Roosevelt Taught Recruits to Lie in Order to Take Benefits Meant for Homeless Kids -- and These Federal Charges Apply
Understand what it means to be a homeless high school student...And J425 documents a laundry list of charges administrators and coaches could face for McKinney-Vento Act Fraud and Kennel Club Payments
Roosevelt’s safeguards failed at every level. Rules violations occurred at the point of student registration when students were told to give dishonest answers in an attempt to obtain federal resources set aside for homeless students.
GREENLAKE PARK, SEATTLE — The drizzle doesn’t so much fall as it hangs in the air, a permanent state of gray, damp stillness that clings to the pre-dawn quiet of Green Lake. It’s 5:45 a.m. From a recess in the stone wall of the bathhouse, a shape unwinds itself from a thin, dark sleeping bag.
It is Maya, all of fourteen years, her movements stiff with a cold that has settled deep in her bones. She zips the bag with a practiced slowness, rolling it tight, a cylinder of synthetic warmth that is her only shield against the night. She shoves it deep into the bottom of her Jansport backpack, one the few things that is truly hers.
Her worn sneakers make no sound on the wet grass as she crosses the park, a tiny solitary figure moving toward the concrete block of the public restrooms, the grey brick structure framed by harsh electric lighting that buzzed in the gloom.
Inside, under the buzz of a bare fluorescent tube, she unzips a side pocket and pulls out a ziploc bag. Inside is a toothbrush, its bristles slightly splayed, a travel-size tube of toothpaste, rolled tight from the bottom, two tiny bottles of L’Occitane de Provence body wash and face lotion – sourced from a cousin working housekeeping at the Fairmont – and a sliver of a white facial soap, protected in a plastic case.
She arranged the grooming products on a single, clean paper towel next to the sink. She looks up and meets her own gaze in the polished metal mirror, humming along with Doechi playing on her phone, working the soap into a lather in her palms before touching her skin, washing her face with a practiced efficiency and attention to detail. She brushes her teeth with a silent ferocity, teeth gleam white in the steel.
She stares down her own reflection. But the girl refuses to disappear.
Changing out of her night clothes, she pulls fresh socks, a couple Pink by VS items and a crisply folded black skinny jeans out of the Jansport. Then out of a compression bag, a green garment near-vacuum packed into a perfect square. The square unfolds into the prized hoodie she’d won in a school spirit contest (An $87 item at retail, she knows.)
She loves the simplicity of the unlettered emerald green garment, depicting only the gold silhouette of Teddy Roosevelt on a bucking bronco. She’d ironed the edges of the logo flat two nights ago at the laundromat, using the last of her quarters not on the dryer, but on the heat of the machine itself, pressing the cotton against its warm metal side until the wrinkles submitted.
Eight minutes after entering the grey block outbuilding, she emerges, skin glowing, teeth shining. Thick hair sorted into a neat ponytail. She swings the backpack onto her shoulders and hoofs it to a nearby school bus stop. Blending into a group of kids and moms.
She’s rejected transportation offered by the district in an attempt at normalcy. But she won’t turn down the breakfast that is boxed and waiting for her in the school cafeteria, nor the track gear set aside for her in her locker, provided by federal funds set aside for homeless students.
Her jaw was set against the morning as she entered the restroom, but she’s smiling now. She loves the school day. It’s the end of the day she dreads. But that’s a ways off. For now, she’s happy, protected by an armor built of L’ocittane, toothpaste…crisp jeans and a hoodie that smells like dryer sheets. And that’s good enough for a start.
Almost 6,200 Kids Across the State are Both Homeless and Alone. And Still Go to School
In Washington State, 6,183 school kids start the day like the girl in the fictionalized account above, both homeless and alone. Another 37,000 homeless students at least have a parent or guardian to rely on. All in all that’s about 44,000 homeless children attending public school in the state of Washington every day.
Across the country the number of homeless and alone kids rises to nearly 140,000. The total number of homeless students attending school each day tops 1.3 million nationwide. And we’re just talking about the ones that are actually attending school.
As recently as 2021, Roosevelt High School in Seattle, WA reported a total of five kids like Maya enrolled on campus.
In 2022, there were 8. By mid 2023, Seattle Schools provided services to 13 homeless students at Roosevelt.
In the October of 2024, the number of McKinney-Vento Act eligible homeless students at Roosevelt had ballooned to 42.
That’s an over 800% increase in two years. Interestingly, almost all of the new homeless kids identified in 2024 also happened to be recently-arrived star football players on Head Coach Sam Adams’ increasingly-high profile program.
High profile inasmuch that everyone was sure talking about Roosevelt.
That same month, J425 published an investigative report on October 3, detailing that Roosevelt was under investigation for alleged recruiting violations. J425 was the first to report that homeless designations were being used to circumvent state eligibility rules. Despite a next-day denial from principal Tami Brewer, issued in an all-staff email, the J425 report was found to be true.
In fact, the problem was even larger than earlier thought.
“A coordinated effort to declare incoming players homeless, allowing them to bypass residency rules for athletic eligibility.”
A June 2025 fact-finding report by the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) found that the Roosevelt High School football program engaged in a coordinated effort to declare incoming players homeless, allowing them to bypass residency rules for athletic eligibility. The scathing report details a scheme involving at least 16 players during the 2024 season who were coached to use "false addresses and false conclusory claims of McKinney-Vento eligibility" to enroll and play. This scandal mirrors a nearly identical situation that embroiled Garfield High School’s football program in 2017, suggesting a persistent and troubling pattern of abuse within Seattle Public Schools.
It’s bad enough that adults in major positions of trust at a high profile public school lured kids and families into transfers with false promises and in violation of state rules. It’s even worse that these adult leaders immediately turned the kids into liars, instructing them how to defraud a federal program in one of their first acts at Roosevelt.
But in order to understand the true nature of the offense, one has to understand the gravity of the term “McKinney-Vento”, and what it equates to in a practical sense.
A McKinney-Vento Act student is a homeless kid. Plain and simple. And the people who administer the McKinney-Vento Act program are in the business of locating and providing services to kids who manage to exist and sometimes thrive despite some of the most depressing situations one can imagine. McKinney-Vento Act Coordinator is truly a job that comes with a near-guarantee of post-traumatic stress.
What is the McKinney-Vento Act?
The McKinney-Vento Act is federal policy designed to make sure that homeless children, regardless of living situation, receive a constitutionally-guaranteed public education. Schools are required to census the homeless population in their service area. The information is provided to the district office. Per state law, the district homeless liaison determines whether or not a student is homeless. Once McKinney-Vento (McV) homeless status is determined, the student receives homeless status and the school works to remove all barriers between the student and schooling + extra-curricular activities.
A homeless student is defined as an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence. The law provides examples.
Students who are sharing housing due to loss of housing or economic hardship
Students living in motels, hotels, and trailer parks because of a lack of housing
Students sleeping in accommodations not designed for sleeping
Student living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings
In Seattle, McKinney-Vento designation works like this. Enrollment for all students in Seattle occurs at the district office. McKinney-Vento status is determined at the district office by Seattle’s McKinney-Vento District Liaison Jeanea Proctor-Mills and her staff of nine full-time employees.
Prior to 2024, new students were enrolled and declared McKinney-Vento prior to review of McKinney-Vento eligibility by district-level staff.
Proctor-Mills confirmed that the former process allowed individuals to use “key phrases” and register as McKinney-Vento without a comprehensive review by McKinney-Vento staff.
But the processes for how students are determined eligible for McKinney-Vento changed at the beginning of the 2024- 2025 school year, Proctor-Mills said, the previous process allowed students to be identified as McKinney-Vento without a thorough vetting of whether or not the student met the McKinney-Vento criteria
“Students and families knew they could go to the district’s enrollment office and say certain words and enrollment personnel would not question the housing status of the student. This allowed circumvention and abuse of McKinney-Vento processes in determining eligibility,” Marilee Scarbrough wrote in the fact-finder report, summarizing her interview with the Seattle Schools McKinney-Vento staff.
In fact, athletes and coaches had been abusing this hole in the district verification process for over a decade.
After students enrolled, coaches and the athletic director failed to hold athletes accountable by checking grades and attendance to ensure athletes remain eligible to compete.
Eighteen New Homeless Football Players —and They’re All Homeless?
The WIAA investigation into Roosevelt was launched after the school saw 18 new student-athletes transfer into its football program for the 2024 season. Investigators found that 17 of them registered using a "conditional" homeless status under the federal McKinney-Vento Act. This act is designed to provide immediate school enrollment and stability for children who lack a "fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence".
At Roosevelt, however, the report concludes the act was used to assemble a dominant team. The WIAA found that players were coached on how to fill out paperwork, repeatedly using identical phrases like "McKinney-Vento" or "couch surfing" to answer questions.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW WITH FULL LIST OF FEDERAL CHARGES
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