In limbo: Students in Sonoma, Napa counties still waiting for state financial aid allotment

Napa High School senior Alejandra Alfaro was recently accepted to Napa Valley College.

She wants to begin her path to a sonography career at the junior college and transfer to nursing school in the hopes of working with pregnant people. Alfaro has already begun looking at four-year universities that will accept her transfer and provide an opportunity to get a sonography credential.

She’s hoping her preparation isn’t premature.

Like thousands of other California students — especially those with at least one undocumented parent — she’s anxiously waiting for her Federal Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, allotment to come through.

Time is getting tight. The deadline for declaring their intent to enroll, usually in early May, is looming.

“It’s really stressing, because what if I don't get the money? I’m not sure what to do,” Alfaro said.

Complicating matters is the fact that at least one of Alfaro’s parents is undocumented and doesn’t have a valid Social Security number. The lack of a Social Security number causes a full-stop in the FAFSA application’s new online format, which came out last December.

That bug in the system has created months of delays in submissions and is affecting academic institutions as well. Colleges are still waiting for processed Student Aid Indexes, which determine a student’s financial need and give universities an idea of how much aid a student is eligible for.

Some schools use the index number to determine whether an incoming student qualifies for additional need-based scholarships, which would be included in a financial aid packet sent out to each student.

And for many students, that financial aid determination will be the deciding factor in not just where they go to college, but whether they go at all.

Alfaro, whose father works in the Napa vineyards, is not sure he’ll be able to contribute much financially to her college education.

She’s holding off on registering for classes, thinking she may have to take half the course load she planned for the fall semester, to make sure it's affordable.

“I’m pretty excited to go to college,” Alfaro said. “But what if I don’t end up going because of the money? That's why, right now, I’m not sure if I’m going.”

Racing to meet extended deadlines

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom extended FAFSA’s priority deadline to May 2, and offered students from mixed-status families — meaning at least one parent is not a U.S. citizen — the option of applying for the CA DREAM Act instead.

That program is typically used by undocumented students who only qualify for state aid, not federal aid. And students who persist with their FAFSA and submit the application after the priority deadline, will receive less than their peers who submitted ahead of the date.

Neither option is ideal, said Gabriela Esquivias , a program manager with 10,000 Degrees, a California nonprofit helping underserved students develop pathways to college.

That nonprofit places dedicated staff members at high school campuses statewide to support underrepresented students who are furthest from opportunity. Those include undocumented, homeless, foster care and low-income students.

Esquivias oversees five staff members at Piner and Elsie Allen high schools in Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa High, Healdsburg High and the Laguna High continuation school in west county.

“With all of these issues, we have been talking to our students and letting them know that they need to have a secondary option in case their dream school isn't offering them as much as they thought, in case they aren’t receiving offer letters in time that the Statement of Intent to Register is due,” she said.

One student, senior Uriel Morales at Piner High School, spent the morning of May 2 with his head buried in his hands, trying to submit a document that would merge his DREAM Act Application and his FAFSA, which only just processed the day before.

He wore a navy blue crew neck with “UCSB” in bold yellow lettering across the chest, bought at the campus store at University of California, Santa Barbara, where he’s been accepted to study managerial economics.

Morales submitted the DREAM Act application after months of delays in processing his FAFSA.

“I started my FAFSA in January — I wanted to get it done early,” he said in the College and Career Center at Piner High School. “But it didn’t work. My parents didn’t have a Social Security number and it didn’t let them log in for two or three months.”

At the time, he had heard back from the schools he was accepted to: UC Davis, San Diego State, Sonoma State, Chico State and UC Santa Cruz , among others.

When Newsom announced mixed-status students could apply for the CA Dream Act while FAFSA officials worked the bugs out of the system, Morales quickly submitted the application with the help of Piner’s college and career counselor, Nicole Cancilla.

When his FAFSA finally processed this week, he had to come back and merge the two applications with another state form, typically used by undocumented students after they gain citizenship.

And he’s still without an estimate from UCSB on his expected financial aid, keeping him from submitting his intent to register to the school.

“I already know I’m going to get good financial aid — I know it’s going to be very cheap for me,” Morales said. “But I’d still like to know.”

All schools in the California State University and University of California systems pushed their deadlines to register as a student from May 1 to May 15. Individual universities are able to push the deadline further back if necessary.

The extended deadlines allow the universities more time to process FAFSA results and craft financial aid offers.

Sonoma State University extended its deadline to June 1, with an understanding that students with mixed-status families continue to face barriers in submitting the application, said Ed Mills, SSU vice president for Strategic Enrollment.

“It has been really difficult — the Department of Education just released another workaround,” Mills said. “It’s still not perfect.”

As of March 1, 19 unresolved issues remained open on the FAFSA website.

SSU has been able to process and award about 6,000 financial aid packets to incoming and current SSU students, but Mills predicts there are close to 2,000 more students waiting for offers.

He described three types of students: Students who’ve received their acceptance to SSU, their aid offer and are “good to go”; students who’ve received their award offer from SSU but not from other universities and so they haven’t committed; and students who are still not successful in filing the FAFSA application.

That’s the group Mills is most worried about.

“My big fear is students who will opt out, themselves — this idea that they don’t trust the process and they’ll decide ‘I’m not going to go to school,’” Mills said.

It's a concern also on Cancilla’s mind.

“Students who are already facing these types of issues where they’re not getting access to things … we’re going to see thousands of students not attending college,” she predicted. “This has by far been the biggest fail.”

A domino effect

Cancilla works in tandem with the 10,000 Degrees associate , each managing students who are facing persistent barriers with submission and students who wait to get financial aid packages from all of their accepted colleges.

Cancilla is urging her students to be patient and wait until all offers come in.

She’s had students who’ve turned to the Santa Rosa Junior College as an alternative, after worries that they wouldn’t get offers back in time for the four-year universities they’ve applied to.

“I tell my students: ‘Don’t make a decision without knowing what you’re getting into. That is not in your best interest,’” Cancilla said.

And at this time each year, initial tuition costs come hand-in-hand with deposits for housing and orientation. Oftentimes, these payments are nonrefundable.

Housing is tricky because first-year students have to live on campus, and spots fill up quickly.

“This can impact whether students get housing or not,” Esquivias said. “And if they don’t have housing, is off campus an option? Living in the Bay Area, for a student who decides to stay local — it’s expensive to live out here.”

Orientation, another early cost for incoming freshmen, is where students get acclimated to campus culture and enroll in their classes. It’s also often nonrefundable.

“If they’re putting off enrolling for orientation because they don’t know what their financial aid offer is or what school they’re going to, they will probably be the last pick of the litter for their classes,” Esquivias said. “That definitely impacts their majors and how they start off their college careers.”

Report For America corps member Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare issues for The Press Democrat. Reach her at Adriana.Gutierrez@pressdemocrat.com.