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  • Cal State faculty staging historic systemwide, weeklong strike

    Cal State faculty staging historic systemwide, weeklong strike


    California State University faculty members protest for better salary and working conditions in Sacramento.

    Ashley A. Smith/EdSource

    For the first time ever, faculty across the entire California State University system on Monday is staging a weeklong labor strike. 

    The more than 29,000 faculty members in the nation’s largest public university system continue to demand higher wages and for the administration to return to the bargaining table. 

    For many of Cal State’s nearly 450,000 students, it means missing their first, second or third week of classes this semester or quarter as professors and instructors walk the picket lines across the system’s 23 campuses. 

    Kate Ozment, an English professor at Cal Poly Pomona, said she hasn’t met her students yet, with the first week of spring classes coinciding with the weeklong strike. Ozment said she posted a notice to her students through the Canvas online learning management system about the strike. 

    “My goal is to not create confusion with students and my goal is to not harm students,” she said. “I don’t want them on campus because with an empty campus, we win. I sent them information about why we’re striking and that I was participating and I also gave them an overview of the course schedule so they could see how I accommodate the work stoppage.” 

    Ozment said she won’t be grading, collecting assignments or leading instruction. But she has encouraged her students to work independently this week. 

    Arabel Meyer, a journalism senior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said all three of her instructors this quarter notified her that they will be striking this week and that classes have been canceled. On the quarter system, students at Cal Poly SLO are in their third week of classes. 

    “I support the faculty in their striking,” Meyer said, adding that as a college student who can barely afford rent in San Luis Obispo, she understands how difficult it is for a professor making the minimum salary to afford rent in the city. “I can’t even imagine being a college professor and living in the town that I live in and not being paid a wage that is enough to be able to survive and be able to provide for their families.” 

    Meyer said she’s not worried about a week away from classes hurting her academically, and she’s heard other students celebrate the idea of a “week off.” The real difficulty will be for the professors to “reorganize their schedules and make sure that they’re covering the material that they need to get through in a quarter,” she said. 

    Nicolette Parra, a political science junior at CSU Northridge, who transferred to university from community college, said she supports the faculty after noticing the problems in CSU.

    “There’s a sense of greediness, like the administration just wants more money,” she said. “I am concerned about canceled classes because when the strikes are happening is supposed to be our first week back from winter break. It feels like we are behind. It’s not the professors’ fault, it’s the administration and that worries me.”

    Salary and wages remain the top issue dividing the faculty and the administration. The faculty have argued for a 12% general salary increase for this year. 

    CSU FAculty demands
    • 12% pay raises to stay ahead of inflation.
    • Pay equity and raising the floor for lowest-paid faculty.
    • Manageable workloads that allow for more support and engagement with students.
    • More counselors to improve students’ much-needed access to mental health services.
    • Expanding paid parental leave to a full semester.
    • Accessible lactation and milk storage spaces for lactating faculty.
    • Safe gender-inclusive restrooms and changing rooms.
    • Safety provisions for faculty interacting with university police on campuses.

    Cal State Chancellor Mildred Garcia said that, without question, the faculty deserve a pay increase.

    “We are committed to compensating employees fairly, but we are and must be equally committed to the long-term stability and success of the CSU,” Garcia said on Friday during a meeting with reporters. “As a new chancellor four months on the job, I have no interest in a strike. We are ready and willing to come back to the bargaining table with the California Faculty Association, but we must work within our financial realities.”

    Garcia said despite the strike, Cal State campuses will remain open this week and provide guidance to students and families and updates about the status of classes.

    “The CSU is not canceling classes,” said Christina Checel, CSU’s vice chancellor for labor and employee relations. “Individual faculty members who decide to strike will cancel their own classes. So students should check their class portals or contact their professors to find out whether they intend to hold class.”

    Checel said the universities have made contingency plans to continue providing advising, financial aid and other services to students, but the strike “will not interfere with students’ ability to complete their courses or graduate on time.”

    Earlier this month, the CSU administration walked away from the bargaining table with the faculty union and offered a 5% pay raise starting Jan. 31. The administration said the salary increase is consistent with agreements CSU reached with five other unions. Over the weekend, CSU also reached an agreement with its skilled trades union, which represents about 1,100 employees.

    Faculty say they are insulted by the 5% wage increase.

    “Somebody can decide to stop having a conversation with you, but that doesn’t mean the conversation is over,” Ozment said. “They unilaterally decided what was appropriate for us. It was not done in collaboration, it was not done in conversation and it was not done based on any reasonable math from our perspective. What we’re hoping is that this (strike) brings them back to the table. They made a bad choice. They can unmake it.” 

    A 5% pay raise would have no impact on professors’ ability to make a living when campuses are raising other costs on them, faculty said. Kevin Weir, a Sacramento State professor on the faculty union’s bargaining team, said campuses are raising parking costs, which wipes out any benefits of a 5% increase for those instructors that are already struggling with the cost of living. 

    But meeting the faculty union’s demands would cost the system about $380 million in the first year and every year thereafter, an amount the system can’t currently afford, said Leora Freedman, CSU’s vice chancellor for human resources.

    “The CSU currently spends 75% of its operating budget on compensation,” Freedman said. “If we were to agree to the increases that these unions are demanding, we would have to make severe cuts to programs. We would have to lay off employees. This would jeopardize our educational mission and cause hardship to many employees.”

    Freedman said CSU has made several proposals to the faculty union, but the organization has not been willing to reduce its economic demands.

    “As soon as either union demonstrates that they’re ready to make meaningful movement in bargaining, we will be back at the table,” she said.

    Weir said he disagrees with the university system’s financial arguments. In October, the union released its own independent study conducted by an Eastern Michigan University professor that examined Cal State’s cash flows and reserves. That study, which CSU has described as incorrect, concluded that CSU has about $8.2 billion in reserves and cash investments.

    “They have more money coming in than going out every year,” Weir said. “They have enough money to give this chancellor 30% more than her predecessor, and her predecessor got 30% more than her predecessor. They have given campus presidents up to 29% increases. They have no problem rewarding the senior executives of the system, but they do have a problem paying faculty just to keep up with inflation. So, no, I don’t buy their argument.” 

    Much of the wage dispute comes as CSU has granted salary increases to campus presidents and hired the new system chancellor with a nearly $800,000 base salary, even as the system faced a budget deficit. 

    Steve Relyea, CSU’s vice chancellor and chief financial officer, said the faculty union has misrepresented the university system’s financial situation. Much of the $8 billion the faculty have cited as available for salaries can’t be used for salaries because it is already committed to CSU’s debt obligations, capital projects, and other contractual commitments like financial aid, housing and parking, he said.

    “To use those one-time dollars for ongoing commitments would be reckless and put the institution and our students at risk,” Relyea said.

    Even if an agreement is reached between the faculty union and the CSU, negotiations for the next faculty contract are expected to start this spring. Weir said union membership will begin receiving surveys to submit their ideas and thoughts on what changes and demands need to be made in the next contract. Weir said it wouldn’t be the first time that the union and the university system negotiated on two separate contracts simultaneously, with the last time occurring in 2011. 

    “But I would rather not do that,” he said. “I would rather settle this contract and then move on to the successor contract. I would love to get back into the classroom and be done with negotiations for a while. But in order for that to happen, I need a willing negotiation partner and, so far, management is walking away from the table and indicating they’re not willing.” 

    Faculty and students have indicated and are aware that if the salary disagreement between CSU and the union isn’t solved, there may be future strikes. 

    “My students are still facing rising tuition and my peers are still driving for Uber and going to local food banks,” Ozment said. “I think that people should anticipate bigger and longer strike actions if we don’t actually get what we need to run this system because we have it. They have the money. They’re just choosing to hoard it like little dragons from ‘Lord of the Rings.’ ”

    California Student Journalism Corps member Delilah Brumer, who is a student at Pierce College in L.A., contributed to this report. Arabel Meyer, a source in this story, is also a member of the California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • Schools should not be battlegrounds for immigration enforcement

    Schools should not be battlegrounds for immigration enforcement


    It’s graduation week in Los Angeles — a time that should be filled with joy and celebration for students and their families. Instead, fear and uncertainty have taken hold in many of our communities.

    Since June 6, federal agents have been conducting extensive raids across Los Angeles, targeting areas many of our students call home. In response, some of our schools mobilized community volunteers or were forced to offer virtual graduation options because families were too afraid to attend in person.

    These actions have shattered the sense of safety that schools work so hard to build. These raids and subsequent arrests have sparked protests.

    I recently stood with staff, students, teachers and parents in Sacramento, urging legislators to pass legislation that would boost protections for immigrant communities.

    Among the group was an undocumented mother of two U.S.-born students who spoke about the emotional changes she has seen recently in her 10-year-old son. “My kids are scared that something might happen during drop-off or pickup, or that immigration officers will try to come into their schools,” she said. “Schools are supposed to be their second homes — places where kids grow, learn and feel safe. But when immigration officials show up like this, it is hard to feel that way.”

    Her son now suffers from panic attacks, clinging to his mother after school, terrified she won’t come home. In response, his mother has done everything she can to protect her children, from seeking therapy for her son, to traveling to Sacramento with the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (a nonprofit that manages 20 LAUSD schools in historically under-resourced communities) to advocating for stronger protections against recent immigration enforcement. “I am afraid, too, but I do not show it,” she said.

    This family’s feelings reflect broader experiences across Los Angeles Unified — not just for undocumented families, but also for U.S.-born students and American citizens who are feeling the ripple effects of these raids. This past April, authorities were denied entry into two elementary schools after they showed up unannounced and sought to get in touch with students who allegedly entered the country without documentation.

    “I’m still mystified as to how a first-, second-, third-, fourth- or sixth-grader would pose any type of risk to the national security of our nation,” said LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who was an undocumented immigrant as a teenager from Portugal.

    There are an estimated 133,000 undocumented students enrolled in California, and roughly 1 million live with a parent or caregiver who is undocumented. This will not be the last time we hear a story about agents attempting to enter schools.

    Without clear laws and protections, there will be more stories of schools being invaded, more confusion, more fear, and more trauma.

    No family should have to live in fear like this. In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that states cannot constitutionally deny a free and public education to undocumented students. Families are trying to exercise that right.

    Today, the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools and its partners are urging lawmakers to protect young people when they go to school by not allowing immigration enforcement to be left to the discretion of individual ICE agents. Such actions should be authorized in writing by a judge. Further, when student safety is in doubt, students and their families should have the right to be forewarned and be given the freedom to stay home without schools being punished with funding cuts.

    These common-sense measures would help ensure that schools continue to be what they were always meant to be: institutions of learning. When students are scared, they cannot learn. When families fear being torn apart, they are reluctant to engage with educators. And when the government sends agents to schools, trust is broken.

    Many states and districts have issued new or updated guidance this year, building on pledges they made to be “safe zones” for immigrant communities during Trump’s first term. Several have published guidance about how schools can comply with federal and state laws and respond to the presence of ICE on campuses and what type of student and parental information can be shared.

    LAUSD has continued to be a leader in California and nationwide. In addition, the district board has passed resolutions stating that LAUSD will be an “immigrant sanctuary.” The state has prepared guidance to help school districts comply with state law limiting participation in immigration enforcement activities.

    But much more will be needed if we are to keep students and their families safe in an increasingly hostile environment. Join us in urging state lawmakers to support several immigration-relsted, including AB 49, which passed the Assembly last month and will be voted on by the Senate Education Committee on June 18.

    •••

    Guadalupe Guerrero is CEO of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit that manages 20 LAUSD schools in historically under-resourced communities.

    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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  • LAUSD agrees to fund $900 million to settle sexual assault lawsuits

    LAUSD agrees to fund $900 million to settle sexual assault lawsuits


    The Los Angeles Unified school board did not discuss the bonds for settling sexual assault lawsuits before members authorized them on June 3.

    Source: Livestream recordings of Los Angeles Unified board meetings

    Top Takeaways
    • School trustees authorize bonds without comment or public explanation.
    • Lawmakers were warned of the financial impact of erasing the statute of limitations.
    • Other districts also face massive costs in response to a 2019 state law.

    The Los Angeles Unified School District board has quietly approved borrowing nearly $900 million — including interest — to settle decades-old sexual assault cases involving former students. 

    And that will likely not be enough to settle all the claims the nation’s second-largest school district is facing under 2019 legislation that allows victims of abuse by school employees to seek damages for incidents dating back to the 1970s. District spokesperson Britt Vaughan would not say how many claims the district faces, the number that have been settled and what they have cost to date.

    Board members approved the expenditure on June 3 without comment, agreeing to borrow up to $500 million through judgment obligation bonds with an estimated 6.10% interest rate, documents show. Unlike bonds for school construction, they did not require voter approval. The debt is due to be paid off in 15 years. The claims are not covered by insurance carriers. 

    This fiscal year, the district’s undisclosed number of settlement claims was roughly $302 million, Vaughan said.

    “The board has been talking about judgment obligation bonds for, I would say, about a year and a half,” board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said in an interview. Spreading out the payments means “the district’s current students aren’t punished by depleting resources,” she said.

    No public hearings were held. Board members were briefed about the matter in small groups, she said. “We also had several conversations in closed sessions, as we typically do with legal cases.” She did not disclose the number of claims made against the district or how many were settled.

    The district administration will likely ask the board to approve more borrowing next year to settle additional claims, Ortiz Franklin said. 

    The district is far from alone in facing massive payouts to victims who have filed claims under the legislation, Assembly Bill 218, which experts say is impacting local public agencies throughout the state.

    Los Angeles County alone is facing $4 billion in settlements involving formerly incarcerated juveniles and foster youth.

    By taking on long-term debt to deal with the AB 218 cases, LAUSD is “lessening any potential impacts to (its) core education programs in the near term,” by spreading out the settlement costs, supporting documents provided to board members stated. Nonetheless, the cost of paying down the bonds will reduce spending on students from the district’s general fund by tens of millions of dollars annually for the 15 years after the bond is issued. 

    AB 218, brought by then-Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, rolled back the statute of limitations for abuse claims involving public employees like teachers to “22 years from the date the plaintiff” becomes an adult “or within 5 years of the date the plaintiff discovers or reasonably should have discovered that the psychological injury or illness occurring after” reaching adulthood was caused by sexual assault. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill on Oct. 13, 2019.

    Messages left at Gonzalez’s office were not returned. 

    Legislative records show that proponents of AB 218 argued that sexual assault scandals involving the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts showed that victims of child sexual abuse sometimes took years to come forward, often after the statute of limitations to seek damages had expired. 

    “Victims who are ready to come forward today deserve an opportunity to expose their perpetrators and those who covered up the abuse,” members of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Victim Policy Institute told lawmakers, records show.

    Opponents of the bill, including the California Association of School Business Officials and other groups, expressed concerns about cost.

    “It will be impossible for employers to effectively defend against these claims when evidence is likely gone, witnesses have moved or passed away, and there has been a turnover of staff,” a summary of opponents’ concerns in legislative archives stated. “With these barriers, schools will be unable to adequately respond to these claims. This failure will result in diversion of funding intended to educate students and serve communities to financing increased legal costs, whether or not the claim is valid.”

    A Senate staff analysis warned of “unknown, potentially major out-year costs to local entities and school districts to the extent litigation is successfully brought outside the current statute of limitations and/or the entities are liable for damages.”  The bill was unanimously passed by both the Senate and the Assembly.

    Last week, in an interview, an advocate for taxpayers was critical of the debts the legislation created for school districts and other agencies. 

    “These bonds are going to hang around the necks of school districts for decades,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “There has to be a statute of limitations,” he said. “Witnesses are probably gone. All cases have to be time-barred at some point. This is bad policy.”

    School districts across the state are facing similar claims allowed by AB 218 and facing crises of how to pay for settlements, according to a January report by the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, or FCMAT. As the matter evolves, there is no firm number of the number of claims so far brought against districts, “but the best estimate is $2 billion to $3 billion.” 

    “A comprehensive analysis of claims is not available,” the report states. “But what we can conclude is that the impact is significant.” 

    FCMAT concluded that “the goal should be to completely eliminate childhood sexual assault in public schools” and to “increase mandated training to build awareness of, and reporting options for, childhood sexual assault.”

    Other recommendations, such as creating a victim compensation fund to eliminate claims brought against individual public agencies, have received little support in the Legislature and were opposed by plaintiffs’ attorneys, the FCMAT’s chief executive officer, Michael Fine, said in an interview.

    The claims and settlements, Fine said, continue to pile up. “The data changes daily.”





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  • Cal State System reaches tentative agreement with faculty on salary

    Cal State System reaches tentative agreement with faculty on salary


    California Faculty Association.

    California Faculty Association

    Faculty in the nation’s largest public university system agreed to end their historic strike against the California State University system late Monday evening.

    The faculty union, which represents more than 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians and coaches, agreed to a 5% general salary increase retroactive to July 1, 2023, and a 5% general salary increase on July 1, 2024, as long as the state does not reduce Cal State’s base funding this summer.

    Monday marked the first day of a planned one-week strike. The system’s nearly 450,000 students saw many of their classes canceled as faculty protested. However, the new agreement means all faculty will return to campuses and their classes on Tuesday.

    “The collective action of so many lecturers, professors, counselors, librarians and coaches over these last eight months forced CSU management to take our demands seriously,” said Charles Toombs, president of the California Faculty Association, the union. “This tentative agreement makes major gains for all faculty at the CSU.”

    The agreement would raise the salary floor for the lowest paid faculty by increasing minimum pay by about $3,000 retroactive to July 1 and raising it again by $3,000 this summer. It also expands paid parental leave from six to 10 weeks.

    Other highlights from the agreement include improved access to gender-inclusive restrooms and lactation spaces, increased protection for faculty who have negative interactions with campus police officers, and additional support for lecturers.

    The agreement extends the current contract for 2022-24 one year to June 30, 2025.

    “I am extremely pleased and deeply appreciative that we have reached common ground with CFA that will end the strike immediately,” CSU Chancellor Mildred García said. “The agreement enables the CSU to fairly compensate its valued, world-class faculty while protecting the university system’s long-term financial sustainability. With the agreement in place, I look forward to advancing our student-centered work — together — as the nation’s greatest driver of social mobility and the pipeline fueling California’s diverse and educated workforce.” 

    The university system is encouraging students to look for messages from their instructors about adjusting their classes this week. Faculty will vote to ratify the new agreement in the coming weeks.

    “This historic agreement was won because of members’ solidarity, collective action, bravery, and love for each other and our students,” said Antonio Gallo, an instructor on the Northridge campus. “This is what People Power looks like. This deal immensely improves working conditions for faculty and strengthens learning conditions for students.”

    The agreement marks another victory for education laborers, the union said, especially following similar strikes at the University of California and the University of Southern California.





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  • Let’s carefully think about how we use AI in education

    Let’s carefully think about how we use AI in education


    Credit: Sanket Mishra / Pexels

    Could you navigate the roads without GPS? What about writing an essay error-free? Could you complete that task without spell check? Although many media reports describe artificial intelligence (AI) as a new innovation, it has been around for decades. GPS and spell check are just two examples of how AI is an integral part of the technologies we use on a daily basis.

    However, the introduction of ChatGPT shook the world. Possibilities for using generative AI to create content and deliver innovations in many fields and aspects of modern life are being developed and introduced quickly, and they are dramatically changing the way we use information. This is especially true in education.

    Students are using AI to complete assignments, teachers are using it to develop lesson plans, and schools are using it to provide individualized support to children. However, there is a lack of clear guidance on the use of AI, which could create new challenges far beyond concerns about cheating, plagiarism and data privacy. 

    One concern is what we refer to as digital amnesia. People tend to forget information that is easily obtained through search engines. Typically, people search for the same word, concept or fact several times, because for many, the brain does not register the information. This dilemma is known as the “Google effect,” and research shows that this often has a negative impact on one’s ability to retain critical information. 

    AI could amplify the amnesia of knowledge and skills on a new level. When an artificial intelligence tool is used to complete homework, the knowledge and skills that would have been developed by completing those activities are no longer acquired. Similarly, when AI is used to make problem-solving decisions, the development of critical cognitive skills and intellectual creativity may be put at risk. 

    The availability of a wide range of AI tools is also raising fundamental questions about what should be taught and emphasized in schools. When calculators were adopted, certain tasks, such as the multiplication and division of large numbers, could be completed efficiently to save time for developing other skills. However, it is still important for students to learn essential arithmetic skills because we know it is foundational to learning more complex math.  

    For this reason, policymakers and educators must know how the use of AI will affect long-term learning outcomes before it is utilized in the classroom. Without carefully thinking through the consequences of using AI in ways that short-circuit learning, it could produce adverse educational effects that we are presently unable to envision, and it could exacerbate existing inequities. 

    Responsible integration of AI requires creating opportunities for users to actively engage in learning activities. AI tools can be used to promote creative thinking and problem-solving skills, giving users learning opportunities that deepen engagement and empower them.   

    We recently documented the possibility of using AI in this way. Through an AI-supported professional development program, we asked math teachers to complete an activity related to their daily teaching tasks and then used an AI tool to analyze their work. The tool identified areas where teachers needed additional support and provided them with activities to acquire the skills needed by asking targeted questions. Teachers learned by doing rather than by simply using AI to show them how to do it. This approach not only improved teachers’ knowledge and skills, it also improved their students’ performance. 

    This research showed that AI can be used as a teacher’s aide. It can analyze students’ work and identify which students need additional help. It can also suggest evidence-based strategies teachers can use to modify subsequent instruction to meet students’ needs. 

    As AI tools become more widely available, it is essential that state and district leaders pay close attention to what vendors are selling. Will new AI tools enhance and empower teachers and learners, or will they contribute to passivity? To answer this important question, teachers must be given an opportunity to investigate how these tools will be used to support students before decisions are made. 

    The second major concern is that teachers and students may begin to over rely on the information provided by AI. Generative AI is based on the data it is trained to assimilate and distill. As we now know, AI makes mistakes that only a well-trained user can identify. The rubrics and data used in AI tools to grade student work, provide guidance on how to address gaps in learning, or to improve student skills, may not be adequate. It could easily reproduce biases and inequities that exist in our schools and society. 

    To avoid these potential problems, content experts from diverse backgrounds must be involved in the development of AI tools in education. These tools must be vetted carefully by subject matter and pedagogical experts who can provide feedback before they are introduced into classrooms. No AI tool should be used unless protocols for data privacy are well documented and there is real evidence that it will improve teaching and learning 

    We are not wary or opposed to using AI to enhance learning. In fact, we believe it has tremendous potential to support teachers and empower learners if used correctly. However, policymakers and educators must ask the right questions about its use and take precautionary steps to determine which tools will be helpful and which may harm teaching and learning. 

    •••

    Yasemin Copur-Gencturk is an associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education and a leading researcher on AI in education. 

    Pedro Noguera is dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education and a newly appointed member of the U.S. Department of Education’s committee on the use of AI in education.

    The opinions expressed in this piece represent those of the authors. 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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  • Newsom’s $8 billion fix to spare cuts to schools, community colleges may face tough sell

    Newsom’s $8 billion fix to spare cuts to schools, community colleges may face tough sell


    Gov. Gavin Newsom announces his 2024-25 state budget proposal, including his plans to deal with a projected deficit in Sacramento on Jan. 10.. Credit: Brontë Wittpenn / San Francisco Chronicle / Polaris

    Gov. Gavin Newsom buoyed the hopes of school district and community college educators this month when, despite a sizable three-year decline in state revenue, he promised to protect schools and colleges from cuts and to uphold future spending commitments.

    They might want to hold their applause until after the last act, when the Legislature passes the 2024-25 budget in June.

    In an analysis of the state budget, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) cautioned that there are questions about how Newsom plans to close $8 billion of a huge revenue shortfall facing schools and community colleges.

    Beyond meeting this challenge, the LAO also urged legislators to start planning for education spending beyond 2024-25, when flat or declining revenues are expected to raise difficult financial choices. They could pit funding of ongoing expenses against sustaining ambitious programs like summer and after-school programs for low-income students, additional community schools, money for teacher training in early literacy and math, and confronting post-pandemic learning setbacks.

    “The state faces significant operating deficits in the coming years, which are the result of lower revenue estimates, as well as increased cost pressures,” the analyst said.

    But the immediate enigma is Newsom’s strategy for the $8 billion.

    Newsom is projecting that state revenues to run schools and community colleges will be short $14.3 billion over three years: the budget year that ended in 2022-23, the current budget year of 2023-24, and the coming year. That number is calculated as revenue through Proposition 98, the formula that determines the proportion of the state’s general fund that must be spent on schools and community colleges — about 40%.

    Proposition 98 revenues are sometimes close but never exactly what a governor and the Legislature assume when they approve a budget. Revenues for the past and current years exceed or fall short of what they projected and not what they predict for the year ahead.  

    Budget analysts were particularly handicapped when calculating the 2023-24 budget. They didn’t anticipate the shortfall from 2022-23 and didn’t discover it until fall 2023, because of a six-month delay in the filing deadline for 2022 tax returns.

    Newsom is proposing to divert $5.7 billion from the Proposition 98 rainy day fund to fill in the current year’s deficit as well as what’s needed to sustain a flat budget, plus a small cost of living increase, for 2024-25. Draining the rainy day fund would require the Legislature’s OK.

    The remainder — and biggest piece — is the $9 billion revenue shortfall from 2022-23, which would be $8 billion after other automatic adjustments. That shortfall is technically an overpayment beyond the statutory minimum Proposition 98 funding guarantee. It fell dramatically from what the Legislature adopted in June 2022 to $98.3 billion that revenue actually produced. The biggest decline was in income tax receipts on the top 1% of earners.

    School districts have already spent funding from 2022–23, including on staff pay raises that they negotiated with good faith estimates. Newsom and the Legislature could try to deduct that overpayment from the current and 2024-25 budgets, but such a move “would be devastating for students and staff,” Patti Herrera, vice president of the school consulting firm California School Services, told a workshop last week with more than 1,000 school district administrators in Sacramento.

    As an alternative, Newsom proposes to find reductions from the non-Proposition 98 side of the general fund, which covers higher education, child care and all other non-education expenses, from prisons to climate change programs.

    “We are super grateful there will be no attempts to claw back” the money given to school districts in a past year’s budget, Herrera said.

    Newsom’s challenge is to make districts and community colleges financially whole without increasing the minimum Proposition 98 guarantee. Raising Proposition 98 could create a bigger obligation in the future, including potential deficits after 2024-25 — unless the Legislature raises taxes, a nonstarter in an election year.

    How Newsom is going to do this is a mystery. The one-sentence reference to it in his budget summary says only, “The Budget proposes statutory changes to address roughly $8 billion of this decrease to avoid impacting existing LEA (school districts) and community college district budgets.”

    Both the LAO and School Services said it’s their understanding from the Department of Finance that the payments from the general fund to cover the Proposition 98 overpayment would be made over five years, starting in 2025-26.

    “We have some questions about that proposal. Probably the most pressing one is how is the state going to use revenue that it’s not going to collect for several years to address a funding shortfall that exists right now,” said Ken Kapphahn, the LAO’s principal fiscal and policy analyst for TK-12 education.

    The questions are legal and political. The proposed statutory language, which may be released in a trailer bill in the coming weeks, will reveal how the state Department of Finance will finesse postponing balancing the 2022-23 budget that’s $8 billion out of kilter. Budget hearings next week in the Capitol may indicate how receptive legislative leaders are to further reducing general fund spending, which also is feeling a financial squeeze.

    A search for the extra $8 billion

    Additionally, Newsom is proposing several billion dollars of accounting maneuvers that will book spending in 2024-25 but delay and defer payments for programs and some state salaries until early 2025-26.  Included are $500 million in deferred reimbursements to the University of California and California State University for the 5% budget increase that Newsom committed to funding in 2024-25.

    “Many of these solutions involve moving costs to next year. That is one reason we have the state looking at a large deficit, not just this year, but the following year,” Kapphahn said. “I can’t recall another situation quite like this.”

    Barring a recession, which neither LAO nor the Newsom administration is forecasting, both Newsom and the administration are projecting general fund deficits averaging about $30 billion annually in the three years after 2024-25. Pushing the $8 billion solution for the 2022-23 Proposition 98 deficit, along with other general fund delays and deferrals into those years will compound difficult choices, according to the LAO.

    “Overall, the governor’s budget runs the risk of understating the degree of fiscal pressure facing the state in the future,” the LAO analysis said.

    The LAO suggested other options for resolving the 2022-23 deficit. It recommended applying the remaining $3.8 billion from the Proposition 98 reserve fund that Newsom hasn’t touched and looking for reductions in unallocated one-time funding such as an unused $1 billion for community schools and canceling $500 million for electric school buses. 

    Even with no cuts to Proposition 98 next year, many school districts and charter schools will likely face their own deficits in 2024-25. That’s because the projected cost-of-living adjustment for next year will not be enough to cover the loss of revenue from declining enrollments. The COLA, tied to a federal formula measuring goods and services bought by state and local governments and not consumer products, is currently projected to be 0.76%; it would be the lowest increase in 40 years, with one exception, the year after the Great Recession, in 2009. This would come on the heels of two years of near record-high COLAs of 6.6% and 8.2%.

    The analyst’s office projects the COLA may inch up to 1% by June, when the budget is set. At that rate, a hypothetical school district with 10,000 students would see declining revenues with an enrollment decline of only about 100 students.

    Paso Robles Joint Unified School District in San Luis Obispo County, with about 6,000 students, is among those with declining enrollment since the pandemic. As a result, the district, with about 800 full-time employees, anticipates a reduction of five full-time staff members in 2024-25 and perhaps 40 layoff notices the following year, said Brad Pawlowski, the assistant superintendent for business services.

    Pawlowski said he came away encouraged after School Services’ presentation that schools will be spared cuts in the next budget, while acknowledging it’s a long time between now and the budget’s adoption.

    “We have seen a common message between the governor and the Legislature to protect education. And that does make me feel good,” he said. But doing so, he added, “will mean finding other ways to make that up outside of Prop. 98. That’s going to be the real challenge.”





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  • Berkeley schools use a discredited reading curriculum. Why is it still in classrooms?

    Berkeley schools use a discredited reading curriculum. Why is it still in classrooms?


    Eva Levenson, now a sophomore at Berkeley High School, has struggled with dyslexia since childhood but private phonics-based intervention made a difference. “I don’t understand what’s in the way of making a shift when, both in other states and locally, districts are able to help kids now,” she recently told the school board. “How is it possible we aren’t doing it in Berkeley right now?”

    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight

    This story is a collaboration between EdSource and Berkeleyside, a nonprofit online newsroom covering the city of Berkeley. EdSource Reporter John Fensterwald contributed to this report.

    How kids are taught to read in Berkeley is slowly starting to shift.

    Teachers are studying the science of reading. More students are learning phonics, sounding out words by letters and syllables. And the school district is screening every student to flag those who may have dyslexia, a learning disorder that causes difficulty with reading, writing and spelling.

    But these changes didn’t come easily. They are the result of a federal class-action lawsuit, filed in 2017, by four families of Berkeley students with dyslexia who claimed the district failed to teach them how to read. 

    And though the suit settled in 2021, the district’s method of teaching reading, a balanced literacy curriculum developed by Columbia University Teachers College professor Lucy Calkins called Units of Study, remains in place. 

    Rather than teaching students to sound out letters, the curriculum relies on a method called three-cueing — where students use context clues like pictures to figure out words — that has now been discredited and banned in several states. Some Berkeley teachers still use cueing, while others have dropped the practice.

    Berkeley’s reckoning with how it teaches reading comes as California faces dismal reading scores and amid a push for the state to do more to ensure children are taught to read using evidence-based approaches. Last year, over half of California students and 33% of Berkeley students could not read at grade level. 

    Now, the wheels are just beginning to turn in a district long devoted to Calkins. Advocates hope that aligning with the science of reading will help close one of the largest achievement gaps in the country — last year, 26% of Black students in Berkeley schools met state standards in reading, compared with 83% of white students. 

    “Historically, Berkeley has been — and is — widely known for being a balanced literacy district,” Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel said during a November panel discussion referring to the Calkins teaching method.

    Enikia Ford Morthel, Berkeley schools superintendent, right.
    Credit: Kelly Sullivan / Berkeleyside

    “What we want to be known for is being a district that is disrupting the narrative, disrupting persistent trends and data and really responding to our students,” she said. “This is not just another initiative. This truly is an imperative.”

    Some students and parents aren’t yet convinced. Without a firm commitment to adopt a curriculum rooted in the science of reading, they are skeptical that they will see all the changes they believe are long overdue.

    “At some point, you have to take responsibility,” said Rebecca Levenson, a parent of two children with dyslexia. Levenson wasn’t part of the lawsuit against the district, but she believes “it’s important for parents who see their children suffer to use their voice and power to make a difference for other families that are in that same situation.”

    The Berkeley lawsuit was the second filed in California in 2017 over literacy instruction. In the other suit, the public-interest law firm Public Counsel charged on behalf of students in the lowest-performing schools that California had failed to meet their constitutional right to read. Under a $50 million settlement in 2020, 75 schools received funding and assistance to improve reading instruction. They were encouraged, but not mandated, to select instruction based on the science of reading.

    While a district review of its elementary school literacy curriculum found that Units of Study failed to teach foundational literacy skills like phonics and vocabulary, Ford Morthel has stopped short of calling on the district to drop Lucy Calkins. The district is now beginning the process of adopting a new curriculum for the fall of 2025.

    At a recent school board meeting, George Ellis, the court-appointed monitor, hammered home the importance of changing the Calkins curriculum. Without a “sound, comprehensive” core curriculum, he said, “it doesn’t matter what interventions we’re really providing, because we’re just filling up holes all over the place, and we’re never going to get caught up here.”

    Attorneys and advocates hope the Berkeley lawsuit will spur other school districts to act faster to avoid legal action, accelerating the adoption of the science of reading in California and across the country. But Berkeley’s experience also demonstrates just how many barriers stand in the way of changing reading instruction.

    Berkeley’s reading guru

    When Lucy Calkins developed her approach in the 1990s, the balanced literacy teaching method was heralded as a new philosophy of education. Rather than teaching from rigid phonics textbooks, teachers introduced students to an entire library of independent books with the goal of teaching kids to love reading.

    Calkins was the “guru of reading for people in Berkeley,” said Maggie Riddle, a former teacher and principal at Berkeley’s Jefferson Elementary, now called Ruth Acty. Once Calkins’ approach came to Berkeley, phonics came to be seen as a rote, old-school way of teaching, “dumbing down” instruction. “Berkeley was anti-phonics. One hundred percent,” Riddle said.

    Berkeley wasn’t alone in this. Balanced literacy once enjoyed nearly universal popularity. “It was being used in every single Bay Area district,” said Deborah Jacobson, a special education attorney who brought the suit, a federal class action, against the Berkeley district seven years ago. 

    Special education attorney Deborah Jacobson, photographed at home on this month, brought up the federal class action lawsuit against the Berkeley school district in 2017.
    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight

    But the approach has fallen under fire amid a national reckoning over reading instruction, with a consensus growing that balanced literacy goes against what we know about how the brain works when learning to read.

    This understanding anchors the science of reading, an approach backed by decades of exhaustive scientific research that suggests most children need systematic lessons in phonics, or how to sound out words, as well as other fundamentals, such as building knowledge and vocabulary, to learn to read. Teaching foundational reading skills especially benefits English learners. Advocates say reading is a civil right and phonics helps bring social justice to Black students.

    More than half of states have passed laws requiring schools to align with research-based methods or favoring phonics. In September, Columbia University cut ties with the Reading and Writing Project that Calkins led for decades, citing the need to seek out new perspectives. Calkins herself has revised her curriculum to incorporate more explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness.

    A decade ago, California adopted a framework for K-12 literacy that encouraged districts to use evidence-based reading instruction, now commonly called the science of reading. But it wasn’t required, and the state didn’t push districts to adopt it. 

    Over the past two years, the state has taken steps toward a literacy plan but continues to leave to districts what curriculum and textbooks to use under a policy of local control. A new law passed in the summer will require that all children be screened for dyslexia and other reading disorders beginning in 2025. And by July 1, California will require teacher preparation programs to provide literacy training based on the science of reading.

    Still, advocates say these changes don’t go far enough. The California Early Literacy Coalition plans to sponsor legislation that would create a comprehensive state literacy plan, mandating training in the science of reading for all teachers, not just new ones, and requiring the use of textbooks rooted in the approach.

    In Berkeley, lawsuit cast a light

    When Berkeley Unified was sued in 2017, Riddle said she saw it as an opportunity. She had moved up through the ranks to become head of K-8 schools and led legal negotiations for the district for two years. “Nobody ever wants the district to be sued, but it cast a light on the needs of kids in reading, especially kids with dyslexia,” Riddle said.

    Not everyone saw it that way. It took five years to reach a settlement agreement, and the district’s core curriculum was a sticking point in negotiations. “The resistance was serious, but the lawsuit was serious, too,” recalled Riddle. During negotiations, the district implemented Fast Track Phonics to get phonics instruction into classrooms, but advocates criticized the decision as putting a Band-Aid on a broken system, leaving the core Calkins curriculum intact.

    Berkeley signed the settlement agreement in 2021, but due to the pandemic, didn’t start working on implementation until the following year, extending the three-year plan until 2025. Initially, Ellis, the court monitor, criticized the school district and its board for failing to embrace the settlement. And in February, Jacobson said the district had breached the settlement agreement by moving too slowly, but decided not to file a notice in court after district leaders promised action.

    In the last year and a half, the district has started taking steps toward the science of reading. 

    Elementary teachers did a book study of “Shifting the Balance,” an introduction to science of reading practices. The district implemented a universal screening system to flag students who might have dyslexia and started training literacy coaches to implement phonics-based intervention programs like Orton-Gillingham and Heggerty. The district also established a new department of curriculum and instruction, hired a districtwide literacy specialist, and began developing a multi-tiered system of support for struggling readers.

    The district’s new focus has made a huge difference for some teachers, even those with decades of experience.

    Angélica Pérez, a reading specialist at Thousand Oaks Elementary, said though she has known about phonics for years and even taught it, only recently has she received the systematic training she needed to implement it well with struggling readers.

    In my 26 years in education and 15 years in the classroom, I wasn’t so aware of the importance of phonemic awareness.

    Angélica Pérez, a reading specialist at Thousand Oaks Elementary in Berkeley.

    The changes have won over some of the district’s critics, including Jacobson. “There is a new sense of urgency with the new administration and a new level of commitment,” Jacobson said. “Every year the light bulb seems to go on, more and more.”

    Angélica Pérez’s reading room at Thousand Oaks Elementary School allows children to explore leisure reading. A longtime reading specialist, Pérez uses a phonics and phonemics curriculum to help struggling students.
    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight

    They have also earned the praise of the teachers union president. “There is a systematic plan to make sure our teachers are getting what they need so they can do their jobs best,” said Matt Meyer, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers.

    Cost to students of the lengthy legal fight

    For families whose children struggle with reading, Berkeley’s decades-long commitment to balanced literacy came at a price. Many students with dyslexia have either missed out on learning, or their parents have paid thousands of dollars in private tutoring to catch them up.

    “After a certain point, the research shows that it becomes unrecoverable,” said Eliza Noh, a Berkeley parent who has a child with dyslexia. “The early years for teaching people how to read are critical.”

    Levenson’s two children, Eva Levenson and Wen Dolphin, both have dyslexia and attended Berkeley schools 18 years apart. But Eva received private reading intervention, while Wen did not. The family says their experience shows the difference phonics-based intervention can make.

    Rebecca Levenson and her youngest daughter,Eva, talk in their West Berkeley home. Levenson’s two children, Eva and Wen, who is in his late 20s and lives in Colorado, have struggled with dyslexia throughout their academic careers.
    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight

    Dolphin dropped out of school at 15, while Eva, now a sophomore at Berkeley High, is taking the same challenging classes as her peers. She began writing for The Jacket, Berkeley High’s student newspaper, and in October, penned an article about the Calkins curriculum.

    “I know that my life trajectory could have been very different if I would have had the support that I needed in those really formative years,” Dolphin told a crowd at a Berkeley school board meeting last year.

    When Lindsay Nofelt’s son was diagnosed with dyslexia, she shelled out thousands of dollars on a phonics-based intensive reading intervention program. Her son’s reading ability improved quickly, but what took Nofelt longer to piece together was Berkeley’s role in her son’s story. 

    Even after listening to Emily Hanford’s podcast “Sold a Story,” which thrust Calkins’ curriculum into the spotlight, she didn’t connect the literacy debate to Berkeley schools.

    “I thought, if Emily Hanford is writing about this and sounds like it’s not serving the needs of the students, then there’s no way that Berkeley Unified school system would use such a discredited curriculum,” Nofelt said.

    Students relax at lunchtime at Willard Middle School in Berkeley in August 2022.
    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside/ CatchLight

    But over time, Nofelt realized her son wasn’t the only one in Berkeley struggling with reading. As she learned more about the science of reading and the class-action lawsuit, she realized that the kind of reading instruction Hanford was describing in her podcast was happening in Berkeley. “When I found out they were one and the same, all of the pieces fell into place,” she said.

    Two years ago, Nofelt formed Reading for Berkeley to educate parents about early literacy and give them resources to advocate for their children. It’s now a resource that Nofelt wishes she had when she was trying to help her son — digestible content designed to help families ask questions about their children’s literacy education and support their reading abilities.

    Today, students with dyslexia and their parents are watching Berkeley closely, their hope resting on the district’s commitment to the science of reading.

    At a recent school board meeting in January, Eva Levenson told the Berkeley school board directors and superintendent that she is still waiting to see a plan that addresses the failure of the district’s core curriculum.

    “I don’t understand what’s in the way of making a shift when, both in other states and locally, districts are able to help kids now. How is it possible we aren’t doing it in Berkeley right now?”





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  • UC moves to ban political statements on its websites by faculty and others

    UC moves to ban political statements on its websites by faculty and others


    Hundreds of UC Berkeley students walked out of class on Oct. 25, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. The students are among thousands who have walked out on campuses nationwide as fighting between Israel and Hamas continues in Gaza.

    Credit: Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris

    This story was updated to reflect the UC board’s decision to table a vote on the issue.

    University of California faculty and other staff could be banned from publishing political statements, including those stemming from the Israel-Hamas war, on university websites and other university channels under a policy brought to UC’s board of regents.

    The consideration of such a policy comes after some units, including at least two ethnic studies departments, posted statements on their websites last fall supporting Palestine and condemning Israel. 

    The proposal is causing an uproar among some faculty who say it would repress their academic freedom and question how it would be enforced.

    UC officials behind the idea say it is necessary to ensure that the opinions of certain individuals or groups of faculty aren’t mistaken for the opinions of UC as a whole.

    “When individual or group viewpoints or opinions on matters not directly related to the official business of the unit are posted on these administrative websites, it creates the potential that the statements and opinions will be mistaken as the position of the institution itself,” regent Jay Sures, who helped develop the proposal as chair of the regents’ compliance and audit committee, said during Wednesday’s regents meeting.

    The regents won’t vote on the policy until March at the earliest. They initially planned to take action this week but opted to table the vote until their next meeting, scheduled for March 19 through 21, after the item caused much confusion and debate when discussed Wednesday evening.

    The effort is the latest fallout from the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s military response in Gaza, which has triggered sharp responses from pro- and anti-Israel groups.

    The policy does not specifically mention any particular issue, but some faculty see it as an attempt to prevent them from discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Since the fall, the website for UC Santa Cruz’s critical race and ethnic studies department has displayed a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” The website for UC San Diego’s ethnic studies department includes several statements and commentaries. One statement says the ethnic studies community at UC San Diego supports Palestinian people and their “freedom from an apartheid system that seeks to dehumanize them in unconscionable ways.” 

    Sures last fall also sharply criticized a letter by the UC Ethnic Studies Council. In the letter, the council said official UC communications denouncing Hamas for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel distorted and misrepresented “the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and thereby contribute to the racist and dehumanizing erasure of Palestinian daily reality.” Sures wrote a public response to the council saying the letter “is rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.”

    One regent, Hadi Makarechian, acknowledged during Wednesday’s regents meeting that the regents were considering the issue because “some people were making some political statements” related to Palestine and Hamas.

    Christine Hong, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz, said during the public comment portion of the meeting that the regents are attempting to “repress academic freedom” and disallow “any critical study or discussion of Palestine.” 

    “Your emissary, regent Jay Sures, declared war on ethnic studies,” Hong added.

    Sures maintained Wednesday that the policy isn’t meant to impede free speech and that he believes there “are many avenues” for faculty to share their viewpoints.

    “I’m not so sure that it needs to go on the landing pages of departmental websites,” he said.

    The final language of the policy that the regents could vote on isn’t yet known. According to their agenda, regents were scheduled to vote Wednesday on a policy stating that “official channels of communication, including the main landing pages of websites, of schools, departments, centers, units, and other entities should not be used for purposes of publicly expressing the personal or collective opinions of unit members or of the entity.”

    That language was criticized for being too ambiguous, including by two key UC law professors who urged the regents to reject the proposal. The professors — Ty Alper of UC Berkeley and Brian Soucek of UC Davis — each previously served terms as chair of the UC Academic Senate’s university committee on academic freedom. As chairs, they helped develop a 2022 recommendation by the Senate that faculty departments should be allowed to issue opinionated statements. 

    In a letter to the regents, Alper and Soucek said the proposed policy “raises more questions than it settles.” Do official channels include a department’s social media pages, even though those aren’t UC-hosted websites? Do emails sent by a dean or department chair count as official channels? Are faculty departments violating the policy if they were to sign a public statement hosted on a website not operated by UC?

    Acknowledging that the language was indeed ambiguous, UC staff during the meeting amended it and presented two different options to regents. Under the first option, faculty departments would be banned from expressing opinions only on the “main landing pages” of university websites. The second option featured language that would extend the ban beyond the landing pages and to other websites, at the discretion of a university administrator.

    But those options also caused confusion and debate among regents and UC officials. 

    “Even if it’s not on the main landing page, if someone says, this is the official viewpoint of Department X on this political issue, I think you could interpret some of this language to say, we also don’t want people to do that,” Howard Gillman, the chancellor of UC Irvine, said Wednesday while addressing the regents.

    Some regents and officials also suggested that the policy include language that university departments should have designated opinion pages on their websites, and that any political statements or other opinions should be limited to existing on those pages.

    Sures agreed to work overnight with fellow regent Lark Park and UC’s general counsel, Charles Robinson, to further revise the policy and return Thursday with a new action item. On Thursday, however, the regents agreed to table the item until March following a motion by regent John Pérez.

    “Issues of First Amendment protection are crucial to the institution. I am supportive of the concept that we’re trying to get through here. After looking at the product of work that’s come forward, I don’t think we’ve got enough to act on in a meaningful way, in a way that’s defensible to the core mission of the university. I think we would benefit from more input,” Pérez said.

    By possibly banning faculty departments from making political statements, UC’s new policy could run counter to the 2022 Academic Senate recommendation, some faculty say. At that time, the Senate’s academic council and university committee on academic freedom agreed that “departments should not be precluded from issuing or endorsing statements in the name of the department,” noting that freedom of expression as well as academic freedom are “core tenets of the UC educational mission.” The Senate took up the issue after UCLA’s Asian American studies department published a statement expressing solidarity with Palestinians and denouncing Israel.

    In a social media statement Wednesday, the Berkeley Faculty Association said the idea to ban departments from making political statements was already considered and rejected by the Academic Senate in 2022. The faculty association also questioned how the new policy would be enforced and urged the regents to reject it.

    “Who gets to decide what is a political statement and who will be responsible for policing the websites and social media accounts of academic units? We urge the Regents not to approve a dangerously ambiguous policy which raises alarming questions about governance and academic freedom,” the faculty association wrote.





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  • Fresno City College professors continue to speak out against colleague

    Fresno City College professors continue to speak out against colleague


    Fresno City College on Dec. 5, 2023

    Credit: Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource

    This story has been corrected to say that 50% of senators must be present and 75% must vote to remove the president, according to the bylaws.

    The Fresno City College community continues to reel from an EdSource report revealing that Tom Boroujeni, a tenured communication arts instructor and president of the school’s academic senate, was found to have committed an “act of sexual violence” against a professor and colleague at nearby Fresno State in 2015. 

    The fallout was laid bare during Wednesday’s academic senate meeting when several professors challenged the body’s leadership, criticizing the executive board and demanding change, despite a plea by the acting president that attendants not use the public comment period to “prosecute this (Boroujeni) case or any other case.” 

    Wednesday’s meeting was the first academic senate meeting since Boroujeni was placed on paid administrative leave on Nov. 30, following the EdSource story and subsequent decision by professors to cancel classes. 

    Because of his administrative leave status, Boroujeni, through a request handled by Fresno City College President Robert Pimentel, asked if, and or how he could speak during Wednesday meeting. 

    He didn’t show up, but the possibility that he would be at the meeting galvanized many of his colleagues. His absence did not prevent discussions about him, his case and the conduct of the academic senate, which he led. 

    “You are our faculty leaders; we look to you for guidance in matters related to us,” communication arts instructor Kherstin Khan said at the meeting. “Your silence in the face of controversy has exacerbated the division of faculty and left many of the people that you represent feeling alienated and marginalized.” 

    As Boroujeni remains on leave, Jackie Williams, president-elect and now acting president, asked those who wished to speak during the meeting’s open forum to focus only on concerns about academic and professional matters pertaining to issues concerning faculty, curriculum and their work.  

    “We are here to work on the matters that are on the agenda,” Williams said.

    She told EdSource that she believes in confidentiality for victims, whom she supports, but doesn’t believe that anyone’s personnel matters should be discussed in a public forum. 

    “I have witnessed firsthand how the investigations of assault can be revictimizing and traumatizing, not just to the survivor of that incident but to other survivors and those that are close to them,” she said. “I firmly support, for that reason, matters being kept confidential and being handled by the appropriate legal and human resource experts unless a survivor chooses to share their story.” 

    However, she did not stop people from speaking out about Boroujeni or the Fresno State case. She declined to comment on their criticism of the executive board. 

    What does Fresno State case entail? 

    Boroujeni has taught at Fresno City College since 2015, the same year he began his academic career at Fresno State while still a graduate student. The alleged victim is also a professor and Boroujeni’s colleague at the city college. The State Center Community College District, parent agency to Fresno City College, learned of the sexual misconduct investigation when the alleged victim requested a no-contact order, which was granted in the spring semester of 2022.

    Fresno State opened the investigation based on the federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX, records show. The investigation determined that Boroujeni committed the sexual violence in 2015. At the time of the incident, Boroujeni was a part-time instructor at Fresno City College while finishing a master’s degree at Fresno State, records show.

    Fresno State couldn’t discipline him because he was a graduate student when the alleged violence occurred, Debbie Adishian-Astone, Fresno State’s vice president for administration, told EdSource. Boroujeni resigned from Fresno State in 2022 after officials said the act-of-sexual-violence report would be placed in his personnel file.

    The Fresno State case was not taken into account as Boroujeni was elected senate president at Fresno City College and achieved tenure in 2023, even after the community college district investigated the alleged victim’s request for a stay-away order and found that sexual violence occurred. 

    Fresno State released a redacted copy of the report to EdSource under the state’s Public Records Act, explaining, “Given that Mr. Boroujeni remains active in the educational community and is teaching at a local community college, there is strong public interest in knowing that a college instructor has been previously found to have committed an act of sexual violence at another university.” 

    Academic senate presidency 

    In May 2023, Boroujeni started a two-year term as Fresno City College’s academic senate president. In that role, Boroujeni works with the school’s administration in setting academic policy and hiring faculty. He assumed the academic senate presidency after a two-year term as president-elect — a rule that doesn’t seem to work, said Tiffany Sarkisian, Fresno City College’s program review coordinator and a communication arts instructor. 

    Sarkisian urged the executive board to create a task force to investigate the efficacy of its bylaws, which she said need to be updated by changing its nomination process, voting procedures and board duties. 

    Williams said the executive board has been reviewing its bylaws in light of the situation. 

    “We’re going through every line and addressing some things that we have found that were silent in the bylaws and came up because of this,” she said.

    The bylaws only address the resignation or removal of an officer, not what to do when an officer is on leave.  According to the bylaws, removing an officer requires a written petition detailing the rationale for the removal, with signatures from 25% of the academic senators; 50% of the senators must be present and 75% must vote to remove the president.

    Anthropology professor German Loffler submitted a petition in December, calling for Boroujeni’s removal, according to Williams. Loffler has since withdrawn the petition. 

    “We do not have an active petition; that’s one mechanism that would open the conversation,” Williams said. “We’re not aware of another mechanism, but if it’s appropriate to place it on the agenda as a discussion item, we can do that.” 

    Boroujeni’s case has divided Fresno City College community 

    Even though the community college district has placed Boroujeni on leave and launched an investigation, some faculty members expect more from the district, the college and the State Center Federation of Teachers, the union representing faculty. 

    For example, some professors in the district called for union leaders to be transparent about their knowledge of the sexual misconduct findings at Fresno State while others expected the union to take a position on the case.

    For instance, Liz Romero, an early childhood education instructor at Clovis Community College, told EdSource it was “disheartening” that the union, through its statement, said their responsibility was to “defend the contract” and “defend the faculty’s rights to due process.”

    There have been heated union discussions among a divided faculty. 

    On Dec. 4, the union censured Clovis Community College philosophy instructor Michael Stannard for his conduct during a discussion of the Boroujeni case at a Dec. 1 union meeting, according to union representative David Campos. The district also announced on Dec. 15 that it is investigating allegations of “inappropriate behavior” by many unnamed employees who allegedly made several female employees “feel unsafe” during union meetings. 

    Boroujeni requested to speak first during the public comment period on Wednesday and then be escorted off campus by police during a brief recess. The executive board declined the request, Williams said. 

    Boroujeni published a blog post on Medium focused on “reclaiming my narrative” on Jan. 10. The nearly 8,000-word post casts Boroujeni as the victim of sexual harassment at the hands of the alleged victim as well as racism and stereotyping because of his Middle Eastern background. 

    Some of his colleagues, including communication arts instructor Jerry Thurston, say they believe the alleged victim. 

    “When women share their experiences, I believe them,” Thurston said. 

    “I don’t gullibly swallow anything people say, but when women tell me that someone has behaved inappropriately toward them, explaining what happened, I believe that that thing happened to them. I believe my female colleagues when they tell me someone has mistreated them.” 

    EdSource reporter Thomas Peele contributed to this story.





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  • University of California won’t allow hiring of undocumented students

    University of California won’t allow hiring of undocumented students


    Immigrant students at UC and their allies rallied last spring in support of a proposal to allow the university to hire immigrant students who lack permission to be in the U.S.

    Michael Burke/EdSource

    This story has been updated with additional quotes.

    The University of California will not allow the hiring of undocumented students for jobs on its campuses, disappointing students who pushed for the right to be employed without legal status. 

    Allowing those students to work campus jobs would have been “the right thing to do” but presented too many legal risks and thus was “not viable,” said Michael Drake, the system’s president, while addressing UC’s board of regents Thursday.

    Drake cited several possible legal ramifications. He said the university could be “subject to civil fines, criminal penalties, or debarment from federal contracting,” while human resources staff could face prosecution if they “knowingly participate in hiring practices deemed impermissible under federal law.” He also suggested that undocumented students and their families could face prosecution or even deportation. 

    “I know that many in our community will be disappointed that we are unable to take immediate action. As an individual, I would like nothing more than to do so right here, right now, because it is the right thing to do,” he added. “However, we have a fiduciary responsibility to consider all possible ramifications of our actions.”

    The regents voted to suspend consideration of the policy for one year. Some regents against the motion said it could be even more difficult to implement the policy a year from now, alluding to the possibility that former President Donald Trump could be back in office.

    In not moving forward with the proposal, the regents “let us down today,” said Jeffry Umaña Muñoz, a UCLA undergraduate student and one of the undocumented students who organized the movement advocating for the proposal. There are more than 4,000 undocumented students across UC’s 10 campuses.

    “Our classmates can apply for any job on campus, helping them not only get by financially on a daily basis but also advancing their careers, while we remain forced to rely on incredibly limited resources,” he added in a statement. “I’m deeply disappointed that the UC Regents and President Drake shirked their duties to the students they are supposed to protect and support. We as UC students deserve so much more from our university leadership.”

    Several regents voted against the measure to suspend considering the policy: Keith Ellis, Jose Hernandez, John Pérez, Gregory Sarris, student regent Merhawi Tesfai and Tony Thurmond. Thurmond is an ex-officio member of the regents in his role as the state’s superintendent of public instruction. Ellis, an alumni regent, is also an ex-officio member.

    A coalition of undocumented students and legal scholars started urging UC more than a year ago to allow the hiring of undocumented students. They argued that UC is permitted to do so, saying the university as a state entity is exempt from a 1986 federal statute banning the hiring of immigrants without legal status.

    UC officials formally started studying the issue last spring. At that time, Pérez said it was the board’s intention to ultimately allow the hiring of undocumented students.

    Pérez said Thursday that he couldn’t “think of a moment where I’ve been more disappointed sitting around this board.” Pérez was appointed as a regent in 2014 and served a one-year term as chair of the board beginning in 2019.

    “We have gotten so focused on the question of what the law clearly says today, that we’re losing sight of the moral imperative of what the law should be interpreted as being,” he said. “Some of us may discount the analysis by some of our greatest legal scholars and suggest that it is just an academic exercise on what is legally permissible. But if we don’t challenge, if we don’t push, we won’t know.”

    The regents’ decision Thursday comes after Politico reported Wednesday that officials in President Joe Biden’s administration privately opposed the proposal and warned UC of possible legal ramifications, even threatening that the administration could sue. 

    In response to a question from EdSource seeking confirmation of the Politico report, a UC spokesperson said the university “regularly engages with local, state, and federal partners on numerous issues concerning public education and for maintaining compliance with existing federal law.” The spokesperson added, though, that UC “will not characterize the nature of those discussions.”





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