transportation

  In the eastern suburbs of Sacramento County, Kamika Hebbert keeps a watchful eye for signs of how an unstable environment affects young minds. There’s the restlessness that comes with worry about biological parents and siblings.

We’re counting down 10 of the biggest stories The Imprint published in 2018. Each day, we’ll connect readers with a few links to our coverage on a big story from 2018.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) signed two landmark bills into law this session related to improving outcomes for youth in the state’s foster care system. As of June 1, through H.B.

In Arizona, as in many other parts of the United States, school stability for foster youth is a significant problem. Forty-two percent of students in foster care switched schools during the school year, according to a 2015 West Ed report, and research has shown that each change costs a student at least three months of academic progress.

Danielle DeMaison woke before sunrise one foggy morning last April and loaded her two daughters into her 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe. Even though the cornstalk-lined roads around her little hamlet of Sanborn on the western edge of New York state were mostly empty, it took DeMaison four hours to get her biological and foster daughters to their separate schools.

In a recent article, L.A. Moves to Fill Educational Stability Gap for Foster Youth Like Alex and Shirley, Daniel Heimpel reported that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a pilot program to ensure that foster youth have transportation to their school of origin.

As Los Angeles County mulls the idea of using ride-sharing services to escort foster youth to visitations with biological parents, some child-welfare experts wonder how such a service would be able to grapple with children with significant experiences of trauma and loss.

After years of trying, the Senate and House passed a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the legislation that drives federal policy on schools. Child welfare and juvenile justice are hardly central issues of federal education reform.

For the first time since the law expired in 2007, both chambers of Congress have passed a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). That 2001 bill, the most recent overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, brought national standards and expectations to education but asserted too much federal authority.