COVID

Newly released figures from the Los Angeles Unified School District – one of the nation’s largest – show that roughly 6,000 fewer students registered for kindergarten this school year than in the previous year – a roughly 14% decrease from last year’s number of 42,912 children. 

California lawmakers may have helped older foster youth from some of the immediate ravages of the coronavirus pandemic in the state’s recently passed budget, but the San Francisco-based Youth Law Center says it’s time to look forward and start planning now for long-term recovery strategies.

Will Lightbourne, a longtime director of state and local social services, emerged from retirement last month to become the director of the California Department of Health Care Services – just as record-breaking coronavirus cases tripled in the state.

Together We Rise, which engages in fundraising collaborations to help offer assistance and positive experiences to young people in foster care, is looking to help current and former foster youths who are temporarily displaced by the closure of a college campus due to coronavirus.

The coronavirus has dominated headlines across the country as the federal government and state leaders scramble to pull together broad plans of attack for testing, quarantining and treating those with severe symptoms.