PORTLAND, Ore. - On paper, there are exactly 11,294 homeless students attending school in Oregon, according to new numbers released Wednesday by the state.

But the true number could be significantly higher, officials said, since it's fiendishly difficult to track a population that's transitory at its core and keeps its secrets close.

The totals don't include children younger than five, nor the influx of students who came to Oregon in the wakes of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and will likely bump up next year's numbers.

"We do have an undercount, because we are not capturing all of the kids that are not enrolled in school," said Dona Bolt, who coordinates homeless education programs for the state Department of Education. "It's very difficult to identify if the family or the youth is not wanting to disclose their living situation."

This year marks the first time that the state has done a formal release of district-by-district totals of homeless students, to comply with federal education laws.

The breakdown includes some givens - Portland, the state's largest metro area by far, also has nearly twice the numbers of homeless students as anywhere else in the state - but also some surprises. For example, the tiny district of Blachly, in rural Lane County, has 45 students classified as homeless, in a school with only 140 students total.

That's 32 percent, far above the statewide average of 2 percent, which in turn mirrors the national estimated average.

Part of the explanation for the numbers lies in how the government defines "homeless" for students, Bolt said. The term doesn't just mean students who live with their families on the street - it can also mean those who live in shelters, in pay-by-the-week seedy motels, in their cars or who simply "couch surf" with friends and relatives.

Based on that definition, the Portland school district serves 1,620 homeless students, the Medford district 962, Salem 475 and Corvallis 170. The bulk of those - 5,052 - are in elementary school, but the largest single-grade number of homeless students is in 12th grade, at 1,183.

Tom Ettel, principal at Jackson Elementary School in Medford, said perhaps 75 of the students at his 370 student school are classified as homeless at any given time, as their families pass through seasonally to work in Southern Oregon's orchards, vineyards and fruit packing plants.

One family spent six months living in a tent in a nearby park, he said, showering when they had the money to rent a motel room.

"We just lost a family recently, they had been here since September," Ettel said. "The kids were withdrawn, quiet, no reading skills. Then, the last week it clicked, especially for the boy, the second grader, and he was feeling good about himself. Now, we don't know, where they went. The mom just showed up, and took the kids."

His school is in a high-poverty area, he said, and so there's no gaping social divide between those with permanent homes and those without.

In Portland, though, dozens of homeless students attend Chapman Elementary in one of the city's most affluent residential districts. The students are at Chapman because the school's boundaries encompass several downtown homeless shelters, said Kerry Tintera, the district's homeless education coordinator.

Minette Desbordes and her daughter, Chloe, 7, spent six months living in shelters, first in California, then in Oregon, before the two were finally able to get their own apartment. Desbordes said her daughter, now a Chapman student, is settling into the school, but that it hasn't been an easy transition.

"We don't have a computer, and other children do," Desbordes said. "I try to make the best of it - I will go into work on my weekend, and type her reports for her, so her things aren't handwritten while everyone else's is typed."

Chapman, though, has helped out the mother and daughter from the beginning, Desbordes said, assisting with their transfer paperwork, and helping to pay for field trips and class pictures that Desbordes couldn't afford.

Tintera said the teachers know homeless students face very different challenges.

"If they are living in a shelter, they may not have slept well at night, or be insecure as to where they are going to be staying the next night," she said. "We try to be sensitive to each child's needs, to make sure they have eaten breakfast and gotten help with their homework. Some of them do struggle, but we have our success stories, too."

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)