Alicia Miñana, LRLC Chair, and Janeen Steel, Executive Director, in the Spring 2007 UCLA Law Alumni Magazine:

Click here to read about Alicia Miñana, LRLC Chair, and Janeen Steel, Executive Director, in the Spring 2007 UCLA Law Alumni Magazine.
Oversight for these alternative programs varies largely by state, county and school district – making it unclear if at-risk youth are receiving the same quality of education as they would in traditional schools. Consistent regulations are needed to make sure that students can transition more smoothly between alternative education facilities and traditional schools – or that students don’t fall through the cracks.

Witnesses also explained today that early identification and assessments of problems of these students are crucial to make their time in these facilities successful.

Press Release March 12, 2009 3:45 PM WASHINGTON, D.C. – Janeen Steel, Executive Director of Learning Rights Law Center, expressed concern at a joint hearing of the Healthy Families and Communities Subcommittee and the Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee in Washington D.C. over what she sees daily in her representation of at risk and foster youth in Southern California.  Ms. Steel gave moving testimony in which she shared her own troubled personal experience as a youth growing up in Los Angeles. Ms Steel, who graduated from UCLA Law after being finally diagnosed with a learning disability as an adult, astutely pointed out that she and the students she serves “are one in the same.”

“When working with youth placed in any alternative setting due to foster care placements or juvenile justice proceedings, urgency drives us to get them out as soon as possible. Priority one: These ‘alternative’ schools are really just warehouses for youth that society has not cared enough to invest in educating,” said Ms. Steel.