People protest against a funding freeze of federal grants and loans following a push from President Donald Trump to pause federal funding near to the White House in Washington on Jan. 28, 2025.
State leaders spent much of Tuesday trying to determine the potential impact of a White House freeze on federal grants and loans that could potentially affect millions of California students and their families.
A White House memo released Monday from the Office of Management and Budget called for the freeze to begin Tuesday at 2 p.m. PST. But, just minutes before 2 p.m., U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington, D.C., blocked the order until next Monday at 2 p.m. PST to give courts more time to consider its impact, according to Politico.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Tuesday that the freeze could cut $3 trillion in federal funding from programs that help the homeless, veterans, seniors, disaster victims and school children nationwide.
The order has thrown state programs into chaos and created uncertainty around their administration, said a media release from Bonta’s office.
“I will not stand by while the president attempts to disrupt vital programs that feed our kids, provide medical care to our families, and support housing and education in our communities,” Bonta said in a statement. “Instead of learning from the defeats of his first administration, President Trump is once again plowing ahead with a damaging — and most importantly, unlawful —agenda.”
Bonta joined 22 other state attorneys general to file a lawsuit calling for a temporary halt to implementation of the memo. The White House directive called for advancing the Trump administration’s policies and called “the use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies a waste of taxpayer dollars.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called the White House memo a violation of federal law. “We are confident funding will be restored,” officials there said in an email to EdSource.
California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said the White House action is misguided. “(It) serves nothing more than to hurt the most vulnerable students and people in our nation,” he said.
Early Tuesday, state education leaders expressed concern that student loans, special education, Head Start, and Title 1 programs could be impacted by the freeze.
But by late Tuesday afternoon, conflicting information from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Department of Education made it unclear which programs would be affected, according to a letter from the California Department of Education to county and district superintendents scheduled to be sent Tuesday night.
According to the letter, the U.S. Department of Education assured state departments of education that Title 1 programs for low-income schools, special education and other formula grants will not be frozen. But, officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said these programs will be subject to the same scrutiny as others regarding compliance with the Trump administration’s executive orders.
“We hope to gain more clarity on affected programs before Feb. 3 and plan to communicate this information to the field as soon as possible in case the OMB directive becomes effective,” said the California Department of Education guidance signed by David Schapira, chief deputy superintendent.
Officials in the U.S. Department of Education said only discretionary grants would be affected and not formula grants, according to Troy Flint, spokesperson for the California School Boards Association.
A list of discretionary grants on the U.S. Department of Education website includes grants for educator development, charter school programs, early learning programs, school and community improvement programs, as well as grants for arts and literacy education.
California School Boards Association officials will be watching to see how the issue is resolved in the courts, Flint said. “This is a fluid and fast-moving topic, and we don’t think we have heard the end of it.”
University leaders are also waiting to see what the freeze could mean for them. University of California staff and lawyers are “working diligently to clarify the potential impacts” on the university, said President Michael Drake in a statement.
He noted that the White House has said federal student loans and Pell Grants would not be impacted.
“We are in contact with key policymakers in Congress and at federal agencies, as well as association partners and other higher education institutions. We are evaluating what actions we are able to take and will keep you informed,” Drake added in a message to the UC community.
EdSource reporters Emma Gallegos, Michael Burke, Mallika Seshadri, Betty Márquez Rosales, Amy DiPierro, Vani Sanganeria contributed to this story.
Like most of the nation, California students were stuck in low gear again in 2024. On the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), they performed significantly below their pre-pandemic scores in math and reading.
The gaps between the lowest-performing students, between low-income and well-off students, and among some racial and ethnic groups continued to widen overall, an ominous sign that many students are unprepared for high school and beyond.
“Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers NAEP, noting that nationwide, the percentage of eighth graders reading Below Basic, the lowest achievers, was 33% and the highest in the assessment’s history. The 40% of fourth graders scoring Below Basic was the highest in 20 years.
On the fourth grade reading assessment for NAEP, scores in five states, in light blue, declined compared with 2022, no states’ scores improved, and 47 states, including California, saw no statistically significant change.Credit: National Assessment of Educational Progress
Also known as The Nation’s Report Card, NAEP is the only assessment that a representative number of students in fourth, eighth, and 12th grades in every state and Washington, D.C., take every two years—and thus, the most reliable measure of performance among states. The results for fourth and eighth graders were released today.
On NAEP’s 500-point scale, where one or 2-point gains are common, and movement of 3 or more points are notable, California’s scores have consistently trailed the nation in both reading and math, although the gap in reading has narrowed. That had been especially so for eighth graders, whose score equaled the nation’s in 2022.
But that result was the exception in a year in which scores fell sharply nationally and to a lesser extent in California in the aftermath of the pandemic and slow recovery. Nationally, math scores in 2022 dropped 8 points in eighth grade and 5 points in fourth, the largest drop in NAEP’s 25-year history.
The latest scores show mostly no progress. Scores in fourth and eighth grade reading fell again, leaving California 9 points and the nation 8 points below 2017. Math was mixed — up in fourth grade, but not enough to catch 2019, with eighth grade taking another dip.
The average scores, however, mask widening disparities between the highest and lowest-performing students. On fourth grade reading, student scores at the 90th achievement percentile fell 1 point between 2019 and 2024, and scores at the 75th percentile fell 3 points. However, scores for students in the 10th percentile fell 10 points, and for students in the 25th percentile, they fell 8 points.
The pattern looks about the same throughout the nation, with a serious long-term impact, said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who also was provided an early peek at the scores. “The top scorers are coming back, and the bottom is doing worse, which will affect income distribution over a lifetime,” he said.
On fourth grade reading, California scored higher than three states (West Virginia, New Mexico, and Alaska), statistically about the same as 35 other states and behind 13 states. Only two states, Louisiana in reading and Alabama in math, scored above pre-pandemic levels of 2019.
NAEP scores fall within four bands of achievement: Advanced, Proficient, Basic and Below Basic. The differences by race and ethnicity remained stark on all the tests. For example, on the fourth grade reading test, 7% of Black students and 19% of Latino students scored Proficient and Advanced, while 50% of Asian and 44% of white students scored that high.
For all students, only 31% of California’s fourth graders scored Proficient or Advanced, compared with 32% nationally.
NAEP defines students performing at the Basic level as having partially mastered knowledge and skills required to perform at a Proficient level. Proficient students have demonstrated a grasp of challenging material and can apply the knowledge to real-world situations and analytical skills. Advanced students showed superior performance.
Scoring Below Basic doesn’t mean students in fourth grade can’t read. “We’re saying that they’re unlikely to be able to determine the meaning of a familiar word using context from the text. That’s a critical skill that students will really need for entering middle school,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, an independent body that Congress created to set policy for NAEP.
Once education experts and advocates have had a chance to review the results and findings of surveys that the National Center for Educational Statistics conducted of students and teachers, there will be theories for the low scores and calls for efforts to address them.
In The 74 earlier this week, columnist Chad Aldeman evaluated a half-dozen explanations for declining scores nationwide. They include less reading and more TikTok; the abandonment of federal accountability for school performance, starting in the latter years of the Obama administration; the adoption of Common Core state standards a decade ago; and soaring student absenteeism rates post-Covid. While they have come down, the rates remain disproportionately high for the lowest-performing students, contributing to widening gaps in achievement.
Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research and one of a few education experts who got an early look at the NAEP results, would add another cause to the mix: emerging evidence of grade inflation, connected to the pandemic, and perceptions parents have of their own children’s learning.
“So the most immediate information that parents get is not state or NAEP tests. It’s (high) grades that are not showing parents where their kids stand in real time, to allow them to provide feedback to their kids and encourage them.”
Goldhaber said there is evidence that teacher quality is largely what moves students; he’d focus on the inequitable distribution of schools with less qualified and credentialed teachers.
Not comparable to Smarter Balanced
Students also take annual state tests in math and English language arts, but NAEP officials warn not to make comparisons since each state’s measurements and standards are different. California aligns its tests to the Common Core standards, while NAEP’s tests are based on what experts say students in each grade should know. It’s harder to score Proficient or above on NAEP than on most state tests. In 2024, 44% of all California fourth graders students scored at or above Proficient on the Smarter Balanced test.
About 11,000 students in California took NAEP, and only portions of it. That’s too few for individual students, schools, and districts to receive scores, with one exception. Annually, a representative number of students in 25 large districts, including Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified, take the Trial Urban District Assessment or TUDA. They provided one of the few bright spots in 2024.
Los Angeles was one of three districts whose fourth grade math scores didn’t drop during the pandemic; it rose slightly from 2019 to 2024, and San Diego’s fell less than 2 points, a statistically insignificant amount. In eighth grade, Los Angeles dropped less than a point, and San Diego’s 8-point drop was lower than the national average for the districts. Los Angeles’ reading scores in fourth and eighth grade didn’t decline at all post-pandemic; San Diego’s increased a statistically insignificant amount in fourth grade, and its decline of 3 points was about the average for the TUDA districts.
California’s low percentage of students scoring Proficient or better on fourth grade reading and math (34% Proficient in fourth grade, 29% in eighth grade) will likely lead to calls for funding for teacher training on the new standards and evidence-based practices in kindergarten through second grade.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed allocating $500 million in the 2025-26 budget for teacher training and to encourage districts to use discretionary funding on summer programs and tutoring to make up for lost Covid learning. Some states whose scores exceeded California’s on fourth-grade reading, including Mississippi, Connecticut and Colorado, adopted comprehensive reading plans grounded in the science of reading.
Fabian Debora uses art as a tool for gang prevention at Homeboy Art Academy in LA.
Credit: Courtesy of Fabian Debora
As a restless eighth grader at Dolores Mission Catholic School in Los Angeles, Fabian Debora often drew pictures at his desk. One day the teacher confiscated his artwork and ripped it up in front of the whole class. Debora, who cherishes his drawing, felt betrayed. He lost his temper, threw a desk at the teacher and got expelled.
The incident led to an epiphany. Debora was summoned before Father Greg Boyle, the beloved parish priest who runs Homeboy Industries, a renowned gang intervention program in East Los Angeles. Instead of chastising him, Boyle asked Debora to draw him something and later persuaded his probation officer to let him work as an apprentice to Wayne Healy, a pioneer in the city’s Chicano mural movement. Art became his lifeline.
“I realized that I’m an artist,” said the soft spoken Debora, 49. “I discovered it young enough to know that this is something that belonged to me, and no one’s gonna take that from me. And I held onto it.”
That drive led him to co-found Homeboy Art Academy, a group that uses arts education to empower formerly gang-involved and incarcerated youth.
“Man, as a formerly incarcerated, gang-involved individual, there aren’t many spaces for me,” he said. “I don’t have the means to go join an art school of some sort. So I’ll have to create a space where these kids can come and all services are free.”
A mural titled “The Power of the Woman,” by Fabian Debora.Credit: Courtesy of Fabian Debora
Part sanctuary, part vocational training center and part studio, the academy resists the notion that art is a precious and rarified pursuit for the elite. Here art is raw and real. You learn to paint your truth, to be unblinking about what you see, but also to feel the freedom of a blank canvas.
“They are the absolute best, completely authentic, devoted to helping people,” said Diane Luby Lane, founder of the poetry education group, Get Lit. “Fabian teaches people to be artists. He respects and utilizes real life experiences and perspectives.”
The recipient of the prestigious National Endowment of the Arts Heritage Fellowship, Debora believes art has the power to change lives. In addition to working as an artist, he is also a teacher and mentor to others seeking to find purpose through art.
“Let’s flip arts education on its head,” said Debora, as he walked around his studio at the art academy. “Let’s take the language and the vocabulary of the arts and tailor it to the lived experiences of this population while introducing relevant information such as in hip hop and street art.”
Born in El Paso, Texas, Debora first discovered art as a little boy weathering a tumultuous childhood in Boyle Heights, which he describes as “one of the roughest projects east of the Mississippi.” The tension bled into his family life, he said. He remembers hiding when his parents fought.
“I used to blame myself,” he recalled wistfully. “I would go and hide under a coffee table, and I would start to sketch, and I would just create my own world to escape my reality. That’s when I found art to be more than just a gift. It was almost like a big brother who held me.”
Violence was embedded in the ecosystem he grew up in, with eight gangs jostling for supremacy and few safe spaces from crime and addiction. By 12, he joined a gang, began to deal drugs and got addicted to them. He wrestled with substance abuse for years before trying to commit suicide at 30, by running across the freeway. That’s when he found his spiritual center and his salvation, his cause.
Now he tries to bring the succor of art to young people who feel hopeless to shape their own destiny.
Artist Fabian Debora teaches the art of painting, graffiti and street murals to students at LA’s Homeboy Academy.Credit: Courtesy of Homeboy Academy
“Art is a vehicle for healing, art is motivating,” says Debora. “It gives you a sense of breathing room, you’re escaping from your realities, as you’re creating. You feel inspired when you realize what beautiful work of art has come out of this. It opens up senses in the brain that haven’t been tapped into.”
While Debora specializes in visual art, the academy also offers classes in everything from creative writing and photography, to coding and poetry. He takes on those who believe they have nothing to lose. That’s who he used to be.
“I want the kids who are hanging out in the basketball court smoking weed all day, kids who are overlooked,” he says, lingering in front of the academy’s altar to indigenous gods. “If you’re gang related and struggling with a drug problem, if you’ve been incarcerated, that’s what qualifies you for this program.”
The impact of Debora’s work resonates throughout the Los Angeles arts community. It’s been a formidable example of how creativity can transform the arc of a person’s life.
“It’s astounding what they do at Homeboy,” says Austin Beutner, former LAUSD Superintendent and author of the arts education mandate, Prop. 28. “It’s hard work but they save lives, one by one. It shows you the power of art. You can be 8 or 28 and the arts can change your life.”
As a young man in ‘80s Los Angeles, Debora responded to the siren song of hip-hop music and graffiti art, the vibrancy of youth culture. The murals became portals to often forgotten Chicano history and culture.
A portrait of the Madonna by Fabian Debora. credit: Fabian Debora
The ancient meets the now in this audacious body of work, from graffiti to fine art. Debora delights in juxtaposing the eye of the masters with a modern urban vibe. Some of his most well-known paintings are fashioned after the manner of Italian master Caravaggio but rooted in the grit of Boyle Heights, such as a portrait of a girl from the barrio striking the pose of the Madonna. He’s now working on a project that deconstructs the Sistine Chapel.
“We are reclaiming the universal language of art,” he said.
Troubled souls often find solace in the universality of dark feelings, the way a painting from the Renaissance can capture how we feel today. That is the power of art as activism.
“Carravagio was also an outcast,” he said. “He was a thug, a killer, a murderer yet he found his spirituality through art.”
Debora uses art like a scalpel to cut away the layers of posturing and pretense that many of his students protect themselves with. He uses art to get at the truths they try to hide, even from themselves.
“The work of Homeboy Art Academy is transformational in providing youth a pathway, learning how to take ownership of their own stories, which are often negated by others who deem themselves more powerful,” says Merryl Goldberg, a veteran music and arts professor at Cal State San Marcos. “Lifting up voices at risk of being suppressed could not be more fundamental to a just and compassionate society.”
Art opens a window to another life, Deborah says. In addition to his work at the academy, he also teaches drawing to inmates at Tehachapi state prison. He cherishes his work with “the lifers,” because they need the solace of art the most.
“People need to be seen, they need to be heard,” he said. “It’s a sense of hope. When we come in, we paint windows on those ceiling walls so they can escape for the time being.”
Louise Simpson, superintendent of Mark Twain Union Elementary School District in Angles Camp, near Yosemite, is frustrated by state rules restricting how small rural districts like hers can spend expanded learning funding.
That was such a well-intentioned and important program for so many districts. It’s known by the acronym ELOP, and it was designed to make additional learning and enrichment opportunities in the school day. But it brought some really burdensome requirements with it, including a 9-hour day and 30 extra days of school.
And while that sounds really great, what’s happened for our small rural districts, is the reality of creating a program just isn’t feasible. And I’ll tell you why:
First, my kids are on the bus for more than an hour each way. They already have a big long day, and adding academics after school for enrichment is not super feasible for two reasons: One is we have a very difficult time finding qualified staff to run it. And the second one is, with the bus-driver shortage, we just don’t have the transportation.
So, many kids that would benefit from this program really don’t have the opportunity, and they are being left behind.
Our budget situation is so, so dire with steep declining enrollment, and we need to use the money that we’re already allocated for super-effective programs.
I came out of retirement this year because this little system was struggling, and only one in 10 kids are proficient in math and only one in four can read — and that’s unconscionable.
And I can fix it, but I need some help using the money that’s already been given to me to use during the day. We have a really cool program that we built with the Sierra K-16 Collaborative Partnership involving peer tutors. It allowed me to get $320,000 to fund an intervention teacher and pay 20 high school kids to come in and tutor my kids. And it’s working, but those funds expire in a year.
I need that ELOP money to be made flexible so that I can teach our kids the core foundational skills they need to be successful. That includes being able to use it during the school day. So many folks can’t find a way to make this funding effective that they’re actually giving it back, and that’s not okay.
We need to come to some agreements where it can be working for everyone. Let me take and share with you what unrestricting these funds could really do for kids.
This is our peer tutoring program. It’s funded in conjunction with Sierra K16.
(short video of tutors working with students)
I hope you’ll join me in reaching out to all of our legislators and asking them to provide small rural districts flexibility in how we use those funds.
Eighth grade students discuss women’s history during a social studies class at Mira Vista Elementary in Richmond, one of two K-8 schools in West Contra Costa Unified.
Theresa Harrington/EdSource Today
The West Contra Costa Unified School District is joining about a dozen other California school districts in search of its next leader. The superintendent position is the district’s highest-paid job, and filling it is one of the most crucial decisions a school board can make.
School board members approved a $45,000 contract with Leadership Associates during last week’s special board meeting to recruit the East Bay district’s new leader. The firm has conducted superintendent and other school leadership searches for 28 years and is currently also searching for superintendents for Las Lomitas Elementary School District, Tamalpais Union High School District, San Pasqual Valley Unified School District and the Santa Clara Office of Education.
At West Contr Costa, interim Superintendent Kim Moses replaced Chris Hurst in December after he announced his retirement. Hurst led the district for more than three years and stepped down to care for a family member with health challenges.
The new leader will face daunting challenges, including making sure the district doesn’t run out of cash and is placed under state control. Also, like other California districts, the district is dealing with teacher shortages, low test scores and meeting the needs of its diverse and large low-income student population.
“One thing that would be very crucial, given our current circumstances as a district, would be crisis management,” said student board member Jorge Espinoza Jr. during the special meeting. “That would include not only advocacy for our students as well as our staff and teachers and principals, but transparency when communicating.”
Students and families deserve a leader who will drive academic gains and “have the courage to disrupt the status quo,” said a Go Public Schools West Contra Costa official, a nonprofit advocating for quality education, in a statement.
“This is a chance for the district to either repair or deepen the wounds caused by years of broken trust and stagnant progress,” said Natalie Walchuk, Go Public Schools’ vice president of local impact. “The next superintendent must be someone who can restore transparency, rebuild accountability and deliver real results for all our students.”
Board member Cinthia Hernandez said the next superintendent should be someone who commits to equity and is culturally competent. Nearly 59% of the student population was Hispanic or Latino in the 2023-24 school year; about 12% of students were Black or African American, while 10% were Asian and 9% white.
About 63% of West Contra Costa students qualified for free or reduced lunch in 2023-24 and 32% were English learners, according to state data. Nearly 26,000 students are enrolled in the district’s 54 schools across Richmond, San Pablo, Pinole, Hercules and El Cerrito.
“They (the next superintendent) have to be innovative, inclusive and bilingual in whatever language —the more languages the better,” said board member Guadalupe Enllana. “They have to know how to listen, not just hear.”
For board member Jamela Smith-Folds, however, understanding diversity, equity and inclusion is not enough.
“I want an anti-racist leader,” she said during the special meeting. “Understanding our district is not just knowing the data of our district. Understanding our district is really understanding who we are and what we need. I want someone who chooses us.”
Smith-Folds said the district needs someone who understands the budget and has proven to improve academic outcomes and school culture. She urged those who haven’t attended a West Contra Costa board meeting or other committee meetings to not apply.
“There is a difference between transparency and honesty,” she added. “Transparency is, ‘If you ask me I’m going to tell you.’ Honesty is, “I’m going to tell you before you ask.’ I want an honest leader.”
Many districts are also searching for leaders
The goal for West Contra Costa is to hire a superintendent by June — about two months before the 2025-26 school year begins. It’s typical for districts to want superintendents to start before the start of the school year. Community engagement with stakeholders, surveys of communities, and listening sessions will ramp up in the coming months.
Hiring leaders is difficult at a time when many superintendents have retired or left because of heightened political climates at board meetings, stress and threats. Districts across the state are also dealing with dwindling enrollment, school closures, budget cuts, and leftover effects of the pandemic, including lower test scores and the need for more social-emotional support.
These challenges have caused veteran superintendents to retire early and be replaced with less experienced educators. Newly elected board members have also pushed out superintendents. And districts are willing to pay top dollar to find a fit for the high-stress job.
At least six open superintendent positions in California are posted through the Association of California School Administrators Career Center. More than a dozen open positions are posted on EdJoin.
Superintendent search timeline
Prior superintendent searches show that the West Costa Unified School District community wants to be involved.
Last time Leadership Associates searched for the superintendent, about 5,000 survey responses were submitted — the most the firm has received from a district, said Jim Brown, a partner with the firm.
“One of the reasons is the communication office and the principals and the teacher leaders did a really good job at making sure at almost every meeting that was held, there were copies of the survey and computers available, so people can fill out the survey,” Brown told the board during the special meeting. “We’re hoping for repetition of that.”
Typically, 1,000 survey responses is a good sign of community engagement, said Sandra Sánchez-Thorstenson, partner at Leadership Associates.
Board member Smith-Folds reiterated the importance of surveys being representative of different areas of the community.
Leadership Associates will begin engaging the West Contra Costa community, staff, educators and students in the middle of February. A survey will be sent out to the various communities from Feb. 17 to March 3.
Leadership Associates will identify potential candidates in February and March. The deadline for applications is March 24. Applications will be reviewed in April, and interviews will be conducted in May.
The district’s next superintendent is slated to be hired at the end of May or the beginning of June with a start date of July 1.
Nothing about being a home-hospital teacher is normal.
A Los Angeles Unified educator drives nearly 22 miles from one student’s home in Venice Beach to another’s in East Los Angeles — and another 20 miles to Maravista, lugging tote bags with school supplies, books, plants and paintbrushes.
Each bag is dedicated to one of her students — from transitional kindergartners to high school seniors gearing up for graduation and new beginnings.
What her students have in common is illness, ranging from leukemia to eating disorders. And she is one of many teachers tending to their education at the one-of-a-kind Berenece Carlson Home Hospital School.
“In a student’s very, very trying times,” said the teacher who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), “no matter what kind of condition the student is in or has been diagnosed with, we become part of the students’ weekly or daily” life.
The school, established in 1970, is intended to provide an education for LAUSD students who are ill or receiving medical treatment and unable to stay in school, sometimes for several years.
It also enables students to receive a more individualized education; teachers can meet students at home or in the hospital for roughly five hours each week.
Classes usually focus on math and English, but sometimes they extend to other subjects or topics that students are interested in.
“She really went above and beyond for both of us,” said Karina Rodriguez, the mother of one of the anonymous teacher’s students. “What she did for my daughter, she did for me. She’s my child.”
But the school has been engulfed in conflict between some teachers who teach in person and those who taught through an online option called the Carlson Home Online Academy, or CHOA, which, according to a district policy bulletin, was established in 2018 to give “homebound students synchronous home instruction in a web-based classroom setting.”
Conflict surrounding the online academy
Despite the work of dedicated instructors, both the in-person and online programs at the Berenece Carlson Home Hospital School have struggled for years with waves of instability, including the recent closure of the online program (CHOA), which has deprived some students who are ill of the individualized education they need.
In 1999, when the California Department of Education began tracking campuses by school type, Carlson was classified as a special education school, according to a spokesperson for the agency. A decade later, the Department of Education added a designation for home-hospital schools, but LAUSD did not reclassify Carlson as a “Home and Hospital” program until last July.
That reclassification came amid pressure from a group of teachers teaching in-person, who began sounding alarms, claiming during the fall of 2023 that Carlson’s online program violated the state’s education code requiring home-hospital schools to operate in person.
The teachers also claimed in emails to district officials that many students in need of in-person instruction were automatically funneled into the online program — and that more than 80 students went without adequate instruction for about two months. EdSource reviewed the emails.
“They tell families there are no teachers available,” said Lisa Robertson, who, since 2009, has taught in the homes of students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
“The families are dealing with the crisis of having a sick child,” she said. “And then, they’re lost in the system.”
Conflict between some home-hospital teachers and those who supported the online program mounted. Another criticism of the online program is that several of its teachers rely on lessons from Edgenuity, an online learning platform, which some hospital-home teachers say places excessive demands on some students with severe illnesses.
Online instructors maintained that their program enabled students to take classes in more subject areas than the in-person program, providing them with a better track to graduate — all while giving them additional flexibility beyond what is provided through LAUSD’s other virtual academies.
“I’ve had cancer,” Robertson said. “There is no way I could have gotten up at 8 in the morning and sat through six hours clicking away at a computer.”
But Kevin Byrd, who taught in the online program, said the program allowed educators to support several students taking different subjects — say, biology, chemistry and health — simultaneously, adding that even though students worked remotely, the online program helped students build camaraderie among their peers.
“There was an understanding about the students, even in middle school, that we’re all kind of supporting each other,” Byrd said. “And just because we have this condition doesn’t really affect our ability to learn.”
The aftermath of CHOA’s closure
Amid the claim that the online program violated California’s education code, the Los Angeles Unified School District closed the online program altogether in July. The closure, however, left about 170 sick students and several educators unsure of where to go next.
“Programming previously offered through the Carlson Home Online Academy was discontinued for the 2024-25 school year as CDE (California Department of Education) clarified that virtual instruction is not part of a home hospital program,” an LAUSD spokesperson wrote in a statement to EdSource. “Home hospital instruction is to be provided on an individual basis aligned with the hours set forth by law.”
Online teachers caught a whiff of their program’s impending closure in late March and immediately started a petition to keep it open; that petition received more than 600 signatures.
“It’s good to have several options, especially for these students who need to be accommodated and have special circumstances,” said Byrd, who started the petition.
“The fact that the second-largest district in the country and the largest in the state is limiting an option for these types of students is really discouraging.”
Since the online program’s closure, most of its former teachers like Rene Rances have become home-hospital teachers — but others have opted to leave Carlson altogether and teach elsewhere. Rances said he is considering leaving the district, too.
“It’s very, very demoralizing,” he said.
A spokesperson for LAUSD maintained, however, that the district’s changes are in keeping with California’s laws; they also said in a statement to EdSource that families whose children were in the online program were informed of their options “through letters, emails, phone calls, and several community meetings.”
Those options included Carlson’s home-hospital programs or enrolling at one of the district’s virtual academy schools, which don’t always provide the same level of flexibility to take varying course loads, said Tammy Koch, Carlson’s counselor.
Koch confirmed that some students left the online program — only to be referred back to the in-person home-hospital program.
“We had students that sometimes can’t handle a full course load. … Sometimes, I had students taking three classes. Sometimes, they took four,” Koch said, referring to her students who used to be enrolled in the online program. “But you don’t have that flexibility at a virtual academy,” she said, because students have to take a full course load there. “It’s just not the same.”
A burned sign at Oak Knoll Montessori School (Loma Alta School) from the Eaton fire on Jan. 9 in the Altadena neighborhood of Pasadena.
Credit: Kirby Lee via AP
As Gov. Gavin Newsom stood near a burned-down school, Pacific Palisades mom Rachel Darvish pleaded with Newsom: “That was my daughter’s school, what are you going to do?” Newsom offered no real answer for the distraught parent at the time.
Well, here’s the answer he should have given: All families affected by the Los Angeles fires should be eligible for emergency education savings accounts that parents can use to pay for education alternatives for their children.
The Los Angeles fires have not only destroyed people’s homes and businesses, they have also razed neighborhood schools. Initial reports indicate at least a dozen schools in the Los Angeles area have burned, affecting more than 5,700 students.
In the Altadena area, which was devastated by the Eaton fire, nearly 2,000 students are school-less.
“I’m just really sad,” one 7-year-old Altadena girl told a CBS-TV reporter, “because I love that school.”
Describing the impact of losing her children’s neighborhood school, an Altadena mom said: “School is a big part of it because it’s the foundation of a family’s daily life. Now we don’t have that anymore.”
The sad reality for affected families is that rebuilding schools, like rebuilding homes, will take a lot of time and money, and only $1 million of Newsom’s $2.5 billion wildfire relief bill was designated for rebuilding schools.
Even in normal times, it takes two years or more to build a school, and school construction costs range from $70 million to $100 million per school.
What are families to do in the meantime?
Many affected families have been dispersed to various parts of Southern California and beyond. Since their homes will not be rebuilt soon, government leaders can address the individual needs of children in this diaspora by giving every child affected by the fires a publicly funded education savings account.
According to the school-choice organization EdChoice, education savings accounts “establish for parents publicly funded government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple uses for educational purposes,” to be used in-state.
Parents can use these funds to cover “school tuition, tutoring, online education programs, therapies for students with special needs, textbooks or other instructional materials, and sometimes save for college,” whatever policymakers determine. Some programs cover home school costs.
California leaders can model on Arizona, where education savings accounts are funded at 90% of the state’s per-pupil funding, with special needs students receiving higher amounts.
In Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget, $83 billion from the state’s general fund would go to K-12 education. Using Arizona as a guide, $12,800 could be made available for these accounts for each affected child.
With thousands of affected students, the total cost for an emergency education savings account program would be around $73 million — a drop in the bucket compared with the billions of dollars in aid being discussed for other aspects of the affected areas.
For example, after talking with Arizona State Board of Education member Jenny Clark about the state’s education savings account program, one family said, “We continue to utilize the … program to tailor our son’s education to meet both his great strengths and real challenges.”
Public schools could be held financially harmless during the existence of these accounts. As EdChoice noted, in states with school choice programs, “many have funding protection policies.” In California’s case, districts could continue to receive their current average daily attendance funding.
Education savings accounts could be funded through the billions of dollars in aid the state will surely receive from the federal government. President Donald Trump would likely look favorably on this program since he proposed a similar program at the federal level in his first administration.
The education savings account program should be reevaluated after a few years to ensure it’s working as designed and improved as needed.
While the catastrophe of the Los Angeles fires has created great uncertainty, one thing is certain: Parents affected by the fires will need the flexibility to pivot and choose educational alternatives that best suit the individual needs of their children.
Parents cannot wait for bureaucratic processes to rebuild the schools that had been. These families need tools right now to pay for and provide for educational services to meet their immediate needs.
“We are so thankful for the educational freedom,” said another Arizona family that used their account funds for a home school hybrid program.
With National School Choice Week upon us, it is a perfect time to give fire-affected Los Angeles parents the freedom and flexibility they so desperately need.
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Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute, a Pasadena-based think tank advocating for free-market policy solutions, and author of “The Great Classroom Collapse.”
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
A special education class at West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
TOP TAKEAWAYS
Federal cuts are directly impacting programs designed to support students with disabilities in their transition to adulthood and programs that train special education teachers.
These cuts have caused significant concern from advocates and educators for disabled students.
Regional special education administrators in California are calling on Congress to rescind the cuts and for the state to fill the gap in the meantime.
Jake, a 17-year-old junior, is beginning to think about life after he graduates from Mt. Carmel High School in San Diego County.
This is a daunting task for any teen, but his mother, Angela, says it’s been especially thorny for Jake, who is on the autism spectrum, has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and struggles with anxiety.
The prospect of getting a job one day soon has made him “suicidal,” said Angela, who asked not to share her family’s last name to protect her son’s privacy about his diagnoses. She said her son has told her, “I’m going to be homeless; I won’t get a job.”
So Angela was thrilled when Jake was accepted into a new program at his school, Charting My Path for Future Success, which helps students with disabilities navigate into adulthood. In late January, Jake began to meet with a caseworker who seemed to understand his needs. At the time, Angela thought, “My prayers have been answered,” she said.
“We don’t have a clear understanding of why this decision was made or why this particular grant program was cut so suddenly,” said Stacey McCrath-Smith, director of special education at Poway Unified. “It was very upsetting to our staff. It was hard to explain to families and parents.”
An email from the U.S. Department of Education said the grant was “deemed to be inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” Representatives from the department did not respond to questions from EdSource.
Educators and disability advocates in California are raising the alarm about federal cuts that are already affecting programs that support students with disabilities. That includes research like Charting My Path for Future Success, but also cuts to special education teacher training.
The disability advocacy community is in defense mode, said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy for The Arc, a national advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“There are many, many pieces that we’re concerned about,” Linscott said.
Linscott and other advocates for disabled students worry that other Trump administration proposals, such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and cutting Medicaid, could further harm disabled students. But some cuts have already taken effect.
The morning after the district was told its grant funding was cut off, Poway Unified notified four teachers being trained to help disabled teens transition to adulthood that they would immediately be reassigned to other positions in the district. This is despite early signs of success, such as one nonverbal student who had become highly engaged in sessions about career planning in a way he had never been in academic classes, McCrath-Smith said.
Jake will no longer receive training to help prepare him for college and employment. Now he will not receive mentoring or lessons on goal-setting, finding an apartment and other skills. His mother said he struggles with real-world topics like banking or how a resume works. She’s been looking for alternatives, but is unsure how her son will find help for his unique needs.
“It was like a gut punch,” Angela said.
Educators’ worries extend beyond the 420 students in California, including students at Sweetwater Union High and Mt. Diablo Unified school districts, who were a part of the national study.
“The recent and abrupt elimination of critical funding and research developments will significantly impact important ongoing special education research and services to students, not only in our member [local education agencies], but in others who would ultimately benefit from the results of their research,” according to a letter written on behalf of the SELPA (Special Education Local Plan Area) Administrators of California, California County Superintendents, the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education and the three districts hit by the cuts.
The March 21 letter calls on Congress to compel the U.S. Department of Education to reverse its decision, and for the California Legislature to bridge the immediate funding gap of $2.8 million for this “vital” special education research.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of researchers against the U.S. Department of Education this month challenged whether the executive branch has the constitutional power to cut nearly $900 million from the Institute of Education Sciences. The suit called the department’s actions “dramatic, unreasoned and unlawful,” noting that the canceled grants left students with disabilities “in the lurch, with no time or help to even transition out of the Charting My Path Program.”
Cuts to special education teacher training
The Trump administration also abruptly terminated $600 million in federal teacher training grants, including programs to address the acute shortage of special education teachers who work with California’s nearly 840,000 students with disabilities.
Three SELPAs in the state reported losing funding to create a pipeline of special education teachers, according to a March 25 letter sent to California state and federal legislators on behalf of the affected districts, SELPA Administrators of California and California County Superintendents.
Under these cuts, the Tulare County SELPA reported that it will lose about $10 million, San Diego’s South County SELPA will lose $4.1 million and the West San Gabriel SELPA will lose up to $650,000. Those cuts are in limbo now as they’re also being challenged in court.
Teacher shortages can impede the education of students with disabilities, said Tamara Schiern, executive director of the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA. When districts are unable to fill openings for these positions, they either hire teachers who are not fully credentialed or long-term substitutes.
According to a federal survey, there’s both a state and nationwide shortage of teachers with the appropriate special education credentials, with 40% of districts reporting in 2020-21 that they struggled to staff special education roles.
The West San Gabriel Valley SELPA typically has 30 vacancies to fill each year in its 14 districts, and it would struggle to find credentialed teachers for eight to 12 of them, Schiern said.
In one example, Schiern said a string of long-term substitute teachers was covering a class of elementary school students with autism. Parents complained, and then the district, which she declined to disclose, asked the SELPA for help. The agency was able to help set the classroom up and model instructional strategies, but when a new substitute teacher came in, the agency had to start from scratch again.
“That’s what a teacher shortage looks like on the ground,” Schiern said.
This is why the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA began a program to train teacher residents specifically in special education. Funding came from state and district sources, but districts with high-need students received federal reimbursement for their share. This year, the program supported 27 teacher residents; ultimately, the goal was to cover 40 residents.
But federal cuts to the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant mean that the annual stipend for the residents will be slashed from $37,000 to $27,000; the coordinator for the program was cut, and only half the number of teacher residents can be supported, Schiern said.
In the meantime, the letter from special education administrators and superintendents asks California’s congressional delegation to pressure the U.S. Department of Education to reinstate the funding and the state legislators to cover the $14.9 million shortfall.
“The sudden loss of federal funding for teacher residency grant programs will have a significant and profound impact on an already fragile system,” reads the letter.
The San Gabriel Valley is a community that is ethnically and racially diverse, with a large population of immigrants and English learners. The region’s SELPA looks to parents and paraprofessionals to recruit special education teachers who can reflect that demographic diversity, Schiern said, adding that representation matters in education for both students and parents — a point backed by research.
This made the program attractive for California to fund, but it also may have made the program a target for the Trump administration, which has canceled contracts for programs that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.
“I can’t help but feel that that could be part of the issue,” Schiern said. “A lot of what California does is at odds with the federal government right now.”
We want to hear from you
A new administration always brings change, and education is once again at the center of the national conversation. As we track these developments, we want to hear from you. What policies are you interested in reading about? What questions do you have about how federal decisions might shape education in California? How will this change affect disabled students in California?
Bill Blanken, a chemistry professor at Reedley College, claims that a diversity and equity policy in California’s community colleges amounts to a “loyalty oath.”
Photo courtesy of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
A federal judge has dismissed a case filed on behalf of professors claiming that California Community Colleges diversity and equity policies infringe on their academic freedom.
Professors at State Center Community College District, based in Fresno, had, in a suit filed in August 2023, sought to block the California Community Colleges from enforcing diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion (DEIA) principles.
But U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff, a Biden appointee who joined the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in 2024, wrote in an order Tuesday that the plaintiffs “failed to allege that there exists a credible threat of enforcement of the regulations against them.”
The plaintiff’s attorney, Daniel Ortner, with the free-speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said he was reviewing the decision and discussing it with his clients.
In 2022, the board of governors for the California Community Colleges adopted regulations requiring all 73 of its local districts to evaluate employees, including faculty, on their competency in working with a diverse student population. More than 7 out of 10 of California’s 2.1 million community students are not white, according to enrollment data from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.
State Center Community College District complied with these regulations with a faculty union contract approved in March 2023. The district declined through a spokesperson to comment on the case.
The push for new diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility policies came out of a long-running effort to improve student outcomes in the community colleges, but it picked up steam in the wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020.
The original complaint described the professors as critics of anti-racism, who instead support “race-neutral policies and perspectives that treat all students equally.” The complaint stated that requiring faculty to be evaluated on their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility principles is unconstitutional and has a chilling effect on their free speech rights. The professors said they feared receiving disciplinary action or being fired under these new regulations.
Lead plaintiff Loren Palsgaard, an English professor at Madera Community College, said in the complaint that he no longer assigned Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” because it “offer[s] perspectives that are different from the ‘anti-racism’ and ‘intersectionality’ perspective mandated by the DEIA Rules.” Reedley College chemistry professor Bill Blanken said he feared that not mentioning the races of Marie Curie or Robert Boyle means that “he will be accused of failing to adopt a ‘culturally responsive practices and a social justice lens.’”
Judge Sherriff wrote that many of the professors’ concerns arose from documents from the Chancellor’s Office, such as guidance, recommendations, model principles and a glossary of terms. He added that none of these recommendations were formally adopted or legally binding, and that what the professors largely objected to was not in their faculty contract.
Sherriff also noted that the Chancellor’s Office confirmed in court documents that it could not take any action against professors concerning their speech, because decisions regarding employees, such as hiring, performance evaluations and terminations, are the responsibility of the district. The Office also stated that they do not believe that the examples cited by the professors would be precluded by the diversity regulations.
In September, Sherriff dismissed a related suit on behalf of Bakersfield College history professor Daymon Johnson. Sherriff wrote in his order that Johnson lacked standing because the Kern Community College District that employed him had not yet imposed local policies implementing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility regulations.
In October, Johnson’s case was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The State Center Community College professors filed an amicus brief in November in support of Johnson, urging the court to “protect academic freedom across the state by vacating the district court’s decision.”
Deborah Vanessa Lopez, left, is a program manager that works with students formerly in the foster system at Rio Hondo College. She has worked with Faylen Bush, right, who is set to transfer out of Rio Hondo College this year.
Credit: Faylen Bush and Deborah Vanessa Lopez
When Faylen Bush returned to college in 2023 after being laid off from work, he planned to pursue construction management to build on the skill set he had acquired over several years in that field as a concrete carpenter and protect himself from future layoffs.
He was married and had three young children, and he had little time to spare as he pursued a more stable future for his family. He knew that to succeed in college, he needed to remain more focused on his career goals than he was when he had been in college about a decade earlier, when he was first entering adulthood after leaving the foster system amid a cycle of housing instability and juvenile detention.
Faylen Bush
And so, when a program at his school, Rio Hondo College in Los Angeles County, reached out to Bush with resources for students with experience in the foster system, he paid little attention. He was unsure that the resources would apply to him at all because he was in his early thirties.
But the program, Guardian Scholars, was persistent. They tried to reach him multiple times until he finally decided to go to their office and learn more. He learned that Guardian Scholars is a chapter-based organization across California’s college campuses that supports students who have foster care experience. It is an organization that, since its inception in 1998 at Cal State Fullerton, has sought to increase college enrollment, retention, and graduation rates among former foster youth as a pathway toward overall stability in their lives.
“I can honestly say that stepping into the office, sitting with Deborah, and having that conversation opened up a whole world of opportunities for me,” said Bush of his first meeting with Guardian Scholars staff.
“Deborah” is Deborah Lopez, a Guardian Scholars program manager. She and her team connect students with access to counselors who are trained to support former foster youth, grants to purchase textbooks, meal vouchers, on-campus jobs, access to conferences to further students’ professional networks, and more.
“Our students experience a tremendous amount of trauma even if it was one day or 15 years of their life” in foster care, Lopez said. This thinking serves as the foundation for their program: They extend support to every single Rio Hondo College student with experience in the foster system, no matter when or how long their experience was.
Bush said he is aware of the statistics he is up against given his upbringing. According to a national 2020 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, far fewer students with experience in foster care have a bachelor’s degree — nearly 5% for men and about 9% for women, than students without foster experience, about 31% for men and close to 36% for women.
Deborah Lopez
These rates persist despite several studies showing that the majority of current and former foster youth report an interest in attending and graduating from college.
But Lopez knows the statistics of the students who have received support targeted to their foster care background. For example, across the California community colleges, students are more likely to enroll in credit-bearing courses and to remain enrolled in school if they are enrolled in foster-specific support programs, according to a 2021 report from John Burton Advocates for Youth, an influential nonprofit that advocates for California’s homeless and foster youth.
“One of the things that has worked for us as a program is consistency,” said Lopez, who has worked with the program for nearly a decade.
While many of their students have graduated and transferred from Rio Hondo, some have needed to cut back on classes or drop out altogether. “But eventually, they come back, and we’re here,” said Lopez.
With the support he has received, Bush has not only remained on track to transfer to a four-year university later this year — he has applied to several Cal State and University of California schools, though he is particularly interested in UCLA. His career goal has also changed in the year-and-a-half since he returned to school. He is now pursuing psychology and a career in counseling, and, while the career change might seem abrupt, it’s a return to the goals he had about a decade ago.
Foster youth also need a blueprint
As Bush tells it, the consistent instability throughout his childhood played a critical role in how his life unfolded as he entered adulthood.
“The system is trying to help … and it’s providing homes, but I still feel like a necessary component is to provide that blueprint for success after you age out,” said Bush of the foster system.
He went on to describe the blueprint that a teenager without foster experience might have: If their parents went to college, they might also attend college; if their parents were part of the workforce, they might decide to pursue a similar path after high school.
“Someone who has experienced the foster system, they don’t have that blueprint and, sadly, the statistics show there’s a small percentage of success stories,” he added.
He was around 10 years old when both of his parents died, leaving him and his sister in the foster system. Their maternal grandmother was near them in Lancaster, a city in northern Los Angeles County, but she was caring for her own young children plus some of her grandchildren and couldn’t take them in.
They remained in foster placement for two years until an aunt in Louisiana reached out and requested they be placed with her.
Thus began Bush’s experience with kinship in which a child in foster care is placed with a family member. He was living with family once again, but his life was no more stable than before.
“I can honestly say she tried her best, but she didn’t really have the resources to fully cater to our needs. To her it was more like, OK, you guys live with me now,’ and that’s it,” Bush said. “But there was trauma that needed to be addressed. There was, for both of us, abandonment issues that needed to be addressed.”
By the time he was 14, Bush was regularly suspended from school, eventually missing enough days to become truant and land in juvenile detention.
“That set a course for me, going in and out of juvenile corrections,” he said. He continued getting into trouble, eventually spending over a year inside.
Once released at 16, he returned to his aunt’s home, but he had developed resentment toward her because she had not visited him during his time inside. He learned that she continued receiving payment as he was still officially under her care, and so began a cycle of housing instability as he began to stay at friends’ homes and hotel rooms rather than sleep at his aunt’s home.
To route the payment to himself and pay for housing, Bush figured out how to emancipate himself at 17. It’s a process that Lopez noted few of their students go through given its difficulty.
Bush knew he had a path forward: football. After his time in juvenile detention, his football coach continued to invest in him, sending him to university training camps. But his behavior landed him in trouble again, and he was in a fight so bad during the summer going into his senior year of high school that the coach ended the relationship.
“I would always wind up in situations where I’m in trouble. I always used to ask myself when I was in front of the principal, when I was in front of the judge, ‘Why am I here?’ said Bush, reflecting on his youth. “And then I learned over time, it’s the decisions that I’m making.”
“Before, there were a lot of things that were happening that were out of my control,” he continued. He slowly learned there were things he had control over, such as his path toward emancipation, but without the proper, stable guidance of an adult through his upbringing, he was often unclear on how to properly use that newfound power.
Unable to play football after the fight, he reached out to a former foster parent in California who agreed to take him in so he could start fresh in his home state.
With his high school requirements complete, he attended Southwest College in Los Angeles, playing football for the team and eventually landing a scholarship to continue playing the sport in Oklahoma.
He had dreams of continuing his studies in psychology, eventually earning a doctorate in the field and becoming a school counselor.
But the pressure of supporting his family took center stage once he and his now-wife had their first child, so he declined his university scholarship. “It was such a big transition at that time, and I felt the need to support my family,” said Bush.
From then through the fall of 2023, Bush worked odd jobs and eventually secured stable work in the construction industry as he and his wife had two more children. His return to school was prompted by his layoff, but he was also keenly aware of the harsh reality of working in such a physically demanding field.
“The longevity for a Black carpenter isn’t that long. I have to figure out how I’m going to maneuver within this industry so that I can make it for at least 15 years,” he said of his thinking at the time.
It wasn’t long after landing in the Guardian Scholars office that he began thinking more deeply about his goals. What began as a return to school to secure job stability in a field he’d entered solely to provide for his family has since become a path back to the goals Bush had long before he had the level of support he has found with Lopez and her team at Guardian Scholars.
“My daughters and my son,” he said. “I feel they are the best thing out of my whole life. I’m trying to put myself in a position where I can be the best example and the best provider for them. I know now, at 33, with all my life experiences, this is what seems clearest to me.”
