Miriam Yarde just wanted to go home.
But, she said, her parents were on drugs – and county officials wouldn’t let her.
She was, after all, only a toddler.
“It was very frightening,” Yarde, a Long Beach native who now lives in the Bay Area, said recently. “You don’t know what’s going on.
“You’re wondering,” she added, “‘Why can’t I go home?’”
For Yarde, that was only the beginning. She would spend the rest of her childhood bouncing in and out of foster homes.
Today, there are nearly 21,000 children in the Los Angeles County foster care system, with the vast majority in temporary homes, according to the county’s Department of Children and Family Services.
Being a product of foster care, traumatic on its own, often comes with a host of other baggage: social isolation, a history of abuse and abject poverty.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle these children face, however, is succeeding academically while chaos consumes their personal lives. Foster children lag behind their peers in virtually every academic and social metric, from graduation rates to their number of friends.
Knowing this, state and local school districts have recently taken up the mantle of trying to help them succeed. But a recent report from the Los Angeles County Grand Jury – which spent a year investigating 10 local districts – has cast doubt on how effectively they’ve risen to the challenge. In the report, the jury criticized half the districts it looked at, concluding they aren’t dedicating enough money to foster youth, and lack sufficient programs and staffing to narrow the achievement gap.
It is unknown, grand jury chairwoman Joan Pylman said, whether the dollars districts receive “for foster youth are being taken advantage of.”
The report, released at the end of June, came on the heels of a lawsuit that argued Long Beach Unified misallocated $41 million meant for high-need students. The district settled last year, agreeing to expand programs for high-need students. Pomona Unified also recently received a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union questioning how it spends state money.
Francisco Meza, Pomona Unified’s assistant superintendent of Pupil and Community Services, said that while some of the figures in the grand jury report were technically accurate, they didn’t tell the whole story.
He pointed out the report’s claim that the district has only spent $500,000 per year for the last three years on foster youth liaisons. Meza said there are several counselors who assist foster students whose salaries are budgeted elsewhere. A better ballpark estimate of how much the district spends on foster youth liaisons would be almost $1 million.
Parents in Pomona have been skeptical.
“The recent civil grand jury report,” said Jesus Sanchez, executive director of Pomona organization Gente Organizada, “serves as validation for the concerns that our parent leaders have raised for over two years now.”
School district officials across the region, who have until the end of September to formally respond to the jury, had mixed reactions to the report – with most defending their programs and questioning the accuracy of the statistics.
But, in the same breath, they admitted they have a long way to go.
The absenteeism rates for fosters at the 10 school districts the jury investigated were more than double – 26 to 12 percent – the general student population in 2016-17. The suspension rates were even worse comparatively: 6.5 percent of all foster kids were suspended versus 1.7 percent of the general population.
“That’s not good enough,” Roger Brossmer, Downey Unified’s assistant superintendent of secondary education, said about the low graduation and college readiness rates of foster youth compared with their peers. “But we have the right things in place overall. I’m proud of the work we’ve done.”
Spending discrepancy
Following the foster youth money is difficult.
The grand jury analyzed how much school districts directly spend on foster youth. It found that half of the districts spend “relatively low amounts,” or less than $500,000 annually – with the per-student cost ranging from $203 at Long Beach to $1,746 at Compton Unified.
Antelope Valley Union, was an exception: It spent nothing, the report said.
The districts, however, pushed back.
“I don’t know where their numbers came from,” Downey’s Brossmer said, echoing his colleagues throughout the county.
In 2013, the state radically changed the way school districts are funded. At the time, Gov. Brown called it “revolutionary.”
Where previously, districts received the same amount for each student, under the Local Control Funding Formula, more money is sent to school districts with large numbers of high-need students. These students – identified as low-income, English learners and foster youth – often overlap categories, and the state lumps the money for them together.
“That’s the problem,” Pomona’s Meza said. “Foster youth are homeless. They are economically disadvantaged. They are English learners. So to say, ‘OK, you’re a foster youth, but you’re none of these other things,’ that’s not — that’s not reality.”
The grand jury tried to parse out how much is spent on fosters. But that created a discrepancy: Each district contacted by Southern California News Group said the amount of state money spent on foster youth is higher than what the grand jury said they spent.
Downey Unified, Brossmer said, spent $125,000 more for its state-funded programs in 2016-17 than the grand jury suggested. Antelope Valley Union spends about $1.1 million annually on its gaggle of counselors and programs, Superintendent Betsy Sanchez said.
“The foster population was never highlighted as a disadvantaged group that needs intervention,” said grand jury Chair Pylman, herself an L.A. Unified special education teacher for 40 years. “We really don’t know how much money is actually being given to the foster youth programs.”
Foster students, Pylman fears, could easily be overshadowed.
Long road to graduation
The principal came on the intercom:
“Miriam Yarde, please come to the office,” he said.
Yarde, now 24, was 9 years old and had recently won an award for excellence at 122nd Street Elementary School in Los Angeles.
But that announcement was familiar to her – and one she wasn’t looking forward to.
As is often the case with foster children, Yarde – who was separated from most of her nine siblings – bounced around. She said one foster parent beat her sister; another was an addict. Before graduating from Long Beach Polytechnic High School in 2012, she lived in nine foster homes, in Norwalk, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Compton.
On this day, a social worker waited for Yarde in the office. Throwing her personal belongs in a plastic trash bag, Yarde was to relocate next to Compton.
“People don’t think about this aspect, but emotionally and socially, it’s tough,” Yarde said. “In third grade, I was excelling academically in every area. Then I went to another school, and they were on different things, and I wasn’t doing as well.”
The transiency is one reason why foster students typically struggle in school. Their suspension and chronic absenteeism rates, the grand jury found, are off the charts.
Though slowly improving, graduation rates are also well below the general population: At Long Beach, 66 percent of foster youth graduated in 2015-16; Downey, the best district, was at 88 percent; Pasadena was at 42 percent. The total Los Angeles County graduation rate in 2015-16 was 77 percent; graduation rates for Los Angeles County foster students was not readily available but the rate was 51 percent statewide.
As a result, school districts have pushed to give fosters as much help as possible: they use the state’s graduation standards rather than the much tougher “A-G” standards universities require; most districts also offer tutoring, some offer free SAT testing during school time and a few – such as Paramount and Compton – provide backpacks and school supplies.
The goal, officials said, is to help these kids live successful adult lives.
“We’ve taken that to heart,” Ruth Perez, Paramount’s superintendent, said.
Social challenges
When Yarde was 5, a social worker came to her foster home. It was supposed to be a routine family update.
Instead, she learned her mother was dead.
A few years later, back at home, Yarde’s world fell apart again: Her father was accused of molesting one of her sisters, she said.
But Yarde is tough. She couldn’t control much in her life, so she worked to own the one thing she could. “I could control school,” she said.
She now has a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley. But her siblings have a different resume: drug-dealing, prostitution, jail time, their own kids in foster care.
“It’s sad,” Yarde said. “It’s sad because you grow up with your siblings and you see the innocence fade away.”
Many foster youth, officials said, have trouble adapting socially and don’t always make friends easily.
Again, districts must help.
When new students transfer to Downey, for example, one of four dedicated counselors will speak to the social workers, the new and old foster parents and even the biological parents – and, of course, the students, counselor Michelle Toscano said. Compton has a 300-to-1 student-to-counselor ratio. Paramount has hired six foster counselors in two years.
The hope, officials said, is that a holistic approach can help the students grow in school, both socially and academically.
“They want someone to constantly support them and tell them we are there for them,” said Cesar Armendariz, a seven-year Downey High teacher and former Long Beach Unified school board candidate.
Armnedariz knows this well. Last year, he had a foster student in one of his classes. She had few friends, was quiet and worked hard.
Still, there was something about her.
“There was a sense that she didn’t know her worth,” Armendariz said. “You find that when society keeps moving you around.”
She needed, he said, someone to tell her she had value.
More to be done
Support is one thing Yarde, luckily, had.
When she won the excellence award in elementary school, her parents couldn’t make it. But her teacher, Mrs. Johnson, did.
“She tried to check in with me even after I left,” Yarde said. “She encouraged me to go to college.”
But for those not fortunate enough to have support groups, school districts – again – must fill the gaps.
Long Beach is increasing “wrap-around services” for foster and homeless youth, such as providing clothing, healthcare and bus tokens. In September, it will launch four family resource centers staffed with counselors and psychologists.
Other school districts also constantly tinker with what works and what doesn’t – and try to give foster students their own voice.
At L.A. Unified, for example, foster youth go to a special empowerment camp to learn to advocate for foster programs. They can shadow school employees on “take your child to work” days and learn how to be the teachers, administrators, counselors and social workers of the future.
“It’s easy for foster youth to be ignored,” Yarde said. “We need foster youth at the table to talk about their experiences.”
That’s what Yarde plans to do.
Currently, she spends much of her free time studying for the LSAT, a law school entrance exam. Once she gets in, she has big plans for the future – and those plans include not forgetting where she came from.
Those plans, she said, include fighting for her fellow foster kids.
July 20, 2018
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
By Emily Rasmussen
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