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Community college students can take classes in their native language under a new law

Tina Chen, who is taking computer science courses taught in Mandarin at East Los Angeles College, speaks at a recent press conference for Assembly Bill 1096.

Courtesy of Ludwig Rodriguez

Hoping to entice more non-English speakers to enroll in community college, California is making it easier for those students to take courses in their native language.

Currently, students in California can take community college classes taught in languages other than English only if they simultaneously enroll in English as a Second Language courses.

That’s about to change, thanks to Assembly Bill 1096, which was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and is set to take effect Jan. 1. The law will allow community colleges to offer courses in languages other than English without requiring students to enroll in ESL.

Community college officials think the bill could be a game-changer for potential students who might otherwise have been discouraged from enrolling or staying in college because of the ESL requirement. Some students have called that requirement a burden because of the extra time commitment.

“We hope that this will create a pipeline for individuals to engage in community college,” said Gabriel Buelna, a member of the Los Angeles Community College District’s board of trustees and supporter of the bill.

“In a world of lower enrollment, do you want more Californians at your community college? Or do you not want more Californians at your community college?” he said, referring to enrollment declines that community colleges suffered during the pandemic.

There’s already some evidence that the new landscape will make a difference. The Los Angeles college district launched a pilot program this year offering courses in non-English languages and gave students the ability to opt out of enrolling in ESL. The program offered 60 classes this spring in four languages — Spanish, Mandarin, Russian and Korean. More than 1,000 students enrolled, almost half of them first-time community college students.

This fall, the district is expanding the program to 86 classes, including child development, business and computer literacy.

Before the pilot launched, the district surveyed students and found that 25% cited English proficiency as a barrier to their educational goals.

“We’ve uncovered that there’s this hidden group of individuals that have missed out on higher education opportunities,” said Nicole Albo-Lopez, the district’s vice chancellor for educational programs and institutional effectiveness.

It’s unclear how many colleges across the state will begin offering more classes in non-English languages when the law goes into effect next year. But several community college districts endorsed the bill, including Foothill-De Anza, Long Beach and San Diego. And in a state where 44% of households speak a primary language other than English, officials expect there will be interest among prospective students across California.

In the Los Angeles pilot, almost all the courses offered were in noncredit classes focused on job training, including in automotive repair, child care and health care services. The new law, however, will apply to both noncredit and credit courses.

For Tina Chen, taking computer science classes at East Los Angeles College in her native language of Mandarin has made a challenging subject more accessible.

Chen’s goal is to eventually transfer to UCLA and enter into a career in artificial intelligence, but computers are new for her, and the course material can be challenging. Being able to learn in her native language, though, has provided a solid foundation.

“It makes it easier. I can understand my teacher who speaks to me and my classmates,” she said.

Carmen Ramirez has also taken advantage of the classes offered at East LA College and enrolled in basic skills courses this year that are taught in Spanish.

Ramirez is from Guadalajara, Mexico, where she previously took college courses while pursuing a degree in psychology. She didn’t finish that degree because of economic reasons, she said, and later moved to Los Angeles.

Taking classes in Spanish “is a great way to be able to come back and renew my studies,” she said through a translator. “It’s more comfortable and lets me learn better.” Ramirez added that native language courses may also be more welcoming to undocumented students and make it more likely that they enroll.

After she’s completed her basic skills courses, Ramirez wants to start taking classes toward a credential or certification. She’s not sure yet what career she wants to pursue, but knows she wants to enter a field that allows her to help other people.

Even though the law won’t require it, Ramirez still plans to eventually take ESL courses because she sees learning English as an important skill that will benefit her career. Research backs up that premise: A 2022 report by the Public Policy Institute noted a link between English proficiency and access to high-wage jobs.

Buelna, the Los Angeles trustee, said he expects many students to follow a path similar to Ramirez’s and enroll in ESL even though they won’t be forced to do so.

“I think this law will actually increase English acquisition,” he said. “Once you get folks in an institution, and you get that curiosity going, they’re going to say, ‘Well, I do need to learn English.’”

Buelna added that the most important factor is that more students get an education and develop new skills — regardless of whether they’re learning English.

“Why does it matter so much that someone learn about caring for the elderly or phlebotomy in a specific language?” he said. “Do you want them to have the skill or not? What’s more important?”

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09/07/2025
City Council removes student newspaper from city property, but they won’t stop us

California State University, Fullerton

Credit: CSU Fullerton/Flickr

I have been a part of the Daily Titan staff since I was a freshman, and every week, we distribute a new print edition to City Hall, the public library and the police department.

The Fullerton City Council just made that illegal.

I’m in my second semester as editor-in-chief of the Daily Titan, Cal State Fullerton’s editorially independent student newspaper. I previously served on the paper’s editorial staff for two years.

On May 6, the Fullerton City Council voted 3-2 to reaffirm a policy that would ban nongovernmental publications from distribution on city property.

The council also voted to add a “community newspaper rack” to the library — a space that the Daily Titan can share with the community newspaper Fullerton Observer and any other entity that wishes to publish.

The best justification that City Council members provided for their decision-making was the potential for litigation from a local blog that had asked if it could distribute its papers on city property.

As editor-in-chief, I can’t help but interpret this as an attack on press freedom in Fullerton.

The Daily Titan regularly covers important items related to the city of Fullerton in addition to our campus coverage. In the past year, we’ve reported on a City Council candidate’s arrest, a parklet program that the city decided to eliminate despite public outcry, and the nearly $10 million deficit the city is staring down — to name a few.

I run a student paper, but my staff and I recognize the growing trend of news deserts — geographic areas with limited or no access to reliable, diverse and independent news.

Since Fullerton isn’t regularly covered by news outlets that meet that criteria, the Daily Titan steps up to help residents be informed. A growing number of college and high school newspapers across the country are doing the same thing.

And despite this setback with City Hall, we won’t stop doing our job.

The reporting of student journalists is now impacting communities like the local dailies of yesteryear, according to an article published in Poynter in April.

The article details how universities now build their curriculum around the notion that student journalism is more impactful than ever. Student journalists are stepping up and covering cities like paid reporters once did.

And while the Daily Titan doesn’t operate as a newswire service like the other university publications detailed in the article, we’re able to serve many of the same purposes.

The Daily Titan holds Fullerton city leaders accountable for their actions. Those same city leaders are making decisions as if we don’t matter.

At the April 1 council meeting, when the newspaper ban was first discussed, multiple City Council members used the term “free speech area” to describe where a proposed community newspaper rack would be in the library.

Their colloquial terminology for the proposed newspaper rack is laughable.

The mere notion that city property should have free speech restricted to a certain area is anti-democratic, and the lack of clear and just leadership from council members is disappointing. If we don’t like your policies, should we only sit at a certain table to discuss them?

Multiple City Council members — one who is also a professor at Cal State Fullerton — claim to support student journalism after the policy was enacted.

From my perspective, no, they don’t.

Supporting student journalism doesn’t mean breaking the status quo for an unclear reason.

Supporting student journalism doesn’t mean limiting the reach of important, unbiased news coverage.

Many student journalists first joined the Daily Titan to learn how to hold community leaders accountable through reporting and writing. The publication provides a platform for us to learn in a way we can’t in a classroom.

While we’re still doing that — and don’t plan to stop anytime soon — the Fullerton City Council succeeded in teaching us another lesson, a harsher one.

A lesson in how governments can work to suppress diverse voices.

A lesson in how student journalists can fall victim to petty City Council conflicts.

And a lesson that, given the Trump administration’s disdain for the press, is all too familiar.

Take the Associated Press (AP) for example: The wire service had to go to court to reinstate its ability to be admitted to White House press conferences after President Donald Trump didn’t like how AP refused to change a stylebook entry for the Gulf of Mexico.

As journalists, we can continue to fight for our right to exist. It’s a jarring reality that litigation might be the most effective way to accomplish that.

What citizens can do is pay attention to the City Council and think critically about its actions. And remember what’s happened in the past four years the next time they vote.

Remember that journalism needs to be protected and uplifted to support a free and fair democracy.

Not pushed to the back of the library.

•••

Emily Wilson is a journalism student at California State University, Fullerton, editor-in-chief of the university paper, the Daily Titan, and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

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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09/07/2025
Public universities should embrace students with intellectual disabilities — now
San José State University

Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

On Oct. 10, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 447, which authorizes public higher education in California to provide educationally equitable environments that give each Californian, regardless of age, economic circumstance or certain specified characteristics, including mental disability, a reasonable opportunity to develop fully their potential, thereby opening the gates to inclusive higher education settings.

In an increasingly interconnected world, diversity cannot remain a mere buzzword; it is a fundamental prerequisite for progress. Our society’s vibrancy is shaped by the myriad of experiences and backgrounds that its citizens contribute. While the inclusion of students with disabilities in K-12 education has been widely discussed (Agran et al., 2020) and legally mandated (IDEA) to some extent, extending this discussion to higher education is imperative. We need to adopt a more inclusive vision of higher education by wholeheartedly welcoming students with intellectual disabilities into four-year colleges.

Inclusion is both a moral imperative and a powerful catalyst for progress. All individuals deserve the opportunity to access higher education, regardless of their abilities. This is not only about fairness; it is about recognizing the untapped potential of those who have been absent in higher education spaces for too long. When the barriers to educational opportunities are removed, students with intellectual and developmental disabilities can share their creativity, passion and unique perspectives, enriching the entire academic community.

Inclusive education is a win-win situation. Including students with intellectual and developmental disabilities not only transforms their lives, but also the lives of everyone around them. These students bring fresh perspectives, challenge preconceived stereotypes and promote a culture of inclusivity, as depicted powerfully in the film “Rethinking College.” Inclusive education is not about charity; it’s about mutual benefit.

Furthermore, the benefits of inclusive higher education ripple far beyond the campus borders. Graduates with intellectual disabilities stand a greater chance of securing meaningful employment and embracing independent lives, thus alleviating the strain on social support systems. Inclusivity can become the cornerstone for reinforcing our economy and creating a more prosperous society.

Critics may argue that inclusive education is costly and challenging to implement, but the benefits far outweigh the investment. True, universities have to make accommodations for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities so that they receive the support they need to succeed. However, this investment has multiple payoffs in promoting independence for students with disabilities, enriching educational experiences for all students on the campus, and in shaping compassionate, understanding and open-minded graduates who will become tomorrow’s leaders.

Inclusive higher education is not uncharted territory. Over 300 colleges and universities across United States (Pacer) have already taken significant steps in this direction. They have demonstrated that with the right support and a commitment to diversity, students with intellectual or developmental disabilities can perform very well. In fact, according to the Think College Reports for 2020–2021, in federally funded grants supporting these inclusive efforts, 31% of the students were successfully placed in paid employment. Remarkably, of these employed students, 50% had never previously held a paid job before entering the program. However, these endeavors have not been without challenges, and the experiences of these universities can offer valuable insights into the essential elements required for successful inclusion. For example, at San Jose State University, where I am involved in an inclusive college program (SPARTANS OCLS), a survey conducted by researcher Jihyun Lee showed that all faculty members who completed the survey were open to having students with intellectual disabilities in their classes. However, over half of them expressed uncertainty regarding their preparedness to meet the needs of students with intellectual or developmental disabilities. Additionally, we’ve encountered difficulties in recruiting peer mentors for our participants and securing placements in classes aligned with their expressed interests.

Learning from the experiences of the existing program, successful inclusion requires at the minimum:
- Access to resources to create accessible campus facilities, develop specialized academic programs, and provide support service.
- Training for faculty and staff to understand better the needs and challenges of students with intellectual disabilities.
- Peer mentorship programs to facilitate the integration of students with intellectual disabilities into the campus community.
- Successful collaboration with universities, parent organizations and government agencies.
- On-campus internships for students to gain practical experience, develop vital work and social skills and prepare for their future careers.
It is high time that we recognize the immense potential within every individual and acknowledge that diversity enriches our lives, communities and institutions of higher learning. Inclusive four-year colleges are not just a vision; they are a necessity. Now is the time to take this bold step toward progress, embrace diversity and remove the barriers for students with intellectual disabilities to get into higher education.

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Sudha Krishnan is an assistant professor at San Jose State University, Department of Special Education, Lurie College of Education and a Public Voice Fellow with the OpEd Project.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
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09/07/2025
Parents have a powerful role in improving literacy education

Two students in a combined second- and third-grade class read together.

Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

After Emily Hanford’s “Sold a Story” podcast sent shockwaves through American public education by revealing how countless schools had been duped into teaching reading in a way that doesn’t actually work, Gov. Gavin Newsom was among those who stepped in.

With the encouragement of State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, he proposed a new $1 million “literacy road map” for school districts.

But despite its good intentions, the voluntary road map lacks teeth, since the state “imposes no requirements on districts regarding how to teach reading.” In other words, we have yet to see whether this much-talked-about national “reckoning” on reading will translate into meaningful changes in local policies and classroom practices in California.

Meanwhile, the most recent statewide test scores show that our literacy crisis persists: Less than half of fourth and eighth graders are proficient in reading. These results have not moved much in the past decade. The Los Angeles Times editorial board recently posed a powerful question for state education leaders: “We know how to turn students into better readers. Why doesn’t California do it?”

This month Families in Schools launched “Read LA! Literacy and Justice for All,” a campaign calling on California’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, to fully implement what’s known as the “science of reading” — a vast body of evidence-based research that shows us how kids actually learn to read and what effective literacy instruction requires. But education leaders and teachers are not the only ones responsible for ensuring every child learns to read.

Parents have a critical and multifaceted role to play.

Unfortunately, many parents are unclear about their children’s literacy development. One poll found that 92% of parents wrongly think their children are academically on track in reading (as well as math). For a forthcoming report on the California literacy crisis, we commissioned a poll (full results will be published soon) that found most parents have no idea what curriculum their child’s school uses. That poll also revealed that 1 in 3 parents are completely unfamiliar with the science of reading.

In our research, we also spoke at length with dozens of parents. We encountered a wide range of perspectives and experiences concerning their role in helping their children become literate.

Some parents don’t realize that literacy starts even before their children are old enough to hold a book. They aren’t aware of the abundance of research showing that by speaking to their infants, parents help them learn words and develop the neural patterns necessary for language comprehension. As their children grow, the research says, parents should engage in nurturing talk and interaction to help build their babies’ brains, which sets the foundation for all learning.

Of course, many parents we spoke with knew they had a crucial role to play in their children’s literacy and relished it. “Her face always lit up with excitement every time we read together, and she always had the book picked out for us, so I know she loved it as much as I did,” Sylvia Lopez told us, describing the countless hours she spent reading with her daughter.

However, economic and time constraints make it difficult for some parents to be as involved as they would like. “As a full-time working single mom, finding time to read with my son was sometimes a challenge,” Mary Lee said. When she was busy juggling work, dinner and other responsibilities, she got creative: “We often turned to rhyming stories that involved singing to make reading more enjoyable. This not only made reading fun but also boosted his recall abilities over time.”

Some confessed they didn’t know how best to help their children with literacy development — an issue that is perhaps more acute among parents for whom English is a second language.

“I have worked a lot on self-healing and personal development so I could provide better support to my son’s development, particularly in the context of literacy, which was a difficult process,” Hilda Avila told us. She sought help from a program in Los Angeles that supports bilingual parents and says it helped her “learn many techniques for supporting my son’s reading proficiency.”

While parents should do all they can to support their children at home, they also can’t ignore what’s happening at school or what their children’s reading scores tell them. When a child is floundering, parents often need to advocate.

Watching her child struggle with reading comprehension, Sonia Gonzalez was frustrated. “I thought that schools were experts at knowing how all students learn to read!” she told us. But Gonzales persisted, seeking out different programs at the school and monitoring the results. “Unfortunately, it took many years and attempts to figure out which reading programs were helpful to my child,” she said.

In the fight to ensure literacy for all kids, which many of us consider among the greatest civil rights efforts of our time, perhaps parents’ greatest asset is their collective strength. By coming together to demand that policymakers and educators make literacy instruction a top priority and adopt bold policy and practice changes that align to the science of reading, parents can help end California’s literacy crisis once and for all.

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Yolie Flores is the CEO of Families in Schools, a nonprofit organization that works with low-income, immigrant, and communities of color to ensure families/caregivers can effectively advocate for their children’s education.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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09/07/2025
A year after Alberto Carvalho vows to curb Covid learning loss, LAUSD struggles to recover

LAUSD Superintendent Albert Carvalho at the Aug. 30, 2022 school board meeting.

Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

Last fall, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he would recover Covid-19 pandemic learning loss in two years.

One year later — and half way to that goal post — the 2023 California Smarter Balanced test scores revealed a small improvement in math scores, a minimal decline in English language arts scores and poor science scores in comparison to the previous year — and is still about 3 percentage points away from the pre-Covid-19 numbers, where roughly 44% of students met English language arts standards and about 33% met math standards in the 2018-2019 academic year, according to the CAASPP dashboard.

With its scores remaining largely stagnant, Jia Wang, a professor at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, said getting scores back to 2018-19 levels is a “very ambitious goal” — but not out of the question.

The district’s ability to make up the lost ground, she said, depends on how well it supports struggling students.

But more than a year after Carvalho’s lofty promise to the district, many teachers and parents remain skeptical, and say the diagnostic tools and expanded interventions the district relies on to boost academic achievement are poorly implemented.

LAUSD’s test scores

Carvalho said he believes LAUSD’s Smarter Balanced test scores across subject areas accurately reflect where the district’s students are academically — but he remains confident that the district will meet its goals and fully recover on time.

This year, LAUSD saw a 2.01% increase in the rate of LAUSD students who met or exceeded standards in mathematics. Overall, 30.5% of students either met or exceeded the standards, while 69.5% failed to do so.

“Math was our Achilles’ heel. That’s why we went really strongly into math, and results are compelling. But math is a subject area that requires foundational skills that build upon each other, right? So you don’t transition to … multiplication, division of fractions until you master addition, subtraction, and you really understand numerator and denominator,” Carvalho said in an Oct. 25 interview with EdSource.

“If you don’t master that, you cannot advance. So, there are a lot of students who are stuck in a loop. They lack certain basic concepts.”

The district’s English language arts scores, however, decreased; 41% of students either met or exceeded state requirements in the subject — marking a 0.53 percentage point across-the-board drop from the previous year.

Carvalho described Los Angeles Unified’s ELA scores as a “mixed bag,” with some elementary grades “moving in the right direction” and other upper elementary and middle school grades in need of improvement.

Middle school grades had some of the district’s lowest English scores, with 38.62% meeting or exceeding standards in sixth grade and 38.9% of students either meeting or exceeding standards in eighth grade.

Of the core subject areas, LAUSD students struggled the most in science — with only 22% of students either meeting or exceeding state standards. The state’s average, in comparison, was about 30%.

Because the district has focused on recovering learning losses in English and math, Carvalho said, subjects such as science and social studies have fallen by the wayside and emphasized a need for that to change.

“Science often becomes a stepchild. It cannot be,” Carvalho said. “There are four major core content subject areas, and science and social science should not be on the back burner.”

These scores across subject areas can help illustrate the district’s progress in relationship to previous years and the state as a whole, Wang said.

But she said they also oversimplify students’ performance, which is “compounded by race and ethnicity, by the language proficiency, by the disability, by your school environment, school resources, you know … whether the students are taught by certified teachers or not, how many years of experience.”

Pressure to move students forward regardless of academic performance

Another reason some remain skeptical about Carvalho’s goals is the practice of promoting students to the next grade level even when they have not met standards in core disciplines.

Raquel Diaz wanted her now 13-year-old daughter Hailey — an English learner with dyslexia — to be held back and repeat fourth grade because she was struggling.

“It doesn’t matter if you can’t understand everything right now. Your goal should always be: I can, and yes I can achieve it,” Diaz said she tells her daughter, according to an interview with EdSource that was translated into English. “Even if you are slower like a turtle, it does not matter. We will achieve it.”

Diaz said the school refused to hold Hailey back, and now she is a seventh grader who cannot read.

“We have to fight for our children and make (the schools) listen to us, so we can move forward,” Diaz said. “I am a single mother … and sometimes I get tired. I get frustrated. But I say ‘Oh, God, give me strength.’ Come on, I have to do it for them.”

Hailey has plenty of company among students with disabilities and English learners.

In the 2022-23 academic year, students with disabilities had some of the lowest standardized test scores in LAUSD — with about 12% meeting or exceeding ELA standards and only 8% meeting or exceeding math standards.

English learners also had disproportionately low scores in all areas, with about 4% meeting or exceeding the state’s English standards and almost 7% meeting the standards in math.

Even in cases where students are not meeting state standards, teachers say they feel pressure to promote them to the next grade level.

Carvalho said the trend of moving unprepared students up a grade is an “uncomfortable truth” and represents a “disconnect between what students can do versus what is taught to them.”

An LAUSD teacher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation told EdSource that in April 2021, her school’s principal had notified the teachers that “no student can be retained.”

“There is a lot of pressure … even more so as secondary teachers, to not give D’s and F’s … even if the student is doing no work,” the teacher said.

“The students’ needs aren’t being met, and they’re really going to struggle,” adding that many will drop out. “A lot of kids, especially older kids, are not coming to school because they’re struggling so much, and it’s so negative. … It just becomes worse and worse.”

Challenges in the classroom

Part of Carvalho’s confidence in LAUSD’s ability to recover Covid learning losses is the 1,000 literacy interventionists hired to work with smaller groups of students on their specific needs as well as the district’s implementation of iReady, an online tool that teachers can use for diagnostic assessments and learning exercises.

Wang, the UCLA professor, said that while there is no perfect metric for students’ academic performance, learning support funneled into classrooms is just as important as student output.

“Instead of just saying ‘here’s what the student produced,’ I also want to see information about what is being put into the classroom,” Wang said. “What kind of supports are being given to students (to) ensure they are given the opportunity to learn?”

Some teachers are claiming that the rollout of LAUSD’s intervention programs, where struggling students are pulled aside for additional support, has been challenging, starting with the diagnostic tool used to determine who is placed into intervention programs.

Teachers who run the district’s intervention programs are supposed to rely on iReady to determine students’ levels of proficiency in reading and math and use the results to decide who needs additional support.

That diagnostic tool is available between August and October, according to a district spokesperson.

“Students continue to enroll throughout the first few weeks of school, and the window provides flexibility to schools,” the spokesperson said. “Schools were guided and supported to provide the best time to administer the assessment based on school needs. We aimed to ensure that teachers had ample time, support and training to successfully implement this assessment.”

That deadline, however, was too late, according to teachers, who stressed that the testing window takes up more than a month, causing interventions to start too late in the school year.

Once teachers determine who needs the extra help, elementary instructors carve out a schedule for different groups to be pulled out — a task some say has been challenging, given large blocks of “protected time.”

“Trying to make a schedule at a school site is very difficult because there’s so many other things going on on campus, and so it really ended up taking students in the same class together. But that doesn’t mean … those are students who should be together based on their needs,” the teacher said.

In middle school, students are pulled aside for an intervention tutorial that takes the place of an elective, a district math teacher and interventionist who also wished to remain anonymous told EdSource.

“I don’t want them to hate math because they have math twice,” the teacher said. “I don’t give homework. I don’t give tests. … I tell them this class is to help your grade in the other classes, to get you better at math.”

During these tutorial sessions, the teacher uses iReady and other techniques that can also give students practice problems targeted at their individual levels.

iReady, according to an LAUSD spokesperson, has a participation rate above 95%, and technical difficulties have been “minimal to nonexistent.”

But the teacher said the tool is sometimes challenging because she can’t see the personalized programming created for each of her students and the problems they are assigned.

With other online tools, she can go through the problems herself, “pretending I’m them to see if it’s doable, and to see where spots might come up that might be difficult for them,” the teacher said. But with iReady, she “can’t find a way to figure out how I can do that. And that makes it difficult for me to know what they’re getting so I can support them.”

While some teachers remain optimistic about LAUSD’s initiatives to boost achievement, several said they would like to see more support from higher up.

“It just seems like … what we do is considered a very low priority on a school campus,” the elementary teacher said. “But the expectations on us are very high. And I kind of just feel like we’re being … set up to fail.”

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09/07/2025
Districts groan as state board sets in motion Newsom’s big changes to funding formula

Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

In pursuit of narrowing cavernous gaps in student achievement, Gov. Gavin Newsom this year made changes to the Local Control Funding Formula, the state’s school funding law, that are among the most far-reaching since the law’s adoption a decade ago. School districts are bracing for the extra paperwork and demands.

Newsom’s directive requires that starting in 2024-25, districts and charter schools spell out how they will address poor performance and target funding for improvements in every school where one or more of the state’s 13 student groups rank red — the lowest of five performance bands on the California School Dashboard. Until now, state law required only improvement efforts for districts as a whole.

The revision was made in the language of the governor’s proposed state budget in January. It was discussed in legislative budget subcommittees as one of many items in the education budget but didn’t receive a separate and detailed review.

Last week, the State Board of Education implemented the changes with regulations on what school districts must do to raise the achievement of the schools’ lowest-performing students. They include setting specific goals, committing to actions and spending to achieve them, and a new requirement — determining how to measure if those strategies are effective by the end of three years and what to do if they aren’t.

Before they voted, board members heard repeated warnings from dozens of superintendents and school district administrators that piling on more extensive documentation would make districts’ three-year strategic plans, called the Local Control and Accountability Plans, unbearably long and unreadable.

“In smaller school districts, where time and resources are already significantly limited, the current requirements of the LCAP add an undue burden,” Helio Brasil, superintendent of Keys Union School District, a two-school district in Stanislaus County, wrote to the board.

“In my experience, every addition of a new table or box or check box or prompt to the LCAP makes it less and less useful as the tool to promote equity-focused, locally informed strategic resource allocation,” Joshua Schultz, deputy superintendent of the Napa County Office of Education, testified. “Already, practitioners in the field will tell you that the LCAP document is not useful for informing and engaging educational partners because of its length and complexity.”

Equity multiplier schools

Included in the revisions is a new category of “equity multiplier” schools serving many of the state’s most vulnerable students. Among the factors for their selection are the proportions of students from low-income families and parents lacking a high school diploma, and school stability — the rate of student transience. Many will likely be small alternative high schools serving students who have been expelled, bullied and struggled at standard high schools or are at risk of dropping out.

The idea was initially proposed by Black educators through a bill authored by Assemblymember Akilah Weber, D-San Diego, to dedicate $300 million to improve the achievement of Black students as the lowest-scoring student group on the dashboard. Newsom agreed to the new level of funding, but, concerned about violating Proposition 209, the 1996 voter initiative that bans affirmative action in public schools, he broadened the idea. The money will require districts to address and fund the specific needs of any lowest-performing student group on any dashboard indicator — whether math scores or absenteeism and graduation rates — and create overall goals for a school. Weber and the California Association of African American School Administrators endorsed the final plan.

The schools have yet to be designated, but the California Department of Education is projecting there could be 1,000 schools. Many will likely have student groups performing in the red and will have to address them like other schools. But equity multiplier schools additionally will be eligible for technical help from designated county offices of education and their share of the extra $300 million, based on student enrollment.

Intense focus on school spending

While not providing explicit funding for each student group, districts are held accountable for their performance. Student groups are determined by race and ethnicity, family income, students learning English, students with disabilities, and foster and homeless youth. Next month, the California Department of Education will release the 2023 dashboard, with color ratings for the first time since Covid interrupted testing in March 2020.

The statutory revisions will mark a major shift in attention and accountability for the billions of dollars in extra “supplemental” and “concentration” money that the funding formula provides to districts annually based on the enrollment numbers of English learners and low-income, homeless and foster students.

The state already reports in the dashboard every school’s test scores and other indicators of student performance. Some districts funnel supplemental and concentration dollars directly to high-needs schools, as Los Angeles Unified does through its Student Needs and Equity Index. But the state steers funding formula dollars only to districts, which in turn determine how the funds are spent: which schools get tutors, extra counselors, teacher training or additional aides. Districts determine whether supplemental and concentration dollars are given to schools or through the central office. Districts are not required to track supplemental and concentration funding by school.

Stepped up accountability

The revisions indicate Newsom agrees that either not enough funding reached the schools where high-needs students attended or funds were spent ineffectively.

“The experience of the past decade is that we haven’t seen districts consistently identify schools with specific needs and take actions tailored to those needs,” said Brooks Allen, an adviser to Newsom and executive director of the State Board of Education.

There has been overall progress in raising graduation rates and cutting suspension rates statewide. But the vast differences in proficiency rates on state test scores between Black (17% in math in 2023), white (48.2% in math) and Asian students (70% in math) have not narrowed, and absenteeism rates remain disproportionately high among Black and Hispanic students.

“Newsom is saying we should move faster and stronger to close gaps in outcomes,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney for Public Advocates, a public interest law firm, one of the advocacy groups that called for the changes that Newsom adopted.

The latest iteration of the LCAP template is at least the sixth in the past nine years. The state board designed the LCAP both as a strategic plan for district improvement and as an accountability tool to verify that districts are directing the $13 billion in supplemental and concentration funding to students for whom it was intended.

Over time, the goals of accessibility and transparency have worked at cross-purposes. A previous iteration, for example, eliminated a potentially huge spending loophole, which the California State Auditor and Public Advocates identified, allowing districts to dump unspent supplemental and concentration dollars into their next year’s general fund to spend for any purpose on all students. Fixing it required adding yet another section to the LCAP accounting for the unspent money from year to year.

A challenge to follow the money

The Legislature hasn’t dedicated funding for research or evaluations to determine whether the funding formula was working. Consistent with his view that legislators should not meddle with local control, former Gov. Jerry Brown, the funding formula’s architect, made it difficult to compare districts’ spending from the funding formula and fought proposals to standardize spending through accounting codes.

Despite the obstacles of limited data, researchers have persisted and found evidence for optimism and skepticism. In separate research studies, both UC Berkeley labor economist Rucker Johnson and Public Policy of Institute of California research fellow Julien Lafortune concluded that the funding formula succeeded in creating a much more equitable finance system and worked as designed for those districts getting the most extra money — those in which low-income students and English learners account for at least 95% of enrollment. Johnson calculated that a $1,000 increase in per-student funding, sustained for three consecutive years in the highest-poverty districts, produced significant increases in math and reading scores.

But Lafortune, in an analysis he co-authored this year, also found that 60% of districts do not report spending on high-need students at or above the level of supplemental and concentration funding they receive. His 2021 research found that statewide only about 55% of supplemental and concentration dollars reached school sites whose students generated the funding, although some of the remaining money could have funded districtwide activities benefiting those schools.

Thus, there have been increasing calls from advocates for low-income students for more fine-grained reporting on spending.

“We don’t report in a standardized way how much we spent at a school site. Getting that would go a long way to build trust that districts are doing what the policy intended,” said Rob Manwaring, senior policy and fiscal adviser for Children Now.

Despite efforts by California Department of Education staff to eliminate redundancies, combine goals for multiple equity multiplier schools, and convert spending listings into data tables, the latest version will undoubtedly lengthen LCAPs that already are often several hundred pages for medium and large school districts, and will take extra labor to complete.

The LCAP instructions will increase from 45 to 57 pages. Districts will have to engage parents, students, and teachers in every equity multiplier school and document how the engagement shaped goals and actions. Districts will add dozens to hundreds of entries for schools with student groups in the red.

“No one wants to fill out paperwork for the sake of it,” said Allen. “But if the result leads districts to conduct further needs and data analyses, and not a compliance exercise, the result could lead to positive change and better support for kids who need it most.”

Representatives of advocacy groups who had been calling for more transparency in the LCAP expressed support for the revised template. “The governor’s proposal, combined with other improvements, would get California closer to ensuring equitable educational opportunities and outcomes,” wrote Guillermo Mayer, president and CEO of Public Advocates, and Christopher Nellum, executive director of The Education Trust-West, a nonprofit organization, in an EdSource commentary earlier this year.

In letters and comments to the state board, no superintendent or lobbyist for school groups commended Newsom’s decision to strengthen the funding formula law and add a new category of highest-need schools. Instead, celebrating seemingly small victories, many praised Department of Education administrators for holding the line by making only those changes to the template that were required by law. They also called for additional efforts to slim down the LCAP.

Advocates and school administrators are hoping that software engineers from Silicon Valley and artificial intelligence will somehow resolve their differences. They’re assuming an interactive, electronic template can reduce confusion and duplication with links to both AI-generated LCAP summaries for curious parents and detailed financial data for accountability hawks.

“I’m sure there’s technology out there that can help to take that large document that’s now being streamlined and put it into an even more user-friendly format for those who desire (it),” said state board Vice President Cynthia Glover Woods, who, she said, had read more than her share of LCAPs as chief academic officer of the Riverside County Office of Education.

The idea of an electronic fix has been mentioned for several years — so far to no avail.

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09/07/2025
Chronic absenteeism: A symptom of an outdated school system?

Photo: Alison Yin/EdSource

Since the pandemic, reports and articles in publications across the state and country have bemoaned the rise in chronic absenteeism (missing at least 10% of school days a year).

While theories and solutions abound from educational experts and practitioners, I think they mostly miss the point.

I would argue that chronic absenteeism is merely a symptom of a larger problem that has been building for years, perhaps decades — that too many students don’t find school to be interesting, engaging or relevant for their futures.

This is particularly true for kids of color and other marginalized student populations. Despite the dramatic changes in our society, our education system continues to rely on legacy ideas and historically taught content, rather than preparing our students to navigate an increasingly complex world.

When schools and districts take the time to ask students, families, employers, and community and civic leaders what young people need for future success, it results in a set of skills, competencies and mindsets — often captured in a “graduate profile” or “learner portrait” — vastly different from that for which the state currently holds schools accountable.

An analysis of dozens of these graduate profiles paints a clear picture: Young people need to communicate and collaborate effectively, think critically and creatively to solve problems, be self-directed lifelong learners and culturally competent and contributing citizens, be kind and compassionate, be technically and financially literate, maintain a healthy mind and body, and have a sense of purpose and sense of self. While often implicit, rarely are these skills, competencies and mindsets the explicit goals of our education system.

If and when we organize schools around these competencies, students would see greater value in attending school.

Let me illustrate further by talking about my 13- and 16-year-old sons, who are pretty typical kids.

My older son (a 10th grader) is intellectually curious and prefers learning independently. As such, he thrived during the pandemic by grabbing his teachers’ instructions and materials from his school’s online learning management system, Canvas, getting help when needed, accessing online tools, and completing his school work at a time and in a manner convenient to him and his needs. This last quarter, he was home recovering after a car accident.

While he stayed up late on the phone with friends and slept in, with focused effort of about two hours per day he was able to complete his school work from the comfort of his own bedroom or dining room table. In doing so, he earned all A’s except for one B. He’s now healing, getting around on crutches, but he doesn’t see much reason to return to school except to see friends. He has been chronically absent, but he’s finding success.

My younger son (a seventh grader) cares little about learning but thrives on social interactions with friends. He’s a pleaser, so he does his schoolwork to appease his parents and teachers. Most days, when I inquire about his day, he simply says “it was boring.” His classes rarely spark his interest or inspire him to be curious, explore and deepen his learning. He simply doesn’t see it as relevant; nothing impels him to go to school.

So, how can we shift teaching and learning to engage students in a way that brings them back to school and/or makes them want to be there? First, put students at the center of their own learning. Give them a voice in what they learn. Give them a choice in how they learn and demonstrate their knowledge and skills. Most importantly, give them the agency to take ownership of their learning journey. Enable students to center their own identities, cultures and languages so that they find value, purpose and relevance in their schooling.

Doing this requires teachers and administrators to cede control and become co-creators and co-facilitators of powerful student-centered learning experiences. This can only happen when teachers form trusting relationships with students, know their names and stories, listen to them and create safe learning environments where they feel a sense of belonging.

Of course, none of this is easy, but we have the answers at our disposal. We need administrators to create the conditions that enable teachers to experiment. The state can help by shifting away from an outdated system of accountability that binds compliance-focused educational leaders to a status quo that we can all agree isn’t working.

My wife and I have long been fans of functional medicine — a field of health care that resists the Western medicine tendency to treat every symptom with a pill, and instead seeks to find and treat the root cause of illness. Our education system could benefit from this approach. Instead of treating chronic absenteeism as the problem, let’s see it as one of many symptoms of an outdated education system.

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Roman Stearns is the executive director of Scaling Student Success, a California partnership dedicated to educating the whole child, leveraging the power and potential of a community-developed “graduate profile” or “learner portrait” as a driver for transformational change.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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09/07/2025
UC pledges $7 million to address Islamophobia, antisemitism on campuses

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

The University of California is committing $7 million to address what officials called “acts of bigotry, intolerance, and intimidation,” including incidents of Islamophobia and antisemitism, that have occurred over the past several weeks on its campuses, where tensions are high because of the Israel-Hamas war.

Michael Drake, UC’s systemwide president, announced the funding during the board of regents meeting Wednesday and said it would go toward emergency mental health resources, new educational programs and additional training for leadership, faculty and staff.

Drake’s announcement came as Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers have called on California’s public colleges and universities to make sure their campuses are safe for Jewish, Arab and Muslim students. The war began Oct. 7 when Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 Israelis, including many children and other civilians. More than 11,000 have since been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military response, according to Gaza health officials.

“The war in Israel and Gaza presents a complex set of intersecting issues that require multiple solutions on multiple fronts. Today we are doubling down on who we are: an educational institution that’s guided by facts and data, but also a moral compass that helps us find our way to compassion and understanding in difficult moments,” Drake said in remarks to the regents Wednesday.

UC board of regents Chair Richard Leib also called on UC’s campus leaders to investigate incidents of discrimination and “enforce discipline” when necessary. Leib said he has met with Jewish, Arab and Muslim students who do not feel safe on UC campuses.

“I’m appalled at the rise of hate speech directed at Arab and Muslim students, and I’m alarmed at the reports of threats and assaults and discrimination in the classroom experienced by our Jewish students,” Leib said.

Leib added that “no one can deny” that there have been incidents of harassment and assault directed at those students but said he doesn’t think there has been appropriate “enforcement of these clear violations.” Leib didn’t specify what actions campuses should take, but he said that if officials do find that such incidents have occurred, they should take “appropriate and swift action.”

The problem isn’t limited to California. Earlier this month, the Biden administration called on colleges to take action against an “alarming rise in reports of antisemitic, Islamophobic, and other hate-based or bias-based incidents.”

In addition to the $7 million commitment, Drake also announced two additional steps his office is taking, including directing UC’s systemwide director of community safety to convene with the campuses and ensure that they are “responding appropriately to incidents of violence.”

Drake also announced the creation of a systemwide civil rights office, which he said has been in the works since last year and will house a new anti-discrimination office as well as a new disability rights office and UC’s existing systemwide Title IX office. He said the new office would be “up and running” by the spring.

Prior to announcing those measures, Drake had been in “regular contact” with Newsom and state lawmakers, UC spokesman Ryan King said in a statement to EdSource.

Earlier this week, Newsom wrote in a letter to Drake and the leaders of the California State University and California Community Colleges systems that he had heard from “hundreds of students and families who feel unsafe and unwelcome on our college campuses” and called on college leaders to “cultivate spaces for affinity and dialogue.” The letter was first reported by Politico.

In a statement last week, Drake and UC’s 10 campus chancellors acknowledged and condemned the “alarming, profoundly disappointing acts of bigotry, intolerance, and intimidation we have seen on our campuses over these past several weeks” and pledged to do more.

Of the $7 million pledged by Drake’s office, $3 million will go toward emergency mental health resources, which will be available for students, faculty or staff “struggling with recent events or with the climate on their campus.” Another $2 million will go toward new educational programs across the campuses, including programs focused on better understanding antisemitism and Islamophobia and the history of the Middle East. The remaining $2 million will go toward training campus leadership, faculty and staff who want “guidance on how to navigate their roles as educators in this space,” Drake said.

Drake added that he and his staff would begin working immediately with the system’s 10 campuses to implement those steps.

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09/07/2025
Boosting student success after Covid is a team effort, panel says

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyf4Q9kpjUs

Two years after California schools reopened their classrooms to in-person instruction following the Covid-19 pandemic, students continue to struggle – both academically and emotionally.

Both of these factors are deeply connected and recovery requires a team effort, according to panelists at the EdSource round table Nov. 15 discussion, “Reenergizing learning: Strategies for getting beyond stagnant test scores.”

Getting California’s learners back on track, panel members agreed, involves the work of school administrators, teachers, parents and the students themselves.

“Students came back, not just with some of this delayed learning, but they lost a lot of opportunities for socialization, which has led to different kinds of behavior in school that make readiness to learn more difficult,” said Heather J. Hough, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education.

Keeping students engaged

With chronic absenteeism soaring across the state from 12.1% in 2018-19 to 30% in 2021-22, the panelists said it is critical for schools to go beyond targeting specific causes for absenteeism – and create a culture where students feel excited to go to school.

“Kids need to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of being valued and cared about,” said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Los Angeles-based Families in Schools.

“…..But I don’t see as much of a focus on [social, emotional] side of the learning. And I wonder if it’s because we still don’t really understand how children learn and what sparks that fire to want to learn.”

Members of the panel discussed programs that are used to gauge students’ concerns so they can be addressed. The San Ramon Valley Unified School District, for instance, holds more regular screenings to measure students’ sense of belonging through a partnership with UC Berkeley, in addition to the statewide California Healthy Kids Survey.

The district is also piloting a diagnostic tool that provides immediate feedback to teachers on students’ thoughts about belonging in their specific classrooms.

Further south, Adalberto Hernandez said at George Washington Elementary School in Madera Unified School District, students recite affirmations: “I am loved; I am valued; I matter,” they declare each morning.

John Malloy, the superintendent of San Ramon Valley Unified, added that schools and educators need to do a better job of getting to know students’ needs as well as their “strengths, interests and passions.”

A big part of why kids decide to come to school, Hough said, depends on answers to certain questions: “How does this fit into the future that I envisioned for myself? Am I getting the right kinds of training for my college or career goals, or the life that I want to live?”

Malloy added that the most impactful strategy “is listening to our students, creating the conditions for them to share their voice and their wisdom, whether it’s kindergarten or 12th grade.”

Support for teachers

Students aren’t the only ones affected by the pandemic: teachers need to be equally supported, because their jobs have gotten harder in the past couple years, panelists said.

“Teachers have been tasked with the job of accelerating learning, but they’re facing much more difficult student needs and, maybe in some cases, students who aren’t in school,” Hough said, adding that there’s widespread vacancies because of problems in filling various school positions.

Parental involvement

Parents, however, are not fully aware of the academic struggles their children may be going through – even though they can play a major role in their child’s achievement.

Flores, the president and CEO of Families in Schools, said a nationwide Learning Heroes survey of families found that 92% of families believe their children are on track in reading and math.

“There’s confusion between what they see from the state. There’s confusion from the report cards that generally say that their kids are getting A’s and B’s, and yet they’re not reading at grade level,” Flores said.

“So what needs to happen is much more clarity and targeted information to families so that they can understand specifically how their children are doing.”

Some parents may want to be more present at their child’s school but may be limited by their work schedules, making involvement challenging. Even in cases where parents may take the time to visit their children’s classroom, they don’t always know what to look for in terms of effective instruction.

“It’s nice when parents are involved, but in a community like ours, we’re not depending on that for student success,” Hernandez said. “We communicate. We involve them. We invite them, and we do events like the Calenda traditional celebration in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, and we had great parent involvement after hours. But during the school day, it’s on us.”

Classroom approach

Getting students to learn – and not just memorize material – is also vital, according to the panelists.

“I’ve been taught to take tests, but I’m not sure I know how to learn,” Malloy said a student told him during a Student Voice Circle, and that the statement has stuck with him, and that his district has since broadened their vision for success.

“If kids are thriving, it means that they are true, independent learners when they graduate from us,” Malloy said. “They have a confidence in their ability to think and to create.”

One strategy to help students really learn, panelists said, is to focus on teaching a few concepts thoroughly rather than covering a broader range of topics on a more cursory level.

If done properly, tutoring also helps, Hough said.

“What makes tutoring effective,” Hough said, “is that those tutors are trained, that they’re being asked to do things that are aligned with the instructional strategies that the teacher is using, so that that’s….reinforcing what they’re learning in school.”

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09/07/2025
Immigrant parents report faulty, slow translation of special education documents

Carmen Rodriguez, seated right, and other parents meet with state Sen. Anthony Portantino in the State Capitol.

Credit: Courtesy of Innovate Public Schools

Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

When Los Angeles mother Tania Rivera signed a crucial document for her son Luis’ special education program in 2022, she was hoping he would be able to return to in-person classes after two years of distance learning.

But the individualized education program, or IEP, required for all children who need special education, was available only in English. Rivera’s first language is Spanish.

Later she was told Luis, who has autism, would have to continue with online learning because the document did not specify that he needed in-person classes. In addition, she says, the document removed his occupational therapy for handwriting because a language interpreter erroneously said she objected.

“It is a big disadvantage that we have, because I have some English, but it is very basic,” Rivera said in Spanish. “If we’re talking about educational terms or legal terms, the meaning can be lost with just one word” mistranslated.

Monthslong waits and faulty or incomplete translations of special education documents are widespread across California for parents who speak languages other than English, according to special education advocates. They say these problems violate parents’ rights to participate in their children’s education plans under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law that regulates special education.

A proposal in the state Legislature, Senate Bill 445, aims to solve some of these problems, but its fate remains uncertain because of concerns over potential cost.

“I’ve never seen a timely translation and I’ve never seen all documents being fully translated,” said Lisa Mosko Barros, founder of SpEducational, an organization that works to educate parents to be advocates for their children with special needs and improve their access to high-quality education. Mosko Barros has worked with dozens of families in Southern California, including Rivera, and trained hundreds of others on navigating the IEP process.

She said she has heard the same complaints over and over.

“I literally spoke to one parent this morning in the Inland Empire who a couple of years ago signed an IEP and didn’t realize she was signing consent to eliminating speech services for her child who is non-verbal with autism,” Mosko Barros said. “It really can make or break a child’s access to a free and appropriate public education.”

Rivera’s son Luis, now in eighth grade, remained in online classes since fifth grade until this fall and regressed as a result, his mother said.

In total, he lost three years of in-person classes, first in 2020-21 when all students had distance learning, again in 2021-22 because he has chronic asthma and his pediatrician recommended he stay home since vaccinations against Covid-19 were not yet available for children. Then, in 2022, the translation problems kept him out of in-person schooling for another year.

“He has had academic setbacks, and socially, he regressed a lot because it was three years without interaction,” Rivera said.

When asked how long the district takes to translate special education assessments and IEP documents, the Los Angeles Unified School District communications team wrote that “the District works to parallel the IEP timeline for consistency and return the translated document within the same 30-day timeframe.” They declined to comment on Rivera’s case.

Rivera and almost 200 other people attended an online meeting in September with state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, at which parents shared how long wait times and poor-quality translations have hurt their children with special needs. They expressed their support for Portantino’s bill, which would require IEPs to be translated into a parent or guardian’s native language by a “qualified translator” within 30 calendar days of an IEP meeting or a later request.

Current federal and state laws require that school districts “take any action necessary” to ensure parents understand IEP meetings, and state law requires they translate a student’s IEP at a parent’s request, but no time frame is specified.

“I believe strongly that parents can best advocate for their children when they have the knowledge to do so. Not being able to read an IEP because of language barriers is unacceptable,” Portantino said. “We must find a way to translate IEPs more quickly.”

Portantino said the issue is personal for him because he struggled with dyslexia and ADHD as a student and received limited help from the schools he attended.

“I largely depended on developing my own learning methods, which included lots of repetition and good listening skills,” Portantino said. But he wants to make sure other children can get the help they need.

The bill passed the Senate, the Assembly Education Committee and the Assembly Appropriations Committee with no opposition. But an analysis by the Assembly Appropriations Committee found that the bill could cost the California Department of Education $409,000 annually and could cost school districts between $6 million and $16 million, which might also have to be reimbursed by the state. Believing there was a risk the bill could be vetoed this year because of those costs, Portantino said he chose to make it a “two-year bill,” giving it more time to be discussed in the Legislature and with Gov. Gavin Newsom.

San Francisco Unified School District passed a policy in 2022 to ensure “every effort shall be made” to translate special education documents before meetings so that parents have time to read and understand them. It also requires meeting times to be extended to allow for interpretation.

Carmen Rodríguez is one of dozens of parents who pushed for that policy. Rodríguez has two children with disabilities. Before the San Francisco Unified policy passed, she said, she waited eight months for a written translation of the first assessment of her older son, who has anxiety and a learning disability, and a year for the IEP for her younger child, who has dyslexia.

“If it’s not in my language, how am I going to understand the document? How do I know that it really says here what my child needs?” Rodríguez said in Spanish.

In addition, she said IEP meetings were often cut short because the district limited them to one hour, with no extra time allowed for interpretation.

Belén Pulido Martínez, senior community organizer for Innovate Public Schools, an organization that worked to get the San Francisco policy passed, said the policy empowers parents.

“Now in San Francisco, the district is training their special ed teachers on the policy, and we’re super happy about that because it’s not just a piece of paper that’s going to die in an office. It’s being implemented,” Martínez said.

Matt Alexander, the San Francisco Unified Board of Education commissioner who worked with parents to write the policy, said school districts have to prioritize translation and interpretation if they want parents to be engaged.

“In our district, over half of our families don’t speak English at home. So if we care about communicating with our families, we have to provide interpretation,” Alexander said. “Step one is, have a clear policy. Step two is, make sure you’re being accountable to families who are directly impacted. Is it working? How do we make it better?”

Rodríguez said since the San Francisco policy passed, several other mothers have thanked her. She said she would love for SB 445 to pass so parents in other districts can also benefit.

“So many children in many different places, many different schools, are not receiving the support they deserve, and their parents have to battle to get an evaluation and to get documents translated, and they find it really hard,” Rodríguez said. “It’s a really, really long document, and it’s a long process. And if it’s in our language, then it will be much easier for us parents to process and understand the document and the evaluation given to our children.”

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09/07/2025