Pushout (14 page)

Sixteen-year-old Jennifer in the Bay Area was among the forgotten.

She had not been to school in three years when we spoke in 2013 and had failed out of the seventh grade. She claimed that she was so busy “running the streets” and bouncing to and from multiple foster homes that she never found a rhythm in school. In fact, her pattern of school attendance had become so irregular that she had developed a dislike for school and decided to avoid it altogether.

“I didn't know anything,” Jennifer said. “I was in foster care and I went to hecka foster homes. They put me out of sixth grade, and the next school, they put me in seventh grade. That's what messed me up. So then I had to flunk seventh grade.”

As a child in foster care, she had been sent to live with a family in the San Joaquin Valley. Though we did not discuss the conditions within her birth family that led to the decision to place her with a foster family, she did mention that she had other “family” influences—none of which were positive—that ultimately impacted her decision not to go to school.

Jennifer was a “runner,” which meant that she often ran away from her foster care placements and other locations that she considered threatening. When asked why she was running, she just shrugged and replied that she “didn't like it.” On the surface, that might look like she was running away out of defiance, but experience had taught me better. For years, I had heard justice system workers describe the conditions that led girls to run from their court-assigned residential placements in detention centers, group
homes, shelters, or private homes.
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Sometimes these girls were described as “incorrigible,” “manipulative,” or simply drug-addicted, without explanation. Anecdotes from Black girls revealed a different perspective. They had run away from these places because of experiences like being forced to wash their hair every day and/or use hair products that were not designed for Black girls' natural hair texture. While these conditions may seem minor, especially if brought up in legal proceedings, to the Black girls who told these stories they were “deal breakers,” not only because these hygienic mandates were inconsistent with cultural norms for Black hair care (and certainly off-limits for girls who wore protective hairstyles like braids or artificial hair) but also, and mostly, because it was a trigger for them—a signal that they were not truly welcomed in these alternative living spaces. Some girls ran away from their placement after being triggered by the actions of other girls in these spaces.

In the course of a group discussion in a juvenile hall, one girl offered that she had run away from her group home because she was the only Black girl there and was being bullied by the other girls. Still other girls I've spoken with over the years offered their own explanations for why they ran.

“Why'd you run from
your
foster home?” I asked Jennifer.

“Because, like, they wasn't treating me right . . . I had a foster dad and . . . he knew I was a prostitute . . . and he was like, if he
was a pimp, he'd recruit me. If he was a john, he would date me . . . and I don't know . . . they just didn't treat me right.”

They didn't treat me right
.

“So did you feel safe?” I asked.

“I didn't like it . . . and they, like, talked about me. Told me I'm stupid and never going to be anything. And I believed it, and so that's when I went back to prostitution.”

Jennifer agreed that education was important—even if she had missed years of school while simply trying to survive.

“I think education is important, because nobody can take that from you,” she said. “Even if I'm in jail, nobody can take it from me, so I want to be somebody in jail. That's why I'm going to work hard. . . . I got kicked out of foster care. My family . . . I don't really know my family like that.”

“How'd you get kicked out of foster care?” I asked.

“'Cause I kept running from my group homes. I kept going back to prostitution. I kept doing hecka stuff, so like, once I got back [in juvenile hall], they kicked me out of foster care.”

I wondered if anyone had ever come looking for her. Jennifer had been out of school for three years, hustling to survive in a world that saw her as expendable. How could her extended absence from school pass under the radar for so long?

“When you were enrolled in school, did the school or district come looking for you?”

“No, my foster mom didn't even know,” Jennifer said. “My school never called her.”

I looked at her face. She had a persistent furrow in her brow, which made it appear that she was frowning or squinting even when she was not. A youthful innocence remained in her spirit, even though her eyes knew a lot more than her age suggested.

“What was it like trying to manage your foster care and go to school?” I asked.

“I didn't feel supported at all. It was hard,” she said. “Plus, the foster kids . . . Like, I fought a lot and my foster mom didn't do anything. So I had a lot of fights. . . . It was just hard.”

Managing school and life was difficult for Jennifer, who mentioned that she often felt that the only person she could rely on was herself. Her independence is what also led to her conflict with other girls, and in some instances her suspension from school for skipping class or fighting.

“What are some of the things that would start the fights?” I asked.

“Uh . . . a lot of people didn't like me because . . . you know how some kids don't like you because of the way that you dress? And I used to dress raggedy because I didn't have anything. Like, my foster parents would buy me shoes from [a budget store]. So I would fight them because they would talk about me.”

Then she mentioned that she had once been in a gang.

“It's just . . . it's a squad, not a gang, really,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Did they ever encourage you to go to school?”

“Mm-mm,” she said, shaking her head.

I understood that the “squad” had not encouraged her to go to school, but wondered if that was really at the heart of what prolonged her sexual exploitation.

“No,” she said. “I got into prostitution because the guy that raped me, he forced me on the track. Basically, I didn't go willingly at first, but ever since he did that to me, my whole life just changed, and that was at twelve years old. Ever since then, my life's been off-track.”

She spoke the words with such direct honesty that I suspected she had told this story before. Her youth was obscured by a very painful and complicated past. Her large wide eyes continued to squint as she discussed her struggle to learn and to acquire skills that could help her earn a living without having sex.

“Has anyone worked with you to try to help you get what you need to get back in school or talked to you about how you can make the transition off of the street?” I asked.

“No. Nobody really helped me. Honestly, it took me about four years to get back on track. I'm just now getting back on track. So all this stuff I go through, I go through myself. I encourage myself.”

Jennifer sighed as she retold her story of personal pain and struggle for redemption. The persistence of her frown when she spoke was a subtle cue that she did not like what she was saying or that she was at least aware of how it might sound to someone meeting her for the first time. I held no judgment against her, and I let her know that. The safety of our space mattered, and I really wanted to better understand how her story might inform ways to rebuild a path from confinement to school for her and for other girls in similar situations. We talked about how being sexually exploited was a significant factor both in her school failure and in her attempt to recover from other traumatic experiences in her life.

“I did it 'cause I didn't have nobody. I did it because I hated myself. I did it because I didn't love myself. I did it because I never had anything. So when I was hustling, I would hustle hard to get what I need and want . . . to make myself look good and feel better. So I started selling my body.”

“Was there anything about that that kept you out of school, though?”

“Yeah . . . money. It's just great. When I hustle, I ho by myself. Like, it's . . . better. Like, you know some of these young girls when they hustle, they hustle with they friends or hang out with their friends. Like, I don't know. I felt like a businesswoman. You know?”

When Jennifer detached from the man who raped her, she began working for herself. She needed money not only for herself
but also for her child, who was a toddler when I met Jennifer. In fact, she credited pregnancy as her best educational experience.

“Being a mother is a blessing,” she said. “And it taught me how to have patience, 'cause I really don't have patience.”

Parenting teens often face tremendous obstacles to completing a high school education, but more often than not, girls interpret their parental responsibilities as an incentive to perform better. While these girls are plagued by social narratives that warn of an end to their lives if they have a child as a teenager, they also understand their heightened responsibility and make great attempts to rise to the occasion.

Notwithstanding their resilient attitudes, earning a diploma can be a difficult process for girls who have become pregnant during their high school years, particularly given the hurdles associated with it. Some schools unlawfully bar pregnant girls from attending school or discriminate against them in other ways, including penalizing their success or ridiculing them.
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When girls are able to attend school, they often face the additional hurdle of finding child care or recuperating credits that were missed.

When I spoke with Terri, another girl from the Bay Area, about her experiences as a teen parent, she offered that school remained a priority for her, even if it was difficult to go every day.

“I missed some days [at school] because I have a baby, and I had to find a babysitter. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't . . . People [at my school] help you. . . . Like, they was helping me find a day care to where I could take [my daughter], and stuff like that. It was people there that were helping me. . . . So I just try to get my work and then go home, but sometimes I'd rather be at school. It seems like you can't do anything without school. You can't get out of this mess that we in unless you go to school.”

Terri was also coming to terms with school attendance as a condition of her probation. The juvenile court, understanding the value of education, had prioritized school attendance in her district, which meant that truancy was no longer just a decision not
to go to school—it was also a violation of her agreement with the court.

“That's the main thing that they look at,” Terri said. “If you go to school or not. That's one of the first things that they look at . . . they want to know, what are you doing besides . . . you know . . . doing the stuff that you're already in trouble for. They want to know if you're going to school. Are you there? Are you on time? That's one of the main things that they do push here. Go to school. If you don't, then you're just going to be right back [in juvenile hall].”

Contact with the criminal legal system might be the first time a girl has access to medical screening. For some, this experience may reveal a host of health conditions that affect their ability to return to school, including pregnancy. However, being in juvenile hall or other forms of detention is about more than gaining access to health care. Just as there are relationships that make girls vulnerable to contact with the criminal legal system, there are also a number of relationships within the justice system that keep girls from reconnecting with school and performing well when they are there.

Going Back to School

School administrators are often unsure how to play an effective role in interrupting the pullout of sexually exploited girls from schools. Though many teachers and school leaders understand what a challenge it is to compete with the lure of money and the adult influences that place children at risk of harm, they have also largely been absent from the public discourse on how to keep our girls from becoming throwaway children. For many educators, classroom deportment drives much of their approach toward these girls. Julio, the principal of a California high school, shared his perspective on the matter.

“A lot of it is behavior,” he said. “But the behavior comes from first and foremost a lack of success in school, a lack of socialization
for one thing. They are not socialized properly. They never had that experience.”

Julio continued to describe how a particular girl, a Black girl who was being introduced to a class as a new student, displayed behavioral issues that complicated the school's ability to respond to her needs.

“We had a girl who would just act out with one of our teachers,” he said. “As soon as she got there, and we couldn't figure it out, and so the teacher asked for her file and started reading over it, and she had a long case of issues in school and there have been issues of abuse, and one of the triggers for whatever reason was older white women. The teacher was an older white woman, and it set her off.”

“So what was your approach?” I asked.