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Give fire victim families emergency school choice

A burned sign at Oak Knoll Montessori School (Loma Alta School) from the Eaton fire on Jan. 9 in the Altadena neighborhood of Pasadena.

Credit: Kirby Lee via AP

As Gov. Gavin Newsom stood near a burned-down school, Pacific Palisades mom Rachel Darvish pleaded with Newsom: “That was my daughter’s school, what are you going to do?” Newsom offered no real answer for the distraught parent at the time.

Well, here’s the answer he should have given: All families affected by the Los Angeles fires should be eligible for emergency education savings accounts that parents can use to pay for education alternatives for their children.

The Los Angeles fires have not only destroyed people’s homes and businesses, they have also razed neighborhood schools. Initial reports indicate at least a dozen schools in the Los Angeles area have burned, affecting more than 5,700 students.

In the Altadena area, which was devastated by the Eaton fire, nearly 2,000 students are school-less.

“I’m just really sad,” one 7-year-old Altadena girl told a CBS-TV reporter, “because I love that school.”

Describing the impact of losing her children’s neighborhood school, an Altadena mom said: “School is a big part of it because it’s the foundation of a family’s daily life. Now we don’t have that anymore.”

The sad reality for affected families is that rebuilding schools, like rebuilding homes, will take a lot of time and money, and only $1 million of Newsom’s $2.5 billion wildfire relief bill was designated for rebuilding schools.

Even in normal times, it takes two years or more to build a school, and school construction costs range from $70 million to $100 million per school.

What are families to do in the meantime?

Many affected families have been dispersed to various parts of Southern California and beyond. Since their homes will not be rebuilt soon, government leaders can address the individual needs of children in this diaspora by giving every child affected by the fires a publicly funded education savings account.

According to the school-choice organization EdChoice, education savings accounts “establish for parents publicly funded government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple uses for educational purposes,” to be used in-state.

Parents can use these funds to cover “school tuition, tutoring, online education programs, therapies for students with special needs, textbooks or other instructional materials, and sometimes save for college,” whatever policymakers determine. Some programs cover home school costs.

California leaders can model on Arizona, where education savings accounts are funded at 90% of the state’s per-pupil funding, with special needs students receiving higher amounts.

In Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget, $83 billion from the state’s general fund would go to K-12 education. Using Arizona as a guide, $12,800 could be made available for these accounts for each affected child.

With thousands of affected students, the total cost for an emergency education savings account program would be around $73 million — a drop in the bucket compared with the billions of dollars in aid being discussed for other aspects of the affected areas.

Education savings accounts are popular with parents. In Arizona, a large majority of parents support such accounts.

For example, after talking with Arizona State Board of Education member Jenny Clark about the state’s education savings account program, one family said, “We continue to utilize the … program to tailor our son’s education to meet both his great strengths and real challenges.”

Today, 18 states from Wyoming to West Virginia have similar programs.

Public schools could be held financially harmless during the existence of these accounts. As EdChoice noted, in states with school choice programs, “many have funding protection policies.” In California’s case, districts could continue to receive their current average daily attendance funding.

Education savings accounts could be funded through the billions of dollars in aid the state will surely receive from the federal government. President Donald Trump would likely look favorably on this program since he proposed a similar program at the federal level in his first administration.

The education savings account program should be reevaluated after a few years to ensure it’s working as designed and improved as needed.

While the catastrophe of the Los Angeles fires has created great uncertainty, one thing is certain: Parents affected by the fires will need the flexibility to pivot and choose educational alternatives that best suit the individual needs of their children.

Parents cannot wait for bureaucratic processes to rebuild the schools that had been. These families need tools right now to pay for and provide for educational services to meet their immediate needs.

“We are so thankful for the educational freedom,” said another Arizona family that used their account funds for a home school hybrid program.

With National School Choice Week upon us, it is a perfect time to give fire-affected Los Angeles parents the freedom and flexibility they so desperately need.

•••

Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute, a Pasadena-based think tank advocating for free-market policy solutions, and author of “The Great Classroom Collapse.”

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.

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23/04/2025
How federal cuts are already affecting disabled students in California
A special education class at West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.

Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
TOP TAKEAWAYS

Federal cuts are directly impacting programs designed to support students with disabilities in their transition to adulthood and programs that train special education teachers.

These cuts have caused significant concern from advocates and educators for disabled students.

Regional special education administrators in California are calling on Congress to rescind the cuts and for the state to fill the gap in the meantime.
Jake, a 17-year-old junior, is beginning to think about life after he graduates from Mt. Carmel High School in San Diego County.

This is a daunting task for any teen, but his mother, Angela, says it’s been especially thorny for Jake, who is on the autism spectrum, has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and struggles with anxiety.

The prospect of getting a job one day soon has made him “suicidal,” said Angela, who asked not to share her family’s last name to protect her son’s privacy about his diagnoses. She said her son has told her, “I’m going to be homeless; I won’t get a job.”

So Angela was thrilled when Jake was accepted into a new program at his school, Charting My Path for Future Success, which helps students with disabilities navigate into adulthood. In late January, Jake began to meet with a caseworker who seemed to understand his needs. At the time, Angela thought, “My prayers have been answered,” she said.

That changed on Feb. 12, when Jake’s school district, Poway Unified, received a notice that the Trump administration had cut funding for the grant behind Charting My Path for Future Success.

“We don’t have a clear understanding of why this decision was made or why this particular grant program was cut so suddenly,” said Stacey McCrath-Smith, director of special education at Poway Unified. “It was very upsetting to our staff. It was hard to explain to families and parents.”

An email from the U.S. Department of Education said the grant was “deemed to be inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” Representatives from the department did not respond to questions from EdSource.

Educators and disability advocates in California are raising the alarm about federal cuts that are already affecting programs that support students with disabilities. That includes research like Charting My Path for Future Success, but also cuts to special education teacher training.

The disability advocacy community is in defense mode, said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy for The Arc, a national advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

“There are many, many pieces that we’re concerned about,” Linscott said.

Linscott and other advocates for disabled students worry that other Trump administration proposals, such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and cutting Medicaid, could further harm disabled students. But some cuts have already taken effect.

The morning after the district was told its grant funding was cut off, Poway Unified notified four teachers being trained to help disabled teens transition to adulthood that they would immediately be reassigned to other positions in the district. This is despite early signs of success, such as one nonverbal student who had become highly engaged in sessions about career planning in a way he had never been in academic classes, McCrath-Smith said.

Jake will no longer receive training to help prepare him for college and employment. Now he will not receive mentoring or lessons on goal-setting, finding an apartment and other skills. His mother said he struggles with real-world topics like banking or how a resume works. She’s been looking for alternatives, but is unsure how her son will find help for his unique needs.

“It was like a gut punch,” Angela said.

Educators’ worries extend beyond the 420 students in California, including students at Sweetwater Union High and Mt. Diablo Unified school districts, who were a part of the national study.

“The recent and abrupt elimination of critical funding and research developments will significantly impact important ongoing special education research and services to students, not only in our member [local education agencies], but in others who would ultimately benefit from the results of their research,” according to a letter written on behalf of the SELPA (Special Education Local Plan Area) Administrators of California, California County Superintendents, the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education and the three districts hit by the cuts.

The March 21 letter calls on Congress to compel the U.S. Department of Education to reverse its decision, and for the California Legislature to bridge the immediate funding gap of $2.8 million for this “vital” special education research.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of researchers against the U.S. Department of Education this month challenged whether the executive branch has the constitutional power to cut nearly $900 million from the Institute of Education Sciences. The suit called the department’s actions “dramatic, unreasoned and unlawful,” noting that the canceled grants left students with disabilities “in the lurch, with no time or help to even transition out of the Charting My Path Program.”

Cuts to special education teacher training

The Trump administration also abruptly terminated $600 million in federal teacher training grants, including programs to address the acute shortage of special education teachers who work with California’s nearly 840,000 students with disabilities.

Three SELPAs in the state reported losing funding to create a pipeline of special education teachers, according to a March 25 letter sent to California state and federal legislators on behalf of the affected districts, SELPA Administrators of California and California County Superintendents.

Under these cuts, the Tulare County SELPA reported that it will lose about $10 million, San Diego’s South County SELPA will lose $4.1 million and the West San Gabriel SELPA will lose up to $650,000. Those cuts are in limbo now as they’re also being challenged in court.

Teacher shortages can impede the education of students with disabilities, said Tamara Schiern, executive director of the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA. When districts are unable to fill openings for these positions, they either hire teachers who are not fully credentialed or long-term substitutes.

According to a federal survey, there’s both a state and nationwide shortage of teachers with the appropriate special education credentials, with 40% of districts reporting in 2020-21 that they struggled to staff special education roles.

The West San Gabriel Valley SELPA typically has 30 vacancies to fill each year in its 14 districts, and it would struggle to find credentialed teachers for eight to 12 of them, Schiern said.

In one example, Schiern said a string of long-term substitute teachers was covering a class of elementary school students with autism. Parents complained, and then the district, which she declined to disclose, asked the SELPA for help. The agency was able to help set the classroom up and model instructional strategies, but when a new substitute teacher came in, the agency had to start from scratch again.

“That’s what a teacher shortage looks like on the ground,” Schiern said.

This is why the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA began a program to train teacher residents specifically in special education. Funding came from state and district sources, but districts with high-need students received federal reimbursement for their share. This year, the program supported 27 teacher residents; ultimately, the goal was to cover 40 residents.

But federal cuts to the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant mean that the annual stipend for the residents will be slashed from $37,000 to $27,000; the coordinator for the program was cut, and only half the number of teacher residents can be supported, Schiern said.

In the meantime, the letter from special education administrators and superintendents asks California’s congressional delegation to pressure the U.S. Department of Education to reinstate the funding and the state legislators to cover the $14.9 million shortfall.

“The sudden loss of federal funding for teacher residency grant programs will have a significant and profound impact on an already fragile system,” reads the letter.

The San Gabriel Valley is a community that is ethnically and racially diverse, with a large population of immigrants and English learners. The region’s SELPA looks to parents and paraprofessionals to recruit special education teachers who can reflect that demographic diversity, Schiern said, adding that representation matters in education for both students and parents — a point backed by research.

This made the program attractive for California to fund, but it also may have made the program a target for the Trump administration, which has canceled contracts for programs that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I can’t help but feel that that could be part of the issue,” Schiern said. “A lot of what California does is at odds with the federal government right now.”

We want to hear from you

A new administration always brings change, and education is once again at the center of the national conversation. As we track these developments, we want to hear from you. What policies are you interested in reading about? What questions do you have about how federal decisions might shape education in California? How will this change affect disabled students in California?

Your input will help inform our coverage.
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23/04/2025
Federal judge dismisses case claiming community college diversity policies infringe on academic freedom

Bill Blanken, a chemistry professor at Reedley College, claims that a diversity and equity policy in California’s community colleges amounts to a “loyalty oath.”

Photo courtesy of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

A federal judge has dismissed a case filed on behalf of professors claiming that California Community Colleges diversity and equity policies infringe on their academic freedom.

Professors at State Center Community College District, based in Fresno, had, in a suit filed in August 2023, sought to block the California Community Colleges from enforcing diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion (DEIA) principles.

But U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff, a Biden appointee who joined the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in 2024, wrote in an order Tuesday that the plaintiffs “failed to allege that there exists a credible threat of enforcement of the regulations against them.”

The plaintiff’s attorney, Daniel Ortner, with the free-speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said he was reviewing the decision and discussing it with his clients.

In 2022, the board of governors for the California Community Colleges adopted regulations requiring all 73 of its local districts to evaluate employees, including faculty, on their competency in working with a diverse student population. More than 7 out of 10 of California’s 2.1 million community students are not white, according to enrollment data from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

State Center Community College District complied with these regulations with a faculty union contract approved in March 2023. The district declined through a spokesperson to comment on the case.

The push for new diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility policies came out of a long-running effort to improve student outcomes in the community colleges, but it picked up steam in the wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020.

The original complaint described the professors as critics of anti-racism, who instead support “race-neutral policies and perspectives that treat all students equally.” The complaint stated that requiring faculty to be evaluated on their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility principles is unconstitutional and has a chilling effect on their free speech rights. The professors said they feared receiving disciplinary action or being fired under these new regulations.

Lead plaintiff Loren Palsgaard, an English professor at Madera Community College, said in the complaint that he no longer assigned Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” because it “offer[s] perspectives that are different from the ‘anti-racism’ and ‘intersectionality’ perspective mandated by the DEIA Rules.” Reedley College chemistry professor Bill Blanken said he feared that not mentioning the races of Marie Curie or Robert Boyle means that “he will be accused of failing to adopt a ‘culturally responsive practices and a social justice lens.’”

Judge Sherriff wrote that many of the professors’ concerns arose from documents from the Chancellor’s Office, such as guidance, recommendations, model principles and a glossary of terms. He added that none of these recommendations were formally adopted or legally binding, and that what the professors largely objected to was not in their faculty contract.

Sherriff also noted that the Chancellor’s Office confirmed in court documents that it could not take any action against professors concerning their speech, because decisions regarding employees, such as hiring, performance evaluations and terminations, are the responsibility of the district. The Office also stated that they do not believe that the examples cited by the professors would be precluded by the diversity regulations.

In September, Sherriff dismissed a related suit on behalf of Bakersfield College history professor Daymon Johnson. Sherriff wrote in his order that Johnson lacked standing because the Kern Community College District that employed him had not yet imposed local policies implementing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility regulations.

In October, Johnson’s case was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The State Center Community College professors filed an amicus brief in November in support of Johnson, urging the court to “protect academic freedom across the state by vacating the district court’s decision.”

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23/04/2025
Robert Shepherd: Trump’s Attack on Nature is a Disaster

Robert Shepherd is a polymath who frequently comments on this blog. He has worked in almost every aspect of education, on curriculum, assessments, textbooks, and as a classroom teacher. His breadth of knowledge is remarkable.

Shepherd writes:

First, a little about the nature of nature.

There are about 800 known species of fig. Each particular species[1] is pollinated by females of ONE species of tiny wasp. For example, the two known species of fig in the United States, the Florida strangler fig (Ficus aurea) and the shortleaf fig (Ficus citrifolia), are pollinated by the fig wasps Pegoscapus mexicanus and Pegoscapus tonduzi, respectively. When a fig has flowered (the flowers are internal), it emits a specific odor that attracts its ONE specific wasp, which burrows into the fig for a meal. The wasp lays its eggs inside the ovaries of the short seeds of the fig and pollinates, incidentally, the long seeds with pollen from its original host fig, and so the short seeds produce baby fig wasps, and the long seeds produce, eventually, with luck, more figs. The pollinating wasp dies, and its nutrients are absorbed by the fig and turned into luscious fruit. It’s a cycle.

Black Elk explained why his people, the Lakota, built their teepees in circular forms and arranged them in circles. Birds do this, too, he said, “because theirs is the same religion as ours.” It is worth contemplating what might be the guiding principles in such a religion.

So, here’s the key point: If you interfere with the lifecycle of one of these wasps, the corresponding fig dies out. If you interfere with the lifecycle of one of these figs, the corresponding fig wasp dies out. That’s how things work out there beyond the asphalt jungle, folks. It’s all about mutuality and interdependence.

Biologists can tell you how breathtakingly interdependent species are. So can indigenous peoples. Here is Oren Lyons, Haudenosaunee Faith Keeper of the Wolf Clan of both the Onondaga Nation and the Seneca Nation. The Haudenosaunee are the Six Nations of the Grand River, also known as the Iroquois:

“The Seven Generations reminds you that you have responsibility to the generations that are coming, that you indeed are in charge of life as it is at the moment. . . . You have the continuing responsibility to look out for the next seven generations. . . .

In the United States, they have a Bill of Rights that they added onto the Constitution. . . . And I think that should have been a Bill of Responsibility, not a Bill of Rights. People talk about their rights, their rights, but they never talk about their responsibility. And leadership has got to have that above all. They’ve got to have vision. They’ve got to have compassion for the future. They’ve got to make that decision for the seventh generation. That’s not just a casual term. That’s a real instruction for survival. Every animal, every nation, every plant, has its own area to be, and you respect that. You know, as we sit here and look about us, there are these flowers. And no tree grows by itself . . . certain plants will gather around certain trees, and certain medicines will gather around those plants, so if you kill all the trees, if you cut all the trees, then you’re destroying the community. You’re not just destroying a tree. You’re destroying a whole community that surrounds it and thrives on it, and that might be very important medicine for people and for animals, because animals know the same medicine. They use this medicine. That’s where we learned. We learned by watching the animals. They taught us a lot. Where is the medicine? Because they use it themselves. And if you replant the tree, you don’t replant the community. You replant the tree. So, you’ve lost a community. And if you clear cut, which is what’s happening in America and in Canada a great deal these days and I guess around the world, then you’re really a very destructive force, and simply replanting trees is not replanting community. You lost a lot in the process. IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT, YOU WILL [Caps mine].”

—From the film Indigenous American Prophecy (Elders Speak)

It is with these matters in mind that I want you to consider the modification of interpretation of the Endangered Species Act posted for comment by the Trump Maladministration’s Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service on April 17 of this year:

Rescinding the Definition of Harm under the Endangered Species Act

Regulations.gov

What this modification does is redefine harm to a threatened or endangered species as take, that is, as the direct killing of an animal. And the effect is to do away with the established definition of harm as, duh, taking an action that causes harm, such as destroying an animal’s habitat, including the plants and animals and fungi and eukaryotes and prokaryotes upon which the animal in question depends (for example, the network of fungal mycelia by which plants and trees communicate with one another and share essential resources; trees will nurture other sick trees nearby by sharing nutrients via these networks; don’t get me started on that one; you will end up out in the woods with me, boot deep in humus and mud).

This proposed modification of interpretation will be devastating to threatened and endangered species because ALMOST ALL EXTINCTION RESULTS FROM HABITAT LOSS, not take. That’s why, for example, Indian Elephants and Mountain Gorillas are facing extinction. Their habitats have steadily eroded from human encroachment. “The Endangered Species List has become like the Hotel California: Once a species enters, they [sic] never leave,” Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, wrote, with typical Trump maladministration semiliteracy. “The only thing we’d like to see go extinct is the need for an endangered species list to exist.” The vandalous Trump maladministration is claiming that the proposed rule change doesn’t matter at all but just clarifies the meaning of the Act. But then, out of the same all-consuming maw, it refers to a dissent by Cro-Magnon Antonin Scalia that defines harm as “take” and take as the direct killing of an animal. And that’s the side of the maw that speaks the actual meaning of its action.

Real Estate developers (LIKE TRUMP; what a surprise!) have long hated the Endangered Species Act because it prevents them from going into fragile, interdependent, mutualist, codependent habitat and clearing it for building. If you live in the so-called developed world, you are familiar with this phenomenon. Developers name their developments after whatever they ripped out to do their building. They cut down the whispering pines and christen their development Whispering Pines. They cut down the palms and level the rock palisade and name their development Palisade Palms. They bulldoze the plants that produce the flowers the butterflies used to migrate for thousands and thousands of miles to feed upon and name their barren, butterfly-less, soulless McMansions development—you guessed it—Mariposa Acres.

It is unsurprising that Trump was recently filmed in the now Offal Office saying that, you know, a lot of endangered species ought to go extinct. [Since this amendment was proposed, I have looked in vain for that clip of IQ 47. If anyone can find it, please share in the Comments, below.]

The change will, OF COURSE, be devastating for vulnerable species. But being devastating to the vulnerable so as further to engorge the rich is what the Trump maladministration specializes in, isn’t it? And all the while, as it paves the way for the rapacious wealthy to leave devastation for the next seven generations, it will tell you that what it is doing is a nonissue. Here’s what Shakespeare had to say about that sort of equivocation:

“And be these juggling fiends no more believed,

That palter with us in a double sense.”

–Macbeth, Act V, Scene xiii.

If you don’t understand that, your grandchildren will.

[1] The redundancy is intentional and for emphasis.

For more work by Bob Shepherd, see Robert Shepherd – YouTube

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23/04/2025
For former foster care students, college help exists long after exiting the system

Deborah Vanessa Lopez, left, is a program manager that works with students formerly in the foster system at Rio Hondo College. She has worked with Faylen Bush, right, who is set to transfer out of Rio Hondo College this year.

Credit: Faylen Bush and Deborah Vanessa Lopez

When Faylen Bush returned to college in 2023 after being laid off from work, he planned to pursue construction management to build on the skill set he had acquired over several years in that field as a concrete carpenter and protect himself from future layoffs.

He was married and had three young children, and he had little time to spare as he pursued a more stable future for his family. He knew that to succeed in college, he needed to remain more focused on his career goals than he was when he had been in college about a decade earlier, when he was first entering adulthood after leaving the foster system amid a cycle of housing instability and juvenile detention.

Faylen Bush

And so, when a program at his school, Rio Hondo College in Los Angeles County, reached out to Bush with resources for students with experience in the foster system, he paid little attention. He was unsure that the resources would apply to him at all because he was in his early thirties.

But the program, Guardian Scholars, was persistent. They tried to reach him multiple times until he finally decided to go to their office and learn more. He learned that Guardian Scholars is a chapter-based organization across California’s college campuses that supports students who have foster care experience. It is an organization that, since its inception in 1998 at Cal State Fullerton, has sought to increase college enrollment, retention, and graduation rates among former foster youth as a pathway toward overall stability in their lives.

“I can honestly say that stepping into the office, sitting with Deborah, and having that conversation opened up a whole world of opportunities for me,” said Bush of his first meeting with Guardian Scholars staff.

“Deborah” is Deborah Lopez, a Guardian Scholars program manager. She and her team connect students with access to counselors who are trained to support former foster youth, grants to purchase textbooks, meal vouchers, on-campus jobs, access to conferences to further students’ professional networks, and more.

“Our students experience a tremendous amount of trauma even if it was one day or 15 years of their life” in foster care, Lopez said. This thinking serves as the foundation for their program: They extend support to every single Rio Hondo College student with experience in the foster system, no matter when or how long their experience was.

Bush said he is aware of the statistics he is up against given his upbringing. According to a national 2020 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, far fewer students with experience in foster care have a bachelor’s degree — nearly 5% for men and about 9% for women, than students without foster experience, about 31% for men and close to 36% for women.

Deborah Lopez

These rates persist despite several studies showing that the majority of current and former foster youth report an interest in attending and graduating from college.

But Lopez knows the statistics of the students who have received support targeted to their foster care background. For example, across the California community colleges, students are more likely to enroll in credit-bearing courses and to remain enrolled in school if they are enrolled in foster-specific support programs, according to a 2021 report from John Burton Advocates for Youth, an influential nonprofit that advocates for California’s homeless and foster youth.

“One of the things that has worked for us as a program is consistency,” said Lopez, who has worked with the program for nearly a decade.

While many of their students have graduated and transferred from Rio Hondo, some have needed to cut back on classes or drop out altogether. “But eventually, they come back, and we’re here,” said Lopez.

With the support he has received, Bush has not only remained on track to transfer to a four-year university later this year — he has applied to several Cal State and University of California schools, though he is particularly interested in UCLA. His career goal has also changed in the year-and-a-half since he returned to school. He is now pursuing psychology and a career in counseling, and, while the career change might seem abrupt, it’s a return to the goals he had about a decade ago.

Foster youth also need a blueprint

As Bush tells it, the consistent instability throughout his childhood played a critical role in how his life unfolded as he entered adulthood.

“The system is trying to help … and it’s providing homes, but I still feel like a necessary component is to provide that blueprint for success after you age out,” said Bush of the foster system.

He went on to describe the blueprint that a teenager without foster experience might have: If their parents went to college, they might also attend college; if their parents were part of the workforce, they might decide to pursue a similar path after high school.

“Someone who has experienced the foster system, they don’t have that blueprint and, sadly, the statistics show there’s a small percentage of success stories,” he added.

He was around 10 years old when both of his parents died, leaving him and his sister in the foster system. Their maternal grandmother was near them in Lancaster, a city in northern Los Angeles County, but she was caring for her own young children plus some of her grandchildren and couldn’t take them in.

They remained in foster placement for two years until an aunt in Louisiana reached out and requested they be placed with her.

Thus began Bush’s experience with kinship in which a child in foster care is placed with a family member. He was living with family once again, but his life was no more stable than before.

“I can honestly say she tried her best, but she didn’t really have the resources to fully cater to our needs. To her it was more like, OK, you guys live with me now,’ and that’s it,” Bush said. “But there was trauma that needed to be addressed. There was, for both of us, abandonment issues that needed to be addressed.”

By the time he was 14, Bush was regularly suspended from school, eventually missing enough days to become truant and land in juvenile detention.

“That set a course for me, going in and out of juvenile corrections,” he said. He continued getting into trouble, eventually spending over a year inside.

Once released at 16, he returned to his aunt’s home, but he had developed resentment toward her because she had not visited him during his time inside. He learned that she continued receiving payment as he was still officially under her care, and so began a cycle of housing instability as he began to stay at friends’ homes and hotel rooms rather than sleep at his aunt’s home.

To route the payment to himself and pay for housing, Bush figured out how to emancipate himself at 17. It’s a process that Lopez noted few of their students go through given its difficulty.

Bush knew he had a path forward: football. After his time in juvenile detention, his football coach continued to invest in him, sending him to university training camps. But his behavior landed him in trouble again, and he was in a fight so bad during the summer going into his senior year of high school that the coach ended the relationship.

“I would always wind up in situations where I’m in trouble. I always used to ask myself when I was in front of the principal, when I was in front of the judge, ‘Why am I here?’ said Bush, reflecting on his youth. “And then I learned over time, it’s the decisions that I’m making.”

“Before, there were a lot of things that were happening that were out of my control,” he continued. He slowly learned there were things he had control over, such as his path toward emancipation, but without the proper, stable guidance of an adult through his upbringing, he was often unclear on how to properly use that newfound power.

Unable to play football after the fight, he reached out to a former foster parent in California who agreed to take him in so he could start fresh in his home state.

With his high school requirements complete, he attended Southwest College in Los Angeles, playing football for the team and eventually landing a scholarship to continue playing the sport in Oklahoma.

He had dreams of continuing his studies in psychology, eventually earning a doctorate in the field and becoming a school counselor.

But the pressure of supporting his family took center stage once he and his now-wife had their first child, so he declined his university scholarship. “It was such a big transition at that time, and I felt the need to support my family,” said Bush.

From then through the fall of 2023, Bush worked odd jobs and eventually secured stable work in the construction industry as he and his wife had two more children. His return to school was prompted by his layoff, but he was also keenly aware of the harsh reality of working in such a physically demanding field.

“The longevity for a Black carpenter isn’t that long. I have to figure out how I’m going to maneuver within this industry so that I can make it for at least 15 years,” he said of his thinking at the time.

It wasn’t long after landing in the Guardian Scholars office that he began thinking more deeply about his goals. What began as a return to school to secure job stability in a field he’d entered solely to provide for his family has since become a path back to the goals Bush had long before he had the level of support he has found with Lopez and her team at Guardian Scholars.

“My daughters and my son,” he said. “I feel they are the best thing out of my whole life. I’m trying to put myself in a position where I can be the best example and the best provider for them. I know now, at 33, with all my life experiences, this is what seems clearest to me.”

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23/04/2025
UC faculty to consider its own high school ethnic studies mandate
Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource
KEY TAKEAWAYS

The UC course criteria would promote the Liberated Ethnic Studies perspective.

It would likely become the default ethnic studies course in K-12 districts.

It would contradict the state’s own voluntary, open-ended model curriculum.
School districts are looking to the May revision of the state budget to learn if Gov. Gavin Newsom will press ahead with a mandate to offer a high school ethnic studies course whose implementation is contingent on state funding. That will be unlikely.

Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and a Newsom adviser, confirmed Tuesday that, given current revenue forecasts, Newsom will not be funding the mandate. He conveyed that message to a representative of the UC Academic Senate, he said.

On Wednesday, however, representatives of the University of California faculty will decide whether to recommend that U.C. regents not wait for state funding and instead independently mandate a course. They’ll vote on a proposal (see pages 39 to 57) to require an ethnic studies course, incorporating criteria and content that Newsom and the State Board of Education have already rejected as politically extreme, for admissions to UC campuses.

Opponents said that adopting the proposal, which had been nearly five years in the making, would be unwise and probably illegal.

“Requiring such a course would entangle the university in the sorts of political and ideological disputes over ethnic studies course content that are currently roiling school districts across the state and the nation,” wrote Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA, and Matt Malkan, an astronomy professor at UCLA, in a letter to the UC Faculty Assembly of the Senate, the body that will take up the issue on Wednesday. An earlier version was signed by 440 members of the UC faculty.

Sander and Malkan also said that the proposal “would effectively force hundreds of schools to invest large sums in creating the mandated curriculum and finding or hiring teachers to teach it” – a step that “would probably ultimately be found to be illegal” if UC acted unilaterally.

If the Assembly passes the proposal, it would be forwarded to UC President Michael Drake and then to the UC Regents this summer for final approval.

Ethnic studies faculty at UC campuses pushed for including ethnic studies among the 15 courses required for admissions, known as “A-G.” It would be satisfied through an English, history or an elective course taught through an ethnic studies lens, as UC defines it. Ethnic studies would become “H”, a new area of concentration.

When adopting legislation in 2016 authorizing the creation of a voluntary, model ethnic studies curriculum, the Legislature was vague about what it intended for an ethnic studies course. It said the objective was to prepare pupils to be “global citizens with an appreciation for the contributions of multiple cultures”; school districts could “adapt courses to reflect the pupil demographics in their communities.”

UC’s proposed criteria for high schools would take a more directive and controversial approach, reflecting the content of many college-level courses.

“Ethnic studies is aimed at producing critical knowledge about power, inequality, and inequity as well as the efforts of marginalized and oppressed racialized peoples to challenge systemic violence and the institutional structures that perpetuate racial injustice,” wrote the co-lead writers, UC Riverside teaching professor Wallace Cleaves and UC Santa Cruz critical race and ethnic studies and literature professor Christine Hong, in a preface explaining the intent of the criteria.

Hong and Cleaves say it is appropriate to set rigorous course criteria for students entering UC because ethnic studies faculty created the foundational theories and instructional strategies for the academic discipline, and the State Board and local district teachers lack their expertise.

But the effect of adopting their course for entry into UC would be an end-run around the state board’s open-ended guidance. It would also deviate from many legislators’ vision of ethnic studies as the study of the cultures and achievements of minority groups, as well as their past and ongoing struggles with racism and discrimination.

The UC criteria would become the standard version that high schools would offer. In turn, UC and CSU ethnic studies faculty would become the go-to private consultants for creating districts’ curricula and training teachers.

Emergence of Liberated Ethnic Studies

UC and CSU ethnic studies faculty were primary writers of the first draft of the state’s model curriculum in 2019, but President Linda Darling-Hammond and other members of the State Board rejected it as biased, and the board hired new writers. The California Legislative Jewish Caucus objected to its characterization of Israel as an oppressive white colonial state and the call for a boycott of companies doing business with Israel.

“A model curriculum should be accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state and align with Governor Newsom’s vision of a California for all,” Darling-Hammond’s statement said.

The writers of the initial draft disavowed the final, revised model curriculum that the State Board passed in 2021. They then formed the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and have encouraged school districts to adopt the original draft as the true alternative. More than two dozen districts have. Both Hong and Cleaves are affiliated with the consortium.

Having gone through five revisions, the final proposal before the Assembly (pages 10 to 18) is a toned-down version, but its purpose and guidelines for developing skills are clear. For example, toward the goal of “Applying critical analysis,” it reads, “Study histories of imperialism, dehumanization, and genocide to expose their continuity to present-day laws, ideologies, knowledge systems, dominant cultures, institutions, and structures that perpetuate racial violence, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression.”

Sander said, “It’s still very clearly a liberated course by which I mean it’s very ideological. It has a particular point of view on various controversial issues.”

Under Assembly Bill 1010, the 2021 state law, high schools would have to offer a one-semester ethnic studies course starting in fall 2025 and students would have to take it for a high school diploma starting in 2029-30. Legislators explicitly referenced the rejected first draft in the law. “It is the intent of the Legislature that (districts) not use the portions of the draft model curriculum that were not adopted … due to concerns related to bias, bigotry, and discrimination,” it reads.

Since then, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Newsom administration have reminded school districts to follow the law’s requirements for “inclusivity, sensitivity, and accuracy.”

“We have been advised, however, that some vendors are offering materials that may not meet the requirements of AB 101,” Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and an education adviser to Newsom, wrote in a memo to districts in 2023.

The “liberated” version has prompted several lawsuits (see here, here and here) by Jewish families and supportive law firms charging that its one-sided perspective fosters discrimination.

A “target” for President Trump?

The vote Wednesday coincides with fraught relations with the Trump administration. The president has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from school districts and California universities that fail to curb antisemitism and teach undefined “woke” ideology on race, including critical race theory.

“Passing the course criteria now would be like putting a target on our back,” Sander said in an interview, and undermine the university’s best defense against Trump’s effort to dictate who to hire and what ideas can be taught.

“It is fundamentally wrong, and inconsistent with the very spirit of a university, to mandate courses that are framed by an ideology – whether that ideology comes from the left or from the right,” he said.
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23/04/2025
More Than 100 Universities Sign Statement Rejecting Trump’s Interference in and Control of Their Campuses

More than 100 universities joined forces to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to control their curriculum, their hiring policies, and their admissions policies. The initial statement was released this morning and almost another 100 universities signed on.

The Trump administration’s threat to academic freedom by suspending federal funding and threatening the universities’ tax-exempt status alarmed the universities and spurred them to resist the administration’s unprecedented effort to stifle academic freedom.

CBS News reported:

Washington — More than 100 U.S. universities and colleges, including Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Brown, MIT, Cornell and Tufts issued a joint letter Tuesday condemning President Trump’s “political interference” in the nation’s education system.

The move comes a day after Harvard University sued the Trump administration, which announced an initial funding freeze of $2.2 billion and later signaled its intention to suspend an additional $1 billion in grants. The moves came after weeks of escalation between the administration and Harvard, which had rejected the administration’s demands to change many of the school’s policies and leadership, including auditing the student body and faculty for “viewpoint diversity.”

“We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” Tuesday’s letter read.

“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion,” it said, adding: “We must reject the coercive use of public research funding.”

Mr. Trump has sought to bring several prestigious universities to heel over claims they tolerated campus antisemitism, threatening their budgets and tax-exempt status and the enrollment of foreign students.

The letter said the universities and colleges were committed to serving as centers where “faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.”

“Most fundamentally,” the letter reads, “America’s colleges and universities prepare an educated citizenry to sustain our democracy.

“The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society. On behalf of our current and future students, and all who work at and benefit from our institutions, we call for constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.”

Reuters reported that other higher education institutions added their names to the statement, which now has nearly 200 signatories.

The New York Times reported today that some of Harvard’s major donors were urging it to settle with the administration. Eventually, the government’s threats to take control of the university made a settlement impossible.

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23/04/2025
California leaders must keep their promise by funding ethnic studies

Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

Decades of institutionalized racism and inadequate funding have left California with a racial achievement gap in its schools. All of our students deserve the chance to learn and succeed, but all too often, students of color have been failed by an education system that still bears the marks of a long history of racism and inequality.

To address this persistent structural problem, Gov. Gavin Newsom has allocated funding that will be directed toward the poorest schools, to be used specifically to help all student groups improve academic achievement in this year’s proposed budget.

The governor did not, however, explicitly allocate funding to support Assembly Bill 101, the mandate that all public high schools offer an ethnic studies course in the 2025-26 school year and require all students to complete a one-semester ethnic studies course for graduation, beginning with the school year 2029-30. The lack of explicit funding has emboldened opponents of ethnic studies education, who now argue that the ethnic studies requirement must be delayed or withdrawn.

Delaying or abandoning the state’s commitment to ethnic studies would not only break the promise that the governor and the Legislature made to the people of California at a time when this kind of education is more important than ever, but also threaten efforts to close the racial achievement gap. Although ethnic studies isn’t designed with the specific goal of reducing or closing racial achievement gaps, it has a track record of doing exactly that.

For example, Stanford researchers Thomas S. Dee, Emily K. Penner and Sade Bonilla found San Francisco’s ninth-grade ethnic studies course to improve students’ GPA, school attendance, and graduation rate. University of Arizona researchers Nolan L. Cabrera, Jeffrey F. Milam, Ozan Jaquette and Ronald W. Marx found that participation in Tucson’s Mexican American studies program raised students’ achievement on the state’s reading, writing and math achievement tests and virtually closed racial achievement gaps.

San Francisco State University researchers found that students who major in ethnic studies graduate within six years at a much higher rate (92%) than students in other majors and students in other majors who take at least one ethnic studies course boost their graduation rates compared with students who do not. At the University of Louisville, researcher Tomarra A. Adams found that Black students who major in Pan-African studies have a higher graduation rate than Black students who major in something else.

Ethnic studies has consistently positive impacts on the academic achievement of students from racially marginalized backgrounds. By offering a relevant curriculum that speaks to issues of concern to their lives and communities, ethnic studies taps into and engages the knowledge students bring to the classroom, allowing them to draw from and recognize their own expertise.

Ethnic studies classes offer an environment where important and relevant issues related to race and ethnicity can be addressed openly rather than be belittled or ignored. Further, as students come to see education as relevant to addressing problems and needs in their communities, and themselves as academically capable, they gain confidence to thrive in school more generally.

Ethnic studies benefits all California students while helping to close the racial achievement gap and preparing the workforce of tomorrow for the multicultural reality of our state. It was in recognition of these benefits that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 101, declaring as part of the signing statement that “these courses boost student achievement over the long run — especially among students of color.”

Recently, Assembly Bill 1468 was introduced to authorize the development of content standards for high school ethnic studies. This bill is unnecessary and potentially harmful. Ethnic studies is a highly contextual approach to curriculum and teaching because it connects with the local cultures and issues of specific communities in which it is being taught.

For that reason, there can be no standardized ethnic studies curriculum. Within the current Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, we already have a set of six guiding values and principles that are broad enough to allow for diverse contextualized approaches to ethnic studies, while they are also sufficiently direct as standards.

I worry that further specification of what should be in an ethnic studies curriculum will authorize one version of ethnic studies to the exclusion of others. This has been my experience with content standards for decades. In addition, ethnic studies is interdisciplinary, which means that the standards for that subject (such as history or English) should be used along with the seven ethnic studies guiding principles. AB 1468 unnecessarily adds layers to the standards we already have.

Ethnic studies needs to be a part of the curriculum offered to California’s students, and it is incumbent on the governor and the Legislature to make good on that promise by resolving any ambiguities about the funding of AB 101.

•••

Christine Sleeter is professor emerita in the College of Education at California State University Monterey Bay, known for pioneering research into multicultural education and anti-racism.

The opinions in this commentary are 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.

A version of this commentary originally appeared in the Sacramento Bee.

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23/04/2025
Months after fire, Pali High moves into Santa Monica Sears building

Students return to Pali South in Santa Monica on April 22.

Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource

It was like the first day of school on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica.

Campus security directed parents as they mapped out drop-off routes. Staff greeted students, who lugged backpacks, musical instruments and sports gear. High schoolers embraced and marveled at their new campus.

But unlike most first days of school, even seniors on the verge of graduating wandered around, asking where to go. Teachers wondered where to lock their bikes.

“[I’m] definitely nervous,” said Aurora Robles, a freshman. “I don’t think I would know where any of my classes are or where any of my friends are.”

It’s April 22 — more than three months since the Palisades Fire ravaged over 23,000 acres in Los Angeles and destroyed roughly 30% of the historic Palisades Charter High School, which is known for its appearances in films such as “Carrie” and “Freaky Friday.”

Unlike other schools in both Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified that returned to in-person learning weeks after the fires, Pali High’s roughly 2,500 students had been learning online.

And as of Tuesday, its students, teachers, administrators and staff can call an old Sears building — now called Pali South — their new, temporary home. It took roughly eight weeks to transform the industrial building into a learning space complete with the school’s lettering, Lauren Howland, a spokesperson for the City of Santa Monica, told KTLA.

“I’m happy to welcome the administrators, educators and students of Palisades Charter High School back to in-person learning,” said Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement released Tuesday.

“While this home is only temporary until we can get them back to their regular site, the partnership and collaboration between state and local officials to get this new site up and running shows the spirit of our recovery. This is an important step forward for the Palisades community as we rebuild and rise together.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District is chipping in with about $300 million to help Pali High rebuild over the next few years. And debris from the original campus has already been cleared by the Army Corps — with the hope that the campus community can return to its true home with portable classrooms at some point in the next year, according to LAUSD School Board Member Nick Melvoin, who spoke at a town hall for the Pali High community earlier this month.

“I definitely didn’t expect it would happen,” said senior Lucas Nehoray. “I told a lot of people that I just didn’t think it would have time to come to fruition at a different site. But here it is… I’m really happy.”

Despite being used to online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, several students expressed their excitement at being back. Some of them, including senior Samantha Murillo, hadn’t seen their peers since December, before winter break.

“I get to see my friends after five, six months,” Murillo said. “But I’m also kind of thrown off a little bit because it’s a whole different location…It’s weird, but in a good way.”

Others said they were looking forward to learning more in person — especially with AP exams around the corner in May.

The “last few months have been easier academically,” Nehoray said. “I’m glad I’m in person and I can actually learn.”

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23/04/2025
Will Ron DeSantis Outrun This Scandal?
Jason Garcia is an investigative reporter in Florida who has had plenty to investigate during the regime of Ron DeSantis. His blog is called “Seeking Rents.” This is a post you should not miss.

The governor acts like a dictator, and the Republican-dominated legislature doesn’t stop him. Remember the takeover of New College? It was the only innovative, free-thinking public institution of higher education in the state. It was tiny, only 700 students. But DeSantis took control of the college’s board, hired a new president (a crony) and set about destroying everything that made it unique. He issued one executive order after another for the entire state to crush DEI and assure the only permissible thought mirrored his own. He attacked drag queens and threatened to punish bars and hotels that allowed them to perform. He created a private army, subject only to his control. He selected politicians to run major universities. He imposed thought control on the state. Fascism thrives in Florida.

Thus far, he has gotten away with his gambits. But Garcia doesn’t think he will get away with this one.

He writes:

A simmering scandal erupted Friday afternoon when the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald and Politico Florida revealed that the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a $10 million payment last fall to a charity founded by the governor’s wife — which then turned around and gave the money to groups that helped finance the governor’s campaign against a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana in Florida.

In a nutshell: The DeSantis administration pressured a major state contractor to make a $10 million donation to the Hope Florida Foundation, the controversial charity spearheaded by First Lady Casey DeSantis. It was part of a settlement negotiated with Centene Corp., after the state’s largest Medicaid contractor overbilled the state by at least $67 million.

Days later, Hope Florida transferred that $10 million to a pair of dark-money nonprofits. The state-backed charity gave $5 million each to “Save Our Society From Drugs,” an anti-marijuana group founded by a late Republican megadonor, and “Secure Florida’s Future,” a political vehicle controlled by executives at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Big Business lobbying group.

And days after that, Save Our Society From Drugs and Secure Florida’s Future gave a combined $8.5 million to “Keep Florida Clean,” a political committee — chaired by Ron DeSantis’ then-chief of staff — created to oppose Amendment 3, the amendment on last year’s ballot that would have allowed Floridians to use marijuana recreationally rather than solely for medicinal reasons.

It’s a daisy chain that may have transformed $10 million of public money — money meant to pay for health insurance for poor, elderly and disabled Floridians — into funding for anti-marijuana campaign ads.

DeSantis, of course, has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong while also lashing out in increasingly vitriolic ways at everyone from the Republican speaker of the state House to the newspaper reporters digging into the story.

But at least one prominent GOP lawmaker — Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican who has been presiding over hearings into Hope Florida — told the Times and Herald that the transaction chain “looks like criminal fraud by some of those involved.”

Clearly, this looks very bad. But it is also by no means an isolated incident.

In fact, this is part of a larger pattern of potential abuses that Ron DeSantis committed last fall when he chose to turn the power of state government against two citizen-led constitutional amendments that appeared on the November ballot: Amendment 3 and Amendment 4, which would have ended Florida’s statewide abortion ban.

Consider what we already know about how DeSantis financed his campaigns against the two amendments using public money taken from taxpayers — and private money taken from donors who got public favors from the governor.
- Five state agencies directly funded television commercials meant to weaken support for the marijuana and abortion-rights ballot measures. We still don’t know the full extent of their spending, although Seeking Rents has estimated the total taxpayer tab at nearly $20 million. We also know that the DeSantis administration commandeered money for anti-marijuana advertising from Florida’s share of a nationwide legal settlement with the opioid industry — money that was supposed to be spent combatting the opioid addiction crisis.
- At the same time, another nonprofit funded by Florida taxpayers poured at least $5 million into television ads attempting to soften Florida’s image on women’s healthcare at a time when Florida’s near-total abortion was under intense attack. It was the Florida Pregnancy Care Networks’ first-ever TV ad campaign. And its commercials, which were overseen by DeSantis administration staffers, complemented the state agency ads against the abortion-rights amendment — right down to using the same slogan.
- Last June, after DeSantis vetoed legislation that would have strictly regulated the state’s hemp industry, CBS News Miami revealedthat industry executives and lobbyists promised to raise $5 million in exchange for the veto for the governor to spend on his campaign against Amendment 3. “Our lobby team made promises to rally some serious funding to stand with him on this,” a hemp industry representative wrote in one message that included a bank routing number for the Republican Party of Florida. “We have to pay $5 million to keep our end of the veto,” a hemp executive wrote in another message.
- In the closing weeks of the campaign, records show that the Big Tobacco giant Philip Morris International gave $500,000 to DeSantis’ personal political committee — which was also chaired by the governor’s then-chief of staff and which DeSantis was using to campaign against both Amendment 3 and Amendment 4. Shortly after the election, the DeSantis administration handed Philip Morris a lucrative tax break, ruling that the company could sell a new line of electronically heated tobacco sticks free of state tobacco taxes.
There were other abuses of power, too. DeSantis and his team threatened to criminally prosecute television stations that aired ads supporting Amendment 4. They sent state police to the homes of Florida voters who signed Amendment 4 petitions. And they hijacked the ballot-writing process for Amendment 4.

There’s a reason why the DeSantis administration made sure to extract a promise of legal immunityfrom the organization that sponsored Amendment 4 as part of a legal settlement negotiated after the election.

DeSantis’ tactics worked. Though Amendments 3 and 4 each won majority support from Florida voters — 55.9 percent for recreational marijuana, 57.2 percent for abortion rights — both fell short of the 60 percent support needed to amend the state constitution.

But, suddenly, it looks like this may not be over — at least not for Ron DeSantis.

House Republicans are seeking troves of records from the DeSantis administration, including text messages and emails related to Hope Florida. The chamber has also scheduled another hearing on the Casey DeSantis charity next week.

What’s more, the House also unveiled a sweeping ethics reform package last week that would, among other things, explicitly expose senior government officials to criminal penalties if they interfere with elections.

That particular legislation would also prohibit state employees from soliciting money for political campaigns — an idea that emerged after DeSantis aides got caught squeezing lobbyistsfor more donations to their boss’ political committee ahead of a possible Casey DeSantis campaign for governor….

Ron DeSantis bet his political future on beating the marijuana and abortion-rights amendments. And he won both of those battles.

But it may turn out that he ultimately lost the war.

Wishful thinking? I hope not.

To give you an idea of how far/right the legislature is, Garcia lists some of the bills that are currently moving through the legislative process:
- House Bill 549: Requires all new public school textbooks to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-29 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor.
- House Bill 575: Replaces Gulf of Mexico with “Gulf of America” in state law. Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-27 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor….
- House Bill 1517: Allows someone to file a wrongful death lawsuit seeking lost wages on behalf of an embryo or fetus. Passed the House of Representatives by a 79-32 vote. (See votes)…
- House Bill 7031: Cuts the state sales tax rate from 6 percent to 5.25 percent. Passed the House of Representatives by a 112-0 vote. (See votes)
- House Bill 123: Allows a traditional public school to be converted into a charter school without the consent of the teachers who work at the school. Passed the House Education & Employment Committee by an 11-4 vote. (See votes)
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22/04/2025