Kindergarten teacher Carla Randazzo watches a student write alphabet letters on a white board at Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.
Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP Photo
California’s students have struggled in the five years since the pandemic closed schools across the state. But kids in many schools are bouncing back, returning to pre-Covid achievement levels. What’s working? How have some districts innovated to turn kids’ learning curves upward once again?
After analyzing student-level statewide data and visiting nine districts in each of the past three years, our team has made these discoveries:
Mindful policies make a difference
Nationwide, the pandemic erased nearly two decades of progress in math and reading. In California, average math proficiency decreased by 6.4 percentage points between 2019 and 2022, and reading proficiency dropped by 4 percentage points. Our work shows a modest positive effect of early reopening and federal recovery investments over this period. This highlights the importance of keeping schools open when it is safe to do so and prioritizing high-need students in reopening. Federal stimulus dollars also helped during this period.
Our statewide work further shows that districts blended, braided and sequenced multiple funding sources to extend instructional learning time, strengthen staffing and provide learning supports.
We also studied the impact of recovery investments and specific district recovery programs. We did not find that increased federal Covid funding to schools increased student test scores post-pandemic. However, districts that devoted funds to teacher retention efforts and extended learning time showed more improvement in student attendance, a key to improving academic outcomes.
Cross-sector partnerships advance whole-child development
Prolonged school closure, social isolation, economic anxiety, housing and food insecurity, Covid-19 infection, and the loss of loved ones exacerbated a national mental health crisis already underway before the pandemic. In 2021, 42% of high school students nationwide experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 32% attempted or seriously considered attempting suicide. As schools reopened, educators found themselves dealing with not just academic learning, but also support for basic needs (such as food and health care), mental health, and life skills (such as relationship skills).
Some districts pivoted to fostering whole-child development. For example, Compton Unified partnered with community health providers to offer health care services (such as vaccinations and check-ups), and Del Norte Unified leveraged Medi-Cal reimbursements to provide mental health counseling and therapy sessions. Educators will still need to deal with the academic, behavioral and life-skills needs for years to come. More cross-sector partnerships with public health, social services and housing would better equip schools to address these challenges.
School innovations foster a rebound in learning
Overall spending infusions have helped students rebound, but the impact has been relatively small. More important is how Covid relief funds were spent by districts. Our longitudinal case study of nine districts revealed some substantial organizational changes — reforms that may stick over time.
One large structural reform was the investment in student well-being. Before the pandemic, student well-being was considered mostly secondary to instruction and academic achievement. However, the pandemic highlighted the need to integrate life skills into instruction. As a result, districts invested in new program materials and moved resources to hire counselors, social workers, psychologists, and increased student access to school-based supports. Some even built new community centers where students and families come together.
A smaller scale, yet key, reform is districts’ investment in career pathways. Districts like Compton and Milpitas Unified offer a wide variety of pathways — from E-sports to computer science to early education — that are tied to on-the-job internships and certificates. These pathways have played an important role in engaging students and connecting them with employment opportunities.
Districts also tried new approaches to the structure of schooling and classroom practices. For example, Glendale Unified shifted to a seven-period block schedule that allowed middle and high school students to add an elective course that sparked their interest. In Poway Unified, small groups of students meet with teachers and classroom aides to focus on specific skill areas.
Digital innovations engage students, but gaps remain
Many districts have turned to digital innovations to motivate kids. In Poway, coaches embedded in the classroom work with teachers to build learning stations, where stronger students work in teams, freeing teachers to provide more direct instruction to kids at risk of falling behind.
Unfortunately, since the pandemic, the digital divide has narrowed, but it has not been eliminated.
In spring 2020, when schools abruptly shifted online, 40% of California households with school-age children did not have reliable internet or devices for distance learning. Over time, the state has made remarkable progress in device access, but not as much progress with internet access. The lack of progress could be attributed to multiple factors, including the absence of pre-existing infrastructure and affordability challenges. Federal and state governments provided unprecedented investments (such as the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program and California Senate Bill 356) to address barriers to universal broadband access; however, communities face significant challenges in building out infrastructure and improving affordability.
The pandemic provided an unprecedented opportunity to rethink and restart public education. Given the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, learning disruptions will become the new norm for many communities throughout the U.S.
By learning from the example of districts that have demonstrated resilience and success in pandemic recovery, we can better prepare for future disruptions and build a more resilient public education that supports all students.
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Niu Gao is a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Julian Betts is a professor at UC San Diego. Jonathan Isler and Piper Stanger are administrators at the California Department of Education.
Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, was part of the research team and contributed to this report.
This collaboration research is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X230002 to the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Any errors or misinterpretations belong to the authors and do not reflect the views of the institute, the U.S. Department of Education or the California Department of Education.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Theresa Montaño, a professor in Chicano/a Studies at CSU Northridge and a member of the LAUSD-UTLA Ethnic Studies Committee, is a defendant in the lawsuit.
Credit: Luis Garcia / California State University, Northridge
A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit against the United Teachers Los Angeles and the organization that created a controversial ethnic studies curriculum adopted by at least two dozen school districts in California.
U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin’s scathing ruling on Nov. 30 criticized what he concluded was a lack of evidence and unpersuasive arguments made on behalf of the two Jewish teachers and parents in Concerned Jewish Parents and Teachers of Los Angeles, the group that brought the litigation.
The plaintiffs’ complaint “is difficult to understand and contains a morass of largely irrelevant — and sometimes contradictory — allegations, few of which state with any degree of clarity precisely what plaintiffs believe defendants have done or, more importantly, how plaintiffs have been harmed,” wrote Olguin of the Central District of federal court in California. His 49-page pretrial ruling dismissing the lawsuit “with prejudice” precludes the plaintiffs from refiling another similar lawsuit in federal court. The lawsuit was filed in 2022.
The lawsuit alleged that the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, the teachers union, its president Cecily Myart-Cruz, and two members of the LAUSD-UTLA Ethnic Studies Committee encouraged the adoption of instructional materials used in several LAUSD classrooms, that they also “covertly” trained teachers in the “liberated” ethnic studies curriculum, which condemns capitalism, white privilege, and Zionism, and characterizes Israel’s existence as “based on ethnic cleansing and land theft, apartheid and genocide,” according to Olguin’s summary of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also alleged that teachers who identified as Jewish or Zionist were not welcome in classrooms where ethnic studies was taught and “personally experienced the official hostility” of UTLA to Israel and to the concept of Zionism.”
Denying they are antisemitic, educators affiliated with the consortium — mainly instructors and professors in ethnic studies departments at California State University and University of California — have made anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel a focus of their curriculum. They characterize Israel as a settler, colonialist nation, similar to European nations’ oppressive occupations of Africa and Asia in the 19th and 2oth centuries.
The “liberated” approach to ethnic studies has drawn scrutiny since its leaders formed the consortium in protest after the State Board of Education rejected as ideological and one-sided a draft curriculum that some of them had authored. In passing Assembly Bill 101, creating a mandate requiring high school students to take ethnic studies to graduate, the Legislature, at the encouragement of the Legislative Jewish Caucus, specified that school districts should not use unadopted portions of earlier drafts of the model curriculum.
Advocates of liberated ethnic studies charged the clause and other “guardrails” in the law were intended to squelch their free speech. The largely unfunded graduation mandate is set to take effect in 2029-30.
In an online celebration Monday, Theresa Montaño, a defendant in the lawsuit who is also a member of the LAUSD-UTLA Ethnic Studies Committee and secretary of the consortium, said, “The end of this two-and-a-half year lawsuit means vindication, affirmation, and victory.”
“This is a win for liberatory critical ethnic studies and academic freedom. It’s a testament to the power of solidarity and liberation, whether that be in South Los Angeles or in Gaza,” said Montaño, a professor of Chicano/a Studies at CSU Northridge. “And so it’s a signal to us that we will not stop, that we will persist until authentic ethnic studies is guaranteed to every student in this state.”
The attorney representing the defendants, Mark Kleiman, told teachers on the press call, “The moral of this story for people in the other school districts is, you don’t have to be afraid of these kinds of attacks. Given half a chance in a fair courtroom, you will be vindicated.”
Meanwhile, the legal director for the Deborah Project — the law firm that filed the lawsuit — said, “We absolutely will be appealing the decision and are confident that the decision will be reversed on appeal.” The appeal must be filed by Dec. 30.
The ruling, said Lori Lowenthal Marcus, “is deeply flawed, as it ignores crucial allegations in plaintiffs’ complaint, fails to address arguments plaintiffs made in their briefs, and even ignores binding precedent from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.”
“We are in the midst of soaring antisemitism in education throughout the U.S., and this is no time for anyone — much less a federal court — to allow publicly funded public schools to be used to indoctrinate children to hate the Jewish commitment to Israel,” she said. “Contrary to the ruling, that’s not ‘education’ about a ‘controversial’ issue. It’s prejudice, pure and simple.”
Uncertain implications
It’s unclear what impact, if any, the ruling might have on other litigation in California involving ethnic studies and allegations of antisemitism and indoctrination which include a potentially stronger lawsuit that the Deborah Project filed last month against the Sequoia Union High School District in Menlo Park, its superintendent, and administrators at two high schools. The plaintiffs in this case are the parents of Jewish students who claim that the district ignored parents’ repeated complaints of antisemitic taunts and bullying by students and biased lessons on the Israeli-Gaza conflict, taught by two history teachers.
On Friday, an Orange County Superior Court judge will consider a motion to invalidate four ethnic studies courses in Santa Ana Unified. In their lawsuit, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law claims that district staff wrote the courses, with the participation of school board members, in violation of the California open meetings law. They did so in order to hide the content from Jewish community members who had repeatedly offered to participate in the process and offer their perspectives. Documents reveal that staff members referred to the Jewish Federation of Orange County as “racist Zionists” and made other bigoted remarks about Jews.
The lawsuit against UTLA and the consortium did not include LAUSD as a direct defendant, which may have weakened the case because the district has not adopted the Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum, and there is no indication if and when it would. That made the plaintiffs’ concerns speculative and, therefore, their proposed remedies invalid, Olguin wrote, noting that the participation of Montaño and Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, an LAUSD teacher and a member of the consortium’s leadership team, in an advisory committee is not evidence of the district’s endorsement of the curriculum.
Olguin further ruled that the plaintiffs could not substantiate that teachers and other plaintiffs had yet faced any actual harm, nor did they demonstrate that the eventual adoption of the curriculum would violate civil rights. The judge continued that although plaintiffs claimed the curriculum was “infected from top to bottom with racism,” they didn’t show any evidence to support their assertion.
“It is far from clear that learning about Israel and Palestine or encountering teaching materials with which one disagrees constitutes an injury,” Olguin wrote.
The plaintiffs had asked Olguin to issue injunctions prohibiting LAUSD from including language critical of Israel or Zionism in teaching materials; preventing the district from paying teachers who used the liberated curriculum; and prohibiting the district from using materials from liberated curriculum in classrooms and teacher training paid for by public funds.
Olguin ruled that the plaintiffs had not substantiated claims that their First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom and their right to equal protection under the U.S. and California constitutions were impeded. However, their request for an injunction would have raised an unconstitutional prior restraint on the defendants’ First Amendment speech rights, he concluded.
While a district can “reasonably” curtail teachers’ speech rights in a classroom, “those limitations are fundamentally different from speech restrictions imposed by a court at the behest of a group of private citizens,” he wrote.
In language certain to alarm Jewish organizations worried that antisemitic and anti-Israel bias is gaining a foothold in California schools, Olguin wrote, “It would be of great concern for the educational project and for academic freedom if every offended party could sue every time they did not like a curriculum or the way it was taught.”
Watch Gabriela Rodriguez dance at New Ballet in San Jose.
Gabriela Rodriguez first glimpsed the magic of ballet in the third grade. The 7-year-old didn’t know a pirouette from a puppet when she first got tapped for the New Ballet School’s First Step program, which brings the joy of dance to low-income students in the San Jose Unified school district.
As a tiny tot, she loved to dance with her Wii every day after school. Now she’s 19, studying Level 6, the highest level at the ballet school, and is also a member of the studio company, a stepping stone to becoming a professional ballerina. The supple dancer with a sunny personality seems to float across the studio at a recent “Nutcracker” rehearsal, twirling like a spinning top.
Dance has changed her life forever, she says. She’ll never forget the first time she watched the beauty of “Swan Lake” unfurl on stage.
“It was so beautiful and graceful, I knew I wanted to be up there on stage, wearing a pretty tutu,” said Rodriguez, who lives with her family in East San Jose. “I was also a really hyper kid, so ballet also taught me discipline, how to be still, how to focus.”
The program shines a spotlight on the sheer love of movement for first, second and third graders at local Title 1 schools — schools that receive federal funding to enhance educational opportunities for low-income families. Roughly 50 children a year receive scholarships that include free ballet classes, including leotards and footwear. Like Rodriguez, many children are recommended for the program by their elementary school teachers.
Little dancers in the ballet’s First Step program often make their stage debut in the holiday classic, “The Nutcracker.” Credit: San Jose’s New Ballet
“My mother warned me that it would be a big commitment if I decided to take this route,” said Rodriguez, who dances about three hours a day in addition to nightly ballet rehearsals, “and it is a lot of hard work, physically and mentally as well.”
Rodriguez whirls onto center stage this holiday season in the starring role of Clara in “The San Jose Nutcracker.” Based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story “The Nutcracker and the King of Mice,” Tchaikovsky’s gem was first danced in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1892 and has become a yuletide tradition. New Ballet gives the chestnut a local twist, setting the story in turn-of-the-century San Jose, the Valley of the Heart’s Delight.
Many of the youngsters in the First Step program make their stage debuts as adorable rodents, the minions of the menacing Mouse King in the Christmas classic. They learn about the magic of live performance, how to combat stage fright with rehearsal and how rigor and tenacity can help unleash their individual creativity. Ballet balances the sheer power of kinetic energy with an almost mathematical exercise in precision.
“It taught me about discipline,” says Rodriguez. “You have to make sure you get your schoolwork done and your household chores done while you’re spending so much time at the ballet.”
Rodriguez has now danced in “Nutcracker” nine times as well as recorded the story of “La Boutique Fantasque” for the troupe in Spanish. She also works as a hostess in a restaurant to make ends meet.
“I want to pursue dance for as long as I can,” Rodriguez said. She fantasizes about training at New York’s storied Juilliard School but fears the cost would be prohibitive. “If I went, I’d be the first in my family to go to college.”
Young dancers in the ballet’s First Step program get to take classes, to learn the joy of dance without spending a fortune.Credit: San Jose’s New Ballet
The high price of arts and culture today keeps many cash-strapped audience members away. That’s why equity is part of the mission of New Ballet. Founder Dalia Rawson believes the arts are an expression of our collective humanity that belongs to all of us, not a luxury for the privileged few.
“There’s nothing frivolous about dance,” said Rawson, executive artistic director of the ballet. “Dancing is part of everybody’s human experience. We believe dance is for everybody. It feeds everybody’s soul. If you don’t dance, you’re not connecting to a part of yourself.”
As our society becomes ever more sedentary, some experts warn, we may be losing touch with the essential need to move our bodies. Children, in particular, need physical activity to stimulate the brain, enhance concentration and boost learning. Dance is an invitation to marry movement with the creative impulse, to make poetry out of motion.
“Dance is something that all humans need,” said Rawson. “We all thrive when we’re connected to our body. And it’s good for your soul. It’s good for your heart. It’s good for your sense of who you are as a human.”
The thrust of the program isn’t so much to cultivate professional dancers and artists as it is to spread the alchemy of arts education, its ability to boost engagement and cognition at a time when chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed.
“We look for kids who have that little spark,” said Laura Burton, director of outreach for the ballet. “That’s something that you want to see grow, because especially at this age, we don’t need to see them do a plié. Does that kid have the heart and the passion? We bring them in and we have two or three classes that we run specifically for them. They get to take the whole semester free of charge.”
Knowing who their audience is, what their niche is, is central to their vision of the ballet. The troupe is all about speaking to their unique community.
Tiny dancers in the ballet’s First Step program get to take classes, to learn the joy of dance without spending a fortune.Credit: San Jose’s New Ballet
“We are not trying to compete with San Francisco Ballet,” said Rawson. “We never will. It’s a $60 million budget, and it’s not hard to get there. If you want to see one of the best ballet companies in the entire world, you can get there in an hour.”
New Ballet focuses instead on opening doors to the next generation, to children and families who can’t pay a fortune for a night of dance.
“We try to make it fun, easy and accessible,” said Rawson. “We don’t have the budget to pay top dancer salaries, but we hire dancers who bring something really special to the stage. We don’t discriminate by body type or anything else.”
These dancers, like Rodriguez, are true believers in the power of dance to uplift the soul. New Ballet dancers often hold down outside gigs to support their artistic pursuits.
“What they share is they want to be here,” said Rawson. “They love to dance. They’re passionate about ballet. That to me is more important than the perfect line of your leg.”’
Rodriguez, for one, dreams of one day teaching dance to children and adults with disabilities, people who may not realize that you don’t have to be a world-class athlete to chase the joy of dance.
“Why not?” she says. “If you start late, you can still dance. If you’re missing something, you can still dance. There’s modifications for everybody out there. Anyone can dance if they truly want to. There’s always a way.”
While we wait for the governor’s budget — and a much leaner projection for public education funding — many district and charter school officials have started making significant cuts in preparation for the upcoming school year.
Unfortunately, at a time when every dollar matters, charter schools serving some of California’s highest-need students are getting shortchanged.
Critical dollars following each and every student is a fundamental construct in our state’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Schools and districts that serve a higher number of high-need students — English learners, low-income students, and foster youth — get additional funding in the form of supplemental grants for each student, along with concentration grants for schools where more than 55% of the student body is from at least one of those student groups. These funds are meant to follow the students and be invested in their programmatic needs.
Unfortunately, the only exception is if these students attend a public charter school.
Current law caps the concentration grant funding for charter schools at the unduplicated pupil percentage of high-need students in the school district in which they are physically located. This restriction disproportionately affects students and families who attend charter schools in districts where the percentage of high-need students is lower than that of individual charter schools. For example, 82% of Oakland Unified’s students are eligible for the additional funding, but many charter schools in East Oakland serve student populations with unduplicated high-need student percentages ranging from 85% to 99%. Yet concentration funding for these charter schools is capped at 82% despite their serving a higher percentage of high-need students. This is also true for many charter schools in the LA area, in the wider Bay Area, as well as across the state.
A new bill seeks to correct this inequity by ensuring that dollars actually follow students to their schools.
Assembly Bill 1062 would enable charter schools serving greater percentages of high-need students than their district to apply for a waiver to receive concentration grant funding based on their actual student population, rather than being capped at the local district average.
Take for example Lodestar: A Lighthouse Community Public School in the Sobrante Park community in deep East Oakland. Like many communities impacted by the pandemic, the school’s demographics have shifted over the last five years. Today, Lodestar serves a student population where 98% of the students have high needs, including 47% English learners, 8% newcomers to our country, 17% qualifying for special education services, and 5% homeless. Should they be expected to meet their community’s needs at “82 on the dollar” while still being expected to meet the state’s stringent charter renewal criteria brought on by Assembly Bill 1505? (This 2019 law requires charters to outperform state averages on standardized tests and other measures to qualify for streamlined approval.)
Shouldn’t dollars that are directly tied to students and families follow them regardless of the school a family chooses for their child?
Many charter schools and charter management organizations that serve East Oakland exist to provide strong school choice options to students and families in historically under-resourced communities. It’s not surprising that one-third of Oakland students have selected charter schools. Over the last three years, Oakland’s charter high schools have had college readiness A-G completion rates for African American and Latino students that are significantly higher than at district high schools.
Despite Oakland’s rich history of political activism for historically marginalized and under-resourced families, this clause in the funding formula prohibiting charter schools from fully accessing these funds has not been studied nor evaluated.
The Assembly Education Committee has an opportunity to consider and address this funding inquiry. This committee, which includes progressive assembly members from the Bay Area and greater Los Angeles area, can advocate for public dollars following each student for their education and future impact.
It’s time to ensure that state funding follows students equitably, so they are not penalized for choosing to attend a public charter school.
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Rich Harrison is CEO of Lighthouse Community Public Schools, which operates two K-12 public charter schools serving more than 1,600 students in East Oakland.
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.
College athletes are often in the news because of their achievements on fields or in arenas, or because of the fame resulting from the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision to allow amateur athletes to profit from their names, images and likenesses, or NIL. But what is sometimes overlooked is that these athletes are also trying to get through college.
Division I student athletes at California public universities have all the obligations of their fellow students, along with additional responsibilities to their teams that can feel like a full-time job. The student-athlete who competes at the highest level is typically taking a full load of courses while juggling practices, weight training sessions, travel and the games and competitions themselves.
With such a wide range of demands on student-athletes, many university sports programs provide additional resources specifically for student-athletes, with an emphasis on academics. Among the benefits are academic advising, priority class registration, mental health support and tutoring.
“One thing that they tell us is that you’re a student first, an athlete second, and your main priority is doing well in the classroom,” said Ebba Adinew, a UC Riverside track and field athlete. “If practice starts to affect you performing well in the classroom, then maybe we’ll have to tone down the amount of work you’re putting in for your sport and focus on the classroom instead.”
Adinew found that having priority registration for course selection is a major advantage that allows him to align his practice and competition schedule with his class schedule. Because of the required time for travel and practice schedules, priority registration for student athletes was made policy by the UC board of trustees in 2016. Adinew also said there is a specific academic adviser for each sport, who creates quarterly schedules for student-athletes to ensure they are meeting their academic requirements.
The importance of a good academic adviser for student-athletes is stressed particularly at Division I universities with nationally ranked athletics programs like UC Berkeley. The recent appointment of Tarik Glenn as UC Berkeley’s new Athletic Study Center (ASC) interim executive director reflects this; Glenn not only has been working with the ASC for the past 10 years, but is a former Cal football player and Berkeley Hall of Famer himself.
According to a June news release from former Chancellor Carol Christ, his personal perspective on student-athletes and “the partnerships he has built over 10 years as an ASC staff member … will help athletes succeed in academics and in becoming independent, self-reliant adults.” Glenn’s mission will be to focus on the “holistic development” of student athletes and will include character and leadership development, along with career coaching.
Other athletic programs have placed an emphasis on career success, as well. UC Riverside assists student-athletes through career fairs and advising. Monea Jennings, a spring 2024 graduate of the UC Riverside track and field program, said her athletic adviser helped her get an internship for her last quarter.
Beyond advising, some schools have programs that focus on future careers for athletes. UC Davis hosts a program called EVO, allowing student athletes to undergo core clinics to help prepare them for earning their degrees and life post-graduation, according to Danielle Shank, the senior associate athletic director for external relations at UC Davis. These clinics are required for every year of undergraduate education and hold focused sessions on career development, including preparing an elevator pitch, writing a résumé and creating a LinkedIn profile. EVO also focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion training, implementing career fairs and separate networking socials for student-athletes.
“It’s our goal to launch student-athletes into a career or graduate school that requires their undergrad degree,” Shank said. “We are constantly working with them so that once they graduate, they already know what’s happening in the next step.”
At San Diego State, Danielle Kelly, senior associate athletic director for student athlete support services, said the athletics program has developed an initiative called Aztecs Going Pro, which began in 2015. Aztecs Going Pro includes one unit pass or fail courses focusing on civic engagement, personal growth and career development. Student-athletes are required to have excellent time management skills and self-discipline, while also spending as much time on sports as one would working a full-time job, Kelly said.
Beyond career preparation programs, student-athletes face struggles navigating their courses and assignments. When student -athletes have exams or assignments that conflict with a competition time, they can seek accommodations from their professors to take it at an alternative time, request an extension or take the test with a proctor. When UC Davis, San Diego State and UC Riverside athletes travel or have a scheduling conflict with an athletic competition, academic advisers can proctor their exam on the road.
However, some athletes said they have faced professors who won’t make accommodations. Jennings said she missed a quiz because she was away competing, and a professor refused to allow her to make it up. She said her athletic adviser and the athletic director got involved, and talked to the professor, which made her feel supported and like she “wasn’t trying to fight this fight alone.”
Jennings said she appreciated the support system she had at Riverside but wanted to better assist her peers. This led to her position as the president of the Student Athletic Advisory Committee, where she strived to make spaces for athletes’ mental health through hosting a variety of events, passing out goodies, running de-stress initiatives and making campus resources more accessible. In addition, she was the student representative for Big West Undivided, a committee that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion among universities that belong to the NCAA Big West Conference.
Jennings said her access to UC Riverside’s academic and athletic resources allow her to feel supported.
“Being a student-athlete is the best experience in the world,” Jennings said. “But also with that, it’s really hard. Being a college student is hard in itself, but being a college student-athlete is a whole different mindset, a whole different ballgame.”
Adinew agreed. “A thing that people don’t know is how tiring it can be, because every day you’re putting your body through much more stress than the average person goes through. Not only do you have to do that, you have to maintain your grades, you have to go to class as well.”
Kelcie Lee is a second-year student majoring in history and sociology at UC Berkeley and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
Student Corps member Emily Hamill, a third-year student at UC Berkeley double-majoring in comparative literature and media studies and minoring in journalism, contributed to this story.
We began by sending requests for contracts and memoranda of understanding with law enforcement agencies under the California Public Records Act to nearly 20% – 178 – school districts across the state, in urban, suburban, and rural communities.
We sent requests to 103 unified school districts, 37 high school districts, and 38 elementary school districts.
We received responses from 157 districts; we are continuing to pursue responses from the remaining 21. We asked for contracts entered into between 2018 and June 2024 and analyzed the most recent contract provided by each district, some of which extend as far as 2027.
Of the districts that responded to our requests, 68 said they had no applicable documents. Sixty-five districts had no assigned school resource officers; three had officers on campus but no contracts with cities and counties for policing services. The 89 districts with responsive documents provided contracts, including supplemental material such as memoranda of understanding, as PDFs and other document file types.
We analyzed the 118 responsive documents – many districts had agreements with multiple law enforcement agencies – and extracted a collection of data points including contract length, costs to the district, reporting requirements, and resource officers’ duties, among other topics.
Additionally, to verify and clarify notable points, we reviewed videos of school board meetings, interviewed experts on policing and government transparency, as well as school board members, school superintendents, law enforcement officers, parents and students.
The resulting data was combined with demographic and accountability information from the California Department of Education and analyzed to identify the commonalities, trends, and outliers explained in our stories.
Teacher pay data was collected from Form J-90s that school districts submit to the state with teacher pay scales. To determine the salary for a mid-career teacher, we used data from the “BA+60” field on those forms.
If you have questions, please email data journalist Daniel Willis at dwillis@edsource.org.
digging into the documents
Our collection of district contracts that informed this story can be browsed and downloaded below.
A Trinity High School student in Weaverville conducts a science experiment with the assistance of school resource officer Taylor Halsey, while fellow resource officer Greg Lindly observes.
Credit: Timbre Beck / EdSource
While some districts commit millions of dollars to resource officers, others struggle to find funding.
Trinity County, population 16,500, has cobbled together a school policing program using a state grant funded by taxes on marijuana sales.
The grant helps pay for two resource officers who cover nine widely spaced districts across the county’s 3,208 square miles, most of it national forest. Checking on one school requires a five-hour drive round trip on mountain roads, County Superintendent of Schools Fabio Robles said.
The officers, a deputy sheriff and a juvenile probation officer, balance their work at schools with other law enforcement duties.
They can only get to some schools a few times a year. “It’s a challenge,” Robles said in an interview in Weaverville, the county seat. The sheriff’s office and the probation department did not allow the officers to be interviewed for this story.
Only one district has a contract with the county. Trinity Alps Unified agreed to an open-ended agreement with the county in 2020. That agreement doesn’t address school discipline.
Robles said he wants to revisit the issue of contracts, but his priority is to keep the resource officer program running.
“We’ve taken a step back lately,” Robles said of formal agreements between the districts and the counties. Contracts “are something we should re-look at,” he said.
Many California school districts pay cities and counties millions of dollars a year to put law enforcement officers on campuses, moving tax dollars allocated for education to policing with little oversight by elected school boards, an EdSource investigation found.
Not every district has what are commonly called school resource officers. Many call 911 if they need help, and 20 have their own police departments. Others contract with cities and counties, which provide resource officers from the ranks of local police, sheriffs, and probation departments.
Those districts provided a combined 118 contracts, entered into between 2018 and 2024, with some paying as many as three cities and counties for resource officers. The agreements, along with school board agendas and videos of meetings, show that district leaders rarely scrutinize the spending publicly.
School boards routinely approve policing contracts without discussion, often bundling them with routine items, such as field trips and cookies for staff meetings, into a single vote. The practice, known as using a “consent agenda,” alarms government transparency experts. EdSource found some boards approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for school resource officers using consent votes.
Although the federal government recommends that school districts review their policing programs annually, most of the contracts EdSource reviewed did not require yearly evaluations. In the few districts that required written reports on officers’ activities, police agencies didn’t submit them — and school officials rarely asked to see them.
The state Education Department offers no guidance to districts on policing contracts, said Elizabeth Sanders, an agency spokesperson.
“Consent items can be horrifically abused.”
David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition
The contracts EdSource obtained show districts spending at least $85 million on school resource officers. But their total costs are likely much higher. Roughly 20% of those contracts don’t include specific dollar amounts.
Instead, they mention unspecified charges based on law-enforcement union contracts negotiated by cities and counties. As a result, school boards sometimes approve contracts without a clear record of how much public money they have agreed to spend.
EdSource found that many districts are not only paying for officers whose positions are already funded by local governments, but also for using police cars, uniforms and cellphones.
The costs to schools surprised policing experts and public watchdogs.
“It’s protect and serve — and profit,” said retired state Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell, who also served as San Jose’s independent police auditor from 2010 to 2015.
She said cities and counties should provide resource officers to schools without charging.
“Shame on them for making this into a money-making operation,” Cordell said.
‘An enhanced service’
In many districts, the cost of a contract for a resource officer often exceeds the salary of a mid-career teacher.
The Holtville Unified School District in Imperial County has a one-year contract with the county for a sheriff’s deputy not to exceed $192,038.40.
That’s enough money to fund the salaries of nearly two teachers, according to teacher pay disclosure forms filed with the state.
The contract requires the district to pay for the officer’s “training, equipment, uniform, vehicle, supplies and employee benefits,” Undersheriff Robert Benavidez wrote in an email. Holtville Superintendent Celso Ruiz did not respond to questions about spending on officers.
Some districts spend more than a million dollars a year on resource officers.
The Elk Grove Unified School District has 67 schools and 62,000 students, and pays the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office $8.5 million over three years to provide six deputies.
The contract, which expires in June, includes nearly $648,000 for patrol cars and $15,000 for cellphone bills, and guarantees deputies five hours of overtime per week. The district also pays the city of Elk Grove $951,000 over three years for three officers.
Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a sheriff’s office spokesperson, said the district is “paying for an enhanced service,” requiring deputies to spend all day in schools.
Asked whether deputies assigned to the district were counted in the sheriff’s annual budget funded by the county, Gandhi replied, “Yes, for regular sheriff services.”
But when deputies work in schools, he said, they provide a service for which the sheriff’s entitled to charge.
“These are not officers that are simply responding to emergencies,” Gandhi said. “They’re on campus. That’s their full-time assignment. They’re helping the administration. It’s a presence issue. It’s something we value.”
If Elk Grove Unified were to end its contract with the county, which it could do with 30 days’ notice, the deputies would “be assigned to regular, other, sheriff functions, in patrol, investigations, corrections, whatever,” Gandhi said, noting that the sheriff’s office has a large number of vacant, budgeted positions.
‘Double taxation’
Many districts pay more than half or all of the salaries for officers whose positions are already funded by cities and counties.
In Ventura County, the Oxnard Union High School District currently has contracts with two cities and the sheriff’s office. The largest is a $2.23 million deal with the city of Oxnard for five police officers, which includes 75% of the city’s costs for the officers’ salaries and benefits.
The district pays for the full costs of one deputy as part of its three-year, $625,000 pact with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. It also has a deal with the city of Camarillo for police services.
Oxnard Union board member Karen Sher, who describes herself as an advocate for school resource officers, told EdSource that charging districts for officers whose positions are already funded amounts to “double taxation.”
“The taxpayer’s paying twice for the same services,” Sher said.
“I really don’t understand how this is not a bigger issue. I have asked the question publicly. I can’t even tell you how many times, and I have never gotten an answer,” she said.
Former Oxnard Police Cmdr. Louis Mc Arthur was in charge of school resource officers before being elected as the city’s mayor in November 2024.Credit: J. Marie / EdSource
Oxnard Mayor Luis Mc Arthur, who, until taking office on Dec. 8, was the Oxnard Police commander in charge of school resource officers, said the city can’t afford to provide the officers without charging the school system. The department’s 2024-25 budget is $105 million, records show.
“We’re strapped financially and also short-staffed,” McArthur said.
“We can argue philosophically if it’s the responsibility of police to fund” resource officers, but the charges will likely continue, he said.
Districts should not fund officers who are already on government payrolls, said David Kline, vice president of communications for the California Taxpayers Association, which advocates for limiting taxes.
“If taxpayers are paying for two police officer positions, they should be getting two police officers,” Kline said. “They shouldn’t be paying twice for the same officer.”
Not all municipalities charge for providing resource officers.
Last year, voters in the Central Valley cities of Manteca and Lathrop passed sales-tax measures funding a range of services, including resource officers for the Manteca Unified School District, which supported the measures.
“We don’t believe in double taxation,” said Victoria Brunn, the district’s chief business and information officer.
But the Manteca district also has a two-year, $274,000 contract with the Stockton Unified School District, which has its own police department, for one officer.
Cost-sharing is common across the country, said Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers. The percentage of an officer’s salary that districts pay varies widely, he said. “Some may pay 25%, while others will pay 100%.”
Canady recommends that school boards review policing contracts annually. “You get to the end of the school year and no one thinks, ‘Hey, we need to take an hour or two here and sit down with people that are going to be making decisions and at least review this thing.’”
‘In case of an armed intruder’
A poll released earlier this month by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that 4 out of 5 public school parents are worried about a mass shooting at their local school, and nearly as many support having at least one armed police officer on campus while school is in session.
The Anderson Union High School District’s three-year contract with the Shasta County Probation Department does not mention school security. But Superintendent Brian Parker said that’s why the district is paying $1.6 million for three resource officers through 2027.
Anderson Union High School in Anderson in Shasta County.Credit: Thomas Peele / EdSource
“The main reason our board and our community want officers on campus is to provide security in case of an armed intruder,” Parker wrote in an email. “Thankfully, that hasn’t happened in our district.”
Many contracts require officers to divide their time between several campuses, which could reduce their ability to respond quickly to a shooting.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there were about 24,900 school resource officers in 2019. The federal government does not collect data on school shootings, but according to a Washington Post database, there have been at least 428 school shootings in the United States since 1999, including 72 in California.
Whether the presence of school resource officers makes schools and students safer remains the subject of research and debate. In 2024, policy analysts at the Rand Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, reviewed dozens of studies and found, “the presence of SROs (school resource officers) may reduce some types of crime and increase the detection of weapons and drugs on campus.”
But, the Rand analysts wrote, “research has also shown that the presence of SROs inflicts costs on students. Students at schools with SROs are more likely to face disciplinary action by school administrations and more law enforcement contact in general. Black and Latino students may be particularly affected.”
‘We wanted to look at everything’
Last year, the Folsom Cordova Unified School Board decided to examine its policing contracts with the city of Folsom and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, which totaled $502,000. Those contracts had remained largely unchanged for 12 years, said board President Christopher Clark.
Christopher Clark, president of the Folsom Cordova Unified School Board.Credit: Folsom Cordova Unified
“What we wanted to do as a school district is be transparent. We wanted to look at everything in the contract,” Clark told EdSource.
At a board meeting last May to discuss the contracts, speakers expressed concerns about the impact police officers had on Black and Latino students.
Van Merrill, a student board member, said he worried about having “armed police officers on campus.” He said the district has many students who come from groups that “have been historically discriminated against and arrested and killed by police.”
Earl F. Smith, a parent who attempted to speak to police about a problem with his daughter at school, told the board that a Folsom High School administrator described him to a resource officer as “an angry, raving black man.”
“I’m scared to go to Folsom High School,” Smith said. He referred to the 2018 fatal shooting of a 22-year-old unarmed Black man by two Sacramento Police Department officers who said they mistook his phone for a handgun.
“It’s easy to make wrong decisions. It’s hard on the officer. It’s hard on the community,” Smith said. “ I would like the board to consider the perspective that maybe only a certain amount of students would feel comfortable with an officer.”
In a telephone interview, Smith said, “I don’t think there should be an officer at a school walking around with a gun.”
Clark, the board president, who is Black, told EdSource that Smith “absolutely” voiced valid concerns. “I’m speaking as an African American,” said Clark. “We are stereotyped. Oh, yeah. I’ve been stereotyped by a police officer.”
The board eventually approved a change to the contract, requiring officers to spend more time patrolling the areas around schools and to respond to emergencies in schools when needed.
“What works for me is that these officers are actually patrolling the area,” Clark told EdSource. “If there happens to be an emergency, the response time is within three and a half minutes. I believe in safety for our kids.”
‘Unaware’ of requirements
The U.S. Justice Department recommends that law-enforcement agencies and school districts “conduct an annual assessment” of resource-officer programs to ensure that they are adequately addressing all expectations, successes, and challenges.”
Both school and police leadership should review law enforcement data and records to help determine whether officers “are using their law-enforcement powers judiciously,” according to the department’s recommendations.
But many school districts don’t seek or receive such data even when they require it by contract.
The Manteca Unified School District in San Joaquin County has a one-year, $125,000 contract for a resource office with the Stockton Unified School District, which has its own police department. The contract requires officers to document “the type, nature and/or description of activities performed each shift” to help school officials evaluate the program’s effectiveness. The reports are to be provided quarterly.
The contract also requires Stockton Unified Police to provide “copies of incident, crime, service and other police-generated reports, search warrants and other public documents which concern substantial actual or potential criminal activity.”
But EdSource found that Stockton Unified police gave no such documents to Manteca. Asked why the reports weren’t provided, Stockton Unified Chief Mayra Franco said she didn’t know anything about them.
“We were unaware of this requirement,” she wrote in an email, adding that her department would start providing the documents.
Brunn, Manteca Unified’s chief business officer, called the failure of Stockton Unified to provide the documents “very unfortunate.” But she also said no one in her district asked for them.
”We had employee changes during that time frame. It’s not what we would have preferred to have happened,” she said.
Parker, the Anderson Union High School District superintendent, said its contract with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, which used to provide school resource officers, required deputies to prepare quarterly activity reports on their activities and provide them to the district “upon request.”
But the district “never requested them,” Parker said, and no longer has a contract with the sheriff’s office. The district’s current contract with the Shasta County Probation Department doesn’t include any reporting requirements.
Canady, of the school resource officer association, questioned whether reports are necessary.
“What would go in a report?” he said. “I don’t think it’s something that school districts have been demanding. If you’re in a good partnership with the law enforcement agency, there shouldn’t be any need for reports.”
Last year, during the debate about law enforcement contracts for the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, school board member Kara Lofthouse said that reports are crucial to understanding the effectiveness of policing programs.
They are needed “so that we can determine whether or not it’s a smart decision” to continue to pay for police. Without them, Lofthouse added, “we cannot make a sound decision on what’s best for our district.”
She said officers should write reports to “show the schools that they’re going to, even if they’re doing nothing, even if they’re checking in with the principal and they have lunch with a couple of kids. That’s really the report I want to see. I want to see what their time is being spent doing.”
The Tracy Unified School District’s contract with the city of Tracy requires police to provide “statistics related to crime if requested.” But the district told EdSource that it did not have any documents with that data. It also did not respond directly to questions about how it determined whether policing services were successful.
“Our district works extremely closely with our officers and Tracy Police. We communicate through in-person meetings, phone calls, etc.,” Bobbie Etcheverry, a district spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Consent votes
Some school boards approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for resource officers using catch-all consent votes, records show.
Policing contracts require more scrutiny and “should not be on consent agendas,” said Barbara Fedders, a University of North Carolina law professor who has written about school policing in California and is a school board member herself.
“Your contract language for a playground provider doesn’t implicate your values as a school district in the same way that a (contract) with the police does,” Fedders said.
“Consent items can be horrifically abused,” said David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition, which advocates for government transparency and press freedoms.
Loy said that two school board votes identified by EdSource may have violated the Brown Act, the state law requiring local legislative bodies to conduct open and transparent meetings.
The agenda for Elk Grove Unified’s board meeting, section VI.10, specifies that the contracts on the attached list “are under the bid limit of $99,100.
In June 2022, Elk Grove Unified’s school board approved its current contracts with the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office and the city of Elk Grove on a consent vote.
The meeting’s consent agenda stated that all the items under consideration cost no more than $99,100. But the contracts with the Sheriff’s Office and the city included payments for $2.7 million and $317,000, respectively.
The list referenced by the agenda includes two law enforcement contracts worth a combined $3 million, both well over the stated $99,100.
“If an agency says, ‘Don’t worry, nothing to see here, everything on the consent agenda is under $99,100,’ and in fact, what’s on the consent agenda is more than $99,100 over the life of the contract, that is itself a Brown Act violation,” Loy said. “I would argue strongly in court you cannot mislead the public.”
Kristen Coates, the district’s deputy superintendent, wrote in an email that the district did not violate the Brown Act because the law contains “no requirement to agendize items based on dollar figures.”
She declined multiple requests to be interviewed. Board President Michael Vargas did not return messages.
A vote in San Joaquin County also raises questions about how boards approve police contracts.
In 2022, Tracy Unified’s board voted for a consent agenda that included “routine agreements, expenditures, and notices of completions.” As part of that vote, the board approved a $900,000 contract with the city of Tracy to provide three resource officers.
The contract was not listed on the consent agenda. A report attached to the larger meeting agenda said the contract was for $450,000 over two years. The board did not discuss the contract before voting.
“The public obligated $900,000, not $450,000,” Loy said. “As a best practice, these things should not be on consent. The public has a right to know what the total obligation is for the life of the contract.”
In an interview, Tracy Superintendent Robert Pecot did not explain why the agenda misstated the contract’s cost. “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “People are welcome to come to our meetings.”
Loy said lawmakers need to amend the Brown Act “to limit the use of consent agendas.” Items such as school policing contracts should be debated, he said. “You should go through the full democratic process. It definitely cries out for significant policy reform.”
Bret Harte Union High School in Angels Camp in Calaveras County.Credit: Thomas Peele / EdSource
‘Sloppy’ practices
Some school boards wait months or even years to ratify contracts for resource officers and, in a few cases, long after those contracts have taken effect or expired, EdSource found. Under state law, school superintendents can agree to contract terms, but those agreements aren’t valid until school boards approve them, a process known as ratification.
The Bret Harte Union High School District in Calaveras County has a one-year policing contract with the city of Angels Camp with a start date listed as July 2, 2024. The district’s board voted to ratify that contract on Feb. 4, 2025. By that time, the city had billed the district more than $35,000 for a resource officer, records show.
Long ratification delays are “an extremely bad budgeting practice,” said Kline of the California Taxpayers Association. “What happens if the school board votes ‘no’ on a contract seven months after it’s been signed?”
It’s “a huge transparency issue,” he added. “The taxpayers haven’t had their notice and chance to voice their opinions.”
Bret Harte’s board also didn’t ratify a separate contract with Angels Camp until two years after it had expired, voting only after EdSource raised questions about it.
Superintendent Scott Nanik initially claimed that the district couldn’t produce a policing contract for the 2022-23 school year. But Angels Camp records show the city billed the district nearly $45,000 for policing services for that school year.
Nanik had signed the document on Aug. 2, 2022. Last month, the board voted without comment to retroactively ratify the deal.
Byron Smith, a lawyer for the district, wrote in an email that the late ratification vote was taken under a portion of state law allowing school districts the “flexibility to create their own unique solutions” and to spend money “not inconsistent with the purposes for which the funds were appropriated.”
Bret Harte leaders “are committed to doing things the right and legal way,” Smith said.
Professor David Levine of UC Law San Francisco said the board likely voted to ward off any potential litigation by making the contract “a proper expenditure.”
“Imagine if you had a gadfly saying it wasn’t a proper use of public funds,” and suing because there was never a vote, Levine said. The district had been “clearly sloppy,” he added.
School boards “should be approving contracts before the related work begins, not afterward,” said Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association.
EdSource found another school board, Benicia Unified in Solano County, that had not voted to ratify a $225,000 policing contract with the city of Benicia for the 2023-2025 school years.
In response to a reporter’s questions, Benicia Superintendent Damon Wright acknowledged the district made a mistake. “The contract should have been formally brought back to the board for final approval,” he said.
On April 10, three months before the contract expires, the board approved the agreement, without discussion, on the consent agenda.
Teaching is often pegged as being an exhausting profession.
When I first became a teacher, I was constantly exhausted by the end of the day. As a budding teacher, I had a mentor who always brought up thought-provoking questions, allowed me to struggle in order to grow, and guided me as an effective mentor should.
Now, as a veteran teacher myself, one thing he told me really stuck with me: At the end of the day, the kids should be exhausted, not you.
When I first heard this, I didn’t really understand the significance of it. As time passed, and my teaching style evolved, I realized how right he was. Being a teacher means having a passion for the content and the kids. This can create a slippery slope of wanting to be the perfect teacher — the one showcased on social media and paraded by their district. But striving to be the perfect teacher can sometimes overshadow the real purpose of teaching: allowing the students to grow and shine.
As a first-year teacher, I felt like I needed to talk the entire period in order to be most effective. The truth is, the less I talked, the more students were encouraged to talk. When students are talking, the learning becomes more meaningful. Getting students to talk, research, write and share their ideas is going to exhaust them in the best way possible. The period will fly and opinions will be formed, changed and formed again. Getting students to talk, debate topics and see others’ perspectives is how meaningful and authentic learning occurs.
But, had you told me that during my first year of teaching, I would have brushed you off and claimed that it wouldn’t be feasible in a science classroom. Now, as a veteran teacher, I am happy to say that it works wonderfully in a science classroom, and I’m willing to bet it would work in any classroom or content area. I’ve created a few steps that you can explore to encourage student discourse.
Start small. In the first week of school, I always play a 10-minute game of “would you rather?” Students all stand up, much to their dismay, and I present them with two choices.These choices are silly, gross and downright stupefying. Students opting for choice 1 go to the right of the room, choice 2 go to the left. Then, I call on a few students to explain their choice. This silly game just created a small foundation in the classroom, one built on openness and encouraging discussion.
Be consistent. Each topic we learn, no matter what the content area, has room for debate. One topic I like to bring up is whether humans should create and maintain animal sanctuaries. At first glance, the topic doesn’t seem that controversial. However, once you take into account who pays for the services, the land used for them or the importance of keeping wild animals wild, the conversation naturally flows. By the end of the class, the students are hooked and want the conversation to continue. Each week, students read articles of high rigor to support or refute their stance. This creates the buy-in teachers are always looking for.
Allow all voices to be heard. When you create a classroom environment of open discussion, you have to be prepared for disagreement. Setting the stage for all voices to be heard, as long as they’re respectful, is vital to making a safe learning environment. Set the expectations, keep them consistent and allow all students to share their opinions on the topic. Encouraging them to make arguments based on evidence from the text or visual aids will take the learning even deeper.
Students are used to sitting in a classroom, filling out the worksheet, and moving on throughout their day. There is a huge difference between compliance and engagement. It is beautiful to take the same content, make it engaging and get students thinking hard. Students, no matter where they are academically or socially, have opinions. Sharing their views while using evidence will open doors and expand their understanding of the world around them. So, by the end of the day, are you exhausted or are your students?
•••
Kati Begen is a high school biology educator and credential coach in Fresno. She is currently working on her doctorate in curriculum and assessment at Southern Wesleyan University. More articles by Kati Begen.
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.
Two years ago, I was ready to give up everything from my old life and move 3,000 miles away to pursue journalism at San Diego State University. This meant leaving behind my friends, family and my passion for singing and performance. I was sure I would have to leave behind my musical side to focus on my academics, take on a campus job and join the student newspaper.
Or did I?
I have been singing almost my entire life, and did so anywhere I could. The first evidence comes from a 2007 video, where 3-year-old me danced around my living room singing “I’m Wishing” from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” A few years later, I took the hobby from my living room to the stage. I joined the school choir and began performing in local productions.
From then until my high school graduation in 2022, there was not a month that went by where I wasn’t in a show, choir or dance class.
Music and theater were always my favorite hobbies, but not something I saw myself pursuing as a career. I decided to study journalism in college after discovering my passion for it during my senior year of high school.
But after dedicating countless hours of my life to performance, how could I leave all that behind in pursuit of my degree?
Luckily, I didn’t have to.
Performing served me so well during my time in high school, allowing me to form lifelong friendships and escape from my other endeavors, so I decided to take the risk and blend my old life into my new college one. I soon found the a cappella group I wanted to join: SoundWave.
I had never done a cappella before, but I wanted to give it a shot. Once I had settled into my first week of freshman year, I signed up to audition and was welcomed into a wonderful community.
Unfortunately, the rest of my first semester at university did not go so smoothly. I was in a rough living situation at my dorm and had trouble making friends. Every day, I wanted nothing more than to transfer home.
But when I went to rehearsal, I left those troubles at the door and found solace in a community that valued every single one of its members. At the time, I had wished that we had rehearsal every day.
Now in my third year of college, and feeling more settled, I am grateful that my SoundWave commitment is flexible, allowing time for my academics and outside endeavors, such as work and an internship.
I believe in the importance of career-focused pursuits. As a journalism major, I report and write for my college newspaper, The Daily Aztec, and am part of the leadership for our Society of Professional Journalists chapter.
However, I also believe in the importance of joining clubs that exist outside your academic realm. Not only do such activities make you stand out to potential employers, but they are also a great way to meet people with similar interests.
Jacob Opatz, a fourth-year computer science major who currently serves as the president of SoundWave, agrees.
“People always cite the studies that say ‘music is good for your brain,’ but on a deeper level, having a community on campus and working towards a creative goal is so important for my mental health,” he said. “Also, since my major is computer science, I’m desperate to find something creative and fun to break up my otherwise boring schedule.”
Extracurricular activities in grade schools have been proven to improve optimism and lower depression and screen time, according to a 2020 study by Preventative Medicine.
As a college student, I am on my laptop for at least eight hours a day. When I’m not on my laptop, I’m usually on my phone scrolling social media.
Rehearsal gets me to put the screen down and create something with the people around me.
We rehearse two days a week. Members are also expected to practice on their own each day. However, the competition season is more hectic. In the months leading up to the quarterfinals for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, our two-hour rehearsals turn into three.
New member and third-year psychology major Lexy Sakrekoff has had to make some sacrifices to be in the group.
“I used to go home more on the weekends to visit my mom in Oceanside, but now I avoid that because of our Sunday rehearsals,” she said.
However, Sakrekoff says the sacrifice is worth it.
“It helps that [my friends and family] are also super supportive and excited that I’m in SoundWave. I even rehearse my songs in front of them, and that’s always fun for them to listen to,” she said. There have definitely been times when I was up late doing homework after rehearsal or had to cut down my work hours due to performances. But despite my junior year being the busiest so far, SoundWave has always felt like a vital outlet rather than an obligation.
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