FosterEd Director Jesse Hahnel

FosterEd Director Jesse Hahnel

This story has been updated. Students in foster care volition be moving to the front of the course if the new school accountability rules the governor proposed in his budget revision become law.

For the first time, districts, county offices of education and country agencies will take to keep runway of and account for the academic progress of their foster students under Gov. Jerry Brown'south May revision.

Although advocates applaud the new rules, they besides are concerned that $15 million in state funding for these students volition no longer exist dedicated to foster youth under the governor's Local Command Funding Formula.

When Brown unveiled his new funding formula, he added students in foster care as a category who should receive extra money considering of the difficulties that they face. In the trailer bill to the May revision, which gives details of the budget, he goes further – making foster students their own subgroup in the Academic Functioning Index. The API measures the academic achievement of the state's students as a whole besides as subgroups of students by ethnicity and classification equally English learners, low-income or receiving special education services. Schools would be required to track the progress of foster students and intervene if students are lagging behind.

These new requirements mean that districts have "very, very strong incentives" to ensure that foster youth progress academically, said H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for the state Department of Finance.

Of the 6.2 million students in California, merely well-nigh 42,000 are school-age foster youth, and they are scattered amidst districts, making information technology like shooting fish in a barrel for them to go unnoticed. Under the governor's proposal, the California Department of Education and the California Section of Social Services would be required to share the information necessary to identify which students are in foster intendance. The Land Board of Education would take until June 30, 2014, to make recommendations on how to meliorate reporting of educational outcomes for foster youth.

"It'southward a high priority to get good, accurate information on foster kids," Palmer said.

Currently schoolhouse districts often are unaware of the number of students they have who are in foster care. These children, who are typically put in foster care considering they have been abused or neglected, ofttimes are shuffled from home to home, changing schools and even school districts. Their academic achievement is lower than that of their low-income peers. Nationally, less than half of foster students graduate from high school.

Advocates for foster children applaud the governor's efforts to brand them visible. "I think there is some great linguistic communication in the May revise regarding foster youth," said Jesse Hahnel, director of FosterEd for the National Center for Youth Law, which advocates for low-income youth. "I recall it is going to brand a huge departure."

However, these advocates, including Hahnel, are concerned that the requirements for county offices of teaching are not strong enough to ensure that the $xv million currently going to county offices for the Foster Youth Services program will remain dedicated to foster children.

Under Brownish'due south proposal, the money volition continue to go to the county offices, but the funds can be spent on any educational purpose, while most of the accountability for foster children'southward bookish achievement falls on schoolhouse districts. As a reader commented below, country senators are as well concerned well-nigh this issue. In Senate Bill 69, the Senate's response to the governor's budget proposal, funding for Foster Youth Services remains dedicated. The bill was introduced past Sen. Carol Liu, D-Glendale.

Since 1981, canton offices of instruction and a handful of districts have been receiving this separate land foster youth funding to develop programs such every bit academic counseling, tutoring, mentoring, vocational preparation and transition services (such every bit ensuring students don't lose credits when they change schools and that counseling and tutoring programs continue). They too aid gear up students to live on their own after they turn xviii and are "emancipated."

"I'g continually benefiting from it (Foster Youth Services)," said Chris Huttman, 18, who is emancipated and about to graduate from Cosumnes Oaks Loftier Schoolhouse in Elk Grove Unified near Sacramento. "Whenever I needed extra tutoring, they'd fix information technology up immediately. I'd go to a library or the tutor would come to my house."

Now an adult and gratuitous to make his ain decisions, Huttman, who has been in foster intendance off and on since he was fourteen months erstwhile, said he has no other support system to assistance him transition to machismo. He wants to be a general contractor, and Foster Youth Services is introducing him to programs that provide free tools and an entry into union apprenticeships. Staff members are too helping him get his commuter's license and find housing.

"Honestly, I didn't know how many opportunities I had outside of loftier school," he said. "I didn't know what existed."

An Oct 2022 report that evaluated the six oldest Foster Youth Services programs showed they were producing positive results in areas such as high school completion, truancy and expulsion rates. For example, foster youth in Mt. Diablo Unified in the San Francisco Bay Expanse had a 93 percent high school graduation rate in 2012, said James Wogan, who oversees child and family programs for the commune. That is more than double the national average graduation rate for foster children, which is 45 pct, according to the written report.

Nether Brown's proposal, county offices would act in more of a supervisory role if districts fail to meet their goals regarding foster children. The county offices are also expected to keep to coordinate services for foster youth with schoolhouse districts and social service agencies and attempt to minimize changes in school placement.

Michael Jones works with foster youth at Elk Grove Unified.

Michael Jones works with foster youth at Elk Grove Unified.

The National Center for Youth Law, in an analysis of the governor's proposal by Hahnel and co-writer Maya Cooper, says the current list of requirements for county offices needs to exist strengthened and be more specific, making county offices more accountable for student achievement and for analogous services amidst social service agencies, schools, the courts and nonprofits that assist foster children.

Hahnel and Cooper emphasize that county offices are not required to maintain the current levels of funding they receive from the land for foster youth. The analysis calls for the preservation of Foster Youth Services' categorical funding or for a "concur harmless" provision requiring canton offices to at to the lowest degree maintain their current funding delivery to foster youth. The governor's proposal has such a "hold harmless" clause for at-gamble students in general, Hahnel says, merely he would like to see foster youth mentioned specifically to protect the Foster Youth Services program.

Michael Jones, a resource teacher who works as an advocate for foster youth at Elk Grove Unified, said the governor'due south new accountability plan would work if the Foster Youth Services funding remains defended and is tied to services. He calls the governor'southward proposal to lift restrictions on the funds "naïve and irresponsible."

"If it'due south not chiselled funds, I guarantee the money will disappear and non reach foster kids," he said.

Palmer disagrees. He says the Department of Finance has "expectations that canton offices will continue to provide those services" and that school districts and canton offices will coordinate to make sure foster youth are not falling through the cracks.

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