California’s legislature passed the new state budget on June 14, 2013. The budget language includes several provisions that hold promise for the thousands of school-age foster children in California. It changes the way education is funded, shifting greater control to individual counties and districts. Of even more direct impact, it protected $15 million for foster youth services, which provide a wide range of supports to individual foster children across the state.

The Local Control Funding Formula
Included in this year’s budget was a new school finance funding formula, also known as the local control funding formula (LCFF). By moving to the LCFF, Governor Jerry Brown thinks the new finance system will provide for maximum flexibility and local control for counties and districts. Governor Brown’s Budget Summary released in January 2013 claimed that the new budget will not only increase funding for districts but also allow “targeted investments in districts serving students with the greatest level of needs – recognizing that [the new state budget] will help the state reduce disparities, maximize student achievement, and strengthening the foundation for sustainable growth.”1

Under California’s LCFF, a specific dollar amount is allocated to educate each student and then additional funding is given to educate students with identified risk-factors or characteristics that may impact their learning. The LCFF is viewed by some as a key step towards redefining education reform through financial measures. However, its opponents argue that the LCFF will permanently eliminate the current state requirements that go with the categorical programs that represent more than approximately $7.4 billion in school funding. School districts in California funded in two different ways, “through unrestricted general purpose funds that may be spent for any educational purpose” and through “restricted funds—called categorical—earmarked for special programs and purposes.”2 Categorical funds are intended for specific programs, such as gifted and talented programs, pupil transportation, special education and professional development for teachers.3

In a time of tight state resources, other states with similar funding challenges are looking to move towards a weighted student formula system. Hawaii is currently the only other state that uses a pure weighted pupil formula (called a “WPF”). Hawaii is also the only other state with a single, statewide school district and whose residents’ property taxes do not fund public education. Hawaii’s State Board of Education adopted the WPF in the 2006-07 school year, which dictates that a large amount of state funding is distributed to public schools based on student’s needs.4 Their system also has a specific dollar amount allocated per student enrolled in school, coupled with additional funding for students with “special needs that impact their learning . . . Some characteristics that are considered weighted include economically disadvantaged students, English Language Learners; and transience due to movements of students and their families.”5 Other states across the country are looking to following a similar WPF, including South Carolina. In recent years, a few states have implemented hybrid formulas that use weights to allocate a portion of overall funding to districts based on student’s needs, but distribute the huge majority school funds without a complex weighted formula.

In California, the LCFF is going to be phased in over five to seven years. Every year counties and districts will receive a percentage of the difference between what they are currently receiving and what the LCFF says they should receive. Once the LCFF is fully implemented, the formula’s structure will provide districts with a “base” amount of money per pupil and a supplemental amount for students who are English Learners (EL), low-income (free and reduced price meal) or in foster care. The grant will not be duplicated if students are eligible in more than one category; pupils who fall into more than one of these three categories will only be counted once. 

California’s Foster Youth Services Program
In the original budget proposal released in January 2013, California’s Foster Youth Services (FYS) programs were included in the removal of 47 of 62 “categorical” education programs under the LCFF. The proposed elimination of the FYS programs under the LCFF would have allowed for the approximately $15 million currently targeted for foster youth supports and services to be distributed to California’s County Offices of Education to use as they choose. The broader intention of removing categorical programs was to give local education agencies increased control over how to spend their funds while holding them accountable, in theory, for the academic progress of these educationally underserved groups.

FYS programs have operated primarily at the local level through the county offices of education to better coordinate with the other county agencies serving foster children. As a categorical program, FYS has included requirements that the funds be spent on children with open dependency cases who live in a licensed foster home, a residence defined as a licensed foster family home, a certified family agency home, a court-specified home, or a licensed care institution (group home). FYS staff have worked with current and former foster youth as well as school, juvenile detention, child welfare, probation department, and community services agency staff to help foster youth succeed in school. Local FYS programs have had broad discretion as to what types of services and supports they provide. Services typically include tutoring, mentoring, educational advocacy, data sharing, coordination, transition planning, and much more. A 2010 Legislative Report6 written by the California Department of Education to the Governor and Legislature summarized the goals common to all FYS programs:

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  Identify the educational, physical, social, and emotional needs of foster youth.


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  Determine gaps in the provision of educational and social support services and provide those services, either directly or through referral to collaborative partners. 


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  Identify inadequacies in the completion and timely transfer of health and education records to facilitate appropriate and stable care and educational placement.


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  Improve student academic achievement and reduce student truancy, dropout rates, and delinquent behavior.


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  Provide advocacy to promote the best interests of foster youth throughout California.7

Foster youth have emphasized the importance of these services. Marinda King, a high school senior and foster youth, pointed out that one of the FYS coordinators at the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, Vivica Taylor, helped connect her with critical counseling services and guidance to ensure that she would meet her high school graduation requirements.8  Alexis Soria9, a graduating senior from the same district, said that she would “not be graduating without the help of FYS.” Soria credits Taylor with providing her the necessary “motivation that she lacked” in order to complete school and “considers [Taylor] a mentor, like a mom” that many foster youth are missing.

During the budget negotiations, foster youth supporters organized a series of advocacy efforts and hearings to help “save” the FYS program from becoming an eliminated categorical program under the LCFF. The major question for FYS advocates during the campaign became – “if FYS is dissolved as a categorical program, what incentives will be in place for counties and districts to serve this fragile student population?” Few school districts have the internal mechanisms to identify which of their students are in foster care. This would make it nearly impossible to hold districts accountable for the performance of these students and districts would be unable to provide these students with the supports they may require. California’s county child welfare agencies would find it much more expensive to comply with federal laws such as the Fostering Connections Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-351)10 requiring child welfare agencies to monitor and track the educational progress of foster children. FYS programs currently provide assistance to child welfare agencies to minimize changes in school placement and facilitate the prompt transfer of educational records between educational institutions when placement changes are necessary. The counties would have to continue doing this, by federal mandate, even without dedicated FYS funding.

Furthermore, foster children face a unique set of educational challenges. Nationwide, their educational outcomes are significantly worse than those of other similarly economically disadvantaged students. On average, children in foster care may change schools two to three times per year.11 One study indicated that more than two thirds of children in foster care changed schools shortly after initial placement into foster care. Other studies show that:

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  Twice as many foster children repeat a grade12


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  75% of foster children are behind grade level13


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  67% of foster children are suspended from school, and 17% are expelled, more than three times the general student population14


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  Foster youth are twice as likely to drop out of school as their peers15


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  Only 1.8% of former foster youth complete a bachelor’s degree, compared to 24% of the general population.16

At Greater Risk, California Foster Youth and the Path from High School to College, recently released by the Stuart Foundation, found that even when compared with other economically disadvantaged students, “foster youth are less likely to complete high school, enroll in community college, or remain in community college for a second year.”17  The Report also reveals heartbreaking statistics about the educational outcomes of the California foster youth studied:

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  45% of foster youth completed high school (compared with 53% of similarly disadvantaged youth not in foster care)


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  43% of foster youth enrolled in community college (compared with 46% of similarly disadvantaged youth not in foster care)


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  41% of the foster youth who enrolled in college remained enrolled in community college for a second year (compared with 48% of similarly disadvantaged youth not in foster care).18

Overcoming these unique educational challenges requires specialized supports different from those provided to disadvantaged children generally.  As articulated by one foster youth, Barbara “Cookeey” Ropati19, foster children are “bounced from house to house and school to school . .  . they often don’t get the [school] credits that they need.” For Ropati, FYS staff provided enormous support during her academic career. As she described it, having the “extra support system [of FYS] helps us feel like we are not alone. . . FYS is our village; it takes a village to raise a child.”

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