Melissa Ramirez, a first grade teacher at Lockeford Elementary in Lodi, holds up a flashcard while students say and spell the word ‘water.’
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Despite a newfound national focus on the science of reading, states, including California, aren’t doing enough to support and train teachers to effectively teach literacy, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Thirty-two states have passed laws or implemented policies related to evidence-based reading instruction in the last decade. Despite that, nearly every state could do more to support literacy instruction, according to the report, “Five Policy Actions to Strengthen Implementation of the Science of Reading.“
“While states are rightly prioritizing literacy, they are not focusing enough attention on teacher effectiveness and teacher capacity to teach reading aligned to the science,” council President Heather Peske told EdSource. “If these efforts are to succeed … the state needs to ensure that teachers are prepared and supported from the time that they are in teacher preparation programs to the time that they enter classrooms.”
The report rated states as strong, moderate, weak or unacceptable, based on whether they have policies to ensure students receive science-based reading instruction that includes teaching them to sound out words, a process known as phonics. Only 12 states, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia, were rated as strong.
The state gets high marks for setting reading standards for teacher preparation programs, adopting a strong reading licensure test for teachers, and requiring districts to select high-quality reading curricula. California scored lower on whether it requires ongoing literacy training for teachers and on its oversight of teacher preparation programs to ensure they are teaching the science of reading.
Not all teachers are trained in the science of reading
While California provides funds to school districts to offer literacy training to teachers, it does not require all elementary school teachers to be trained in the science of reading, as other states do, Peske said, adding that without proper training, teachers often flounder when teaching literacy, despite having access to high-quality instructional materials.
Effective teaching is critical to improving students’ reading skills. More than 90% of students would learn to read with effective reading instruction, according to the report.
About 40% of students entering fourth grade in the United States can read at a basic level, according to the research. The latest California test scores show fewer than half of the students who were tested were proficient in reading. These results have not changed much in the past decade.
“Why do we see staggering numbers of children, especially children of color and from low-income backgrounds, without fundamental literacy skills? said Denise Forte, president and CEO of The Education Trust. “Because in many districts and schools nationwide, outdated teaching methods and curricula that have been proven ineffective, and even harmful, are still being used.”
The report comes as California and other states are renewing their focus on the science of reading, which is based on over 50 years of research that provides a clear picture of how effective literacy instruction can produce a skilled reader, Peske said.
Only two of the 41 teacher preparation programs reviewed in California adequately cover all five components of the science of reading, according to the report. The five components include phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
California puts renewed emphasis on reading
But that could change soon. By July 1, California will require teacher preparation programs to provide literacy training based on the science of reading and the state’s new literacy standards.The new standards include support for struggling readers, English learners and pupils with exceptional needs, incorporating dyslexia guidelines for the first time.
The state is also eliminating the unpopular Reading Instruction Competence Assessment in 2025. It will be replaced with a performance assessment based on literacy standards and a new set of Teaching Performance Expectations.
“This latest set of standards and TPEs are probably the strongest statements we’ve had about reading and literacy in teacher preparation,” said Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. “We are going gangbusters to get them in the field.”
More than half of the states use outside accreditors to review teacher preparation programs, which researchers say is not ideal. The report includes California as one of those states, but Sandy says that is not the case. Teacher preparation programs in California must be reviewed every seven years by a commission-approved institutional review board made up of university faculty and practitioners across all credential areas, Sandy said. Members are trained on the standards, or have a background or credential in the subject being reviewed, she said.
Teacher preparation programs that want a national accreditation can choose to use an outside accreditor, but it is not required for state accreditation, Sandy said.
California should also include data it collects on teacher pass rates on the state reading licensure test as part of the review of teacher preparation programs, Peske said.
California’s changes to teacher preparation and emphasis on the science of reading were taken into consideration by National Council on Teacher Quality’s researchers when evaluating the state, Peske said. The research was also sent to the California Department of Education at least twice for review. No one at the department said the research was in error, according to the council.
The council has provided a guide to help states implement and sustain strong reading instruction.
“Helping all children learn to read is possible when you have teachers who’ve been prepared in the science of reading,” Peske said. “Much like an orchestra needs each section of instruments to come together to successfully create music, states need to implement multiple teacher-focused reading policies that work together to improve student outcomes.”
Knowing which cybersecurity threats pose the biggest danger to your business can be a tricky task. Even the smallest security incidents involving critical systems can result in large-scale disruptions and costly expenses when trying to resume normal operations.
One form of cybercrime that businesses encounter on a regular basis that has the capability of crippling critical systems and applications is ransomware. These cyberattacks are highly sophisticated in both their design and their orchestration. The simple act of visiting a webpage or opening an infected file can quickly bring a business to a standstill.
To mitigate the impact of ransomware threats, proactive security planning is essential. Below are some important best practices you can follow to reduce your attack surface and lower your chances of becoming a target.
Minimizing Vulnerabilities at the User Level
Every device used to access your company’s systems or networks is known as an “endpoint.” While every organization has several endpoints that require management, companies with remote employees tend to have a much higher volume that requires regular monitoring and protection.
With fully remote and hybrid working arrangements increasing the average number of endpoints businesses have to manage, the potential for bad actors to exploit these connections also increases.
To mitigate these risks, the organization’s perimeter security needs to be thoroughly evaluated to identify and protect any potential entry points. After this is accomplished, companies can use a combination of Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) systems and access control measures to reduce the chances of unauthorized individuals posing as legitimate users.
Additionally, enforcing personal device usage policies is also essential to improving cybersecurity posture. These policies outline specific measures that employees should follow while using personal devices to conduct company business. This may include avoiding open public internet connections, locking devices when unattended, and updating software and firmware regularly.
Educating Your Team on Password Best Practices
Your employees are key assets to preventing ransomware attacks, even if they don’t realize it. Using weak login credentials, coupled with limited password management practices, leads to a high probability of organizational security becoming compromised.
As convenient as using easy-to-remember passwords may be for a user, businesses need to educate employees and enforce certain best practices when maintaining company credentials. Establishing strong password protocols is essential to maintaining security. Employees should be required to update their credentials periodically throughout the year and avoid reusing passwords across multiple platforms to reduce the risk of compromise.
Building a Reliable Recovery System
Creating regular copies of databases and infrastructure configurations is a critical step to increasing the digital resilience of any organization. In the event that your operations face a malicious attack and assets become encrypted, reliable backups help you to bring your systems back online more efficiently. While system restoration may still take some time, it is a much more reliable solution than trying to pay a ransom demand.
A widely recognized guideline for structuring your backup strategy is the 3-2-1 rule. This recommends:
Always keep three up-to-date backup files of critical data
Use two different storage formats (internal and/or external)
Keep at least one copy of the data stored outside your business infrastructure
Following this advice reduces your chances of all backups being compromised during an attack and improves your chances of successful recovery.
Creating Secure Zones Within Your Infrastructure
Decentralizing your network into smaller segments helps when containing the rapid spreading of ransomware. This ensures that a compromised system doesn’t automatically allow a bad actor to freely navigate the entire system. Creating secure network zones helps to limit potential damage and gives response teams more time to address the issue.
Strict user access management is also important for reducing your risk exposure. These measures restrict the amount of open access a person has to a system at any given time. This makes it easier to track access levels if employees leave the company and minimize the amount of data exposure with all employees.
Improving Security Through Proactive Testing
As your organization grows, there becomes a need for additional security protections as your digital footprint expands. Still, it’s important to remember that the measures you put in place won’t necessarily stay as effective over the long term. This is why proactive security testing is so important.
However, for many companies, trying to find security weaknesses across a larger underlying infrastructure can be very resource-intensive. Penetration testing services are a great way to help address this challenge.
Pentesting can help organizations identify where various security mechanisms may be failing. By conducting simulated attack scenarios, these ethical hacking teams isolate critical weaknesses that can lead to a data breach. Once receiving a report back from the team, organizations can then prioritize filling high-priority security gaps that could lead to increased attack susceptibility or costly data security and compliance issues.
Maintaining Compliance and Building Customer Trust
Aside from operational disruptions, ransomware can lead to compromised client and customer data security, which can cause serious legal and reputational harm.
Using strong encryption on all of your critical company data is imperative for reducing this risk. This process makes it difficult for any unauthorized person to access information without the necessary encryption keys. While this step may not eliminate all chances of data being accessed, it will go a long way in preventing the illegal trading of this information on dark web markets.
When trying to maintain customer trust, it’s also important to remember that although there is a greater reliance on AI-powered security systems, certain regulatory and ethical considerations need to be taken into consideration. This includes being transparent with customers regarding how these solutions may use their data and how their information will stay protected.
Build a Stronger Defense Against Ransomware
It’s important to maintain a proactive approach when protecting your business from ransomware threats. By following the provided guidelines, you’ll ensure that your organization is less susceptible to these attacks moving forward and that you have effective response plans in place to help you recover if necessary.
The most stressful time in most people’s academic careers is their first year of college. The transition from the routine of high school is suddenly over.
An entirely new level of freedom is afforded to us, and quite frankly, even that can be overwhelming. You might suddenly miss a class or two and no one will phone your home, and it’s enticing to view college as a chance to catch up on socializing. All this can cause students — especially those in community colleges where material isn’t always as rigorous — to make the mistake of not putting adequate effort into education the way they should.
So, what happens when students hit a snag in the road during their collegiate start?
For myself, there was something else that affected my ability to put my best foot forward in classes. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis just as I began my next chapter in my educational journey. I couldn’t help but feel like my world was crashing down.
This illness can create frustrating pain at times we cannot predict. Attending classes, much less focusing on the material, sometimes felt impossible. My grades faltered as I tried to manage my social life, treat my illness and balance a full load of classes.
My first few semesters in community college featured the dreaded W, or withdrawal, and even a pair of F’s. I immediately knew transferring was unlikely, so I decided to take some time off. Maybe college wasn’t for me. I was forced to put dreams aside and try to find work; and given the price of medication and doctor visits, it wasn’t a bad idea. So I dropped out, and for a time I thought I’d never have a chance to earn a degree.
Then came the Covid pandemic, and with it, work and school from home.
The opportunity to take online courses was enticing, even though I assumed transferring was out of the question given my academic record.
I decided to email an adviser at my local community college, just to see what could be done to transfer despite my less-than-stellar transcripts.
To my surprise, I learned about the little-known academic renewal policy. It allows community college students who have taken two years off to apply to have a limited number of units cleared from their GPA. It will remain on their records to give potential four-year universities a fuller picture of their efforts, but if you can return to classes and start hitting the ball out of the park, there is a chance to rebuild your academic career.
According to the California Community Colleges, academic renewal was first introduced in 2008.
It gives students a chance to petition to have D’s and F’s removed from their GPAs, but they must first earn a certain level of passing grades to start the process.
Ultimately, the work still must be done by the student. You are not guaranteed success by wiping a few W’s and F’s from your GPA, but the opportunity to have a second chance in education can uplift those who face illnesses, economic hardships or other unforeseen circumstances.
Your first semester in college should not follow you forever. And thankfully, the state’s community college system understands this.
When I filled out the academic renewal application with my adviser, I didn’t expect much. But to my surprise, they were very helpful in ensuring that my plan to take the appropriate courses to transfer to colleges of my choice was possible.
What followed were four semesters of the hardest work I have ever put in. I came back as a student on a mission to attend class as often as possible, ask questions to professors, get involved in study groups and even be a teaching assistant. My illness had thankfully gone into remission, and for once I felt like I could be a student.
Thanks to my advisers, professors and fellow students, I transferred to my dream university.
However, I do wish this renewal process were more widely advertised because not all students who have initial struggles in their academic careers will reach out to advisers. Community colleges can and should find better ways to ensure students understand there are second chances through what appears to be a little-known process.
Students across the state should know about academic renewal. It can be the difference between giving up on getting a degree or achieving your goals.
The opinions expressed in this piece 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.
Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, hosts a panel discussion with California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian, California State University Chancellor Mildred Garcia, and University of California President Michael Drake.
Credit: Ashley A. Smith / EdSource
With some of the most racially and ethnically diverse student bodies in the country, California’s public community colleges and universities fail to mirror its students in teaching and leadership positions.
White men dominate the leadership positions within the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems, even as two-thirds of undergraduates across the state identify as Latino, Black, Asian or Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Campaign for College Opportunity.
Notably, the three systems are each led by a person of color: a Black man at UC, an Afro-Latina at Cal State and an Indian-American woman at the community colleges, but the report highlights that those leading academic senates, tenured positions, departments and senior administrative positions are disproportionately white and male.
Seeing instructors, staff members, administrators and presidents from diverse backgrounds on college campuses has been shown to help all students perform better academically, the campaign’s research shows.
“I have often found a disheartening lack of representation while going to school, particularly as a STEM major,” said Casey Chang, an environmental science major at Mission College in Santa Clara. “I’ve had a few professors who are Asian American men, but navigating higher education as a woman of color has been difficult. I have yet to take a class with a female Asian American professor, and it feels like my identity has been left out.”
Chang spoke at an event Tuesday evening hosted by the campaign about the report.
Autumn Alaniz-Wiggins, a student at Chico State University, said she was excited to study nutrition, access and food justice at the school. But when she started her classes, she found that instead of learning about the intersection of systemic racism and food swamps, her instructors focused on the benefits of kale and quinoa.
“It became clear to me that the absence of diverse identities in faculty and leadership positions hindered us from equitable student access,” she said. And for a year, Alaniz-Wiggins dropped out of college. That is, until she met her first Black faculty member at Chico State.
“He taught culturally relevant courses and even hired me as a research assistant where I became published through a study on nutritional knowledge and (low-income) students,” she said. “For the first time, I was getting the support that I needed from the start.”
For the Campaign for College Opportunity, improvement is too slow.
“California’s public colleges and universities as well as our governor and Legislature have prioritized and invested in efforts to increase the representation of faculty and college leaders, but the work is, at best, happening at a pace that is far too slow or at worst, only paying lip service to the values of diversity, equity and inclusion,” said Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity. Despite small increases in the racial and ethnic diversity of faculty and college leadership, “troubling gaps” remain, she added.
The report found that while there have been improvements in gender and racial representations since the campaign’s first report in 2018, the state’s public universities still need to improve diversifying their leadership positions. For example, Latino, Black, Asian, Native Hawaiian and American Indian professors are underrepresented among the tenured and tenure-track faculty groups across the community colleges, UC and CSU systems.
The UC system
There are few Latino faculty members in the UC system, and only 8% of them are tenured or on the tenure track. Among Black faculty, only 3% are tenured or on the tenure track.
Only eight of 117 campus leaders in the UC system are Latino, compared with 25% of UC students who identify as Latino, 39% of all Californians and 49% of Californians aged 18 to 24.
When it comes to women in leadership, only two of the nine undergraduate campuses are led by women, despite 54% of undergraduate UC students identifying as women.
The Cal State system
Only 10% of Latino faculty across the 23 CSU campuses are tenured or on the tenure track.
The report also found that the CSU’s academic senate is also overwhelmingly white. Seventy percent of the Academic Senate and 64% of the campus-wide academic senate members are white, despite white students comprising 21% of the undergraduate student body.
California’s community colleges
Only 18% of Latino faculty across the state’s 116 community colleges are tenured or on the tenure track. Among Black faculty, only 4% are tenured or on the tenure track.
Asian and Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islander students comprise 14% of the state’s community college students, but only 8% of campus or district leaders are Asian or Native Hawaiian.
California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian said she’s optimistic that in five years students will see an increase in diverse leadership across the 116 campuses.
“Tenure happens at the discipline level, not only at the college level,” she said. “As system leaders, we need to set the expectations and shift the mindset.”
Unfortunately, too often during the hiring process, people give arguments about not diminishing standards in the pursuit of diversity and equity, but “those are all false arguments,” Christian said. “We need to focus on what the data shows like the (report).”
UC President Drake said one way to improve the diversity of leadership positions is to encourage the diverse students within the three higher education systems to pursue careers in academia “through graduate school, to the junior faculty, to tenured faculty and to our leaders,” he said. “Those things are evolutionary and they take time. But all the energy’s moving in the right direction.”
Cal State Chancellor Mildred Garcia, hired at the end of last year, said she’s already starting to hold the 23 campus presidents accountable when it comes to making diversity, equity and inclusion a priority.
“We have to remember belonging because students do not understand our campuses,” she said. “What are you doing about your staff? And your senior team?”
But Garcia said campuses should also address the unconscious bias that happens on search committees. The UC system, for example, uses equity advisers in its hiring searches to guarantee a diverse and equitable pool of candidates, Drake said.
There have been some pockets of improvement in closing racial and gender disparities across the three systems. For example, Black Californians are represented in both tenured and non-tenured faculty positions in the community colleges at 6% for both groups, according to the report, which reflects the state’s Black population.
The share of tenured and tenure-track professors who are women has increased from 33% to 40% in the UC system and from 47% to 49% in the CSU. About half of CSU presidents are women and more than half of the CSU board of trustees identify as women. CSU presidents are also racially diverse, with 12 of 23 campuses led by Latino, Black, Asian and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander leaders.
Women also lead 52 of the 116 community college campuses, and 49% of presidents in the two-year system come from diverse backgrounds.
The campaign also recommended requiring all three public college systems to submit a bi-annual analysis of their leadership, faculty and academic senate diversity, and encouraged the Legislature to build a statewide fund that would help the colleges in recruitment, hiring and retention. The campaign also recommended that college presidents be willing to restart searches if their applicant pools don’t have an adequate number of competitive candidates from diverse backgrounds.
San Juan Unified in Sacramento County implemented the Safe Routes to School initiative and other measures to address pedestrian safety, including the Charles Peck Elementary School “May the 4th be with you!” Walk to School Day.
Credit: Courtesy of Civic Thread
This story was updated to reflect Clovis Unified’s 2022-23 accident data that was provided after the story’s publication.
As students waited for a bus in front of Roosevelt High School last September, a vehicle crashed into the bus stop, injuring 11 of them. The next day, a mom was walking her four children to school when a driver ran a traffic light, hitting the mom and dragging one of her children. They were using the crosswalk.
These incidents represent a few of the many accidents involving students or pedestrians being hit by vehicles on or near Fresno Unified campuses between August and December.
“Those are the ones that made the news,” said Amy Idsvoog, executive officer for health services, safety and emergency response for Fresno Unified School District.
Many more incidents never made the news but can still be traumatizing for students and families, causing them to live in fear over their safety when getting to or leaving school.
“We saw a need even last year to try and do something,” Idsvoog said.
Fresno Unified district leaders, Idsvoog said, first noticed an uptick in the number of students being hit by cars in the 2022-23 school year when there were 17 incidents, including a death in October 2022. In the aftermath of the student’s death, board member Andy Levine acknowledged “the reality that our students are not safe when they step right off of campus,” and that the district needed to “make sure that never happens ever again.”
Despite the district’s efforts to improve pedestrian safety, Fresno Unified is recording double-digit numbers of incidents for the second consecutive school year — nearing 20 incidents this school year with about six months of school remaining.
Fresno Unified, the state’s third-largest school district, with about 70,000 students, is trying to curb the frequency of accidents involving students being hit by vehicles by teaching students about pedestrian safety, displaying banners and materials on campuses and educating the wider community on the importance of the topic.
“It just seems to be something that is not stopping,” Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson said in late September after a student on her way to school was hit by a vehicle. “It just can’t continue to happen to our kids. Our kids deserve to be safe as they travel to and from school.”
Now the school district is working to implement the Safe Routes to School initiative to address pedestrian safety.
Fresno-area districts, organizations launched a campaign last school year
Fresno Unified’s 17 vehicles vs. student/pedestrian incidents in the 2022-23 school year was up from seven in 2018-19, nine in 2019-20 and four in 2020-21. The district had zero reported incidents in 2021-22, when all students returned to in-person learning following the pandemic.
But there’s not a sole explanation for the increased number of incidents, Idsvoog said.
She explained that among many factors, possible causes include pedestrians not using crosswalks or doing so incorrectly, drivers not paying attention to a stop sign or traffic light in a school zone, as well as parents dropping students off in the middle of the street, rather than in a drop-off zone. The district has also seen a rising number of cases involving student drivers, including four this school year.
“No one can exactly come up with why yet,” she said.
Idsvoog said she learned from the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of 78 of the nation’s largest urban public school systems, that school districts across the nation have not found the answer either.
Nationally, some school districts have tried different methods to address pedestrian safety, including buying $20,000 speed monitoring displays, Idsvoog said. (Fresno Unified has at least two dozen schools with speed monitors requiring a battery replacement.) As of Jan. 1, thanks to new legislation across the state, six California cities will install automated speed cameras in school zones.
“I think everyone is trying to address the same problem,” Idsvoog said. “I don’t think there’s this magic ticket yet that says, ‘This is what you do.’”
In April 2023, Fresno Unified, the Fresno County superintendent of schools, Central Unified, Clovis Unified, Sanger Unified, the Fresno Police Department and the city of Fresno launched Street Smart, a joint pedestrian safety campaign.
“They all wanted to get the message out and, hopefully, have a stronger impact on the community,” Idsvoog said. “But we know there’s more that has to be done.”
‘It’s not enough’
Despite the multi-agency campaign and other efforts, the number of incidents involving students or pedestrians being hit by vehicles on or near campus has remained stagnant in some districts.
Central Unified, a district in Fresno that participated in the Street Smart campaign, reported one incident this school year of someone being hit while crossing the street near a school — a number that has not changed from the previous school year.
The district has continually invested in crossing guards, monitored signage and crosswalk painting needs and advocated for infrastructure improvements, including a High-intensity Activated crossWalK (HAWK) grant near Herndon-Barstow Elementary, a four-way stop near Teague Elementary and additional sidewalks, according to a district spokesperson.
So far this school year, between August and Jan. 9, Clovis Unified has recorded 18 incidents of a vehicle striking a pedestrian or bicyclist in contrast to eight incidents last school year. No injuries were reported either year, said district spokesperson Kelly Avants.
Still, the district continues to focus on pedestrian safety, Avants said, citing crossing guards at busy intersections, reminders to families to follow traffic laws and education of students and the community.
Fresno Unified also “isn’t there yet,” Idsvoog said about numbers continuing to rise year after year. As of Friday, the number of students hit as they traveled to or from school stood at 17 — already matching the total at the end of the last school year.
In the spring 2023 semester, Fresno Unified launched an age-appropriate pedestrian safety curriculum, which is available again this school year. The school district even sought additional volunteer crossing guards and conducted community outreach about pedestrian safety.
Idsvoog said that Fresno Unified’s education and outreach efforts to address pedestrian safety are not “enough to resolve the problem.”
“Everything we’re intending to do is still not enough,” she said. “It’s not enough because we’re not seeing a decrease in incidents.”
Safe Routes to School initiative
The Safe Routes to School initiative pilot is assessing 15 schools in Fresno Unified, representing the seven high school regions:
Bullard High
Hoover High
McLane High
Roosevelt High
Duncan High
Cooper Middle
Computech Middle
Kings Canyon Middle
Scandinavian Middle
Tioga Middle
Wawona K-8
Herrera Elementary
Lincoln Elementary
Roeding Elementary
Vang Pao Elementary
Also a part of the Safe Routes to School initiative are community meetings.
The next meetings will be at the Roosevelt High School cafeteria on Jan. 18 and at the Bullard High cafeteria on Jan. 22. The meetings run from 5:30 to 6:30 pm.
That’s why the district started the Safe Routes to School initiative this school year.
Through a pilot at some of the district’s schools, Toole Design — a company that assesses city infrastructure, develops pedestrian safety programs and improves school arrival and dismissal — is assessing students’ routes to school.
The assessments will help Fresno Unified find school and district practices to create safe routes to school for all students, whether they are using a scooter, walking, biking or being dropped off, Idsvoog said.
Identifying the routes that students use to travel to and from school each day will allow the district to evaluate whether changes should be made.
In choosing the piloted campuses, the district considered whether students had been hit there, whether bus accidents had occurred and the proximity to another school. Idsvoog said the district hopes to assess 15 more schools next year through grant funding.
The assessments will also determine how the city might be able to help the district.
For example, Herrera Elementary, Fresno Unified’s newest school, between Storey Elementary and Terronez Middle, has no curbs or sidewalks on one side of the school.
Besides creating safe routes for students, the assessments can lead to district events continuing the community’s education on the importance of pedestrian safety.
Such events, Idsvoog said, could help reduce incidents and extend dialogue and awareness.
What FUSD can learn from other districts that implemented initiative
San Juan Unified, a 40,000-student district with 64 K-12 schools, implemented the Safe Routes to School initiative to address pedestrian safety. Located in Sacramento County, San Juan Unified comprises incorporated cities as well as communities such as Citrus Heights and Orangevale.
In partnership with the nonprofit organization Civic Thread, the district developed classroom presentations, demonstrations and other activities on pedestrian safety, according to Natalee Dyudyuk, community safety specialist and Safe Routes to School coordinator in San Juan Unified.
The demonstrations encompass a pretend intersection with stop signs, traffic lights and crosswalks; student volunteers act out what happens when “safe crossing skills” learned in the presentation are used or not, Dyudyuk said.
Following the demonstration, groups visit a crosswalk near the school to practice their skills, she said.
“As I always like to mention to the students, the drivers on the street are not paid actors,” Dyudyuk said about the effectiveness of the real-world scenario. “They are folks who are driving throughout the community, trying to get from point A to point B. It’s a great way to practice because you don’t ever quite know how those drivers are going to react to our presence there.”
Pictured are San Juan Unified students participating in the district’s Mission Avenue Elementary Bike Safety Education. Credit: Courtesy of Civic Thread
San Juan Unified students participate in the Charles Peck Elementary School Bike to School Day. Credit: Courtesy of Civic Thread
Mission Avenue Elementary Pedestrian Education in San Juan UnifiedCredit: Courtesy of Civic Thread
Students learn about crossing the street safely during a Mission Avenue Elementary pedestrian education event in San Juan Unified. Credit: Courtesy of Civic Thread
For its educational activities, the school district hosts bicycle rodeos, helmet giveaways and walk- or bike-to-school days, with students forming a “walking bus” or a “bike train,” Dyudyuk said.
“Parents get really excited about that,” she said.
According to Raj Rai, San Juan Unified district communication director, pedestrian safety efforts date back to at least 2010. District investments have grown from one liaison working with law enforcement to a safe schools department with eight community safety specialists.
In her role since 2021, Dyudyuk works with schools to evaluate student pickup and dropoff and to create checklists and visuals for families to use — education and outreach that continues beyond the initial Safe Routes to School assessments.
Universities implement education, enforcement
Just as K-12 school districts locally and nationally have worked to address pedestrian safety, so have higher education institutions.
Each semester, Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata displays signs “warning and reminding” pedestrians and bicyclists to stop at intersections and others to obey traffic laws, said Peter Cress, a lieutenant with the university’s police department.
When education and warnings don’t work, the university’s police can turn to enforcement: ticketing drivers. Crediting the college’s approach of using education and enforcement, Cress said that the 5,700-student Cal Poly Humboldt averages one vehicle-pedestrian incident causing significant injury annually. In September, a student was hit while crossing the street.
Enforcement — or the threat of enforcement — is the only proven way to change motorists’ behavior, Cress said. So, even though education is imperative to what schools do to address pedestrian safety, Cress encourages K-12 districts to implement enforcement through citations, possibly by partnering with local law enforcement.
That kind of enforcement isn’t an easy feat for K-12 school systems.
Idsvoog said that while the Fresno Police Department has worked to place more patrol officers at schools during student arrival and dismissal, police cannot be at Fresno Unified’s 107 schools every day at the same time while patrolling other parts of the city.
One way to fill the void and help with enforcement, Idsvoog said, is using volunteer crossing guards. With more crossing guards, Fresno Unified can strengthen pedestrian safety, she said.
But there’s never enough crossing guards, Idsvoog said, and the district usually relies on teachers for that role at schools’ multiple crosswalks used by students.
Kimberly Armstrong, second grade teacher at Kirk Elementary, became a volunteer crossing guard out of concern for her students. As a crossing guard, she said she still witnesses people disregarding traffic laws.
“There’s really no consequences for them to do any better,” Armstrong said during the Dec. 12 Safe Routes to School community meeting at Computech Middle School. She implored district leaders to find a way to add police at school arrival and dismissal, even if they have to rotate between schools or regions.
Fresno Unified school officials can report areas where high numbers of pedestrian safety concerns are occurring to police, Idsvoog said, but problems exist at each of the district’s more than 100 campuses.
“Having a police officer there is not just the answer,” Idsvoog said. “There is no quick resolution. There’s got to be a bigger plan: more education, more messaging to parents, yes, consequences.”
‘Everyone’s responsibility’
While law enforcement can define social expectations and attitudes toward pedestrian safety on a higher ed campus, the school community of parents, school staff and community members can set the standard in a K-12 environment, Lt. Cress said.
When parents and community members witness or learn about pedestrian safety concerns, Cress said, they must have difficult conversations with each other, which will lead to “conversation after conversation after conversation.”
“Those types of informal conversations generate a community attitude,” he said.
Ensuring pedestrian safety
“There’s so many things that we all can do,” Idsvoog said, including:
Adhering to speed limits, crosswalks and traffics signs, including the stop signs that are deployed from school buses
Being aware of one’s surroundings
Having conversations with students
District leaders and school staff in the Fresno, Clovis, Central and San Juan districts agreed that student and pedestrian safety is a community effort that requires everyone’s effort — not just parents and students.
“Pedestrian safety is everyone’s responsibility,” Idsvoog said. “And it’s going to take parents, community members and even students to really make a difference.”
Armstrong, the teacher and volunteer crossing guard, said she is optimistic about the district’s efforts, but “time is of the essence” to improve pedestrian safety. The importance of students arriving at and leaving campus safely is often overlooked and missing from the conversation about school safety, she said.
“We can’t just worry about kids and their safety once they’re inside of our school buildings,” Armstrong said. “We have to ensure their safety getting to and from. It’s just as important.”
Not only did UC enroll a record number of Californians and its largest-ever class of California first-year students, but the rate of increase for those students was higher than in recent years, when UC has often seen only modest growth.
That freshman class had 42,058 Californians — or 2,094 more than the previous fall. In addition to the uptick in first-years, UC enrolled more returning in-state sophomores, juniors and seniors than the previous year. Overall, UC enrolled 194,571 California resident undergraduates — or 4,145 more than fall 2022, a 2.2% jump. That accounted for 83.4% of UC’s total undergraduate enrollment. Enrollment of out-of-state students declined, thanks to a drop in the number of returning international students.
The historic jump in California residents is a turnaround from last year when lawmakers were critical of UC for failing to meet their demands.
Campuses that welcomed an increase in California freshmen last fall are: Santa Cruz, Irvine, Davis, UCLA, San Diego and Santa Barbara. Berkeley and Merced saw only modest increases. When including returning students, the largest increases of California residents happened at the Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego campuses. UC officials cited higher retention rates as being among the main drivers of those increases.
“When we take a look at California resident students, this is the largest number that we’ve ever had,” Pamela Brown, UC’s vice president of institutional research and academic planning, said on a call with reporters this week.
Over the last several years, UC has faced pressure from lawmakers and Newsom to prioritize enrollment of California resident undergraduates. In 2022, Newsom implemented a multiyear agreement — or a “compact” — with the system. Under the agreement, Newsom pledged annual budget increases of 5% in exchange for increased enrollment of in-state students, among other things.
The system at times has struggled to keep up with those requests, with higher numbers of admitted California residents not always translating to enrollments in recent years.
UC officials maintain they are committed to continue growing enrollment of California residents, even though Newsom earlier this month proposed deferring $258.8 million in state dollars for UC until 2025. That includes the funding for a 5% increase to UC’s base budget that the system is supposed to receive as part of the compact.
“We’re all in on the compact,” Brown said.
UC also enrolled a more racially diverse student body this past fall. Across the undergraduate student body, the share of students from underrepresented racial groups — including Black, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander students — grew by 1.1% or 3,481 students. By far, the largest increase was among Latino students. UC enrolled 61,075 Latino students, 2,671 more than the previous fall, with California residents making up the vast majority of those students.
UC achieved the increases despite a small decline in California residents transferring from a California community college, with the number of first-time transfer students down by 72. That decline, however, was much more modest than the previous year, when the number of in-state residents who transferred from a California community college declined by more than 1,000 students.
“We feel that this is something that is going to continue to improve in the next few years,” Brown said.
UC’s optimistic estimates for in-state enrollment marks somewhat of a contrast from just a year ago, when UC told lawmakers it was behind schedule in increasing the enrollment of those students. UC estimated at the time that its enrollment of in-state students would decrease in the 2022-23 academic year, frustrating lawmakers who had asked UC to add thousands of California residents.
In fact, though, UC ended up increasing enrollment of California residents on a full-time equivalent basis by more than 1,500 students in 2022-23, officials said this week. That was because students took more classes in the spring and winter than UC had anticipated.
The full-time equivalent calculation is different from headcount enrollment, which is a simple count of the total number of students. The number of full-time equivalent students, which is how the state calculates enrollment for funding purposes, is based on the total number of credits that students take. Under the multi-year agreement with Newsom, UC is expected to have added 8,000 full-time equivalent resident undergraduates by 2026-27, with 2022-23 serving as the baseline.
UC won’t know its 2023-24 full-time equivalent enrollment numbers until the end of the academic year, but the increase in headcount enrollment in fall 2023 suggests that number is continuing to trend upward.
And even though UC is funded based on its full-time equivalent enrollment, lawmakers are just as concerned with ensuring the system continues to increase the total number of residents who attend.
During this week’s call with reporters, officials cited new housing projects that are underway at several campuses and noted that future new students may not all be attending UC’s traditional brick-and-mortar campuses.
“We are evaluating opportunities for students to pursue their degrees through things like our University of California in DC program, through our Sacramento program, which may not have direct footprints on campuses, but still allow them to have the in-person educational experience,” said Ryan King, a spokesperson for the system.
King added that UC will also look to increase online offerings.
Brown also noted that the compact with Newsom has provided the “stability of knowing what we’re getting” and will help support enrollment growth.
This year, under Newsom’s proposed budget deferrals, UC would be asked to borrow money to cover its compact funding — $227.8 million, plus another $31 million to increase resident enrollment and offset declines in the enrollment of nonresidents, who pay more tuition.
In his budget proposal, Newsom said UC would get reimbursed in next year’s state budget. In its analysis of Newsom’s budget, the Legislative Analyst’s Office warned that plan could be risky.
“Not only would this proposal increase the pressure on the state to provide these payments next year—despite continued deficits — but it also would shift fiscal risk to these entities in the event the state does not ultimately make these payments,” the LAO wrote.
Brown, though, said UC remains confident in the compact and noted campuses are already moving forward with their 2024-25 enrollment planning, when UC expects to further increase California resident enrollment.
“Campuses have set out targets that are helping us achieve the compact goals, and we’re continuing with those,” Brown said. “All our enrollment planning functions are looking to achieve the compact goals, and we are expressing great confidence that we’ll continue to get that support from the state.”
Last week, ICE was rounding up immigrant workers in agriculture, swooping them up in the fields where they were picking berries and radishes, trimming the vines in vineyards, and preparing the soil for planting. This is backbreaking work. The videos I’ve seen were taken in California, so this must be part of Trump’s focus on crippling the big Blue state.
The slogan of the farm workers’ union, United Farmworkers, is “We feed you.” If they are all detained and deported, who will do the hard work they do?
Farmers in California are typically pro-Trump; some of them must have called Trump to plead that he stop arresting their loyal workers. That would explain why, on Friday, Trump directed ICE to stop arresting agricultural workers, as well as immigrants employed in hotels and the restaurant industry.
Trump heard them and posted this incoherent response on Truth Social:
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Does Trump really believe criminals are slipping across the border to take jobs as farm workers?
Maybe Trump could launch a campaign to persuade MAGA patriots to pick the crops, not only in California but in Florida, Texas, the Deep South, Midwest and other states that voted for him. How many applicants would he get?
California State University faculty members protest for better salary and working conditions in Sacramento.
Ashley A. Smith/EdSource
For the first time ever, faculty across the entire California State University system on Monday is staging a weeklong labor strike.
The more than 29,000 faculty members in the nation’s largest public university system continue to demand higher wages and for the administration to return to the bargaining table.
For many of Cal State’s nearly 450,000 students, it means missing their first, second or third week of classes this semester or quarter as professors and instructors walk the picket lines across the system’s 23 campuses.
Kate Ozment, an English professor at Cal Poly Pomona, said she hasn’t met her students yet, with the first week of spring classes coinciding with the weeklong strike. Ozment said she posted a notice to her students through the Canvas online learning management system about the strike.
“My goal is to not create confusion with students and my goal is to not harm students,” she said. “I don’t want them on campus because with an empty campus, we win. I sent them information about why we’re striking and that I was participating and I also gave them an overview of the course schedule so they could see how I accommodate the work stoppage.”
Ozment said she won’t be grading, collecting assignments or leading instruction. But she has encouraged her students to work independently this week.
Arabel Meyer, a journalism senior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said all three of her instructors this quarter notified her that they will be striking this week and that classes have been canceled. On the quarter system, students at Cal Poly SLO are in their third week of classes.
“I support the faculty in their striking,” Meyer said, adding that as a college student who can barely afford rent in San Luis Obispo, she understands how difficult it is for a professor making the minimum salary to afford rent in the city. “I can’t even imagine being a college professor and living in the town that I live in and not being paid a wage that is enough to be able to survive and be able to provide for their families.”
Meyer said she’s not worried about a week away from classes hurting her academically, and she’s heard other students celebrate the idea of a “week off.” The real difficulty will be for the professors to “reorganize their schedules and make sure that they’re covering the material that they need to get through in a quarter,” she said.
Nicolette Parra, a political science junior at CSU Northridge, who transferred to university from community college, said she supports the faculty after noticing the problems in CSU.
“There’s a sense of greediness, like the administration just wants more money,” she said. “I am concerned about canceled classes because when the strikes are happening is supposed to be our first week back from winter break. It feels like we are behind. It’s not the professors’ fault, it’s the administration and that worries me.”
Salary and wages remain the top issue dividing the faculty and the administration. The faculty have argued for a 12% general salary increase for this year.
CSU FAculty demands
12% pay raises to stay ahead of inflation.
Pay equity and raising the floor for lowest-paid faculty.
Manageable workloads that allow for more support and engagement with students.
More counselors to improve students’ much-needed access to mental health services.
Expanding paid parental leave to a full semester.
Accessible lactation and milk storage spaces for lactating faculty.
Safe gender-inclusive restrooms and changing rooms.
Safety provisions for faculty interacting with university police on campuses.
Cal State Chancellor Mildred Garcia said that, without question, the faculty deserve a pay increase.
“We are committed to compensating employees fairly, but we are and must be equally committed to the long-term stability and success of the CSU,” Garcia said on Friday during a meeting with reporters. “As a new chancellor four months on the job, I have no interest in a strike. We are ready and willing to come back to the bargaining table with the California Faculty Association, but we must work within our financial realities.”
Garcia said despite the strike, Cal State campuses will remain open this week and provide guidance to students and families and updates about the status of classes.
“The CSU is not canceling classes,” said Christina Checel, CSU’s vice chancellor for labor and employee relations. “Individual faculty members who decide to strike will cancel their own classes. So students should check their class portals or contact their professors to find out whether they intend to hold class.”
Checel said the universities have made contingency plans to continue providing advising, financial aid and other services to students, but the strike “will not interfere with students’ ability to complete their courses or graduate on time.”
Earlier this month, the CSU administration walked away from the bargaining table with the faculty union and offered a 5% pay raise starting Jan. 31. The administration said the salary increase is consistent with agreements CSU reached with five other unions. Over the weekend, CSU also reached an agreement with its skilled trades union, which represents about 1,100 employees.
Faculty say they are insulted by the 5% wage increase.
“Somebody can decide to stop having a conversation with you, but that doesn’t mean the conversation is over,” Ozment said. “They unilaterally decided what was appropriate for us. It was not done in collaboration, it was not done in conversation and it was not done based on any reasonable math from our perspective. What we’re hoping is that this (strike) brings them back to the table. They made a bad choice. They can unmake it.”
A 5% pay raise would have no impact on professors’ ability to make a living when campuses are raising other costs on them, faculty said. Kevin Weir, a Sacramento State professor on the faculty union’s bargaining team, said campuses are raising parking costs, which wipes out any benefits of a 5% increase for those instructors that are already struggling with the cost of living.
But meeting the faculty union’s demands would cost the system about $380 million in the first year and every year thereafter, an amount the system can’t currently afford, said Leora Freedman, CSU’s vice chancellor for human resources.
“The CSU currently spends 75% of its operating budget on compensation,” Freedman said. “If we were to agree to the increases that these unions are demanding, we would have to make severe cuts to programs. We would have to lay off employees. This would jeopardize our educational mission and cause hardship to many employees.”
Freedman said CSU has made several proposals to the faculty union, but the organization has not been willing to reduce its economic demands.
“As soon as either union demonstrates that they’re ready to make meaningful movement in bargaining, we will be back at the table,” she said.
Weir said he disagrees with the university system’s financial arguments. In October, the union released its own independent study conducted by an Eastern Michigan University professor that examined Cal State’s cash flows and reserves. That study, which CSU has described as incorrect, concluded that CSU has about $8.2 billion in reserves and cash investments.
“They have more money coming in than going out every year,” Weir said. “They have enough money to give this chancellor 30% more than her predecessor, and her predecessor got 30% more than her predecessor. They have given campus presidents up to 29% increases. They have no problem rewarding the senior executives of the system, but they do have a problem paying faculty just to keep up with inflation. So, no, I don’t buy their argument.”
Much of the wage dispute comes as CSU has granted salary increases to campus presidents and hired the new system chancellor with a nearly $800,000 base salary, even as the system faced a budget deficit.
Steve Relyea, CSU’s vice chancellor and chief financial officer, said the faculty union has misrepresented the university system’s financial situation. Much of the $8 billion the faculty have cited as available for salaries can’t be used for salaries because it is already committed to CSU’s debt obligations, capital projects, and other contractual commitments like financial aid, housing and parking, he said.
“To use those one-time dollars for ongoing commitments would be reckless and put the institution and our students at risk,” Relyea said.
Even if an agreement is reached between the faculty union and the CSU, negotiations for the next faculty contract are expected to start this spring. Weir said union membership will begin receiving surveys to submit their ideas and thoughts on what changes and demands need to be made in the next contract. Weir said it wouldn’t be the first time that the union and the university system negotiated on two separate contracts simultaneously, with the last time occurring in 2011.
“But I would rather not do that,” he said. “I would rather settle this contract and then move on to the successor contract. I would love to get back into the classroom and be done with negotiations for a while. But in order for that to happen, I need a willing negotiation partner and, so far, management is walking away from the table and indicating they’re not willing.”
Faculty and students have indicated and are aware that if the salary disagreement between CSU and the union isn’t solved, there may be future strikes.
“My students are still facing rising tuition and my peers are still driving for Uber and going to local food banks,” Ozment said. “I think that people should anticipate bigger and longer strike actions if we don’t actually get what we need to run this system because we have it. They have the money. They’re just choosing to hoard it like little dragons from ‘Lord of the Rings.’ ”
California Student Journalism Corps member Delilah Brumer, who is a student at Pierce College in L.A., contributed to this report. Arabel Meyer, a source in this story, is also a member of the California Student Journalism Corps.
It’s graduation week in Los Angeles — a time that should be filled with joy and celebration for students and their families. Instead, fear and uncertainty have taken hold in many of our communities.
Since June 6, federal agents have been conducting extensive raids across Los Angeles, targeting areas many of our students call home. In response, some of our schools mobilized community volunteers or were forced to offer virtual graduation options because families were too afraid to attend in person.
These actions have shattered the sense of safety that schools work so hard to build. These raids and subsequent arrests have sparked protests.
I recently stood with staff, students, teachers and parents in Sacramento, urging legislators to pass legislation that would boost protections for immigrant communities.
Among the group was an undocumented mother of two U.S.-born students who spoke about the emotional changes she has seen recently in her 10-year-old son. “My kids are scared that something might happen during drop-off or pickup, or that immigration officers will try to come into their schools,” she said. “Schools are supposed to be their second homes — places where kids grow, learn and feel safe. But when immigration officials show up like this, it is hard to feel that way.”
Her son now suffers from panic attacks, clinging to his mother after school, terrified she won’t come home. In response, his mother has done everything she can to protect her children, from seeking therapy for her son, to traveling to Sacramento with the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (a nonprofit that manages 20 LAUSD schools in historically under-resourced communities) to advocating for stronger protections against recent immigration enforcement. “I am afraid, too, but I do not show it,” she said.
This family’s feelings reflect broader experiences across Los Angeles Unified — not just for undocumented families, but also for U.S.-born students and American citizens who are feeling the ripple effects of these raids. This past April, authorities were denied entry into two elementary schools after they showed up unannounced and sought to get in touch with students who allegedly entered the country without documentation.
“I’m still mystified as to how a first-, second-, third-, fourth- or sixth-grader would pose any type of risk to the national security of our nation,” said LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who was an undocumented immigrant as a teenager from Portugal.
There are an estimated 133,000 undocumented students enrolled in California, and roughly 1 million live with a parent or caregiver who is undocumented. This will not be the last time we hear a story about agents attempting to enter schools.
Without clear laws and protections, there will be more stories of schools being invaded, more confusion, more fear, and more trauma.
No family should have to live in fear like this. In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that states cannot constitutionally deny a free and public education to undocumented students. Families are trying to exercise that right.
Today, the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools and its partners are urging lawmakers to protect young people when they go to school by not allowing immigration enforcement to be left to the discretion of individual ICE agents. Such actions should be authorized in writing by a judge. Further, when student safety is in doubt, students and their families should have the right to be forewarned and be given the freedom to stay home without schools being punished with funding cuts.
These common-sense measures would help ensure that schools continue to be what they were always meant to be: institutions of learning. When students are scared, they cannot learn. When families fear being torn apart, they are reluctant to engage with educators. And when the government sends agents to schools, trust is broken.
Many states and districts have issued new or updated guidance this year, building on pledges they made to be “safe zones” for immigrant communities during Trump’s first term. Several have published guidance about how schools can comply with federal and state laws and respond to the presence of ICE on campuses and what type of student and parental information can be shared.
LAUSD has continued to be a leader in California and nationwide. In addition, the district board has passed resolutions stating that LAUSD will be an “immigrant sanctuary.” The state has prepared guidance to help school districts comply with state law limiting participation in immigration enforcement activities.
But much more will be needed if we are to keep students and their families safe in an increasingly hostile environment. Join us in urging state lawmakers to support several immigration-relsted, including AB 49, which passed the Assembly last month and will be voted on by the Senate Education Committee on June 18.
•••
Guadalupe Guerrero is CEO of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit that manages 20 LAUSD schools in historically under-resourced communities.
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.
The Los Angeles Unified school board did not discuss the bonds for settling sexual assault lawsuits before members authorized them on June 3.
Source: Livestream recordings of Los Angeles Unified board meetings
Top Takeaways
School trustees authorize bonds without comment or public explanation.
Lawmakers were warned of the financial impact of erasing the statute of limitations.
Other districts also face massive costs in response to a 2019 state law.
The Los Angeles Unified School District board has quietly approved borrowing nearly $900 million — including interest — to settle decades-old sexual assault cases involving former students.
And that will likely not be enough to settle all the claims the nation’s second-largest school district is facing under 2019 legislation that allows victims of abuse by school employees to seek damages for incidents dating back to the 1970s. District spokesperson Britt Vaughan would not say how many claims the district faces, the number that have been settled and what they have cost to date.
Board members approved the expenditure on June 3 without comment, agreeing to borrow up to $500 million through judgment obligation bonds with an estimated 6.10% interest rate, documents show. Unlike bonds for school construction, they did not require voter approval. The debt is due to be paid off in 15 years. The claims are not covered by insurance carriers.
This fiscal year, the district’s undisclosed number of settlement claims was roughly $302 million, Vaughan said.
“The board has been talking about judgment obligation bonds for, I would say, about a year and a half,” board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said in an interview. Spreading out the payments means “the district’s current students aren’t punished by depleting resources,” she said.
No public hearings were held. Board members were briefed about the matter in small groups, she said. “We also had several conversations in closed sessions, as we typically do with legal cases.” She did not disclose the number of claims made against the district or how many were settled.
The district administration will likely ask the board to approve more borrowing next year to settle additional claims, Ortiz Franklin said.
The district is far from alone in facing massive payouts to victims who have filed claims under the legislation, Assembly Bill 218, which experts say is impacting local public agencies throughout the state.
Los Angeles County alone is facing $4 billion in settlements involving formerly incarcerated juveniles and foster youth.
By taking on long-term debt to deal with the AB 218 cases, LAUSD is “lessening any potential impacts to (its) core education programs in the near term,” by spreading out the settlement costs, supporting documents provided to board members stated. Nonetheless, the cost of paying down the bonds will reduce spending on students from the district’s general fund by tens of millions of dollars annually for the 15 years after the bond is issued.
AB 218, brought by then-Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, rolled back the statute of limitations for abuse claims involving public employees like teachers to “22 years from the date the plaintiff” becomes an adult “or within 5 years of the date the plaintiff discovers or reasonably should have discovered that the psychological injury or illness occurring after” reaching adulthood was caused by sexual assault. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill on Oct. 13, 2019.
Messages left at Gonzalez’s office were not returned.
Legislative records show that proponents of AB 218 argued that sexual assault scandals involving the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts showed that victims of child sexual abuse sometimes took years to come forward, often after the statute of limitations to seek damages had expired.
“Victims who are ready to come forward today deserve an opportunity to expose their perpetrators and those who covered up the abuse,” members of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Victim Policy Institute told lawmakers, records show.
Opponents of the bill, including the California Association of School Business Officials and other groups, expressed concerns about cost.
“It will be impossible for employers to effectively defend against these claims when evidence is likely gone, witnesses have moved or passed away, and there has been a turnover of staff,” a summary of opponents’ concerns in legislative archives stated. “With these barriers, schools will be unable to adequately respond to these claims. This failure will result in diversion of funding intended to educate students and serve communities to financing increased legal costs, whether or not the claim is valid.”
A Senate staff analysis warned of “unknown, potentially major out-year costs to local entities and school districts to the extent litigation is successfully brought outside the current statute of limitations and/or the entities are liable for damages.” The bill was unanimously passed by both the Senate and the Assembly.
Last week, in an interview, an advocate for taxpayers was critical of the debts the legislation created for school districts and other agencies.
“These bonds are going to hang around the necks of school districts for decades,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “There has to be a statute of limitations,” he said. “Witnesses are probably gone. All cases have to be time-barred at some point. This is bad policy.”
School districts across the state are facing similar claims allowed by AB 218 and facing crises of how to pay for settlements, according to a January report by the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, or FCMAT. As the matter evolves, there is no firm number of the number of claims so far brought against districts, “but the best estimate is $2 billion to $3 billion.”
“A comprehensive analysis of claims is not available,” the report states. “But what we can conclude is that the impact is significant.”
FCMAT concluded that “the goal should be to completely eliminate childhood sexual assault in public schools” and to “increase mandated training to build awareness of, and reporting options for, childhood sexual assault.”
Other recommendations, such as creating a victim compensation fund to eliminate claims brought against individual public agencies, have received little support in the Legislature and were opposed by plaintiffs’ attorneys, the FCMAT’s chief executive officer, Michael Fine, said in an interview.
The claims and settlements, Fine said, continue to pile up. “The data changes daily.”
