Child advocacy groups are joining the New York City Council to urge the Adams administration to restore funding for a two-year-old program that helps thousands of students living in shelters navigate the school system.

The nonprofit Advocates for Children released a brief on Thursday highlighting how shelter-based coordinators are boosting school attendance rates, keeping homeless students on track for graduation and ensuring eligible students are properly enrolled in special education programs.

The push for more funding comes as 40,800 students spent time in homeless shelters in the last school year — a nearly 40% jump from the previous year, according to data provided by Advocates for Children. Mayor Eric Adams has proposed slashing the 100 shelter coordinator positions even as 14,500 migrant families with children are living in city shelters and enrolling in the school system for the first time, and often doing so in a new language.

The proposed cuts are “just bananas given just how many students are in shelter right now [and] the fact that you have 100 new shelters that have opened,” said Jennifer Pringle, project director for Advocates for Children. “They are needed now more than ever.”

Funding for the shelter coordinators ends in June, when federal COVID-19 funds from the American Rescue Plan stimulus package, which covers 75 positions, are set to run out. The city’s portion, which covers 25 jobs, will also expire.

Adams’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But a spokesperson for the city’s education department said that the shelter-based coordinators “provide critical resources” to support students.

“We are extremely grateful for the stimulus funding that we used to support a range of programs and roles that support student wellbeing, especially as we continue to respond to the ongoing migrant crisis. We will review these priorities as we go through the budget process,” said spokesperson Jenna Lyle in a statement.

The City Council also pushed Adams on Monday to include $12.3 million for the program and called on him to reverse more than $1 billion in cuts to early childhood education, libraries and other city services.

Parent Anzhela Mordyga said the coordinator at her shelter helped her 8-year-old son enroll at a nearby Brooklyn school after she was initially told there was no more room. She said the coordinator also helped her child join an after-school program.

“Without her, I would be lost,” Mordyga said. “Who would I go to who could help? Having a shelter without a coordinator would be like building a restaurant but without a stove.”

Shelter coordinators serve as bridges between schools and families in shelter, particularly when students miss class or risk falling behind, according to Advocates for Children.

Pringle said student attendance will decline if the positions are eliminated.

“There is no question in my mind, none whatsoever,” she said. “I think you’ll see absences increase and I think you’ll see school transfers increase, neither of which is good for schools.”

Her nonprofit’s analysis found that 72% of students in shelter were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year. It also found 22% of students in third through eighth grades were proficient on the English Language Arts exam and 11% were proficient in math.

The report included stories from families, such as anecdotes about how a shelter-based coordinator helped a teenage parent enroll in a high school that provides childcare so the parent could finish school; how a coordinator helped add a student to her sibling’s bus route so their parents could start new jobs; and how a coordinator helped secure a new wheelchair for a growing 13-year-old.

“The shelter-based community coordinators,” Pringle said, “are the people who are on site meeting with families every single day, connecting them with school, making sure the kids are enrolled in school, setting up transportation, connecting them with after school, getting the younger kids enrolled in 3-K and pre-K, helping them sign up for Summer Rising, you name it.”

This story was updated to include a statement from a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Education.