The American Rescue Plan funds for students experiencing homelessness must be budgeted by September — so several interns spent this session helping get the word out
BY: ANNELISE HANSHAW and CLARA BATES Missouri Independent
In March, the phone in state Rep. Deb Lavender’s office in Jefferson City started ringing constantly, but the calls weren’t for her.
They were for her interns, Santino Bono and Alanna Nguyen.
The interns, along with Dylan Powers Cody, who was interning for state Rep. Peter Merideth, had spent months cross-checking spreadsheets to pinpoint school districts who had not yet claimed pandemic-era federal funds for homeless students.
Those federal dollars are part of the American Rescue Plan and must be budgeted by September. A large part of the interns’ project was calling districts to notify them that they had money that could expire if they didn’t act quickly.
The office got so many calls back from schools about the interns’ project that Lavender’s legislative assistant needed to create a voicemail folder just for them.
So far, they helped districts claim $1.15 million in funds in four months that can be used for a range of services for homeless students — from buying washers and dryers to temporary hotel stays and transit cards.
“We had multiple school districts call back and say, ‘We have twenty grand in the bank that we can use to help homeless students? No one really told us,’” Bono said in an interview with The Independent.
Most of the districts the interns reached had no idea they had funding available, Nguyen said.
“Then, they wanted more information on it,” she said. “Once they got the information on it, they were able to kind of kickstart it up and get things moving along.”
Bono expected the internship might be more menial, including the “intern trope of having to get coffee for people,” he said.
“To know that I could have potentially a much bigger impact on actual students, as a student myself, I’m really proud of that,” Bono said.