WA Best Practices: Immediate Enrollment for Children and Youth in Foster Care

This WA state primer contains several key topics to help schools ensure the immediate enrollment of students in foster care, including definitions, timelines, enrollment strategies, and critical roles such as foster care liaisons. It describes the federal legal framework for educational stability; defines immediate enrollment (i.e., “the student is fully enrolled, even without typically required documents, as soon as practicable (e.g., within 3 business days) to avoid educational discontinuity”); and specifies that in WA state, record requests and record transfers must occur within 2 business days.