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  • How a community school helped its students through the FAFSA fiasco

    How a community school helped its students through the FAFSA fiasco


    A teacher kicks off a lesson during an AP Research class.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for EDUimages

    High school seniors walked the stage last month, but the FAFSA fiasco has left some still in limbo about their college plans for the fall.

    Changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) were supposed to make accessing financial aid easier for students and their families. Instead, it created new challenges for our students at the UCLA Community School, a public LAUSD school located in Koreatown. Despite our best efforts, our predominantly working class, Latino students lived in constant uncertainty around their college plans because issues with the application process led to delays in financial aid packages from universities.

    Although it was a frustrating experience, our counseling team found a silver lining — using this opportunity to teach our students how to overcome one of the many systemic challenges they will face as first-generation college students. As a Latino first-gen student myself, I leveraged my lived experiences and worked with colleagues in our College Center to teach our students the critical college knowledge they will need to navigate a system that seems stacked against them.

    Working in a community school means intentionally anticipating challenges and systemic barriers students and their families face along their educational journey. Community schools, located in neighborhoods with large numbers of high-needs students, work extra closely with community agencies and local government to provide a range of resources and services to students and families.

    Two years ago, we created a College and Careers Transition course to help seniors develop a plan for college and/or careers after high school. However, we didn’t realize how important this course would be until we faced the FAFSA fiasco, which was a huge technical nightmare that delayed aid packages to students who were relying on federal aid to make their college decisions. First-generation college students and underserved communities have always needed support in the application process, but this year, more than ever. Through a collaborative partnership with UCLA, the Fulfillment Fund and Gear Up 4 LA, we helped all students access aid through one-on-one support and educated students and families on how to complete FAFSA once in college.

    Although students were given dedicated class time to complete the application, several students needed extra support. One ambitious student, whom I’ll call Nadia to protect her privacy, was accepted to highly selective colleges and would visit the College Center every day seeking support and understanding. The first issue we faced was verifying their parents’ identities. Although the family had created their Federal Student Aid IDs and submitted verification documents as soon as the application opened (late) in January, Nadia was not able to complete the form. This issue occurred for more than half of our students simply because they are part of mixed-immigration status families. Not being able to provide a parent’s signature on the form meant that the Student Aid Index (SAI) could not be calculated, therefore leaving students uncertain of the amount of financial aid they would receive.

    Although FAFSA provided temporary workarounds, Nadia was still not able to receive an accurate provisional aid letter by the May 15 deadline observed by most colleges in California. Pressured by looming deadlines she deferred admission to her second-choice college because she did not want to risk committing to a school she could not afford. After checking FAFSA every day for months, the day finally came when Nadia could access her Student Aid Index and she elected to attend community college for academic and financial reasons. In a turn of events, she got off the waitlist for her dream university, the University of Southern California (USC). We spent the week leading up to graduation watching Nadia take the lessons learned from the course as she advocated for herself to secure her aid package from USC. She will start there this year. However, while Nadia had a week to have important financial conversations with family, other students had less than 24 hours or no time at all. Some students felt forced to commit to a school without aid packages or deferred to community college to minimize the financial risk.

    While we are hopeful that next year’s FAFSA process will be smoother, this year’s fiasco has helped us build confidence in students and their families who are sending children to college for the very first time. Our transition course affirmed students’ own agency and the power of community. We taught students to have hope and to find it in their circles of support. We also provided coordinated, one-on-one support for every student, which wouldn’t have been possible without the support of UCLA and college access partners like the Fulfillment Fund.

    This experience has demonstrated how critical college access programs are in supporting first-generation college students and the many barriers they will face in their higher education journeys.

    •••

    Jonathan Oyaga is a research associate for UCLA Center for Community Schooling, a campuswide initiative to advance university-assisted community schools, and an educational aide at the UCLA Community School, working in the College and Career Center to support students’ postsecondary transitions.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • ‘Psychological first aid’: How volunteers helped students recover after LA fires

    ‘Psychological first aid’: How volunteers helped students recover after LA fires


    A burned sign at Oak Knoll Montessori School (Loma Alta School) from the Eaton fire on Jan. 9 in the Altadena neighborhood of Pasadena.

    Credit: Kirby Lee via AP

    Top Takeaways
    • More than 100 volunteers helped provide “psychological first aid” to students in the Pasadena Unified School District following the Eaton fire.
    • Mental health professionals say normalcy remains far away for many students impacted by January’s fires, and long-term trauma is expected.
    • The volunteer effort has died down, but the district is looking for ways to provide ongoing support to students with greater needs.

    In a classroom that smelled like a campfire, a student at Pasadena Unified’s Sierra Madre Elementary School broke down when he saw a student-made stuffed rabbit that had X’s for eyes. 

    His art teacher called for help from Tanya Ward, a project director for the mental health and school counseling unit at the Los Angeles County Office of Education. 

    Ward arrived immediately and pulled the student aside. 

    “That’s a dead bunny. That’s a dead bunny,” the student repeated, sobbing.  

    “What does that make you feel?” Ward asked him. “What do you think about that bunny with X eyes? Could it be something else?” 

    The student began to breathe and seemed less agitated. He started talking haltingly about how the stuffed rabbit — in reality, a sock wrapped around a rice-filled balloon — made him feel. 

    Sad. And scared. 

    “Then he was able to go back,” Ward said. “I sat with him for a little bit longer, just to help him get going with his project. … The other students didn’t tease him or make fun of him. They just embraced him.” …

    Ward is one of roughly 100 volunteers from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, or LACOE, and beyond, who have provided mental health support at Pasadena Unified School District school sites and enabled hundreds of students to get back on track in the months following the Eaton Fire, which displaced about 10,000 of the district’s 14,000 students. 

    “We’ve always been ready. But to be able to be welcomed and ushered into this work — and be able to have solutions — and to know that you have people who’ve got your back, it’s pretty unbelievable,” said Julianne Reynoso, Pasadena Unified’s assistant superintendent of student wellness and support services. “I would never have imagined this level of support.” 

    Supporting families 

    Shortly after the Eaton fire burned more than 14,000 acres, John Lynch, a community schools initiative coordinator for LACOE, started making phone calls to check in on families and find out what support they needed, from economic needs requiring gift cards to housing. 

    He called 100 about families at Altadena’s Eliot Arts Magnet alone — all while dealing with his own long-term displacement from the region. 

    “It was a way for me to really know, to be in community with other people who live in my community, and we’re kind of going through something similar, even though we’ve all experienced this differently,” Lynch said.

    “Families that are displaced, I think they — we — … have maybe felt a little bit forgotten, as the rest of the world kind of goes back to their everyday life,” he added. “People are just like, “Wow! Thank you for calling, and for remembering that we’re kind of going through this tragedy.”  

    Supporting students 

    When students returned to school after the fire, many had been separated from their peers for months. 

    “Some hadn’t even really come back from Christmas break. And then the fires closed down their school, so they had not seen peers, their friends, for several weeks,” said Anna Heinbuch, a school counseling coordinator at LACOE. 

    “A lot of our students were just happy to be in a space where they were with their peers and able just to talk about something other than the fires.”

    Within weeks of the fires, Heinbuch facilitated a “psychological first aid” session in the gym of Marshall Fundamental Secondary School — gauging students’ wellness, helping them through whatever they were dealing with and providing them with suggestions for next steps, such as access to a school social worker. 

    She brought coloring books to help comfort the students and taught them breathing exercises they could do by themselves. She asked whether they had been sleeping well and eating properly. 

    The initial period of assessing students’ needs lasted a few weeks, and then the effort rolled back. But Kim Griffin Esperon, a LACOE project director of mental health and school counseling, who organized the volunteer effort, began hearing from principals who expressed an increased need for longer-term support. 

    And Griffin Esperon worked to bring in longer-term support, which lasted until the end of March. 

    Volunteers said students’ grief had started to deepen. Some longed for their lost pets and missed the other animals that made Altadena home. Others, whose homes survived, felt survivor’s guilt. 

    Some students began to act out in the classroom. Others felt less engaged academically. Many struggled when they were away from their parents or siblings. 

    “This is going to take a long time for some of these kids to work their way through,” Griffin Esperon said. “There’s no rushing back to normal for these students because their lives will not probably feel normal to them for quite a while.” 

    The road ahead 

    More transitions lie ahead for some students — from potential housing changes to friends who may move elsewhere. 

    And with the volunteer effort having achieved as much as it can for now, Reynoso said the goal is to connect students who need it with longer-term care and support. 

    Pasadena Unified is continuing to monitor students’ well-being, Griffin Esperon said, and has recently received funding to hire two crisis counselors. The district will also rely on parents who have health insurance to provide support for their children, she added. 

    “Despite what crisis or trauma they’ve been through, we want (students) to feel connected,” Reynoso said. “We’re definitely seeing the need … for long-term care, and we’re looking at every opportunity we possibly can.” 





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