As districts set up their goals for the next school year and classify funding under the new California school finance system, they take to consider for the get-go fourth dimension a small, highly at-gamble subset of students: youth in foster care.

Under the new Local Command Funding Formula, districts must develop Local Control and Accountability (LCAP) plans, and they must give particular consideration to the needs of English learners, students from low-income families, and students in foster care.

Districts are used to considering the challenges faced by low-income students and English learners, said Teri Burns, senior director of policy and programs for the California School Boards Association. But "the area of foster youth is a new one for most districts," she said. "It's not i where districts take taken real direct action in the past."

Determining how to see the needs of these highly mobile students – who account for only virtually 42,000 of California's half-dozen.2 million students and whose test scores and graduation rates are among the lowest of whatever subgroup of students – is proving to be a challenge for many districts.

Source: WestEd

Source: WestEd

To help districts, a coalition of advocates has put together a sample Local Command and Accountability Programme (LCAP) for foster youth. The California Schoolhouse Boards Association emailed a copy to all its members, Burns said, adding that it is a good starting point every bit districts brainstorm to look at best practices for supporting foster youth.

The sample program calls on districts to go baseline data to place their foster youth, then prepare the goal of closing the achievement gap betwixt foster students and the full general student population by 10 percent a yr. The programme also recommends providing staff dedicated to the needs of foster students.

"If they don't practice anything else, districts demand to accept foster youth counselors who are working to identify the strengths and needs of foster children and ensuring they accept educational opportunities," said Jesse Hahnel, who helped develop the sample LCAP and is director of foster youth programs at the National Middle for Youth Police force in Oakland.

Former foster youth know what is needed

Districts are expected to attain out to parents, teachers, administrators and the community at large when they create their accountability plans. But effective outreach to develop the foster youth component is more complicated. Unlike most students who tin be represented by their parents, foster youth oft motion from home to home or live in group homes.

"Nosotros've gone through life experiences that other kids don't go through," said Yoselin Cabral, a student at Cal Country Fresno and a former foster youth. "We're non worried about our clothes or even school. We worried about where we're going to be living the side by side twenty-four hours."

Districts need to reach out to students' foster parents, attorneys, social workers, educational advocates and mental health counselors, advocates say. Perhaps as important, they said, is including foster students and onetime foster youth.

Cabral is a fellow member of the California Youth Connexion, a statewide advancement group made up of virtually 500 current and former foster youth. The grouping is participating in district meetings and presenting the sample LCAP, sometimes with local modifications, said Vanessa Hernandez, the statewide policy coordinator for the group. Concluding calendar month, members participated in a rally along with other advocacy groups in Los Angeles, urging districts to prefer the sample LCAP.

Although needs vary by district and pupil, California Youth Connection members say most foster students need academic guidance counselors who volition ensure that they are taking the right classes, especially in high school, and are signed up for the Human action and SAT higher entrance exams. They said schools need to accept academic credits or partial credits from other schools foster students take attended.

This advisor "needs to keep them on runway, not permit them slack off," said Justin Davis, a fellow member of California Youth Connection who works at La-Z-Male child Furniture and takes classes at Long Embankment City College.

Anthony Navarrete, a staff member for the youth group, is working with the San Francisco Unified and San Mateo Unified schoolhouse districts on developing their accountability plans. In both districts – reflecting a statewide trend — truancy rates are loftier among foster students. Many accept unstable home lives and are oftentimes afraid to get emotionally invested in schools where they don't expect to stay, foster advocates say.

Making students feel similar they belong and finding ways to motivate them to come to school each day "is a baseline preventive measure," Navarrete said.

Teachers, administrators and other school staff also need to empathise the trauma, including corruption and neglect, that nigh foster students have faced, and non respond to small offenses past suspending or expelling students, Cabral said. "In that location shouldn't be an assumption that you're a foster youth, so y'all're a troublemaker," she said.

The goal of schools to graduate students who are college and career ready has a more than urgent meaning for foster youth, who are expected to fend for themselves subsequently they plow eighteen. Davis said he was homeless for a few months before finding a task and enrolling in community college. Foster youth demand career-related courses in loftier school, help applying for scholarships and other financial assist, and access to services that will assist them discover housing and jobs, he said.

Districts are attempting to rise to the claiming

School officials appear to exist listening. Hahnel said he feels "tremendously positive" about the efforts big and pocket-sized districts are making across the state.

"I call up nosotros are going to run across a critical mass of school districts which, equally role of the LCAP, have meaningful goals that are specific to foster youth and help to close the achievement gap," he said.

Los Angeles Unified, which has more five,000 foster students, is considering adding 72 foster youth counselors (for a total of 75) and spending an additional $8 million to help foster youth succeed, Hahnel said.

On a smaller scale, Oakland Unified wants to split up the district into iii regions with a foster youth coordinator for each region who will then develop point people at each school. These point people could be social workers, teachers or administrators, said Lydell Willis, who is the district'south foster youth coordinator.

And East Side Union Loftier Schoolhouse Commune in San Jose wants to add a social worker dedicated solely to coordinating district support for foster youth. Some districts, such as Oakland Unified and Sacramento Urban center Unified, already take foster youth coordinators on staff.

"We're a little scrap alee of almost anybody else," said Aliya Holmes, coordinator of Foster Youth Services for Sacramento City Unified. "We already take counselors who work straight with foster youth at our schools."

Nevertheless, the district is sending out a survey to find out what foster youth desire, and staff are meeting with social workers, attorneys, grouping home representatives and foster parents. Sacramento City too plans to add a new staff position in the Foster Youth Services department. The LCAP procedure, said Gabe Ross, a spokesman for Sacramento Metropolis, has the added benefit of making students and schools more aware of some of the options and resources the district already has in place.

Many districts that don't take their ain employees dedicated to serving foster youth are turning to Foster Youth Services coordinators in their canton offices of education. In San Diego Canton, coordinator Michelle Lustig offered to set upwardly regional stakeholder meetings that included everyone involved with foster youth. "The districts were thrilled," she said.

Oakland's Willis said he is not concerned about the goal in the sample LCAP of endmost the achievement gap for foster students by 10 per centum each year. "If we get something in identify, we can do a lot about these kids," he said.

But for districts who accept non yet identified their foster youth and do not already have a coordinator on staff, the 10 percent goal can seem intimidating, said Michael Paynter, the Foster Youth Services coordinator for the Santa Cruz County Office of Educational activity.

"No 1 is saying these aren't good goals," Paynter said. "It's a question of capacity." Many districts, he said, don't expect more funding for the next school twelvemonth. "If they tin can't commit to endmost the achievement gap past x pct, we're encouraging them to put 1 percentage every bit a goal and see what happens. They demand to get something in there on the right track."

Jessica Thomas, the Foster Youth Services coordinator for the San Luis Obispo County Role of Education, said many of the districts in her county accept just a handful of foster youth.

"A lot of districts have small numbers, and then assisting foster youth volition be an boosted duty for someone already working at the district," Thomas said. Districts in her county are also talking about increased preparation for counselors and other support staff and stronger communications with social workers serving foster youth at the Department of Social Services.

Lustig says she sees these efforts to include foster youth in local accountability plans as an "amazing opportunity."

"No other state has taken the stride to say foster students are a significant subgroup," she said. "It says so much about who nosotros are as a state and how we care nearly our kids."

Susan Frey covers expanded learning time. Contact her . Sign upwardly here  for a no-toll online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest teaching reporting squad in California.

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