Update: Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 1211 into law on June 20, removing the age cap on college tuition waivers for former foster youth. The new law became effective immediately. The other bills mentioned in this article did not pass before the legislative session ended.
Shortly after adopting two adolescent brothers from foster care, Texas Rep. John Lujan and his wife got an alarming reality check. They had just put two biological children through college, and didn’t have savings for this pair who would, they hoped, soon need that same support.
While they were relieved to learn Texas adoptees have lifetime access to free tuition at all in-state colleges and universities, foster youth who have not been adopted don’t get that lifetime benefit. Under current state law, the opportunity to have their tuition waived ends at age 25.
That struck Lujan — who was once a Court-Appointed Special Advocate for kids in the system — as an unfair disparity. He knew the early years after aging out of foster care involve cobbling together the essentials, like safe housing and a steady income. Why should his adopted sons receive more help from the state to pursue higher education, he wondered, than young people with no help from parents?
“To me, it was like a common sense thing that this needs to be corrected and fixed,” the San Antonio lawmaker told The Imprint. “I don’t want to have any hindrance for them — I think they’ve been through enough.”
Lujan’s House Bill 1211, and its companion bill in the Senate, would eliminate the age cap on tuition benefits provided under the state’s waiver program.
The legislation is among several foster care-related bills now being considered in the statehouse. Others focus on keeping foster youth out of legal trouble, tightening regulations on residential treatment and expanding mental health programs.
Existing help in Texas for college-bound foster youth
Despite the age limit, tuition waivers for Texas foster youth are among the most generous in the nation. Eligibility standards are broad, and include all youth who age out at 18, and many who are reunited with their families as teens. The state grants far more waivers each year than most of the other 36 states that offer similar tuition support. There’s no GPA requirement to receive the help and no limit on how long students can utilize the waiver as long as they opt in before turning 25.
Former foster youth such as Andrea Contreras, a 27-year-old mother of three, are among the beneficiaries.
“With my kids, I definitely don’t think I would even have had the opportunity, I wouldn’t really have the money,” Contreras, who studied nursing at San Antonio College, said in a 2022 interview. “With the tuition waiver in place, it makes it way easier to decide to actually take that path.”
The Texas benefit has proven effective. Former foster youth who take advantage of the tuition waiver are 3.5 times more likely to graduate with a bachelor’s degree than their foster care peers who go through college without this financial support, according to a 2020 study from Texas State University researchers and local nonprofits.
This is significant in the face of bleak statistics on overall academic achievement among former foster youth. A key longitudinal study of foster youth who aged out of the system in three states, conducted by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, found that only 4% earn a four-year college degree by age 26, compared to 36% of their peers in the general population.
“To me, it was like a common sense thing that this needs to be corrected and fixed.”
— Bill sponsor Rep. John Lujan
Among those who make it to college, roughly two-thirds don’t enroll immediately after graduating high school, said Toni Terling Watt, a Texas State University professor whose research focuses on foster youth in higher education.
But, she said, many of those currently eligible for the age-limited version of the waiver don’t take advantage. It’s unclear how many additional former foster youth will enroll if the current age cut-off is eliminated.
“There are probably some people whose lives this will change, but we don’t expect it to be a huge number,” Terling Watt said.
For this reason, the bill has no “fiscal note” — or budget ask — attached. The bill has passed committee review and awaits consideration from the House. Its Senate companion bill, authored by Sen. Jose Menendez, awaits a committee hearing.
Watt also said stumbling blocks that keep the waiver underutilized for those currently eligible — lack of awareness and an onerous application process — will remain a challenge even if Lujan’s bill is passed.
The legislator hopes word can be spread while young people are still in the system, as a motivator for what lies in their future.
“It’s something that the system can use when they’re in foster care, that there’s hope for some that do want to get ahead,” Lujan said. “Somebody can share with them, ‘Look, you have college waiting for you,’ and that might be that motivating factor to help. We have to do everything we can to help these youth.”
Other Texas child welfare bills
Following several years of substantial reforms to Texas’ child welfare system — including major reforms to pare down the number of children coming into foster care — the Legislature is also now considering a handful of bills that aim to further prevent family separation.
House Bill 5030 by Rep. Ann Johnson seeks to make more behavioral health treatment available under the state’s Medicaid plan. Multisystemic therapy — designed to keep at-risk youth out of foster care and the youth justice system — would be among the newly covered services, along with partial hospitalization and crisis intervention programs.
“Unfortunately, Texas Medicaid only covers two ends of the spectrum of children’s mental health services: basic therapy/counseling and medications or full inpatient hospitalization. This legislation would broaden that coverage,” the nonprofit Texans Care for Children said in a statement.
Johnson’s bill would also make therapy more accessible for Medicaid recipients, by allowing a wider range of providers to be reimbursed for counseling services, and imposing stricter licensing standards for youth residential treatment programs to better align with federal requirements.
Roughly 6% of foster care entries in Texas occur when parents relinquish custody to the state because they can’t meet their children’s behavioral health needs. Advocates and clinicians in the state say expanding access to publicly funded services may help curb that trend.
“If we could support children and families better earlier on, I think we could prevent a lot of this,” Leela Rice, behavioral health policy chief with the Texas Council of Community Centers, said in a recent interview.
Senate Bill 837 by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst also strives to provide mental health care and other resources that can keep struggling families intact. This bill would make permanent a handful of pilot programs that used federal Family First Prevention Services Act funds for family preservation efforts.
If passed, the programs — which connect youth and families with mental health services to help avoid foster care — could continue beyond the pilots’ 2025 end date. Kolkhorst’s legislation would also permit these state and federal funds to be put toward short-term financial assistance for necessities like rent and transportation.
For children already in foster care, a pair of bills aims to cut off the pipeline from foster care to the juvenile justice system. They would better train group home staff so that behavioral crises can be safely managed without calling the police. According to the Juvenile Law Center, youth living in group homes are 2.5 times more likely to become involved in the juvenile justice system than foster youth living with families.
