BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 854
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB
854 (Weber)
As Amended May 28, 2015
Majority vote
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|Committee |Votes |Ayes |Noes |
| | | | |
| | | | |
|----------------+------+--------------------+--------------------|
|Education |7-0 |O'Donnell, Chávez, | |
| | |Kim, McCarty, | |
| | |Santiago, Thurmond, | |
| | |Weber | |
| | | | |
|----------------+------+--------------------+--------------------|
|Appropriations |17-0 |Gomez, Bigelow, | |
| | |Bonta, Calderon, | |
| | |Chang, Daly, | |
| | |Eggman, Gallagher, | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | |Eduardo Garcia, | |
| | |Gordon, Holden, | |
| | |Jones, Quirk, | |
| | |Rendon, Wagner, | |
| | |Weber, Wood | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
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AB 854
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SUMMARY: Expands the uses of Foster Youth Services (FYS) funding
to support students in all foster care placements, makes
significant changes to the FYS program, and establishes a State
Foster Youth Services Coordinator in the California Department of
Education (CDE). Specifically, this bill:
1)Allows FYS funding to be used to support any student in foster
care, including students residing in juvenile detention
facilities.
2)Allows the FYS coordinator to work on behalf of any student in
foster care residing or attending school in their county.
3)Requires a FYS program, in consultation with local educational
agencies (LEAs), the county social services agency and county
probation department, to prescribe the methodology for designing
specific supports for students in foster care, and in doing so,
consider at least all of the following: the needs of specific
age groups, students in foster care in specific geographic areas
with the highest concentration of students in foster care, and
students in foster care with the greatest academic need.
Encourages a FYS program to first provide services for students
in foster care who reside in group homes or other institutional
settings.
4)Requires each FYS program to develop and implement a plan
documenting how the program will:
a) Collaborate with county child welfare agencies, county
probation departments, and LEAs to minimize changes in school
placement and support the placement of students in regular
public school settings. States that the program may pay for
transportation costs related to school placement.
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b) Collaborate with county child welfare agencies, county
probation departments, and LEAs so that when it is in the
best interests of a student in foster care to transfer
schools, transfers are done at an educationally appropriate
time, educational records are quickly transferred,
appropriate partial credits are awarded, and the student in
foster care is quickly enrolled in appropriate classes.
1)Requires these plans to document how FYS programs will:
a) Collaborate with county child welfare agencies, county
probation departments, and school districts to ensure
students in foster care have an active education team,
defined to include existing education teams such as
individualized education program teams and multidisciplinary
teams, that includes an educational rights holder, caregiver,
social worker, teacher, counselor, court appointed special
advocate, other stakeholders, and the student
b) Participate in education teams as is helpful and needed
and help the education team assess the educational strengths
and needs of a student in foster care, and help develop,
monitor, and update an education plan, defined to include
existing education plans
c) Provide tutoring, mentoring, counseling, transition,
school-based social work, and emancipation services, if those
services are determined to be needed by the Executive
Advisory Council, and if the county child welfare agency,
county probation department, or school district are unable to
provide those services.
d) Maintain information on all of the following for purposes
of ensuring that students in foster care, education rights
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holders, and other education team members are informed of all
available opportunities for a student to attend specified
schools and educational programs.
e) Maintain information on postsecondary educational
institutions, career technical education programs, and
postsecondary opportunities
f) Collaborate with local postsecondary educational
institutions, including the California Community Colleges,
the California State University, and the University of
California, and with county independent living programs to
facilitate a seamless transition from high school to
postsecondary educational institutions, and to provide
students in foster care currently enrolled in high school
assistance with college applications, matriculation, and
financial aid.
g) Facilitate on behalf of individual students in foster care
to ensure transfer of records, transcript analysis, credit
recovery, timely individualized education programs (IEPs) and
special education services, timely placement in English
learner programs, enrollment in, or transition to,
comprehensive schools or the least restrictive educational
placements, and ensure that education entitlements specific
to students in foster care are provided, including receiving
partial credits, the right to attend the school of origin,
and access to extracurricular activities including
interscholastic sports.
h) Collaborate with local educational agencies, child
welfare, juvenile courts, and Special Education Local Plan
Areas (SELPAs) in an effort to ensure that students in foster
care have an identified education rights holders with the
capacity to support educational success capable of specified
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support activities.
i) Collaborate with county child welfare agencies, county
probation departments, and local educational agencies to
facilitate information sharing, as specified, and support
interagency efforts to improve the educational outcomes of
students in foster care, as specified.
1)Requires each FYS program to work with their county office of
education to ensure the implementation of portions of school
district and county office of education Local Control and
Accountability Plans that pertain to foster youth to conduct
specified activities.
2)Requires that each FYS program establish an Executive Advisory
Council, which would include representatives from the county
child welfare agency, the county probation department, local
educational agencies, local postsecondary educational
institutions, and community organizations, and if possible,
include foster youth, caregivers, education rights holders, and
other interested stakeholders. FYS coordinator would be a
permanent member. The Councils would be required to regularly
review the recommendations to the FYS plan.
3)Modifies the requirements of the bi-annual FYS report to the
Legislature. Requires that the report include aggregate
educational outcome data for each county in which there were at
least 15 students in foster care who attended school in the
county, with information on each specified indicators. Requires
that, whenever possible, the data in the report be the same as
is used by the Superintendent in determining the Academic
Performance Index or its successor.
4)Requires the CDE to collaborate with the Chancellor of the
California Community Colleges and the Chancellor of the
California State University to identify indicators that can be
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used to track access to postsecondary education for students in
foster care participating in a FYS program.
5)Requires that each county office of education with a FYS program
develop and enter into an agreement with the county child
welfare agency pursuant to which FYS program funds would be
used, to leverage funds received pursuant to federal Social
Security Act Title IV-E and any other funds that may be used to
specifically address the educational needs of students in foster
care, or requires that they explain in writing, annually, why a
memorandum of understanding is not practical or feasible.
6)Requires the SPI to identify a State FYS Coordinator within the
CDE, who would be responsible for a variety of administrative
functions, and deletes requirements for the SPI to convene an
advisory committee.
7)States that the SPI may provide funding to one or more LEAs to
work with the State FYS Coordinator to provide statewide
technical support to ensure educational, child welfare, and
judicial agencies receive the technical support needed to
improve the educational success of students in foster care.
States that funding for the technical assistance described above
may come from the FYS appropriation in the annual Budget Act, as
determined by the Superintendent, but shall be no more than 5
percent of the FYS budget allocation for the applicable fiscal
year.
FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee:
1)Ongoing Proposition 98/General Fund cost pressures of
approximately $20 to $30 million to expand the FYS program to
serve all foster youth. For several years, the existing FYS
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program has received $15.2 million (Proposition 98/General Fund)
to serve approximately one-third of foster youth in California.
This bill expands services to the remaining two-thirds
(approximately 40,000 foster youth) but does not provide
additional funding. It is estimated that the costs to fully fund
the program to provide the same level of services for all foster
youth is approximately $35 million to $45 million.
2)Ongoing General Fund administrative costs, in the range of
$300,000, to provide technical assistance to coordinate
resources; collect, manage and report data and other program
oversight requirements.
COMMENTS:
The "Invisible Achievement Gap." A 2013 report by the Center for
the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd, titled "The
Invisible Achievement Gap," for the first time linked education
and child welfare data to identify the achievement gap for
students in foster care relative to their peers. It found, based
on 2009-10 educational data, that students in foster care
represented a subgroup distinct in many ways from other low-income
students. Among the findings in this report were that foster
youth:
1)Have among the lowest scores in English-language arts.
2)Have the lowest scores in mathematics of any subgroup.
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3)Have the highest dropout rate, nearly three times the rate of
other students.
4)Have the lowest high school graduation rate of any subgroup.
The report also found that students in foster care are more likely
to change schools during the school year, more likely to be
enrolled in low-performing schools, less likely to participate in
state assessments, and significantly more likely to be enrolled in
nontraditional schools.
FYS program outcomes. In its 2014 report to the Legislature, the
CDE reported that for students served by FYS in the 2012-13 school
year:
1)Seventy-two percent of foster youth served gained more than one
month of academic growth per month of tutoring received,
surpassing the target objective by 12%.
2)Sixty-two percent of eligible 12th graders completed a high
school program (compared to the general foster care graduation
rate of 58%)
3)Nineteen hundredths of a percent (0.19%) of foster youth served
were expelled, surpassing the target of less than 5%.
4)Students exceeded their attendance target rate of 90%.
Refocusing the FYS program around support and coordination. The
FYS program was largely built around a direct service model,
providing tutoring, mentoring, counseling, and other services to
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students - services for which there was little dedicated funding in
1973. The program statute still reflects this model, requiring a
hierarchy of services, for example, starting with tutoring.
Over the course of this program's history the landscape of school
finance and accountability has changed dramatically. Most notably,
through the Local Control Funding Formula and LCAPs, school
districts are both receiving more support for, and being held
accountable for, the educational needs and outcomes of students in
foster care as never before.
This bill proposes to replace the FYS model in statute with a new
role for the program - one of support, coordination, planning, and
leadership. This is evident, for example, in the provision of this
bill which requires that direct services be provided only if they
cannot be provided by other agencies, such as school districts.
Given LCFF and many other policy changes since the FYS program
statute was written, an updating is justified. The programmatic
changes in this bill would shift the role of the FYS from direct
services to the creation of a kind of support infrastructure for
the education of students in foster care.
Analysis Prepared by:
Tanya Lieberman / ED. / (916) 319-2087 FN:
0000799
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