Keep a Rockledge student in their school. Even when home isn't stable.

The story:

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One of our students was ubering his two younger siblings to school every morning from a motel outside our zone. Then he was walking — an hour and a half each way — to get himself to class.

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When the family got kicked out of the motel, he moved in with a friend three towns over. Then a different friend. Then another. He was couch-surfing his way through the school year, trying to stay enrolled.

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Here's what most people don't know: the school district will bus a student in transition. Florida law protects that right. But to set up the route, the family has to be stable at one address for about two weeks while the paperwork processes.

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Two weeks is not a luxury our students always have. Some of our kids change couches every three or four nights. By the time the district paperwork catches up, they've moved again.

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That's the gap our bus passes fill. A Space Coast Area Transit monthly pass works from anywhere in the county. It doesn't care about paperwork or stable addresses. The student we just described used his pass to ride an hour and a half each way to school — wherever he was sleeping that week — until his housing stabilized enough for the district route to kick in.

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To date, Rising Tide has funded 10 monthly bus passes for students in housing transition. Ten months of attendance that, otherwise, would not have happened.

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We have also helped families replace essentials lost during displacement — the things people don't think about until they've lost them. Bedding. Toiletries. Backpacks. School clothes. The basic items that get left behind when a family has to move suddenly.

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What we want to be able to do, with growth, is expand into gas cards for parents driving extended distances to keep their kids in their home school, and short-term motel support during placement gaps. Both are common needs we currently can't meet. That's what your donation builds toward.