The halls of Sullivant Elementary School are full as kids shuffle from their classrooms to the cafeteria. For hundreds of homeless children in Columbus, school is the only stable environment they know.

“This year so far we have served over 800 homeless children in Columbus,” said Joan Abbott, Columbus School District’s Liaison for homeless education at Project Connect.

When you include children under the age of five, estimates on the number of homeless children in Columbus can reach more than 4,000, Abbott said.

The definition of homeless includes families who lost their housing and are in shelters, camp grounds, cars, motels or “doubling up” at a friend or family’s home.

It is important the child can stay in the school they started in before they ended up at a shelter or friend’s house, Abbott said. The school district works to help the child finish out the school year at their home school.

Project Connect is a free program in central Ohio that provides support to families that are homeless.

“There are no homeless shelters in the suburbs,” Abbott said. “All of the homeless shelters are in Columbus.”

“There is a shortage of affordable housing in Columbus,” Abbott said. “We need 22,000 more low-income housing units.”

A family may lose their housing while living in a suburb and end up in the Columbus school district, Abbott said. Project Connect works to find transportation for those children back to the school they were originally at when the family became homeless.

“We look to see if it’s a good situation,” Abbott said. “Sometimes busing kids across town to their original school is too much for them.”

Project Connect will work with the school district from which the children come to coordinate transportation for the kids, Abbott said.

The Columbus School District pays half of the costs to transport the child back to the school in the suburbs, Abbott said. The other school district pays the other half.

On any school day the Columbus Public Transportation Department logs 50,000 miles transporting 60,000 kids back and forth to school.

“Everyday we call the Columbus Public Transportation Department to have the buses rerouted,” Abbott said. “We coordinate transportation for the 150 schools in the district.”

Sometimes it is necessary for the Columbus Public Transportation Department to call every family on the bus route to inform them of a bus time change or even if the bus is coming from another direction, Abbott said.

Project Connect also works with other support agencies such as The Children’s Education Program for the Homeless Families Foundation, which has an after school and enrichment program.

“We help kids experience things they normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to experience,” said the Director of the Children’s Education Program for the Homeless Families Foundation, Gale Hacker. The program exposes them to things such as ballet, theater, and poetry.

A big part of Project Connect’s job involves advocacy, Abbott said.

“A lot of families and school districts are unaware of the McKinney act; so part of our job involves informing them,” Abbott said.

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, the McKinney Act – passed July 22, 1987 – is the first and only major federal legislative response to homelessness.

The McKinney Act consists of programs providing a range of services to homeless people, including emergency shelter, transitional housing, job training, primary health care, education, and some permanent housing.

One of the programs is the Education of Homeless Children and Youth Program.

Every school district has to make provisions to educate homeless children, Abbott said.

“There are 340 kids at Sullivant Elementary School and about a third of them are from homeless situations,” said Kathryn Moser, Principal of Sullivant Elementary.

The number of homeless students at Sullivant fluctuates and sometimes is only about a quarter of the student population, Moser said.

A lot of these kids need clothes and school supplies, she said. Sullivant has a storage area for donated clothes. The school nurse is there three days a week to help with health problems some of the kids might have.

“We receive more service than other schools our size,” Moser said.

The Interfaith Hospitality Network, an emergency family shelter on 400 W. Broad St., houses families during the day. At night the families are taken to different churches around Columbus.

The biggest problem these kids have is lack of sleep, Abbott said. They have to get up at 5 in the morning to catch a shuttle back to the shelter. Then they are bused to their school.

Sometimes its necessary to let the child go to the nurse’s office to get some rest, Moser said.

The staff at Sullivant visits the parents to speak with them about issues concerning the students, Moser said.

“We are committed to getting out of the building to meet with parents,” Moser said.

A liaison position was created to have someone to meet with parents on a regular basis at some of the family homeless shelters, she said. Some of the parents cannot make it there to speak with someone about their kids.

A lot of these kids are still hungry when they go to school, Abbott said.

“Over 90 percent of our kids are eligible for free or reduced lunch,” Moser said. There are kids who have very little and then we have kids who have almost nothing.

Volunteers come to Sullivant from local businesses on their lunch break to help tutor kids, she said. The school gets support from the community and from visitors who want to help.

On the 100th day of school, a class of first graders at Sullivant counted out different snacks. Visitors were approached by a little girl, who quietly made her way towards the strangers. The blond-haired girl never said a word and handed them some of her snacks.

“You would think that these kids who have nothing would hoard when they do have something,” Moser said. “But it’s the exact opposite – they are always so willing to share.”