Committee on Education hears DCF: foster-care population down, academic gaps narrowing but data and placement challenges remain

The House Committee on Education on an unnamed date heard the Department for Children and Families present its annual foster care report card, which showed the state’s foster population at “around or under about 5,600 youth,” a level the department described as the lowest in roughly 12 years.

Rebecca Gerhardt, director of permanency and licensing for the Department for Children and Families, told the committee the report includes new comparison data gathered with the Kansas State Department of Education and that the agency has added sex and race/ethnicity breakdowns at stakeholders’ request. “We are, around or under about 5,600 youth who are experiencing a need for foster care which is the lowest number of youth we've had experiencing that need in about 12 years,” Gerhardt said.

Committee members and Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) officials said the numbers show progress but flagged continuing gaps and technical and procedural obstacles that complicate schools’ ability to support students who move between placements.

Gerhardt highlighted several positive trends in the report. The graduation gap between students in foster care and the statewide student population narrowed from about 24 percentage points to about 20 points. The foster-care dropout rate fell from about 5.1% to 3.9%, and the gap with the general population fell from about 3.5 points to about 2.6 points. Attendance gaps are smaller: overall attendance for students in foster care was within about 3 percentage points of peers statewide, and the gap for Black students was about 1 percent.

Other specifics in the report included a decrease in chronic absenteeism among students in foster care and mixed trends for discipline: fewer students in foster care received suspensions year over year, though the average number of suspension days changed slightly. The number of schools with mental‑health intervention teams grew from 56 two years ago to 81 in the most recently completed school year; those teams reached 410 youth in foster care (about 7.3% of the foster population) and roughly 4,000 general‑education students. Gerhardt also said about 87.7% of students in foster care accessed at‑risk preschool services, an increase of 3.3 percentage points, and that more than 90% of Black students in foster care accessed at‑risk preschool services.

Academic preparedness measures showed mixed results: KSDE reported improvements in math and science preparedness for students in foster care between the 2022–23 and 2023–24 school years but a decline in English/language arts. Gerhardt said English/language arts remains the area with the largest gap between foster and non‑foster populations.

Committee members pressed departmental officials on operational and data challenges that affect students who change schools or placements. Representative Ruiz asked for a plain‑language description of how a child enters foster care; Gerhardt outlined that intake/assessment staff investigate reports and, if needed, may request a petition to place a child under court jurisdiction, and that law enforcement removals can also occur in some circumstances. Gerhardt said not every court jurisdiction decision results in DCF custody.

Members raised specific concerns about course placement and continuity of extracurricular or wraparound services when a student leaves one district for another. KSDE’s representative urged coordination with school counselors but said local districts make placement decisions and the State Board cannot direct course placements across districts. Dr. Harwood of KSDE told the committee that KSDE and DCF are discussing ways counselors and case managers can better coordinate placement decisions and explained KSDE’s move from its old KIDS system to a new Kansas education data system (referred to in testimony as KEDS) designed to provide more real‑time enrollment updates.

KSDE said the new data system will supply nightly updates about student enrollment so the department can better track how often students move and which schools they attend. KSDE plans to run both the old and new systems concurrently next year as a safety measure while testing. Both agencies noted legal and privacy constraints: schools cannot freely share student data with third‑party service providers without appropriate permissions, and DCF and KSDE both face statutory and regulatory limits on data sharing.

On advocacy and legal representation, Gerhardt described the statutory access guardian ad litem and CASA volunteers have to DCF and court files once a case is filed. She and Dr. Harwood said guardians ad litem (in Kansas, assigned attorneys) receive continuing legal education under Supreme Court Rule 110a and often work with limited resources, particularly in rural counties.

Committee members asked about two operational items that could affect outcomes: (1) whether the state or districts can do more to preserve students’ ties to community programs such as mentoring or job programs when placement changes occur and (2) access to credit recovery or transition services that help students stay on track for graduation. Gerhardt and Dr. Harwood said a statewide list of community organizations is not maintained centrally; local case‑management educational liaisons and districts typically know the resources near them.

The committee invited DCF and KSDE to return to demonstrate new data systems in a later meeting. No formal committee action — votes or motions — were taken on the report during the hearing.

Gerhardt and KSDE officials stood for questions throughout the discussion and said they would provide follow‑up information the committee requested, including grant award status for a community organization mentioned by members and counts on how many students in foster care return to parental care versus age out of the system; Gerhardt noted that the department posts fuller data on its public website.

The testimony underscored progress on several statewide educational metrics for students in foster care while also focusing attention on remaining problems: cross‑jurisdictional data matching, privacy and permissions for third‑party service providers, course placement, and limited guardian ad litem capacity in some counties.