After a contentious road to approve a new set of statewide guidelines on teaching students math, California officials must still figure out how to support school districts with implementation.
The 2023 Math Framework, which the State Board of Education passed in July, is a 1,000-page document that details what many state and education officials accept as the best practices to teach mathematics. Although not everyone agreed and controversies arose during the four years of work it took to reach approval, math experts and organizations across the state are beginning to have conversations about what a statewide rollout could look like.
The state hasn’t provided funding for implementation, which is typical, said Mike Torres, director of curriculum frameworks and instructional resources for the Department of Education. Historically, any framework rollout isn’t funded and is implemented with outside collaborators who are experts in the topic. For the most part, district officials must find ways to fund professional development on their own.
“This situation with the mathematics framework is not different,” Torres said. “There isn’t any specific funding where we can pay experts to help us participate in webinars … or put on events.”
It’s unclear why California historically hasn’t set aside money to help districts with implementation once new guidelines are passed. But that could change.
During a press conference last month, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said he intends to introduce legislation for funding for professional development for those teaching math and reading. The funds could be up to $500 million, he said.
Torres said the California Department of Education would need to find other ways to offset costs if events will be held. It’s too early to know what kind of rollout could or will happen. Torres and his team have had three meetings with groups they work with to talk about a framework rollout, he said.
There are many organizations collaborating with the California Department of Education on implementing the math framework, including the California Mathematics Project, California County Superintendents Curricular and Improvement Support Community (CISC), California Math Council, California Teachers Association, and County Offices of Education.
During other framework rollouts, districts have sent teams of teachers and administrators to training and then had them relay information to the rest of the staff, said Kyndall Brown, one of the framework authors and executive director of the California Mathematics Project – one of the state’s partners. It’s something that could be replicated during a math framework rollout.
Even if there are conferences teachers can attend, one professor says she isn’t a huge fan.
“One day of hearing these ideas doesn’t necessarily translate into having a balanced curriculum – at all,” said Karajean Hyde, co-director of the UC Irvine Math Project. “It doesn’t necessarily create change in the classroom.”
To create changes that will increase students’ proficiency in math, teachers need trainers who will work with them in and outside of classrooms on a consistent basis, Hyde said, which is work she does with her colleguues.
School districts do have pots of funding that could be used toward professional development, Brown said, such as special education funds or funds from the Local Control Funding Formula.
However, a $50 million math, science, and computer science professional learning grant the governor allocated in the 2022 budget could help to fund professional development. Some allocations have been given to the County Offices of Education, Torres said, and the offices handle how the money is used.
The timing of the grant worked out perfectly with the beginning of a math framework rollout, said Ellen Barger, an associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction at the Santa Barbara County Office of Education. Other grant funds are being used to support rural school districts in particular and the most recent grant will help to continue building coherence across all counties and to fill gaps.
“The framework is one of the tools that’s helping us achieve a vision of high-quality
mathematics for every California student, and we are building structures to bring people together to build knowledge and skills to operationalize that vision in every county, district, and community,” Barger said.
How to make that equitable will be a difficult task.
Each school district has different needs, unique populations, and different levels of resources. For example, a district with more than 50,000 students will typically have more resources and staff to support professional development. A district with less than 50 kids might just have one staffer who is taking on multiple roles.
There are some school districts that haven’t yet finished implementing the common core standards, Brown said. The common core standards detail what students in each grade level need to master.
“There was no rollout of the 2013 framework (common core standards),” Brown said. “You had county offices and math project sites doing what we could, but we’re running into teachers who still don’t know about the elements of the common core standards.”
There are also always new teachers coming into schools who will need to be trained, Brown said. “We have years and years worth of content.”
But at least some colleges of education at California universities have had many aspects of the math framework already embedded in their curricula for the last decade. Professors at UC Davis, UC Irvine, and UC Riverside all spoke about how ideas in the framework have been used in their classrooms and the long history of controversy over how to teach math.
Karajean Hyde, co-director of the UC Irvine Math Project, works with districts to train teachers on how to teach math and students in the credential program. For years, she said, the focus has been on student engagement, understanding motivation, including student identities in lessons, and building healthy classrooms – all included in the math framework.
Most teachers teach the way they were taught, Hyde said, and learned shortcuts to solving math problems. It results in current and future teachers not understanding the mathematics behind what they’re teaching.
During professional development training, Hyde and other Irvine professors make sure educators begin to understand the concepts behind what they are teaching, she said. They spend time co-planning lessons, observing lessons being taught, and relating what they are teaching back to the common core standards.
“We need to make sure teachers understand the math and how to teach the math first and then it’s easier to help them consider – ‘How do I make this more engaging? How do I connect this back to the kid’s prior experience?’” Hyde said.
If teachers don’t understand the content “I fear they will just have a series of super fun, engaging lessons that kids feel super good about but they’re not actually mastering mathematics,” Hyde said. “I feel in turn is going to really increase the achievement gaps that we already have that are horrible in California.”
The professional development work UC Irvine is doing has helped the two dozen districts they work with, but there are still many districts that don’t have this kind of support in place.
It will take years until every student in California is exposed to a way of learning math that follows the guidelines in the framework and Brown says, “Something needs to change.”
About 17% of African-American students and nearly 23% of Hispanic students in the state
met or exceeded math standards in 2023, which was only about a 1% increase from the prior year. Brown called the results “horrendous.”
“It’s more than obvious the current system is failing too many people,” Brown said. “It’s long overdue – time to make some changes so we can see some different outcomes.”
A Long Way to Go
The final version of the framework was posted last month on the California Department of Education website. Officials are still working on a professionally edited version of the framework, which can take about a year, Torres said.
Although school districts have access to the final version of the framework, it will still take up to two more years to have math materials that are vetted and approved by the state board that align with the framework, Torres said. Some publishers have likely started to write new materials.
The earliest the State Board of Education will kick off an adoption of math instructional materials is January – when the board approves a schedule of hearings. Districts aren’t required to use the materials approved by the state board, Torres said, but it’s helpful for implementation.
School districts also don’t have deadlines for when the framework needs to be implemented, Brown said. Every district is on its own timeline.
Barger said a rollout isn’t an event, but an ongoing process of continuous improvement that could take the next six or seven years.
Students at Wilson Elementary School in Selma participate in mental health awareness activities on May 24, 2023. Students are seen trying toys that can be used as coping mechanisms.
Credit: Kristy Rangel
Top Takeaways
Cuts to social safety net programs for the United States’ poorest will partly offset the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts weighted toward the wealthy.
$170 billion to immigration enforcement likely to harm student mental health, research shows.
Up to 151,000 children could lose health care in California, though advocates say the number is likely higher, as cuts may impact school-based health services.
Hundreds of thousands of California’s low-income children and their families will likely see federally funded food support and health care shrink or vanish in the coming years under the mammoth budget and tax law that President Donald Trump rammed through a divided Congress and signed last week.
Education cuts to come
The $12 billion in cuts to K-12 schools and colleges that Trump proposed in May and the related $6.2 billion in federal funding that he ordered withheld from schools last week are not connected to the tax and budget bill that Congress just passed. They are the next target of Trump’s plan to hollow out funding for public education.
The $12 billion cut — about 15% of what the U.S. Department of Education last appropriated for schools and universities — would take effect on Oct. 1, the start of the 2026 federal fiscal year. Trump’s plan would kill funding for educating migrant children and English learners, and end grants to attract candidates to become teachers, while maintaining current funding levels for Title I aid for poor children and students with disabilities.
Because the forthcoming budget bill will require 60 votes in the Senate to pass, unlike the simple majority that Trump squeezed by last week with the budget and tax bill, opponents are optimistic they’ll be able to blunt some of the proposed cuts. They also believe they’ll get courts to reinstate the $6.2 billion that Trump withheld as of July 1. Congress already appropriated that money for states last February, in effect, to tide them over, since their fiscal year starts earlier, on July 1.
“The bill will put young people and families at significant risk,” said Dave Gordon, Sacramento County superintendent of schools. “There’s nothing good about any of that. It’s cruel and it’s mean-spirited.”
Immigrant families are bracing for ramped-up immigration enforcement as those efforts are now infused with an additional $170 billion. Those billions will be pulled in part from the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid — known as Medi-Cal in California — and $186 billion cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides monthly payments for food to about 5 million Californians, including nearly 2 million under 18.
State legislators did not set aside funds to account for cuts before approving the state budget, potentially leaving school districts to “absorb the shortfall,” as Visalia Unified stated it is prepared to do.
Each district is facing a different reality. Some might have enough reserves to maintain current programming, while small and rural districts often heavily rely on federal dollars just to maintain basic educational infrastructure and services, said Fresno County’s schools Superintendent Michele Cantwell-Copher.
Reduced spending on the poorest Americans will partly offset the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts weighted toward the wealthy, along with other features like a small increase in the $2,000 child tax credit. But the remaining $3 trillion will add to the federal deficit and be piled onto a record national debt to become a burden for the next generation of Americans. The higher interest payments on the debt they’ll pay as a portion of the federal budget will crowd out new spending options, including education and child care.
What follows is a summary of what’s in the 2026 budget law, which will be phased in over several years, and its implications for families and children.
Cuts to food assistance
Around $186 billion is cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, also known as CalFresh in California, where over 55% of participants are families with children.
An estimated 735,000 people are expected to lose their benefits, mainly because of new work requirements, according to the governor’s office.
“Work requirements do not increase employment, it increases the red tape for vulnerable populations, causing more strain on hospitals with uninsured patients,” said Clarissa Doutherd, executive director of Parent Voices Oakland and a commissioner with First 5 Alameda County.
The bill extends work requirements to a greater number of people, including those aged 55 to 64 and parents whose children are 14 or older.
“Schools don’t exist in a vacuum. Cutbacks that impact the health and welfare of families create additional challenges for student support and academic success,” said Troy Flint, chief communications officer with the California School Boards Association.
Since SNAP participation also determines eligibility for school lunch programs, a drop in enrollment could cut federal meal subsidies and raise state costs for meeting all students’ daily nutritional needs.
Under the newly signed bill, states will also be required to front a greater amount of the program’s cost.
States may need to cover between 5% and 15% of the benefits cost starting in 2028 if they have an error rate over 6% for recipients. This is a threshold that data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows only eight states met last year. California was not one of those states.
It remains unclear what impact the cuts will have on schools, but the state has not provided any additional funding to backfill the cuts.
Medi-Cal cuts
Over half of all children in California are enrolled in Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is called in the state. An analysis of the House bill found that up to 151,000 children in California would lose health care coverage, largely due to changes in work requirements and eligibility.
Mike Odeh, senior director of health policy at Children Now, said the number will likely be higher. The final bill exempts parents of children age 13 and under from meeting work requirements. Odeh said families with children over the age of 14 who do not report monthly work hours will likely lose coverage.
Medicaid is the fourth-largest federal funding source for K-12 schools nationwide, providing roughly $7.5 billion in school-based health services every year. California is one of 25 states that bill Medi-Cal for school-based health services, including vision and hearing screenings, nursing services, school counseling services and environmental support for special education students.
If local clinics shut down as a result of Medicaid cuts, more kids are likely to turn to school-based health services for care, Odeh said. “So there will be less resources available for school-based medical services as there’s also more demand for them,” Odeh added.
Medi-Cal billing is also a core source of sustainable funding for nearly 300 school-based health centers statewide, offering services such as mental health counseling, primary care and speech or occupational therapy.
School-based health centers are funded by a combination of grant funding and Medi-Cal reimbursements, with no state-funded grants to rely on, according to a spokesperson from the California School-Based Health Alliance.
The bill also cuts the provider tax, a key source of funding for rural community hospitals, and prohibits the use of Medicaid dollars toward reproductive care at Planned Parenthood clinics, two main sites of health care used by young people in rural, high-poverty communities.
In recent years, California has expanded efforts to include school-based mental health support in Medi-Cal reimbursement, including support for mental health clinicians, wellness coaches and peer support programs that were initially funded by the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. Newly hired school-based mental health providers may lose a critical portion of funding when some students are no longer eligible to have those services reimbursed by Medi-Cal, according to the California School-Based Health Alliance.
“We know that kids who are enrolled in Medicaid do better in school,” said Odeh. “They miss fewer school days, they’re more likely to graduate high school and less likely to drop out, they’re more likely to go to college and have fewer emergency room visits and hospitalizations as adults.”
School choice for states that want it
The budget law will establish the first big federally funded program granting tax credits to underwrite private school tuition. If it proves popular, the program would potentially divert billions of dollars in federal tax revenue that opponents argue would be better spent supporting public schools.
All but the wealthiest parents would be eligible to receive up to $1,700 in direct tax credits to defray tuition to private schools or potentially use it for homeschooling. Other taxpayers could receive the same tax credit by donating to “Scholarship Granting Organizations,” which would award scholarships to attend private or religious schools in states that take on the program and manage the scholarships. The number and size of the scholarships would depend on the number of Americans who make tax-deductible contributions and the states that offer the program.
That’s the catch: Congress included an opt-in provision, and California is one of 20 states that currently don’t have a private school choice program. Gov. Gavin Newsom has shown no interest in signing up, and a state Senate committee in March killed a bill that proposed a statewide education savings account. Teachers unions are unalterably opposed, charging that it will primarily subsidize parents who already send their kids to private schools.
Lance Christensen, a longtime advocate of school choice and a former candidate for state superintendent of public construction, criticized Newsom and state leaders for locking California out of a program “providing billions of dollars in K-12 scholarships to poor and middle-class families in other states so their kids can get an education tailored for their needs.”
California proponents of school choice, however, are hopeful that the federal tax credits could enhance passage of their own Children’s Educational Opportunity Act, establishing a state-controlled Education Savings Account. Supporters are collecting signatures to place the initiative on the 2026 statewide ballot. It would provide parents with $17,000 — the equivalent of public school funding per student — to enroll their children in a private school or cover expenses such as tutoring or special education services.
Billions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement
The massive infusion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, will likely increase anxiety among immigrant families, lead to more absences from schools and harm children’s mental health, according to research.
“The children of immigrants, any time they’re away from their families, we hear examples that they’re worried at school about what might happen to their parents. That’s a huge mental toll that we’re asking every one of these kids that is an immigrant or lives in a mixed-status family to carry with them every day, 24 hours a day,” said Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, deputy director of Californians Together and co-chair of the National Newcomer Network.
The funding is aimed at expanding detention centers to hold adults and families with children while their immigration cases are pending, and increasing the number of ICE agents.
Immigration raids in California increased significantly toward the end of the latest school year, causing upheaval and fear among students whose family members — and sometimes themselves — were detained or deported.
“We already see families keeping their kids home from school and keeping their kids home from summer activities because they’re fearful to leave their houses,” Cruz-Gonzalez said.
Last week, the California Legislature let its widely heralded 2021 high school ethnic studies bill, AB 101, silently lapse after it and Gov. Gavin Newsom passed a 2025-26 state budget that did not appropriate funds for it. Without that funding, school districts will not be bound by AB 101’s Fall 2025 deadline to offer students an ethnic studies course.
Ethnic studies’ popularity has been built on a false narrative: that California requires high school students to pass an ethnic studies course to earn a diploma. What’s been omitted from this narrative is that shortly before AB 101’s passage the Legislature added a barely noticed but hugely consequential sentence to AB 101 — that the ethnic studies graduation requirement will become “operative only upon an appropriation of funds” in separate legislation.
In other words, from its inception, AB 101 was, and remains, aspirational.
Upon learning this surprising news, Mountain View-Los Altos High School District Superintendent Eric Volta dubbed the state’s ruse “a hot mess” (view recording hour 3:37). “Everyone was moving in one direction until December,” he said, scrambling with limited resources to meet the state’s pressing deadline.
The Senate Appropriations Committee estimated that an ethnic studies requirement would cost taxpayers a staggering $276 million a year — for a subject rife with controversy and concern.
California’s decision not to trigger AB 101 was undoubtedly made easier given the turmoil wracking school districts that had already prepared this coursework, including Newsom’s alma mater, Tamalpais Union. Heated school board meetings extended into the night when ethnic studies landed on board agendas. Parents statewide were distraught to see their districts selecting “liberated” ethnic studies like in Tamalpais, centered on race-based resentment that seemed to encourage armed militancy.
Attorney General Bonta, in a rare Legal Alert sent to all local superintendents and school board members, obliquely signaled the state’s hesitation to move forward. This public alarm and skittishness followed state leaders’ receipt of a detailed June 2023 policy paper from the non-partisan Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, cc’d to 3,000 school board superintendents and trustees, alerting them that the California Legislature did not appear to require ethnic studies after all. The Los Angeles Times and EdSource confirmed it, EdSource reporting that state officials agreed — “no money, no requirement to develop or offer classes.”
The California Department of Education’s (CDE) years of silence on this funding caveat, pertaining to the first change in the state’s graduation requirements in decades, is not what local education leaders and taxpaying parents should expect from a state agency with a $300 million annual administrative budget and a duty to help districts operate their schools.
This silence was not just consequential for California’s 430 school districts with high schools. It became a recurring issue for the University of California’s Academic Senate and its governing bodies as they contemplated making passing an ethnic studies course a UC admissions requirement, grounded largely in the mistaken belief that the state requires high school students to enroll in it. The Academic Senate rejected that proposal in April after a letter signed by hundreds of UC faculty members pointed out its many flaws, including this faulty premise.
It appears that CDE’s silence about this funding caveat was intentional. Believing for years that ethnic studies was mandated, school districts developed courses expecting the state to cover their expenses. Neither the CDE nor the State Board of Education advised school districts differently. In fact, CDE’s website states that students must take ethnic studies to graduate. The state board’s comment that ethnic studies is not required was in 2025, and directed only to the University of California’s Academic Senate.
Over one-quarter of California school districts with high schools now offer ethnic studies, 85% employing the controversial liberated ethnic studies framework according to my recent sampling. Liberated Ethnic Studies is political education, teaching students to view the world through the narrow lenses of skin color and oppression, often so they will try to change it with anti-Western activism.
School districts just now learning about this reprieve are reversing course or pausing their ethnic studies work. In January, San Dieguito Union turned its new required 9th-grade Ethnic Studies English course into an elective, only to discover that student interest in the course was so low that it might not offer the class at all its high schools. This spring, Ramona Unified, Glendora Unified, Chino Valley Unified, and others paused their work mid-stream. Parents in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Newsom’s Tamalpais Union are pressing their school boards to do the same.
The lesson here for local school leaders: verify narratives before acting, including those advanced by California state education officials.
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Lauren Janov is a California lawyer, education policy analyst, and political strategist. She is a legal consultant for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, advised the University of California faculty team which opposed a proposed Ethnic Studies admissions requirement, and co-founded the Palo Alto Parent Alliance. The opinions expressed are her own.
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.
Chico State University followed proper procedures in how it handled the sex investigation of suspended professor David Stachura and its lengthy aftermath, including not informing faculty and students that Stachura allegedly threatened gun violence on campus, an independent investigation has found.
The 20-page report by San Diego lawyer Nancy Aeling was released late Monday afternoon by the university, nearly a year after EdSource first reported on findings that Stachura had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student and allegedly threatened to shoot two colleagues who cooperated in an investigation of the matter, and was later named the university’s Outstanding Professor of the 2020-21 school year.
“The university acted consistently with policy by not notifying the Chico State community of Stachura’s alleged threats of violence,” Aeling wrote. Stachura, according to court testimony by his estranged wife, had told her of his intent to kill two professors who cooperated in the 2021 investigation that found he had an inappropriate relationship, which included sex in his office, with a student. Separately, a biology lecturer revealed — and later testified — that Stachura spoke to her about committing a shooting in the biology department.
Aeling did not respond to a phone message left at her office on Monday.
The report was also not critical of the university’s Campus Violence Consultation Team, which recommended that Stachura be allowed to return to campus after investigating the alleged threats against his colleagues and “did not find that he posed a threat of violence.”
A member of that team, Chico State Police Chief Christopher Nicodemus, testified in a court proceeding earlier this year that he did not agree with the team’s findings.
“There were concerns” about Stachura, Nicodemus said on the stand in a legal proceeding that resulted in a judge issuing a three-year workplace violence restraining order against Stachura that bars him from going on campus or near the people he threatened.
Nicodemus said on the stand that he believed “it’s safer to err on the side of caution” when making a threat assessment. He added that it would have been better to have mistakenly fired Stachura than live with the aftermath of a violent event.
Aeling wrote in the report that she did not consider “the appropriateness of Stachura’s actions or communications with his colleagues nor his colleagues’ responses to Stachura and his continued presence on campus, or the overall effectiveness of the procedures or policies in place to address the situation presented by (his) actions or communications.” Rather, the report was limited to “whether (the) responses were reasonable given the information available at the time and were consistent with the policies and procedures governing them.” The report makes no policy recommendations.
A faculty union officer ripped the report Monday night.
“It’s absolutely demoralizing and heartbreaking that no one has taken any accountability for what has happened,’’ Lindsay Briggs, a public health professor and a California Faculty Association Chico Campus Executive Board member, wrote in an email to EdSource.
“This is why survivors of violence don’t speak out and why we don’t feel safe at our jobs; because we’re not. No one cares to do anything other than offer empty platitudes.” Eleven “months of hand wringing and we’re no better off than we were before,” she said.
Gordon Wolfe, a professor who turned over court records about Stachura’s alleged threat to kill witnesses, said in a phone interview Monday evening that he received an email from Chico State saying that Aeling wanted to interview him, but that “she never followed up.”
Stachura remains on administrative leave as the university finishes an investigation of his alleged threat to kill witnesses in the sex case. He was recently ordered by a judge to pay more than $64,000 for the legal fees of a lecturer he unsuccessfully sued for libel. His lawyer did not respond to a request to comment on Aeling’s report.
In a prepared statement that accompanied the report’s release, Chico State President Stephen Perez said, “I appreciate the thorough review and the opportunity to consider our practices moving forward.”
Without mentioning her by name, the report found that former Chico State President Gayle Hutchinson considered the sex case against Stachura as well as the alleged threats he made when approving “Stachura’s promotion to” full professor in 2021. Hutchinson found him “to be a highly productive citizen of the academy, with a strong record of teaching, service and research,” the report states.
Hutchinson retired in June. She could not be immediately reached Monday night.
Middle school history teachers discuss their lesson plans for teaching about the Great Depression.
Credit: Allison Shelley / American Education
My first year of teaching was the worst year of my life.
I remember preparing for the new school year, prepping my classroom and making lesson plans. If you know the Central Valley of California, you know the summer heat and heavy lifting in a classroom are not the most desirable combination. However, I had hope in my heart, and I was so excited for my career to finally begin!
Then I made the grave mistake of going into the copy room packed with veteran teachers. I was eager to learn from them; they had the experience I lacked. One gave me a tip to “not smile until October” so the kids would know I was a tough teacher. One advised me to stick to worksheets so that I didn’t burn out.
While these bits of advice were well-intentioned, they were not what a budding teacher needed. Teaching is an extremely difficult profession, but it is also incredibly rewarding. There is an extreme learning curve for new teachers. Despite the credential program and a mentor teacher’s best efforts, nothing can thoroughly prepare you for your first classroom.
It’s no secret that there is a mass exodus of teachers leaving the profession. To keep people in the profession, we need to support them throughout. If the support is consistent and starts when a teacher first enters the school, there can be a shift in the number of people leaving and the school’s overall culture.
As I said, the copy room was a hot spot for negative talk. At every school I have worked in, this has reigned true. Instead of continuing to let the negative talk fester, I propose making the copy room a hub for ideas to be shared and support to be given. Dedicating a space on the wall where teachers can “shout out” each other can quickly change the room’s vibe. Having funny memes posted by the printer about how it’s always “jammin’.” A designated space where teachers can drop off or pick up extra supplies. Best yet, make every first Monday a little treat day. Each department takes turns bringing small treats. These little things can help build a culture and safe place for teachers, especially the newer ones, to feel supported.
Another method to support new teachers is to create a partnership between them and a veteran teacher. This veteran does not even need to be in the same content area. Instead, an experienced teacher that matches a new teacher in personality or classroom management style can be extremely beneficial. I distinctly remember the veteran teachers who guided me through my first few years, and I’m eternally grateful for them.
One important aspect, however, is that veteran teachers must volunteer for this. Pushing this vital role on somebody who doesn’t want it would not work. This partnership can look like once a week, 30-minute check-in meetings. It can be regular, short observations. Maybe the two teachers team-teach a lesson while an administrator covers one of their classes. This partnership, however it is laid out, can be rich in growth for the veteran and new teacher.
Teachers of all ranks need to continue to grow and update their methods. This can be done by creating a culture of observation without the “gotcha!” feeling. Administrators can simply pop in, offer compliments, support, and notes in general, and then leave. Teachers working on the same content can observe others, offer feedback, and see new methods. The frequency of observations can help spot any areas of growth and strengths. As new teachers learn their individual teaching styles, it’s important that they be observed constructively, and it should be done often.
Inundating new teachers with supplemental training, resource books and websites can be overwhelming and exhausting. The goal is to support new teachers so they stay in the profession and feel appreciated. They do not need to hear horror stories constantly, receive unhelpful criticism or feel isolated. This will only increase the number of teachers leaving the profession.
Teachers, administrators and support staff can all make an effort to openly welcome and support new teachers. Inviting a teacher to the staff outing, getting them the school shirt, helping them staple borders on the walls and supporting them however they need will make a difference in their career.
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Kati Begen is a high school biology educator and credential coach in Fresno and has earned a multiple-subject credential, a single-subject credential and a master’s degree in teaching.
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.
Anand Girihadaras writes in his blog “The Ink” that the billionaire elite have given up their pretense of using their fortunes to make a better world. Two events stripped away the veil: one, the greedy gaudy wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in Venice and the announcement by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan that they are abandoning their lofty goals of curing the world of disease.
Naked greed is in, big-hearted philanthropy is out. The oligarchs revel in their splendor.
Anand writes:
Like bottomless mimosas and a mother’s unsolicited advice, eras don’t just end. The new thing elbows its way in, the old thing lingers like a houseguest, and they compete for primacy. Only eventually — sometimes long after — do you notice the eclipse.
No one was ever going to announce that the era of performative elite do-gooding had ceded to the era of naked oligarchy. But this week three events made that eclipse clear.
The first was the multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos’s wedding, in Venice, to Lauren Sánchez, who would surely float if she fell into a canal. As celebrities poured into a city already strained by tourism, and the happy couple was photographed frolicking in a literal foam party aboard a yacht, there was an almost refreshing, well, nakedness to the avarice, to the carelessness, to the not-giving of civic fucks.
There was a reminder of the omnipotence and the utter loneliness at the commanding heights: you can get anyone you want to your wedding, and the people you want are the people you’d invite if you told your assistant to run to the dentist’s office, pick up People magazine, write down names in it, and invite them. These are people who have everything, and who don’t have the thing everybody else does.
The third event was the passage today of Donald Trump’s and the Republicans’ budget, a document of searing meanness that former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls the “Worst Bill in History” — a “giant budget-busting, Medicaid-shattering, shafting-the-poor-and-working-class, making-the-rich-even richer bill.” Like the Bezos wedding and the Zuckerberg-Chan pivot, the bill had one refreshing quality, though. It made zero effort to mask its ugliness. It said the cruel part out loud.
There is a nakedness to our oligarchy now, and it is pruny as hell. But at least there is this: As far as I can tell, the era of highly performative elite do-gooding is passing. The billionaires who felt the need to give TED talks about eradicating poverty while also causing poverty. The incessant blabbing about Africa by oligarchs who rarely left Connecticut. The pledges to save democracy, save the planet, and, yes, end all diseases. The buy-one-donate-one products. Red things involving Bono.Subscribe
I wrote a whole book about that era and its maneuvers and deceptions and costs, and it occurs to me now that the entire complex of activities I chronicled is giving way to something altogether different. What is ascendant now is nakedness — of greed, of sociopathy, of power thirst. Somewhere along the way, the professed goal of the elite morphed from fighting inequality from above to defending their castles in the sky.
There is a kind of progress in this, because what is naked is easier to see, even if pruny.
This eclipsing of performative virtue by pungent avarice, of fake billionaire “change” by real billionaire wolfishness, is part of why figures like Zohran Mamdani are rising. When I published Winners Take All in 2018, the things I was trying to deconstruct took explaining. That is, after all, why you write a book. I’m not sure a book is needed now.
The moves, the lust, the underlying goals — all of it is in the open. This era is less confusing. And people are voting accordingly.
It’s also why a generation gap is opening. The old guard power elite, seeing Mamdani’s rise, is terrified that the Soviet Union could soon be coming to a bodega near them, even though they probably don’t live near any bodegas and probably think the word “bodega” is Arabic. But their children and grandchildren are not afraid of free buses and childcare. They’re willing to take a chance on something that would switch their trajectory off the track from nothing to nowhere and on to a course of life.
When Estela Lopez was about 7 years old, her brother told her she could join in on an adventure — provided she stayed strong, followed instructions and didn’t cry.
After school one day, Lopez and her older brother trekked across the street to their local school in what used to be South Central Los Angeles and climbed over the walls, jumping from one room to the next despite hearing their mother calling their names.
By chance, Lopez stumbled on a recycling bin packed with paper worksheets. She grew excited and rummaged for more.
“I went into the trash cans, and I started looking at different worksheets, and I started taking them out,” Lopez said. “I had a younger sister, I was like, ‘You know what, we’re going to play school. I’m going to be the teacher. You guys are going to listen to me.’”
What started out as play that day — with her sisters sometimes complaining, “You always want to be the teacher; you always want to have us doing work” — led Lopez to begin her journey as an educator, as she began to notice the positive effects of her methods at home.
“One of my sisters was very strong in reading, but I saw that my other sister was struggling,” she said, so she just helped them with their homework. “The expectation, since I was the oldest, was to get home, help my sisters with homework, help around the house while both of my parents were working 12 hours a day.”
The community Lopez grew up in lies in what is now South Los Angeles — and she still lives and works just a five-minute drive from where she was raised on 49th Street. But since she took over as the principal of Dolores Huerta Elementary, Lopez has gone beyond teaching reading and writing — working her way from being a coordinator who supports English learners, to assistant principal, to a principal who extended her reach far beyond the classroom to help families secure housing and deliver critical supplies during the height of the Covid pandemic.
Ryan J. Smith, the chief strategy officer at the LA-based organization Community Coalition that works to “upend systemic racism,” said Lopez has worked diligently with LAUSD and has established various community partnerships to help create safe passage routes near the school.
And when a parent can’t take their child to school, Lopez and assistant principal Sandra Sandoval step in.
“We had a kiddo last year who is being raised by grandpa, and he was having a hard time picking her up from school. He was going through chemo treatment. … And so we took turns walking her home and picking her up in the morning so she would get to school safely,” Sandoval said.
“We will do whatever we need to do to make sure that our kids are safe and getting to school and … at least being kids and not dealing with big people problems for six and a half, seven hours a day.”
Supporting students’ families
Virtual learning due to Covid was particularly challenging, Lopez said, as many students did not log onto their online coursework.
So, she and her fellow administrators began going door to door, but they quickly realized that a lot of the families also did not have masks to stay healthy.
“We would get to the homes, and we would ask them to come out, and they were like, ‘We don’t have any face masks,’ some of the essential things,” Lopez said. “So we started carrying them in the cars, and we started giving them to the families because these are the families we’re supporting. They don’t have face masks. They’re not protecting themselves.”
Around that same time — as rents skyrocketed — Lopez helped organize town halls and workshops for parents to learn about housing security in an attempt to avoid eviction.
“We find sometimes when we’re looking at enrollments, we see the same address three or four times,” Lopez said. “That means there’s three or four families living under one roof. And sometimes we find out it’s only a two-bedroom, and that’s what our kids deal with on a daily basis.”
According to Ryan, that level of community outreach is critical, and Lopez has acquired a “profound” understanding “that students need all things to thrive.”
A time to heal
For Lopez, however, that period of seclusion wasn’t just about supporting families in her community. It was also about healing herself.
Lopez missed the students when they were home during the pandemic. “I really did. I missed that laughter outside. I was only hearing the little birds,” she said. “But I think I needed that time because, during that time was when my son (Mauricio) passed away, and I wasn’t in a good place to be their school leader. I needed that time to cope, but I also needed that time to heal.”
Mauricio was the eldest of Lopez’s three sons, born when she was a 17-year-old high school senior.
She recalled that Mauricio was only 4 months old when he watched her take the stage as a high school graduate. And he watched her again, as an adult with a daughter of his own, when she shared her story for the first time at a celebration of the school’s 10th anniversary in 2019 — when Lopez also met civil rights icon Dolores Huerta in person for the first time and began her yearslong relationship with her.
“Sharing about becoming a teenage mom, sharing about the LA riots, sharing about the challenges of being a parent that was raising three Latino boys and the conversations with them. Sharing that I left (home) when I was only 15 years old. Sharing how difficult it was to grow up in a home where my dad was an alcoholic and how my ex-husband became an alcoholic and I didn’t want to continue that cycle with my son,” Lopez said.
While Ryan eventually convinced her to speak at the event, Lopez said, that was one of the hardest decisions she has had to make — but that it was ultimately an opportunity to honor the five most important people in her life who continually motivated her to keep going: her parents and her three sons, Mauricio, Ivan and Julian.
Lopez said that after she spoke, Huerta embraced her and said, “You’re strong, mi hija. You’re a strong woman.”
But in the wake of Mauricio’s death, Lopez questioned whether she should remain an educator.
“I went back and thought about the times that I wasn’t with him and the times that I felt that I invested so much on me and not on him … or my last conversation with him,” Lopez said.
“I was working on the main office to make it look pretty for our students, and he called me that Saturday, and he said, ‘Mom, are you coming home?’ And I said ‘Not yet, mi hijo.’ I said I want to finish painting the office because I don’t want to be here on Sunday. And he said, ‘That’s cool, mom. I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’”
Ultimately, Mauricio’s wife, Alejandra, showed Lopez her son’s social media posts, which reminded her of her purpose.
“I’m very proud of you, mama. You make me strong,” Mauricio had written. “Keep the work going. You’re helping the little kids out.”
Life at Dolores Huerta Elementary
Despite having had three sons and a granddaughter (who attends Dolores Huerta Elementary) of her own, Lopez has regarded the students as her “other children.”
“All I have to do sometimes is look at that window … and when they pass by, and they’re showing me their little cards or they’re smiling, that’s worth it,” she said.
When a student arrives late, Lopez said she immediately takes them to the cafeteria to eat something. When a student cries, she offers comfort. And when a student doesn’t seem responsive in the morning, she and her staff check on them throughout the day.
“I know how challenging it can be out there,” said Lopez, who views the school as a shelter for children from some of their difficulties. “I want to make sure that when we open the doors in the morning, everything is left outside.”
Students at the school, including Samantha Estrada Flores, said she has admired Lopez as an “amazing woman” who organizes fun activities for the children. And, Ernesto Gallardo, a fifth-grader running for student council president, said when he walks through the gates each morning, “I’m always happy.”
“At the beginning, when (Mauricio) passed away, it was hard for me to say I have three sons, but now, I have three sons: two with me, and one that’s not with me right now — but the one that taught me how to be a mom,” Lopez said. “And with that learning, I learned to be a strong leader and for my community to know that I’m here to support them in any way that I can. That’s my mission.”
The center photo features Tom Boroujeni, Fresno City College academic senate president.
Credit: Mark Tabay, Fresno City College & Fresno State/Facebook
A Fresno City College communication instructor and president of the school’s academic senate was found to have committed an “act of sexual violence” against a professor and former colleague at nearby Fresno State University, where he taught for years until he resigned under pressure last year, documents show.
The allegations against Tom Boroujeni stayed hidden from public view, EdSource found, before surfacing in 2020, when Fresno State opened an investigation based on the federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX, records show.
That investigation determined that Boroujeni committed the sexualviolence in 2015, when he was a graduate student and part-time instructor at Fresno State. The case wasn’t fully resolved until February, when the alleged victim reached a $53,300 settlement with the university after claiming it hadn’t done enough to protect her, university records show.
Boroujeni was also a part-time instructor at Fresno City College while finishing a master’s degree at Fresno State in 2015, records show.
Boroujeni, 38, of Clovis, is also known as Farrokh Eizadiboroujeni and Tom Eizadi, documents show.
City College’s parent agency, the State Center Community College District, became aware of the matter in August 2021 when the alleged victim, who also teaches there part-time, “requested a no-contact order” against Boroujeni “as a result of a sexual misconduct investigation” at Fresno State, according to an internal district document obtained by EdSource.
The district granted the order based on a report by its former general counsel, Fresno attorney Gregory Taylor, who conducted interviews and combed through Fresno State’s investigation. Taylor concluded Fresno State’s finding was “well-reasoned and supported by sufficient evidence.”
In 2023, despite the findings and stay-away order, the State Center Community College District gave Boroujeni tenure. A district spokesperson said laws governing the granting of tenure were followed.
In both Fresno State’s investigation and in interviews with EdSource, Boroujeni denied committing what Fresno State concluded was “an act of sexual violence.”
Asked if he raped the alleged victim, Boroujeni replied in a sharp tone, “No, I did not.”
Boroujeni claimed he and the alleged victim, who was a professor at Fresno State at the time, had consensual sex in her apartment in June 2015,shortly after they started dating. But the investigation found that she told Boroujeni “no” when he asked if they could have sex. He then “pinned down (her) upper region” and she “zoned out” during what followed, according to the 2021 university report.
EdSource doesn’t identify sexual-abuse victims. The alleged victim declined to be interviewed for this story.
Boroujeni appealed the findings to the California State University’s Chancellor’s Office in June 2021. The appeal was denied a month later.
EdSource sought documentation about the case from Fresno State earlier this year.
“Given that Mr. Boroujeni remains active in the educational community and is teaching at a local community college, there is strong public interest in knowing that a college instructor has been previously found to have committed an act of sexual violence at another university.”
John Walsh, the CSU system’s general counsel
Walsh wrote in an Aug. 4 letter to Boroujeni’s lawyer, Brooke Nevels, informing her the report would be released as “a matter of public interest.”
Boroujeni said his 2015 graduate-student status should have blocked the release of the investigative report to EdSource under the state’s public records act. He also was a part-time instructor at the time. But in a decision made at the CSU system’s Chancellor’s Office, the report was released over his objections.
Boroujeni complained to the U.S. Department of Education’s Student Policy Privacy Office, claiming the release violated the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, according to a generic confirmation email he provided to EdSource. The response states the complaint wouldn’t be answered for at least 90 days. The department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A tale of two colleges
January 2015 – Graduate student Tom Boroujeni begins working as a substitute instructor and teaching assistant at Fresno State University.
May 2015 – Boroujni begins working as an instructor at Fresno City College
June 21, 2015 – Boroujeni allegedly commits an “act of sexual violence” against a Fresno State professor.
June 22-30, 2015 – The alleged victim confides in friends that she was assaulted. She declines to call police, telling a friend she is afraid making a report would negatively impact her at Fresno State, where she is working toward tenure.
2016 – Boroujeni finishes his master’s degree at Fresno State and continues working at the university, becoming coach of the school’s debate team.
2016 -The victim of the alleged sexual violence begins teaching as an adjunct at Fresno City College in addtion to working at Fresno State.
Aug. 2019: Boroujeni gets a tenure track instructor position in Fresno City College’s Communication Department.
Oct. 2019 – Boroujeni is told he will be assigned to non-debate classes and removed as debate team coach at Fresno State.
July 9, 2020 – Boroujeni files a complaint with Fresno State alleging that the alleged victim had made “unwelcome advances of a sexual nature” to him in 2015. He claimed he entered into a relationship with her only because he feared that not doing so would hurt his chances of receiving his master’s degree and full-time employment at the university. He further claims his removal as debate coach and change in teaching assignments is retaliation for her rebuffing further advances in 2016.
Oct. 6, 2020 – While being interviewed about Boroujeni’s complaint against her, the alleged victim tells an investigator that on June 21, 2015, Boroujeni allegedly committed an act of sexual violence against her. Fresno State opens an investigation.
May 2021 – Boroujeni becomes president-elect of Fresno City Colleges academic senate for a two-year term, meaning he will ascend to the senate presidency in 2023.
May 18, 2021 – Investigator Tiffany Little issues two findings. She rejects Boroujeni’s claims of sexual harassment and finds that, based on a preponderance of the evidence, Boroujeni committed an act of sexual violence against the victim.
May 25 2021 – The alleged victim is notified that the university’s remedy is that she and Boroujeni have no contact with each other. A no-contact order is issued by Fresno State.
June 16, 2021 – Boroujeni appeals the finding to the CSU Chancellor’s Office of Investigations Appeals and Compliance. His appeal was rejected on July 29, 2021.
August 2021 – The alleged victim asks Fresno City College – where she and Boroujeni both still teach – for a no-contact order on campus, similar to what was put in place at Fresno State. The order is issued months later.
2022 – The alleged victim tells Fresno State that it “failed to take adequate actions” to address her safety concerns with Boroujeni. She threatens to take legal action against the university.
Feb. 8, 2022 – Boroujeni files a grievance with Fresno State over a decision to place the report on the act of sexual violence in his personnel file as he approaches a performance review for a three-year lecturer contract.
March 7 2022 – Boroujeni tells Fresno State that he intends to resign at the end of the academic year.
March 11, 2022 – Fresno State placesBoroujeni on administrative leave, pending the outcome of an unrelated allegation of misconduct.
May 5, 2022 – Boroujeni resigns from Fresno State, agreeing that he “will not apply for, seek, or accept employment with CSU Fresno or any other campus or department of California State University or its auxiliaries.”
Nov. 14 2022 – Boroujeni received a letter of reprimand from the dean of Fresno City College’s Division of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts in part for unprofessional conduct including an allegation he referred to a colleague with an apparent racial slur and threatening “to get” that person.
Feb. 8, 2023 – The alleged victim settles her claim with Fresno State over her safety concerns. She is paid $53,300 and is given a paid year off from teaching to do academic research.
March 7, 2023 – the State Center Community College District board of trustees grants tenure to Boroujeni and 24 other faculty members at Fresno City College.
May 10, 2023 – Boroujeni becomes academic senate president of Fresno City College
“It was in the greater good of the public to disclose it,” Debbie Adishian-Astone, Fresno State’s vice president for administration, said of the heavily redacted 43-page document. “The public has a right to know.” EdSource obtained an unredacted copy of the report.
CSU’s Title IX history
In May 2023, Boroujeni started a two-year term as Fresno City College’s academic senate president, a position that gives him input on behalf of the faculty on academic policy and personnel matters and puts him in frequent contact with college and district leaders. “I am a politician. I am a public figure,” he told EdSource.
The revelations about Boroujeni come as Fresno State attempts to move past a CSU-sanctioned report released earlier this year that said the school had “the most high profile and incendiary Title IX issues plaguing the CSU.” That’s a reference to the scandal that took down former CSU Chancellor Joseph Castro, who resigned in 2022 after it was revealed that while serving as Fresno State’s president, he ignored years of sexual misconduct allegations against Frank Lamas, his vice president of student affairs.
When the allegations were finally investigated, Castro agreed to let Lamas resign in exchange for a $260,000 settlement, retiree benefits and a promise of a glowing letter of recommendation.
The Boroujeni case also raises questions regarding the State Center Community College District’s response after learning of Fresno State’s determination of sexual violence and how Boroujeni went on to receive tenure and become academic senate president.
The Fresno State case was not taken into account as Boroujeni became senate president at Fresno City College and achieved tenure in 2023, even after the district investigated the alleged victim’s request for a stay-away order and found that sexual violence occurred.
The president of the State Center Community College District’s board of trustees, Nasreen Johnson, declined to talk to EdSource, and Chancellor Carole Goldsmith declined to be interviewed and answered questions through a district spokesperson.
Other than the no-contact order, the district “took no other action as there were no civil or criminal findings, judgments and/or convictions surrounding (Boroujeni) at Fresno State, nor were there accusations or reports of similar misconduct” at Fresno City College, district spokesperson Jill Wagner wrote in an email to EdSource. The no-contact order requested by the alleged victim wasn’t effective until the spring of 2022, in part because the process of obtaining records from Fresno State was “slow and arduous.”
Wagner said the tenure committee assigned to Boroujeni “considered multiple factors in favor of granting tenure. Areas of concern were not identified” at the time Boroujeni was reviewed. Asked if the committee that considered Boroujeni’s tenure had access to or was aware of Taylor’s report confirming that an act of sexual violence had occurred, Wagner did not respond directly. She wrote that the district followed state law and the district’s union contract, “which prescribes what information can be included in tenure review.”
Boroujeni told Edsource that he “got tenured with the district’s knowledge of everything that had happened.”
Boroujeni resigned from Fresno State on May 9, 2022, agreeing to a demand that he never apply for, or accept employment, in the 23-campus California State University system again, according to the resignation document.
When he accepted those terms, he was being investigated for other unrelated misconduct allegations that were later found to be not substantiated, documents show.
Despite its findings about the 2015 incident, Fresno State couldn’t discipline Boroujeni — such as suspending or firing him — because he was a graduate student when the alleged act of violence occurred, Adishian-Astone, the school’s vice president for administration, said in an interview.
Boroujeni started working for Fresno State as a teaching assistant and part-time instructor in January 2015, nearly six months before the incident, records provided by the university show. But Adishian-Astone said his status at the time was as a graduate student.
The university can’t “discipline an employee for something he did as a student,” she said. But the findings still contributed to Boroujeni leaving his faculty position at Fresno State.
Boroujeni told EdSource that he agreed to resign because if he hadn’t, the act-of-sexual-violence report would have been placed in his personnel file. He said he was up for a performance review at the time and a three-member committee of communication-department academics would have had access to the report. He said he was concerned his reputation would be harmed and his contract not renewed.
“They threatened me, basically,” Boroujeni claimed. “They said, ‘If you don’t (resign), we’re going to hand this over to your department for review.’ They said, ‘It becomes part of your employment record.’”
Although the university couldn’t directly discipline Boroujeni, Adishian-Astone said placing the report in his personnel file was allowable. If Boroujeni hadn’t resigned, the university would have done that, “particularly given the egregious nature of this incident,” she said.
Information sharing limited
California has no mechanism for its three public higher-education systems — CSU, the University of California and the California Community Colleges — to share information about employees with sexual misconduct-allegation records.
In response to EdSource’s questions, Wagner, the State Center Community College District spokesperson, said the district is now calling on the state to require that “educational institutions have a mechanism to share information about employee misconduct, harassment and sexual violence.”
The practice of someone in higher education being employed at another college despite sexual misconduct allegations is dubbed “Pass the Harasser,” which the Chronicle of Higher Education once called “higher education’s worst kept secret.”
Boroujeni’s employment at Fresno City College after resigning from Fresno State is a variation of that, said Michigan State University professor Julie Libarkin. She tracks alleged offenders through the Academic Sexual Misconduct Database, which aggregates abuse cases based on news reports. It contains nearly 1,100 cases nationwide, which she said is just a fraction of what occurs.
Too often, she said, faculty members move to another institution after being disciplined or fired. “It’s a problem all over the country,” she said, enabled by secrecy and schools that “don’t want to have their names sullied” by publicly identifying an abuser. If an accused person quietly resigns, they’re often able to keep their records confidential, she said.
In Boroujeni’s case, he was already working as a Fresno City College instructor when Fresno State made its findings. There was no communication between the schools about the matter until the alleged victim asked for the stay-away order.
Adishian-Astone said Fresno State “would not have advised (the State Center Community College District) about this matter on our own as it was a confidential personnel matter and at that time the respondent was already an existing (district) employee. If (the district) had reached out about a reference for the hiring of a new employee, we would have advised them accordingly. Our system does not track if faculty also teach at other institutions.”
Shiwali Patel, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, said the alleged victim could be “in a vulnerable position” at Fresno City College with Boroujeni serving as president of the academic senate.
Boroujeni “shouldn’t have any impact on her experience there, promotions or anything to do with her employment. If he holds this position of power over the victim who told the community college about what happened at the other institution, she could be in a vulnerable position,” she said.
The district “should have checked with the victim to see what impact that could have on her, given that she’s employed by the same institution,” Patel said.
Asked about the alleged victim, Wagner wrote in an email that the district “unequivocally supports survivors of violence.”
A dean’s complaint
Boroujeni told EdSource he is also facing allegations regarding his interactions with three other women at Fresno City College. They have each filed pending complaints against him, which he characterized as allegations of “gender discrimination.”
Wagner, the district spokesperson, said she could not discuss the complaints because they are personnel matters. Boroujeni said one is a Title IX investigation and the others are being treated as grievances. The women declined to discuss their complaints.
He identified one of the women as Dean Cyndie Luna of the college’s Fine, Performing and Communication Arts Division. He declined to provide details of her complaint.
Last year, Luna reprimanded Boroujeni for incidents of unprofessional conduct that she wrote were “becoming more frequent and aggressive” and “causing me grave concern as your supervisor,” according to a November 2022 letter of reprimand, which EdSource obtained from a source.
Luna also wrote that in a conversation with her, Boroujeni referred to a colleague with an apparent racial slur and, in a “menacing and threatening” tone, said he “will get” the colleague for gossiping about him.
Boroujeni told EdSource that Luna fabricated the accusations in the letter. “She makes up a lot of things,” he said. Luna declined to discuss his allegation or the letter of reprimand.
Boroujeni said other aspects of the reprimand challenge actions he’s taken as senate president, which he claims cannot be subject to a reprimand. The senate’s executive committee, which he heads, filed a lengthy response to the portion of the reprimand dealing with administrative matters. More than a year later, Boroujeni is trying to get the reprimand withdrawn.
Luna’s “using my employment as a way to mitigate a political situation,” he said, claiming that she is trying to reprimand him for positions he has taken on behalf of the faculty.
“She’s punishing me for doing my job when she’s not even my supervisor as the president of the academic senate. We don’t have supervisors,” Boroujeni asserted.
‘Unwelcome advances’
Born in Iran, Boroujeni said he lived in Greece before eventually coming to the United States and enrolling at Fresno State. In Greece, he said he started using Tom as a first name instead of Farrokh and continued using it in America. He also began shortening his last name to Boroujeni — although Eizadiboroujeni remains his legal last name, according to voter registration and other public records.
Boroujeni was ambitious about a career in academia. He began working in Fresno State’s communication department as “substitute instructional faculty,” in 2015, records show, while finishing his master’s degree, and beginning to climb the teaching ranks.
By 2020, Boroujeni was worried that a job within Fresno State’s communication department was being taken away from him, Fresno State records show.
He was the coach of the school’s nationally prominent debate team, the Barking Bulldogs. But he was losing the job, and the classes he was assigned to teach were being changed in a communication department shakeup, documents show. The publication Inside Higher Ed reported on Boroujeni losing the debate coach job in October 2020.
A few months before the Inside Higher Ed story was published, he retroactively filed a complaint stating that in 2015, when he was a graduate student, a professor lured him into a romantic relationship — the same professor he would eventually be found to have committed an act of sexual violence against.
Boroujeni claimed she sexually harassed him with “unwelcome advances.” But he began a relationship with her because “he feared rejecting (the) advances would jeopardize both his ability to graduate from Fresno State with his master’s degree and his future employment opportunities because (the professor)” taught in the communication department, the investigative report states.
Five years after the alleged harassment, he claimed “the personnel changes were made because of the termination of the relationship with” the professor. But the investigator assigned to Boroujeni’s complaint found communication department leaders had “legitimate reasons” for the personnel shakeup and that no harassment occurred.
But the harassment complaint led to revelations about a deeply held secret.
The investigator, Tiffany Little, found that the alleged victim had confided in a conversation with a close friend “in which (she) described the experience as rape,” Little’s report shows.
Little met with the alleged victim. She confirmed what she had told her friend in 2015, making “an allegation of sexual violence” against Boroujeni, Little wrote.
Boroujeni told EdSource that the alleged victim fabricated the claim as retaliation for his harassment complaint.
Dating colleagues
Boroujeni and the alleged victim were the same age — 30 — when they began dating in 2015, after he had taken one of her classes as a graduate student.
On the night of June 21, 2015, they were at her apartment. Both were married. She was in the process of divorcing. He told her he had worries about his own marriage, documents show.
Both acknowledged that during a make-out session, Boroujeni asked her if they could have sex. He claimed she said yes and that she provided a condom in a pinkish wrapper, according to documents.
But the alleged victim told Little that she didn’t consent. She first said she couldn’t remember if there was a condom, then later said she was sure she hadn’t provided one, as Boroujeni claimed, because she did notkeep condoms in her apartment.
Little’s report states that when the alleged victim told her friend what happened, the friend wanted to call the police. But the alleged victim did not want to make a criminal complaint because “she did not want any of this to come out to the university because she was this young tenure track professor,” Little wrote.
In his statement, Boroujeni said he asked the alleged victim if she wanted to have sex and she replied “mhm,” which he understood as consent.
The alleged victim continued to see Boroujeni, the report states. As she did, the alleged victim described to a friend how he “disregarded (her) boundaries sexually,” Little wrote. That friend told Little that the alleged victim had told her there were times she did not want to have sex with Boroujeni, but “he pressured her until she did.”
Another person told Little that the alleged victim confided in 2017 that Boroujeni “forced me to have sex with him.”
Boroujeni refused to speak with Little, choosing instead to answer her questions in writing. Those answers, Little noted, were written “with the benefit of first having seen (the alleged victim’s) account and the details she provided and didn’t provide.”
Boroujeni said he didn’t speak to Little because “I was seriously worried about criminal exposure.”
He said he couldn’t get legal representation for an interview because of scheduling problems.
He described Little as untrained and “just somebody who works in an office in CSU who is now in charge of a very serious allegation. … How do they hire these people? They are not an attorney. (sic) They are not an investigator. (sic) They go through minimal training.”
Little, who received a law degree from the University of Illinois in 2014, is now the director of civil rights and Title IX Compliance at Northwestern University. She didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Unlike Boroujeni, the alleged victim spoke with Little.
She “didn’t have time to reflect upon, ponder, deliberate about, and compose her answers. Instead, she answered this investigator’s questions in the moment, and based only on her personal recollection. Put simply, a reasonable person could find that (her) manner of testimony supports a finding that her account was credible.”
Little wrote that Boroujeni told her “there are text messages that corroborate his account and requested that (the victim) submit these materials.” But the alleged victim told Little she had already submitted all the texts she had. There was nothing in them that matched what Boroujeni described, Little wrote.
“Told this,” Boroujeni “never submitted or described the messages” himself, Little wrote. Boroujeni told EdSource he’d deleted the messages.
“A reasonable person could find Boroujeni‘s assertion that there is evidence to corroborate his account, and his failure to produce or describe such evidence … to diminish the likelihood that his version of events can be corroborated and therefore the credibility of his account,” Little wrote.
Little concluded that she found the alleged victim had proven herself credible. Boroujeni, she wrote, “did not likely obtain consent for sexual intercourse.”
Fresno State ordered Boroujeni and the alleged victim to avoid each other on campus. He continued teaching.
The alleged victim wasn’t satisfied that the university was doing enough to protect her. She then filed a grievance and gave notice to CSU “of her plans to pursue litigation,” records show.
She reached a settlement in February. The university paid her $53,300 with a paid year off from teaching to conduct research.
In March 2022, Fresno State notified Boroujeni about a new allegation of misconduct against him. The university placed him on administrative leave. He was notified on July 25, 2022, that the complaint was not substantiated.
By then, he had resigned from Fresno State and was pursuing his career at Fresno City College.
As part of his war on “woke,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis packed the board of New College with likeminded right wingers intent on purging the small college’s progressive character.
Two financial officers who were ousted during the transition revealed that the DeSantis board dipped into restricted gifts to pay the bloated salary of DeSantis-selected President, Richard Corcoran, a politician with no academic credentials. In other words, one of DeSantis’s cronies.
Suncoast Searchlight reported:
Two former top finance officers at the New College Foundation say they were ousted in 2023 after pushing back against college administrators who sought to use donor-restricted funds to cover President Richard Corcoran’s salary and benefits — a move they said would violate the terms of the donations.
Ron McDonough, the foundation’s former director of finance, and Declan Sheehy, former director of philanthropy, said they warned administrators not to misuse a major gift — the largest donation in the school’s history — which they said was not intended to fund administrative salaries.
Both said their contracts were terminated after they raised concerns internally.
“The college was trying to find the money to pay the president,” McDonough said. “And I kept on going back, saying, ‘We don’t have this unrestricted money.’”
The accounts of their final days on the job, shared publicly for the first time with Suncoast Searchlight, come as former foundation board members and alumni demand greater transparency and accountability from New College amid rising costs and sweeping institutional change.
Since Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a new slate of trustees in early 2023, the small liberal arts college has undergone a dramatic transformation — eliminating its Gender Studies program, reshaping student life, and launching a costly new athletics department. Critics say the administration has also sidelined financial safeguards, raising questions about whether the college is honoring donor intent and maintaining public trust.
Last month, a group of former foundation board members sent Corcoran and New College Foundation executive director Sydney Gruters a demand letter requesting an audit of how restricted donor funds were used and threatening legal action if they do not comply. The letter follows a string of high-profile board resignations and dismissals, including those who held key financial oversight roles.
Their exits, and the college’s move last year to hand Corcoran the unilateral power to fire foundation board members, have deepened fears that independent checks on the foundation’s spending are being systematically dismantled.
A “direct support organization” with close ties to New College, the foundation has never operated independently of the school. But in giving the college president the power to unilaterally remove board members last year, the Board of Trustees further eroded its autonomy.
“Good governance is not a side item,” said Hazel Bradford, a former foundation board member who sat on the organization’s investments committee and resigned in April, citing concerns about the college’s handling of the foundation. “It’s the beginning and end of any foundation handling other people’s money…”
After the DeSantis-backed overhaul of the Board of Trustees, New College named Corcoran president in early 2023, approving a compensation package that made him the highest-paid president in the college’s history —earning more than $1 million a year in salary and perks.
Because state law limits taxpayer funding for university administrator compensation to $200,000 — an amount that covered only the first four monthsof Corcoran’s salary — New College has turned to its foundation, which manages the school’s endowment and donor funds, to make up the difference.
“Corcoran’s salary is not a one-time thing,” said McDonough. “It’s not sustainable…”
So the new leadership had to find money to pay Corcoran’s lavish salary, and they turned to the College’s foundation. Most of its funds were restricted by donors for purposes like scholarships. Donor intent is a crucial concept. If a donor give $1 million for scholarships, it should not be used to pay the College president’s salary. Future fundraising will be crippled by violation of that trust.
The older alumni, graduates of the only progressive college in the state, are not likely to make new donations to New College. The new alumni do not yet exist. Maybe Betsy DeVos will bail out New College, which is no longer “new.”
Former governor Jerry Brown headlines a party next week toasting the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), California’s ten-year-old reshaping of school finance, the nation’s most ambitious effort to target public investment toward narrowing disparities in student achievement.
In 2013, Brown and the Legislature recast state funding to shift dollars toward districts that serve greater shares of low-income and non-English-speaking children. The logic remains compelling: educators labor to bring all children over proficiency hurdles in reading and math, so greater resources must go to students who have the farthest to climb.
Party goers in Sacramento do have cause to celebrate. The extra funding has worked to lift performance among students living in areas of concentrated poverty. Test scores, graduation rates, and college readiness have all seen increases stemming from the extra funding, according to research from the Learning Policy Institute and the Public Policy Institute of California.
Education funding also soared under both Brown and Gov. Gavin Newsom, fueled by a robust economy, the voter-approved Proposition 98 set aside for schools, and pandemic-era aid from Washington. State funding for K–12 education has grown more than 40% since 2017.
But California’s schools still produce grossly unequal results among racial and economic groups. While reading proficiency among fourth graders climbed from 40% to 49% between 2014 and 2019, with slightly greater gains for low-income students, racial disparities failed to budge. White children in California have continued to achieve at three grade levels above Latino peers over the past quarter century, according to the National Assessment of EducationalProgress — gaps were even larger for Black children. The picture is similar for math.
The good news: Brown’s funding formula helped sustain progress made by educators and kids since 2002, continuing to boost average test scores, especially in districts with concentrated poverty. The sobering news: inequalities among students remained unmoved despite gains for all demographic groups in reading and math.
So, what have we learned over the past decade that could inform more potent school finance policies?
First, only a small slice of local control funding — just 7% — is dedicated specifically to districts serving the largest concentrations of low-income families. For some, the impact was eye-popping: districts in which nearly all students are from impoverished families enjoyed a 13% gain in the share meeting grade-level standards. But most low-income students do not attend schools in these districts and so receive much less targeted funding. And schools with concentrated poverty in economically mixed districts lose out on this additional funding.
Policy makers and researchers remain in the dark over whether local boards mirror the spirit of the formula when allocating dollars between schools, and this holds consequences for kids. If districts spend dollars equally across all students, then low-income kids only partially benefit, even as the formula targets districts with more high-need students.
Newsom did target fresh funding to low-performing schools this year, dubbed the equity multiplier. The dollar augmentation is modest, but the new mechanism recognizes “that we have not sufficiently structured the reform to get dollars to highest-needs schools in a consistent way,” Jessenia Reyes, a policy analyst at Catalyst California in Los Angeles, told us.
Second, how districts choose to deploy their funding matters. Local control funding operates like a dump truck, unloading extra dollars to the district — it’s not a backpack, where targeted dollars follow the child. Districts do not always target extra funds to the students who generate them: for each dollar a school generates due to its socioeconomic “need,” spending goes up only by 63 cents in the average district; the rest is spread more equally across all other schools in the district. Data suggest this targeting, or lack thereof, varies considerably across districts.
Los Angeles Unified — pressed by equity advocates — has pioneered a Student Needs Equity Index that pinpoints the most challenged schools, then distributes $700 million in flexible dollars to their principals and teacher leaders. Despite equaling less than 5% of the district’s yearly budget, this progressivity among schools has helped to boost reading scores for English learners.
When local boards award extra funding to their most hard-pressed schools, contentious politics may come to light. Spreading new dollars across all schools holds broad appeal to labor leaders and parents. But “if we are really trying to implement equity, some kids may not need the [additional] resources,” said Ana Teresa Dahan, managing director of GPSN, the nonprofit formerly known as Great Public Schools Now.
Third, as we learn more about how spending varies among schools, we arrive at the effects of something quite sacred: teacher seniority. More experienced and highly qualified teachers tend to migrate to more affluent schools. So, serious efforts to equalize school budgets require incenting the best teachers to remain committed to poor communities.
Even when districts focus extra resources on their most challenged schools, principals often assign more senior teachers to high-achieving kids, as we found in Los Angeles. More robust targeting of funds among schools may fail to narrow gaps within schools until principals are better coached to weigh strategic options.
Yes, policy leaders deserve to pause and party on, celebrating a decade of high hopes and discernible progress in elevating disadvantaged students. But avoid the hangover. Fresh policy options and sober attention to school-level spending and staffing are urgently needed.
