Comments Document

See attachment.

I write today in support of HB427 to include Student Parents in data collection at institutions of higher education in Virginia. Too often parenting students are left out of funding consideration due to being an invisible population on campuses across the country. One in five students in undergraduate programs are also parenting children under the age of 18. Parenting students are often faced with barriers to their success through no fault of their own. Parenting students face having to reduce working hours, spend less time caring for their children, and reducing sleep in order to be successful students. These factors can cause parenting students to drop out or stop out of their educations at higher rates than their non-parenting peers. By including parenting students in data we can offer better support to the unique challenges that student parents face when trying to be successful in their educations. As a former parenting student who now supports parenting families, I know first hand the difficulties and invisibility faced by these students. Biases against parenting students still exist in higher education settings; yet these students show up everyday without asking for help and suffering in silence. We owe it to them to say that we see you and we count you, because you matter. Please vote yes on HB427, so we can count the many students who are parenting and support them in their success.