A 2022 study by the Rand Corporation found that nearly every school district in America had to combine or cancel classes or ask teachers to take on additional duties due to a nationwide shortage of teachers.
The US has struggled with shortages for decades, but the pandemic worsened the problem, according to the Learning Policy Institute, with teachers citing online teaching and disruptive student behavior as reasons why they are leaving the profession.
Join EdSource reporter Diana Lambert on Wednesday, March 6 at 3:30 p.m. for a Reddit AMA focused on the nationwide teacher shortage, why teachers are leaving and what leaders are doing to bring educators into classrooms. Not a Reddit user? Create an account here.
An AMA, which stands for “Ask Me Anything” is a crowdsourced interview. The interviewee begins the process by starting a post describing who they are and what they do. Then commenters from across the internet leave questions and can vote on other questions according to which they would like to see answered.
The interviewee can go through and reply to the questions they find interesting and easily see those questions the internet is dying to have the answer to. Because the internet is asking the questions, they’re going to be a mix of serious and lighthearted, and interviewees will end up sharing all sorts of things you won’t find in a normal interview.
Chelsi Allen, a mother with children in a Fresno private school, buys farm-grown produce at a Fresno Unified farmers market. Allen saw the market while picking up her daughter from a basketball game at Fort Miller Middle School on February 5, 2024.
Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
When the end-of-school bell rang, groups of students, parents and community members headed for the on-campus farmers market displaying plump green vegetables, potted seedlings and even boxes of free food.
Reflecting the community’s diversity, signs in the booths advertised crops not often seen in mainstream grocery stores, such as chijimisai (a hybrid Asian green that’s packed with nutrients) and other items popular with Asian or Latino families, alongside the standard fare.
As adults bagged and paid for the produce or helped themselves to any free items, young children questioned the farmers about how much water or sunshine a plant needs.
Later, when after-school activities ended, more parents and their student athletes, many still wearing their game uniforms, joined the crowd in the schoolyard at Fort Miller Middle School in Fresno on Feb. 5 — one of a number of farmers markets being held on Fresno Unified campuses this year.
Fresno Unified contracted with Fresno Metro Ministry, a nonprofit organization, to bring farmers markets to schools and increase access to fresh, healthy and affordable food in neighborhoods where it’s not easy to come by.
Fresno Unified and Fresno Metro Ministry leaders say the partnership is important for students, families and the community. Here’s how:
Why start the program?
Much of Fresno is a food desert, lacking access to affordable, healthy food due to an absence of nearby grocery stores, or a food swamp with better access to junk food than nutritious food options, said Amanda Harvey, director of nutrition services with Fresno Unified.
Bringing farmers markets to schools within a food desert or swamp — which mostly exist in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods — provides access to nutritious food.
Is this the first time Fresno Unified has put farmers markets on its campuses?
In the past, the district has hosted farmers markets sponsored and run through community partnerships, Harvey said, but the partnership with Fresno Metro Ministry is run with the school district.
The big difference is that through the new partnership, Fresno Unified students and staff will learn how to operate the markets, said Chris De León, the farm and gardens program manager with Fresno Metro Ministry.
Why partner with Fresno Metro Ministry?
Fresno Metro Ministry creates school and community gardens at locations throughout Fresno to educate the community about gardening and provides land access and other resources for beginning farmers and community members to grow fresh, local produce in food-insecure neighborhoods. De León said it was a “no-brainer” for the organization to partner with the school district to engage students and bring farmers to school campuses.
What’s sold at the markets?
Xiong Farm Produce, one of the vendors at the Fort Miller Middle School farmers market, sells Romanesco broccoli. Fresno Unified has been placing farmers markets on its campuses to provide affordable, nutritious food options for families. Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
The Fresno Unified partnership is funded, in part, through a grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture that requires the farmers market to sell specialty crops, such as apricots, avocados, asparagus, beans, blueberries, broccoli, cabbage, carrots and other fruits and vegetables, as well as tree nuts, herbs and other plants.
Crops from different cultural groups, such as Latino and Southeast Asian farmers, can be offered, too. For instance, Casillas Farms and Siembra y Cosecha Farms, managed by Spanish-speaking farmers, and Xiong Farm Produce, which sold Chinese cauliflower, were at the Fort Miller market.
How does the program impact students?
The farmers markets are meant to be student-led.
Students learn how to seek out farmers, work with market vendors, organize, then promote the upcoming event and set up the market, Harvey said.
Students can even earn food safety and handling certifications, an experience Harvey called a “resume-builder.”
The farmers market itself highlights and promotes student clubs and district programs, especially activities related to agriculture.
Harvey said schools give students the autonomy to come up with ideas for the markets: “What do they want to see in their event?”
A community member and student visit a booth with herbal plants. Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
Eighth graders Lilly Blanco and Andrea Morgan (who managed a booth with herbal plants) pointed out to shoppers how enslaved Africans used herbs, a topic they’re exploring in their ethnic studies class. Aloe vera was used to treat burns and inflammation, and mullein could treat whooping cough, chronic bronchitis and congestion, Morgan said about the research she and her classmates conducted and published in pamphlets for the market.
The farmers market allows students to sell, feature or display products.
“They’ve been really excited planting their own herbs,” Morgan said.
Having students lead, plan and facilitate the events puts them at the forefront, gives them a voice and teaches them responsibility, said Yang Soua Fang, a farm and gardens project manager with Fresno Metro Ministry.
How is it beneficial for families?
While picking up her daughter from a basketball game at Fort Miller, Chelsi Allen expressed how convenient it was for her, a mother of five, to be able to shop while on campus.
“Being at the school setting,” Allen said, “I never thought about it. It just feels right to get some healthy foods and go home and cook.”
Allen, whose children attend Holy Cross Junior High, a private school in Fresno, said that what Fresno Unified is doing gives families affordable access to items needed for a balanced meal.
She pointed out the stark difference between the convenience of the school farmers market and a grocery store, where most people shop for specifics and may not seek out healthy food options that aren’t “in your face” like those at the farmers market.
“We get to serve our students every day,” said Harvey, the district’s nutrition services director, “but to be able to also bring nutritious meals to our adults in our community is huge.”
Will the school district do anything differently?
During the markets, Fresno Metro Ministry can offer food demonstrations to show families ways to serve the farm-grown produce. The food demos weren’t available at the Fort Miller market on Feb. 5, but Fresno Unified plans to do its part to promote nutritious food options to families.
Harvey said the district’s nutrition team can obtain participants’ input on introducing products into the food students eat in school.
“Is this something you’d be interested in seeing on school menus?” a survey asked farmers market attendants about kale.
“The more familiar students are with them, the more likely they are to ask for them at home,” she said. “‘I had this item at lunch; it was delicious. Let’s buy it.’”
What else do markets mean for families, school and community?
The farmers market also “puts a face to produce,” De León said.
“There’s so much: ‘What is this? How did you grow it? How do you cook it?’” he said.
He said he believes those conversations will build relationships between farmers and families, leading to more awareness and a better understanding of the importance of local farming.
Patricia Hubbard is a farmer who grows produce at Fresno Metro Ministry’s Yo’Ville Community Garden & Farm behind the Yosemite Village housing complex.
At the Fort Miller market, Hubbard sold starter plants of sweet peas and kale, including Ethiopian and Portuguese kale. The products are easy-to-grow plants that can hold kids’ interest in growing their own vegetables, Hubbard said.
“We need young people farming,” she said.
The farmers market can pique that interest while changing the narrative about farmworkers, Soua Fang said.
“There’s such a negative stereotype to being a farmworker or laborer, but yet their contribution to our society is so important for us: That’s how we can sustain ourselves,” he said. “But … it’s like we put them at the bottom of the pedestal.”
Connecting and engaging with farmers places value and respect in their craft, especially when they share the stories of how they overcome barriers to become farmers.
Are there more markets?
With plans for different schools to host markets on a monthly or quarterly basis, Fresno Unified and Fresno Metro Ministry hope to set up about 15 farmers markets on campuses this school year. In addition to the Fort Miller market, Phoenix Secondary Academy held a farmers market in the fall to launch the partnership, and a couple of markets have been held in collaboration with the Fresno High School Flea Market. For the rest of the school year, markets will be at:
Fort Miller Middle School on the first Monday of each month. The March 4 market has been rescheduled for March 18.
Fresno High School on the second Saturday of each month.
McLane High School, which is still planning dates but has confirmed April 6 for its first market.
Some of the designated schools are located in the middle of food deserts or serve high numbers of students experiencing food insecurity, Soua Fang said.
At other Fresno Unified schools where there may be agricultural programs offering gardening and farming, Fresno Metro Ministry hopes to “fill the last little gap” by creating a culture around farmers markets. At the Fresno High Flea Market, De León said the organization adds healthy food access to an already thriving market “to connect that bridge from community to school, so it’s not so separate.”
Schools interested in hosting a farmers market should reach out to Fresno Metro Ministry.
Governor Gavin Newsom spoke to the situation in Los Angeles, which Trump is using as a target in his campaign to distract the public from his incompetence. In his hateful way, Trump always refers to Governor Newsom as “Newscum.”
Governor Newsom said, as transcribed by The New York Times:
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California delivered a speech on Tuesday, titled “Democracy at a Crossroads.” The following is a transcript of his remarks as broadcast online and on television channels:
I want to say a few words about the events of the last few days.
This past weekend, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids in and around Los Angeles. Those raids continue as I speak.
California is no stranger to immigration enforcement. But instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and people with final deportation orders, a strategy both parties have long supported, this administration is pushing mass deportations, indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.
What’s happening right now is very different than anything we’ve seen before. On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van near a Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people. A deliberate targeting of a heavily Latino suburb. A similar scene also played out when a clothing company was raided downtown.
In other actions, a U.S. citizen, nine months pregnant, was arrested; a 4-year-old girl, taken; families separated; friends, quite literally, disappearing.
In response, everyday Angelinos came out to exercise their Constitutional right to free speech and assembly, to protest their government’s actions. In turn, the State of California and the City and County of Los Angeles sent our police officers to help keep the peace and, with some exceptions, they were successful.
Like many states, California is no stranger to this sort of unrest. We manage it regularly, and with our own law enforcement. But this, again, was different.
What then ensued was the use of tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, federal agents detaining people and undermining their due process rights.
Donald Trump, without consulting California law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state’s National Guard members to deploy on our streets, illegally and for no reason.
This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk.
That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder. And the president, he did it on purpose. As the news spread throughout L.A., anxiety for family and friends ramped up. Protests started again.
By night, several dozen lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They vandalized property. They tried to assault police officers. Many of you have seen video clips of cars burning on cable news.
If you incite violence — I want to be clear about this — if you incite violence or destroy our communities, you are going to be held to account. That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Full stop.
Already, more than 220 people have been arrested. And we’re reviewing tapes to build additional cases and people will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Again, thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown.
But that, that’s not what Donald Trump wanted. He again chose escalation, he chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. He federalized another 2,000 Guard members.
He deployed more than 700 active U.S. Marines. These are men and women trained in foreign combat, not domestic law enforcement. We honor their service. We honor their bravery. But we do not want our streets militarized by our own armed forces. Not in L.A. Not in California. Not anywhere.
We’re seeing unmarked cars, unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids afraid of attending their own graduation. Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.
That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.
California will keep fighting. We’ll keep fighting on behalf of our people, all of our people, including in the courts.
Yesterday, we filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s reckless deployment of American troops to a major American city. Today, we sought an emergency court order to stop the use of the American military to engage in law enforcement activities across Los Angeles.
If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.
Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.
And by the way, Trump, he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. What more evidence do we need than January 6th.
I ask everyone: Take time, reflect on this perilous moment. A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions.
This is a president who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable, accountable for corruption and fraud. He’s declared a war, a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases quite literally are vanishing.
He’s delegitimizing news organizations and he’s assaulting the First Amendment. And the threat of defunding them. At threat, he’s dictating what universities themselves can teach. He’s targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly and civil society. He’s calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than to, in his own words, “for getting elected.”
And we all know, this Saturday, he’s ordering our American heroes, the United States military, and forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past.
Look, this isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. he made that order apply to every state in this nation.
This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.
Democracy is next.
Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.
There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.
The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don.
The founding fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis, he said it best. In a democracy, the most important office — with all due respect, Mr. President — is not the presidency, and it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.
At this moment, at this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please do it peacefully.
I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment.
A student holds a welcoming sign at Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland.
Credit: Jane Meredith Adams/EdSource
In June 2023, as I tightly hugged my childhood friends and departed from Saratoga High School, an emotional conflict stirred within me. We had graduated with an intense knowledge of the thrilling and very challenging life of a student in today’s world. As I reflected on the transformative experiences that shaped my high school years, I felt fortunate to have shared and expanded these insights while on the California Center for School Climate’s Youth Advisory Team. This defining moment to partner with peers and experts throughout California to help improve school climate had a resounding impact on me.
The Youth Advisory Team, which included adult mentors and seven students I collaborated with virtually, examined the challenges that stem from high levels of stress in students and the root causes of it — exploring the daily pressures of academic success, college admissions and competition. As I engaged in discussions and initiatives in and outside my school, it became evident that fostering a positive and inclusive environment is not merely a goal but an urgent necessity.
Attending schools in both Costa Rica and Saratoga, I witnessed the impact of school climate on students’ emotional and physical well-being. Local and societal prioritizations of social status and wealth led many students, including me, to share a simple mindset: The more we take on, the better we are as people. Rather than using empathy, curiosity and integrity to gauge our worth and that of others, we often rely on a resume to determine a person’s value. While many dedicated school staff and parents attempt to alleviate this taut way of thinking, students often feel compelled to take on as many responsibilities as possible and try to execute them all perfectly, leaving them anxious and exhausted. The need to excel at everything can lead to a negative school climate and internal conflicts where students feel burdened by unrealistic expectations from themselves and others.
Academic achievement and college admissions should not overwhelm students’ educational experiences. To thrive, students need opportunities and flexibility to discover their own paths. However, students can’t expect adults to properly bring about change if they don’t hear students’ voices — youth need to help guide the direction education leaders take with decision-making, whether this be in advisory committees, one-on-one conversations, school polls/surveys, etc.
Working closely with the California Center for School Climate and fellow students, our team helped develop resources explaining the importance of school relationships and school safety, designed a toolkit for educators to better support staff and student connection, and attended meetings about topics related to school climate, including school safety, mental health, and well-being, equity and inclusion.
A key lesson I learned through this work was that in order to co-create school climate resources, adults must actively listen to and engage with students to build trust and meaningful relationships — helping them feel comfortable speaking up in any environment. Breaking down barriers is essential to have these meaningful conversations in which students can begin to see adults beyond their authoritative powers (making rules, handing out punishments, giving rewards) and as real people with struggles. When adults are willing to be vulnerable to the extent that they feel comfortable, it makes students feel like they can open up, too — creating an open and honest space to talk, share and take real steps forward.
However, a movement toward a healthier future isn’t automatically successful on its first day; it requires us to adapt to our communities’ changing needs constantly. The mental and physical health of youth will only improve through a constant flow of reflection and open-mindedness, tied together by a disciplined will to do something better. I was reminded of this during the center’s annual virtual event in 2023, in which nearly 200 school staff, parents and educators from across California came together in the middle of a workday to listen to our youth panel relay our insights.
The youth panel members had spent months researching resources (such as toolkits, educational videos, and guides) from a broad range of sources, analyzing our school experiences, and considering different concepts. That day, we shared our recommendations with education leaders on what they could do to help their young people, which included:
Integrating mental health discussions/lessons into existing or new curriculums.
Revisiting guidelines regarding a balanced amount of take-home work.
Ensuring that school clubs and sports are healthy environments.
Creating online open channels of communication and in-person events with parents to educate them on the pivotal role home life plays in student well-being and success.
The members of our audience were willing to take the time to reflect on their own strategies and were open-minded enough to acknowledge and consider new ones.
Students and adults should aspire to assemble and strengthen bridges of trust and understanding with the overarching goal of committing actionable change. Together, they can forge a path toward a more positive and inclusive school climate where students feel cared for, empowered and ready to embrace their futures.
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Julian Berkowitz-Sklar is a recent graduate of Saratoga High School and served on the Youth Advisory Team of the California Center for School Climate, a state initiative that provides free support on school climate and data use to local education agencies in California.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Master Plan for Career Education offers a critical and timely opportunity to reshape education and workforce preparation to be more efficient, effective and accessible, especially for students. As the Legislature considers the proposal, there is plenty here to embrace, from the need for greater agency coordination to better data, more opportunities to “earn-and-learn,” and workable pathways for students to stack up credentials in robust and emerging job markets.
One promising approach is increasing access to career technical education (CTE) fields through dual enrollment. Our recent research highlights how dual enrollment expands opportunities for both career education and exposure to postsecondary pathways.
By its very nature, dual enrollment — the practice of students enrolling in college courses while still in high school — facilitates access to higher education, accelerates credit-earning and streamlines education and workforce transitions. CTE-focused dual enrollment provides students early access to growing occupational fields, such as allied health, information technology and construction, and can move them toward economic prosperity.
Research shows that dual enrollment is associated with higher rates of high school completion and college participation and success. What’s more, dual enrollment opportunities in career-oriented fields may offer students who are not currently finding success or relevance in high school a “warm handoff” to additional training, typically in community colleges, and to jobs in growing economic sectors.
With our partners at the California Department of Education and the California Community Colleges, we explored access to different course pathways. We found that 18.4% of California public high school graduates in 2022 completed a high school-based career technical education pathway and 9.4% participated in these CTE pathways through dual enrollment (including 3% of students who do both). Importantly, 6.4% of high school graduates participated in career technical education coursework exclusively through dual enrollment, many of whom may not have otherwise engaged in such subjects. These courses expand the range of industries available for exploration among high school students. For example, fields like business and finance, public service, education and child development are available through college courses rather than through high school CTE pathways.
Right now, these opportunities are unevenly accessed, with lower relative participation among Black and Hispanic/Latino students and among students who struggle academically. These disparities arise from differences between schools, such as available programs or staffing, and school-based practices such as class scheduling and postsecondary advising. Yet, we and others (including the Public Policy Institute of California) show that formal, carefully implemented dual enrollment programs, such as those created through College and Career Access Pathways (CCAP) partnerships, foster more equitable access and participation.
We are convinced that CTE and dual enrollment, especially delivered in tandem, can be good for all students, as all can benefit from exposure to college-level work and relevant career-connected education. The unfortunate history, however, is that our systems too often sort students into one or the other: academic or career technical pathways. CTE-focused dual enrollment can bridge a stubborn divide and deliver early access to growing occupational fields, setting high school students on a path to professions with economic security.
The governor’s strong new Master Plan for Career Technical Education could be further strengthened by a greater focus on the expansion and careful implementation of CTE dual enrollment opportunities. Along the way, policymakers and educators should focus more on reducing barriers to these programs and encouraging participation by students who, in the past, have been unnecessarily left behind.
The research reported here was supported by the Stuart Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Analysis was completed under research partnership agreements with the California Department of Education and the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. The findings and conclusions here are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the funders, including the U.S. Department of Education, or of the state agencies providing data.
Construction site at Murray Elementary in Dublin Unified in 2022.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
A public-interest law firm threatened Wednesday to sue Gov. Gavin Newsom and state officials unless they create a fairer system of subsidizing the costs of school facilities. That system must be as equitable as the Local Control Funding Formula, the decade-old formula for funding schools’ operating budgets, Public Advocates demanded in a lengthy letter.
At a news conference announcing their demand, Public Advocates and school board members, superintendents and parents with decrepit, inadequate and unhealthy school buildings charged that the state’s school facilities program discriminates against districts with low property values. Districts with high property values gobble up most of the state’s matching subsidies to modernize schools, while property-poor districts serving low-income families can’t afford local school bonds to qualify for state subsidies to build comparable facilities, they said.
“It is our clear call to get this right,” said Gary Hardie, a school board member in Lynwood Unified in Los Angeles County. “We have not solved our facilities needs — not because we don’t fight each and every day for our young people, but we are up against policies that prevent us from doing the best we can do for our community.”
Hardie is one of four potential plaintiffs in a lawsuit. The others are Building Healthy Communities – Monterey County, Inland Congregations United for Change, and True North Organizing Network, which works with families across Tribal Lands and the broader North Coast region.
In 1971, the California Supreme Court struck down the school funding system based on local property taxes as violating the constitutional right of students in low-wealth districts to have an equal education. In the letter to Newsom, Public Advocates argued the current system of funding school facilities is no better than the property-tax-based system that the court rejected in the Serrano v. Priest decision.
“Study after study has acknowledged the open secret here: Some districts get to build swimming pools and performing arts centers, while others suffer through leaky roofs and black mold,” said John Affeldt, Public Advocates’ managing attorney and director of education equity. Citing a 2022 study by the Public Policy Institute of California, he said that lower-wealth districts have received nearly 60% less state modernization funding than higher-wealth districts since 1998.
“The discriminatory design of the state’s facility funding system is no accident,” he said. “It has been intentionally baked into the system, and its disparate results are wholly foreseeable.”
Hardie, a native of Lynwood, called his city “culturally rich” but under-resourced as a result of federal redlining policies that divided Lynwood’s Black and brown communities with highways that lowered property values.
Lynwood Superintendent Gudiel Crosthwaite said that this week the district of 12,000 students “had about 40 classrooms that were leaking due to the rains, and last year it was a different 60 classrooms.” While other districts are modernizing labs and performing arts theaters, he said Lynwood was forced to demolish the only major auditorium in the city because of the building’s condition. In the district, 99% of students are Black or Hispanic, and 94% are from low-income families.
Going Deeper
Credit: bike-R on flickr
Read more EdSource coverage about school facilities funding, planning and construction. California school districts rely on state and local bonds and developer fees to fund facilities. As this funding has fluctuated over time, research has found significant disparities in their capacity to keep up facilities that adequately meet students’ needs.
Public Advocates’ 21-page demand letter coincides with the start of negotiations between legislative leaders and the Newsom administration over the size and details of a school facilities bond for the November ballot. Two bills must be reconciled. Assembly Bill 247, by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, calls for a $14 billion TK-12 and community college state bond. Senate Bill 28, by Sen. Steven Glazer, D-Orinda, calls for a $15 billion bond that includes funding for UC and CSU.
Neither bill, at this point, gives a funding breakdown. However, AB 247 includes a possible framework for reform, with a point system that favors low-wealth and low-family income districts with a slightly larger state subsidy. Affeldt, of Public Advocates, dismisses this as inadequate for failing to provide enough funding to address the stark disparities in the current system.
There is little disagreement that a state school bond is needed. Money from the last state school bond, Proposition 51 (2016), with $7 billion in state support for K-12 and $2 billion for community colleges, has been allocated, and about $2 billion in state-approved projects are in the queue for the next round. There is also a demand to remove lead in school water and to shield schools from the impacts of climate change through better air filtration systems, flood protection and heat abatement.
Under the state program, districts pass local bonds through property taxes, and the state matches the money through a state-funded bond issue paid off through state taxes. For new construction, the state splits the cost. For modernization projects — renovating facilities at least 25 years old and portables at least 20 years old — the district pays 40% and the state 60% of a project’s cost.
Public Advocates is calling for addressing only the modernization program, not new construction. Affeldt said that the 60% guarantee for all districts, regardless of their ability to raise far more money than property-poor districts, provides substantially more modernization funds per pupil to higher-wealth districts.
The current facility program also includes a hardship program for small districts with so little assessed property that they can’t afford a school bond. However, the current qualifying criteria — a maximum of $5 million of assessed value — are strict and don’t account for the high construction costs in remote areas. AB 247 would raise the limit to $15 billion.
Between 1998 and 2016, the state provided $42 billion of the $166 billion that school districts raised for new construction and modernization, according to a report by Jeff Vincent, who co-directs the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley and has done extensive research into the school facility program and its disparities.
Spokespersons for Newsom and Muratsuchi did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
Long-standing complaints
The issues raised by Public Advocates are not new.
In 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown called for major changes in the facilities program, and opposed the measure when school districts and construction lobbies wouldn’t compromise. Brown wanted to concentrate state aid on low-income, low-property-wealth districts and end the first-come, first-served basis for allocating state matches, which he said favored wealthy and big districts, like Los Angeles Unified, with large facilities planners that can quickly apply. Voters passed the $9 billion Proposition 51 ($7 billion for K-12 schools and $2 billion for community colleges) anyway.
In 2018, Vincent co-authored a study that documented the disparities among districts’ ability to raise money through local bonds. He found that districts with the most assessed property value raised more than triple the amount of bond revenue per student than districts with the least assessed value per student.
With calls for reform escalating, Newsom took up the cause in negotiating a $15 million bond for the March 2020 ballot. The down-to-the-wire talks led to concessions. Instead of first-come, first-served, the bond issue set priorities for state funding. They started with districts facing critical health and safety issues, like mold in schools or seismic hazards, small districts facing financial hardship, schools needing lead abatement, and districts facing overcrowding.
The agreement also established a ranking system that factored in school districts’ ability to fund construction, as measured by bonding capacity per student and the percentage of students who are low-income, fosters, homeless, and English learners — the same measure for extra state money under the Local Control Funding Formula. Based on their point total, districts could qualify for a bonus 1% to 5% of state funding above the 60% match for modernization and 50% match for new construction.
The changes were not implemented after voters rejected the bond issue 47% to 53%. It was the first defeat of a statewide school bond in more than 40 years. Some attributed the loss to anxiety over Covid, whose infections were making the news; others blamed its unfortunate but coincidental title —Proposition 13 — and confusion with the 1978 tax-cutting initiative.
In September 2020, after Newsom and school districts reached a deal on what would become Proposition 13, Vincent told EdSource, “State leaders took the much-needed first step in putting forth a new program and a new wealth-adjusted funding formula. However, providing poor districts with a few more percentage points of funding may not remedy the inequities we’ve seen. It will be important to watch things closely in coming years.”
Public Advocates and the complainants say now is the time for the much-needed second step.
If negotiations fail, a lawsuit in the fall could complicate the chances of passage, if not derail, a bond measure in November. Knowing that, Affeldt said, “I hope that the serious threat of litigation and negative publicity that will come with that will make all of the players realize that we need a more aggressive overhaul of the system.”
As economists who have devoted our careers to researching how economies can grow and how the benefits of this growth can be translated into broadly shared prosperity and security, we have grave concerns about the budget reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 22, 2025.
The most acute and immediate damage stemming from this bill would be felt by the millions of American families losing key safety net protections like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. The Medicaid cuts constitute a sad step backward in the nation’s commitment to providing access to health care for all. Proponents of the House bill often claim that these Medicaid cuts can be achieved simply by imposing work reporting requirements on healthy, working-age adults. But healthy, working-age adults are by definition not heavy consumers of health spending, so achieving the budgeted Medicaid cuts will obviously harm others as well.
Medicaid provides health insurance coverage for low-income Americans, but this includes paying out-of-pocket health costs for low-income retired Medicare recipients and providing nursing home and in-home care services for elderly Americans. Medicaid also covers 41% of all births in the United States, including over 50% of all births in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Work reporting requirements will obviously yield no savings from these Medicaid functions.
Besides providing affordable health care to families, Medicaid is also crucial to state budgets and hospital systems throughout the country—particularly in rural areas. In 2023, the federal government sent $615 billion to state governments to cover Medicaid spending; this federal contribution accounted for over 75% of total state Medicaid spending in more than 19 states. Rural hospitals in states that accepted the Medicaid expansion that was part of the Affordable Care Act were 62% less likely to close than rural hospitals in non-expansion states.
In addition to Medicaid, the House bill also significantly cuts SNAP. These steep cuts to the social safety net are being undertaken to defray the staggering cost of the tax cuts included in the House bill, including the hidden cost of preserving the large corporate income tax cutpassed in the 2017 tax law. But even these sharp spending cuts will pay for far less than half of the tax cuts (not even including the cost of maintaining the corporate income tax cuts of the 2017 law).
U.S. structural deficits are already too high, with real debt service payments approaching their historic highs in the past year. The House bill layers $3.8 trillion in additional tax cuts ($5.3 trillion if all provisions are made permanent) on top of these existing fiscal gaps—and these tax cuts are overwhelmingly tilted toward the highest-income households. Even with the safety net cuts, the House bill leads to public debt rising by over $3 trillion in coming years (and over $5 trillion over the next decade if provisions are made permanent rather than phasing out). The higher debt and deficits will put noticeable upward pressure on both inflation and interest rates in coming years.
The combination of cuts to key safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP and tax cuts disproportionately benefiting higher-income households means that the House budget constitutes an extremely large upward redistribution of income. Given how much this bill adds to the U.S. debt, it is shocking that it still imposes absolute losses on the bottom 40% of U.S households(if some of the fiscal cost is absorbed in future bills with extremely high and broad tariffs, the share of households seeing absolute losses will increase rapidly).
The United States has a number of pressing economic challenges to address, many of which require a greater level of state capacity to navigate—capacity that will be eroded by large tax cuts. The House bill addresses none of the nation’s key economic challenges usefully and exacerbates many of them. The Senate should refuse to pass this bill and start over from scratch on the budget.
First grade teacher Sandra Morales discusses sentences with a student.
Credit: Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
Newly proposed legislation sponsored by the California Teachers Association would eliminate all performance assessments teachers are required to pass, including one for literacy that it supported three years ago. The result could leave in place an unpopular written test that the literacy performance assessment was designed to replace.
Senate Bill 1263, authored by state Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, would do away with the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA, through which teachers demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice.
Eliminating the assessment will increase the number of effective teachers in classrooms, as the state continues to contend with a teacher shortage, said Newman, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
“One key to improving the educator pipeline is removing barriers that may be dissuading otherwise talented and qualified prospective people from pursuing a career as an educator,” Newman said in a statement to EdSource.
The bill also would do away with a literacy performance assessment of teachers and oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation programs mandated by Senate Bill 488, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-West Covina, in 2021.
The literacy performance assessment is scheduled to be piloted in the next few months. It is meant to replace the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment set to be scrapped in 2025.
New law could leave RICA in place
The proposed legislation appears to leave in place a requirement that candidates for a preliminary multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a reading instruction competence assessment, said David DeGuire, a director at the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
“At this time, it is unclear what that assessment would look like, but it could be that the state continues to use the current version of the RICA,” he said.
Newman will present the legislation to the Senate Education Committee in the next few months. Discussions about whether the RICA remains in use are likely to take place during the legislative process.
Rubio recently became aware of the new legislation and had not yet discussed it with Newman.
“For three years, I worked arduously and collaboratively with a broad range of education leaders, including parent groups, teacher associations and other stakeholders to modernize a key component of our educational system that in my 17 years as a classroom teacher and school administrator I saw as counterproductive to our students’ learning,” Rubio said of Senate Bill 488.
Teachers union changes course
The California Teachers Association, which originally supported Senate Bill 488, now wants all performance assessments, including the literacy performance assessment, eliminated.
“We are all scratching our heads,” said Yolie Flores, of Families in Schools, a Los Angeles-based education advocacy organization. “We were really blindsided by this (legislation), given the momentum around strengthening our teacher prep programs.”
The results of a survey of almost 1,300 CTA members last year convinced the state teachers union to push for the elimination of the CalTPA, said Leslie Littman, vice president of the union. Teachers who took the survey said the test caused stress, took away time that could have been used to collaborate with mentors and for teaching, and did not prepare them to meet the needs of students, she said.
“I think what we were probably not cognizant of at that time, and it really has become very clear of late, is just how much of a burden these assessments have placed on these teacher candidates,” Littman said.
Teacher candidates would be better served if they were observed over longer periods of time, during student teaching, apprenticeships, residencies and mentorship programs, to determine if they were ready to teach, Littman said. This would also allow a mentor to counsel and support the candidate to ensure they have the required skills.
California joins science of reading movement
California has joined a national effort to change how reading is being taught in schools. States nationwide are rethinking balanced literacy, which has its roots in whole language instruction or teaching children to recognize words by sight, and replacing it with a method that teaches them to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics.
Smarter Balanced test scores, released last fall, show that only 46.6% of the state’s students who were tested met academic standards in English.
Last week Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, introduced Assembly Bill 2222, which would mandate that schools use evidence-based reading instruction. California, a “local control” state, currently only encourages school districts to incorporate fundamental reading skills, including phonics, into instruction.
“It (Newman’s SB 1263) goes against not only the movement, but everything we know from best practices, evidence, research, science, of how we need to equip new teachers and existing teachers, frankly, to teach literacy,” Flores said. “And that we would wipe it away at this very moment where we’re finally getting some traction is just very concerning.”
Lori DePole, co-director of DeCoding Dyslexia California, said the proposed legislation would cut any progress the state has made “off at the knees.”
Among her concerns is the elimination of the requirement, also authorized by Senate Bill 488, that the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing certify that teacher preparation programs are teaching literacy aligned to state standards and a provision that requires the commission to report to the state Legislature annually on how stakeholders are meeting the requirements of the law.
“It would be going away,” DePole said. “Everyone agreed with SB 488, all the supporters agreed, this was the direction California needed to go to strengthen teacher prep with respect to literacy. And before it can even be fully implemented, we’re going to do a 180 with this legislation. It makes no sense.”
Flores said teachers want to be equipped to teach reading using evidence-based techniques, but many don’t know how.
“We know that reading is the gateway, and if kids can’t read, it’s practically game over, right?” said Flores. “And we are saying with this bill that it doesn’t matter, that we don’t really need to teach and show that teachers know how to teach reading.”
Teacher tests replaced by coursework, degrees
California has been moving away from standardized testing for teacher candidates for several years as the teacher shortage worsened. In July 2021, legislation gave teacher candidates the option to take approved coursework instead of the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, or the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET. In January’s tentative budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed eliminating the CBEST and allowing the completion of a bachelor’s degree to satisfy the state’s basic skills requirement.
Littman disagrees with the idea that there will be no accountability for teachers if the legislation passes. “There’s always been, and will continue to be, an evaluation component for all of our teachers in this state,” she said. “It just depends on what your district does and how they implement that. There’s always been a system of accountability for folks.”
Sacramento State student assistants and employees celebrate the official vote for the undergraduate student assistants to unionize.
Ashley A. Smith/EdSource
This story was updated at 1:10 p.m. Friday to include more comments from student workers and CSU chancellor’s office..
Student assistants and workers in the California State University system announced Friday that they had voted in favor of unionizing.
The students across the 23 campuses voted in favor of organizing one of the largest student worker organizations in the country so they could fight for better pay, working conditions, sick and paid leave, and more work hours.
The students overwhelmingly voted 7,050 to 202 in favor of joining the CSU Employees Union (CSUEU).
“This is for all of us and for all of our futures,” said Cameron Macedonio, a student assistant at CSU Fullerton. “Student assistants were increasingly fed up with the CSU administration’s treatment of us. They undervalue us. On one hand, they act as if we’re dispensable, but on the other hand, they expect us to do the work of full-time staff but for minimum wages and no benefits.”
Student assistants often work for minimum wage, are limited to 20 hours or less a week, and don’t receive sick or paid leave.
Danny Avitia, a senior majoring in sociology and leadership development at San Diego State, said he’s found it difficult to survive on $16.50 an hour while working in the campus Office of Employee Engagement. He assists the director of that office with organizing events, newsletters, graphics, media and communications.
Avitia said he’s had to take on two more jobs and whenever he’s gotten sick, he “shows up to work and gets everyone sick” because he doesn’t receive any leave or paid time off.
Unionizing “means better access to discounts like parking and transit,” he said. “It means that I can fight for a better living wage because, again, meeting the basic needs of people is simply not enough here in California anymore.”
Now, they will need to decide what they want to bargain for, assemble a negotiating team and leadership, and present their demands to the Cal State administration. As part of the CSUEU, they’ll have assistance from that organization and the Service Employees International Union or SEIU.
“With 20,000 student assistants joining CSUEU’s 16,000 CSU staff members, university management will no longer be able to divide students and staff or exploit student labor to degrade staff jobs,” said Catherine Hutchinson, president of CSUEU. “Joining together is a win for students, for staff, and for all Californians who have a stake in the CSU’s mission.”
Many of the student assistants feel unionizing was just one step in a long process to better pay and working conditions. They all recently watched the California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 professors and, lecturers go on strike twice for a better contact.
“There will be some struggles that will come with it,” said Alejandro Carrillo, an international business junior at San Diego State. “We just had the CFA strike and saw how hard it was for them to fight and the struggles that came with it. I’m not expecting anything less than that for student workers.”
In the meantime, the chancellor’s office said it would maintain the current standards and requirements for student assistants.
“The CSU has a long history of providing on-campus jobs to students through student assistant positions, which give our students the opportunity to gain valuable work experience while they pursue their degrees,” said Leora Freedman, CSU’s vice chancellor for human resources. “The CSU respects the decision of student assistants to form a union and looks forward to bargaining in good faith with the newly formed CSUEU student assistant unit.”
California Student Journalism Corps member Jazlyn Dieguez, a fourth-year journalism student at San Diego State University, contributed to this story.
Gary Rayno is a veteran journalist who writes about politics and government in New Hampshire. He knows more about school finance than most members of the State Legislature.
If you watched the House session Thursday, you had to realize the message the Republican majority is sending on public education.
Republicans quickly passed expanding Education Freedom Accounts, or vouchers, that will cost the state’s taxpayers well over $110 million for the next biennium with most of the money going to higher-income parents who currently send their children to religious and private schools or homeschools.
The expansion to vouchers-for-all has been a goal of the Free State/Libertarian controlled GOP for some time and they are likely to reach this year by daring Gov. Kelly Ayotte to veto the budget package, something she is not likely to do although she wanted the students to actually attend public schools before they join the EFA program with few guardrails and little academic accountability.
Instead much of the debate was over two bills that would significantly change the educational environment in public schools.
Senate Bill 72, would establish a parental bill of rights in education, and Senate Bill 96 would require mandatory disclosure to parents. And for good measure they added Senate Bill 100 which could cost a teacher his or her teaching credentials if they violate the divisive concepts law and school districts could be fined $2,500 plus attorneys’ fees and court costs.
The second offense is a permanent ban from teaching and school districts would have to pay a $5,000 fine and the penalties for third-party education contractors are even more onerous.
The state is prohibited from enforcing the law because a US District Court judge found the law unconstitutionally vague and the changes in Senate Bill 100 do nothing to change that except encourage more litigation.
These are just the latest attempt to convince the state’s residents that public schools are filled with far left teachers who want to indoctrinate students, to shield LGBTQ+ students from their parents and to encourage deviant behavior.
Nine-nine percent of parents with children in the public schools would tell you that is not true and the other 1 percent are in the New Hampshire legislature or related to someone who is.
Public schools are not perfect but the Free State/Libertarian talking points about public education are not being created in New Hampshire. They are the work of far-right think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council, the same groups that generate the wording for these bills.
The legislature has not addressed the real problems facing public schools, but have instead been exacerbated by the GOP controlled legislature. The bills passed this session have created more work for educators and school boards and they divert time and money away from educators’ first responsibility: to educate students and prepare them to survive and compete in today’s world.
The elephant in the room is the lack of state funding for public education at the elementary, secondary and postsecondary levels where the state of New Hampshire, one of the wealthiest per capita in the country, is dead last behind such educational meccas as Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and West Virginia.
Public schools do not need to spend more money for their educational system that continually ranks near the top nationally, but the state needs to pay its share of the cost which nationally averages a little less than 50 percent.
In New Hampshire local property taxpayers pay 63 percent of the cost of public education, while the state contributes 28.8 percent, leaving a little over 8 percent for the federal government to contribute, the 45th lowest for states.
Property taxes pay about 70 percent of the cost of education when you add in the Statewide Education Property Tax which is included in the state’s share although it all comes out of property owners’ pockets.
This legislature did two things to address the funding issue this session, one would be to bring the Statewide Education Property Tax collection methods in line with a superior court judge’s ruling that requires the property wealthier communities to turn their excess revenue not needed to cover the cost of an adequate education for their students over to the state and to stop the Department of Revenue Administration from approving negative local education property tax rates allowing unincorporated places to avoid paying the statewide property tax.
That action does not require any more state money and in fact increases state revenue by about $30 million.
The Legislature increased spending on special education in the second year of the biennium, but the Senate budget reduced that figure by $27 million.
Just a few years ago, the Education Trust Fund, which pays for state adequacy grants to public and charter schools, special education, building aid and several other educational needs, had a surplus approaching $250 million, but since that time the EFA program has also drawn its money from the same source of funds totally $76 million through this school year.
The additional draw from the EFA program and declining state revenues have combined to substantially change the financial picture. At the end of this fiscal year at the end of the month, the surplus will be around $100 million.
At the end of the upcoming biennium the surplus in the Senate’s budget will be less than $20 million, with the fund in deficit under the House’s budget, and $14 million in the governor’s plan.
All three plans reduce the percentage of state revenues that go into the Education Trust Fund and increase the amount going to the state’s general fund.
Drying up the Education Trust Fund was a plan hatched long ago to have vouchers competing with public schools for state education money. When that happens, if you think your property taxes are too high now, just wait until the money goes to the voucher program first before adequacy grants to school districts.
The Free State/Libertarians have long sought to have public schools house only special education students and kids with disciplinary programs. The rest of the students and their parents will be on their own to find and pay for their education, meaning the rich will do just fine and everyone else will scramble to find an inferior education they can afford.
That is a pathway to retaining the oligarchy.
Another significant issue facing public education is the dearth of teachers as many school districts cannot find certified teachers to hire and instead have to rely on non-credentialed personnel or para educators to fill the gap.
See above and and you could reasonably ask, with these kinds of bills that put teachers between their students and their parents and make schools less than safe spaces for many kids, who in their right mind would want to be an educator.
At last week’s session, Rep. Stephen Woodcock, D-Center Conway, a retired teacher and school principal, said “Parental rights go hand in hand with parental responsibilities. It is not a teacher’s responsibility to do the parents’ job, which is talking with their children.”
And you could argue that public education ought to be more rigorous than it is now, but society has pressured schools to “make every child succeed,” and that translates into lower academic standards.
And that describes the new state education standards recently approved by the State Board of Education in the name of competency-based education.
If this group of legislators continue to control the agenda, it will not be long before public education will be in tatters, which will suit them fine.
But with about 90 percent of the state’s children in the public school system, it is hard to believe that is their parents’ or their desire.
