students live a different story. Last year, 1,107 children in the Lafayette Parish School System were enrolled as unhoused students, meaning they were living in shelters, hotels or motels, doubled up with another household because of economic hardship or housing loss, or in other unstable living situations. Some were unaccompanied youth. Others were living unsheltered, including in cars, parking lots or uninhabitable buildings…