The number of homeless students in the Anchorage School District has grown by 38 percent from this time last year, and large increases have also been recorded in the Fairbanks and Matanuska-Susitna Borough districts.

Social service providers and school district administrators attribute the jump in homeless students to one factor in particular: families from the Lower 48 moving to Alaska in search of higher-paying jobs.

"There's a lot of people coming up searching for a better way of living," said Susan Bomalaski, executive director of Catholic Social Services. "They have enough money for a week in a hotel, and then what do you do?"

As the nation's economy has sputtered over the past year, some breadwinners in the Lower 48 have begun to think of Alaska as the place where they can finally solve their financial worries. When those families come to Anchorage, often with little savings and few resources, they sometimes wind up living in shelters or doubled up with relatives. When that happens, the Anchorage School District is responsible for working to keep those children in school.

Since 2001, federal law has required every school district in the country to have a homeless liaison to help homeless students with enrollment, transportation, and tutoring. The Anchorage School District's program, Child in Transition/Homeless Project, has a staff of 14.

Last year, CIT/H helped 852 students between the start of the school year and Sept. 30, 2008. In the same period this year -- from the first day of school to Sept. 30 -- that number was 1,176, an increase of 38 percent. East High School has the highest homeless enrollment in the district, with 90 students currently being helped by CIT/H.

During the entire 2008-09 school year, CIT/H helped 1,996 homeless students. The number of homeless students jumped 15 percent last year, but was steady over the three years prior. The Anchorage School District enrolls about 50,000 students, and is the 87th-largest school district in the country, according to the district's Web site.

One of the major ways CIT/H keeps kids in school is by helping with transportation. Federal law says that a student has the right to continue attending the same school they were at when their family first became homeless. To fulfill that requirement, CIT/H gives gas vouchers to parents so they can afford to drive their kids to school, organizes buses to run students back to their original school, and as a last resort will even call a cab to drive a student to school.

Almost all of the ASD's homeless students are able to stay either at shelters or at the homes of friends and family, couch-surfing from house to house for a few days at a time.

"A large portion of families are in doubled-up situations," said Dave Mayo-Kiely, program coordinator for CIT/H. "The number of families on the street is pretty low. They are at least out of the elements."

The waiting lists for families trying to get into Anchorage shelters are long. McKinnell House, run by the Salvation Army, is the only shelter in town that will house two-parent families or single fathers with children. McKinnell House can house 16 families at a time, and currently has a waiting list that's 35 families long.

Myths about Alaska that circulate through the Lower 48 contribute to the problem. Stories about pipeline jobs, no taxes, and big state checks spur some families to make the move north.

"I've heard a lot of people say ‘I thought I was going to get a PFD right away,'" said Nathan Madsen, a case manager for Beyond Shelter, a CSS program that helps homeless families transition into housing. Catholic Social Services also runs two homeless shelters, two residences for homeless teens, and a number of other social programs.

Outside Anchorage

"As I'm talking to people, they say they lost their jobs in the lower 48 and came up here looking for work," said Leona McDaniels, the Fairbanks School District's sole homeless liaison.

McDaniels said that so far this year she's identified 208 homeless students, and at this time last year she only had 160. The Fairbanks School District's total enrollment is over 14,000.