Ensuring Success in School


We need your support today! The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, in coalition with youth, education, and violence-victim advocates, has drafted a bill, Ensuring Success in School (ESSA), to promote school success and safety for Illinois students who are expectant parents, parents, or the victims of domestic or sexual violence.

From around Illinois the Shriver Center has heard stories from youth and advocates who described tremendous barriers to school participation and success. For example, one parenting student who was disenrolled from her school, in part for being tardy too often, explained that she had to travel two hours by bus and train each way to and from school in order to drop off and pick up her young daughter from child care. Another Illinois student who was raped by a classmate and harassed at school by other students finally moved away from her hometown to transfer to another school. The Shriver Center seeks to help these students and others like them by promoting ESSA, which

  • utilizes Student Success Plans and holds schools accountable for accommodating and providing youth who are expectant parents, parents, or the victims of domestic or sexual violence with in-school services or connecting them to nonschool resources; 
  • promotes the confidentiality and the safety of such youth; and 
  • encourages parental involvement in such youth’s efforts to succeed in school when such involvement does not compromise their health or safety.

Illinois State Senators Iris Martinez (D) and Kimberly Lightford (D) and Representative Karen Yarbrough (D) have agreed to sponsor ESSA. The bill will be introduced to the Illinois General Assembly shortly. We will immediately forward you the House and Senate bill numbers when they are available and keep you updated on activities and calls to action for ESSA. In the meantime, read more about ESSA at www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/essa.htm, where you may read and download short and long fact sheets about this important bill as well as past WOMANVIEW issues addressing the critical problems facing youth who are expectant parents, parents, or the victims of domestic or sexual violence.

We urgently need your or your organization’s endorsement 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. 

For more information, contact Wendy Pollack (312.263.3830 ext.238) or Aleeza Strubel (312.263.3830 ext.229).

February 17, 2005