Fredericksburg Parent

14 Fredericksburg Parent and Family • February 2025 The week had barely begun, and already Cynthia Lucero-Chavez, the McKinney-Vento liaison for Stafford County Public Schools, was attempting to navigate the families she works with through a new crisis. "We just understood today that one of our hotels on [U.S.] 17 is not allow- ing microwaves anymore," Lucero-Chavez told the Advance on a recent Tuesday. "So, the families living there are now without any capacity to pre- pare any sort of nutritious meal for their children. How will they manage to prepare food without the ability to cook? That's today's crisis." But in Lucero-Chavez's world, there is a crisis every day. The day before, Lucero-Chavez said, she'd used donated funds that she luckily had on hand to help a family that became suddenly homeless and didn't even have a car to sleep in. "The children were going to be coming off the bus to find the family sitting on the curb with their gear," Lucero-Chavez said. Across the Fredericksburg region, McKinney-Vento coordinators for local school divisions say families have more needs—and more complex needs— than ever before. Right now, there are children attending Spotsylvania County Public Schools who are living out of their family car— "a new situation" this year, said Michelle Swisher, the division's McKinney-Vento liaison. Last year was the first year that Jennifer Bunn noticed this occurring in Fredericksburg City Schools. Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash K-12 Students Experiencing Homelessness That's 'Alarming' WRITTEN BY ADELE UPHAUS In Stafford, Lucero-Chavez said she is finding that she has to prioritize between a homeless family with a car and one that is literally without shelter of any kind. "Now what I see happening, that is alarming to me, is that we have a family living in a shed," she said. "We have fami- lies living in closets or living in very inadequate commercial spaces." "This is probably the most dire I've ever seen it, and I've been doing this for eight years," Lucero-Chavez continued. As of mid-November, there were 757 identified home- less students in Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Stafford County schools—385 in Spotsylvania, 214 in Stafford, and 158 in Fredericksburg. The numbers fluctuate every day, but they are either in line with or poised to surpass last year's numbers. "We ended last year with 630, and we're right about where we were at this point last year, maybe five or six more kids," Swisher said. In Fredericksburg, Bunn said, "We ended last year with 190, for comparison." "So, we're only 30 off from that" at not even halfway through the school year, she said.

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