By JESSICA MARQUEZ
Starting a new school can be daunting and a bit scary for students of any age but when it’s your third new school within a year, it’s more than daunting, it’s an interruption to your education.
This is the academic life of a foster child, as portrayed by child advocacy group Children’s Rights, which on Thursday announced a campaign to focus attention on “the state of education in foster care”.
Thousands of foster children are uprooted from foster homes around 20 times a year, forcing them to go through the process of starting a new school all over again, the advocates said. The children can fall behind, losing about four to six months of schoolwork and missing up to an average of five weeks of school a year. Sixty percent of foster care children who graduate high school, finish by age 19. They are also very less likely to finish college, with only 30 percent graduating, advocates added.
“It is a living nightmare,” said Children’s Rights Executive Director Sandy Santana in a phone press conference. “You’re setting these young people to fail.”
Other factors such as lack of emotional support, traumas from the child’s experience as a foster child, and long commutes to and from school, also play a role.
Nyeelah Innis and Brian Morgantini are two of the many foster care children who know this experience firsthand. Morgantini and Innis both spoke at the Children’s Rights press conference of the challenges they faced as students in foster care.
Innis, a full-time college student and foster care advocate had been in the system for eight years until she was 18.
“A huge part of me transitioning out of the foster care system successfully was getting my education,” said Innis. “But it wasn’t easy to come by”
Innis moved around a lot in Georgia, from foster homes to a residential care facilities. She went to eight different high schools and had to get accustomed to different curriculums each time. For Innis, it was “very rocky”.
“It was hard to keep up with that on top of going to therapy.”
At 18, she transitioned out of the foster care system while also attending high school, which was a long commute. She went to live with her father, who she said figured she could take care of herself.
“Being 18 for youth not in care, they get to celebrate. 18 is a great time and fun time,” said Innis. “But I had to worry about school, also transitioning back with my father. It was a very difficult time for me.”
She was a self-described good student but the lack of love and support from her father took a toll on her. She stopped going to school.
Without knowing about past in foster care, Innis’s teachers called her grandmother and held a parent teacher conference, where they learned about her situation. With the support from her grandmother and teachers, she graduated high school on time.
Morgantini, like Innes, grew up in foster care, entering at age 4 till he turned 21. Morgantini transitioned over 20 times to multiple locations, from foster homes to treatment facility centers to a mental hospital. He attended ten different schools.
“I didn’t work at my full capacity,” said Morgantini. “I wasn’t in the best mental state to be able to receive education and thrive in school.”
His teachers weren’t able to recognize and deal with what Morgantini was going through and the trauma he dealt with. In response, Morgantini started acting out and was eventually transferred to a behavioral school.
The new school used restraint and punishment instead of connecting with students, he said, and the experience left him traumatized and he dropped out of college three times.
“Trauma can affect people in funny ways, different ways,” said Morgantini.
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