For the first time in five years, the West Contra Costa school district board of trustees has denied a renewal petition of one of its charter schools.
By a unanimous vote on Wednesday, the board rejected the renewal application of the Richmond Charter Academy, which serves just under 300 students.
It is part of Amethod Public Schools, or AMPS, a charter management organization that also operates two other charter schools in Richmond and three in Oakland.
The vote followed impassioned appeals by staff and students wearing yellow T-shirts, trying to persuade the board to allow the school to continue operating.
A similar hearing about the school’s fate was held at a board meeting last month. There are 13 charter schools in the district, serving close to 4,000 students of the district’s nearly 30,000 students.
The charter schools are among more than 1,300 in California, by far the largest number in any state.
Renewal petitions are rarely denied in California. The Legislature approved a law (Assembly Bill 1505) in 2019 governing charter school applications and renewals, but its full implementation was delayed until after the pandemic. As a result, many charters are just now coming up for renewal under the 2019 law.
The board’s decision was not entirely unexpected. It was based on a strong recommendation by district staff, outlined in a detailed 79-page report that the district deny the school’s charter based on concerns about its finances and its ability to guarantee that it could offer the educational programs it was promising.
The staff reviewers said they “found fiscal concerns that could not be remedied and the school would not likely implement the program as described in the petition.”
The denial came despite students showing academic results somewhat higher than the district average.
Beyond fiscal worries, several board members also expressed concern about the small number of Black students in the school.
The school has a 91% enrollment of Latino students, while Black students only make up 4%. That’s in a district with an 11.5% Black enrollment.
School administrators said the school admitted students based on a lottery, and thus, the racial or ethnic makeup of the school was determined by who applied.
The school now has a chance to appeal the denial to the county school board, and if the renewal is denied there, the school could then appeal to the State Board of Education.
Among the issues identified in the staff report was the very low number of teachers with a “clear” teaching credential.
Another concern was the considerable turnover in leadership. Some board members had high praise for the current interim CEO, Adrienne Barnes. But in light of leadership turnover in the past few years, they said they weren’t confident that the current leadership would stay much longer.
“Ms. Barnes, you have made a Herculean leap forward, and I appreciate your efforts,” board President Leslie Reckler told her at the meeting. “But I have deep concerns over whether you’re going to be here in a year, or even less than that.”
In 2020, the board voted not to renew the application of the Manzanita Elementary charter school, despite a staff recommendation that the application be approved. The school then appealed to the Alameda County Board of Education, which overruled the district board. Manzanita is still operating today.
None of the current district board members were on the board in 2020. Reckler and Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy, the two most senior current members, pointed out that this was the first time they had voted against a charter renewal, and that it was a difficult vote to cast.
“As the people in charge of renewing the charter, I simply cannot do that,” Gonzalez-Hoy said. “I am sorry for that because I know how painful this is. And as the first charter that I have to deny, I feel the pain.”
“The staff’s findings raise serious questions that we cannot ignore, and it would be irresponsible to move forward without addressing them fully,” added board member Guadalupe Enllana in explaining her vote. “My decision is not made lightly, but it’s made with students at the center because that is who we are here to serve.”
While 14 Cal State universities notched six-year graduation rate increases over the previous year, nine schools in the system saw their rates decline.
San Jose (+ 4.6 percentage points), East Bay (+ 2.4 percentage points) and Fresno (+ 2.1 percentage points) were among the campuses with the greatest increases in six-year graduation rate. Those figures represent the difference in completion among first-time, full-time freshman students who started in 2018 and those who began in 2017.
But several campuses’ graduation rates slipped year-over-year, with the deepest dips at three of Cal State’s smallest campuses. Cal Maritime posted the biggest downswing, falling 7 percentage points. Stanislaus (- 4.6 percentage points) and Monterey Bay (- 4.1 percentage points) recorded the next-largest decreases. Two of Cal State’s largest campuses — San Diego (- 1.8 percentage points) and Long Beach (- 1 percentage point) — also saw six-year freshman rates go down slightly.
That’s according to campus-level statistics the system unveiled this week, coinciding with Cal State’s November board of trustees meeting. The university system is nearing the end of a decadelong campaign to graduate more students, which will conclude in spring 2025. It has made marked improvement toward hitting top-line goals across the system, but is falling short on some targets. Cal State officials have said that the pandemic set back progress on some graduation metrics. They also cite a need to focus on retaining students entering their second and third years of school, particularly students of color.
Cal State knows “that we have a leak, that in that second to third year we’re losing a significantly high number of our students of color and probably male students of color, quite honestly,” said Dilcie D. Perez, Cal State’s chief student affairs officer. “We’re bringing them in. But if the mechanism doesn’t change, we’re going to lose students.”
Systemwide data presented last month shows that Cal State’s freshman four-year graduation rate across all campuses increased slightly during the 2023-24 school year over the previous year, but that its six-year freshman rate plateaued and four-year transfer rate fell.
Cal Maritime, the university system’s smallest campus, was an outlier in terms of how much graduation rates fell from spring 2023 to spring 2024. The school, which specializes in shipping and oceanography programs, experienced the system’s greatest decrease in four-year graduation rates among students transferring from the California Community Colleges over the past two school years. Flagging enrollment has plunged the school into financial difficulty, which culminated this week in a vote to merge the maritime academy with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in order to keep it afloat.
Eight other campuses including Bakersfield (- 3 percentage points) showeddeclines in four-year transfer graduation rates. Humboldt (+ 5.8 percentage points) and Monterey Bay (+ 4.1 percentage points) gained the most, comparing four-year transfer graduation rates for the 2018 cohort to their peers a year earlier.
Systemwide, Cal State is aiming to have 40% of first-year students graduate in four years and 70% of first-year students graduate in six years by spring 2025. Individual campuses also have their own graduation rate targets, which can be more or less ambitious than those that apply to the system as a whole.
None of the system’s universities met their individual campuses’ graduation rate targets for first-time, six-year graduation rates among students who started in 2018. There has been more success on four-year rates. San Diego, Long Beach, San Jose, Sacramento and Northridge met their four-year target for first-time students who started in 2020.
West Contra Costa Unified School District administration building.
Credit: Louis Freedberg / EdSource
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West Contra Costa Unified anticipates it will receive only about $600,000 of $4.2 million it was awarded last year.
The cut is part of a big push by the Trump administration to roll back or eliminate funding to support student mental health in schools across the nation.
The district was one of only three school districts in California to be awarded grants from the Mental Health Professional Services program.
The West Contra Costa Unified School District is the latest school district in California to feel the direct impact of the Trump Administration’s elimination of a range of grant programs approved by the U.S. Department of Education during the Biden administration.
At its meeting on Wednesday night, Interim Superintendent Kim Moses told board members, who were caught unawares by the news, that she had received a letter the previous day from the department of education indicating that the five-year, $4.2 million grant awarded last fall will be cut to one year.
The letter stated that the grant was no longer “aligned with the current goals of the administration,” she said.
As a result of the cut, the district anticipates it will only receive about $600,000 of the funds it was expecting, all of which must be spent between August and December of this year.
Board president Leslie Reckler summarized her reaction in two words: “Total bummer.”
The district was one of three in California to receive a five-year grant last fall. They were among 46 grants awarded last year under the Mental Health Services Professional Grant program begun by the Biden Administration.
The grant was supposed to enable the San Francisco Bay Area district to address the mental health needs of its students by placing graduate student counseling interns in its schools, in collaboration with San Jose State University and St. Mary’s College in Oakland.
The goal of the program, as described in the Federal Register, is “to support and demonstrate innovative partnerships to train school-based mental health services providers.”
Interim Superintendent of West Contra Costa Unified, Kim MosesCaption: Courtesy West Contra Costa Unified
Moses said she was taken aback by the news of the drastic reduction. “Of all the things that I am worrying about being reduced or taken away, I didn’t have this grant in mind,” she said in an interview after the meeting. “The grant is to build our workforce (of mental health workers). How could building our workforce and supporting students with their mental health needs be against what the administration stands for?”
School board member Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy described the funding cut as “atrocious.” “This is just another way they (the Trump administration) are going to start hurting our kids, our staff, our school district, because of what we stand for, because of what we look like.”
The drastic grant cutback comes as a blow to the district, which has made significant progress over the past year in cutting major budget deficits and averting the prospect of a state takeover. Especially since the pandemic, educators have realized that addressing the mental health needs of students is essential to their ultimate academic success. A particular challenge has been to boost the number of school mental health professionals, especially those reflecting the backgrounds of students.
The reduction appears to be part of an aggressive drive by the administration to eliminate mental health programs serving schools. On the same day West Contra Costa heard about its grant reduction, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Department of Education is moving to terminate $1 billion in mental health grants to schools, signed into law by President Biden after the school shooting massacre in Uvalde, Texas in 2022.
The district applied for the funds in the spring of 2024 and was awarded them in the fall. It had been working on signing a Memorandum of Understanding to begin implementing the program this fall.
The funds were designated to be spent in “high-need” school districts like West Contra Costa Unified, where nearly two-thirds of its almost 30,000 students qualify for free and reduced-price meals.
Program probably targeted because of emphasis on diversity
What almost certainly caught the Trump administration’s eye was the emphasis on diversity in the grant application guidelines, a term the current government is using as a rationale to cut federal funds to education institutions at all levels.
One of the goals of the program, according to the guidelines, is to “increase the number and diversity of high-quality, trained providers available to address the shortages of mental health services professionals in schools served by high-need districts.”
The mental health professionals serving students in those districts, according to the guidelines, “shouldreflect the communities, identities, races, ethnicities, abilities, and cultures of the students in the high-need districts, including underserved students.”
“We considered appealing, but the reality is that they just erased this whole grant, and everybody is in the same boat,” interim Supt. Moses said. “This isn’t a case of ‘we picked on you because you’re doing something wrong, we picked on you because the grant is going away.’”
Looking forward, board member Gonzalez-Hoy said, “We must just continue to reassure our students that even if we have less resources, we are here to support and protect them, and we will give them what we can with what we have.”
Other districts that received grants under the program are Trinity Alps Unified and the Wheatland Union High School District, both in Northern California. Also receiving grants are the Marin County Office of Education, Cal State East Bay and the University of Redlands, as well as two charter schools, Entrepreneur High School in San Bernardino and Academia Avance in Los Angeles.
A student in Oakland’s Skyline High School Education and Community Health Pathway sculpts a clay model of the endocrine system.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
It’s time to balance out our lopsided education system. Millions of parents and students have long struggled with our one-size-fits-all model, which primarily teaches to, tests for and celebrates students as theorists, not practitioners.
Our current system acts as a gatekeeper to the middle class by doling out opportunity based on grades and test scores in a traditional classroom setting, but rarely recognizes competencies and interests beyond standardized exams and essays.
Fifty years ago, students could opt into publicly funded trade schools and apprenticeships or enroll in practice-based classes like home economics and shop in traditional academic schools, which taught skills that led to well-paying jobs in carpentry, culinary arts and other trades. But over time, public funding for such programs dried up. The share of federal spending on vocational instruction as part of elementary and secondary education dropped from roughly 30% in 1970 to just 7.5% in 2022. Even as elementary and secondary education spending ballooned from $5.8 billion a year to $96 billion during this period, the vocational component grew only from $1.8 billion to $7.2 billion.
Most publicly funded instruction now happens at desks, with grading based on written exams, essays and problem sets rather than demonstrations and hands-on learning. Some students are more prepared than others to succeed in such a system, exacerbating existing inequalities.
Research by the Economic Policy Institute found that social class, as defined by parental income, education and job, is the leading predictor for a student’s school readiness: Kindergartners from the highest social class possess more theory-based skills and perform an entire standard deviation higher on math and reading tests than kindergartners from the lowest social class. The gaps are particularly high for Black and Hispanic students, who are more likely than white children to live in poverty. When some students inevitably falter, the system tells them they are failures and offers trade schools and technical colleges as second-tier alternatives they often must pay for themselves.
It didn’t have to be this way. The United States originally based its system on a German/Prussian model, which prioritized efficiency by tracking students into “academic” or “vocational” tracks at age 10. In that model, still in place in Germany today, students are expected to know what they want to do by adolescence, and many simply end up in the same track as their parents.
The United States, hoping to advance a true meritocracy, did not want a system that limited intergenerational mobility in this way, and over the 20th century we adopted a liberal arts approach that was supposed to prioritize economic and social mobility. But in a myopic attempt to get rid of tracking, we inadvertently eliminated vocational education and simply tracked all our students into the academic model. The result? The worst of both worlds for less traditional students who struggle in a sink-or-swim academic system.
Student outcomes now depend a lot on parents’ backgrounds, just like in Germany.
There is another possibility. Consider Finland, which in the 1970s switched from the German model to one that teaches a combination of academic and technical subjects until age 16, when students choose a track. The vocational path for students interested in highly -skilled trades includes carpentry and culinary arts, but it also offers applied sciences, health care, and social services, which in the United States would require attending traditional academic universities.
Finland’s vocational path is highly competitive and includes matriculation at rigorous polytechnic universities with high-level training in subjects like business, engineering and nursing and quality instructors with connections to actual companies — not an alternative education. With a system that celebrates the value of highly skilled thinkers and workers, Finland recently ranked first out of 143 countries on the World Happiness Report for the seventh consecutive year, and as of 2021, its income inequality is eighth lowest among 37 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the United States ranks 23 on the World Happiness Report, and its income inequality is down at 33, beating only Turkey, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica).
Of course, the United States is not Finland, and we cannot simply adopt its system. (Though before you discount Finland because of its smaller or more homogeneous population, consider that its size and composition are comparable to many U.S. states, and much of U.S. education policy is decided at the state level.) What we can do is stop deciding who is educated, intelligent and successful based on only one type of student. Instead, we should recognize the value of all students, and offer more mainstream career and technical opportunities across K-12 education.
States and the federal government should fund more career and technical education, including apprenticeships, hands-on learning courses and training and recruitment for vocational teachers. They should work with employers, schools, training organizations and other groups to tie education to the workforce needs of their region.
Everyone should be given the opportunity to pursue a traditional academic education, but they should also be able to pursue an equally rigorous vocational one, equipped with public resources and support. Only then will the middle class truly be open to all.
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Eric Chung is a lawyer, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project. His work focuses on law and policy related to economic mobility and educational opportunity.
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.
“I find it most helpful for summarizing readings and just making really menial and time-consuming tasks a lot easier,” Miglani said. A premium ChatGPT subscriber, he said he regularly checks his math problems with the chatbot, though it often can’t handle the complex equations and concepts used in some of his classes.
Miglani said the preliminary models of ChatGPT were “pretty rudimentary,” struggling to produce quality written answers and useful for mainly short-answer assignments and creating outlines for his essays. Now, ChatGPT and other AI tools, including Microsoft Edge and Gemini, are Miglani’s near-constant companions for homework tasks.
For the first few semesters after ChatGPT’s debut, Miglani said students used it fairly freely without much concern about getting caught, as AI detection software didn’t yet exist. Now that commonly used submission programs like Turnitin allow professors to scan assignments for evidence of AI use, Miglani said he’s been more conscientious about writing essays that won’t be flagged.
“I have not gotten caught using AI yet,” he said. “In fact, now, as I take higher level courses, professors understand that people are going to use AI, and so I have started asking them, ‘Do you approve of AI use in and in what capacity?’”
Some of Miglani’s professors have allowed AI use for research and basic summarization, but many draw the line at using chatbots to generate citations or write essays.
My time on the high school football field was spent with a snare drum strapped around my chest. As a student who was easily distracted in the academic classroom and struggled to apply myself, band class was a welcome reprieve during the day.
Playing the drums was my niche, it was how I stood out. I carried my drumsticks around the way football players wore their varsity jackets.
During my school years, I was fortunate that the district I attended recognized the importance of arts education. In elementary school, there were classrooms devoted to art and music staffed by full-time teachers. There was also an orchestra teacher. My middle school had two full-time band teachers, and an art class was included in the curriculum. High school offered a full range of band and choir classes in addition to the chance to participate in the jazz band and marching band in after-school programs.
Even back then, it was clear that future students would not have these same opportunities. The program that allowed interested sixth-grade students to participate in a stage production disappeared while I was in school, a victim of budget cuts as the baby boom turned into a bust. During my time in high school, there were constant rumors of plans to reduce the number of band teachers.
This reduction in the availability of arts education was part of a nationwide trend that accelerated as the second Bush administration and then Obama’s placed an increasing focus on test scores. Ignoring evidence that music and art help increase academic performance, teachers were forced to spend more time teaching to standardized tests. Arts funding was seen as extravagant in a system that values data over a full educational experience.
When I visited my old elementary school in 2015, the band room did not even exist anymore. I grieved for the school’s students who no longer had the opportunity to find the joy of mastering an instrument.
California voters understood the magnitude of this loss when 64.4% of voters opted to approve Proposition 28 in 2022. This measure provided an additional source of funding for arts and music education for K-12 public schools with rules to ensure that districts used this money to supplement, not supplant, existing funding.
This included a requirement that schools with 500 or more students use 80% of the funding for employing teachers and 20% for training and materials.
Complaints grew as parents in Los Angeles noticed that their children were not seeing improved access to art and music funding as the Proposition 28 money started to flow into the district. As the author of the proposition, Austin Beuttner was well acquainted with the rules it set in place and agreed that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was not following the spirit or the letter of the law.
After months of trying to get the district to do the right thing, Beuttner joined parents, students,and teachers in filing a lawsuit against the district and current Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho.
The suit could have served as a wake-up call to LAUSD’s leadership that their actions were being watched, but they did not use it as an opportunity to ensure the Proposition 28 money was being spent properly. Carvalho saw the suit as a public relations problem, and instead of fixing the compliance issues, he tried to spin the narrative. As noted by the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jeff Chemerinsky, he “has already decided to double down on explanations not grounded in fact.”
To resolve this issue, the plaintiffs are demanding that LAUSD:
Publicly acknowledge that it misspent the Proposition 28 funds in the 2023–24 and 2024–25 school years.
Fully restore the misspent and misallocated funding to schools.
Be fully transparent about how the funding is used in future years.
In a letter to the LAUSD’s general counsel, Chemerinsky reminds the district that, if it is found that the funds were not used properly, it will have to return the money to the state. Combined with possible penalties for “violating the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino students,” LAUSD could be facing a hit to its budget of over $100 million.
This is not a slip-and-fall lawsuit designed to squeeze scarce education funding from our children’s classrooms. Rather, it is intended to improve the educational experience of our students.
The suit would not have been brought if Carvahlo and the district had engaged with the community instead of ignoring their concerns. As Chermerinsky notes, “families, labor partners and concerned citizens spent months seeking answers. Regrettably, LAUSD refused to meaningfully respond.”
The lawsuit has also attracted the attention of California Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, who has asked the state auditor to look into how the funds were spent.
If the audit proceeds, Bryan says, “The district is going to have to produce the necessary documents to show that they are in compliance.” Based on statements from Carvalho saying the author of the proposition has a “misunderstanding of the law,” LAUSD should be concerned that its creative budgeting will not pass muster when held up to scrutiny.
The LAUSD board must make it clear to Carvahlo that the concerns of their constituents can no longer be ignored by an increasingly detached bureaucracy. A good place to start would be by settling this lawsuit.
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Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, and serves as the education chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. Read more opinion pieces by Petersen.
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.
Born and raised in the agricultural foothills of Tulare County in California’s Central Valley, Greg Salcedo attended the only K-8 school and high school serving his rural town of about 3,000 people, where everything seemed out of reach — backpacks and notebooks, teachers and administrators and, in particular, school counselors and social workers.
Friends and family, Salcedo said, never spoke about adolescent depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress or suicide, issues that have, for decades, disproportionately affected rural, high-poverty communities in the United States.
But after the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated a decades-long mental health problem in Tulare County — with psychiatric hospitalization rates for students 9 to 13 years old climbing 23% during the first year of the pandemic — Salcedo decided to pursue a master’s degree in social work. In his first year as a graduate student, he helped shape the county’s emergency response through Rural Access to Mental Health Professionals, a program that placed him as a student mental health support worker in schools serving his community.
“I was able to talk to students and set them up with resources, call parents to set them up for therapy referrals or services with outside agencies [and] do a lot of outreach to promote mental health,” Salcedo said. “Being in this community for so long has helped me have a better sense of empathy and understanding of these kids and what they’re going through.”
The program places early-career mental health workers in 33 of Tulare County’s high-poverty school districts. Through the program, Salcedo served a one-year unpaid internship at an elementary and high school in Tulare, after which he was hired full time as a social worker at a high school in the Tulare Joint Union High School District.
Participants are first- and second-year graduate students in social work who provide education-related services such as interim therapy and student group services, according to Marvin Lopez, executive director at the California Center on Teaching Careers, which helps coordinate the program. Since 2019, the center has supported 50 candidates through a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
“In our district alone, we started out with three social workers last year, and now, we have seven new social workers that came on through the grant,” Salcedo said.
In 2019, Tulare County had a student-to-counselor ratio of about 870:1 — one of the highest in the state and well exceeding the recommended ratio of 250:1.
Districts in Tulare County have improved shortages of mental health providers using funds from the state. Tulare Joint Union High School District, for example, reported that the district’s student-to-counselor ratio improved significantly from 300 students per counselor in 2019 to 268 students per counselor in 2021.
But, few participants could afford to stay in the school-based mental health field after completing their unpaid placements, said Lopez.
“It became evident that we needed to support candidates to make sure we retain them,” Lopez said. “We began looking at resources like clinical supervision and additional training, but also financial incentives that can allow them to continue working at school sites.”
Last year, the center secured a $15 million federal grant to develop Preparing Rural Inclusive Mental Health Educators, a program that pays final-year graduate students a $45,000 stipend for a yearlong internship and a three-year commitment to remain in the field of school-based mental health care. To date, the center has sponsored 23 interns.
According to Lopez, these candidates are able to offer more long-term, advanced care, such as individual student therapy, group therapy, parent and family consultation and school faculty support. The center intentionally recruits from partner universities closest to Tulare County, such as California State University Bakersfield and Fresno State, whose students largely come from the rural communities they will serve.
Jeovany Martin, who completed his master’s in social work at CSU Bakersfield, was an intern in the program at a local elementary school. Martin was raised in neighboring Kings County by his Mexican immigrant parents, and he applied for the program to serve families whose needs have been shortchanged by language barriers.
“I’m able to relate to these students. I speak their language, and I’m able to communicate with parents in their language, which goes a very long way in creating a working relationship with them,” Martin said.
Martin said that the program was also his most realistic path to the field of education-based mental health care. Most providers are overworked and underpaid — with nearly 59% of school counselors leaving their positions in their first two years — and non-white, low-income candidates have much less financial and professional support to enter the field.
Nationally, most school counselors are overwhelmingly white, and they do not represent the backgrounds of the students they serve. For Tulare County’s student population — where nearly 80% of students are Latino — the two programs address a shortage of cultural competence in mental health support available to students, according to program supervisor Rosie Hernandez.
“We’re also having folks who are bilingual be part of our program because it allows families to be a bit more open to services because of that simple fact that they speak their native tongue,” Hernandez said.
Most children living in rural, low-income households, Lopez said, are also more likely to experience higher rates of anxiety, depression and behavioral problems, often due to stressors such as food insecurity, parental job loss and geographic isolation.
“We’re recruiting, preparing and supporting candidates from our own communities who represent our student population,” Lopez said. “That, in itself, allows our students to connect at a much higher level with our interns to bring them comfort, a space where they can interact and feel safe.”
A legacy of bias and neglect
Martin and Salcedo’s internships in Tulare County also provided the opportunity to tackle a decades-long legacy of mistrust between social workers and immigrant families.
“A lot of our families, especially from the Hispanic culture, think of social workers as ‘the people that take away my kids,’” Salcedo said. In his first year, Salcedo felt stifled by the number of permission slips that would have allowed him to help more students, but were returned unsigned. “Our job is also about breaking down that barrier and [explaining] our role for them to understand, ‘This person is here to help my kid with anxiety. They’re not here to judge me as a parent.’”
The National Center for Youth Law found that across the country’s child welfare, education and mental health systems, providers and educators have routinely over-referred Latino students for behavioral issues and subjected them to harsher disciplinary measures than white children. Black and Latino children were also found to be removed from their families and into out-of-home care at higher rates, while receiving fewer mental health services, such as psychotherapy and counseling, than white children.
Families that include at least one undocumented member or non-citizen — 14.3% of Tulare County’s overall population — are also less likely to opt into care if they rely on citizen children to receive basic benefits like food stamps and housing subsidies, which can be jeopardized by family separation. In a county where more than a quarter of residents receive SNAP food assistance, and two-thirds of these recipients are children, signing a permission slip could come down to what some parents feel is a calculation between their child’s mental health and access to basic services.
To address fears of bias and neglect, which remain the highest barrier for underserved communities to access to mental health care, program interns adapt a traditionally siloed approach in school counseling to work more directly with parents, caretakers and community support systems.
Salcedo, for example, partnered with the local Boys and Girls Club to run a regular backpack drive for students in the neighborhood. He also helped set up a resource closet at his school, where students frequently stop by for necessities such as food, school supplies and personal hygiene products. Most recently, he partnered with a local church to serve boxed meals to students at the end of the school day and to parents on back-to-school nights.
“We have this daily check-in routine with our students, where we say, ‘Whether you’re needing to talk to a counselor, or you just need some deodorant, a snack, or pencils, we can provide it,’” Salcedo said. “‘If you’re looking for housing, or babysitting, or transportation to get to an appointment, we can try to help.’”
Broader post-pandemic challenges
Martin, who was hired as a social worker after completing his placement, said that the need for broader support has especially spiked for K-8 students in Tulare County, many of whom lost crucial social and cognitive development to remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of Salcedo’s high school students, he said, withdrew from their counseling sessions online — some did not have reliable Wi-Fi or could not turn on microphones due to chaotic environments at home, for example.
Many also experienced life-altering trauma as a result of the pandemic. They grieved family members, experienced debilitating illness and lost access to basic needs like shelter and food.
“That’s why it’s important for us to take a holistic approach,” Martin said. “We might be doing an intervention here at the school for the student, but there might be something going on at home that the family needs extra resources for. We’re able to help bridge those gaps, wherever they might be, for the students and their families.”
The national rhetoric regarding the value of attending a college or university has reached a fever pitch. Being “better off” goes well beyond politics and the price of milk and eggs or an understanding of how tariffs work. Let’s face it: Education provides opportunity, and making higher education work for everyone must be a priority if we are to be a thriving, civilized society.
Let’s start with the current disruptive notion that poses the discomfiting question: Is a college degree worth it?
Many of us working in postsecondary education felt that question didn’t go far enough in looking for the opportunity to improve in new and better ways when the stakes are higher than ever.
So, we took that question on as a challenge and expanded it to ask: What is college worth, and how do we measure and improve its value, especially for low- and moderate-income learners? Answers to such questions should prove fruitful, especially given that a new Gallup survey reports Californians overwhelmingly value postsecondary degrees or credentials, particularly because of their career-related benefits. Yet, we know that many are hesitant to enroll in college or university because of the perceived unaffordability of earning a credential or degree.
This led our organizations to explore what kind of return on investment higher education institutions — part of a stale, antiquated system that does not always deliver on its promise of economic mobility and equity — provide to their learners. The ensuing report produced more nuanced data to inform continuing conversations on the value of postsecondary education, which, frankly, helps learners and their families make decisions on where they want to make a higher education investment from a value and return-on-investment perspective.
Our first step was to look at the value that California institutions offer their low- and moderate-income learners. We also wanted to know if certain college programs or credentials made a difference.
After all, learners who choose a postsecondary education should end up better off for it, right?
The good news we found was, yes, most students were better off for the most part. The troubling news, though, was that for some students, it was not always, and sometimes, never.
We’ve also learned that sometimes a student’s college major can matter just as much for an economic return-on-investment — if not more — than the institution itself. Some programs provide a strong return, but some offer none whatsoever, even leaving some degree or credential graduates making less than a high school graduate.
For example, we found that almost all programs (97%) offered at public institutions in California show their graduates being able to earn back the costs of obtaining a degree or credential within only five years. Essentially, these graduates earn enough of an “additional income” because of their college degree to make their college program worth it.
And, also impressive, nearly half of public college programs (48%) allow this within one year’s time. Programs at private nonprofit colleges in California generally take students longer, as only 7% enable graduates to recoup their costs within 12 months. And worrisomely, for-profit colleges show their graduates struggling to recoup their college costs, and nearly a fifth of their programs (17%) show no economic return whatsoever.
This work is not a denouncement of any specific program or desired area of study, but rather an opportunity for further research to understand why and how these institutions and college programs produce these outcomes and where there may be policy and practical implications.
A simple example of such a practical change may be for institutions to provide a clearer picture to students before they enroll of how much a specific program will cost — and provide information on how much former students typically earn. Another may be more geared toward college administrators to ensure that they are equipping students with the right skills — and necessary credentials — to pursue and succeed in careers within the geographic region where the institution is located.
Institutional leaders and elected officials must lean into discussions that are happening right now about the value of a college education and how it ties to learners’ futures and where improvements can happen.
While more questions must be answered — and more research will follow — one thing has become abundantly clear: Our higher education system can no longer be enabled by a “this is the way we do things” mentality in places where it is not working.
Postsecondary attainment must be tied to value, economic mobility and equity, as this is essential to creating a higher education system that drives a robust, inclusive economy that works for all Californians.
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Eloy Ortiz Oakley is president and CEO of College Futures Foundation, whose mission is based on a belief in the power of postsecondary opportunity.
Michael Itzkowitz is founder and president of the HEA Group, a research and consulting agency focused on college access, value, and economic mobility.
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.
EdSource receives funding from many foundations, including The College Futures Foundation. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.
Community college bachelor’s degree programs can provide a concrete pathway to socioeconomic mobility, while helping achieve the dream of completing a bachelor’s degree for students who have not been served by any other public college sector, especially among populations who are historically underserved.
Nationwide, 187 community colleges in 24 states are now authorized to offer at least one bachelor’s degree program. It has been nearly a decade since 15 California community colleges first offered a bachelor’s degree program, and there are now at least 38 California community colleges that can do so. A survey of students participating in California’s pilot program found that more than half would not have pursued a bachelor’s degree had it not been offered at their community college.
Given that these programs can improve access to bachelor’s degree programs and jobs, it is frustrating that the programs are not more widely available across the state’s 116 community college campuses, which are closer to home for far more of the state’s students than either a UC or CSU campus.
Unfortunately, community colleges have historically had a complicated standing within the higher education ecosystem, and their bachelor’s degree programs have been held back by stigma, suspicion and scrutiny.
Stigma is palpable in references to community colleges as “junior” or “lower-tier” colleges, despite California authorizing them to provide bachelor’s degrees nearly a decade ago. Suspicion is evident in claims that community colleges are not cooperating with other entities, despite California’s policies that give universities the power to delay and even prevent community colleges from offering bachelor’s degrees. Scrutiny refers to the numbers of hoops that community colleges must jump through, especially with bachelor’s degree program approval.
But California’s community colleges are an important feature of the higher education landscape. Serving nearly 2 million students annually, it is the largest higher education system in the country. Despite evidence of their success in providing a concrete pathway to jobs and socioeconomic mobility, community college bachelor’s degree programs continue to face many roadblocks that do not center students’ and communities’ best interest at heart.
Let’s address common myths about community college bachelor’s degree programs:
Myth 1: These programs duplicate existing academic programs and steal students from colleges.
Reality: By 2030, there is a projected state shortage of 1.1 million bachelor’s degrees. Community college bachelor’s degree programs are one solution to this supply problem. Research shows California’s community college bachelor’s degree programs provide a pathway to bachelor’s degrees for people who likely would not have had it otherwise. They especially benefit older students — 77% of community college bachelor’s degree program students are 25 or older, compared with just 23% at California State University (CSU). There is no concrete evidence, to our knowledge, that shows that community college bachelor’s degree programs are “stealing” students from other public education segments in California. Research in Florida shows no decline in regional public university enrollment when community colleges offered a bachelor’s degree.
Myth 2: Community colleges lack quality and produce poor outcomes.
Myth 3: It is easy for community college bachelor’s degree programs to get approved.
Reality: Current policies create unique hurdles for community colleges that want to offer bachelor’s degrees. While California’s process of approving community college bachelor’s degree programs is similar to other states in some ways, it is unique in terms of the power that the CSU and University of California (UC) systems have to delay or prevent them from happening at all. For example, when Feather River College attempted to offer a bachelor’s degree in applied fire management, Cal Poly Humboldt — a college 270 miles away — objected to the program, citing duplication despite the fact that the fire program at Humboldt did not even exist yet.
It is easy to get caught up in preconceived myths about community colleges. But the reality is that community colleges are beneficial for students, and, by offering bachelor’s degrees, they can support the economic mobility of more students.
As California faces growing demand for bachelor’s degree holders, these programs offer a practical solution that deserves recognition and support rather than continued stigma, suspicion and scrutiny. Given their success, policymakers should strengthen and support these programs, allowing them to grow alongside other college options in California.
Debra D. Bragg is president of Bragg & Associates and endowed professor emerita of higher education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Elizabeth Meza is a senior research scientist at the University of Washington and a New America Education Policy Program Fellow for Community Colleges.
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.
The international students office at Grossmont College in El Cajon,.
Amy DiPierro
Top Takeaways
About 14,000 international students attend California’s community colleges, many of them in the Bay Area.
Community colleges charge international students as much as 10 times resident tuition.
The Trump administration said it is restoring abruptly revoked international student visas, but anxiety persists.
As Kaung Lett Yhone finished high school at home in Myanmar, he knew he wanted to go to college in the U.S. So to find the perfect fit, he did what anyone would do: He searched online.
“I looked up on Google, ‘best community college,’ and De Anza showed up as No. 1,” he said. So he soon enrolled at De Anza College, a two-year school located in Cupertino, in the heart of Silicon Valley, which has an international reputation for preparing students for transfer into their dream universities.
Yhone, a biology student, plans to transfer from De Anza to a four-year institution next fall. He has his sights set on two San Francisco Bay Area gems — Stanford or, failing that, Berkeley — just as international students are getting more scrutiny than ever from the Trump administration, provoking anxiety among them.
Yhone is one of 14,000 international students enrolled in California’s community colleges as of fall 2023, with the largest shares clustered at institutions in the Bay Area. Public two-year colleges, though better known for educating U.S. students from their immediate area, enrollroughly 12% of international students in California. Some community colleges have made overseas recruiting a specialty, as a way to boost tuition revenue and add cultural variety to their campuses.
International enrollment attracts more attention at higher-profile bachelor’s degree-granting campuses such as the University of Southern California and UC San Diego. Some people are surprised to learn that community colleges have substantial numbers.However, more international students attended community colleges in California in the 2023-24 school year than in any other state.
But with the Trump administration’s visa policies possibly discouraging their enrollment, the number of international students who will re-enroll next school year is an important question for California community colleges. Some community colleges, like De Anza, now depend on international students for as much as 7% of enrollment.
Media reports estimate that as many as 4,700 international students nationwide have had their visas abruptly revoked in recent weeks, including more than a dozen California community college students. In what appears to be a reversal, the Trump administration shifted and said it will reactivate those visas pending a new framework for visa terminations. But anxiety remains among college staff who work most closely with them.
“You have no idea how nervous I am,” said Nazy Galoyan, De Anza College’s dean of enrollment services and head of international student programs, before news of the Trump administration’s reversal broke. “To go to California and Silicon Valley and get your education, that’s something that is absolutely a dream, right? And students really work hard toward that. What we’re going through, I don’t know, that dream might be jeopardized.”
Galoyan’s college has experienced the student visa crackdown firsthand. De Anza enrolls 1,100 international students, according to federal data for fall 2023. And at least six had their F-1 visa records terminated in the initial round of Trump administration actions. It’s not alone among community colleges in having visas canceled. Santa Monica College, which enrolls almost 1,700 international students, reported seven visa terminations.
In interviews, international students at California community colleges were happy to explain why they came to school here, but declined time and again to discuss the threat of visa terminations.
Some community colleges could feel the effects of a student visa crackdown even if their students are not directly impacted or are granted a reprieve after having a visa revoked.
There is “no indication that it will become any easier for international students to gain new visas, and the chaos caused by the government’s revocation and later reversal will likely cause even more turmoil and unease in the international student community,” said Carrie B. Kisker, a director of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Center for the Study of Community Colleges, in an email. “Without clear guidance on what international students can expect in the coming months and years, I don’t think that the government’s about-face will ease any concerns about the U.S. being a safe and welcoming place to study.”
Non-resident tuition, diversity and ‘a little bit of prestige’
In international students, community colleges see a source of higher tuition, diversity and “even a little bit of prestige,” said Linda Serra Hagedorn, a professor emeritus at Iowa State University who has studied the role of international students in community colleges.
De Anza College is among those that have cultivated students from overseas. Many enroll from Asian countries, including China, Japan and South Korea. But the college also gets students from Europe, Africa and Latin America — “from everywhere,” said Galoyan, who makes two trips annually to recruit students abroad, one to central Asia and another to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Nuri Illini Ahmad, who graduated from the College of San Mateo in 2019, came across the Bay Area community college while attending a recruitment fair in her home country, Malaysia. New York University and George Washington University were advertising their campuses, too, but she thought the San Mateo campus would be a better fit for her budget and interest in studying media. There was even a Malaysian student featured in the college flyer.
“We got in contact with the student, and then somehow, that person ended up being one of my closest friends as well,” she said.
International students at De Anza pay $276 per unit. At Santa Monica College, they and other nonresidents pay a total of $444 per unit — nearly 10 times as much as California residents.
But from the perspective of international students, a California community can still be a bargain. An international student on track to graduate from Santa Monica College in two years would pay $13,320 in tuition a year, assuming they don’t get any scholarships or other discounts. The same non-resident student would pay $19,770 at a California State University (CSU) campus, $50,328 at a University of California (UC) campus and $73,260 at the University of Southern California without financial aid.
Eyeing a path to top-tier universities — and, perhaps, a day at the beach
In brochures and other marketing materials, community colleges around California paint a glittering portrait of what it’s like to be an international student on their campus.
Irvine Valley College, which enrolled about 550 international students as of fall 2023, seeks to beguile prospective international students with a promotional video. “A lot of international students dream of graduating from a UC or top private university. Whatever you choose, your future starts at Irvine Valley College,” an unseen narrator intones, before the video cuts to a series of testimonials from international students. “You’ll enjoy great weather year round and world-class shopping, culture and beaches are nearby.”
Grossmont College in El Cajon, with almost 190 international students last school year, has its own promotional video interspersing images of nearby downtown San Diego and Balboa Park. Among other perks, a Grossmont website touts small classes and “camping in the desert, kayaking in San Diego Bay, and barbeques at the beach.”
Community colleges also pitch their campuses to international students as a less expensive route to a four-year degree, a place to fine-tune English language skills and prepare for bachelor’s degrees from prestigious institutions.
In fall 2024, De Anza College students who applied to aUniversity of California campus had an 81% acceptance rate; Diablo Valley and Irvine Valley students were not far behind, with roughly 80% and 79% acceptance rates to UC, respectively.
Dinara Usonova, a business major at De Anza, decided in high school in Kyrgyzstan to apply to U.S. community colleges rather than go straight to a four-year university. That, she believed, would allow her to adjust to the American higher education system and give her time to improve her English before attending a university. The cost was also attractive to Usonova, who pays rent and other living expenses on her own.
Usonova has been admitted to Berkeley and is waiting to hear from additional universities before deciding where to transfer this fall.
“Going to community college, paying cheaper tuition and getting all these kinds of experiences and building my foundation, I think it was a great choice,” she said.
‘I feel so much at home’
Statewide, international students at community colleges contributed $591 million to the California economy last school year, according to an analysis by NAFSA, a nonprofit association for higher education professionals who work with international students.
Santa Monica College’s international students added an estimated economic value of $56 million and another 245 jobs, NAFSA found.
Santa Monica’s international students, who are from about 100 different countries, contribute significant non-resident tuition revenue to the campus, said Pressian Nicolov, the college’s dean of international education, in an email. Losing those students and the nonresident tuition they bring “would result in a significant impact on college programs and, ultimately, on all students.”
But the loss of international students would not just be financial, he said.
“There would be fewer opportunities to engage with global viewpoints, fewer opportunities for domestic students to develop life-changing cross-cultural friendships and learn about diverse cultures,” Nicolov said.
Nuri Illini Ahmad, second from right, and other Malaysian MARA Scholars in their traditional clothing at the College of San Mateo’s 2016 World Village.Courtesy of Nuri Illini Ahmad
International students provide “huge value” to campus culture, Galoyan at De Anza added. Many experience culture shock when they first arrive, but most adapt and become active in the community, joining clubs and even the student government.
That’s the case for Yhone, who is the legislative liaison for the Inter Club Council, a coordinating body for more than 60 student clubs at De Anza. Since enrolling, he has also helped to reactivate two clubs: the De Anza Red Cross and the Business Information Technology Club.
“There are so many opportunities, so many clubs to expose yourself to here,” Yhone said.
Ahmad,the student who finished at San Mateo, succeeded in earning a four-year degree from a U.S. college — and then some. She earned a bachelor’s degree at San Francisco State University, then advanced to a master’s program at Columbia University.
For now, Ahmad is watching the U.S. from London, where she’s seeking work as a freelance video producer after a job in New York ended abruptly, forcing her to leave the country. If she were a high school senior today, she said, she would probably start college in the U.S. all over again. “I know it sounds weird saying this,” she said, “but I feel so much at home when I was there.”
