How a community school helped its students through the FAFSA fiasco

A teacher kicks off a lesson during an AP research class.

Credit: Allison Shelley for EDUimages

High school seniors walked the stage last month, but the FAFSA fiasco has left some still in limbo about their college plans for the fall.

Changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) were supposed to make accessing financial aid easier for students and their families. Instead, it created new challenges for our students at the UCLA Community School, a public LAUSD school located in Koreatown. Despite our best efforts, our predominantly working class, Latino students lived in constant uncertainty around their college plans because issues with the application process led to delays in financial aid packages from universities.

Although it was a frustrating experience, our counseling team found a silver lining — using this opportunity to teach our students how to overcome one of the many systemic…