The 2025-26 school year saw a handful of changes to the student demographic within the Warren County R-III district.

At the district’s May board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith shared the district’s report on homeless, migrant, ELL and foster students with the board.

This school year, four students within the district qualified as migrants.

“For the first time, we have a student classified as migrant this year,” Klinginsmith said. “You have to (have parents or guardians) in the (agriculture) industry and have had to have moved in the last three years to seek work in the industry. I don’t know if they’ll continue to qualify if they stay here.”

Additionally, 60 students in the district were classified as homeless.

That number is comparable to the number during the previous school year.

To qualify as homeless, individuals lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence and that includes — (I) children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; or are abandoned in hospitals; (II) children and youths who have a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human being; and (III) children and youths who are living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations, or similar settings.

“The number of homeless students is about the same as last year,” Klinginsmith said. “We’ve seen an uptick since 2022. We had 60 kids qualify as homeless. To qualify, it’s a federal definition; if a student lacks a regular residence, they are homeless. Most of our homeless students fall under No. 1. They’re staying with someone else, for whatever reason.”

In 2022, 44 students were classified as homeless. The number increased to 58 two years ago, 59 last year, and is currently 60.

Klinginsmith added that the 24 foster students within the district are down from the 39 who were in the district during the 2022-23 school year.

Conversely, the population of English Language Learners (ELL) students has increased significantly over the last year. The rapid growth necessitated the hiring of a second ELL teacher.

“English language learners, this is where we’re seeing a big increase,” Klinginsmith said. “Last year, we had 37 ELL students. This year, we’re at 87, so we really appreciate the board’s support early in the year, when we added another ELL teacher to support this. It has made a big difference.”

Klinginsmith said that the largest group of ELL students is Spanish speakers. He added that Haitian Creole and Indonesian are other languages spoken by students in significant numbers.

Other languages spoken by students include Chinese, Lingala (a central African language), and Tagalog (an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines).

“This is what our ELL teachers are navigating,” Klinginsmith said. “We have some software that helps translate. The kids are doing well, the teachers are doing well. At the beginning of the school year, I think we were a little overwhelmed.”

Klinginsmith went on to laud the district’s employees, as a whole, for their efforts to help care for students.

He said that the district’s ‘Care to Learn’ program is going strong and that’s because there is plenty of staff involvement in funding the program, which is concerned with a student’s health, hunger, and hygiene.

“One of our biggest avenues to help students get what they need is through care to learn,” Klinginsmith said. “We have over 100 staff members who have payroll deductions that go to Care to Learn. It helps students with hygiene products and things like that. There’s no red tape; if they ask for things they need, they just get them.”