A California Senate invoice that would offer free faculty tuition for the state’s 60,000 foster youth superior within the Senate Training Committee final week.
The Senate Training Committee unanimously accepted the invoice throughout a March 29 listening to and referred it for a listening to within the state Senate Committee on Human Companies within the coming weeks.
State Senate Invoice 307, launched by state Sen. Angelique Ashby (D-Sacramento) and Senate Majority Chief Mike McGuire (D-North Coast) in February, would set up the Fostering Futures Program as part of the state’s current Center Class Scholarship Program.
This system would cowl one hundred pc of tuition for foster youth enrolled in affiliate diploma or certificates packages at a group faculty or in a four-year program at a California State College or College of California campus—together with meals, textbooks, and housing.
The funds can be obtainable after different state and federal assist—normally the Cal Grant, which covers a portion of tuition for all California residents, and the Chafee Grant, which covers a portion of tuition for foster youth—is utilized, in keeping with the invoice.
“Each foster youth deserves the chance to realize their faculty dream, however in too many circumstances, that dream is out of attain resulting from monetary obstacles and excessive challenges that come about within the foster system. That is merely unacceptable,” stated McGuire in a Feb. 7 press launch.
Through the March 29 listening to, Ashby instructed the committee that the invoice is meant to assist present foster youth with the assets they should help themselves after they age out of the system.
“[This bill] will give foster youth company to handle themselves,” Ashby stated. “Think about with the ability to inform a 14-year-old who’s misplaced every little thing, together with their dad and mom, that if they’ll simply deal with faculty, that there’s a method out for them sooner or later.”
Ashby stated that housing instability and homelessness are a high concern amongst foster youth as soon as they flip 18.
Nationwide, an estimated 20 % of younger adults who’re in foster care grow to be homeless the second they’re emancipated on the age of 18—and moreover, about 50 % of the homeless inhabitants hung out in foster care, in keeping with information from the nonprofit Nationwide Institute of Foster Youth.
Ashby additionally stated that the invoice would redirect roughly $21 million from the Center Class Scholarship Program to cowl the price of faculty attendance for foster youth.
A number of youth and training organizations spoke on the assembly to help the invoice—together with Metropolis Youth, California Alliance of Baby and Household Companies, and California Constitution Faculties Affiliation.
There have been no audio system in opposition to the invoice on the listening to.
