- June 21, 2025
In a presentation to the Flagler County School Board last month, Rashawnda Lloyd-Miller, the district’s Families in Transition liaison, said her job was humbling yet rewarding.
“We support the students who are homeless to ensure that they have full access to a school education and their housing is not a barrier,” she said. “We get them in school despite them missing documents. We provide academic support. We connect them with our community partners to help provide them with some of their basic needs like food, clothing and school supplies.”
Flagler Schools’ FIT program served 394 homeless students this past school year, including 34 who were unaccompanied youth, meaning they were not living with a parent or legal guardian. Seventeen of the homeless students were seniors who graduated with their class last month.
Some of those students are headed to college. Some will be earning trade certifications at Flagler Technical College, she said. Some earned multiple scholarships despite their hardships.
The majority of the students and families in the program share housing with another family. Many live with one family for a week and then move on to live with another family. Some live in campsites or motels.
The only full-time shelter in Flagler County is the Family Life Center which only serves victims of domestic violence. Volusia County has a few shelters.
“The Family Renew Center and Hope Place are typically the only two where our families ever get a space,” Lloyd-Miller said in an interview with the Observer.
She has made it her mission to build an “army of advocates” and works with at least a dozen community organizations that provide support.
“A bus driver is going to see something different than the cafeteria person, different than a classroom teacher or somebody out in the community,” she said. “So, we just train people to know that this program exists, and this is what you might see. It just helps us to identify more students and make sure they have what they need to be successful academically.”
The FIT program is federally funded through the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which guarantees that children experiencing homelessness have equal access to a free public education. Flagler Schools received $54,450 through McKinney-Vento funds and used about $40,000 of its Title One funds to provide such things as transportation from a shelter to the student’s school of origin, because for some, their school is their only constant.
Lloyd-Miller has been with the program for two years. She makes sure the students get into school, have transportation, are safe and have access to food.
Tammy Yorke, Flagler Schools’ coordinator of federal programs, told the School Board at last month’s spotlight that since Lloyd-Miller has been with the program it has grown in leaps and bounds.
“I want to say how fortunate this program is to have someone who is so full of energy and love and really wants to make sure that everyone feels included and seen,” Yorke said. “What she brings to this program is phenomenal.”
Lloyd-Miller can relate to the students she serves because she was in a similar situation when Hurricane Andrew tore through Miami in 1992 and destroyed her family’s apartment building, leaving nothing but a pile of bricks. They lost everything and wound up living in her grandparents’ house through much of her fifth and sixth grade school years.
She shared a three bedroom, one bath house with her parents, brother, sister, grandparents, uncle and some cousins — 13 in all.
“I know what it’s like to be in a crowded house,” she said. “I know what it’s like to not want to be in that place. I got on the city bus. We were not in the zone for our school, so I got on the bus early at 7 o’clock. I would stay after school for some after-school programs, clubs, sports, whatever. And that was just my life. I’d come back late at night, 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, whatever it is, because there's just a lot of people, it's noisy, you don't sleep well. But that was our life.”
She continues to advocate for students after they graduate. She helped one who has a job find a home. Affordable housing is an oxymoron, Loyd-Miller said, so he wound up renting a room in a house. Another student was able to move into the Family Life Center because he had turned 18 and he was a victim of abuse.
She continues to send emails to families in the program letting them know about community resources and food pantries that are available. She’s enrolled some of her elementary school kids in her summer program, Great Minds Literacy Camp, at the Carver Community Center. She reached out to homeless parents of ninth graders to recruit them for the Take Stock in Children program. Five or six were enrolled in the four-year program, which provides a mentor, college prep and college tuition at a state school.
Three of the program’s unaccompanied homeless students this year were elementary school students, Lloyd-Miller said.
“One of the little girls, her mom passed away. There was one where they don’t know where the parent is. Usually, they have a caregiver who steps in, but they don’t have any legal rights to make any decisions. We can help that caregiver and provide them with some support.”
At the School Board meeting she related how she and her husband were without a washer and dryer for two months and going to the laundromat seemed like such a burden.
“I have a washer and dryer at home,” she said. “But then I think about somebody who doesn't have a home. It's just a humbling thing, and you just step back and realize how blessed you are.”
