Aspire Public Schools is a K-12 school system focused on improving public education by preparing underserved students for college, training highly effective teachers and sharing innovative best practices.
The effects of recent delays in college financial aid could be felt by a vast array of students for years. We spoke with students across the country about their experiences. Here are their stories.
Instead of attending college this fall, a Massachusetts teen plans to join the Marines.
A first-generation student from Illinois hopes her restaurant job will cover college costs.
A Floridian in her 30s says she might go back to exotic dancing to afford tuition.
May 1 has long been the deadline for many students to decide where to attend college. But for applicants across the country, 2024 has been the year the systems in place for decades fell apart. While picking a college is anxiety-inducing in a normal year, the government’s botched handling of financial aid upended that decision-making process, disrupting the lives of a broad swath of American students.
The stress stems from a form called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which opens the door to government help with tuition and, many say, to a better quality of life. This year, glitches and holdups with the form kept many vulnerable people from getting across the finish line.
Historically, the application required students and their families to answer dozens of complicated questions using decades-old technology. Facing a mandate from Congress, Biden administration officials set out to fix it. But the new FAFSA was beset with issues and corrupted data, delaying aid offers for months and jeopardizing the prospects for some of the students the updates were supposed to help.
“FAFSA is the stepping stone to everything,” said Galawe Alcenet, 17, a student in South Saint Paul, Minnesota, who lost her chance at getting several private scholarships because of processing delays. Courtesy of Galawe Alcenet
Even employees in the Education Department’s Federal Student Aid office, which was charged with streamlining the form, expressed frustration with their bosses’ handling of the rollout, two agency officials not authorized to speak publicly told USA TODAY. Then, last week, seemingly capping off the fiasco, the top Biden administration official overseeing the revised process resigned from his post.
“FAFSA is the stepping stone to everything,” said Galawe Alcenet, a senior in Minnesota who lost her chance at getting several private scholarships because of the processing delays. “The biggest challenge has been the waiting.”
In times of crisis, we should be looking for ways to help, not hinder. But in California, the inequities in public school education funding are only deepening the crisis for too many students.
On top of the devastating social-emotional and academic effects of the pandemic, our communities have been dealing with widespread staffing challenges, culture wars and frequent unfair attacks on educators. And in cities across California, projections suggest that public school enrollment will continue to drop — creating a crisis for practically all schools across the state.
Public charter schools face all of these challenges and more. At Aspire Public Schools, a charter school network serving more than 15,000 students in 36 schools across the state, our student population is more than 85% Black and Latino, and the vast majority of our students are experiencing poverty. Yet since the day we were founded, we’ve been forced to get creative with limited resources: Aspire students — like all public charter school students in California — receive less funding than their peers in traditional public schools.
According to new research from the University of Arkansas, the problem remains severe. In the 2019-20 school year, Los Angeles public charter school students received $5,226 less per-pupil funding than their counterparts in traditional public schools. In Oakland, the gap is even larger, at $7,103. This is driven by a lack of public funding. In both cities, public charter schools receive less local, state and federal funding than their counterparts in traditional public schools.
Why? While both public charters and traditional public schools receive the same amount of base funding under California’s Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, that doesn’t mean the total funding is equal. One reason for this is that schools receive additional funding for higher-need student categories and for higher concentrations of students in those categories, known as “concentration grants.” However, charter school concentration grant amounts are capped based on the average student demographics for the district in which they reside. This means that public charters are, in effect, penalized for serving a greater share of high-need students than their district. There are also a number of local, state and federal funding streams that are only accessible to traditional public schools —for instance, voter-approved local funding for operations or capital projects.
I’m not writing this to complain. We are honored to serve our school communities and our wonderful, talented scholars. It’s hard work, but unequal funding makes it harder. The more time we have to spend fighting tooth and nail for basic resources, the less we can spend educating California’s next generation. Our scholars are the same students whom politicians claim to want to support, especially in the wake of the pandemic, but they are consistently left out because they and their families made the choice to attend a public charter school. Elected officials frequently speak about the importance of equity, and we at Aspire couldn’t agree more. But equity means all students getting what they need — and Aspire schools (as well as many other public charter schools)serve large numbers of historically marginalized students.
This challenge is nothing new. If you talk to charter leaders across California, they’ll all tell you a similar story. Due to this systemic funding deficit, we have had no choice but to try to raise philanthropic dollars to fill critical funding gaps. But that is often turned into an attack against us, with critics saying that public charter schools are bankrolled by private investors. That is simply untrue. Trust me — I would love nothing more than to be able to operate our schools without fundraising. But it’s just not an option.
And new challenges often emerge. Just two years ago we made the choice to go to Sacramento to advocate for all public charter students to fight against legislation that would have penalized charter schools — and not traditional public schools — for following the state’s guidelines for quarantining students who were exposed to Covid-19. While we were able to win that fight, it is illustrative of the larger issue: Charter students are treated as less than others.
But here’s the thing: Despite these challenges, charter schools have been able to accomplish so much. According to new research from the CREDO Institute at Stanford University, California charter students have gained the equivalent of 11 days of reading and four days of math compared with similar students in traditional public schools. Black and Latino students and students experiencing poverty had even larger gains. At Aspire specifically, we were proud to have met CREDO’s “gap-busting” criteria in both reading and math, recognizing our ability to reduce opportunity gaps at scale.
So many of our students are carrying so much. They are talented and resilient, and they work hard to achieve their goals. We believe in them, and we tell them that every day.
But this funding gap tells them something different — that because they happen to attend a charter school, they matter less. It’s time that education leaders put childish politics aside and focus on giving all of our kids what they need. They’re all California students. They deserve to be treated as such.
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Mala Batra is the chief executive officer at Aspire Public Schools, a charter management organization serving 15,000 TK-12 students across 36 schools in historically underserved communities throughout California.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
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COMMENTARY
By CORA PALMA, Aspire Public Schools, Director of Mental Health Services
APRIL 13, 2023
Those of us who work in schools don’t need statistics to tell us that our children are in crisis; the research corroborates our lived experience. Since 2017, rates of anxiety and depression among California’s children have shot up by 70% and one-third of California adolescents experienced serious psychological distress between 2019 and 2021, including a 20% increase in adolescent suicides. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all communities, but it exacerbated the trauma that already existed in communities of color and under-resourced communities.
To his credit, Gov. Gavin Newsom has responded to this crisis by launching the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, a $4.4 billion investment in the systems that support behavioral health for California’s children. Our state also increased its investment in the Community Schools Partnership Program, a school improvement strategy focused on partnering with the community to serve the “whole child.” I applaud both of these efforts to create better behavioral health systems for the future, but they fail to meet the immediate crisis-level needs of students today.
If the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative includes resources to build the capacity of schools — where children spend the majority of their waking hours — our schools have yet to see them, and there are several barriers to obtaining support through the Community Schools Partnership Program. The application process can take up to two years, and eligibility depends on the percentage of the school population that is eligible for free and reduced lunch, are English language learners, or are in foster care. Furthermore, many schools lack the capacity to write and submit the application because of the very reason they need this program — school resources are spread too thin as they deal with unprecedented levels of student crises.
We must address the problems we see today with immediate resources to support the mental health needs of our students, alongside longer-term investments in future systems.
With these additional resources, schools can increase their capacity to support all students’ mental wellness and focus on preventive strategies, in addition to crisis intervention. Schools can prevent an escalation of mental health challenges by meeting the most basic needs of children, including the need for belonging, connectedness, and by developing healthy coping skills that lead to better overall health. These supports create a school culture where students develop prosocial skills, make meaningful connections with trusted adults and learn to care for their own well-being. They also make schools safer.
School programming should include an evidence-based social-emotional learning curriculum, like RULER, a systemic approach developed at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, which has been implemented at several Aspire schools and others across California. Parent engagement with the school can also make a meaningful difference in students’ well-being and overall school success. Regular parent workshops on topics such as bullying awareness, suicide prevention and fostering resilience can build parents’ and guardians’ capacity to support their child’s mental wellness.
Given the heavy load that educators are carrying, we also must provide more robust training for those who are in classrooms every day. We must support teachers in interpreting behaviors that may be an indicator of a mental health need by understanding risk factors using a trauma-informed lens. Educators should know how to help prevent crises, how to respond when a crisis happens, how to manage the challenging behaviors that may result from students’ experience with trauma, and know when to seek additional help.
We know these interventions are effective, and with the ongoing shortage of mental health counselors, they can be implemented with non-clinical staff. But most public schools — especially those that serve students from under-resourced communities — need additional staff and training to implement them well.
A petition by Aspire Public Schools for more mental health resources in schools can be found here.
That’s why we’re calling on policymakers to identify immediate and dedicated resources for schools to support students’ mental health, and why we’re supporting AB 1479. Sponsored by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, this bill would establish a program and funding for schools to develop additional Tier 1 student supports — evidence-based programs that support all students in developing the knowledge, skills and behaviors that lead to positive mental health outcomes. We are eager to work with any lawmaker who is committed to the long-term well-being of our children while appreciating the magnitude and urgency of this problem today.
When schools have the resources to address students’ mental health needs, students will learn more, be more connected to their school community, and feel safer and more supported. Schools shouldn’t be forced to choose between their students’ well-being and safety, and the resources needed for learning. Our children are in crisis and cannot wait.
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Cora Palma, Ph.D., is the director of mental health services at Aspire Public Schools, a network of public charter schools.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
To get more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource’s no-cost daily email on latest developments in education.
