When I first went to a free yoga class at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s recreation center in the winter of my sophomore year of college, I never realized how it would change my life.
I entered the space with a sense of discomfort; I hadn’t practiced yoga in several years and was hesitant to observe the stiffness of my limbs and unevenness of my breath. The other students around me seemed familiar with these classes and overall more comfortable in their skin.
At the time, I was facing mental health challenges, and a counselor recommended that I try the free yoga class at the recreation center. Willing to try anything, I decided to give it a shot.
The first class I took was led by a student. She invited us into a space with lit candles and gentle music. Even though my initial class was an adjustment, I still went back. And then, I went back again. In fact, it soon became clear to me I wanted to be an instructor myself.
I am a journalism major, and could never have imagined that college would allow me access to anything beyond a career in my area of study. But after completing my 200-hour yoga teaching certification over the summer, I was ready to apply to teach at the recreation center.
According to Eric Alexander, assistant coordinator of Cal Poly’s fitness programs, 16 out of the 46 fitness instructors at the recreation center are students. A huge benefit of hiring students as fitness instructors, he said, is the affinity with their peers as students.
“Students bring great energy to fitness programs, and they get the opportunity to positively impact and motivate their peers,” Alexander said. “That student experience is not only valuable to the instructors but to participants and the program as well.”
I saw this as soon as I entered the teaching space. My classes are sometimes filled with 40 or 50 students, many of them regulars who return weekly. I have found that my being a college student makes my students less hesitant to approach me after class to ask questions or simply to share what the class meant to them.
This accessibility to the physical and mental benefits of yoga helped me to recenter and grow as a person and as a student. Additionally, I came to realize I wanted to help others on their journey of healing. In this role as a fitness instructor, I have been able to expand access to yoga in my college community.
Yoga practice draws on a rich history of healing through mind-body connection which can help promote mindfulness and reduce tension. Especially for college students, this kind of physical practice can be incredibly beneficial.
According to research cited by the National Library of Medicine, “Yoga has positive effects on a psychophysiological level that leads to decreased levels of stress in college students.”
With the average yoga class in a commercial studio costing $15-$25 per session, yoga’s benefits are unaffordable to many young people. I’ve seen how free classes on campus solve that problem, and how they may be less daunting for some students to explore on their own.
Cal Poly and other public universities also offer other free group physical activity classes, such as cycling, dance, Pilates, high-intensity interval training and much more, allowing students to explore what activity is most beneficial for them.
I am grateful that pursuing my passion for yoga has been supported by my university, and while teaching me something that I love to share with other college students: Pursuing a passion or side interest while in school will serve to enrich your life, and in my case, the lives of others.
Consistently after my classes, students approach me to share how the space has helped them to recenter and find peace amid busy school days. I encourage them to not only continue practicing yoga but to consider teacher training if they are interested.
Using my platform as a student fitness instructor, I am able to share my passion for yoga to promote healing, growth and mindfulness in my college community. And I have gained experience for a career in teaching yoga, which I intend to maintain as a side job after college.
High school students conduct a science experiment with their teacher, right.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
It’s not hard to imagine why we are currently confronted with a crisis of teacher burnout. After decades of being severely underpaid while costs of living skyrocket, combined with heightened safety issues and the incredible stress of the pandemic, it’s no wonder why countless teachers across the country are fleeing the profession.
It has resulted in a national teacher shortage that we are experiencing acutely in California. According to the California Department of Education, there were more than 10,000 teacher vacancies during the 2021-22 school year, particularly concentrated in rural communities, communities of color and low-income communities, as well as a 16% reduction in new teacher credentials, the first decline in nearly a decade.
Even when people decide to make the courageous decision to become teachers, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ensure they stay in the profession. A recent nationwide survey found that 1 in 3 teachers say they are likely to quit in the next two years.
It’s a dire crisis that must be addressed with urgency, coordination and innovative solutions. As state superintendent of public instruction, I have partnered with educators and legislators across California to craft teacher recruitment and retention policies that comprehensively confront this momentous challenge.
SB 765, which Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed, will help develop a statewide recruitment strategy that’s never been seen before, incentivizing longtime, qualified educators back in the classroom to provide short-term help and removing financial barriers to those attempting to enter the profession.
The financial incentives include expanding the Golden State Teacher Grant Program to provide a $20,000 scholarship for anyone who wants to be a teacher or school mental health clinician, as well as a $10,000 undergraduate scholarship for any student who is enrolled to become a tutor in our College Core program. It also offers people who complete the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification a $5,000 annual grant for five consecutive years of their teaching career.
These measures are invaluable tools to provide bonuslike incentives for people from marginalized communities looking to enter the profession, which many believe is critical in hiring more teachers of color across the state to ensure that our classrooms actually look like California — something that greatly benefits every student.
We’re also working to expand outreach to specific communities that may have an interest in teaching in our state, including recently retired educators, the spouses of military personnel who have teaching backgrounds in other states, as well as recruiting from the ranks of the classified staff and expanded learning educators.
Teacher recruitment has historically been a disparate process that is executed at the individual district level. But due to the overwhelming scale of the crisis, we’ve made creating a coordinated statewide effort under the California Department of Education a top priority, including developing a one-stop portal that’s a resource for teaching credentials, scholarships and teacher openings throughout the state.
In addition to building a comprehensive teacher recruitment system, California must invest in providing desperately needed raises for educators. AB 938, which was introduced this year by Assembly Education Chair Al Muratsuchi but didn’t make it through the state Legislature, would have increased teachers’ salaries across California 50% by 2030, aiming to close the existing wage gap between teachers and similarly educated college graduates in other fields.
At a time when costs of living in our state, including the skyrocketing cost of a four-year degree, are greatly outpacing the rate of stagnating teacher pay, it’s absolutely essential that we fund a significant increase in pay so educators, including classified employees, can remain in the communities they teach in.
It’s one thing to recruit teachers to teach in local schools, but it’s another to retain them for decades in our communities. The best way to do that is by providing a living wage for educators in every California neighborhood. That’s why ensuring that teachers are properly compensated for their tireless work next year through the budget or a bill like AB 938 that would significantly increase their salaries is so important.
Ultimately, the best way to combat our teacher shortage crisis is by developing a coordinated recruitment strategy, increasing compensation and providing additional financial incentives to build a sustainable pipeline of educators in our communities. In California, we’ve invested in bold recruitment and retention strategies that, if paired with the doubling of teacher salaries, will be a comprehensive solution to this overwhelming crisis.
When disaster strikes, it feels like time stands still, but we are expected to keep moving. Those with children don’t have a choice — they go to work and address an overwhelming sense of trauma for their families.
The recent fires in Los Angeles demonstrated the worst of what disaster can bring and the best of our communities in their response.
Working in the early childhood space at the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles, I witnessed child care providers act with urgency and care to ensure babies and toddlers impacted by the fires had a safe place while their families began the journey to recovery. Six months later, the child care providers who stepped up heroically during the devastating fires remain undervalued, and the sector as a whole remains in critical condition. It’s time to prioritize child care before the next disaster strikes.
The Alliance tracked the impact of the fires on the child care sector and found that more than 100 sites providing care were impacted, with 47 of those facilities destroyed.
Even those who lost their homes put their role as professionals first, and figured out how to provide for the children in their care.
The day after the wildfires began, one Altadena provider evacuated to an Airbnb and took in children. This is just one of many stories of providers who lost their homes and everything they owned, and yet, still showed up for the families who rely on them.
This isn’t the first time providers held our community together. When Covid hit, providers responded so frontline medical workers and parents could go to work. No matter the circumstance, child care providers do what it takes to ensure children have a place to go.
That resiliency comes at a heavy cost — and it often happens without the necessary infrastructure from city, county and state leaders to make it sustainable.
The 0-to-3 child care system has needed transformative solutions for years. Families struggle to find and afford care, while providers are some of the lowest-paid professionals in our country. Child care advocates are extremely coordinated, coming together to address longstanding sector challenges. But we cannot transform the system without public-private partnerships driving a holistic approach.
The flames may be gone, but the path to recovery is far from over.
Think about the child care system’s critical yet overlooked role in keeping families afloat during and after disaster. There are still neighborhoods where trucks haul away debris and where child care providers are piecing together arrangements in borrowed community spaces. Their commitment to caring for our youngest remains unwavering, but their capacity is stretched to the limit.
The Alliance has worked to track down displaced families and offer direct support. Some providers reconnected with the children they cared for. Others are still figuring out how to reopen. The unfortunate reality is that many providers have been forced to quit. As recovery inches forward, it is painfully clear: California’s child care system helps us withstand disasters, yet it’s not supported like other essential services.
Despite an outpouring of community and philanthropic support, child care remains largely absent from infrastructure rebuilding conversations. In some LA County disaster response plans, animal shelters and stables are listed as essential locations to check during a fire, but child care homes and centers are not.
I love animals, but the fact that our youngest children and providers are an afterthought in our community planning should alarm all of us.
We need our leaders to commit to building a more resilient child care system. There are simple, tangible solutions on the table now that our leaders can take action on. Our state Legislature and governor could protect provider wages and benefits from potential cuts or delays. This would go a long way to keeping more providers in the profession and supporting them ahead of a future disaster.
Crises don’t create fractures in our child care system. They expose them.
If we want to be truly prepared when disaster strikes, we must treat child care as the essential infrastructure it is and support the providers who keep our kids thriving, happy, and safe.
•••
Cristina Alvarado is the executive director of the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles and leads A Golden State for Kids, a campaign that brings together families, providers, child advocacy organizations and businesses to build demand for accessible child care in California.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
In 2017, Trump pushed through a 1.4% tax on college endowments. Not on all colleges, but on those that had a large endowment relative to the size of their student body. No President had ever thought to tax endowments, which typically subsidize scholarships and maintenance.
This time around, Trump proposed a draconian increase in the tax on college endowments, 4% for some, 8% for another group, and 21% for the colleges with the largest endowments.
But Republicans wanted to shield one college: the ultra conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan.
They tried eliminating the tax from religious colleges, but the Senate Parliamentarian nixed that idea.
They finally settled on a solution that protected Hillsdale and certain other private colleges.
Republicans were aiming to shield Hillsdale College, a small conservative Christian liberal arts school in Michigan, from the endowment tax.
While 11 schools, including Princeton, MIT, Yale and Harvard, were hit with a higher tax on their endowments’ investment earnings, Congress exempted wealthy small schools, including Swarthmore, Amherst, Hillsdale and CalTech, from the levy.
Strange things happen when details of a massive tax and budget bill, like the one President Donald Trump signed yesterday, are tweaked behind closed doors. Among them: A couple dozen of the nation’s wealthiest small private colleges will be getting a tax cut next year, even as bigger rich universities, including Princeton, MIT, Yale and Harvard, will be slammed with higher taxes.
It all began as an effort by House Republicans to dramatically raise the excise tax imposed on the earnings of college endowments, and particularly the endowments of wealthy “woke” schools like Harvard University that they (and President Donald Trump) have targeted.
But as it turns out, while Harvard’s tax bill will likely more than double, some smaller schools with famously left-leaning student bodies (e.g. Swarthmore College and Amherst College) are getting tax relief. That’s because schools with fewer than 3,000 full-time equivalent tuition-paying students will be exempt from the revamped endowment tax beginning next year. It currently applies to private schools with more than 500 full-time equivalent tuition-paying students and endowments worth more than $500,000 per student.
Using the latest available federal data from fiscal year 2023, Forbes identified at least 26 wealthy colleges that are likely subject to the endowment tax now, but will be exempt next year based on their size. Along with top liberal arts schools like Williams College, Wellesley College, Amherst and Swarthmore, the list includes the California Institute of Technology, a STEM powerhouse, and the Julliard School, the New York city institution known for its music, dance and drama training. Grinnell College in Iowa, which enrolled 1,790 students in 2023, will save around $2.4 million in tax each year as a result of the change, President Anne Harris said in an email to Forbes.
Here’s what happened. As passed by the House in late May, the One Big Beautiful Bill (its Trumpian name) increased the current 1.4% excise tax on college endowments’ investment earnings to as high as 21% for the richest institutions—those with endowments worth more than $2 million a student. (While these schools are all non-profits and traditionally tax exempt, the 1.4% tax on investment earnings was introduced by Trump’s big 2017 tax bill. According to Internal Revenue Service data, 56 schools paid a total of $381 million in endowment tax in calendar 2023.)
Along with raising the rate, the House voted to exempt from the tax both religiously-affiliated schools (think the University of Notre Dame) and those that don’t take federal student financial aid. (The religious exemption was structured in a way that Harvard, founded by the Puritans to train ministers, wouldn’t qualify.) The House also sought to penalize schools like Columbia University, with heavy international student enrollments, by excluding students who aren’t U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents from the per capita calculations.
Then the bill went to the Senate, where the Finance Committee settled on more modest–albeit still stiff–rate hikes. Schools with endowments of $500,000 to $750,000 per capita would still pay at a 1.4% rate, while those with endowments above $750,000 and up to $2 million would pay 4%. Those with endowments worth more than $2 million per student would pay an 8% tax on their earnings, not the 21% passed by the House.
Enter Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who makes decisions on the Senate’s Byrd rule, which requires parts of a budget reconciliation bill like this one to have a primary purpose related to the budget—not other types of policy. The Byrd rule was put in place because reconciliation isn’t subject to filibuster. “You can’t get into a lot of prescriptive activity” in a budget reconciliation bill, explains Dean Zerbe, a national managing director for Alliantgroup, who worked on college endowment issues back when he was tax counsel for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “Like, ‘you’ve got to hop on one foot,’ or ‘you’ve got to make tuition affordable,’ or ‘you’ve got to do better in terms of admission.’”
The Parliamentarian ruled that those three House provisions—exempting religious-affiliated schools, exempting schools that don’t take federal aid, and excluding foreign students from the per capita calculation—didn’t pass the Byrd test.
At that point, Republican senators settled on the 3,000-student threshold in large part to specifically exempt one school from the tax: Hillsdale College, an ultra-conservative, Christian liberal arts college in Hillsdale, Michigan and a GOP darling. It enrolled 1,794 students in 2023, had an endowment worth $584,000 per-student, and notably accepts no federal money, including student aid. (So both the religious exemption and the one for schools taking no federal student aid would have presumably shielded Hillsdale from the endowment tax—before the Parliamentarian gave them the thumbs down.)
There was also a broader group of small schools pushing for the exemption, notes Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education. “They made an argument that I think got some positive reception among Republican senators of saying that essentially, while their endowments may be big relative to the fact that they have small student bodies … their endowments weren’t big.” A school like Amherst, he adds, “might have a big endowment for a small school, but they don’t have a big endowment relative to the Ivies and the more heavily resourced [universities].”
House Republicans, under intense pressure to meet Trump’s July 4th deadline, ended up accepting the final Senate product in full. That meant exempting the smaller schools, including the “woke” ones, while levying a rate of up to 8% on the endowments of bigger schools. Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation estimates colleges will now pay an extra $761 million in tax over 10 years, compared to the extra $6.7 billion they would have paid under the House version with its higher 21% rate and broader reach.
Based on data from 2023, Forbes estimates that at least 11 universities will have their endowment earnings taxed at an 8% or 4% rate in 2026, while five will continue to pay the 1.4% rate.
Three schools—Princeton University, Yale University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—will likely be required to pay an 8% excise tax on their endowment earnings. Another eight, including Harvard, Stanford University, Dartmouth College and Vanderbilt University, will likely pay a 4% tax. The remaining five schools—Emory University, Duke University, Washington University in St Louis, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University—would pay the same 1.4% endowment tax rate they’re paying now, based on fiscal 2023 numbers.
One school that will likely pay 4% is the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic-affiliated school which would have been exempt from the tax were it not for the Byrd rule. “We are deeply disappointed by the removal of language protecting religious institutions of higher education from the endowment tax before passage of the final bill,” Notre Dame wrote in a statement to Forbes. “Any expansion of the endowment tax threatens to undermine the ability of a broad range of faith-based institutions to serve their religious purpose. We are proud to have stood with a coalition of these institutions against that threat, and we are encouraged by the strong support for a religious exemption received from both chambers.”
Fansmith, for his part, won’t call the exemption of the small schools a win. “We think the tax is a bad idea and it’s bad policy, and no schools should be paying it. But, by the standard that fewer schools are paying, it’s better, but it’s still not good,” he says. “It’s not really about revenue,” adds Fansmith. “It’s really about punishing these schools that right now a segment of the Republican party doesn’t like.” The schools make the argument that it’s students who are being punished, since around half of endowment spending pays for student scholarships.
Meanwhile, Zerbe warns the now exempt schools shouldn’t take that status for granted. “Once revenue raisers are in play and out there, they come back again and again,” he says. “It would be a disaster for [colleges] to think somehow this was a win for them. This was a billion dollar hit on them and there’s more to come later.”
To see the list of private colleges that were exempted, and those that will see an increase, open the article.
Research by Stanford University found that 75 of the lowest-performing California elementary schools that received funding from an out-of-court settlement made significant progress on third-grade state Smarter Balanced tests this year.
The results indicate that the $50 million the schools received for effective reading instruction in the primary grades carried over to third grade after two years of funding.
“The fact that we were able to budge third grade comprehension assessments with a grant that was focused on TK, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, with a light touch on third grade, is amazing,” said Margaret Goldberg, literacy coach at Nystrom Elementary in West Contra Costa Unified, one of the schools that received the Early Literacy Support Block Grants, or ELSBs.
The 75 schools had the lowest scores in the state in 2019 on the third-grade Smarter Balanced test. They received the money, averaging $1,144 per year for the 15,541 K-three students, under the settlement in the lawsuit, Ella T. v. the State of California, brought by the public interest law firm Public Counsel. It argued that the state violated the students’ constitutional right to an education by failing to teach them how to read adequately.
Eligible schools were chosen from various districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, West Contra Costa Unified and others. The funding promoted the literacy instruction known as the “science of reading,” which includes explicit phonics instruction in kindergarten and first grade, along with the development of vocabulary, oral language, comprehension and writing.
Schools had the flexibility to choose to fund literacy coaches and bilingual reading specialists, new curriculum and instructional materials, expanded access to libraries and literacy training for parents. Schools were encouraged to participate in professional development in the science of reading and seek guidance on their literacy plans from the Sacramento County Office of Education, which oversaw the grants.
Released Monday, the study concluded that the block grants “generated significant (and cost-effective) improvements in English language arts achievement in its first two years of implementation as well as smaller, spillover improvements in math achievement,” wroteresearchers Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and Sarah Novicoff, a Stanford doctoral candidate in educational policy.
Students in the funded schools were scoring at the bottom of the scale in 2019, and, despite significant progress, few had achieved reading at grade level in 2023. Dee and Novicoff credited the early education grant for increasing third graders’ achievement by 0.14 standard deviation, the equivalent of a 25% increase in a year of learning, compared with demographically similar students who did not receive the funding. Researchers also found a similar gain by comparing the scores of third graders in the schools with the grants with third-grade scores of fifth graders from the same schools who had not benefited from the funding.
The Smarter Balanced reports results in four performance bands: standard not met, standard nearly met, standard met and standard exceeded. The schools with the grants succeeded in raising scores by 6 percentage points from the lowest category to standard nearly met, significantly reducing the number of students requiring intensive help. Still, after two years of funding, only 13.5% of students are proficient in reading, having met or exceeded standard. That’s 3 percentage points higher than in 2018, and 1 percentage point above pre-pandemic 2019. Schools with similar students not receiving the grants remain below where they were before Covid, according to the research.
Dee and Novicoff were unable to analyze why some schools performed better than others, which could be useful in shaping the state’s policy on early literacy. Unlike some states with comprehensive literacy plans, California does not collect any assessment data that school districts collect from TK to second grade. And, under the rules that the state negotiated in the settlement, participating schools were not required to submit their assessment data to the California Department of Education; most voluntarily did in the second year, but many did not in the first year. It’s also unclear how many schools adhered to their literacy plans or focused on less effective or ineffective strategies for improvement.
Researchers used the only complete set of state-level data to which they had access — third-grade reading comprehension assessments. Those scores may have understated the progress in reading that many schools made on district assessments in the first and second grades.
Public Counsel filed the Ella T. v. the State of California lawsuit in 2017, and the settlement went into effect during the height of the pandemic.Dee said the early success of the program during Covid, amid teacher shortages and extremely high chronic absences, made the results even more striking.
The third graders who took the Smarter Balanced test in 2023 “were the hardest hit by the pandemic. They were in kindergarten when it was interrupted by Covid,” Goldberg said. “They attended first grade remotely. In second grade, in schools like mine, which chose to adopt new curriculum, their teachers had never taught the curriculum before.”
Dee noted the academic gains from the grant were relatively large compared with the cost, making the program quite cost-effective — an effect size that is 13 times higher than general, untargeted spending.
Goldberg said the grant was efficient “because early intervention is cheaper and it’s more effective than waiting until third grade or later grades to provide reading support.”
The grant funding ends in June 2024. Dee said whether schools can sustain improved scores without specific funding support is an open question. Novicoff mentioned that the grant schools may be able to continue receiving support for literacy coaches and reading specialists if they receive funding from the new Literacy Coach and Reading Specialist Grant program.
Instead of being based on performance, the literacy coach grants are awarded to schools with high unduplicated pupil percentages, or the number of students who are eligible for free or reduced meals, are English language learners or are foster youth. Schools eligible for an early literacy grant may also qualify for a literacy coach grant.
Dee said design and implementation are key if the state hopes to continue or scale this success. This means paying close attention to school-based literacy action plans, oversight and resources with some flexibility. “This is a story about how schools that get money tend to do better — money does matter in schools, and this is another piece of evidence into that bucket,” Novicoff said, “but it also shows that what we can do with the money and how you structure that funding really does matter.”
UC Berkeley students on campus on Sather road in Berkeley.
Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource
Long revered as the birthplace of the free speech movement in the ’60s, UC Berkeley now finds itself at the center of a fractious debate about First Amendment protections and religious intolerance amid the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East.
Tempers are running high on all sides amid the bloodshed in the Middle East, which has already claimed thousands of lives, exposing ideological rifts between students and professors at the law school, spurring a discrimination lawsuit against the UC system and setting off a broader a debate over who gets to define the boundaries of First Amendment protections, a drama heightened by Berkeley’s legendary status as the heart of the ’60s student protest movement.
“It’s emblematic of the polarized times that we live in. We can’t begin to decide what the contours of expressive rights are,” said Will Creeley, the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy group. “In our pluralistic democracy, there are going to be groups out there with beliefs that you don’t share, that maybe the majority of Americans don’t share. But that’s what our system of government kind of defends and requires. We believe in groups of citizens banding together, even groups of citizens with unpopular ideas. That’s what the First Amendment protects.”
The war of words first flared last summer when a student group, Law Students for Justice in Palestine, adopted a bylaw that banned supporters of Zionism from speaking at its events. Roughly 22 other student groups have adopted variations of this bylaw.
Hundreds of UC Berkeley students walked out of class on Oct. 25, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. The students are among thousands who have walked out on campuses nationwide as fighting between Israel and Hamas continues in Gaza.Credit: Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris
“As law students, we must utilize our privilege in amplifying the voices of indigenous movements for liberation and engage in the academic and political boycott that is essential to furthering goals of freedom,” as the LSJP group noted on its Instagram page, framing the bylaw issue as a matter of free speech. Members of the group did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Others view the bylaws as discriminatory toward Jewish students, faculty and invited speakers. Steven Davidoff Solomon, a noted professor of corporate law, took offense at the bylaw, firing off an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging employers: “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students.”
“The student conduct at Berkeley is part of the broader attitude against Jews on university campuses that made last week’s massacre possible,” he wrote in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
In response to that commentary, a group of alumni wrote an open letter to Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school, calling on him to uphold the rights of all students. The letter argued that Solomon conflated “support for the Palestinian people or criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”
Chemerinsky responded by voicing the school’s commitment to freedom of speech, including language that “others find offensive, even deeply offensive.” Excluding speakers based on race, religion, sex or sexual orientation would not be allowed, he said, but excluding speakers based on viewpoint is a different matter.
“Student organizations have the First Amendment right to choose speakers based on viewpoint,” said Chemerinsky. “The College Republicans can choose to invite only conservative speakers. The Women of Berkeley Law can choose to invite only pro-choice speakers. I think that is quite clear.”
However, if you consider anti-Zionist to be synonymous with antisemitic, as some do, then excluding Zionist speakers can be seen as a discriminatory act.
“Nobody’s saying you have to include a program on a position that you disagree with,” said Alyza D. Lewin, president of the Brandeis Center For Human Rights under the Law. “They’re saying you cannot exclude an individual on the basis of their identity. That is a form of discrimination they need to address. You can’t have groups saying, ‘Zionists aren’t welcome,’ because that’s excluding Jews on the basis of an integral component of what it means to be a Jew.”
That’s among the reasons the Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education are suing UC Berkeley for what they characterize as the “longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism” on campus. The suit argues that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism and that the student group bylaws violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, the First Amendment right to freedom of religion and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“Conditioning a Jew’s ability to participate in a student group on his or her renunciation of a core component of Jewish identity is no less pernicious than demanding the renunciation of some other core element of a student’s identity — whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity,” as the lawsuit said.
Others reject the notion of equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
“I am wary of that argument for a couple reasons. First of all, I do think there is a distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism,” Creeley said. “You have a First Amendment right to criticize Israel. That’s core political speech.”
Still, the question became a hot-button issue when more than two dozen Wall Street law firms signed a letter warning deans at top law schools that they have “zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses.” Harvard, Columbia and NYU students have already lost job offers over “inflammatory remarks.”
Other voices, however, defend the right of student groups to invite whomever they choose to speak on campus. For instance, it has been noted that some chapters of Hillel, the Jewish student group on college campuses, have rules prohibiting speakers who “delegitimize” Israel.
“If you are a public university, you can’t require your belief-based student groups to either adopt or disavow certain beliefs,” said Creeley. “Student groups have an associational right, protected by the First Amendment, to band together over a shared belief, even if that belief is noxious to some, many, or even most.”
But some argue that freedom of speech should not trample on the freedom of religion. Kenneth Marcus, chairman and founder of the Brandeis Center as well as the civil rights chief of the U.S. Education Department during the Trump administration, has likened the bylaws to the “Jewish-free zones” of the past.
“The school is quick to address other types of hatred, but why not antisemitism?” as Marcus, a Berkeley law school alumnus, has put it. “Berkeley, once a beacon of free speech, civil rights and equal treatment of persons regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender and sexual orientation, is heading down a very different and dangerous path from the one I proudly attended as a Jewish law student.”
Hannah Schlacter, a second-year MBA student at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who is part of Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, says she feels unsafe on campus.
“I sense a hostile campus environment towards Jewish students who express their Jewish identity in certain ways. This was the case before 10/7, but it became even more so after 10/7,” she said. “If I express a part of my Jewish identity, like holding a flag of the Jewish homeland, then if I am assaulted, the university has demonstrated they will not investigate nor call it hate crime.”
The dean of the law school, a constitutional law scholar who is Jewish, refutes the central tenet of the suit.
“There is no ‘longstanding, unchecked antisemitism’ on the Berkeley campus,” said Chemerinsky. “I have been here six and a half years, and it is just a false narrative. I doubt the people who wrote it have been on campus.”
At the core of the debate is how you define freedom of speech, which has become an increasingly contentious matter in itself in recent years. Some say there’s not as much common ground on what constitutes free speech and the critical role it plays in feeding a lively marketplace of ideas, the foundation of any participatory democracy, as there once was.
“I have been teaching First Amendment law for 44 years and I think there is less consensus about free speech than there used to be,” said Chemerinsky. “The first seven weeks of this semester were calm and easy. Since Oct. 7, it has been difficult on our campus and on campuses across the country.”
For his part, the dean has also blamed the media, suggesting that many outlets have overblown the controversy, pouring fuel on the fire.
“What is the proper role of the university? To be a place where all ideas and views are discussed,” he wrote. “At my law school, the Law Students for Justice in Palestine bring in speakers and hold programs to express their views. At the same time, the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies holds many programs.”
Lewin disagrees that institutional neutrality is the best approach to combat a rising tide of bias. The suit argues that the university failed to address antisemitic incidents on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. In one campus incident, the suit alleges, a Jewish student draped in an Israeli flag was assaulted by two protesters who hit him in the head with his water bottle.
There has also been a rise in anti-Islamic incidents. Pro-Palestinian students have reported being harassed and threatened in the wake of Oct. 7, according to university officials.
“Hate doesn’t start with violence. Hate starts with biased attitudes,” said Lewin. “It starts with stereotypes. And then it builds. The reason we’re now seeing the violence is because for all those years when the biased attitudes, the stereotypes, the slurs, the shunning were taking place, the university said we’re not doing anything.”
Certainly the law school is far from being alone in grappling with these thorny issues. Cases of both Islamophobia and antisemitism have been spiking on campuses across the country. These mounting incidents have prompted a federal response, with President Joe Biden’s Department of Education announcing investigations into antisemitism and Islamophobia at a growing number of universities, including Harvard, Columbia and Cornell.
“Of all the issues we deal with, of all the topics of speech, abortion, Trump, politics, whatever, Israel and Palestine has always been the most intensely felt. And that was true before Oct. 7. Now, holy moly,” said Creeley. “It’s the intensity of the feelings on both sides and the decades of historical precedent, the general feeling of bitterness and hopelessness. It all coagulates into a very toxic stew on campus.”
The social strife rampant on campuses across the country, experts say, may reflect a deeply divided nation coping with myriad crises, foreign and domestic. This has spread far beyond campuses to society at large with Oakland’s City Council passing a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Demonstrators recently shut down the San Francisco Bay Bridge while others staged a sit-in at Oakland’s Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building, also urging a cease-fire. Protesters have also delayed a ship, which was believed to be carrying military supplies, for nine hours at the Port of Oakland. The use of hate speech is also rising online. Common ground is proving elusive on all fronts.
Grappling for ways to combat the rising tide of hate, UC President Michael Drake has pledged $7 million toward addressing “acts of bigotry, intolerance, and intimidation” on campuses.
“We have a crisis today on America’s campuses,” as Marcus said in his testimony before the House Committee on Education in a hearing titled “Confronting the Scourge of Antisemitism on Campus.” “This is an emergency, and I would suggest to this committee that when the problem is exceptional and unprecedented, the solutions need to be unprecedented and exceptional.”
Chemerinsky, for one, takes a pragmatic approach to the discord on and off campus in these polarized times. At the law school, he says he hopes to engender a greater sense of civility in the discourse.
“I don’t think we can aspire to unity,” he said. “But we can work to create community and to make all students feel included and respected.”
A student holds a flash card with the sight word ‘friend’ during a class at Nystrom Elementary in the West Contra Costa Unified School District in 2022.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
I once believed that improving reading at a failing school could be a finite job. I thought it meant bringing in a new curriculum, showing teachers how to use it and then lingering long enough to ensure that students receive consecutive years of high-quality instruction.
I was terribly wrong, but my misbelief brought me to work on California’s Early Literacy Support Block (ELSB) grant, and for that I’m grateful.
The early literacy grant resulted from a class-action lawsuit. Students sued California for lacking a plan to address low reading achievement. The result was a $53 million settlement to provide the state’s lowest-performing schools with supplemental funding and guidance. A recent evaluation by researchers at Stanford University found the focus on early literacy turned out to be worth more than the grant’s dollar amount — the program was 13 times more effective than general increases in school spending.
During an EdSource Roundtable on literacy, Mark Rosenbaum, lead attorney in the lawsuit noted, “If this is a pilot program, it has succeeded. We don’t need a task force; we don’t need more studies; we just need a commitment to expand it to every kid, every teacher and every school.”
Improving reading instruction requires a literacy plan backed by strong leadership. It means coordinating resources, monitoring progress, and changing course when needed. It demands making decisions based on evidence, not adult preferences, and prioritizing early literacy so that every child gets off to a good start reading.
I was on a team that helped eligible schools draft literacy action plans for the grant funding. I’d hoped this work would inform statewide planning, but despite the program’s success, California is no closer to a literacy plan.
And worse, in a few months, schools like mine will lose the funding and support that made us briefly successful.
When the program launched, I joined Nystrom Elementary, in West Contra Costa Unified, as a literacy coach. At the time, 91% of our second-graders needed to learn kindergarten phonics, as did 65% of upper graders. Working fast, we created a “walk-to-read” block in which grade level bands (e.g., first and second grades) pooled their students and sorted them into groups according to assessment data. Each teacher taught two of the groups. Our plan required collaboration and created peer accountability for teaching a new curriculum.
In the second year, teachers led. They facilitated professional development, refined instruction and analyzed student data. We began to pick up momentum. By the middle of the year, the need for second grade intensive intervention was cut almost in half (from 86% to 46%). By the year’s end, according to the district’s reading comprehension assessment, Nystrom Elementary had the highest growth.
This year, we turned our attention to improving writing and language instruction. We’ve forged a partnership with SAiL Literacy Lab to bridge the divide between what researchers know about language development and how we teach our students.
Each year, we’ve adjusted our literacy action plan, incorporating what we’ve learned from research, practice and our student data. We’ve spent our literacy block grant funds on curriculum, coaching and intervention to strengthen classroom instruction, but our staff’s commitment to the plan is what improved achievement.
Good literacy plans in California are rare, and wasted opportunities abound. Walk into any school and you are likely to see curriculum (some of it brand new) collecting dust. Our literacy coaches often say they are kept busy with subbing, yard duty and other tasks that don’t improve classroom teaching. Reading interventionists often feel isolated in their work, unsure how much they are contributing to their school’s overall success. Most rare in California are strong literacy plans that are backed by secure funding.
The money from the Early Literacy Support Block Grant is drying up, but my school’s work is not done. It never will be.
More than 95% of our students are from low-income households and our non-stability rate (students who enroll and disenroll, often due to unstable housing) is over 26%. Our school will always have intervention needs, teachers requiring support and data demanding analysis and action. These needs are not problems, as long as they are met with a plan and funding.
As Rosenbaum noted in the EdSource Roundtable: “This grant is only for three years. … That was the best we could get in the settlement, but that makes no sense if you care about kids. I wouldn’t say about my kids, ‘I will do what you need for three years, and then we’ll do the best we can afterwards.’ These schools, these educators, need what they need forever.”
This year, California spent over $225 million on coaching and intervention, but a literacy plan was not a condition for schools receiving the funds. Another $248 million was recently added to bring in a new cohort of schools, but those with expiring literacy plans were not prioritized.
Because California lacks a strategic plan to improve literacy (the very reason for the lawsuit years ago), effective literacy plans may soon become dreams deferred. The irony of this cuts deep.
•••
Margaret Goldberg is a literacy coach in West Contra Costa Unified School District and co-founder of The Right to Read Project, a group of teachers, researchers and activists committed to the pursuit of equity through literacy.
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.
There’s a strong body of research that suggests arts education can boost everything from test scores to social-emotional learning, but when budgets get tight, the arts are often the first thing on the chopping block.
In California though, that’s about to change following the passage of Proposition 28, which guarantees a new annual funding stream for arts education equal to 1% of the state’s general fund. In 2023, that’s about $1 billion for schools to hire teachers in the arts and fund arts education initiatives.
Join EdSource reporter Karen D’Souza on Thursday, Dec. 14, at 12:30 p.m. for a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session. D’Souza will answer your questions about the rollout of Proposition 28 and how California’s groundbreaking arts education initiative compares with how states across the country fund and implement arts education programs. Click here to ask a question.
EdSource readers are encouraged to submit their questions during the online event.
An AMA, which stands for “Ask Me Anything” is a crowdsourced interview. The interviewee begins the process by starting a post describing who they are and what they do. Then commenters from across the internet leave questions and can vote on other questions according to which they would like to see answered.
The interviewee can go through and reply to the questions they find interesting and easily see those questions the internet is dying to have the answer to. Because the internet is asking the questions, they’re going to be a mix of serious and lighthearted, and interviewees will end up sharing all sorts of things you won’t find in a normal interview.
Temecula Valley Unified School District board member Joseph Komrosky.
Credit: Temecula Valley Unified
One Temecula Valley PAC has submitted 5,236 signatures to initiate a recall election against Temecula Valley Unified School District’s school board president, Joseph Komrosky — surpassing the requirement of 4,280 two days before Friday’s deadline.
The Registrar of Voters in Riverside County will now formally count and verify the legitimacy of the signatures to determine if the recall campaign will lead to an election. Jeff Pack, co-founder of One Temecula Valley political action committee — which aims to combat “a very real and dangerous threat to local governance posed by political and religious extremist views” — anticipates that the process will take a couple of months.
“We’re looking … forward to being this organization that demands good governance, and I think this is a great start,” Pack said. “I’m really proud.”
In its initial stages, the recall campaign was also gathering signatures for board members Jennifer Wiersma and Danny Gonzalez, who, with Komrosky, make up the board’s conservative majority.
However, Pack said the campaign eventually decided to focus on Komrosky because his recall seemed to be the most likely, based on the number of signatures gathered for his recall. And flipping his seat alone would be enough to tip the board’s current majority.
Meanwhile, some community members have speculated that Gonzalez plans to leave the state altogether, noting that his house is currently on the market for sale.
Neither Komrosky nor Gonzalez responded to EdSource’s request for comment. Wiersma, who stated she may be able to respond, did not provide a comment by EdSource’s deadline.
The road to recall
The effort to recall Komrosky, Wiersma and Gonzalez began early in June when Pack met a group of moms at a local duck pond.
The moms, who eventually formed the organization EnACT Temecula-Equity in Action, wanted to initiate a recall against Wiersma.
“Well, why don’t we just do all three? he told them “We’ll back you. We have money. We can get all this stuff together, get all the paperwork together and let’s do it.”
The moms questioned his idea to start a recall for all three.
“Which one deserves to stay? Which one do you want to leave there?” Pack said he responded. “And nobody can answer that question.”
The recall effort began to gain steam, he said. And in one day, they had gathered the 35 signatures needed to file a notice of intent to recall for each board member.
In the months that followed, teachers and community members went door to door, gathering more signatures. They also stationed themselves at the duck pond during weekends.
Eventually, the recall effort also garnered support from organizations including the Temecula Valley Educators Association, the League of United Latin American Citizens Inland Empire chapter and the NAACP’s Southwest Riverside branch 1034.
“As educators, we’re all just hoping that the focus of the district can return to student performance, supporting learning environments to maximize how teachers can do their jobs,” said Edgar Diaz, the president of the Temecula Valley Educators Association.
He added that he’s “glad the community came out and supported” the recall, showing “that this is actually a community issue, not a teacher- or a union-driven issue.”
Reactions to the recall
The recall effort has been met with mixed reactions from members of the community and beyond.
While Pack said there has been enthusiastic support for Komrosky’s recall, they were unable to gather the 3,987 signatures needed to get Wiersma’s on the ballot.
Pastor Tim Thompson of Evangelical 412 Church Temecula Valley — who has consistently stood by the board’s majority — has said he doubts a recall election will take place.
“If they get their way and this goes to an election, what we’re going to find is the same thing we found in the election cycle last period, is that the vast majority of people in the Temecula Valley support these three,” Thompson said. “They’re happy that they’re in there. They’re happy for the changes that they’re making.”
Thompson also commended the current board for fulfilling their duty to “protect the youth in our community.”
Temecula Valley district board member Steven Schwartz, however, disagrees, saying most board decisions have been “political and not educational.”
As a member of the board minority, Schwartz said he has received mostly positive feedback from parents and community members who he said feel the same way as he does.
Meanwhile, he said many of the speakers who have voiced their support for the conservative majority at meetings do not come from the community.
“When you have people coming from outside disrupting meetings … calling people names, what is that supposed to prove?” Schwartz said. “What is that supposed to do for our children and for schools?”
Regardless of the outcome, Pack said he is proud of the effort and that the recall’s advocates were able to make history in Temecula.
“This is entirely volunteers that are local, and it’s really, really something that I don’t think this community has ever seen,” Pack said. “It’s a big growing-up moment, I think, for the city of Temecula.”
Editors’ note: This story has been updated to correct a name’s spelling and revise the number of signatures needed to file the notice of intent to recall.
California school superintendents have been leaving their jobs in large numbers this year. Many reached retirement age; others, tired of dealing with the aftermath of pandemic school closures, are retiring early or leaving for other jobs or business opportunities. Some are just looking for a change.
Then there are the superintendents who, having put off plans for retirement to help districts through pandemic closures, now finally feel comfortable enough to leave.
The result: a turnover of superintendents, with older, more experienced veterans being replaced by new, less experienced leaders.
EdSource interviewed five California superintendents who either recently left or are leaving their jobs, to better understand what compelled them to step down.
Covid, threats push Chris Evans to early retirement
Chris Evans retired as the superintendent of Natomas Unified after the 2022-23 school year. Credit: Jeff McPhee
Former Natomas Unified Superintendent Chris Evans has been the target of multiple personal threats in recent years, but in September 2021, the hateful rhetoric grew so intense that the school board agreed to pay for security for his home.
A school board meeting in September 2021 was abruptly canceled during public comment because of the raucous behavior of some in the audience.
Parents and members of the Sacramento community were upset about comments made by an Inderkum High School teacher who was secretly recorded claiming he kept an antifa flag in his classroom and encouraged his students to protest, according to media reports.
Evans announced at the meeting that the teacher had been put on paid leave pending an investigation.
“Following the Sept. 1 meeting, each trustee and Chris received numerous — 150-plus — disturbing emails that were forwarded, I believe, to local and federal law enforcement agencies,” said Susan Heredia, Natomas Unified board president.
“People would show up in front of my house, take pictures, speak to my children,” Evans said. “They would call the district and say they were headed to my house and would be intercepted going to my house.”
Last June, Evans stepped down from his position as superintendent at age 52, after 11 years leading the district. He had planned to retire at 55. He blames his early departure on the Covid-19 pandemic.
“For me, Covid did it,” Evans said. “Covid and everything that came from that — the politics of it. It was exhausting. That took two years off my career.”
Evans is still working in the district temporarily, helping first-time Superintendent Robyn Castillo transition to her new role. After that, he will focus on his new endeavor at Action-Oriented Leaders, an education consulting firm that focuses on helping superintendents and school boards problem-solve and troubleshoot, he said.
Brett McFadden opted for a quieter job closer to home
Brett McFadden left his job as superintendent of Nevada Joint Union High School District after the 2021-22 school year.Courtesy of the Monterey County Office of Education
Brett McFadden, 55, left his job as superintendent of Nevada Joint Union High School District in Grass Valley after the 2021-22 school year, primarily to be closer to his home in Aptos with his wife, an administrator at Monterey Peninsula Unified School District.
He was superintendent at Nevada Joint Union for four years before accepting a job as a deputy superintendent at the Monterey County Office of Education.
It was difficult being a school superintendent during the Covid-19 pandemic, McFadden said. Nevada Joint Union High School District, like others in the state, had contentious school board meetings that centered on issues like masking, vaccines and the teaching of critical race theory.
“We went from board meetings that were not that well attended to board meetings that would have 300-plus people because of one particular contentious issue,” he said.
The community had a long history of treating everyone respectfully before the pandemic, but that changed within months, McFadden said.
“We lost empathy and grace,” McFadden said.
There also was a sharp increase in vitriolic comments from the community, he said.
“You know you can take those with a grain of salt, but when you hear 30 or 40 of them, and then you’re accused of not caring about kids, or destroying the education of kids or destroying kids’ lives after you’ve committed your entire career and your entire sense of being as a human being, as a professional, to fostering students’ lives and opportunities, that takes a toll on people,” McFadden said.
Despite the difficulties of the last few years, McFadden misses working at a school district. He expects he’ll return to one in some capacity someday, although he isn’t sure when.
Normalcy and ‘the sweet spot’ entice Brian Dolan to retire
Brian Dolan will retire as superintendent of Dixon Unified School District after this school year.Credit: Stewart Savage, Abaton Consulting
Dixon Unified Superintendent Brian Dolan, 62, has reached the “sweet spot” — the age where superintendents begin to reap the best retirement benefits. He’ll retire after this school year.
Although Covid-19 took the fun out of the job for a while, Dolan is glad he stayed long enough to see things almost return to normal.
“If I were at retirement age, just coming out of Covid, I would’ve needed to work another year just to put a little shine back on the apple,” he said.
Three of the six districts in Solano County had their superintendents retire in the last three years, Dolan said.
“None of us are going out early, but all of us are going out as early as we can,” he said.
Other than some discontent during Covid-19 school closures, Dixon’s school board meetings haven’t had the drama seen in many other districts, Dolan said. They haven’t been contentious and Dolan hasn’t been threatened. But he acknowledges the jobs of all school employees have become harder.
Dolan has spent a quarter-century of his 35-year career at Dixon Unified School District — 13 as its superintendent. He still finds delight in talking to students who recognize him on the street or when he answers his door on Halloween. The youngest ones pronounce his name Mr. Donut.
“Wow. I wouldn’t change a thing for myself, because there are so many good things to come out of this as well, but it’s hard work,” Dolan said.
He doesn’t plan to sit out for too long — probably just the six months required by the state. Dolan sees himself doing administrative coaching or support, or working with student teachers in the future.
Cathy Nichols-Washer pushed back retirement until things got better
Cathy Nichols-Washer was the superintendent of Lodi Unified for 15 years. Credit: Ken Sato
Cathy Nichols-Washer, 60, stayed at the helm of Lodi Unified School District in northern San Joaquin County longer than she thought she would. After 15 years, she was the longest-serving superintendent in the district’s history when she retired at the end of last school year.
Like many superintendents, Nichols-Washer didn’t have the heart to follow through with plans to retire two years earlier, because the Covid-19 pandemic changed her plans.
“I just didn’t feel right leaving the district in the midst of all that,” she said. … “So I stayed, and then, after Covid was over and we kind of got things — I’m not going to say back to normal, but back to a place that felt good and comfortable — you know, on a good track again, then I felt comfortable leaving.”
During the pandemic, superintendents had to manage the district and get their job done, while dealing with the negativity directed at them at board meetings, on social media and through emails. Nichols-Washer found it particularly difficult to explain to the community why state Covid regulations were changing weekly, if not daily.
To make matters worse, everyone had a different opinion about the dangers of Covid, she said. Some staff members were afraid to come to work and some parents were afraid to send their children. Others were fighting every regulation, refusing to wear masks, choosing not to be vaccinated, said Nichols-Washer.
“And then there was anger, because people felt so strongly about the issue that it came out, in many cases, in a very aggressive manner,” she said. “And so board meetings got very contentious, packed board meetings, people yelling and screaming, unruly.”
Nichols-Washer understands why so many superintendents leave as soon as they reach retirement age. “You can’t blame them,” she said.
Gregory Franklin moved from Tustin Unified to professor post at USC
Gregory Franklin retired as superintendent of Tustin Unified in the middle of the 2021-22 school year.Credit: Courtesy of Gregory Franklin
Gregory Franklin, 61, retired as superintendent of Tustin Unified School District in Orange County in the middle of the 2021-22 school year to be a professor of education at the University of Southern California, a position he says doesn’t come around often.
Franklin said he could have started working at the university at the beginning of the school year, but he wanted to allow the school board to find a replacement without having to get an interim superintendent.
He has nothing but good things to say about the Tustin Unified school board, which he says puts the education of children first. He was superintendent of the school district for 10 years.
“There was a position that came open, and I applied for it,” Franklin said. “I was pretty close to retirement anyway, so I probably left maybe a year or two earlier than I would have otherwise.”
Being a superintendent has always been a hard job, but it became much harder after the pandemic school closures and the “really brutal politics at the district level” that followed, he said.
Anger at school closures morphed into anger at masking and other Covid regulations.
After the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, school districts took a look at what they were doing to contribute to the inequity, Franklin said. Schools started to diversify the range of novels and authors available in school so that students could see characters in stories that had similar backgrounds and family structures as their own, but that also made some people angry, he said.
Then LGBTQ+ rights and students’ right to privacy about their gender decisions bumped up against parental rights, making more people angry, he said.
“And so we had one thing after another, really starting in May 2020, that has spun things up,” Franklin said. “The number of irate speakers who come to school board meetings now to berate the superintendent, the school board, and school leaders — it’s hard for people. “
