Pennsylvania’s Act 1 guarantees help for formerly incarcerated students. Some say it’s falling short.

Stoneleigh Youth Advocacy Fellow Aqilah David is featured in Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she reflects on her own experience as a student returning from incarceration and discusses the promise and shortfalls of Pennsylvania’s Act 1 law.

Nobody was looking out for Aqilah David when she came home from incarceration.

At least that’s how it felt when she returned to her Philadelphia high school in 2018, after several months in a juvenile facility. The school’s administrators had marked her absent for much of the time she’d been away. Even though she’d taken classes while incarcerated, she had to fight to prove she had. She ended up graduating late.

“It just feels like a whole waste of your time, and it’s not a good feeling,” she said of her experience.

David then joined an effort to push for help for students like her — and won. Pennsylvania lawmakers moved to ensure more students get the credits they’ve earned in classes behind bars with a 2022 law called Act 1.

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