Tom Boroujeni, Fresno City College academic senate president.
Credit: Mark Tabay / Fresno City College
The State Center Community College District placed Fresno City College instructor and president of the school’s Academic Senate, Tom Boroujeni, on administrative leave late Thursday, district officials said in a statement.
District officials cited no specific reason for the action. It takes effect immediately.
The move came one day after EdSoruce reported that in 2021 Fresno State University determined that in 2015, Boroujeni “committed an act of sexual violence” against a professor who also teaches part-time at Fresno City College. He denies committing the act.
Chancellor Carol Goldsmith did not respond to messages Thursday night.
Boroujeni did not respond to messages following the district’s brief announcement.
In a message to the City College campus community Thursday, President Robert Pimentel wrote that “investigative action” was being taken, and that “the college takes allegations of this nature very seriously.” He did not explain the specific allegations.
Boroujeni, 38, of Clovis, is also known as Farrokh Eizadiboroujeni and Tom Eizadi, documents show. He has taught at Fresno City College since 2015, the same year he began his academic career at Fresno State while still a graduate student.
Earlier Thursday, three female instructors in the communication department at Fresno City College refused to teach their classes, citing the EdSource report.
Tiffany Sarkisian, the college’s program-review coordinator and a communication arts instructor, told the administration and her students that she and others decided to stay off campus in an effort to advocate for a safe teaching, learning and working environment.
“The environment at FCC (Fresno City College) grows more toxic and unsafe by the day, especially as an abuser has been – and continues to be – protected by various campus leaders,” she emailed college administrators.
Late Thursday, after learning the district put Boroujeni on administrative leave, Sarkisian said the college’s decision was appropriate.
“It provides a space where other parties can feel safe to actually do the job of teaching and learning,” she said, but the paid administrative leave is “essentially rewarding (him) for behaving badly.”
She added that the college had deeper problems than Boroujeni. “It’s not just this individual being a bad actor; it’s institutionalized practices and structures that allowed this to continue for so long.”
“This (was) another example of an institution protecting the abuser and not the victim,” she told EdSource. “What happened on our campus should not have happened, and there should have been other structures in place.”
Boroujeni told EdSource in an interview that he also faces complaints from three female employees of the college for what he described as gender discrimination.
He was also reprimanded last year by Cyndie Luna, dean of the school’s Fine, Performing and Communication Arts Division, for unprofessional conduct that included allegedly referring to a colleague with an apparent racial slur and threatening “to get” the colleague, according to a copy of the reprimand letter EdSource obtained. Boroujeni claimed Luna fabricated the slur and threat she attributed to him, adding, she “makes things up all the time.”
He also claimed that a Fresno State professor was lying when she told an investigator that she did not consent to sex with Boroujeni in her apartment on June 21, 2015, and that he “pinned down her upper region” and that she “zoned out” during what followed.
EdSource does not identify victims of sexual abuse or violence. The woman declined to be interviewed.
Boroujeni told EdSource the woman made up the assault allegation in retribution for a sexual harassment allegation he brought against her, claiming she seduced him into a relationship he didn’t want but entered into out of fear that she would undermine his ability to earn a master’s degree and become a Fresno State instructor.
That claim, which Bouroujeni linked to his removal in 2020 as coach of the school’s nationally prominent debate team, was dismissed by a university investigator.
It was during the probe of his claim that the alleged victim told the investigator about what happened at her apartment on June 21, 2015. The investigator determined she was credible and found that Boroujeni committed what Fresno State has called “an act of sexual violence.”
The university couldn’t discipline him because he was a graduate student when the alleged violence occurred. Boroujeni resigned from Fresno State last year after officials said a report on the matter would be placed in his personnel file when he was up for a performance review.
In his resignation, he agreed to not seek or accept work in the California State University system again.
But the matter had no immediate impact on his teaching a few miles away at Fresno City College, where the victim teaches part-time in addition to her tenured position at Fresno State.
A State Center Community College District document obtained by EdSource shows that “in August 2021, (the victim) sought a ‘no contact order’ from Fresno City College against Tom Boroujeni… as a result of a sexual misconduct investigation at CSU Fresno.” The ‘no contact order’ was granted, the document, titled an “Administrative Determination,” states.
The district granted Boroujeni tenure in March. He assumed the academic senate presidency in May, after a two-year term as president elect.
Jill Wagner, spokesperson for SCCCD, told EdSource that Boroujeni’s tenure committee “considered multiple factors in favor of granting tenure, and areas of concern were not identified” at the time of the review. Asked if the committee that considered Boroujeni’s tenure had access to or was of the district’s administrative determination which confirmed Fresno State’s finding that an act of sexual violence had occurred, Wagner did not respond directly, writing instead that the district followed state law and the district’s union contract, “which prescribes what information can be included in tenure review.”
Boroujeni told Edsource that he “got tenured with the district’s knowledge of everything that had happened.”
Wards at N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility talk at a table in Merced Hall in Stockton, Calif.
Credit: Lea Suzuki / San Francisco Chronicle / Polaris
California is failing to provide a high-quality education to students in the juvenile justice system by not addressing the inadequacies of academic data collection practices, according to a recent report from the national Youth Law Center. Current collection practices, the report authors argue, do not accurately measure student needs and outcomes.
“A failure to design better metrics would be a disastrous choice on the part of California stakeholders to keep these students out of sight and out of mind,” the report’s authors wrote.
The report, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” is a follow-up to a 2016 report that similarly found the state to be failing in its mission of providing students in juvenile detention with high-quality education via its disproportionate representation of multiple student populations, high rates of chronic absenteeism, low high school graduation rates, inaccurate or incomplete data, and more.
The most recent report highlighted data from two school years — 2018-19 and 2021-22 — using publicly available data from the California Department of Education as well as public records requests sent to 10 county offices of education that oversee court schools, which are education facilities for youth in the juvenile justice system. Students enroll in court school as they await adjudication or disposition, after they’ve been committed to a juvenile facility, or if they’re in a home placement under the supervision of probation.
During 2018-19, nearly 20,000 students attended court schools in the state. In the 2021-22 school year, the number dropped to 10,891. This decrease likely reflects the lower number of youth in the juvenile justice system, which has trended downward in recent years, per the report.
California’s current academic data system does not capture one crucial data point — that the majority of students attend a court school for less than 31 instructional days, the report noted. This means that few students attend for an entire school year, which is typically the time frame that data collection practices are based on.
What’s more, currently available data does not distinguish between academic needs and outcomes of students who spend days or weeks attending a court school versus those who attend for years.
The report highlighted that it has long been anecdotally understood by researchers, probation staff and others working in education within the juvenile justice system that student attendance is often transitory given the dynamic nature of the legal system. The report’s authors argue that instructional programming should reflect this knowledge by calculating any partial credits earned by recording them in student transcripts once they leave juvenile detention. Students also need additional services to more seamlessly move back into their local schools.
While the report’s authors acknowledge that less time in the juvenile justice system is most beneficial, they maintain that the time youth do spend attending a court school should be as minimally disruptive as possible to their education. Minimizing disruption, they said, could include a heightened focus on the transition process out of juvenile detention.
An ongoing challenge with inadequate data collection is that improvements are difficult to highlight. For example, the report authors found that the college-going rate at 10 court schools exceeded the average for the state’s alternative schools.
“The data doesn’t really care if it’s positive or negative. The limitations exist on both sides,” said Chris Middleton, an Equal Justice Works fellow at the Youth Law Center and a primary author of the report. “And I think here where a really positive story could be told, there’s still a set of limitations that’s very evident.”
Much of the data contained in the report reflects a dire reality.
For example, the overall number of youth in the juvenile justice system decreased significantly from 2018 to 2022, yet the number of students with disabilities rose from 20.1% to 29.8%.
The report suggests a few potential reasons: improved screening and identification, improved communication between schools regarding disability status, or a failure to capitalize on the systemic changes that drove the decrease in youth detention statewide.
The report’s authors also found that foster youth are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system.
While foster youth represent less than 1% of all students enrolled in California schools, in 2018-19 they made up 21.44% of court school enrollments; by 2021-22, they were almost 31 times overrepresented in court schools versus traditional schools. This data was either redacted or unavailable for 27 of 51 court schools.
“The extremely high rate of disability status and the extremely high rate of foster care overlap,” Brady said. “We have long known that young people with disabilities are more likely to be impacted by the juvenile justice system. … The numbers for foster care were still surprising.”
Similarly, high rates of students experiencing homelessness were found at some court schools, but the data for this population of students was particularly unclear; much was either redacted or unavailable. While foster youth status is centrally tracked by the state, homelessness is largely screened by school districts — an identification process that has only in recent years improved through legislation and enforcement.
Regarding chronic absenteeism, the rate was 12.9% among court schools and 12.1% statewide during the 2018-19 school year, and by the 2021-22 school year, that rate was 16.8% among court schools and 30% statewide.
Though lower than the state average, this was alarming for the report’s authors.
Students who attend a local education agency for less than 31 days are not eligible to be considered chronically absent, which indicates that the true rate of chronic absences is much higher, given that most court school students attend for less than 31 instructional days, the report authors wrote.
Additionally, the authors found while some students refuse to attend class, some cannot attend due to decisions made by probation staff. Two examples shared in the report include a practice in Los Angeles County “of barring entire living units of young people from attending school if one of them misbehaved” and refusal by probation staff to provide “timely transport” of students to school.
According to the report, “A necessary element of addressing chronic absenteeism in court schools must include better documentation of missed instructional time and the reasons why students are absent from class.
“Additionally, efficient and effective coordination between probation and school staff is critical to ensuring the basic educational responsibility of students being present in their classrooms is met.”
While the rate of chronic absences was lower among court schools during the 2021-22 school year, it should be noted that the percentages across court schools varied. Some schools reported a rate of over 30% while other schools reported 0%.
One recent allocation of $15 million toward post-secondary education programs for youth in the juvenile justice system might turn the tide on better understanding outcomes. The funding will create and expand community college programming inside juvenile facilities, and a portion is intended to go toward evaluating such programs.
This ongoing funding “is the single most positive and exciting thing that’s going on in the area of juvenile justice and education right now,” said Lauren Brady, managing director of the legal team at Youth Law Center.
Many of the issues with data collection that researchers found were due to unavailable data or redactions — when a group includes fewer than 10 students, data is withheld to protect student privacy.
“We can’t tell the complete story. That’s where we’re at right now. … In order to truly transform the experience for students and to give them the best chance to have a brighter future, we have to be able to measure what they’re experiencing,” report co-author Middleton said. “And I think that we have the capability. I have faith in California and our institutions that we are able to properly develop these measures and ensure that the data’s actually being reported.”
Wards at N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility talk at a table in Merced Hall in Stockton, Calif.
Credit: Lea Suzuki / San Francisco Chronicle / Polaris
California is failing to provide a high-quality education to students in the juvenile justice system by not addressing the inadequacies of academic data collection practices, according to a recent report from the national Youth Law Center. Current collection practices, the report authors argue, do not accurately measure student needs and outcomes.
“A failure to design better metrics would be a disastrous choice on the part of California stakeholders to keep these students out of sight and out of mind,” the report’s authors wrote.
The report, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” is a follow-up to a 2016 report that similarly found the state to be failing in its mission of providing students in juvenile detention with high-quality education via its disproportionate representation of multiple student populations, high rates of chronic absenteeism, low high school graduation rates, inaccurate or incomplete data, and more.
The most recent report highlighted data from two school years — 2018-19 and 2021-22 — using publicly available data from the California Department of Education as well as public records requests sent to 10 county offices of education that oversee court schools, which are education facilities for youth in the juvenile justice system. Students enroll in court school as they await adjudication or disposition, after they’ve been committed to a juvenile facility, or if they’re in a home placement under the supervision of probation.
During 2018-19, nearly 20,000 students attended court schools in the state. In the 2021-22 school year, the number dropped to 10,891. This decrease likely reflects the lower number of youth in the juvenile justice system, which has trended downward in recent years, per the report.
California’s current academic data system does not capture one crucial data point — that the majority of students attend a court school for less than 31 instructional days, the report noted. This means that few students attend for an entire school year, which is typically the time frame that data collection practices are based on.
What’s more, currently available data does not distinguish between academic needs and outcomes of students who spend days or weeks attending a court school versus those who attend for years.
The report highlighted that it has long been anecdotally understood by researchers, probation staff and others working in education within the juvenile justice system that student attendance is often transitory given the dynamic nature of the legal system. The report’s authors argue that instructional programming should reflect this knowledge by calculating any partial credits earned by recording them in student transcripts once they leave juvenile detention. Students also need additional services to more seamlessly move back into their local schools.
While the report’s authors acknowledge that less time in the juvenile justice system is most beneficial, they maintain that the time youth do spend attending a court school should be as minimally disruptive as possible to their education. Minimizing disruption, they said, could include a heightened focus on the transition process out of juvenile detention.
An ongoing challenge with inadequate data collection is that improvements are difficult to highlight. For example, the report authors found that the college-going rate at 10 court schools exceeded the average for the state’s alternative schools.
“The data doesn’t really care if it’s positive or negative. The limitations exist on both sides,” said Chris Middleton, an Equal Justice Works fellow at the Youth Law Center and a primary author of the report. “And I think here where a really positive story could be told, there’s still a set of limitations that’s very evident.”
Much of the data contained in the report reflects a dire reality.
For example, the overall number of youth in the juvenile justice system decreased significantly from 2018 to 2022, yet the number of students with disabilities rose from 20.1% to 29.8%.
The report suggests a few potential reasons: improved screening and identification, improved communication between schools regarding disability status, or a failure to capitalize on the systemic changes that drove the decrease in youth detention statewide.
The report’s authors also found that foster youth are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system.
While foster youth represent less than 1% of all students enrolled in California schools, in 2018-19 they made up 21.44% of court school enrollments; by 2021-22, they were almost 31 times overrepresented in court schools versus traditional schools. This data was either redacted or unavailable for 27 of 51 court schools.
“The extremely high rate of disability status and the extremely high rate of foster care overlap,” Brady said. “We have long known that young people with disabilities are more likely to be impacted by the juvenile justice system. … The numbers for foster care were still surprising.”
Similarly, high rates of students experiencing homelessness were found at some court schools, but the data for this population of students was particularly unclear; much was either redacted or unavailable. While foster youth status is centrally tracked by the state, homelessness is largely screened by school districts — an identification process that has only in recent years improved through legislation and enforcement.
Regarding chronic absenteeism, the rate was 12.9% among court schools and 12.1% statewide during the 2018-19 school year, and by the 2021-22 school year, that rate was 16.8% among court schools and 30% statewide.
Though lower than the state average, this was alarming for the report’s authors.
Students who attend a local education agency for less than 31 days are not eligible to be considered chronically absent, which indicates that the true rate of chronic absences is much higher, given that most court school students attend for less than 31 instructional days, the report authors wrote.
Additionally, the authors found while some students refuse to attend class, some cannot attend due to decisions made by probation staff. Two examples shared in the report include a practice in Los Angeles County “of barring entire living units of young people from attending school if one of them misbehaved” and refusal by probation staff to provide “timely transport” of students to school.
According to the report, “A necessary element of addressing chronic absenteeism in court schools must include better documentation of missed instructional time and the reasons why students are absent from class.
“Additionally, efficient and effective coordination between probation and school staff is critical to ensuring the basic educational responsibility of students being present in their classrooms is met.”
While the rate of chronic absences was lower among court schools during the 2021-22 school year, it should be noted that the percentages across court schools varied. Some schools reported a rate of over 30% while other schools reported 0%.
One recent allocation of $15 million toward post-secondary education programs for youth in the juvenile justice system might turn the tide on better understanding outcomes. The funding will create and expand community college programming inside juvenile facilities, and a portion is intended to go toward evaluating such programs.
This ongoing funding “is the single most positive and exciting thing that’s going on in the area of juvenile justice and education right now,” said Lauren Brady, managing director of the legal team at Youth Law Center.
Many of the issues with data collection that researchers found were due to unavailable data or redactions — when a group includes fewer than 10 students, data is withheld to protect student privacy.
“We can’t tell the complete story. That’s where we’re at right now. … In order to truly transform the experience for students and to give them the best chance to have a brighter future, we have to be able to measure what they’re experiencing,” report co-author Middleton said. “And I think that we have the capability. I have faith in California and our institutions that we are able to properly develop these measures and ensure that the data’s actually being reported.”
Students, faculty and staff protest a potential tuition increase across the California State University system on Sept 12, 2023.
CREDIT: MICHAEL LEE-CHANG / STUDENTS FOR QUALITY EDUCATION
Thousands of California State University faculty are preparing to shut down their classes and strike for one day next week as labor negotiations have stalled.
The series of one-day rolling strikes will begin at Cal Poly Pomona on Monday, with San Francisco State following on Tuesday, Cal State LA on Wednesday and Sacramento State on Thursday. Some faculty from other campuses are expected to join their colleagues and not teach on those days.
Salary remains the largest disagreement between the 23-campus Cal State system and the California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 professors and lecturers. The faculty is fighting for a 12% general salary increase for this year and has not specified the size of the raises it will seek after that. However, the university system is proposing a total increase of 15% over three years, including this year.
“A lot of what we’ve been offered by management is dependent on the state budget,” said Kate Ozment, an English professor at Cal Poly Pomona who will participate in the strike. “That doesn’t work for faculty who have to pay bills right now.”
Many faculty members have student loan debt and want to start families or are struggling to support the families they do have, she said.
“So many of us chose to work for the CSU specifically because we believed in the mission and we believe in the student body,” Ozment said. “The CSU talks a really big game about recruiting first-generation faculty and underrepresented faculty, but the reality is those populations are less likely to have generational wealth to fall back on, and they’re way less likely to have had good jobs that helped them save before they went to graduate school.”
But CSU officials say the system can’t afford to give more than 5% a year to the faculty group.
“We recognize the need to increase compensation, and we are committed to doing so. But our resources are limited, and our financial commitments must be fiscally sustainable,” said Leora Freedman, CSU’s vice chancellor for human resources, during a call with media. “CSU is prepared to return to bargaining with CFA at any time.”
Freedman added that the university system has already successfully negotiated 5% annual increases with four other labor unions. However, negotiations have also stalled with Teamsters Local 2010 representing 1,100 of CSU’s skilled trades workers. The Teamsters also announced they plan to join the faculty in their strike.
“Any larger salary increases would force very difficult and painful decisions on our campuses and would trigger a reopening of salary negotiations with other labor unions,” Freedman said.
In August, the faculty union and the CSU entered a state labor mediation process. A fact-finding report written by a third-party labor negotiator was released by both sides Friday. The negotiator ultimately recommended a 7% general increase in faculty salaries for one year while noting that this would be below the rate of inflation.
In an email to its members, the faculty association said it appreciated the fact-finder’s work but believes the 7% proposal is not enough to address the loss in buying power.
The fact-finding report also highlighted that reaching an agreement has been challenging because the union and the university system have “radically different views” of the ongoing financial situation. The faculty union, as well as some student groups, have argued that the university system can use its reserves to cover expenses like faculty salaries. However, CSU has stated that its reserves are intended for one-time emergency purposes and can’t go to salary increases.
Much of the wage dispute comes as CSU has granted salary increases to campus presidents and hired the new system chancellor with a nearly $800,000 base salary, even as the system faced a budget deficit.
As for the series of one-day strikes, Ozment said at the start of this semester that she alerted her students to the potential disruption of their classes in her syllabus.
“Being a teacher is about transparency and consistency, so I felt that if I told them from the beginning about a possible disruption they would be emotionally and intellectually prepared for it,” she said. “My students have been really upset when they learn how many of their faculty are not paid a living wage, especially how many classes are taught by lecturers who can’t afford rent or are constantly driving from campus to campus in order to put food on the table.”
Ozment said she did receive some concerns about the impact of the strike on grading or the ability to graduate on time eventhough just one day’s classes will be canceled.
“I told them the same thing that I always tell them, which is: ‘I’ve got your back,’” she said. “There’s going to be a disruption. That’s the nature of the thing I have to disrupt, but I’m disrupting management. I’m not trying to disrupt (students). I encouraged them to be a part of it because the better the disruption, the quicker this is over and the quicker they get the education they deserve.”
Students have also received communications from the chancellor’s office about the strikes and have been encouraged to speak with their faculty members about the impact on their courses and grades. And not every faculty member will participate in the strike, Freedman predicted.
The chancellor’s office is caught between “a rock and a hard place,” she added.
“We need to be responsible and protect the university and our students and our operations,” Freedman said. “At the same time, we also need to pay our employees fairly and competitively. We are in a very tough situation. I wish we had more money. I wish we had more money to use and to make different choices, but we’re very limited.”
Former Temecula Valley Unified Superintendent Jodi McClay mouths “thank you” to the supporting crowd at Temecula Valley High School on June 13, the night she was fired.
Credit: Anjali Sharif-Paul/MediaNews Group/The Sun via Getty Images
The number of California school superintendents leaving their jobs is climbing, despite increased salaries and benefits. Some have reached retirement age or are moving to less stressful jobs. Some are being pushed out by newly elected school board majorities. A new crop of less experienced district leaders is taking their place.
Superintendent turnover in California grew from 11.7% after the 2019-20 school year, to 20.9% after the 2020-21 school year. Just over 18% left after the 2021-22 school year, said Rachel S. White, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who runs a research lab that collects data about school superintendents.
Turnover is particularly high this year because many superintendents who stuck it out during pandemic school closures, and the tumultuous years since, have had enough, White said.
“This year, before the 2023 school year, I think people finally broke,” she said.
Chris Evans, 52, decided to step down as superintendent of Natomas Unified in Sacramento at the end of last school year. He stayed on to help the new superintendent transition.
“The job was always hard to begin with, and it’s become infinitely harder,” said Evans, who led the district for 11 years.
“There are a number of folks in their 50s and 60s who are saying they are done,” he said.
Pandemic made top job more difficult
Superintendents’ jobs changed dramatically after the pandemic closed schools in March 2020. Instead of focusing on academics, strategic planning, school finances and community relations, superintendents were charged with navigating pandemic mandates and negotiating these changes with district unions. Superintendents also were tasked with ensuring there were enough computers and connectivity for students and staff to support virtual learning, all while dealing with parents who were angry their children were not in school.
The reopening of schools did little to turn down the heat at school board meetings, which were politicized over issues such as the teaching of critical race theory and its tenets of systemic racism, and LGBTQ+ topics. School superintendents often found themselves the focus of community and parental ire — so much that some school districts paid for security for their superintendent.
I can’t ever remember hearing of a superintendent that had gotten a death threat before. Now, I know personally four or five.
Gregory Franklin
Gregory Franklin, the former superintendent of Tustin Unified School District in Orange County, said he has never been threatened, but he knows other superintendents who have.
“I can’t ever remember hearing of a superintendent that had gotten a death threat before,” said Franklin, who left Tustin Unified at the end of 2021 for another job. “Now, I know personally four or five. It’s just kind of shocking. So, I think, all of that being said, that when other possibilities present themselves, people are taking them.”
Job turnover is a national problem
The superintendent turnover problem is not California’s alone, according to the Superintendent Research Project. Nearly half of the country’s 500 largest school districts have changed leadership or are undergoing leadership changes since the pandemic began in March 2020. The study compared the two years before the pandemic to the first two years of the pandemic and found a 46% increase in superintendent turnover nationally.
“What we are seeing is that the challenges are greater than ever before and the political environment is creating great instability in the institution, which is resulting in shorter tenure for superintendents,” said Dennis Smith, managing search partner for Leadership Associates, a recruitment agency that does many of the superintendent searches in California.
Superintendents needed: many openings
California school districts searching for superintendents include Sacramento City Unified, Eureka City Schools, Palm Springs Unified, Eastside Union, Pasadena Unified, Pajaro Valley Unified, Pacific Grove Unified, Culver City Unified, Newman-Crows Landing Unified, Solana Beach School District, Culver City Unified, Dixon Unified, Millbrae Elementary, Woodlake Unified, Hillsborough City, Merced City, Black Oak Mine Unified, North Monterey Unified and Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified.
The California School Boards Association projected a superintendent shortage five years ago, said Susan Heredia, CSBA past president. It began as baby boomers started to retire, she said.
In the 15 months since Brett McFadden began work as a deputy superintendent at the Monterey County Office of Education, a quarter of the county’s 24 school districts have changed superintendents, he said. McFadden was the Nevada Joint Union High School District superintendent until last school year.
“If you look at the last 100 superintendents that had to leave their positions or their districts, you would be very hard-pressed to find any one of them that left because of test scores or left because of educational issues,” McFadden said. “They leave because of local politics, board relations, labor relations, a facility bond matter or a budget thing.”
McFadden calls the Covid-19 pandemic the kindling that ignited the rise in single-issue adult-driven disputes, like those around masking and vaccinations, at school board meetings.
Demand is so high for superintendents that McFadden is already getting calls from search firms hoping to entice him to apply for jobs.
“You know the paint on the door isn’t even dry yet with my name on it,” he said. “These search firms are now just aggressively looking for candidates.”
Of the 30 candidates that apply for each candidate search, maybe eight to 10 meet the district’s qualifications, Evans said. Of those, there are only maybe three or four that could potentially be hired for the job, he said.
The high demand is driving up salaries and benefits packages, with total compensation surpassing the $500,000 mark in some cases.
Firings making applicants wary
Another factor pushing superintendents out the door is board members elected with the promise of firing the incumbent. The election of school board members who are determined to make significant changes in school districts has resulted in the firing of an unprecedented number of superintendents since the pandemic began in 2020, Smith said.
The school board meetings, broadcast live, have been watched throughout the state — especially by other superintendents.
“You’d expect this in a Spanish novella or something, but you don’t expect it in your neighboring district,” he said.
School boards can waive state credential requirement
School boards largely determine the qualifications required for a superintendent in their district. Although the state of California requires school district superintendents to have both a teaching credential and an administrative credential, the school board can waive the credential requirement.
At least six California school district superintendents did not have both a teaching and administrative credential in the 2022-23 school year, according to data reported to the state. The districts that waived the requirement that year included Visalia Unified, Los Angeles Unified, Mountain View Whisman Unified, Sacramento City Unified, Kingsburg Joint Union High School District and San Marino Unified, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
Since there is no mandate to report this information in CALPADS, the state data system, there could be more superintendents without both credentials, said Anita Fitzhugh, California teaching credential commission spokesperson.
Superintendents are watching these meetings and paying more attention than ever to whether they fit well with the community of the district before they apply for a job, said White, of the University of Tennessee.
“I think it’s just a heightened awareness right now,” White said. “Especially if I’m going to pick up and move my entire family and start a position in a new place. I don’t want to be fired in two years.”
Temecula Valley Unified has been a hotbed of controversy since a trio of conservative trustees took control of the board a year ago. The board fired Superintendent Jodi McClay in June and banned the teaching of critical race theory, passed a parental policy requiring staff to notify parents if students are transgender and removed social studies material because it included a section on LGBTQ+ rights activist Harvey Milk.
Although the search for a candidate ended on Nov. 13 with the hiring of Gary Woods, a former Beverly Hills Unified superintendent, the search firm indicated to one board member that there were fewer candidates than in the past. Quite a few candidates did not meet the requirements outlined by the district in a job description and some weren’t even from the education field, board member Allison Barclay told EdSource in early November.
“I would assume that if you’re looking for a position anywhere, any company, any school district, you’re really going to look at what the situation is you’re walking into financially, culture-wise, all of those things,” Barclay said. “And so, having a school district that is making national news is probably not appealing to as many people as might be attracted to it when it wasn’t making national news and was just simply known as an award-winning school district. So, I can’t imagine that that’s been helpful.”
State legislators responded to the spate of firings by passing a bill creating a cooling-off period, prohibiting school boards from firing a superintendent or assistant superintendent within 30 days of new board members being seated or recalled.
The law also prevents school boards from firing school leaders at special or emergency board meetings, which require only 24 hours’ notice, instead of at a regular meeting, which requires the public to be informed of a meeting at least 72 hours in advance. The bill was signed by the governor in October.
“People are recognizing it’s just not healthy for an organization to go through these flip-flops where you might have a 3-2 majority that keeps a school or a superintendent, then have an election where the 3-2 flips and then the superintendent is looking for a job,” Franklin said.
Less experienced leaders hired
Assistant or deputy superintendents in larger districts are moving into the lead role in smaller districts, or superintendents in smaller districts are taking the opportunity to move to more lucrative jobs in larger districts. Newer, younger superintendents are becoming more common, Smith said.
To meet their administrative needs, many districts are also grooming their own talent, said Molly Schwarzhoff of Ray and Associates, a national education search firm.
‘I’m seeing different, perhaps less-seasoned individuals coming into the roles,” McFadden said. “That doesn’t mean they are less talented or more talented.”
To help new superintendents prepare for their new role, the Association of California School Administrators offers a new superintendents seminar series, a superintendents academy and a new superintendents workshop before its annual Superintendents Symposium.
The 2023 Voice of the Superintendent Survey, conducted by education consulting firm EAB, recommends that school boards find ways to help superintendents feel successful in their role and allow them time to connect with students and collaborate with peers to staunch turnover. Superintendents surveyed for the report overwhelmingly said they need help navigating challenging conversations with the community.
Superintendents report directly to the school board, something first-time superintendents have never done before, said James Finkelstein, professor emeritus of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia. The new superintendent now has multiple bosses, often with divergent interests. They also have to deal directly with parents and external interest groups.
“No amount of academic training or a certificate can prepare someone for this trial by fire,” Finkelstein said. “The bottom line is that there is no substitute for experience. But the catch-22 is that the only way to get the experience is by doing the job. Every school district would like an experienced superintendent who has demonstrated success in their previous position. But finding those individuals is increasingly difficult, especially given the dramatic turnover since Covid.”
When I first went to a free yoga class at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s recreation center in the winter of my sophomore year of college, I never realized how it would change my life.
I entered the space with a sense of discomfort; I hadn’t practiced yoga in several years and was hesitant to observe the stiffness of my limbs and unevenness of my breath. The other students around me seemed familiar with these classes and overall more comfortable in their skin.
At the time, I was facing mental health challenges, and a counselor recommended that I try the free yoga class at the recreation center. Willing to try anything, I decided to give it a shot.
The first class I took was led by a student. She invited us into a space with lit candles and gentle music. Even though my initial class was an adjustment, I still went back. And then, I went back again. In fact, it soon became clear to me I wanted to be an instructor myself.
I am a journalism major, and could never have imagined that college would allow me access to anything beyond a career in my area of study. But after completing my 200-hour yoga teaching certification over the summer, I was ready to apply to teach at the recreation center.
According to Eric Alexander, assistant coordinator of Cal Poly’s fitness programs, 16 out of the 46 fitness instructors at the recreation center are students. A huge benefit of hiring students as fitness instructors, he said, is the affinity with their peers as students.
“Students bring great energy to fitness programs, and they get the opportunity to positively impact and motivate their peers,” Alexander said. “That student experience is not only valuable to the instructors but to participants and the program as well.”
I saw this as soon as I entered the teaching space. My classes are sometimes filled with 40 or 50 students, many of them regulars who return weekly. I have found that my being a college student makes my students less hesitant to approach me after class to ask questions or simply to share what the class meant to them.
This accessibility to the physical and mental benefits of yoga helped me to recenter and grow as a person and as a student. Additionally, I came to realize I wanted to help others on their journey of healing. In this role as a fitness instructor, I have been able to expand access to yoga in my college community.
Yoga practice draws on a rich history of healing through mind-body connection which can help promote mindfulness and reduce tension. Especially for college students, this kind of physical practice can be incredibly beneficial.
According to research cited by the National Library of Medicine, “Yoga has positive effects on a psychophysiological level that leads to decreased levels of stress in college students.”
With the average yoga class in a commercial studio costing $15-$25 per session, yoga’s benefits are unaffordable to many young people. I’ve seen how free classes on campus solve that problem, and how they may be less daunting for some students to explore on their own.
Cal Poly and other public universities also offer other free group physical activity classes, such as cycling, dance, Pilates, high-intensity interval training and much more, allowing students to explore what activity is most beneficial for them.
I am grateful that pursuing my passion for yoga has been supported by my university, and while teaching me something that I love to share with other college students: Pursuing a passion or side interest while in school will serve to enrich your life, and in my case, the lives of others.
Consistently after my classes, students approach me to share how the space has helped them to recenter and find peace amid busy school days. I encourage them to not only continue practicing yoga but to consider teacher training if they are interested.
Using my platform as a student fitness instructor, I am able to share my passion for yoga to promote healing, growth and mindfulness in my college community. And I have gained experience for a career in teaching yoga, which I intend to maintain as a side job after college.
High school students conduct a science experiment with their teacher, right.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
It’s not hard to imagine why we are currently confronted with a crisis of teacher burnout. After decades of being severely underpaid while costs of living skyrocket, combined with heightened safety issues and the incredible stress of the pandemic, it’s no wonder why countless teachers across the country are fleeing the profession.
It has resulted in a national teacher shortage that we are experiencing acutely in California. According to the California Department of Education, there were more than 10,000 teacher vacancies during the 2021-22 school year, particularly concentrated in rural communities, communities of color and low-income communities, as well as a 16% reduction in new teacher credentials, the first decline in nearly a decade.
Even when people decide to make the courageous decision to become teachers, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ensure they stay in the profession. A recent nationwide survey found that 1 in 3 teachers say they are likely to quit in the next two years.
It’s a dire crisis that must be addressed with urgency, coordination and innovative solutions. As state superintendent of public instruction, I have partnered with educators and legislators across California to craft teacher recruitment and retention policies that comprehensively confront this momentous challenge.
SB 765, which Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed, will help develop a statewide recruitment strategy that’s never been seen before, incentivizing longtime, qualified educators back in the classroom to provide short-term help and removing financial barriers to those attempting to enter the profession.
The financial incentives include expanding the Golden State Teacher Grant Program to provide a $20,000 scholarship for anyone who wants to be a teacher or school mental health clinician, as well as a $10,000 undergraduate scholarship for any student who is enrolled to become a tutor in our College Core program. It also offers people who complete the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification a $5,000 annual grant for five consecutive years of their teaching career.
These measures are invaluable tools to provide bonuslike incentives for people from marginalized communities looking to enter the profession, which many believe is critical in hiring more teachers of color across the state to ensure that our classrooms actually look like California — something that greatly benefits every student.
We’re also working to expand outreach to specific communities that may have an interest in teaching in our state, including recently retired educators, the spouses of military personnel who have teaching backgrounds in other states, as well as recruiting from the ranks of the classified staff and expanded learning educators.
Teacher recruitment has historically been a disparate process that is executed at the individual district level. But due to the overwhelming scale of the crisis, we’ve made creating a coordinated statewide effort under the California Department of Education a top priority, including developing a one-stop portal that’s a resource for teaching credentials, scholarships and teacher openings throughout the state.
In addition to building a comprehensive teacher recruitment system, California must invest in providing desperately needed raises for educators. AB 938, which was introduced this year by Assembly Education Chair Al Muratsuchi but didn’t make it through the state Legislature, would have increased teachers’ salaries across California 50% by 2030, aiming to close the existing wage gap between teachers and similarly educated college graduates in other fields.
At a time when costs of living in our state, including the skyrocketing cost of a four-year degree, are greatly outpacing the rate of stagnating teacher pay, it’s absolutely essential that we fund a significant increase in pay so educators, including classified employees, can remain in the communities they teach in.
It’s one thing to recruit teachers to teach in local schools, but it’s another to retain them for decades in our communities. The best way to do that is by providing a living wage for educators in every California neighborhood. That’s why ensuring that teachers are properly compensated for their tireless work next year through the budget or a bill like AB 938 that would significantly increase their salaries is so important.
Ultimately, the best way to combat our teacher shortage crisis is by developing a coordinated recruitment strategy, increasing compensation and providing additional financial incentives to build a sustainable pipeline of educators in our communities. In California, we’ve invested in bold recruitment and retention strategies that, if paired with the doubling of teacher salaries, will be a comprehensive solution to this overwhelming crisis.
When disaster strikes, it feels like time stands still, but we are expected to keep moving. Those with children don’t have a choice — they go to work and address an overwhelming sense of trauma for their families.
The recent fires in Los Angeles demonstrated the worst of what disaster can bring and the best of our communities in their response.
Working in the early childhood space at the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles, I witnessed child care providers act with urgency and care to ensure babies and toddlers impacted by the fires had a safe place while their families began the journey to recovery. Six months later, the child care providers who stepped up heroically during the devastating fires remain undervalued, and the sector as a whole remains in critical condition. It’s time to prioritize child care before the next disaster strikes.
The Alliance tracked the impact of the fires on the child care sector and found that more than 100 sites providing care were impacted, with 47 of those facilities destroyed.
Even those who lost their homes put their role as professionals first, and figured out how to provide for the children in their care.
The day after the wildfires began, one Altadena provider evacuated to an Airbnb and took in children. This is just one of many stories of providers who lost their homes and everything they owned, and yet, still showed up for the families who rely on them.
This isn’t the first time providers held our community together. When Covid hit, providers responded so frontline medical workers and parents could go to work. No matter the circumstance, child care providers do what it takes to ensure children have a place to go.
That resiliency comes at a heavy cost — and it often happens without the necessary infrastructure from city, county and state leaders to make it sustainable.
The 0-to-3 child care system has needed transformative solutions for years. Families struggle to find and afford care, while providers are some of the lowest-paid professionals in our country. Child care advocates are extremely coordinated, coming together to address longstanding sector challenges. But we cannot transform the system without public-private partnerships driving a holistic approach.
The flames may be gone, but the path to recovery is far from over.
Think about the child care system’s critical yet overlooked role in keeping families afloat during and after disaster. There are still neighborhoods where trucks haul away debris and where child care providers are piecing together arrangements in borrowed community spaces. Their commitment to caring for our youngest remains unwavering, but their capacity is stretched to the limit.
The Alliance has worked to track down displaced families and offer direct support. Some providers reconnected with the children they cared for. Others are still figuring out how to reopen. The unfortunate reality is that many providers have been forced to quit. As recovery inches forward, it is painfully clear: California’s child care system helps us withstand disasters, yet it’s not supported like other essential services.
Despite an outpouring of community and philanthropic support, child care remains largely absent from infrastructure rebuilding conversations. In some LA County disaster response plans, animal shelters and stables are listed as essential locations to check during a fire, but child care homes and centers are not.
I love animals, but the fact that our youngest children and providers are an afterthought in our community planning should alarm all of us.
We need our leaders to commit to building a more resilient child care system. There are simple, tangible solutions on the table now that our leaders can take action on. Our state Legislature and governor could protect provider wages and benefits from potential cuts or delays. This would go a long way to keeping more providers in the profession and supporting them ahead of a future disaster.
Crises don’t create fractures in our child care system. They expose them.
If we want to be truly prepared when disaster strikes, we must treat child care as the essential infrastructure it is and support the providers who keep our kids thriving, happy, and safe.
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Cristina Alvarado is the executive director of the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles and leads A Golden State for Kids, a campaign that brings together families, providers, child advocacy organizations and businesses to build demand for accessible child care in California.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Research by Stanford University found that 75 of the lowest-performing California elementary schools that received funding from an out-of-court settlement made significant progress on third-grade state Smarter Balanced tests this year.
The results indicate that the $50 million the schools received for effective reading instruction in the primary grades carried over to third grade after two years of funding.
“The fact that we were able to budge third grade comprehension assessments with a grant that was focused on TK, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, with a light touch on third grade, is amazing,” said Margaret Goldberg, literacy coach at Nystrom Elementary in West Contra Costa Unified, one of the schools that received the Early Literacy Support Block Grants, or ELSBs.
The 75 schools had the lowest scores in the state in 2019 on the third-grade Smarter Balanced test. They received the money, averaging $1,144 per year for the 15,541 K-three students, under the settlement in the lawsuit, Ella T. v. the State of California, brought by the public interest law firm Public Counsel. It argued that the state violated the students’ constitutional right to an education by failing to teach them how to read adequately.
Eligible schools were chosen from various districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, West Contra Costa Unified and others. The funding promoted the literacy instruction known as the “science of reading,” which includes explicit phonics instruction in kindergarten and first grade, along with the development of vocabulary, oral language, comprehension and writing.
Schools had the flexibility to choose to fund literacy coaches and bilingual reading specialists, new curriculum and instructional materials, expanded access to libraries and literacy training for parents. Schools were encouraged to participate in professional development in the science of reading and seek guidance on their literacy plans from the Sacramento County Office of Education, which oversaw the grants.
Released Monday, the study concluded that the block grants “generated significant (and cost-effective) improvements in English language arts achievement in its first two years of implementation as well as smaller, spillover improvements in math achievement,” wroteresearchers Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and Sarah Novicoff, a Stanford doctoral candidate in educational policy.
Students in the funded schools were scoring at the bottom of the scale in 2019, and, despite significant progress, few had achieved reading at grade level in 2023. Dee and Novicoff credited the early education grant for increasing third graders’ achievement by 0.14 standard deviation, the equivalent of a 25% increase in a year of learning, compared with demographically similar students who did not receive the funding. Researchers also found a similar gain by comparing the scores of third graders in the schools with the grants with third-grade scores of fifth graders from the same schools who had not benefited from the funding.
The Smarter Balanced reports results in four performance bands: standard not met, standard nearly met, standard met and standard exceeded. The schools with the grants succeeded in raising scores by 6 percentage points from the lowest category to standard nearly met, significantly reducing the number of students requiring intensive help. Still, after two years of funding, only 13.5% of students are proficient in reading, having met or exceeded standard. That’s 3 percentage points higher than in 2018, and 1 percentage point above pre-pandemic 2019. Schools with similar students not receiving the grants remain below where they were before Covid, according to the research.
Dee and Novicoff were unable to analyze why some schools performed better than others, which could be useful in shaping the state’s policy on early literacy. Unlike some states with comprehensive literacy plans, California does not collect any assessment data that school districts collect from TK to second grade. And, under the rules that the state negotiated in the settlement, participating schools were not required to submit their assessment data to the California Department of Education; most voluntarily did in the second year, but many did not in the first year. It’s also unclear how many schools adhered to their literacy plans or focused on less effective or ineffective strategies for improvement.
Researchers used the only complete set of state-level data to which they had access — third-grade reading comprehension assessments. Those scores may have understated the progress in reading that many schools made on district assessments in the first and second grades.
Public Counsel filed the Ella T. v. the State of California lawsuit in 2017, and the settlement went into effect during the height of the pandemic.Dee said the early success of the program during Covid, amid teacher shortages and extremely high chronic absences, made the results even more striking.
The third graders who took the Smarter Balanced test in 2023 “were the hardest hit by the pandemic. They were in kindergarten when it was interrupted by Covid,” Goldberg said. “They attended first grade remotely. In second grade, in schools like mine, which chose to adopt new curriculum, their teachers had never taught the curriculum before.”
Dee noted the academic gains from the grant were relatively large compared with the cost, making the program quite cost-effective — an effect size that is 13 times higher than general, untargeted spending.
Goldberg said the grant was efficient “because early intervention is cheaper and it’s more effective than waiting until third grade or later grades to provide reading support.”
The grant funding ends in June 2024. Dee said whether schools can sustain improved scores without specific funding support is an open question. Novicoff mentioned that the grant schools may be able to continue receiving support for literacy coaches and reading specialists if they receive funding from the new Literacy Coach and Reading Specialist Grant program.
Instead of being based on performance, the literacy coach grants are awarded to schools with high unduplicated pupil percentages, or the number of students who are eligible for free or reduced meals, are English language learners or are foster youth. Schools eligible for an early literacy grant may also qualify for a literacy coach grant.
Dee said design and implementation are key if the state hopes to continue or scale this success. This means paying close attention to school-based literacy action plans, oversight and resources with some flexibility. “This is a story about how schools that get money tend to do better — money does matter in schools, and this is another piece of evidence into that bucket,” Novicoff said, “but it also shows that what we can do with the money and how you structure that funding really does matter.”
UC Berkeley students on campus on Sather road in Berkeley.
Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource
Long revered as the birthplace of the free speech movement in the ’60s, UC Berkeley now finds itself at the center of a fractious debate about First Amendment protections and religious intolerance amid the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East.
Tempers are running high on all sides amid the bloodshed in the Middle East, which has already claimed thousands of lives, exposing ideological rifts between students and professors at the law school, spurring a discrimination lawsuit against the UC system and setting off a broader a debate over who gets to define the boundaries of First Amendment protections, a drama heightened by Berkeley’s legendary status as the heart of the ’60s student protest movement.
“It’s emblematic of the polarized times that we live in. We can’t begin to decide what the contours of expressive rights are,” said Will Creeley, the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy group. “In our pluralistic democracy, there are going to be groups out there with beliefs that you don’t share, that maybe the majority of Americans don’t share. But that’s what our system of government kind of defends and requires. We believe in groups of citizens banding together, even groups of citizens with unpopular ideas. That’s what the First Amendment protects.”
The war of words first flared last summer when a student group, Law Students for Justice in Palestine, adopted a bylaw that banned supporters of Zionism from speaking at its events. Roughly 22 other student groups have adopted variations of this bylaw.
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
“As law students, we must utilize our privilege in amplifying the voices of indigenous movements for liberation and engage in the academic and political boycott that is essential to furthering goals of freedom,” as the LSJP group noted on its Instagram page, framing the bylaw issue as a matter of free speech. Members of the group did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Others view the bylaws as discriminatory toward Jewish students, faculty and invited speakers. Steven Davidoff Solomon, a noted professor of corporate law, took offense at the bylaw, firing off an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging employers: “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students.”
“The student conduct at Berkeley is part of the broader attitude against Jews on university campuses that made last week’s massacre possible,” he wrote in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
In response to that commentary, a group of alumni wrote an open letter to Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school, calling on him to uphold the rights of all students. The letter argued that Solomon conflated “support for the Palestinian people or criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”
Chemerinsky responded by voicing the school’s commitment to freedom of speech, including language that “others find offensive, even deeply offensive.” Excluding speakers based on race, religion, sex or sexual orientation would not be allowed, he said, but excluding speakers based on viewpoint is a different matter.
“Student organizations have the First Amendment right to choose speakers based on viewpoint,” said Chemerinsky. “The College Republicans can choose to invite only conservative speakers. The Women of Berkeley Law can choose to invite only pro-choice speakers. I think that is quite clear.”
However, if you consider anti-Zionist to be synonymous with antisemitic, as some do, then excluding Zionist speakers can be seen as a discriminatory act.
“Nobody’s saying you have to include a program on a position that you disagree with,” said Alyza D. Lewin, president of the Brandeis Center For Human Rights under the Law. “They’re saying you cannot exclude an individual on the basis of their identity. That is a form of discrimination they need to address. You can’t have groups saying, ‘Zionists aren’t welcome,’ because that’s excluding Jews on the basis of an integral component of what it means to be a Jew.”
That’s among the reasons the Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education are suing UC Berkeley for what they characterize as the “longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism” on campus. The suit argues that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism and that the student group bylaws violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, the First Amendment right to freedom of religion and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“Conditioning a Jew’s ability to participate in a student group on his or her renunciation of a core component of Jewish identity is no less pernicious than demanding the renunciation of some other core element of a student’s identity — whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity,” as the lawsuit said.
Others reject the notion of equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
“I am wary of that argument for a couple reasons. First of all, I do think there is a distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism,” Creeley said. “You have a First Amendment right to criticize Israel. That’s core political speech.”
Still, the question became a hot-button issue when more than two dozen Wall Street law firms signed a letter warning deans at top law schools that they have “zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses.” Harvard, Columbia and NYU students have already lost job offers over “inflammatory remarks.”
Other voices, however, defend the right of student groups to invite whomever they choose to speak on campus. For instance, it has been noted that some chapters of Hillel, the Jewish student group on college campuses, have rules prohibiting speakers who “delegitimize” Israel.
“If you are a public university, you can’t require your belief-based student groups to either adopt or disavow certain beliefs,” said Creeley. “Student groups have an associational right, protected by the First Amendment, to band together over a shared belief, even if that belief is noxious to some, many, or even most.”
But some argue that freedom of speech should not trample on the freedom of religion. Kenneth Marcus, chairman and founder of the Brandeis Center as well as the civil rights chief of the U.S. Education Department during the Trump administration, has likened the bylaws to the “Jewish-free zones” of the past.
“The school is quick to address other types of hatred, but why not antisemitism?” as Marcus, a Berkeley law school alumnus, has put it. “Berkeley, once a beacon of free speech, civil rights and equal treatment of persons regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender and sexual orientation, is heading down a very different and dangerous path from the one I proudly attended as a Jewish law student.”
Hannah Schlacter, a second-year MBA student at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who is part of Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, says she feels unsafe on campus.
“I sense a hostile campus environment towards Jewish students who express their Jewish identity in certain ways. This was the case before 10/7, but it became even more so after 10/7,” she said. “If I express a part of my Jewish identity, like holding a flag of the Jewish homeland, then if I am assaulted, the university has demonstrated they will not investigate nor call it hate crime.”
The dean of the law school, a constitutional law scholar who is Jewish, refutes the central tenet of the suit.
“There is no ‘longstanding, unchecked antisemitism’ on the Berkeley campus,” said Chemerinsky. “I have been here six and a half years, and it is just a false narrative. I doubt the people who wrote it have been on campus.”
At the core of the debate is how you define freedom of speech, which has become an increasingly contentious matter in itself in recent years. Some say there’s not as much common ground on what constitutes free speech and the critical role it plays in feeding a lively marketplace of ideas, the foundation of any participatory democracy, as there once was.
“I have been teaching First Amendment law for 44 years and I think there is less consensus about free speech than there used to be,” said Chemerinsky. “The first seven weeks of this semester were calm and easy. Since Oct. 7, it has been difficult on our campus and on campuses across the country.”
For his part, the dean has also blamed the media, suggesting that many outlets have overblown the controversy, pouring fuel on the fire.
“What is the proper role of the university? To be a place where all ideas and views are discussed,” he wrote. “At my law school, the Law Students for Justice in Palestine bring in speakers and hold programs to express their views. At the same time, the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies holds many programs.”
Lewin disagrees that institutional neutrality is the best approach to combat a rising tide of bias. The suit argues that the university failed to address antisemitic incidents on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. In one campus incident, the suit alleges, a Jewish student draped in an Israeli flag was assaulted by two protesters who hit him in the head with his water bottle.
There has also been a rise in anti-Islamic incidents. Pro-Palestinian students have reported being harassed and threatened in the wake of Oct. 7, according to university officials.
“Hate doesn’t start with violence. Hate starts with biased attitudes,” said Lewin. “It starts with stereotypes. And then it builds. The reason we’re now seeing the violence is because for all those years when the biased attitudes, the stereotypes, the slurs, the shunning were taking place, the university said we’re not doing anything.”
Certainly the law school is far from being alone in grappling with these thorny issues. Cases of both Islamophobia and antisemitism have been spiking on campuses across the country. These mounting incidents have prompted a federal response, with President Joe Biden’s Department of Education announcing investigations into antisemitism and Islamophobia at a growing number of universities, including Harvard, Columbia and Cornell.
“Of all the issues we deal with, of all the topics of speech, abortion, Trump, politics, whatever, Israel and Palestine has always been the most intensely felt. And that was true before Oct. 7. Now, holy moly,” said Creeley. “It’s the intensity of the feelings on both sides and the decades of historical precedent, the general feeling of bitterness and hopelessness. It all coagulates into a very toxic stew on campus.”
The social strife rampant on campuses across the country, experts say, may reflect a deeply divided nation coping with myriad crises, foreign and domestic. This has spread far beyond campuses to society at large with Oakland’s City Council passing a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Demonstrators recently shut down the San Francisco Bay Bridge while others staged a sit-in at Oakland’s Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building, also urging a cease-fire. Protesters have also delayed a ship, which was believed to be carrying military supplies, for nine hours at the Port of Oakland. The use of hate speech is also rising online. Common ground is proving elusive on all fronts.
Grappling for ways to combat the rising tide of hate, UC President Michael Drake has pledged $7 million toward addressing “acts of bigotry, intolerance, and intimidation” on campuses.
“We have a crisis today on America’s campuses,” as Marcus said in his testimony before the House Committee on Education in a hearing titled “Confronting the Scourge of Antisemitism on Campus.” “This is an emergency, and I would suggest to this committee that when the problem is exceptional and unprecedented, the solutions need to be unprecedented and exceptional.”
Chemerinsky, for one, takes a pragmatic approach to the discord on and off campus in these polarized times. At the law school, he says he hopes to engender a greater sense of civility in the discourse.
“I don’t think we can aspire to unity,” he said. “But we can work to create community and to make all students feel included and respected.”
