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Guest commentary: My sisters and I ended up in the foster care system. Given how much we moved around, getting to school every day was one of my biggest challenges. Transportation often prevented me from going to school. 📝: Georgina Rodriguez
, which would force transportation options that serve students with specialized needs to meet complicated, illogical and almost impossible requirements. If Oakland state Sen. Nancy Skinner’s proposal becomes law, these vital transportations options that help fill the gaps could struggle to exist.
When I was moved into the foster care system, I desperately wanted to attend my school of origin so I could see my sisters, who were living in a different home. But there was no school bus or public transportation that could get me there, leaving me separated from the most important people in my life.Click to learn more about this former legislator In the span of one year, my sisters and I moved homes five times and I attended three different schools. Every time I changed schools, some of my coursework didn’t transfer. I thought I wasn’t going to graduate. In fact, I thought about quitting altogether. For a while, I tried taking a two-hour public bus ride to go to school with my sisters, but I couldn’t maintain the schedule. I was falling apart mentally and falling behind in school. Eventually, my social worker alerted me to another option called HopSkipDrive, which works with school districts and other agencies to arrange rides for students who need extra help getting to school. It changed everything. The service cut the ride to just 30 minutes, and allowed my sisters and I to ride to school together. The shortened commute also allowed me to go to school early or sometimes stay late so I could catch up on the credits I missed. After a lot of hard work, I graduated with a president’s award, citizenship award and on the honor roll. I got lucky discovering HopSkipDrive, but I don’t want other kids in foster care to have to go through what I went through before that. Kids who are in the system already can feel like they aren’t wanted and don’t belong, and there are so many things that they have to deal with on a daily basis. With so much instability at home, getting to school safely and consistently is one less thing to worry about. SB 88 could make it much more difficult for services like this to survive, prompting school districts and county education offices across California to oppose the bill. At this time of year, and in this time for our state, we need to be looking for every solution to get kids to school. I hope more people will hear my story and think about the thousands of students like me across California. We need to expand options for kids, not shrink them.Want to submit a guest commentary or reaction to an article we wrote? You can find our
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