[from the Child Welfare League of America 12/7/09]
Shortly before the Thanksgiving break, Senators Al Franken (D-MN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced companion legislation to address educational access for children in foster care and homeless children and youth. The Fostering Success in Education Act of 2009, S. 2801, introduced by Franken, would create a version of the McKinney-Vento program but apply it to children in foster care. The Educational Success for Children and Youth Without Homes Act, S. 2800, introduced by Murray, would reauthorize the McKinney-Vento education program.
The Franken bill would require some of the same mandates on the state education and local education agencies that were enacted on child welfare agencies in 2008 as part of the Fostering Connections to Success Act (P.L. 110-351). The legislation requires child welfare agencies to keep children placed in foster care in their current schools when it is in the child’s best interest. When staying in their current school is not in the foster child’s best interest, then the child welfare agency must make sure that the child gets immediate enrollment in a new school. The Fostering Connections to Success Act also allowed states to draw down Title IV-E foster care maintenance funds to cover the cost of transportation if the child is Title IV-E eligible (approximately 211,000 out of 494,000 foster children in 2007). The initial challenge to the changes enacted by the Fostering Connections to Success Act is that the mandate is on the child welfare agency and those agencies do not control school enrollment policies. In some instances, local education agencies are unaware of the 2008 change.
The Franken bill also creates a new program similar to McKinney-Vento that would provide funding to facilitate cooperation between the child welfare and education agencies. States could apply for funding as long as they submitted collaborative plans drawn up by the state education and child welfare agencies. The plans must address, among other items, how the law will be enforced, an analysis on the barriers to education for children in care, detailed procedures for making school selection decisions, procedures to address transportation barriers and how they will be funded, how records will be transferred, how disputes will be resolved, how critical stakeholders are involved and will continue to be involved, and several other requirements.
CWLA has been working with Senator Franken and we support the legislation and its extension of the requirements now in child welfare law to education law. The bill, which makes most of its changes through federal education law, would also amend Title IV-E to direct the child welfare agency to have a designated person to address education issues, and to offer assurances on cooperation with the education agencies. It also contains a more controversial provision to require that the child welfare agency pay for transportation costs if necessary.
The Murray bill would reauthorize and strengthen the existing McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youth program by making changes to how Title I, Part A education funding homeless set asides are determined, expanding access to summer school and before and after school programs for homeless children, addressing graduation barriers and school credit issues for unaccompanied youth, and improving access to preschool programs for homeless children. The bill also increases the authorization level for transportation costs and allows the use of Title I, Part A funding for transportation costs for homeless children. The McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youth has been in existence for 22 years. It is reauthorized as part of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind). Congress is expected to start debate on the education reauthorization at some point next year.
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