Education-Legal Partnerships Are Needed to Fight Student Poverty

Attending school during a pandemic is difficult. Attending school without a stable home is unfathomable. Unfortunately, that’s a reality for more than a quarter million students in California, according to a recent report from UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools. The study found that schools can, and do, play a vital role in providing for our most vulnerable students, but they can’t solve the crisis of child poverty alone. We agree and believe that by embracing more collaborative efforts like “education-legal partnerships,” they don’t have to.

The past several months have laid bare the unsung role of schools as the backbone of our social safety net. School Districts like Los Angeles Unified have embraced this caregiver role, providing food, medical care, mental health services, and childcare — all on top of providing an education. But these schools never have the financial or other structural supports necessary to fully meet the needs of students. Legal assistance, for instance, is notably absent, forcing families to seek outside, unfamiliar sources of aid.

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, community schools had emerged as powerful models to support students’ holistic needs. Also called “full-service schools,” community schools provide an integrated set of services to meet the learning and developmental needs of children. LA Unified has made a concerted effort to replicate the concept of community schools, funding dedicated staff and training and forging partnerships to provide primary medical care, vision care, dental screening, and mental health services — among other efforts — wherever possible. The community school model acknowledges the reality that families have more trust in schools and teachers than in other institutions and that society should build upon that trust to support children and help them grow.

Under our proposed “education-legal partnership,” community schools should build partnerships with legal aid organizations. What if children and their families had access to a free lawyer that was assigned to their school? What if this lawyer helped families address the legal issues that led to their homelessness or food insecurity, or helped avoid these issues in the first place? What if this lawyer spent time with teachers and parents, providing legal training and empowering communities to prevent the need for legal intervention?

What if children and their families had access to a free lawyer that was assigned to their school?

We already have examples of education-legal partnerships here in Los Angeles Unified (where Nick is a Board Member). The district partnered with UCLA School of Law to develop the Immigrant Family Legal Clinic, where UCLA Law students and legal staff provide immigration legal services to families. Bet Tzedek, a nonprofit that provides free legal services (where Diego is CEO), also hosts an attorney at the UCLA clinic who focuses specifically on supporting families to obtain outstanding wages. That clinic, operated and funded by its legal partners, is part of the RFK community school, physically located on the campus and accessible to families.

The successful partnership at RFK demonstrates that families who are used to connecting with teachers, counselors, and administrators with questions can easily be connected to a lawyer. With that lawyer’s help, families have been able to access government benefits, receive the wages they are owed, keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

LA Unified is working to expand the services of the community school model to reach more students and families, and this includes the District’s efforts to decentralize more than 1,200 schools into 42 smaller clusters of schools (called “Communities of Schools”). We are exploring an “education-legal partnership” pilot, with the help of Bet Tzedek, to serve the whole Community of Schools in Fairfax — rather than limiting these legal services to individual schools.

This type of collaboration may be novel in the education world, but it isn’t new to the legal profession. Over the past few decades, Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) have flourished across the United States. Even here in Los Angeles, Bet Tzedek has two attorneys located at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center who receive direct referrals from hospital staff of patients with legal issues that need addressing. The theory behind an MLP is deceptively simple: a patient’s health is often impacted by social and environmental factors, often referred to as “social determinants of health,” such as where they live. A doctor can’t help with those issues — but a lawyer can. Remedying these underlying social determinants can also help prevent further medical concerns.

This concept of “social determinant” is already very familiar to teachers and school administrators. If a child hasn’t slept well because they are living out of a car, they will have a difficult time concentrating. If a child is hungry due to food insecurity, they will have a difficult time focusing. Schools can offer a stable learning environment and free meals, but a lawyer can address the underlying issues that families are facing.

California has strong laws in place to protect vulnerable populations, but those laws work only if families are aware, empowered, and supported in their enforcement. Local schools can’t solve these problems alone, but they do offer one setting to connect families with the support they need to address the barriers of systemic poverty.

Diego Cartagena is President & Chief Executive Officer at Bet Tzedek Legal Services.
Nick Melvoin is a Board Member at the Los Angeles Unified School District.