Education Coordinating Council

Today, Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors will consider a motion aimed at speeding the county’s implementation of federal mandates on the educational stability of its 20,000 school-aged foster youth. While the motion claims that the county’s 81 school districts are not out of compliance with a 2015 federal law mandating that foster kids be transported to their “school of origin,” assertions from the Los Angeles County Office of Education make clear that those districts ­– and thus the state of California – are.

Despite a long history of supporting foster youth’s academic success, California failed to comply with a federal deadline requiring all states to submit plans on how to pay for those students’ transportation to school.

When Stefanie Gluckman, the new director of Los Angeles County’s Education Coordinating Council, talks about the goals that the council outlines in its new strategic plan, she circles back to the word “opportunity.”