Supporting Illinois Youth: Ensuring Success in School Act (ESSA)

The Shriver Center has recently been working to promote the Ensuring Success in School Act (ESSA), soon to be introduced in the Illinois General Assembly this legislative session. ESSA is the centerpiece of the Shriver Center’s efforts to promote safety and school success for all students in Illinois, but particularly for students who are expectant parents, parents, or victims of domestic or sexual violence. Sponsored by Sen. Iris Martinez (D) in the Illinois Senate and Rep. Karen A. Yarbrough (D) in the Illinois House of Representatives, ESSA offers long-overdue help for these students. The Shriver Center urgently needs your help today to make sure ESSA becomes Illinois law!

For expecting and parenting students, school takes on new meaning and importance even as it poses greater challenges. Many young parents report great interest in completing school despite being encouraged by school personnel to drop out or transfer. Students also report that the lack of safe, appropriate, and affordable child care near their schools is an obstacle to regular attendance. For example, the Shriver Center has worked with one parenting student who was disenrolled from her school, in part for being tardy too often, who explained that she had to travel two hours by bus and train each way to and from school to drop off and pick up her young daughter from child care. Rather than forcing young parents to choose between good parenting and school success, ESSA aims to help them succeed at both.

Likewise, ESSA addresses complications that arise out of what is a growing public health concern for many young people: dating and sexual violence. Rather than ignoring these problems (which is how school administrators often react to student reports of violence), ESSA requires schools to help students obtain the assistance they need in order to stay safe and minimize the impact that violence has on their lives and their ability to succeed in school. No student should be made to endure what another Illinois youth in contact with the Shriver Center experienced after being raped by her classmate. The school that this youth attended did not appropriately handle safety issues and other concerns that arose following her rape, such as the harassment she endured from other classmates who were friends with the rapist. This youth’s family members felt they had no choice but to move away from their hometown so that their daughter could transfer to another school.

ESSA addresses these and other barriers to school success and inappropriate school responses in several ways. First, ESSA requires immediate enrollment and reenrollment for all students who are expectant parents, parents, or the victims of domestic or sexual violence. ESSA recognizes that students may be absent due to pregnancy, parenting, or conditions related to the experience of domestic or sexual violence and adds new categories to the list of valid causes for school absences. ESSA encourages schools to work with students to develop Student Success Plans and holds schools responsible for accommodating students who are expectant parents, parents, or the victims of domestic or sexual violence. Schools are also expected to provide in-school services for these students or to connect them with nonschool resources to enable school success and completion. ESSA promotes parental involvement in students’ efforts to perform well in school when such involvement does not compromise their health or safety.

ESSA contains enforcement and notice provisions to ensure that the bill’s goals are realized, as well as a requirement that school districts separately report the dropout, transfer, and graduation rates of students who are expectant parents or parents, or both, to help define the scope of the problems such students are experiencing in school.

We urgently need individual and organization endorsements of ESSA and have prepared an endorsement form that you may download at www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/essa/essa_supporter.pdf, fill out, and fax or mail to us.

To find out more about ESSA, visit our website at www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/essa.htm, where you may read and download fact sheets about this bill, an endorsement sign-up sheet, and a growing list of ESSA supporters. Or contact Shriver Center attorneys Wendy Pollack (312.263.3830 ext. 238) or Aleeza Strubel (312.263.3830 ext. 229).