Proposed FERPA Changes “Focus” on Foster Youth

By Tasion Kwamilele

Records for foster youth are often lost as they are moved around. A game-changing database called Foster Focus is helping social workers and school administrators assist the needs of foster youth by keeping all of their records – from residential history to school documentation – in one place.

Foster Focus was established by the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) to maintain residential, health and school records of foster kids. It was only implemented in two counties when it first started in 2000 but since then, 23 local educational agencies have contracted with SCOE to use the database including the San Francisco Unified School District.

Tom McGeorge, planning analyst for San Francisco’s Human Services Agency, is working with SCOE to finalize the implementation of Foster Focus in the School District this upcoming school year.  In the past, updating foster kids records relied data from the social workers monthly visits but the new database will now update records on a nightly basis. 

“Only seeing a child once a month is a long time so this will be used as a case management tool,” McGeorge said. 

By monitoring grades, course schedules and school attendance, “this database will allow us to know much more than we’ve known about our foster youth,” he added.

A new bill was introduced this week and, if passed, would amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as FERPA. FERPA gives parents legal control over a child’s school records until the age of 18, hindering school officials and social workers from receiving school records.

Sacramento’s Office of Education had to work around FERPA to allow for its robust data sharing, according to Trish Kennedy, SCOE‘s director of Foster Youth Services.

“Not only do we have a Memorandum of Understanding with our agencies, our database is extremely secure,” Kennedy said. “We can also track who logs into the system, where they go and what they look at. In all the years that we’ve had Foster focus, we’ve never had a breach.”

This week, Representatives Karen Bass (D-CA, Tom Marino (R-PA), Michelle Bachman (R-MN) and Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced the Access to Papers Leads to Uninterrupted Scholars Act (A+ Act). The A+ Act will assist child welfare agencies in “monitoring enrollment, attendance, and school stability of children in their care.”

Jesse Hahnel, director of the Foster-Ed Initiative at the National Center for Youth Law, is a supporter of the Foster Focus system and is working with the Santa Cruz Office of Education to have the program implemented there. To avoid confusion, Hahnel says the county will obtain parental consent for every child in care or will have an order from the presiding juvenile court judge.  This will allow for information sharing with respect to education – a time consuming process that would be averted if the A+ Act were to become law.

Unlike SF Unified School District, the Santa Cruz Office of Education is having a hard time linking school records into the Foster Focus database.

“Sacramento County has created a system that imports data from child welfare agencies into the [Foster Focus] database but the school information is in a different system,” Hahnel said.  “So getting that information into the database is pretty difficult.”

He doesn’t expect the system to be fully implemented until the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

“You can pull a ton of data on a group of individuals but if the information is not collected, disseminated and reported back in a scientific manner, it becomes irrelevant,” said Mike Jones founder of Courageous Connections.

Jones started Courageous Connections, a non-profit that has partnered with Elk Grove Unified School District and provides normalizing activities for foster children in the public school system. While he thinks the Foster Focus database is a “step in the right direction”, he feels it is necessary to track the effects it has in counties implementing the system.

“I am working on a report right now and using the Foster Focus database. I think it’s a great idea, “ Jones said. “But the problem of maintaining a database this size is getting all of the players to input the information that needs to be known on a timely basis.”

Advocates rallied in Washington D.C. on May 31 to support the new A+ Act. The bill will now make its way up the House of Congress, beginning with its review in an assigned committee hearing. 

New Student Aid Limitations Could Challenge Former Foster Youths

Looming changes to the Federal Pell Grant Program will jeopardize the college prospects of former foster youth, who often start toward higher education with no academic credentials and high financial needs.

A budget deal reached by Congress in December maintained the amount of the Pell grants, but will limit eligibility for the grants in two key ways starting July 1. First, students can only receive them for 12 semesters, down from 18. This change affects students retroactively, so for those students who have been in school for 12 semesters and planned to receive aid for another 6 semesters, they will run out as of July 1.

Second, students can no longer qualify for Pell grants through the Ability to Benefit Test.  The test allows those students who haven’t yet received a high school diploma or GED to prove they are college prepared and therefore eligible to receive federal funding.

Both changes take effect on July 1 of this year. More than 65,000 students won’t receive aid because of the changes, according to the Association of Community College Trustees.

Some of those students are foster youth, who not only rely on the financial support but also statistically take longer to graduate from college. Eight percent of foster youth alumni graduate from a two-year or four-year institution by age 26, compared to only six percent by age 24, according to the University of Chicago Chapin Hall Midwest Evaluation of Former Foster Youth.

“It’s like a moving train is told to immediately stop and let people off,” says Michael McPartlin, program coordinator of the Guardian Scholars Program at Community College of San Francisco (CSSF).

The Guardian Scholars Program provides comprehensive support to foster youth completing a GED, achieving an Associate’s  Degree or certificate program, or transferring to a four-year institution. McPartlin says a number of students have already visited his office with concerns about how they will now pay for school.

“This is just being thrown at them now. They already have academic plans in place as suggested by the school, and now they are stuck,” says McPartlin.

One of the students stuck between a desire to continue education and a way to pay for it is Nicole Rodriguez, 26, who has been working toward an Associate’s Degree since 2006.

When Rodriguez started school, she placed into English91 B, the lowest level English class offered at CCSF. In order to be eligible to transfer to a four-year college she must take and pass English 1B, which means there are five additional required classes for which she must pay.

She is now on her twelfth semester, and wants to transfer to a four-year college and study social work.

“For the vast majority of our students, because of multiple placements, they are placed in the most basic level classes and aren’t entering prepared for the collegiate level,” says McPartlin.

The last six years Rodriguez spent becoming college-ready was like a punishment, she now feels, without the financial ability to continue college.

“How can they do that, especially for foster youth who start at the lowest of the lowest?” says Rodriguez.

Rodriguez’s road to college was long and arduous.

With a mother who was a prostitute and drug abuser, her life was never completely stable. At 15 she delivered a baby and, because her mother was on drugs, couldn’t return home. As soon as Rodriguez left the hospital she and her baby entered foster care.

After graduating high school, she became a prostitute and drug addicted, a life that to issues with depression, PTSD, and anxiety. Yet eventually she made her way to Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco and was encouraged to continue her education at CCSF.

Now married with four children, she is devastated that the lack of governmental funding will allow her to become the professional she wants to be.

“It’s still my dream to become a social worker, so not having that financial option takes away my ability to take care of my family while going to school,” says Rodriguez.

There are financial alternatives for foster youth who, like all students, can apply for student loans. In California, there are Chafee grants available, which awards former foster youth up to $5,000 in aid per year. But the aid is only available until age 23.

Now, because Rodriguez can no longer receive federal aid, she won’t be eligible for the part-time job she has on campus, which is paid through work study.

“Yes I can take out loans, but I’m trying to get out of debt. Especially coming from foster care, I need to build a foundation,” says Rodriguez.

“I may have to give up on school to take care of my family.”