Isn’t it Ironic, Don’t you Think?

By. Daniel Heimpel

As the federal government works toward eased flow of information between the foster care system and education, the state that led the charge now aims to dam up the spring. 

SACRAMENTO – As California stumbles into the oncoming fiscal year, a yawning deficit is forcing wrenching cuts. It is an environment wherein hard fought protections for the state’s most vulnerable are felled at a dizzying rate.

“What is sad is that somehow anything that might potentially have a cost is just being swiped away without any close analysis,” said Laura Faer, Public Counsel’s Education Rights Director.

Faer and an unrelenting group of advocates have been fighting proposed changes to California’s education code under Governor Brown’s 2011-12 budget.  These changes would save two hundred thousand dollars but the cost to the state would be far greater, hurting its status as a national leader in policy promoting the educational success of foster children. Not to mention the educational cost to foster youth who already bounce through an average of nine different schools from kindergarten to senior year. This all happening while Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.) – who was California’s Assembly Speaker in 2010 – promotes federal legislation she introduced last month facilitating the exchange of information between schools and foster care agencies to support foster children’s education.

But, the irony of federal advancement on foster care and education is lost on California administrators too deep in the budget hacking woods to see the forest.

On June 12^th, the Senate Budget Fiscal Review Committee held a budget hearing in Sacramento. Michael Cohen, Chief Deputy Director of the Brown Administration’s Department of Finance explained the rationale behind converting 18 state mandates on Local Educational Agencies and School Districts to a $200 million “block grant.” This would eliminate the cumbersome process wherein local level school authorities must file reimbursemnt claims to recoup costs on  mandates imposed by the state, Cohen said. “We moved to a block grant approach where you eliminate those mandates, which in retrospect were never needed or are no longer needed.”

But, two of the mandates that would be eliminated under Cohen and the Administration’s plan are essential for foster youth struggling to make it through the state’s faltering public school system.

The first deals with the need for all social workers to have access to foster children’s educational records. Over the years, public child welfare agencies in California have increasingly contracted with social workers employed by private Foster Family Agencies to handle day-to-day casework. This means that private social workers are often the person closest to the foster children. But until 2000 when then-Assemblymember George Runner introduced legislation to fix the problem, these social workers did not have direct access to the educational records that would help them make decisions in the best interest of the child.

“The direct link between foster families and social workers is often weak,” the analysis filed in the statehouse reads. “Therefore it can be cumbersome to obtain student records, transmit them to the agency who then transmits the foster family.”

Roberto Favela, Vice President of a large California Foster Family Agency, says that this information is critical to ensuring that school records follow the child. “His personal life is traumatized by a living change,” Favela says, “and now you have an educational change that doesn’t facilitate or accommodate his needs.”

This was one of many examples of California’s progressive policy on the education of foster youth, which in 2003 culminated in landmark legislation to ensure foster youth had at least a fairer shot at at an education. A key mandate embedded into the broader law (AB 490) compelled Local Education Agencies to transfer a foster child’s school records within “two business days” of being moved. The common sense idea of timely transfer of records has since been engrained in federal child welfare policy as well as proposed federal education reform.

Despite a report from the California State Controller in 2011 that this mandate costs nothing, it still ended up on the Brown Administration’s chopping block, leaving advocates like Faer incredulous.

But for Cohen and the Administration, block granting and the subsequent elimination of code sections — which were created through thoughtful consideration and deliberation — is a win-win. “The block grant offers an opportunity for everyone to win by saving the administrative effort and providing flexible funding within the broad parameters of the state’s requirements,” Cohen said in the June 12^th budget hearing.

While in agreement with some aspects of Cohen’s argument, Senator Mark Leno lead the Budget Review Committee in a 10-5 vote modifying the Administration’s block grant scheme, setting the stage for a state-level drama with national implications.

In Washington D.C., the attitude towards the education of foster youth is markedly different.

On May 31^st, the last day of National Foster Care Awareness Month, Representative Karen Bass (D-Calif.) introduced the A Plus + Act, alongside co-sponsors Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). A + would loosen federal rules on who can access educational records, easing foster care agencies’ ability to get their hands on important school information.

The irony is not lost on Danielle Mole, a Policy Advocate for the Alliance of Children and Family Services, who has been lobbying to save the imperiled educational mandates back in California.

“One of the authors of the A + Act is Karen Bass who not so long ago was an Assembly member here in California,” Mole says. “We have a major California leader moving forward on providing increased collaboration between agencies, while California is potentially putting up addition barriers.”

A + currently sits in the House Education and the Workforce Committee, where staffers are unclear of when it will move forward. But co-sponsor Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) is clear about wanting to see that happen.

“It’s a bipartisan and commonsense bill and it costs nothing,” Stark said in a written statement provided to The Chronicle.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-Sc.), attended the May 31^st press conference when the bill was announced. As a member the Education and the Workforce Committee, Wilson is in a position to move A + to the floor.

“As an adoptive father, Congressman Wilson understands the importance of this issue and plans to review legislation pertaining to it,” said Wilson Communications Director Caroline Delleney in a statement provided to The Chronicle.

So as Washington presses forward on the education of foster youth, Sacramento may be rolling back.

Calif. Budget Battle Threatens Education of Vulnerable Children

by Daniel Heimpel

As Friday’s constitutional deadline for a California state budget looms, Gov. Jerry Brown’s Administration is at a loggerheads with advocates about the future of mandates supporting the educational success of vulnerable children.

In an effort to save nominal cash on the processing of a one-page form and photocopies of student records, advocates argue that the Governor’s Department of Finance is not only hurting the educational progress of vulnerable children, but is also shooting itself in the fiscal foot.

Tucked deep in the Governor’s Trailer Bill outlining the policy changes accompanying the Administration’s 2012-13 state budget, Public Counsel Attorney Laura Faer found two obscure yet important policy changes that will affect vulnerable children. The Brown Administration plans to suspend re-imbursements to school districts as part of the Caregiver Affidavit Program and constrain California’s progressive policy on educational records for foster youth.

A report outlining the Legislature’s 2012-13 Budget Plan released by the Assembly Budget Committee late June 11^th rejected the Administration’s proposal to shelve these and 16 other mandates up for suspension.

But Faer and a group of foster care advocates are settling in for a fight. They say this in an example of a broader trend of cutting programs that have obvious and immediate benefits for children, and the state’s bottom line.

“What is sad is that somehow anything that might potentially have a cost is just being swiped away without any close analysis,” Faer said. “Key pieces of laws that were put into place and that made California one of the national leaders in the education of vulnerable children will be lost in one fell swoop. It is ironic. We are in a really sad state.”

Between 2009-2011 there were an average of 333,000 California children living with kin, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Center, and all but 16,000 of them did so outside of the child welfare system. Financial instability, incarceration, illness, deportation and myriad other causes contribute to the number of parents who can’t care for their children and thus leave them with kin.

Until the mid-1990s, living with a relative could prove a substantial impediment to a child’s educational success, because school districts were not obliged to enroll those children unless the caregiver produced adequate documentation from the biological parent or became a legal guardian him or herself. This was – and is – an expensive, time-consuming process, which slows down school enrollment, retarding student advancement.

In 1994, state legislation was passed, allowing relative caregivers to fill out a one-page form, which affirmed that they were the caregivers, thus compelling schools to enroll these children immediately.

The program has cost an average of $584,123.20 per year in the five years from 2006-07 to 2010-11, according to the Department of Finance.

“This is not a decision to single out any specific mandate but part of a broader policy of the administration to either suspend or eliminate all K-12 mandates that are not associated with core student health and safety issues,” said Department Spokesman H.D. Palmer.

But suspending the Affidavit Program will have real costs. Advocates argue that courts will soon be swamped with countless thousands of relatives applying for guardianship, forcing costly investigations and lawyer’s fees.

“The bottom line is that there is no way the state could conduct that many guardianships a year, or financially afford to require all these children to obtain legal guardianships before entering school,” wrote Karen Jones-Mason of the Northern California Association of Counsel for Children in a letter to the Governor, the State Board of Education as well as the Senate and Assembly Budget Committees. “The cost would be astronomical.”

Eric Harper, child welfare analyst for the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office in Sacramento, explains how cuts in one policy area can have unforeseen consequences in others: “In general we wouldn’t recommend a cut that would end up costing the state more.” And while the LAO had not conducted an analysis on the effect of the bill or taken a position, Harper said, “if everyone had to get a guardianship, there certainly is a cost. It wouldn’t be free.”

In addition to the Caregiver Affidavits, the trailer bill would suspend key provisions in education policy regarding foster youth, potentially throwing a wrench into nearly a decade’s worth of progressive policy and practice that has set California on the vanguard of a national effort to improve educational outcomes for foster youth.

Advocates contend that the Department of Finance proposes saving $200,000 in photocopying costs by eliminating Foster Family Agencies’ (FFAs) ability to obtain foster children’s educational records from school districts. FFAs are private agencies that contract with California’s county foster care administrations to handle casework.

“If the state is worried about the cost of photocopies, the FFAs will pay for the photo copies,” said Danielle Mole, policy advocate for the California Alliance of Children and Family Services, which represents many of the state’s Foster Family Agencies.

Front line workers argue that they need these records to serve the best interests of children, and that if their access is stymied they will have to go through the county social worker, further slowing the process down.

“It just becomes cumbersome,” said Stephanie Antonioli a regional manager for EMQ FamiliesFirst. “It is the kids who are losing the services, and the kids who are suffering more than anything else.”

In addition, the trailer bill would suspend Education Code sections ensuring the timely transfer of foster students records as they get bounced from school to school. The rapid transfer of school records was a key component of Assembly Bill 490, which took effect in 2004 and set the tone for national policy on the education of foster youth. This California law influenced federal child welfare policy in 2008 and helped frame an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act written by Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.).

Tuesday, June 12th is slated for the next round of negotiations on California’s budget.

-Daniel Heimpel is the Director of Fostering Media Connections and the publisher of the Chronicle of Social Change