(SFGate.com)
San Francisco Gate
At Last, a Bridge to Higher Education

July 14, 2006
WHEN foster children are moved from one home to the next, with no one adult to monitor their success or failure, a college education can easily be overshadowed by basic necessities.

This may explain why only 15 percent of our state's 80,000 foster youth are taking college preparatory classes, and only 2 percent are actually graduating from college.

Many foster youth say that counselors often fail to go beyond the high-school level when they advise them. "They tell us what we need to do to graduate from high school, but they don't tell us what we need to get into college," said Sade Daniels, whose plight we have been following in our editorials. "It's like they don't see it as a possibility for us."

As a result, Daniels was rejected by numerous colleges and universities she had applied to because she fell short of the requirements.

Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, is hoping that $14 million signed into the state budget for college assistance for foster youth will help others avoid the same pitfalls.

In a press conference held Thursday at San Francisco Independent Living Skills center, Leno said the new funding will allow for the implementation of his bill, AB2489, which provides youth with the "academic preparation, financial assistance and the campus-based support they need to complete their college education."

The funds, which will be disbursed through each county's office of education, will be put to use as follows:

  • $8.3 million will go toward expanding the K-12 Foster Youth Services program, which only serves 12 percent of the foster youth population, those in group homes. The program provides a coordinator who tracks a child's transcripts when they are transferred to different schools, as well as provides them with mentoring and tutoring to prepare them for college applications and college. The funds will expand to all foster youth in stranger placements.

  • $5.7 million will serve as a state compliment to the federal Chafee Postsecondary Education and Training Grants. The funds, which can go up to $5,000 per youth, can go toward such things as rent and books.

These funds are the right step toward giving these youth what they need to succeed -- a college education.
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