Contacting Family of a Homeless Student

My school does have a policy of trying to make a phone contact whenever you have a student making a failing grade or has a discipline write up. Sometimes this process is time consuming and very frustrating. Phones are disconnected, or not in service, or you play phone tag. We use contact log sheets to document who and when contact is made. This is written log is required by my bosses. in order to be able to prove that you attempted contact with a parent. I had a difficult time with one student that was failing my class a few weeks back. The phone numbers that I tried were not working. I had a conference with the student to try and find out what his situation was and to get some kind of additional contact numbers. During this conference the student told me that he stayed wherever. He told me lots of things like he did not live with his mother and he did not have a father. He could not give me an address where he stayed at night. He told me that he just stayed everywhere during a second interview. Our school has a policy of reporting this as a homeless situation. When I started talking to the school administrators about these interviews, another teacher gave the number of his Aunt. Well I made contact by phone with her at 9:i5 AM, then his Grandmother called and was very upset that he stated that he didn't have any family and was homeless. Next the Aunt called back and scheduled a conference the next morning. Then I had his Uncle call me, he was coming to the conference also. Next call was his mother from her job in Atlanta. It was true that he did not live with her during the week because she took a job in North Atlanta and only came home on the weekend. To make a long story short, I had six family memebers show up for the conference the next morning. I wish a had a video of his reaction when he walked into the conference room and saw his family there. It was one the best conferences I have ever been a part of and my boss was there also. I realized then that I needed to always stick with trying to make some type of contact-ALWAYS.