Gresana Hinds, 16, dreams of studying at Harvard University. She eventually wants to go to business school and open a bakery.

But she suffered a setback this year — she and her family were homeless.

“I lived in three different places in the span of five months. It was just hard, " she says.

Gresana and her siblings are part of a disturbing trend in Boston, where at least 3,000 students — one in 19 — are homeless at any given time.

One of the biggest challenges for these students is transportation. By law, districts are required to pay for personal transportation for homeless students, but as Gresana’s family’s experience shows, not all students use the service.

For Gresana, the problems started last fall when her family’s landlord sold their apartment in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. They didn’t find an affordable apartment in time, so they moved in with their aunt in Randolph. That put Gresana 14 miles away from her high school,  Jeremiah E. Burke High School.

Safe Space

When she became homeless, school was the only stable thing in Gresana's life.

“School's like my safe space,” Gresana says. "School was where I went to escape.”

Gresana would spend hours after school with friends in Boston, anything she could do to avoid going back to her aunt’s house.

“I didn't want to be at my aunt's house because it was so small and there wasn't a lot of space,"she says. I was basically sleeping on couch pillows on the floor." 

Gresana found her way to school on public transit, taking a combination of buses and subway trains to get there. She often arrived late, missing first and second periods. Soon she was failing those classes.                  

Right to a Driver

Gresana, her brother and sister were all eligible for a private driver paid for by the school districts. Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, schools are required to provide transportation to homeless students “to and from their school of origin if it is in the child’s best interest.”

Gresana says she’s not sure why she never received a personal driver, but her mother explains her kids were embarrassed.

“They weren’t very enthusiastic about transportation,” Ana Castillo says. “So I didn’t really pursue it. … They told me they didn’t want to pull up to school in a van."

Castillo pushed for a driver to take her youngest child to school. Anagres, 12, wasn’t old enough to take the bus or train alone. But in the first month and a half after losing their home, the family didn’t have a stable address for a driver to find Anagres, so she stayed home missing around six weeks of sixth grade.

Out of School

Studies show that her experience is common for homeless students who miss more school than they did when they had a stable place to live.

"I was a little upset about that,” Anagres says. “But I knew I was going to come back, and I knew I was going to graduate. So it wasn’t a big worry to me.”

Anagres says she didn’t have her schoolwork while she was out, but she practiced her subjects on her own. Once she was back in school, Anagres was determined to do well. Now she says she makes better grades than she did before.

“I got more motivated because I know if this ever happens again, I should have higher grades so even if my grades drop I can still be passing," she said.

Gresana says she regrets not pursuing a driver to take her to school. She didn’t fail her classes, but she had to attend summer school. Now she has bigger problems. Her mother found a permanent place to live, but it’s not in Boston. Under the law, she has to attend her new school.

WGBH’s coverage of K-12 education is made possible with support from the  Nellie Mae Education Foundation.