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Bill Would Limit School Changes For Foster Children
By COLIN POITRAS
Courant Staff Writer
February 29, 20087
In her seven years in state foster care, Cheniece
O'Neal lived in seven different foster homes, three residential
centers and a shelter. She had five different social workers, three
different lawyers and attended seven different schools. Being a
foster kid and trying to get good grades in school is tough enough,
O'Neal told a panel of state legislators Thursday. Having to adjust
to a new school, new classes and new friends every few months brings
a whole new dimension to the struggle.
"Can you imagine how hard it is to make new
friends, stay on task with school work and re-adjust to new families
and communities each year, when you are constantly being moved from
place to place?" said O'Neal, 16, of New Haven. "It sounds pretty
tough right?" O'Neal asked. "No matter how many times you go through
it, you never get used to it - it's that same horrible feeling over
and over again." A bill aired before the legislature's Select Committee
on Children Thursday would require the state Department of Children
and Families to keep foster children in the school they attended
prior to being moved into foster care or to a new foster home.
Advocates testifying in favor of the bill said
they repeatedly hear foster children saying how staying in one school
would provide critical stability in their often chaotic lives.Studies
show that foster children perform significantly worse in school
than children in the general population and frequent school changes
increase the risks for failing grades, behavior problems and students
dropping out, according to Stacey Violante Cote, a teen legal advocate
with the Center for Children's Advocacy at the University of Connecticut
School of Law. Research shows it takes a child approximately four
to six months to recover academically from a school transfer, Violante
Cote said. "The educational cost of multiple transfers is potentially
devastating," she said.
"This is not rocket science that kids need stability
and consistency," said Bridget Allison, a social studies teacher
at Hartford Public High School. Allison said a student in foster
care just entered her psychology and the law class in the third
marking period. While Allison said she tries to give the new arrival
special attention, such distractions impact the entire class and
it will take a lot of work for the child to catch up. "It's such
a deficit to their educational ability," she said.
Department of Children and Families Commissioner
Susan I. Hamilton said she supports the legislation's intent and
appreciates the importance of educational stability in a foster
child's life. But Hamilton also said she was concerned about the
potential costs of transporting children to schools in other towns
and whether the law would be flexible enough to consider instances
where leaving a child in a particular school might not - in the
long term - be best for him or her. She said she was willing to
work with the drafters of the bill to see if such goals could be
accomplished other ways.
One of the bill's leading proponents, state
Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven, said the law would limit potential
travel time for foster children to 25 minutes or less. She said
early estimates have the program costing the state about $500,000
a year.
Oregon, which has about 7,730 children in foster
care compared with Connecticut's approximately 5,880, recently enacted
similar legislation, Violante Cote said. Oregon's department of
human services is setting aside $375,000 a year to run the program,
she said.
Walker said Connecticut could fund the school
transportation through DCF's $34 million flexible fund program,
which is supposed to distribute small allotments of money to help
individual foster kids when they need it.
Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant.
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