Free Tuition for Foster Kids
After hop scotching around the country with a drug-dealing uncle, abusing substances and alcohol himself, and doing stints in homeless shelters, Romero, 23, became one of the fewer than ten percent of foster youth in California who attend college, said the article
“Despite having no formal education before going to Balboa High at age 16 when he entered the foster care system Romero set his sights on college with the encouragement of his foster mother and counselors at the Independent Living Skills Program,” said writer Janine DeFao. “But the San Francisco State University student has had to drop his full-time course load so he can afford to pay for his education and cover the high price of living in the Bay area.”
My sister Cindy had also been in foster care and with the encouragement of her foster parents who were teachers at the high school she attended she started college in the fall after graduating.
Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, plans to introduce a bill, AB2489, to help students like Romero and encourage other foster kids to enter college by offering them free tuition at state universities, increased financial aid, and on-campus support, said DeFao.
Visiting my sister every spring break while I was in high school made me excited and happy to start college one day.
“It’s not only our job to protect foster kids from abuse and neglect,” Leno said recently.
Being a foster child in Georgia the law was that once you turn 18 you were out on the street, with or without money or education.
Education remains a major challenge for foster children, many of whom are moved from home to home as they grow up, according to Leno.
My sister was a success story, going on to earn her graduate degree two years after graduating from college.
“The statistics are pretty dismal,” said Jennifer Troia of the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, a supporter of Leno’s bill, in a recent interview.
I didn’t have the benefit of on-going services once I started college and I had to learn everything the hard way – or not learn it at all.
The bill would expand tutoring and other support services now available to kids in group homes to all foster children, according to research.
If it weren’t for the help of my mom and sister I wouldn’t have been able to fill out the needed paperwork to get into college.
While financial aid is available for college many foster kids don’t know how to apply or have trouble collecting the needed transcripts, DeFao wrote.
My sister’s friends in college didn’t know she had been a foster child because on the outside she looked “fine.”
The bill would essentially make tuition free for foster kids at state colleges and universities as well as increased financial aid by make students automatically eligible for Cal Grants and providing matching state funds for the federal Chafee Postsecondary Education and Training Grants, states the bill’s literature.
I was fortunate that I attended college with financial aid, a journalism scholarship, a work-study program, and was employed through all four years of school.
The bill also would provide housing preferences for foster kids on public campuses and seek to replicate the successful Guardian Scholars program started at California State University Fullerton which provides college staff to help foster kids navigate the various aspects of academic and campus life, DeFao writes.
My sister now has her own business, having run it successfully since 1990 and is a great example of what perseverance can achieve.
“Foster kids are very likely to end up in similar situations from which they came,” said Denis Udall, a senior program officer at the Walter S. Johnson Foundation in Menlo Park.
I did experience poverty, was almost a single parent, and could have easily wound up in prison if it weren’t for my sister.
Former foster child Courtney Lee, 26, of San Francisco, said she has struggled to continue her education after completing an associate’s degree in community college, stated DeFao.
My sister always told me it only takes one person to believe in you so that you can keep going.
“It was a sink-or-swim situation when I emancipated from foster care,” said Lee, who bounced from relative to relative after being taken when she was very young from her mentally ill mother.
One caveat regarding my college experience: Due to alcohol abuse I didn’t get to finish my education, something I have always regretted.
Romero also has found finances, especially the cost of housing, difficult, he said.
My sister has taught me at the age of 40 about budgeting though she still oversees my finances because I’m too compulsive.
Romero traded his dorm room at San Francisco State for a studio in Daly City to save money and recently became a part-time student so he can find a full-time job.
One thing that I have noticed since being out of school is how the college picture has changed for so many given the fact that so many students don’t work and just focus on their education, which is great that they can do that.
“It’s very hard to find housing and become independent,” said Romero, who spent a year in a homeless shelter after emancipation.
Leno’s second bill would make it easier for siblings in the foster system to reconnect after adoption, according to recent documents. More than 56,000 foster kids in Oct. 2004 had at least one sibling also in an out-of-home placement. Currently if siblings are adopted they can get information on each other only after they turn 21 and file a confidentiality waiver. The proposed law would allow a foster child to search for a sibling who has not signed a waiver by requesting an intermediary to make contact.
Wendy Piccus, a 25-year-old graduate student at UC Berkeley, was separated from four of her five sisters when they entered the foster system when she was 16, after she reported her parents for drug, alcohol, and other abuse. She said she had no contact with her sisters for about seven years and later sued her parents for custody, now raising three girls.
