Graduation - the day after

Seems fitting to kick off this blog by recounting the last day of my 2009-2010 school year.

After fretting throughout Finals week about how I could possibly find time to upload my semester grades and clean the classroom out, especially after attending graduation Thursday evening instead of attending to final exams, optimism held sway by the time Friday rolled around. My checkout sheet for the year had been signed off by lunchtime, affording ample time for late Spring cleaning. I rolled home with that crossing-stuff-off-your-to-do-list-with-a-one-inch-thick-smelly-Sharpie bounce in my step and spirit. I didn't even have to pick up my son from day care for another two hours. 3:00 - I sailed into the house eager to bask in summer break.

Then the phone rang. My wife. "Did you get the email?"

Subject - Immediate need. Time stamp 3:04. From the social worker with whom we'd been obtaining our certification as foster and adoptive parents. Two girls were being removed from their home. They need foster care -- right now. Can we help?

One hour later, my mother arrived. Another hour later, she would walk down to day care to explain to our son that, at least for now, he had two younger sisters. He is five-and-a-half - we'll call him "Lance". His new sisters are "Jeri" and "Nora", a one-year-old toddler and a seventeen-DAY-old infant, respectively.

Two weeks have passed. We are flesh-and-blood foster parents. We had hoped to keep our son in his current Montessori school through kindergarten, but he will likely enter the public school system a year ahead of our plan and get his Montessori fix in the afternoons. Jeri and Nora may leave our care before either one can enroll. They have a relative that may take them in -- assessments are ongoing, we are told.

The foster care system often creates nomads out of their wards, which naturally impacts their schooling. Over a quarter of California's ninth graders never earn their high school diplomas, but for teens in foster care, you may as well flip a quarter. We cannot expect these realities to change so long as our foster system creates students that shift residences so often. Schools in themselves create strong communities between the families that attend and the staff that administer and teach. Often, schools are a great source of community pride for the towns and neighborhoods that surround them. This communal heartbeat can even bridge the gaps between elementary, middle, and secondary schools, but a foster student who must withdraw and re-enroll in different districts or counties has no such bridge -- only gaps.

Philadelphia's Arise Academy, which graduated its first class of ten seniors four days after Jeri and Nora landed on our doorstep, may yet provide a template for giving foster students a sense of consistent community despite the upheaval that often surrounds their homes and families. I'd like to see California and other cities and states experiment with the Arise model.

Locally, let's get that done by August 2014, shall we? That would be when Jeri enters kindergarten.