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Dozens of educators to be laid off in West Contra Costa

Dozens of educators in the West Contra Costa Unified School District will be laid off in the upcoming school year, including grant-funded positions the district can’t afford to absorb.

The district plans to eliminate 104 positions, nearly 40 of those grant-funded, according to district officials. Assistant principals, instructional specialists, psychologists, bilingual paraprofessionals, academic support providers, special education and general education teachers are among the positions being eliminated.

Although some educators received preliminary layoff notices on March 15, the board won’t finalize the total number of eliminations until May, officials said. Some of the eliminated positions were already vacant.

“We understand the community’s concerns about the impact of these layoffs on classroom staffing,” district spokesperson Raechelle Forrest said in an email. “It is important to note that the district is committed to hiring and maintaining qualified and credentialed individuals and that classroom teachers have not received preliminary notices.”

The school board approved layoffs at a meeting earlier this month. Dozens of parents, educators and students spoke during the public comment period, pleading with the board to vote against the layoffs. In particular, many people spoke about the importance of school community outreach worker positions that will be eliminated.

School community outreach workers serve as liaisons between schools and families. Many of those workers are bilingual and can help with translations and teaching non-English speaking parents and students how to navigate the school system. Outreach workers also connect families with resources and can help facilitate meetings when there are language barriers.

Outreach workers were among the grant-funded positions district officials said they couldn’t afford to keep without the extra money. The district would need about $9.4 million to keep the nearly 40 positions that are being axed, district data showed. Many of the positions relying on grant money provided extra support for students: bilingual instructional aides, graduate tutors, coordinators, academic support providers and bilingual paraprofessionals.

In the 2022-23 school year, nearly 32% of students in West Contra Costa Unified were English learners, according to data from the California Department of Education. The percentage of English learners in the district who became fluent in English has dropped significantly since 2018, data shows, dropping from nearly 13% to about 3% in the 2020-21 school year, the most recent data available.

The majority of English learners speak Spanish, about 27% or nearly 8,000 students in the 2022-23 school year. About 30,000 students are enrolled in West Contra Costa Unified.

During public comment, parents and teachers spoke about the vital role outreach workers have for schools and the community. Without them, people contemplated how some families would continue to stay engaged in school communities.

Educators were also outspoken about how the lack of staffing in schools has been affecting learning. Because of larger classes, there are fewer one-on-one opportunities; there’s an uptick in behavioral issues in classes with consistent substitutes, and teachers are losing prep periods in order to fill in for other classes. One student said he hasn’t had permanent teachers in core classes in recent years and, as a result, he hasn’t learned much.

Three complaints were filed with West Contra Costa Unified earlier this year alleging some schools failed to provide students with qualified teachers. The complaints also allege there’s been a pattern of filling vacancies with long-term substitutes, which attorneys at Public Advocates, a nonprofit civil rights law firm, say is illegal.

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07/06/2025
Bill would expand nursing bachelor’s degrees to California community colleges

Credit: Riverside City College / RCC.edu

Community college leaders will once again attempt to offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing, renewing a fight with the state’s universities over whether expanding to the two-year sector eases California’s nurses shortage or increases competition.

The bill, authored by state Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, would allow 15 yet-to-be-selected community college districts that already provide associate degrees in nursing to offer bachelor’s degrees in the field.

While California State University has yet to take a position on Roth’s bill, it’s clear the system has a stake in whether community colleges are allowed to serve students who may otherwise attend CSU or private school programs.

The majority of bachelor’s and advanced nursing degree programs are taught by independent and private colleges, which hold about 51% of the market. Statewide, there are 48 bachelor’s degree nursing programs. At least 17 Cal State campuses and six University of California campuses offer a bachelor’s or master’s nursing program within their systems.

Enrollment in bachelor’s nursing programs has also increased statewide, with much of the growth in the private sector. In 2021, 9,179 new students entered these programs — nearly 2,500 more than the previous year, according to a 2023 state nursing board report conducted by UC San Francisco. Meanwhile, fewer students are enrolling in associate degree nursing programs, which are mostly at public community colleges.

“The workforce need has only grown,” said Kaylie Schmidt, a spokesperson with the Community College League of California, a nonprofit organization advocating in favor of the bill, SB 895. “We have nursing shortages like we’ve never seen before, and many of our districts are in communities that have workforce shortages.”

Schmidt said in some areas of the state, nursing students will leave their smaller communities that are in desperate need of health care professionals and migrate to other regions that offer them an opportunity to pursue the bachelor’s nursing degree.

Some estimates show that California is facing a shortage of about 36,000 licensed nurses — a need that is expected to grow “substantially by 2030,” said Andra Hoffman, a trustee for the Los Angeles Community College District. “This tremendous gap continues to widen as current nursing baccalaureate degree programs have demand greater than their enrollment capacity,” she said.

This isn’t the first time the community colleges have pushed the Legislature to approve offering nursing baccalaureate degrees. Ten years ago, the state’s community colleges began offering bachelor’s degrees in certain programs and at specific colleges to address unmet workforce needs. Back then, community college leaders warned that nursing shortages would continue if California didn’t allow the community colleges to offer nursing degrees. The state approved the pilot community college bachelor’s degree program but excluded nursing because state law bars the colleges from offering programs already offered by the universities.

SB 895, which would change that law, is expected to be heard by the Senate Education Committee on April 10.

Rehman Attar, Cal State’s director of health care and workforce development, said CSU has not taken a formal position on the bill but welcomes the Legislature to fix the problems like clinical placements and faculty shortages in nursing education within all three systems.

Registered nurses are not legally required to have a bachelor’s degree to practice. But a growing number of employers and health facilities require registered nurses to have, or be in pursuit of, a bachelor’s degree. A 2010 Institute of Medicine report recommended that the proportion of registered nurses with bachelor’s degrees increase to 80% by 2020. Meanwhile, in California, a 2021 Health Impact report found more than 54% of the state’s hospitals preferred hiring nurses with bachelor’s degrees.

A common misconception is that increasing the capacity of BSN-trained nurses at CSU would solve the nursing shortage, Attar said.

Instead, the problem is much larger than that, he said. Solving it means increasing more capacity for students to get clinical training and hiring more faculty to teach the courses for the community colleges and the universities.

“That’s a big limiting factor and a bottleneck for us to increase capacity,” Attar said.

Both associate degree and bachelor’s degree nursing programs require practical experience, or clinical education, in health care settings. But many health care facilities have a limited number of spots available to offer that experience to students. Creating new nursing programs would only add more students competing for that limited space. Attar said some universities outside of the CSU system also pay or incentivize for clinical placement spots for their students. Getting students into clinical training is an additional challenge all colleges face. Attar said CSU doesn’t pay or incentivize health care facilities for clinical placement spots because the practice isn’t equitable or fair for all students.

Schmidt said the bill would use clinical space already offered to these community college districts. Would that mean students within a single community college are facing greater competition against each other for clinicals? Schmidt said it would be on the community college to determine how it wants to use the clinical space it has between students earning an associate degree and a bachelor’s degree.

A separate bill authored by Roth, SB 1042, plans to address the clinical placement problem by requiring health facilities to work with public and private nursing programs to attempt to make the necessary number of placements available to them to meet the schools’ demand.

Statewide, there has been growth in nursing programs offering bachelor’s degrees. According to a 2023 report from the California Board of Registered Nursing, the number of bachelor’s programs in the state increased from 43 in 2020 to 48 in 2021. However, that 20% growth in programs took place in the private sector.

Alex Graves, vice president of government relations for the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, said the organization has not taken a formal position on SB 895, but they do have concerns about it exacerbating the challenge of finding faculty for bachelor’s nursing programs.

“The reality is if there are additional courses that are going to be required for community colleges to offer BSN programs, it will likely mean there will be additional faculty demands coming for those programs,” he said. “That will just make it all the more difficult for all of us to find those folks to fill those positions in our programs.”

Encouraging qualified nurses to teach in both associate and bachelor’s degree programs has been challenging for nearly all programs because colleges and universities can’t compete with the salaries nurses make working in health care settings.

Although faculty vacancy rates have fluctuated over the years, in 2022, the state nursing board reported a 12.1% faculty vacancy rate — the highest it had been in 10 years. Many colleges have compensated by hiring more part-time nursing faculty, but that hasn’t diminished their need for more faculty overall. The board found nearly 70% of nursing programs reported faculty working “overloaded” schedules, of which 94% reported paying their faculty extra for the additional work.

“We’re fortunate enough that we have doctoral programs that focus on creating nurse educators,” Rehman said, speaking for the CSU system. “But again, that pipeline gets restricted at the associate’s and bachelor’s degree level, so if we’re not able to increase that pipeline of students to become nurses, it restricts us in terms of producing nursing faculty, as well.”

Rehman called it a “domino effect.”

“When we’re able to address these core fundamental nursing issues of clinical placement — and just starting with that — that’s going to start alleviating some of the pains that we find with faculty,” he said.

Addressing the constraints on clinical placements and the shortage of nursing faculty are the best ways to get more nurses into the profession, Graves said.

Instead, Graves said there are better examples of collaboration between community college and university nursing programs that provide a clear path for students to achieve their bachelor’s without compounding the faculty and clinical placement challenges. Those examples are in concurrent enrollment or associate degree to bachelor’s nursing degree programs.

Partnerships

The number of associate degree programs partnering with bachelor’s degree nursing programs has also increased. Private universities and some Cal State campuses have formal concurrent enrollment nursing programs with community colleges that allow students to earn both degrees simultaneously. The state nursing board reported such partnerships have increased over the last 10 years from 50.8% in 2012 to nearly 60% in 2021.

CSU has more than 10 such partnerships across its campuses and wants to add more.

“These ADN to BSN pathways have been really helpful,” Rehman said. “We’ve been able to streamline our curriculum with the community colleges to really reduce the time to graduation. … We’re also having coordination with our clinical placements.”

The partnerships could be an alternative to allowing community colleges to offer the bachelor’s degree directly.

That collaboration with the community colleges creates better clinical placement schedules to get students in and out of the program more quickly. Traditionally, it can take a nursing student up to six years to complete their bachelor’s degree. However, the associate-to-bachelor’s nursing partnerships reduce that time to three to four years, allowing more students to graduate, Rehman said.

“It’s a win-win, and we’re always looking to grow it,” he said. “We’re going to continue to keep on trying to grow it and make it more accessible to all of our community college partners.”

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07/06/2025
Why I love my urban public school
Two San Francisco parents promote the city’s public schools at a city resource fair.

Credit: SF Department of Children, Youth and Families

If you live in San Francisco or have been here recently, you may have started seeing window signs or bumper stickers that say “I love my SF public school.” And if you’re not a San Francisco public school parent or student, you might be surprised to see these signs, given the prevailing narrative about the public schools in our fair city and in other urban areas. It turns out there are plenty of satisfied — even enthusiastic — public school parents and students in our big cities.

In California, and across the country, there is a pervasive narrative that urban public schools are “bad” and suburban schools are “good.” (Example: The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a small East Bay suburb has “better” schools than San Francisco like it’s an objective fact.) Describing a school, let alone an entire school system, as “good” or “bad” is lazy at best and coded racism at worst. Why? Because we typically rely on test scores and numerical ratings to identify a “good” school, and those ratings are highly correlated with race and income.

And there is so much more to a school than reading and math test scores.

Instead, we should talk about “fit” because a school that is a great fit for one kid may be a terrible fit for another. I am a graduate of the vaunted Palo Alto public school system. It was a good fit for me because I thrived (mostly) in a competitive academic environment; it was a terrible fit for one of my relatives, whose special needs were never adequately met in that system.

To determine a good fit, we parents and caregivers have to get really specific about what we’re looking for in a school and what each of our kids needs. Do we want rigorous academics? Arts education? A focus on social justice? Support for social-emotional development? A diverse student body?

Next, we need a reliable source of information. You can certainly learn something from looking at numerical data, like the School Accountability Report Cards. But if you really want to know whether a given school has what you’re looking for, the best source of information is current students, parents and caregivers.

If you ask urban public school parents what they think of their public schools, you will certainly hear both positives and negatives, as you would anywhere, including the suburbs. Since you can find a litany of complaints via a quick Google search, and in the spirit of the “I love my SF public school” campaign, I will focus on the positives. Here are the many things those of us displaying the signs in San Francisco — and sharing similar sentiments across the state — love about our kids’ schools:
- The rich diversity of our cities is reflected in our schools. San Francisco middle school parent Jessica Franklin appreciates that her kids “are learning to engage with, interact with and learn from so many people who are so different from themselves.” Hanson Li says that, as a first-generation immigrant, he appreciates the district’s “continued commitment to immersive language programs.” His high schoolers are fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese after attending elementary and middle schools with language programs.
- Our teachers are incredible. They are skilled and experienced: At her kid’s elementary school in San Francisco, Autumn Brown Garibay says five teachers have been at the school for more than 20 years, and many teachers sent their own kids to the school. They are dedicated: Sonia Gandiaga’s eighth grader in San Francisco has an “incredibly committed math teacher” who made her love math and feel confident in her math skills. They are committed to learning the latest, most effective teaching methods: At my son’s school, teachers learned how to teach a research-based phonics program and supported each other to implement the program.
- Our schools have a strong sense of community that is intentionally cultivated by teachers, school leaders, and families. Oakland middle school parent Monica Purdy appreciates how effectively her son’s school is supporting his transition into sixth grade, with camping trips to build community, weekly mentoring and individual counseling. In Los Angeles, Sara Light appreciates that her kids’ school draws from the surrounding neighborhood, which helps facilitate the feeling of community.
- Our children have access to enrichment programs and field trips that come with living in a world-class city. At the middle school Franklin’s kids attend, in just one year, students participated in collaborations with six different arts organizations, including the San Francisco Opera, Hip Hop for Change, and Alonzo King LINES Ballet.
No school or school district is perfect. As public school parents, we are the first to admit that our schools have areas that need improvement. Still, there are many things we love about our urban public schools.

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Jennie Herriot-Hatfield is a K-12 education consultant, former elementary school teacher, and public school parent in San Francisco. She serves on the board of directors for SF Parent Coalition, which advocates for a thriving, equitable school system.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
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07/06/2025
California Community Colleges approves 6 new bachelor’s degree programs

Dental hygiene program at Fresno College.

Credit: Fresno City College

Six additional bachelor’s degree programs have been approved across California’s community colleges, the state chancellor’s office for the college system announced.

With the approvals, there are now 39 bachelor’s degree programs that are being offered or will soon be offered across the community college system.

The latest programs to be approved include respiratory care at Antelope Valley College, paramedicine at College of the Siskiyous, dental hygiene at both Cypress College and Oxnard College, paralegal studies at Santa Ana College and respiratory care therapist at Victor Valley College.

“Through the Baccalaureate Degree Program we are broadening the reach of higher education and skill development to a greater number of students by offering affordable and quality opportunities close to home,” Aisha Lowe, an executive vice chancellor for the college system, said in a statement.

There are now 32 different community colleges across the state with at least one bachelor’s degree program. A few colleges have multiple offerings, including Antelope Valley, Cypress and Santa Ana with their latest approvals.

The number of bachelor’s degrees being offered across the community colleges will likely continue to increase. In January, colleges submitted another 13 program applications that are currently under review.

Under a 2021 state law, the community college system can approve up to 30 bachelor’s degrees annually, across two cycles each year. The degrees are all offered in high-demand career fields such as dental hygiene and automotive education.

By offering those degrees at the community college level, students can earn a bachelor’s degree for a fraction of what it costs to get one at a four-year university. In some cases, the degrees are also more accessible, since there are some community colleges offering them in parts of the state where there isn’t a University of California or California State University campus.

To get approved, the programs must first go through intersegmental review, a process in which the California State University and the University of California systems get to say whether they object to the degrees. Under state law, the programs can’t duplicate programs that are offered at UC or CSU.

That has been a point of contention, particularly with CSU, which has raised duplication concerns about several programs that community colleges have proposed, something that has delayed the approval process. Currently, 11 programs remain under intersegmental review.

Community college officials say they are working with CSU officials to establish a better process for resolving those disputes more quickly in the future.

Because the community colleges can’t create bachelor’s degree programs that are already available at CSU and UC, they have been prevented from offering degrees in some fields with worker shortages, such as nursing. Newly proposed legislation aims to change that: Senate Bill 895 would allow 15 community colleges to begin offering bachelor’s degrees in nursing.

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06/06/2025
Nearly all school parcel taxes pass, but mixed results for school bonds in March election

The March 5 primary proved to be a good day for passing school parcel taxes, but not so good for school construction bonds.

With fewer than 1% of votes statewide remaining to be counted, it appears likely voters in 10 of 11 districts approved parcel taxes. Although a small sample size, the 91% passage rate beats the historic 65% pass rate for primary elections, according to Michael Coleman, who publishes election results at CaliforniaCityFinance.com (see note below). The sole defeat was the Petaluma Joint Union High School District’s eight-year proposed tax at $89 per parcel.

Voters in 24 of 40 school districts passed school facilities bonds: 60% compared with the historic 73% primary election approval rate. And the winners include two tiny school districts in Sonoma County that looked like they would be defeated on election night but picked up enough mail-in or provisional votes to eke out a win.

It takes a 55% majority vote to pass a bond, and in Fort Ross School District, two votes made the difference for the $2.1 million bond; the 158 to 126 vote was 55.6% to 44.3%. Supporters of the $13 million bond in the Harmony Union School District picked up 6 percentage points since election night to end with 56.3% of the vote.

School districts can choose the March primary or November general election for a parcel tax or school bond. Most traditionally choose November, when more voters cast votes. But others gamble on the primary election, when there’s less competition, with fewer state bond issues and many initiatives competing for dollars on the ballot.

The most recent proposal for a state school construction bond, which would have provided matching funding for local school bonds, was also on the statewide primary ballot in March 2020, and it lost — the first in decades to lose. But it coincided with the emergence of the Covid pandemic, adding an edge of anxiety for voters. It also had the misfortune of coincidentally being designated Proposition 13, which likely caused confusion among voters with the 1978 anti-tax initiative that substantially restricted property tax increases and required a two-thirds voter majority to pass new taxes, including parcel taxes. (Voters lowered that threshold for school facilities bonds to 55% with Proposition 39 in 2000.)

The Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s aides are negotiating whether to place a school facilities bond proposal on the November ballot. With student enrollment declining statewide, most of the money would be designated for renovations and repairs, not new construction.

Brianna Garcia, vice president of School Services of California, a school consulting company, doubted that the lower-than-average passage rate for bonds would predict the outcome in November for local and state bond proposals. Many more districts will place bonds before voters, and the passage rate will revert to the norm for November elections, which is over 80%, she said.

While agreeing with Garcia, Eric Bonniksen, superintendent of Placerville Elementary School District in El Dorado County, cautioned that people struggling financially “are looking at every avenue to fit within their budgets, including school bonds.” A drop in interest rates, even if not large, which economists are forecasting, “may make people feel better about the economic outlook,” he said

Voters, Bonniksen said, want to see something visible, like remodeling a building, reconstructing a field or painting a school. “If a bond only fixes sewer and electrical lines, they will question, ‘What did you do for this money?’” he said.

Voters passed about $3 billion worth of projects, not including interest, generally paid over 30 years at rates of $15 per $100,000 of assessed property value in Sunnyvale to $60 per $100,000 of assessed property value in Benicia, Hayward, Culver City and Desert Sands unified districts. The largest bonds approved are for $675 million in Desert Sands, $550 million in Hayward, and $358 million in Culver City.

The largest bond that failed was for $517 million in Tamalpais Union High School District in Marin County; as of March 22, it was 1.25 percentage points shy of 55%. Opponents, led by the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers, questioned the scale of the work and said the money would disproportionately go to Tamalpais High, with not enough to two other high schools. The district last approved a construction bond two decades ago.

Parcel taxes

Only about 1 in 8 school districts, primarily in the Bay Area and districts with wealthier families in the Los Angeles area, have passed one. Parcel taxes are one of the few sources of funding for districts to supplement state or local funding. Because Proposition 13 bans tax increases based on a property’s value, parcel taxes must be a uniform amount per property, regardless of whether it’s a cottage, a 10-bedroom house, or an apartment building.

Courts have ruled, however, that parcel taxes can be assessed by the square footage, and three of the 11 on the ballot (54 cents per square foot per year in Berkeley Unified, 55 cents in Albany Unified, and 58.5 cents in Alameda) passed. School boards in high-cost Bay Area districts argue that parcel taxes are critical because state funding under the Local Control Funding Formula doesn’t take regional costs into consideration.

The approved parcel taxes range from $75 per year for eight years in Martinez Unified to a $768 per year extension of an existing parcel tax, with an annual cost of living adjustment, in Davis Joint Unified.

Note: Updated data indicated that parcel taxes in Manhattan Beach Unified and Petaluma City Elementary School District, along with bond proposals in Fort Ross and Harmony Union school districts picked up enough support to pass.

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06/06/2025
FAFSA delays make it difficult for students to finalize college decisions

A student heads toward the Student Services building at Los Angeles Pierce College

Credit: Delilah Brumer/EdSource

Waiting for college financial aid offers has been worrying for Kamila Juarez, a high school senior at Grace Davis High School in Modesto. The prolonged timeline of this process, caused by a delayed release of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has added to the uncertainty.

“It’s kind of stressful, just because I know that when I do know how much I get, it’s going to be pretty fast,” Juarez said. “So knowing that I have all this waiting time, I can’t really do much about it besides apply for scholarships and wait to hear back from those scholarships. It’s pretty suspenseful.”

The U.S. Department of Education launched a renewed version of FAFSA on Dec. 31, 2023 — three months later than the usual release each Oct. 1 — because the new form was not ready to be rolled out on time. The new FAFSA was said to be simpler and more efficient for families to complete, with the intention of providing more students with aid due to a new formula.

With FAFSA’s availability issues, about 5.7 million students have successfully completed the application, compared to the average of 17 million applicants at this point in previous years. The compressed time schedule strained families applying for financial aid.

The Education Department’s deadline for getting student financial aid data to colleges and universities was last week, so schools are only now receiving that information. And on Friday, complications piled up, as the Education Department announced that a miscalculation in “the formula of the FAFSA resulted in incorrect financial need information for several hundred thousand students being sent to colleges and universities.”

The delays led all nine UC campuses to push back their Intent to Register deadline to May 15, while all 23 CSU campuses to no earlier than May 15. Despite the 15-day commitment deadline extension, some students said they are facing difficulties in making a decision without knowing their financial aid package for the 2024-25 academic year.

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill extending the state’s financial aid deadline to give students more time to apply for state aid programs.

Juarez said she has received scholarships from Sonoma State University and California State University, Monterey Bay but is waiting until she knows what financial aid she’ll get from every school before making her decision.

“My biggest (factor), I would say, is financial aid, as well as location,” Juarez said.

Juarez said she hopes to be able to go to either Cal Poly San Luis Obispo or UCLA and major in city planning or geography and environmental science.

Finean Hunter-Kenney, a senior from Lowell High School in San Francisco, said the FAFSA delays have also heavily impacted his decision in committing to college.

“I can’t make any decision on where to go to college without all the financial info,” he said. “Right now I’m in the process of committing to Chapman University to play baseball, but I can’t make that decision final until I see how much FAFSA will pay for, because the tuition is really expensive.”

Hunter-Kenney said he feels pressure to say “yes,” because the deadline is May 1, but he can’t accept the offer until FAFSA releases financial aid information. For him, there is “definitely a limit” when it comes to the cost of tuition, and while aid is not “make or break,” it will still affect his college decision.

“I am pretty stressed about where to go,” Hunter-Kenney said. “The financial aspect is stressful as well, because without all the information, I don’t know how much in loans I’m going to have to take out, and that’s something I want to know before I decide to go anywhere.”

For Isabella Gentile, a communication studies major at Pasadena City College, financial aid was one of the main reasons she decided to focus her transfer applications on in-state public universities and avoid the financial uncertainty that can come with private or out-of-state schools.

“I know I would receive more money from (my) grant if I attended a UC school versus if I attended a private school, which impacted my decision to not apply to somewhere like USC,” Gentile said.

However, Gentile also said that the transfer and financial aid process has been “good and easy” overall, because she was able to submit everything she needed to.

Other students filling out this year’s FAFSA have faced technical difficulties, according to Laura Burtness, a college and career adviser at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo. Some of these issues are related to her students’ citizenship status.

“There is difficulty for mixed residency families, or families where not all claim U.S. citizenship,” Burtness said. Error messages and application rejections have been common when parents don’t have social security numbers — classified as “eligible non-citizens” for FAFSA purposes. Families calling the help line have reportedly been met with recordings of outdated information or advice to try to fill out the form again later.

The Education Department announced in late February that students who have at least one parent without a social security number would be able to successfully submit FAFSA forms in the first half of March.

Burtness mentioned the urgency and concern she’s had for the students she has worked with all year.

“I think this is going to be a big deal because we’re running out of time. Hillsdale’s graduation is on May 30, and we’re doing anything we can to help,” she said.

Los Angeles Pierce College political science major Eric Guerrero faced the more common technical difficulties; he said he spent weeks troubleshooting his FAFSA form before he was able to submit it in late January.

Guerrero plans to transfer to a four-year university this fall and has his sights set on UCLA. He said the challenges he faced with FAFSA have made his transfer process harder.

“Every time I tried it, it was crashing or it wouldn’t load,” Guerrero said. “It was so hectic. Trying to get it done was horrible, and I was really nervous. Eventually, one random night at like 2 in the morning, it finally went through.”

Ashley Bolter is a fourth-year journalism student minoring in French and ethnic studies at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science. Kelcie Lee is a first-year student at UC Berkeley majoring in history and sociology. Abbie Phillips is a third-year journalism student minoring in Spanish at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. All are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

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06/06/2025
Taxpayers deserve better performance audits of school construction bonds

Photo: Carol Davis/Flickr

California public school and community college district voters approved $20 billion of construction loans in 2022, with more passing in 2023, using the Proposition 39 financing capability. The California Association of Bond Oversight Committees (CABOC) estimates that a total of $197.8 billion of this type of construction loan now exists.

Proposition 39 made it easier to pass bond measures, but it also created a new emphasis on vigorous taxpayer oversight of construction expenditures. Indeed, when Proposition 39 was presented to the voters, the Legislature created a quid pro quo scenario, reducing the bond approval level to 55% from two-thirds, but requiring extensive taxpayer oversight and public visibility.

This oversight includes a performance audit that “… shall be conducted in accordance with the Government Auditing Standards issued by the Comptroller General of the United States for financial and performance audits.” Education code section 15286

When a standards-compliant performance audit is not present, however, laws can be broken, crimes committed, and voters are left to conclude that their tax money is not being spent wisely. A search engine’s worth of indictments, allegations and plea deals are discoverable on the internet, relating to school districts and construction. This is in addition to the traditional occurrence of excessive change orders, cost overruns and delivery delays.

For instance, the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) uncovered evidence of fraud, misappropriation or other illegal activities in 65% of the “extraordinary audits” it conducted between 2018 and 2023. While not all construction related, these cases were referred to law enforcement authorities.

In Santa Barbara County, an assistant school district superintendent and three construction company executives were charged with 74 counts of misappropriation of public monies, embezzlement of public funds, diversion of construction funds and grand theft. In San Francisco, a former school district facilities manager overseeing a district construction account pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion in an alleged scheme to divert $500,000 out of a construction escrow account.

But the greater mystery may be when there is no oversight performance audit and wrong-doing goes unexamined.

A statewide compliance survey released in October 2022 revealed that performance audits produced by most school districts fail to sufficiently comply with the required standards, according to a common sense, reasonable evaluation. Missing and non-standards-compliant performance audits deprive the public and those overseeing construction bond programs of valuable information that could be used to meaningfully evaluate the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds.

Many performance audits are just over two-pages in length, and include a single compliance audit objective. They typically fail to audit or provide information on program effectiveness and results, internal control or any prospective analysis of the construction program, which is usually the largest construction program ever undertaken by a school district.

The comptroller general’s government auditing standards manual describes how government officials, such as school districts, should use a performance audit to assure the public that its money is well-spent. These standards describe the categories of audit objectives: program effectiveness and results; internal control; compliance; and prospective analysis. It also lists 32 examples of audit objectives, illustrating each of the four categories. This information provides objective analysis, findings and conclusions in order to improve program performance and operations, reduce costs and increase public accountability.

School and community college districts engaging firms to produce the Proposition 39 performance audits should include audit objectives from a broad array of audit categories, so that the public truly understands the expenditure of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds.

And taxpayers should carefully review the Proposition 39 construction bond program documents of their school and community college districts, including the performance audit, which are required by law to be posted on district websites.

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Bryan Scott serves on two citizens’ bond oversight committees in Brentwood, and in 2023 he was named the Member of the Year by the California Association of Bond Oversight Committees. He is the creator of “Becoming an Effective Watchdog: A Necessary Primer for California School Construction Bond Oversight.”

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

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06/06/2025
Cal State extends general education requirements for transfers to first-time freshmen

Students walking on CSU San Marcos campus.

Anne Hall/CSU San Marcos

New general education requirements created for transfer students will now apply to all students, including first-time freshmen in the California State University.

Cal State trustees voted Wednesday to create a unified, simplified general education pathway for all students, despite opposition from faculty and students that the decision would eliminate classes that contribute to lifelong learning.

The decision effectively replaces the “CSU GE Breadth” and reduces the number of general education required credits from 39 to 34, by eliminating additional humanities and arts courses and classes identified as lifelong learning and self-development. However, it also adds a laboratory class to the requirements. Students would still be able to take many of these courses as electives.

The simplified pathway, known as Cal-GETC or the California General Education Transfer Curriculum, was first proposed in May 2022 as part of the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act of 2021 as a way to improve the transfer experience for community college students entering the University of California and Cal State systems. The curriculum was developed by the academic senates of the CSU, the UC and the community colleges and goes into effect in the fall of 2025.

Although the new transfer pathway was created with community college students in mind, Cal State administrators and trustees chose to apply it to first-time freshmen, too.

About 60% of Cal State’s first-year applicants have some type of transfer credit, many of them earned through dual enrollment courses taken in high school, said April Grommo, CSU’s vice chancellor for enrollment management, adding that some continuing CSU students also complete general education courses through their local community colleges. Without creating one pathway, Grommo said about 25% of undergraduates would have to complete more general education requirements.

“Aligning general education for all CSU students provides an equitable set of degree requirements for all undergraduate students,” she said.

Trustees said proceeding with two different systems could lead to equity concerns.

“I am concerned that if we have one path for community college transfers and one path for those students who begin with us, that there might be a feeling of inequity,” trustee Jack Clarke Jr., said.

Although most Cal State faculty support the new simplified path for transfer students, many said they opposed applying it to students who enter the system as freshmen.

Beth Steffel, chair of CSU’s academic senate, said despite claims that students can still take these courses, there is a chance that courses will be eliminated if not designated as part of general education.

“If a course is not required, it will not be offered,” Steffel said. “Resource constraints ensure this reality.”

Eliminating the courses from general education requirements could also have unintended consequences by reducing the potential for students to learn other languages through arts and humanities and create costs by adding an additional science laboratory, Steffel said.

Steven Filling, an accounting professor at Stanislaus State, said losing the courses provided in CSU GE Breadth rquirements would be detrimental to students who enter the system as freshmen because they would miss out on the extra skills gained from social learning, communication and critical thinking.

For example, kinesiology classes, which is the study of movement, fall under the lifelong learning and self-development courses. Students interested in business fields like accounting, for example, could take golfing courses to prepare them for meeting with clients.

“If you’ve never played golf and have no clue about it, well, you may have a little bit of trouble,” Filling said.

These classes are called “lifelong learning” because they help students discover how to cope and deal with the world around them, he said.

There’s another reason some CSU faculty oppose Cal-GETC: Much of the curriculum was chosen with the UC system in mind.

“The UC has a pretty strong position of, ‘Well, if we don’t agree to it, we’re not going to do it,’” Filling said. “If you look at Cal-GETC, you’ll notice a strange similarity between that and the UC’s present (general education) programming.”

Filling said one problem with that is the UC and Cal State systems have different missions and, although there is overlap, educate different types of students. For example, the UCs are tasked with admitting the top 9% of high school graduates.

“To think that somebody in the top 5% of their high school class is going to be at exactly the same level as somebody who is at the 30th percentile is unrealistic,” he said.

“It’s clear our students need different things than what UC students do,” he said. “It may be the case that the community colleges, with the resources they have, can provide the additional support those students need to get them up to the level where UC students are. It’s far from clear to me that that works for students coming into the CSU.”

The new simplified pathway represents both systems, said Laura Massa, Cal State’s interim vice chancellor for academic and faculty programs. For example, Cal-GETC includes ethnic studies and oral communication requirements that were required for CSU but not UC.

Student trustee Diana Aguilar-Cruz said some of the opposition from students arises from their rising distrust of the board and administration’s decisions. Students have been calling for some analysis of the current general education path before making any change.

“Especially with all the prior decisions that we’ve been making throughout the year,” Aguilar-Cruz said, referring to the tuition increase. “They really need to see this data. … That has really fractured the trust that students have.”

However, trustees said they did not want to proceed with two different systems for meeting general education requirements.

Despite opposition from faculty and students to the change, Cal State officials said they worked collaboratively with both groups on understanding the pros and cons and took both groups into consideration.

“Shared governance doesn’t always mean agreement,” CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia said. “The success, sustainability and continued growth of our institution depends on our ability to recruit, serve and guide our students through our universities to remove barriers that sometimes we put in their way and provide clear and direct pathways to a degree and a fulfilling profession for us. And for me, I believe a single GE pattern for all CSU students achieves that goal, and it advances our mission of student success for all.”

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06/06/2025
Should 4-year-olds have to take an English proficiency test?

Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

Four-year-olds are crying, putting their heads on their desks or simply refusing to answer the questions during an English proficiency test they’re required to take in transitional kindergarten.

The initial English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC) is used to determine whether new students will be designated English learners. Under current law, the test must be given to all students whose parents speak another language at home within the first 30 days of enrollment in kindergarten through 12th grade. The test measures proficiency in four domains — listening, speaking, reading and writing in English.

The test is different for each grade. But since transitional kindergarten, often referred to as TK, is classified as the first year of a two-year kindergarten program, and not as a separate grade, schools have had to administer the test to students as young as 4 years old.

School district staff and advocates for English learners and young children say the test was not designed for 4-year-olds, may not be accurate for assessing language acquisition and may misidentify children as English learners when they are simply too young to answer questions correctly.

“We’re assessing children on reading and writing when we know that children that are young 4-year-olds are not reading and writing,” said Carolyne Crolotte, director of dual language learner programs of Early Edge California, a nonprofit organization that advocates for early education.

A new bill, Assembly Bill 2268, introduced by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, would exempt transitional kindergartners from taking the test until they enter kindergarten.

Brett Loring, student services coordinator for Vallecito Union School District, a tiny district in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Calaveras County, said giving the ELPAC to a transitional kindergartner was “probably the most frustrating test administration I’ve ever given.”

Loring said the 4-year-old spoke Spanish at home, but he had seen that she understood some English in the classroom. Still, she was intimidated by having to leave her classroom to take the test.

After a few questions, the child said “No want to. No more,” crossed her arms and put her head down on the table.

“Why are we making kids do this?” Loring asked. “Let them develop in the TK year, get them used to the classroom, get them used to socializing. That’s the purpose of TK. It’s really a developmental year. Don’t throw this heavy test on them and expect that you’re going to get good results.”

Concerns have grown as transitional kindergarten is being expanded to all 4-year-olds, meaning younger children are taking the test each year. This school year, children as young as 4 years and 4 months were eligible to enter transitional kindergarten. By 2025, all children who turn 4 years old by Sept. 1 will be eligible.

“Why are we making kids do this? Let them develop in the TK year, get them used to the classroom, get them used to socializing. That’s the purpose of TK.”

Brett Loring, student services coordinator, Vallecito Union School District

The English proficiency test for kindergartners, which is also administered to transitional kindergartners, requires students to read and write simple words like “cat”, “pan” and “dip”, and identify the first letters in words, based on their sounds.

“My experience is ELPAC is very challenging for all kinder and TK students,” said Bernadette Zermeño, multilingual specialist at Oakland Unified School District. “Even if kids were monolingual and only speaking English, it would still be a very hard exam.”

Proponents of the bill said districts should instead use the home language survey, observations by teachers and conversations with families to assess what language help transitional kindergartners need. This would be similar to how school districts and other state-subsidized providers assess students enrolled in preschool programs.

Muratsuchi said he does not believe that students who are English learners could fall through the cracks if not tested in transitional kindergarten.

“All of these children are going to be assessed in kindergarten, so I’m confident that those who really do need the support will be properly identified in kindergarten, but in the meantime, we want to make sure we’re not over-identifying students,” Muratsuchi said.

The state funding formula gives districts more funding based on how many students are English learners, low-income, homeless or in foster care, so this bill could potentially cost districts some funding, but Muratsuchi and proponents of the bill said the loss of funding would be minimal.

“I think more important than funding is making sure that we’re serving our students well with developmentally appropriate assessments,” Muratsuchi said. “We don’t want kids to be having meltdowns over tests that are not appropriate for their age.”

Crolotte said if students are misidentified as English learners when they actually speak English, resources could be allocated for children that don’t need English language development services.

In addition, Crolotte said she’s worried students could be identified as English learners “and then get in the hamster wheel and not be able to get out of EL status.” Once identified as English learners, students must take the ELPAC every year until their test results, both on the ELPAC and on academic English language arts tests, show they are proficient in English. Some advocates believe many districts have set the bar too high for students to show they are fluent in English.

Crolotte said that Early Edge California has been researching other ways to test young children, including how other states assess young students. She pointed out that Illinois and Virginia only assess English skills in listening and speaking during the first semester of kindergarten, since many children have not yet learned to read or write. Both states wait to begin testing reading and writing skills until the second semester of kindergarten.

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06/06/2025
Newsom promises funding to jump-start early literacy

Gov. Gavin Newsom displays the Golden State Literacy Plan, a compilation of actions he has taken to improve reading in early grades, during an appearance at Clinton Elementary School in Compton on June 5.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom confirmed Thursday that the state budget will include hundreds of millions of dollars to fund legislation needed to achieve a comprehensive statewide approach to early literacy.

Assembly Bill 1454, which passed the Assembly on Thursday with a unanimous 75-0 vote, would move the state’s schools toward adopting evidence-based literacy instruction, also known as the science of reading or structured literacy.

Although phonics, the ability to connect letters to sounds, has drawn the most attention, the science of reading focuses on four other pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, identifying distinct units of sounds; vocabulary; comprehension; and fluency. It is based on research on how the brain connects letters with sounds when learning to read.

“Learning to read is life-changing for a child,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, said in a statement. “And strong reading skills are the gateway to academic success, lifelong confidence, and opportunity. With this legislation, we take a clear and necessary step toward ensuring every child in California learns to read, and read well. This bill is supported by a broad and growing coalition all united in one belief: That we can and must do better for our students.”

Rivas forged a deal for AB 1454 after ordering the sponsors of the bill, which included advocacy groups Decoding Dyslexia CA, EdVoice, and Families In Schools, to settle their differences with advocates for English learners and the California Teachers Association.

The compromise legislation would provide funding for optional teacher training in evidence-based practices, require that all TK-5 textbooks that districts adopt be aligned to in this approach, and ensure all newly credentialed administrators are trained to support evidence-based instruction.

Assemblymembers Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, and Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, co-authored the bill.

“We attached that bill to the budget, so we mean business,” Newsom said during a press conference at Clinton Elementary School in Compton. “We wanted to get that done, and we got it done. We hope we’ll get it done with an additional $200 million attached to it.”

Advocates of a comprehensive statewide approach to early literacy say the bill would fill in significant gaps in the state’s current policy of local control over instructional decisions. It completes a comprehensive plan to improve literacy in the state, said Newsom, introducing the Golden State Literacy Plan.

“This Golden State Literacy Plan is a step-by-step plan to make real what we are promoting,” Newsom said, holding up the nine-page document — a compilation of actions the state has taken, culminating with additional funding for literacy-related programs and actions.

While states like Mississippi, Tennessee and Colorado have started with a framework grounded in the science of reading and a comprehensive plan for early literacy, California, over the past five years, adopted disparate parts: new evidenced-based reading standards for teacher preparation programs, state funding of an early grade diagnostic screening system for reading challenges like dyslexia, and funding reading coaches in the state’s lowest-performing schools. It also included the expansion of transitional kindergarten and expanded bilingual programs.

Newson talked about his personal experience with dyslexia and how it has motivated him to improve literacy in the state.

“There’s not a day where my dyslexia does not expose itself,” he said. “If anyone’s seen my writing, they can attest to how it exposes itself. So this has been an imperative for me to do more and do better in this space.”

Newsom also took the opportunity Thursday to talk about some of the state’s successes, including improved scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading in both fourth and eighth grades between 2011 and 2022.

The Compton Unified School District was selected for the press conference to highlight the district’s increased test scores and graduation rates.

“Today’s event reflects a shared purpose, ensuring literacy for all,” said Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley. “The governor’s emphasis on literacy is both timely and essential. Research and experience tells us that if students are not reading by grade three, it’s going to be a struggle. Thereafter, their academic path becomes increasingly difficult.”

Compton Unified has worked to eliminate the opportunity gap by expanding access to early literacy programs, multilingual education and STEAM pathways, he said.

“Compton Unified is proof that demographics do not determine destiny,” Brawley said. “With the right investments, the right leadership, the right vision, the right partnerships, we can transform outcomes and unlock the full potential of every single child.”

Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, which advocates for English learners, said the state literacy plan supports a diverse student population. The organization, which had opposed the original bill, was satisfied that the materials and training in the new bill would incorporate the specific literacy needs of English learners.

“The recently launched literacy and biliteracy resources, the literacy content blocks and the preschool through third-grade learning progressions provide critical guidance to help educators support young learners in both English and their home language,” Hernandez said. “Thank you, Governor Newsom, for ensuring that multilingual learners are at the center of California’s literacy promise.”

The Golden State Literacy Plan also highlights the state’s investments in literacy in the governor’s upcoming budget, including $1.7 billion for a block grant to fund professional development for teachers, $500 million for TK-12 literacy and math coaches, $387.6 million for additional Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant funding, $40 million to support literacy screenings, and $25 million to support implementation of math and literacy initiatives, elevate best practices, and establish a clearinghouse for state-developed math and literacy resources.

The increased state funding for literacy comes amid criticism of Newsom’s spending plan for education, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office has said will create new debt and rely on one-time funding to pay for ongoing operations.

John Fensterwald contributed to this report.

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06/06/2025