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Good education for foster children sought New rules promoted in state special report Thursday, February 28, 2002 By Eleanor Chute, Post-Gazette Education Writer
La Verne Conley has helped all of her children -- biological, adopted and foster -- through the school system. And she's found that getting the proper education for a foster child has been the biggest challenge.
A foster parent often doesn't have the legal right to approve a foster child's educational program, and there can be delays in paperwork and schooling if the child moves from district to district. While some foster children are enrolled in new schools within a week, some face delays of weeks or months.
"They're a disposable population. Everyone else has someone or something to look out for them. These kids don't," said Conley, who lives in Mt. Lebanon.
In a report being released in Harrisburg today, the Education Law Center -- a public interest law firm that advocates on behalf of dependent and delinquent children -- is calling on the state to establish rules that would help to ensure foster children receive an appropriate education promptly.
"You have all of these different private providers and counties," said attorney Janet Stotland, co-director of the Education Law Center and co-author of the report. "They all have different rules. ... It's really extremely difficult for these agencies to have a coherent plan how to make sure these children are promptly enrolled. The only way to fix that is to look at it from the state level."
The center recommends:
The law center's report, "Lost in the Shuffle Revisited," looks at schooling for foster children since 1987. That's when a case filed by the center resulted in a federal court decision that school districts can't refuse to admit foster children whose parents live in other school districts.
More than 23,000 children statewide are in foster care, according to 1998 federal statistics, the latest available. The median time they spend in foster care is 19.6 months, sometimes in multiple placements.
"That's a lot of kids, and they very rarely get considered as a group," said Mary Jo Meenen, executive director of Court-Appointed Special Advocates. CASA is a nonprofit group that works with children in juvenile court in Allegheny County, including some foster children.
In a nonscientific survey distributed in the 1999-2000 school year, the center received answers from 61 school districts; 10 county children and youth agencies; 59 private foster-care providers; and 43 agencies engaged in helping children from birth to age 5.
The survey showed serious delays in enrolling foster children in schools.
Fifty-six percent of county and private foster-care providers had experienced delays of more than five days and 26 percent experienced delays of more than two weeks in enrolling foster children in new schools.
Forty percent of the county agencies knew of at least one enrollment delay of at least 30 days, with three noting delays of more than 100 days.
One reason for the delay is the problem in reaching a biological parent or appointing a surrogate parent to sign for a special education program.
"We have kids who have gone through seven to 10 placements. The transfer of information and records is unbelievable," said Susan Davis, executive director of Every Child, a nonprofit agency in East Liberty. Statewide regulations on enrollments would be "much more powerful," she added.
When enrollment is delayed, most districts and agencies said they didn't provide any educational program, although a few said they provided homebound instruction or made other arrangements.
"I think the unmet needs of kids is an issue even more than the lapse of records," said Meenen. "My fear is there are a lot of kids out there who don't have someone pushing for them."
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A statewide standard for required documents for school enrollment of foster children. The center recommends proof of age, residency and immunization.