A Shelter for Homeless Students Is a Brilliant Idea — and Not Just for Dallas

I've got to congratulate the Dallas public school system for coming up with an innovative way to help some of its most vulnerable students - the homeless.Can you imagine being a child and trying to go to school with no permanent place to call home?Sadly - shamefully, really - that's a reality for a growing number of kids across America. They are, in many ways, invisible: sleeping in cars, staying in low-budget hotels, camping out in public parks and transit stations, or hiding out in abandoned buildings.They are roughly 1.3 million in number, according to the National Center for Homeless Education.That means if we could round up all these homeless students in one place, we'd be looking at a city the size of Dallas.Just let that image sink in for a while -- Homeless Students, USA: population 1.26 million and growing.But these rootless children are scattered across our land, from Rhode Island to Oregon and every point in between.More than 113,000 of them reside in Texas, which trails only California, with about 236,000, and New York, with more than 118,000 homeless students.  Continue reading...