NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH: Child Advocacy

NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH

Raising Katie

What adopting a white girl taught a black family about race in the Obama era.

Courtesy Mark Riding

Mark Riding (left) with his son Niles and adoptive daughter Katie O'Dea-Smith at Disney World. Katie and her baby sister Langston attend a birthday party with Terri Riding (right). 

By Tony Dokoupil | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Apr 23, 2009

Several pairs of eyes follow the girl as she pedals around the playground in an affluent suburb of Baltimore. But it isn't the redheaded fourth grader who seems to have moms and dads of the jungle gym nervous on this recent Saturday morning. It's the African-American man—six feet tall, bearded and wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt—watching the girl's every move. Approaching from behind, he grabs the back of her bicycle seat as she wobbles to a stop. "Nice riding," he says, as the fair-skinned girl turns to him, beaming. "Thanks, Daddy," she replies. The onlookers are clearly flummoxed.

 

As a black father and adopted white daughter, Mark Riding and Katie O'Dea-Smith are a sight at best surprising, and at worst so perplexing that people feel compelled to respond. Like the time at a Pocono Mountains flea market when Riding scolded Katie, attracting so many sharp glares that he and his wife, Terri, 37, and also African-American, thought "we might be lynched." And the time when well-intentioned shoppers followed Mark and Katie out of the mall to make sure she wasn't being kidnapped. Or when would-be heroes come up to Katie in the cereal aisle and ask, "Are you OK?"—even though Terri is standing right there.

Is it racism? The Ridings tend to think so, and it's hard to blame them. To shadow them for a day, as I recently did, is to feel the unease, notice the negative attention and realize that the same note of fear isn't in the air when they attend to their two biological children, who are 2 and 5 years old. It's fashionable to say that the election of Barack Obama has brought the dawn of a post-racial America. In the past few months alone, The Atlantic Monthly has declared "the end of white America," The Washington Post has profiled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's struggle for relevance in a changing world, and National Public Radio has led discussions questioning the necessity of the annual Black History Month. Perhaps not surprising, most white and black Americans no longer cite racism as a major social problem, according to recent polls.

But the Ridings' experience runs counter to these popular notions of harmony. And adoption between races is particularly fraught. So-called transracial adoptions have surged since 1994, when the Multiethnic Placement Act reversed decades of outright racial matching by banning discrimination against adoptive families on the basis of race. But the growth has been all one-sided. The number of white families adopting outside their race is growing and is now in the thousands, while cases like Katie's—of a black family adopting a nonblack child—remain frozen at near zero.

Decades after the racial integration of offices, buses and water fountains, persistent double standards mean that African-American parents are still largely viewed with unease as caretakers of any children other than their own—or those they are paid to look after. As Yale historian Matthew Frye Jacobson has asked: "Why is it that in the United States, a white woman can have black children but a black woman cannot have white children?"

That question hit home for the Ridings in 2003, when Terri's mother, Phyllis Smith, agreed to take in Katie, then 3, on a temporary basis. A retired social worker, Phyllis had long been giving needy children a home—and Katie was one of the hardest cases. The child of a local prostitute, her toddler tantrums were so disturbing that foster families simply refused to keep her. Twelve homes later, Katie was still being passed around. Phyllis was in many ways an unlikely savior. The former president of the Baltimore chapter of the National Association of Black Social Workers, she joined her colleagues in condemning the adoption of black children by white families as "cultural genocide"—a position she still holds in theory, if not in practice. She couldn't say no to the "charming, energetic" girl who ended up on her front doorstep.

Last November, after a grueling adoption process—"[adoption officials] pushed the envelope on every issue," says Mark—little Irish-Catholic Katie O'Dea, as pale as a communion wafer, became Katie O'Dea-Smith: a formally adopted member of the African-American Riding-Smith family. (Phyllis is her legal guardian, but Mark and Terri were also vetted as legal surrogates for Phyllis.)

To be sure, it's an unconventional arrangement. Katie spends weekdays with Phyllis, her legal guardian. But Mark and Terri, who live around the corner, are her de facto parents, too. They help out during the week, and welcome Katie over on weekends and holidays. As for titles: Katie calls Phyllis "Mommy" and Terri "Sister," since technically it's true. Mark has always been "Daddy" or "Mark."

"Let me just put it out there," says Mark, a 38-year-old private-school admissions director with an appealing blend of megaphone voice and fearless opinion, especially when it comes to his family. "I've never felt more self-consciously black than while holding our little white girl's hand in public." He used to write off the negative attention as innocent curiosity. But after a half-decade of rude comments and revealing faux pas—like the time his school's guidance counselor called Katie a "foster child" in her presence—he now fights the ignorance with a question of his own: why didn't a white family step up to take Katie?

Riding's challenge hints at a persistent social problem. "No country in the world has made more progress toward combating overt racism than [the United States]," says David Schneider, a Rice University psychologist and the author of "The Psychology of Stereotyping." "But the most popular stereotype of black people is still that they're violent. And for a lot of people, not even racist people, the sight of a white child with a black parent just sets off alarm signals."

Part of the reason for the adoptive imbalance comes down to numbers, and the fact that people tend to want children of their own race. African-Americans represent almost one third of the 510,000 children in foster care, so black parents have a relatively high chance of ending up with a same-race child. (Not so for would-be adoptive white parents who prefer the rarest thing of all in the foster-care system: a healthy white baby.) But the dearth of black families with nonblack children also has painful historical roots. Economic hardship and centuries of poisonous belief in the so-called civilizing effects of white culture upon other races have familiarized Americans with the concept of white stewardship of other ethnicities, rather than the reverse.

The result is not only discomfort among whites at the thought of nonwhites raising their offspring; African-Americans can also be wary when one of their own is a parent to a child outside their race. Just ask Dallas Cowboys All-Pro linebacker DeMarcus Ware and his wife, Taniqua, who faced a barrage of criticism after adopting a nonblack baby last February. When The New York Times sports page ran a photo of the shirtless new father with what appeared to be a white baby in his arms (and didn't mention race in the accompanying story), it sent a slow shock wave through the African-American community, pitting supporters who celebrated the couple's joy after three painful miscarriages against critics who branded the Wares "self-race-hating individuals" for ignoring the disproportionate number of blacks in foster care. The baby, now their daughter, Marley, is in fact Hispanic. "Do you mean to tell me that the Wares couldn't have found a little black baby to adopt?" snarled one blogger on the Daily Voice, an online African-American newspaper.

For the relatively few black families that do adopt non-African-American children, and the adoptive children themselves, the experience can be confusing. "I hadn't realized how often we talked about white people at home," says Mark. "I hadn't realized that dinnertime stories were often told with reference to the race of the players, or that I often used racial stereotypes, as in the news only cares about some missing spring-break girl because she is blonde.'"

Katie, too, has sometimes struggled with her unusual situation, and how outsiders perceive it. When she's not drawing, swimming or pining after teen heartthrob Zac Efron, she's often dealing with normal kid teasing with a nasty edge. "They'll ignore me or yell at me because I have a black family," she says. Most of her friends are black, although her school is primarily white. And Terri has noticed something else: Katie is uncomfortable identifying people by their race.

Is she racially confused? Should her parents be worried? Opinions vary in the larger debate about whether race is a legitimate consideration in adoption. At present, agencies that receive public funding are forbidden from taking race into account when screening potential parents. They are also banned from asking parents to reflect on their readiness to deal with race-related issues, or from requiring them to undergo sensitivity training. But a well-meaning policy intended to ensure colorblindness appears to be backfiring. According to a study published last year by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, transracial parents are often ill equipped to raise children who are themselves unprepared for the world's racial realities.

Now lawmakers may rejoin the charged race-adoption debate. Later this year the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent federal think tank, is expected to publish a summary of expert testimony on adoption law—much of which will ask Congress to reinstate race as a salient consideration in all cases. The testimony, from the Evan B. Donaldson institute and others, will also suggest initiatives currently banned or poorly executed under existing policies, including racial training for parents and intensifying efforts to recruit more black adoptive families.

Would such measures be a step back for Obama's post-racial America? It's hard to tell. The Ridings, for their part, are taking Katie's racial training into their own hands. They send her to a mixed-race school, and mixed-race summer camps, celebrate St. Patrick's Day with gusto and buy Irish knickknacks, like a "Kiss Me I'm Irish" T shirt and a mug with Katie's O'Dea family crest emblazoned on it. But they worry it won't be enough. "All else being equal, I think she should be with people who look like her," says Mark. "It's not fair that she's got to grow up feeling different when she's going to feel different anyway. She wears glasses, her voice is a bit squeaky, and on top of that she has to deal with the fact that her mother is 70 and black."

But even if Katie feels different now, the Riding-Smiths have given her both a stable home and a familiarity with two ethnic worlds that will surely serve her well as she grows up in a country that is increasingly blended. And it may be that hers will be the first truly post-racial generation.

© 2009 Newsweek  

NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH: Beyond Foster Care

Getting Beyond the Foster Care System: What Works for Teens

 

Q&A with Betsy Krebs

  Could you have made it entirely on your own at 18 or 21? Each year, roughly 25,000 young people “age out” of the foster care system, many without family or economic supports. Without connection to a caring adult and support to plan and prepare, these youth face steep challenges, including higher rates of unemployment, poor educational attainment, health issues, incarceration, and homelessness.
But those are the problems, the statistics—what about the potential of these teens, and their desire to succeed? And what of the programs that are tapping that potential?
In 1992, attorneys Betsy Krebs and Paul Pitcoff founded the Youth Advocacy Center (YAC) in New York City, based on their belief that with guidance and tools, teens in foster care can succeed as adults. The YAC program teaches self-advocacy and goal-setting to empower teens to take on significant responsibility for planning for their futures.
In the wake of New York Times coverage spotlighting the struggles of New York City’s foster care agencies, we spoke with Betsy Krebs about what works to help teens aging out of foster care succeed.

Has there been progress in recent years in New York? Does the New York Times story recognize that progress?

The major progress in New York City child welfare is the reduction of the number of children in foster care, due at least in part to a government commitment to preventive services for families.
However, a large proportion of those who remain in temporary foster care—often for years—are teenagers. We’ve seen more discussion about “preparing youth for adulthood,” and increased interest in teens aging out, but we still need to see more change that supports teens becoming successful participating citizens.

The foster care system was designed to protect children from imminent harm, not prepare teens for adulthood. The system has been given the responsibility of raising teens to adulthood, but that’s not what it was designed for nor currently prepared to accomplish.

What are the challenges facing young people aging out of foster care as they become adults?

Working with thousands of young people from foster care, we know that they have aspirations, strengths and talents, and the potential to become fully participating citizens who contribute in a range of fields.
The main challenges facing young people are: (1) the culture of low expectations for teens in foster care and (2) the lack of accountability for their success or failure. A principle challenge is changing the thinking and the current practices that resist and prevent teens from taking on more responsibility for preparing for a future of successful independence.
Until that happens, most young people aging out of the foster care system will not be prepared for college and meaningful careers. Too many will continue to end up homeless, jobless, and incarcerated, without the resources they need to become successful adults.

What can be done?

There are three sets of “players” available to help teens escape poverty and other challenges after foster care.
Teens. First, the teens themselves are untapped resources. They can make significant contributions to the community, and speak most passionately and articulately about what they want for their lives—not just today but for their futures. If given responsibility and adequate supports, they are the best advocates for themselves, and they will carve out a path to reach their goals.
Child Welfare Professionals. Second, the thousands of dedicated and experienced professionals in the foster care system can help lift teens out of poverty if they are given support and tools to treat each teen as an individual with potential.
We need to recognize that many professionals have a wealth of creativity and experience and must find ways to allow them to bring this resource into the process of preparing teens for independence. Employing the Socratic approach—supporting teens in learning for themselves—would create a powerful collaboration of professional and teen that would dramatically elevate teens’ responsibility level and critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Community. The third group that has demonstrated interest and talent in helping teens in foster care is the broader community—the private sector, experts on higher education, national service, the arts. Busy individuals from every background are willing to contribute experience, resources and perspective on what we can all do to help young people escape poverty.

Whether it means giving advice to individual teens (as leading urban professionals do in our Getting Beyond the System® Self-Advocacy program), providing scholarships, internships, or participating in policy discussions about foster care reform, the input of the wider community is invaluable and must be increased.

How can we measure program success? What should we look for in any program addressing issues related to aging out?

Right now there are no real metrics for teens that gauge their success after foster care.

Rather than needing more training programs in “independent living skills,” young people need to be able to acquire information, investigate opportunities, and make decisions relying on their intellectual power. Today’s youth must be prepared to adapt to constantly changing conditions—in their own lives, in the communities in which they live, in their country, and in the larger world.

You’ve talked about switching from seeing young people as problem to seeing them as individuals with assets and strengths. How do we do that?

We should no longer tolerate treating teens as problems to be solved, cases to be diagnosed, managed, and restrained. If they remain objects of treatment teams, of case planning meetings, of behavior modification and management, of training programs, there is no reason for teens to respond positively.

Instead, we must adopt approaches that treat them as subjects of their own preparation for adulthood. They must be independent thinkers and lifelong students who carve out their own paths to the future.

• The Socratic approach, described above, is one way our program and others around the country engage teens and adults to learn critical thinking skills together. It gives young people responsibility for developing their own approaches to solving problems, and teaches them to be active learners.
  
• Another concrete tool we use is the informational interview. We ask every young person in foster care what they want to do when they are 25. Then, through the Getting Beyond the System® Seminar, we prepare each teen for an individual meeting with an experienced professional in that field to discuss career and education goals. The young person is prepared to ask questions and gather important information—lifelong skills—and also begins building his or her own network in the community beyond the system.

More people around the country, both at the government and the practice level, are looking at our own and other innovative ways to help teens transition to independence, because they recognize that we have too long been failing these youth.

---

Betsy Krebs and Paul Pitcoff co-founded and direct the Youth Advocacy Center Inc. Their latest book, Beyond the Foster Care System: The Future for Teens (Buy on Amazon), chronicles the development of their program, which brings teens, the system, and the outside community into active collaboration to increase opportunities for teens after foster care. For more information, including tools, ideas, and trainings on the Getting Beyond the System® Approach, visit the Youth Advocacy Center site.

If you would like to get involved with teens placed in foster care contact Foster Club. We are assisting children placed in foster care with much needed clothing. With $25 you can provide a gift card to a foster child at Clothing Our Youth.

JEREMIAH'S PROMISE

NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH: Chicago Student Offered $1 Million In Scholarships

 Children come to the attention of child protective service agencies for a myriad of reasons, from different situations, and a multitude of backgrounds. Often older children available for adoption are left in foster care, unadopted, and in need of life skills to be productive citizens.

*Every year, approximately 18,000 youth will emancipate — or "age-out"— from the foster care system when they reach age 18 or finish high school. Youth in foster care often do not get the help they need with high school completion, employment, accessing health care, continued educational opportunities, housing and transitional living arrangements. Studies of youth who have left foster care have shown they are more likely than those in the general population to not finish high school, be unemployed, and be dependent on public assistance. Many find themselves in prison, homeless, or parents at an early age.

 The following article comes from Chicago, it highlights that not all children who are in "the system" or "age-out" follow the status quo.

 ___________________________________________________________________

Aug 13, 2009 5:49 pm US/Central

CHICAGO (CBS) ―

A lot of kids are getting ready to head off to college and, it's a great accomplishment.

CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker talked to one Chicago student had a much longer road to go before he got on the right path.

"I got over a million dollars in scholarships. It's very exciting," said Derrius Quarles.

He received $1,150,000 to be exact. Quarles is a graduate of Kenwood High School who was offered $755,000 from nearly a dozen colleges, which he turned down. He accepted $355,000 in scholarships and will now attend Morehouse College. He earned all of this while being a ward of the state.

"My father was killed in this city when I was four years old and I was taken away from my mother shortly after that. My mother had a drug problem," he said.

To say he has succeeded against huge odds is almost an understatement. Quarles credits his success to his determination to go to college, his ability to accept his past, and not use it as an excuse.

"I had to come to accept what happened. I had no part in it, in my circumstances. But it is my responsibility to. It's all about how I'm going to overcome that," he said.

He's not only an inspiration because of the painful past he's overcome, but as a million dollar scholarship baby Quarles is also an example of how hard work can pay off for any student.

Quarles began searching for scholarships when he was a sophomore. He says he applied to more than 40 and quickly learned the essay was key. He didn't just write about his past. Most of the time he wrote about the time he joined the Kenwood Swim Team nearly drowned.

"To give the reader a sense I gained a lifelong lesson from that one experience, I think that tells someone about you and your character," he said.

While the essay is key, it helps that Quarles has a 4.2 GPA, got a 28 on the ACT, and had a counselor like Lynda Parker who was honored to write a recommendations for a student she knows will meet his future goals.

"He really made it happen when all the stats says it shouldn't. He could have given up. He could have just said I'm not supposed to make it, but instead he said 'no I can and I will' and he did," said Parker.

Quarles plans to pursue a career in medicine. He leaves for Morehouse College in Atlanta on Saturday.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

*To support National Adoption Month we are supplying gift certificates to a local organization, Foster Care Support Foundation. You can assist in this effort by making a donation here.

NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH: Foster Parents Can Make the Difference

Bridging the Gap 
You will hear stories on the new about foster parents who abuse children, take their per diem and use it for a variety of things other than the children in their care, and a million other things that would lead you to color the whole group with a paint brush which does not fit every case.  In America there are more than 510,000 children and youth in out of home foster care ^[1]. It would be preposterous to think that the majority of them are living in subpar homes with strangers. In fact, as of September 30^, 2006 of the 510,000 children in foster care 24% (122,400) are placed with relatives. Yes, the majority of children are placed in non-relative foster homes of people who want to make the difference for children. And this is my thanks to the ones who bridged the gap for me.

There is no way to sugar coat the beginning of life for my son. Born about 10 weeks early and possibly exposed to drugs in utero, at birth weighed in at 2.8 pounds and 15 inches, received “bag and mask ventilation”, was  incubated on multiple occasions, and spent the next 2 months in the hospital. Due her inability to care for him, he was released frohe hospital to a couple Alfonzo and Dorothy Smith. As an older couple they had already been foster parents to more children than they could count, not mention being the parents of six children. Only a special couple would say, “yes” to a child diagnosed with “apnea of prematurity, respiratory distress syndrome, anemia, and physiologic hyperbilirubinemia”. Most parents get overwhelmed thinking about taking a child home with all of that going on, much less the child of someone else. Yet, that is what Alfonso and Dorothy did that day. And for three years following that day.

For a large portion of that three year period they transported him to and from visits whether or not his mother came. Due to the diagnoses he received upon discharge, he was in occupational therapy which required appointments, which they were sure to make regularly. It sounds simple; however, they were foster parents of other children in the home as well. Beyond being foster parents to him they often helped their own family of grandchildren, parents, sisters, brothers, and do not forget children. The day I walked into their home and saw that little boy I was immediately taken by his friendliness, his playful demeanor, and of course, he was cute. Cuteness, they had no hand in, but the other things can be traced back to their loving nature, attentiveness, willingness to care for him, and general disposition as a couple.

You see, when the Smiths chose to become foster parents they took it as a service to the children and the families. It was a commitment. Not like we see today where people choose to commit just for a time, the good times. When you commit to a child you commit for an uncertain amount of time and through an undetermined situations. As a result of their commitment, I received a child who had not been bounced form home to home, was surrounded by family and love, automatic Grandparents, and people with whom there is bond like none other. The transition to my home was not easy for either of us because he had bonded with them. He still calls them regularly and to him they are Grandma and Grandpa. The day I picked him up to bring him home, was the greatest day of my life. And for them it was bittersweet. After seven years as a parent and many conversations with them, it is clear that they bridged the gap for him to find a family and for me to have an amazing child.

Foster parents can make the difference in the life of a child, for the rest of their life. If you want to know more about becoming a foster parent the National Foster Parent Association is a wonderful resource. However, to find out the specific requirements and resources in your State go to Child Welfare Information Gateway. This page will allow  you to select and receive contact information for your State.  




*To support National Adoption Month we are supplying gift certificates to a local organization, Foster Care Support Foundation. You can assist in this effort by making a donation here.

NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH: Born in my Heart

Not Your Average Love Story

Most little girls, as they are growing up, dream of the white picket fence, the husband, and having two children. That is not my story, it did cross my mind, but somehow I knew my family would never be the normal one. My Love Story, began when I saw a little boy at a foster home in October of 2000. When I tell people about meeting him, it sounds like a made for television drama. See when you adopt, the child is born in your heart.

The winter began to set in on Cleveland, Ohio; I worked in the Department of Children and Family Services as a social worker. The first children I visited were two girls placed in a foster home. Prior to this case, I had none. In fact, I had a choice between 2-3 other cases and chose this particular one. Single, college graduate, no children, those were my basic stats at the time. As I sat on the couch of the foster parents’ home there was a tiny boy hiding behind the curtains playing peek-a-boo with me and laughing. Soon after his antics with the curtains he crawled up on the couch, sat next to me, and just looked at me. He moved closer, and then closer, eventually he was on my lap. In a moment of freedom I said, “I’m gonna take you home with me.” About a year following that day, his foster mother told me he was available for adoption. Due to making monthly visits to the home for the other children placed there, I had grown attached to hi, and always wanted to know how he was doing. When told me, my heart stopped and I got worried that I would never know how he was or what happened to him. So, I made the choice to adopt him. Single, college graduate, no children, those were my basic stats at the time. Little did I know that day would be a day to change two lives.

Jamil, officially, became my son in March of 2003 at the age of 3 years old and our love story is still being written. Adoption, to me is no different than having a natural child in many ways. I question my fitness as a parent and whether I made the “right” decision. And there were times, and still are, when I thought he would be better off with someone else. He would have two parents, a bigger house, a better yard, a dog (like he begs me to get), and other siblings in the home (like he begs me to get). And were it not for the support of other family and friends, we would not have made it this far. He is what I live for now. He is the Love of my Life. When I think about him not being in my life, it is hard to fathom.

 I received a call from my sister in California, whom he stays with for part of the summer. At the time was nine years old, he was asking about his birth Mother, and I became worried. To let you know, he is has always known he was adopted; he has an album with the names of his birth parents, knows he has siblings and has bet all but one of them. It has never been a conversation that was off limits for him. With that said, she had questioned him on what he would change about his life and he said, “nothing”. He expressed that he loves me, he is happy to be adopted, and he would not change that at all. Neither would I. At every juncture, it has always been my intention to have him be well adjusted. Unlike birth children, Jamil has questions about life that speak to who he is in a different way. Why he is not with his birth family? What happened that his parents were not able to care for him? He has a list of questions of which I can not and would not attempt answer for him. However, as his Mom I can be there to support him in becoming what he wants to be, developing him for the future, and accepting himself. Isn’t that what being a parent is about anyway?

 

 Still single, still a college graduate, one child, those are my basic stats. He was not born from me physically, but he was born in my heart. And this is not your average love story.

Are you considering becoming an adoptive parent? There are plenty of helpful resources available, listed below:

Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption

National Adoption Center

National Council for Adoption 

AdoptUsKids 

Adoption Resources 

Child Welfare Information Gateway

Courageous Choice

Adopt America Network

Children Awaiting Parents

Comeunity

Comeunity Resource Listing

Children Awaiting Parents

*To support National Adoption Month we are supplying gift certificates to a local organization, Foster Care Support Foundation. You can assist in this effort by making a donation here.
 

HOLIDAY TRAVEL START BOOKING

And you thought The Pulse was not about saving money. Not true. In being dedicated to what matters in life, The Pulse knows that making travel to see family or just get away means a lot to many people.How many times do you hear about the holiday travel rush? Uhm, yearly?! Of course, as long as there are end of the year holidays there will be The Holiday Rush. So, with that, here are airlines offering specials... get a pencil... get ready.

 

American Airlines  American Airlines nationwide fare sale -- from $152* round trip

 Low fares just in time for the holidays. Save on your late fall/early winter flight with Expedia and American Airlines’ round-trip sale. You can get a flight from NYC to Chicago for $152* round trip. Book by November 15; travel now-December 31.Book by 11:59 PM on 11/15/09 (PST) 

 $25*+ flight sale on AA.com -- 2 days left (one way, R/T req.) 

Sky-high savings -- little time left. American’s huge, 72-hour nationwide sale ends this Thursday. Fares start at just $25* each way, based on round-trip purchase. Travel December 2-16 and January 5-February 10. Don’t wait on this one. By American, Book by 11:59 PM on 10/29/09 (CDT)

Last-minute flights from your city -- from $101* round trip 

Time is almost up, and it's time to save. Take advantage of Expedia's last-minute sale and get a round-trip flight from San Francisco to Vegas for $101* or Washington, D.C. to Orlando for only $139*. Many departure cities and destinations are available.By Expedia.com, Due to limited inventory, this deal may expire at any time. Book now to take advantage of the savings.

AirTran's huge one-way fare sale -- U.S. flights from $39* 

All stops are on sale. Expedia and AirTran have teamed to offer a one-way fare sale to cities across the U.S. One-way fares include Boston to Baltimore for $39* and NYC to Charlotte for $64*. Book by November 10; travel now-February 10, 2010. By Expedia.com, Book by 11:59 PM on 11/10/09 (PST) 

Discount Sites:

BookingBuddy 

Orbitz 

CheapOAir 

AirTran 

Expedia 

CheapTickets 

Kayak 

SideStep