[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 116 (Wednesday, August 1, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Page S5880]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. LANDRIEU (for herself, Mr. Grassley, Mr. Begich, Mr. 
        Blunt, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Franken, and Ms. Klobuchar):
  S. 3472. A bill to amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy 
Act of 1974 to provide improvements to such Act; to the Committee on 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about a 
bill that I have the pleasure of helping to lead with several of my 
colleagues, particularly Senator Grassley, who has been my long-
standing partner and a wonderful cochair of the foster care caucus. 
There are any number of us, Republicans and Democrats, who have our 
eyes on and our hearts connected to the 500,000 children who are 
technically being raised by the government.
  The government does many things well, but raising children isn't one 
of them. So it is our responsibility, when we enter into or respond to 
a case of abuse, gross abuse, neglect, or gross neglect, that we 
respond appropriately by removing children from homes who have, 
unfortunately, been tortured at times by their own parents. That, of 
course, is inconceivable to me and to many, but, unfortunately, it 
happens.
  So we remove children--hopefully temporarily--until the situation at 
home can be addressed with community services, faith-based services and 
support, where the children can be reunited with parents who have been 
healed, possibly, of their situation. That is not always the case, and 
we work as quickly as we can to find responsible and able relatives to 
take in the child--willing and able relatives, the law says, to take in 
the child with sibling groups intact. If that is not possible, then we 
seek to find a family in the community that will adopt these children.
  The thing I want to say about these wonderful children is that while 
their families may be broken--families may disintegrate for all sorts 
of reasons, including mental health, drug abuse, uncontrollable 
violence, criminal activity that disintegrates the family, and children 
are most certainly affected--these children, in many instances, aren't 
broken. Their families are broken. The possibility of these children, 
from the ages of zero to 1 or 2 or 3 or 9 or 12 or 15, being given an 
opportunity to be adopted into the loving arms of a stable family who 
will raise that child or children as their own or to be reunified with 
loving family members is ideal.
  As I said, governments do many things well, but raising children 
isn't one of them. Human beings raise other human beings, and we need 
to do a better job of placing our children in quality, temporary foster 
homes, and then finding permanent, loving homes.
  We have this crazy notion in America and around the world that 
children are grown when they are 18, so we put all of their belongings 
in a plastic bag and we say goodbye to them, and we tell them: Please 
forget my cell phone number because you have aged out of the system.
  Several of us have been working for years, including former Senator 
Chafee, for one, to create more permanent opportunities for extended, 
independent living. While I support that--it is much better than 
putting their things in a bag, their few little items after 18 years, 
and sending them on their way--we now can extend that help until they 
are 21. However, what we really need to be doing is finding families 
for these children.
  I am 57 and I still need my family. I still talk to my mother and 
father almost every day. I was with my family this weekend. They will 
be with me and have been with me for every important moment of my life. 
When did somebody get a notion that children don't need a family after 
they are 18? It is a silly notion, and it is not even true. We would 
not send our own children into the world alone by themselves. So our 
whole foster system needs great reform, and we are working on that.
  But one piece of this system that needs reform is what we are trying 
to address today by introducing the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, which 
is a bill that Senator Grassley and many others, including Senator 
Begich, Senator Blunt, Senator Boxer, Senator Franken, and Senator 
Klobuchar have graciously agreed to cosponsor and provide their 
leadership. Congresswoman Bass is a U.S. Representative from 
California's 33rd District. She, along with Congresswoman Bachmann from 
Minnesota, Congressman Marino from Pennsylvania, and Congressman 
McDermott from Washington State, has introduced the same bipartisan 
bill in the House. So we are very excited about the strong bipartisan 
support for this bill.
  All this bill says--and it makes such sense I can't believe it is not 
in the law already--is that when a child comes into the care of the 
government, the government agency responsible for the care of this 
child--now it is not parents any longer because the parents' rights 
either have been terminated or are in the process of being terminated--
the government will have the right, or the agencies representing the 
government, to their academic records.
  What is happening now is foster children are getting lost not only in 
the system but lost in their schools because of the difficulty in 
getting access to education records under the guise that these records 
should be private, et cetera.
  What is happening is some of these privacy rules are not protecting 
the children, they are protecting the system that is broken, and that 
is the problem. We are doing everything we can to protect the privacy 
of the child, but what is happening is some of these privacy rules are 
putting up a screen so that we can't find out that the school is not 
doing its job on behalf of the child, or the social workers are not 
doing their job on behalf of the child.
  So this simply streamlines the process of making sure academic 
records can be accessed by foster families--either adoptive families or 
guardians--without having to go through the courts for a long, extended 
timeframe.
  I think this is an important change. It is one of probably 100 
changes to this system that need to be made. Of course, we can make 
these new laws in Washington. A lot of this has to be carried out with 
heart and compassion and common sense, which, unfortunately, we cannot 
legislate from Washington. But what we can do is try, when we see a 
problem--this problem was identified not by me or by my staff. It was 
actually identified by foster youth who came up here this summer to 
intern and brought to our attention the issue that some of their 
records are not accessible to their foster families who are trying 
their best to raise them and to help them, et cetera. So the young 
people themselves have asked for this change. We are happy to 
accommodate that request.
  Let me end by saying again, there are over 480,000--about 400,000 to 
500,000--children who are in our foster care system representing less 
than one-half of 1 percent of all the children in America, which is 
about 100 million. But it is an important one-half of 1 percent because 
these are children whose families have failed them terribly. These are 
children who are vulnerable and need us to love them extra specially, 
to help them extra specially. That is what some of us spend a good bit 
of our time trying to do because they are willing and able to become 
great citizens of our Nation but need that extra special help.
  So this Uninterrupted Scholars Act will give access, appropriately 
with protections, to their academic records. Senator Franken has a bill 
to give them choice in public schools to help give them stability in 
their public schools, so they can stay with their friends, their 
teachers, as they, unfortunately, have to move around in the system.
  Many people will benefit--most importantly, the youth involved.
                                 ______