News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Putnam County Schools will implement new software that helps track its student homeless population.
Family Resource Coordinator Kristy Hunt said the program helps collect data required by the state and personal information. She said this will help the school system get its families the assistance they need.
“Putnam County we have increased quite a bit,” Hunt said. “And because we are so busy trying to help our families this streamlines what we’re doing and ti also helps with providing our data from Putnam County to the state.”
Hunt said that data is either self-reported by families or collected through talking with students. She said sometimes counselors can understand there are larger issues in certain families after connecting individually with students.
Hunt said they help about 282 homeless students, and around 300 students who are at-risk. She said about 50 percent of their students live at or below the poverty line.
“You know the pandemic was really hard on a lot of families,” Hunt said. “And event though we’re now what I might consider after the pandemic, a lot of people and a lot of our families are still struggling. So we’re hoping this might help us in our process to get them what they need.”
