This Week's News: 12 Feb 2006

Education

Bill aims to decrease dropouts, encourage college
The Pueblo Chieftain – Feb 11, 2006 By Charles Ashby
DENVER - Sen. Abel Tapia wants to get children in school earlier in life and keep them there longer.

GED plan reduces dropouts
The Sun Herald – Feb 12, 2006 by Vivian Austin
JACKSON COUNTY - The Jackson County School District says its year-old general education diploma program is having the intended effect.


Foster Care

NO REFUGE A way home for foster youth
San Francisco Chronicle, USA - Feb 12, 2006
If that foster youth reaches 18 and emancipates from the system without either, the state has failed them. Each year, the state ...

Pushed out on her own at 18
Detroit Free Press, USA – Feb 12, 2006
Katrina McQueen was sitting in her classroom at Durphee Elementary when, suddenly, some grown-ups she didn't know came to take her sister and her to the principal's office. Katrina was told she was being removed from her mother's custody and sent to a cousin's house to live.
She didn't go to school for three days.

Bill makes education an incentive for foster kids
Seattle Post Intelligencer – Feb 11, 2006 by Claudia Rowe
The path out of foster care is a bleak one for teenagers: If they stay in high school and earn a diploma, the state makes them effectively homeless by cutting them from its rolls on their 18th birthday. But if they drop out, they remain covered for three more years.


Juvenile Justice

County eyes new juvenile justice centerOfficials discuss options ...
Elkhart Truth, IN - Feb 10, 2006
... Stuck between what they can afford and what the county needs, county leaders are looking for creative ways to pay for a new juvenile justice center. ...

Juvenile justice system reflected in book
Columbus Telegram, NE - Feb 10, 2006
...A coach who has befriended the boy reaches out to convince juvenile justice authorities to allow the teen to live with some of his friends in a smaller ...