Starting college can be overwhelming for anyone, especially now that the budget is tight and extra pressure is put on students to choose a major and get through as quickly as possible. Choosing classes, finding time to study, working to make rent and bills and juggling family life can be enough to exhaust even the most prepared young student. All this becomes infinitely harder when that student has no parents to call for a bit of extra money, no overbearing aunts and uncles to give advice on transfer options and no grandparents asking probing questions about their major.

When Harmony Simmons first started at SRJC, she took a counseling class to try and get a handle on what she could expect while at school. She reached out to the Foster and Kinship Care Program and received guidance and reassurance about her educational and life goals.

Starting at age 13, Simmons moved between foster homes once about every six months. She was one of 500 children and youths in Sonoma County’s foster care system. “No one really educated me about getting an education. There wasn’t anyone pushing education on me,” Simmons explained.

Within six months of graduating out of foster care, 50 percent of all foster children are homeless, adding to the 700 youths between ages 12 and 24 that are on the street in Sonoma County. Sixty-five percent of all foster youths in Sonoma County drop out of high school.

“There wasn’t anybody who became like a mentor for me, or family,” Simmons said. “So I was just kind of on my own, advocating for myself. But a lot of kids don’t advocate for themselves. They’re not that independent. So coming to school I was totally lost.”

The average foster child in Sonoma County is a 17 year old white female who speaks English; she will go through five placements in different foster homes by the time she graduates from the program.

These are daunting statistics. Thanks to new legislation such as AB12 and AB194, Californian foster youths have a better chance at making a good life for themselves. AB12, called “Fostering Connections after 18” allows foster youths to remain part of the program until they are 21. They are given four options of living situations for those extra three years: staying with their current foster home, two different options of transitional housing and an independent living program. The youths are entitled to $750 a month for living expenses, which allows them to go to school without needing to work full time. AB194 concerns pre-priority enrollment. In short, it allows foster youths to enroll in classes before priority enrollment begins, much like students with the Disability Resource Department, veterans and EOPS.

Nickolas Lawrence, project coordinator for the Foster and Kinship Program, is trying to help these youths to get their adult lives underway and set up a system for helping them get through college. He says the pre-priority enrollment and other new benefits are great for foster youth, as long as somebody helps them to know how to plan for and use them. The problem is, foster youth are very rarely prepared for living on their own and entering college.

“I look at it like, it’s your birthday or Christmas or your favorite holiday and you go outside and there is an enourmous box with your name on it, wrapped,” Lawrence said. “And you rip it open and it’s exactly what you wanted but it takes 50 batteries and nobody got you the batteries.”

He hopes to help youth find the batteries to get their college lives started. One way he’s hoping to help is with a section of Counseling 53 that is reserved entirely for foster program students. He also hopes to raise support for students who may need a bit of a boost to complete their programs. He gave the example of a female student who completed the firefighter program at SRJC only to discover that between licensing and testing fees she’d need another $1000 to complete her education; money that she didn’t have.

Lawrence also hopes to run “Pre-Priority Parties” at a local service called Voices, where foster youth can gather and get advice while enrolling for classes.

Any clubs or organizations interested in helping out with the program find more information at http://www.santarosa.edu/childdev/foster/ or find their offices on the second floor of Maggini in room 2822, second floor.

The Oak Leaf will follow up with more in the spring.