A Kansas House bill would require school districts to transfer records of children in foster care within no more than two business days to provide stability in their education.

House Bill 2320 would shift the responsibility for transferring records from the Department for Children and Families to school districts, with a goal of streamlining the transfer process for children with placement changes.

A transportation plan also would be required if students moved placements but chose to attend their original school.

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Rebecca Gerhardt, director of permanency and licensing at DCF, presented the 2024-25 foster care report, saying the academic data they saw for last year aligns with the bill’s goals of providing stability. She said more youths in foster care are graduating high school, are moving on to the next grade level and have a decreased dropout rate than previous years.

“When we enroll a child in school, we’re supporting placement stability. Foster kids are narrowing that gap in schools,” Gerhardt said. “If records don’t stand in the way, they can get enrolled quick. Being in school supports educational outcomes but also the social outcomes. The child is tied into a community.”

Gerhardt said the two-day timeline will help to prevent barriers that keep a child from enrollment after a new placement.

“We are trying to work with our local school districts to keep kids where they started, but that doesn’t always happen,” Gerhardt said. “This creates a timeline that has not existed before, so that the records transfer doesn’t stand in the way of a young person enrolling in that next school.”

Children’s Alliance of Kansas CEO Kristalle Hedrick said from July 2025 to January 2026, there were 675 instances where placements couldn’t be found for youths in foster care, primarily middle and high school ages. In fiscal year 2025, that number was 485 instances for the entire year.

“We get in this situation where we have kids moving around. They lack complete stability,” Hedrick said. “We know kids need stability whether kids admit it or not. We can’t have them not being educated on top of the other challenges they’re facing.”

Shannon Kimball, from the Kansas Association of School Boards, shared concerns of school districts’ ability to follow the bill’s timeframe of record transfers. Kimball asked legislators if there was any flexibility in the timeframe under special circumstances.

“The records transfer timeline is rather aggressive,” Kimball said. “There may be issues of compliance with that all the time, even when school districts are making good faith efforts to transfer records.”

Hedrick said because schools are a place of stability for kids in foster care, it’s important that there aren’t barriers to enrollment due to administrative delay.

“Schools are the bedrocks of our communities,” Hedrick said. “We need help from our schools to help create consistency for these kids.”