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  • Fresno Unified board names interim superintendent ahead of national search

    Fresno Unified board names interim superintendent ahead of national search


    Fresno Unified Deputy Superintendent Misty Her.

    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    The Fresno Unified school board on Friday appointed Misty Her, the district’s deputy superintendent, to lead the district on an interim basis while the board conducts a national search for someone to fill the permanent role.

    The decision came after closed-session discussions at a Monday meeting and during special board meetings about the interim position on Wednesday and Friday.

    As interim superintendent of California’s third-largest district, Her becomes the nation’s highest-ranking Hmong education leader and brings stability that the district needs, board members said at the news conference after Friday’s meeting. 

    Her appointment, which becomes effective on Wednesday when her contract is approved, allows Fresno Unified to “maintain momentum” without rushing the search process, board President Susan Wittrup told reporters. 

    “We need an interim superintendent who will continue to implement the important initiatives that the district is pursuing and who will ensure that we are fully prepared for the first day of school in the fall,” Wittrup said. 

    The school board said on April 10 that it would consider both internal and external candidates in the search for a new superintendent — a change in the search process that was spurred by weeks of community outrage. 

    The outrage followed a March 20 closed-session decision to interview internal candidates before deciding how to proceed with the search process. Details of the 4-3 decision were leaked to the media, sparking community anger that pushed the board to reverse course on April 3 and postpone already scheduled interviews.

    After the April 10 decision, the search process was supposed to include community participation with the board providing additional updates at other meetings. Although board members met on April 24 for a regularly scheduled meeting, the board president didn’t disclose a timeline in a seemingly stalled process, The Fresno Bee reported. 

    Superintendent Bob Nelson announced his resignation on Jan. 22; his last day is July 31. The school district confirmed in a media release about Nelson’s resignation that Her would be named interim superintendent, but naming her on Friday is a move that most likely won’t restore community trust, according to Fresno Teachers Association President Manuel Bonilla. 

    “The FUSD school board continues to erode community trust with its handling of the superintendent search process,” Bonilla said in an emailed statement following the announcement. “The board’s decision to announce the appointment of Interim Superintendent Misty Her during the Friday News Dump period, following two abnormally scheduled special meetings that effectively sidelined public input, undermines transparency and further erodes community trust in the superintendent selection process.”

    So far, the search process has been engulfed in community angst about an alleged lack of transparency and accusations that the process had been tainted by politics, EdSource reported. District employees at the center of the search, including Her, even faced racial harassment and threats.

    Reflecting on the last few weeks, board member Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas said on Friday that the board is now where it needs to be — united to find its next superintendent who can advance student achievement. Most Fresno Unified students failed to meet the state standards in 2023.

    The district leaders did not answer questions at Friday’s news conference but will host another one Wednesday before the board’s regularly scheduled meeting.

    “Moving forward, the board must demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity and transparency in its decision-making processes,” Bonilla said. “We urge the board to prioritize meaningful community engagement and input in the selection of the next superintendent to rebuild trust and ensure accountability to all stakeholders.”

    Nelson, board members say the appointment is what Fresno Unified needs

    The board’s unanimous decision to appoint Her is what the Fresno Unified community needs, district leaders said.

    “There is nobody I am more confident in leading our Fresno Unified family through this transitionary period than you,” Nelson said, addressing Her, at the Friday special board meeting.  “You have never apologized about your relentless focus on student achievement, and that’s what we really need at this time.” 

    Her’s entire 30-year career has been in Fresno Unified where she’s held many positions, including a bilingual instructional aide, a school leader and deputy superintendent in 2021. 

    “Most important to me,” trustee Veva Islas said, “Misty’s lived experience allows her to relate to our disadvantaged students that no other superintendent can.” 

    Born in a prisoner of war camp in Laos, Her’s family escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand after the end of the Vietnam War before eventually coming to the United States and settling in Fresno when she was a young child, Fresno Unified said in an emailed statement. That firsthand experience and her understanding of the challenges faced by students from diverse backgrounds have shaped her into a passionate and effective leader, the school district stated. 

    Based on 2022-23 state data, more than 92% of Fresno Unified students are minorities, and according to 2023-24 district data, 88% of students are living in disadvantaged circumstances. 

    The school board, which has yet to lay out a timeline, share a job description for the next superintendent or select another search firm to lead the search, will update the community about the national search at its May 8 meeting. 

    The board is “committed and unified” to not only find the next superintendent but to support Her in the meantime, board members said. 

    “Fresno Unified is my life. From elementary school through more than three decades as an employee and a current Fresno Unified parent, my commitment runs deep,” Her said in the district’s statement. 

    “I am proud to serve our students and their families as one of their own,” she said. “Our Fresno Unified family deserves a leader who is a successful Fresno Unified graduate, is committed to this community and truly believes in our students and staff.”





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  • Oliver Darcy: Don’t Fall for the Rightwing Attacks on Biden

    Oliver Darcy: Don’t Fall for the Rightwing Attacks on Biden


    Oliver Darcy is a media expert who reports on the media at his blog called Status. He here writes about the unwarranted jubilation of rightwing pundits who believe that their relentless attacks on Biden’s cognition were correct after all. This turns out to be a useful topic for them right now as Trump is hoovering up all the cash he can handle from his profitable dealings in real estate, bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and other lucrative deals.

    When you compare the two, it’s clear that Biden’s presidency was unblemished by corruption or scandal. The unemployment rate was low, inflation was dropping, and relationships with our allies in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Asia were strong. The Economist said that the American economy was “the envy of the world.”

    Now we are locked, as Rahm Emanuel wrote in The Washington Post, in a state of chaos, corruption, and cruelty. Every government agency has been ripped apart by Elon Musk’s DOGS, and our democracy is turning into an imperial presidency. Trump has assembled a Cabinet of billionaires and FOX News personalities. From day to day, we wonder which government responsibility will be cast aside.

    I don’t know what Biden’s mental state was. But I liked his government far more than Trump’s cruel autocracy.

    Darcy writes:

    For years, right-wing media pushed a warped narrative of Joe Biden as a brain-dead puppet controlled by sinister, shadowy forces. Now they’re demanding vindication—but they do not deserve it.

    Over the last week, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin,” has landed with a flurry of attention-grabbing headlines—not just for the reporting, but for what Tapper has said during the press tour. In an interview with Megyn Kelly on Tuesday, Tapper declared that “conservative media was right and conservative media was correct” about Joe Biden’s mental state. 

    But that’s not quite true. Or rather, it simplifies a much more nuanced media and political reality. While it’s fair to argue that the press should have covered Biden’s age with greater urgency—and to acknowledge that Biden clearly lost a step during his presidency—that’s a far cry from validating the deeply irresponsible narrative right-wing media spun for years: that the president of theUnited Stateswas a mentally incapacitated puppet with dementia, unaware of his own surroundings, and propped up by a “shadow government” running the country in his name. 

    That was never journalism. It was propaganda. Full stop.

    Since the early days of the 2020 campaign, MAGA Media figures—particularly on Fox News—lobbed increasingly absurd claims about Biden’s mental faculties. They painted him as a senile old man who didn’t know what day it was, who couldn’t walk unaided, and who spent his presidency dozing off while Barack Obama or Ron Klain or some other shadowy liberal elite force secretly ran the country behind closed doors.

    This wasn’t grounded in evidence. It wasn’t the result of deep reporting or careful observation. It was pure narrative warfare—an attempt to delegitimize Biden not just as a candidate but as a commander-in-chief. And the coverage became so cartoonish at times that no amount of fact-based reporting about Biden could pierce the right-wing media bubble.

    None of this is to deny that Biden was aging. He was. By the end of his term, it was obvious to those around him—and to many voters—that he lacked the energy he once had. Even Democratic operatives privately acknowledged that he didn’t have his fastball anymore. But there’s a world of a difference between an 80-something president, who has always been prone to gaffes, showing his age and a man secretly suffering from debilitating dementia or worse. And conflating the two, as Fox News and its allies routinely did, wasn’t just misleading—it was malicious.

    Yes, Biden’s debate performance on CNN was troubling. Yes, the press should have been more aggressive in scrutinizing his capacity to serve a second term. But reporters who refrained from joining the right-wing media hysteria were not negligent or part of a cover-up—they were simply cautious. They understood the weight of diagnosing a president with a serious neurodegenerative disorder without hard evidence. And they understood the cost of being wrong, particularly asDonald Trump ran on an authoritarian-like platform that he is now implementing in office.

    MAGA Media’s goal was never honest diagnosis. It was political demolition. They weaponized Biden’s verbal gaffes, his slower gait, and his lower-energy demeanor to manufacture the idea that he was mentally vacant. Never mind that Biden managed the job without the chaos and confusion that has markedTrump’s second term. No matter what Biden did—whether it was biking, traveling, or delivering speeches—the same echo chamber smeared him with the same predictable attacks.

    That wasn’t journalism. It was performance. And it came from people like Kelly and Sean Hannity, who weren’t doing reporting at all. They weren’t gathering facts. They were throwing mud, hoping some of it would stick. And in many corners of the country, it did.

    That’s what makes the current revisionism so maddening. Now, with Tapper and Thompson’s book pointing to Biden’s visible decline, MAGA Media figures are claiming vindication. They’re demanding apologies from journalists who didn’t amplify their dementia narrative—insisting, once again, that they were “right all along.” 

    It’s reminiscent of how right-wing media rewrote history around Robert Mueller’s Russia probe or the COVID-19 pandemic: flattening complexity, cherry-picking facts, and pretending their worst-faith speculation was truth from the start.

    But they weren’t right. They were irresponsible. They didn’t try to understand what was happening behind the scenes—they invented a version of it that was politically convenient. And just because Biden aged, and struggled in the final days of his presidency, doesn’t make their years of bad-faith character assassination suddenly noble. Notably, while they maligned Biden, they let Trump—a man prone to deranged rants and wild conspiracy theories—off the hook entirely.

    Biden didn’t have a perfect presidency, and his age became an unavoidable liability. But he was not an empty shell of a man, either. He governed. He made decisions. He passed legislation. And he did it while under constant attack from a media machine that acted not as a watchdog—but as an attack dog.

    No one owes that dishonest machine an apology.



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  • California colleges agree on how to interpret in-state tuition law for undocumented students

    California colleges agree on how to interpret in-state tuition law for undocumented students


    California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

    Credit: Ashley Bolter / EdSource

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    More than 20 years ago, California passed a law allowing some undocumented immigrant students to attend college with in-state tuition, if they meet certain requirements.

    But immigrant rights advocates say many students who should have been eligible have been wrongfully denied in-state tuition because of confusion over requirements, misinformation and different interpretations of the law at different college campuses.

    “We lose that incredible brain power and colleges are losing enrollment,” said Nancy Jodaitis, director of higher education for Immigrants Rising, a nonprofit organization that advocates for undocumented people to achieve educational and career goals.

    Immigrants Rising brought together officials from all three public college systems — California Community Colleges, California State University and University of California — to discuss and agree on answers to frequently-asked questions about the law.

    The result is a document called the Systemwide AB 540 FAQ, which all three systems have now signed. The document includes answers to 59 questions, such as:

    • What if a student graduated from a California high school (completing three years’ worth of high school credits), but did not attend three years at a California high school?
    • Does a student have to take classes full time for their attendance to count?
    • Does all their coursework have to be taken at the same school?

    Spokespeople from UC, CSU and California Community Colleges all celebrated the document.

    Paul Feist, vice chancellor of communications and marketing for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, said the document is particularly important because there are several different laws regarding the nonresident tuition exemption.

    The first bill exempting some undocumented immigrants from out-of-state tuition, Assembly Bill 540, was signed into law in 2001. Since then, three other bills have been passed to expand the law, in 2014, 2017 and 2022.

    “While the intent was to expand access to AB 540 financial assistance, they had the unintended effect of making it more difficult to navigate,” Feist said. “This FAQ is designed to provide clearer explanations and provide additional resources in advising students.”

    Under current California law, students who are undocumented or have temporary protection from deportation such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, are eligible for in-state tuition and state financial aid, if they attended at least three years of high school, adult school or community college in California and obtained a high school diploma or equivalent, an associate degree or fulfilled the minimum requirements to transfer to a UC or CSU. 

    Access to state financial aid and in-state tuition can be a critical factor for undocumented students, who are barred from receiving federal financial aid. Without the law in place, some of them would be charged tuition rates for international students, often much higher than in-state tuition.

    “This is huge,” said Maria Gutierrez, a college counselor at Chabot College in Hayward and a doctoral student at San Francisco State University. “It helps us be aligned and have something in writing.”  Before the FAQ document, Gutierrez says college staff in charge of approving exemptions from out-of-state tuition were sometimes afraid to make decisions without written proof of how to interpret the law.

    Gutierrez herself has benefited from AB 540. She came to the U.S. when she was 5 years old on a visa, which later expired. She attended elementary, middle and most of high school in California. She also graduated from high school in California. But when she applied to attend community college in California, different campuses disagreed on whether she was eligible for in-state tuition because she had spent two years of high school in Utah. At the time, a second law had recently been passed to allow colleges to consider years of attendance in elementary and middle school for AB 540 eligibility.

    “One college that I went to in So Cal, I was approved for AB 540. When I had to go back to the Bay Area, I was not approved for AB 540. So then I was confused that there was this inconsistency,” Gutierrez said.

    A few years later, when she applied to transfer to a four-year college, both UC and CSU campuses told her she was not eligible for in-state tuition, even though by then, a law had passed that clarified that attendance at community college could be counted toward the requirements. She spent a semester paying out-of-state tuition at San Jose State University, before the university finally acknowledged she was legally eligible for in-state tuition. 

    As a college counselor, Gutierrez continues to meet students who have been incorrectly told they are not eligible for in-state tuition.

    “It’s crazy because in reality it hasn’t changed much,” she said. However, she said, the financial burden is harder now, because most students graduating from high school cannot apply for work permits under DACA, because the government has not accepted new applications since 2017. 

    “I see my students now and I see the struggles they’re going through. If I didn’t have DACA, I honestly don’t think I would be where I am now,” Gutierrez said. “There’s no way that I would’ve been able to pay nonresident fees or wait for whoever it is that is determining that to learn what they need to do for me to be able to go to college.”

    Advocates say they hope the document will help colleges give correct information and avoid students having to research on their own for information.

    California also recently streamlined the process for undocumented students to apply for financial aid and exemption from in-state tuition on the same application when they fill out the California Dream Act application. In the past, students had to both fill out a California Dream Act application and an AB 540 affidavit form for each college. Now, the AB 540 form will be part of the same application.

    Diana Aguilar-Cruz said that change is significant. Aguilar-Cruz is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public health at Cal State Fullerton. When she first began her undergraduate education at Cal Poly Pomona, she was charged nonresident tuition, which was almost double the in-state tuition. She had immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico City in 2015, when she was 14 years old, and lived with her grandmother in Baldwin Park while attending high school. 

    She had completed a California Dream Act application, but no one told her she also had to complete a separate form. After researching it herself online, she found the form and completed it, at which point the university finally changed her tuition to in-state.

    “If I didn’t find it in my Google search, would I be paying in-state tuition for my four years of college?” Aguilar-Cruz said. “I always think to myself, what would have happened if I was a more fearful student or a student who did not have a strong support system at home?”

    This article was corrected to clarify how Maria Gutierrez immigrated to the U.S. and that Chabot College is in Hayward.





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  • We must do more to prepare California students to confront climate change

    We must do more to prepare California students to confront climate change


    Piedmont seventh graders participate in the global strike for climate change in San Francisco in 2019.

    Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource

    I live on the coast of California, near the Point Reyes National Seashore. In February 2023, we endured an abnormally violent storm with 60 mph wind gusts that brought down a large redwood tree onto two cars parked in my driveway. I was shaken but grateful to be alive. I was also grateful for the generosity of my neighbor who allowed me to borrow her car for the next two weeks as I sorted things out.

    When the time came to return the borrowed car, I made sure to wash it, clean it out and return it with a full gas tank. I recalled hearing my father’s voice telling me to always return something you borrowed in better shape than when you got it.

    I realize that my generation of baby boomers has essentially “borrowed” and used the planet for our own purposes for the past 50 years. And now it is time for us to return what we borrowed — and turn it over to the next generation.

    Fifty years of population growth, industrial expansion, carbon burning and general lack of care has initiated a process of climate change that is generating a multitude of physical, economic and social crises. We are trying to mitigate these changes, but no matter how well we do that, we will nonetheless be turning over the planet to the next generation with irreparable damage done and in a state of accelerating decline.

    So what else can my generation do? 

    I think our generation owes it to the next generation to prepare them as well as we can for the world they will face. If we cannot return the earth to them in good shape, we can at least give them a powerful education so that they can survive — and do better than we have done — when it is their turn to assume stewardship of the planet.

    Preparing our children for the world they will inherit is the right thing to do — for them and for us.  But it also could be very good for the California education system. Preparing students for the world they will inherit could help schools find renewed purpose and achieve the relevance that students are demanding.

    In 2015, California published its Blueprint for Environmental Literacy. The document points out that K-12 students in California do not currently have “consistent access to adequately funded, high-quality learning experiences, in and out of the classroom, that build environmental literacy.” Many receive only a limited introduction to environmental content, and some have no access at all.

    Why has so little changed in our schools over the nine years since the blueprint was published? 

    One answer is that the state has not made environmental or climate change education a priority, nor has it invested in long-term, well-crafted initiatives to develop the capacity and propensity of the educational system to change itself. The state does relatively little to develop the curriculum, assessments and professional development that is required to create learning opportunities that can help students prepare for a world dominated by climate change. 

    Over the next five years, California is planning to invest about $10 billion a year to combat the effects of climate change. By contrast, the state presently invests less than 0.1% of this amount to support the development of climate change education.

    This means that for every $100 the state spends fighting climate change, it spends less than 1 cent on educating its students to understand the need for those efforts.

    For every student in California, we spend over $20,000 a year on their school education. Of this amount, we devote less than $2 per student annually to develop our capacity to promote climate change literacy.

    The Covid pandemic provides a clear example of what happens when investment in science and investment in education are not well-balanced. The nation succeeded in creating vaccines that were successful at fending off the worst effects of this new Covid virus. However, the lack of public understanding of vaccines, and in the science behind them, severely limited their timely adoption and success. 

    The same is true with climate change. In the long term, we will not be able address climate change without an equal emphasis on climate change education.  

    California is taking the lead in the nation in supporting policies and research that fight climate change. It could do the same with climate change education. 

    We very much need the next generation to be smarter and wiser than mine. This is not just my generation’s idea of what is good for our youth. They are already demanding of us that we do better in terms of mitigation, adaptation and education. Can we look them in the eye and honestly say to them that we are doing everything we can do to prepare them for what is coming?

    •••

    Mark St. John is founder of Inverness Research, a nonprofit organization that studies education initiatives, and a consultant to Ten Strands, a nonprofit organization promoting environmental literacy for California students.

    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.





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  • Dozens of fixes proposed to deter more mega-cases of charter school fraud

    Dozens of fixes proposed to deter more mega-cases of charter school fraud


    A multi-ethnic group of elementary age children are playing with blocks in class at their desks.

    Credit: Christopher Futcher / iStock

    Audacious, multimillion dollar scandals by two California charter school operators within the past decade exposed vulnerabilities to fraud resulting from inept and negligent oversight and inadequate auditing. A pair of inquiries into those weaknesses have concluded that several dozen actions could help spot, address and potentially deter future attempts by charter school operators to evade state laws and regulations.

    Both reports were issued within the past two months. One is a joint effort of the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) and the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team, a state fiscal oversight agency known as FCMAT. 

    The other is by the Anti-Fraud Task Force of the California Charter Authorizing Professionals, a nonprofit association for school districts and county offices of education. Its report reminded legislators and policymakers what’s at stake in failures of oversight: “Every theft of funds from our public schools not only harms the students, but also undermines public confidence in our public education system.” 

    A third and final report, concentrating on auditing reforms, will be released before June 30 by a multi-agency task force. Chaired by state Comptroller Malia Cohen, it was commissioned by San Diego Superior Court Judge Robert Longstreth, who presided over a jaw-dropping case of financial abuse.

    That case involved the now-defunct virtual charter school network A3 Education, which thrived because of a total breakdown of accountability systems. Its founders, Sean McManus and Jason Schrock, pleaded guilty in 2021 to a conspiracy to commit theft of public dollars, extracting $400 million in attendance-based state revenue, much of it based on phantom enrollments. They siphoned at least $50 million to a company they owned while promising services to students that were never provided. In return for serving four years on house arrest, the executives pledged to repay $37 million.

    A3 operated 19 charter schools approved by small school districts in a half-dozen counties that relied on the 1% to 3% in annual fees to balance their budgets. Collectively, the fees produced millions of dollars. The districts didn’t supervise effectively, because they lacked the capacity, expertise and, in some cases, motivation to hold charter schools accountable. 

    Big revenue for a tiny district

    Among them is Dehesa School District, with 84 students and one school in the San Diego County foothills. It chartered three A3 schools. Dehesa’s former superintendent was the only superintendent of the 11 people indicted in the A3 scandal.

    Dehesa also granted charters to two schools for Inspire Charter Schools, the other suspected perpetrator of large-scale fraud. Inspire, a home-school charter network with a dozen schools in multiple counties with, at one point, 24,380 students, directed 15% of its more than $100 million income to a corporation created by its founder, Herbert “Nick” Nichols III.

    Inspire enticed families to enroll by awarding $2,600 per student to spend on academic enrichment activities of their choice, including annual passes to Disneyland and Big Air Trampoline Park.

    An audit by FCMAT found that the records of financial expenditures and transfers of money from school to school, all run by Nichols’ central office, were so poorly kept and hard to track that FCMAT couldn’t prove fraud or other illegalities — although the deficiencies in recordkeeping increased the likelihood of them, the audit said. Nichols, who received $1,056,000 in advance pay, agreed to pay it back in a severance agreement in 2019 but declined repeated requests to speak with FCMAT, according to the audit.

    A3 and Inspire may have committed the largest-scale fraud, but they weren’t the only cases of embezzlement and probably won’t be the last. Last week, Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, and Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, requested approval of a state audit of a charter school and related operations after whistleblowers told Sacramento TV news channel ABC10 about suspected fraud, waste and abuse of public funds. The audit would include examining oversight of the district authorizer, Twin Rivers Unified.

    The employees of Sacramento-based Highlands Community Charter School asserted problems that include falsified student attendance numbers, cronyism and misuse of public funds for luxury gifts for staff and students, staff bonuses, and political contributions. Highlands Community Charter enrolls adult immigrant students for career and technical courses and English language instruction.

    Reports by both LAO-FCMAT and the authorizers’ task force make similar recommendations for effective oversight, such as demanding that nonprofit charter school boards scrutinize third-party contracts for conflicts of interest and annual financial audits. In return for authorizers doing more work, the LAO-FCMAT report would raise their fees to 3% of a charter school’s Local Control Funding Formula revenue.

    The LAO-FCMAT report calls for limiting small school districts’ ability to authorize charter schools with enrollment no larger than the district’s own. It suggests creating a new entity to approve and oversee all-virtual charter schools, which currently must seek multiple distinct authorizers in many counties, complicating coherent oversight. 

    The task force calls for establishing a statewide Office of Inspector General, perhaps under the state Attorney General, to investigate and prosecute financial fraud in school districts, community colleges and charter schools. The office would have the power to issue subpoenas and prosecute.

    Demand more of charter authorizers

    Past attempts to legislate reforms broke down amid contention between school districts and charter schools’ advocates. But David Patterson, a founding member and now president of the California Charter Authorizing Professionals, said he’s optimistic that collaborative work over two years will resolve disagreements.

    He said the bulk of recommendations would not require statutory or regulatory changes and could be adopted immediately. They’d involve creating a fraud risk management program for all charter schools and charter management organizations, as well as district and county authorizers. Elements would include regularly training charter school board members and fleshing out expectations and statutory obligations for authorizers which, Patterson acknowledged, are “outmoded and insufficient.” Even some of the small authorizers “that everyone wants to pick on, deservedly so, probably met minimal requirements” under the state’s 30-year-old charter school law, he said.

    There also would be clear procedures for filing complaints of suspected fraud, including a statewide hotline, Patterson said. Currently, there are no formal channels for reporting suspected fraud. Jeff Rice, founding director of APLUS+, which advances personalized learning models for 91 member charter schools in California, said he called out Inspire for the Disneyland passes, and others complained to authorizers and county offices about illegal enrollment practices, to no avail, he said.

    ‘The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office charged A3’s founders and administrators with defrauding the state by inflating tuition revenue by purchasing children’s personal information from private and public schools and then enrolling them without families’ knowledge. FCMAT suspected Inspire did something similar by manipulating enrollments in a multitrack attendance schedule.

    Eric Premack, executive director of the Charter Schools Development Center in Sacramento, a veteran charter school adviser and advocate, put the blame on auditors and authorizers for not detecting the fraud.

    “Even the smallest authorizer spending 20 minutes in the school could have and should have found this. If it’s a brick-and-mortar school, go visit at least a couple of classrooms,” he said. “And if there’s no students in the classroom and no teaching going on, you know you have a problem. In an independent study program, go in, look at the enrollment list. And then say, ‘I want to see this kid’s work.’”

    Both reports suggest improvements in the auditing process.

    • Charter school audits are not required to extensively examine enrollment and attendance records. The LAO-FCMAT report would require an auditor to flag for the board and authorizer any monthly variation in enrollment or attendance numbers exceeding 5%. 
    • Sampling records and transactions for compliance is critical to detecting discrepancies. The standard practice is for the auditor to choose what should be sampled. But the LAO-FCMAT report said that in recent cases of fraud, the school had provided the sample. The report calls for mandating that the auditors choose. 
    • Charter schools must choose an auditor from a state-sanctioned list. But there’s no requirement that auditors have any expertise in doing school audits. That would change. Auditors on the state list would be required to take regular training in school financing and regulations.

    The anti-fraud task force and LAO-FCMAT reports focused on non-classroom-based charters because that’s where cases of fraud, including A3 and Inspire, have largely been concentrated. Non-classroom-based charters are defined as schools in which less than 80% of instruction occurs in a classroom.

    Contrary to widespread belief, few of them are strictly online schools, as the LAO and FCMAT discovered. About a quarter of the state’s 1,200 charter schools are non-classroom-based, serving 38% of charter school students. Post-COVID, the combination of hybrid schools and home-based schools that spend part of the week in school facilities is a fast-growing sector of schools. Most report they offer no virtual instruction or are primarily classroom‑based.

    Classification as a non-classroom-based charter imposes a set of requirements to qualify for full funding. Class sizes can be no larger than 25 to 1; schools must spend at least 40% of their revenue on certificated teachers and staff and 80% of their budget on instruction.  

    In a recommendation that surprised and pleased most charter advocates, the LAO-FCMAT report recommends narrowing the definition of non-classroom schools to those offering less than 50% instruction in a classroom. Schools would be able to count facilities expenses as part of instruction, and qualify for after-school funding that other schools receive.

    “We question whether a whole bunch of charter schools should have to go through the funding determination process,” said Mike Fine, FCMAT’s CEO. “The name non-classroom-based charter school is a misnomer for many schools that don’t have a virtual component, have a robust facility (operation) and a cost structure that isn’t any different from any other school.”

    In 2019, the Legislature imposed a two-year moratorium on passing new non-classroom-based charter schools, and has twice extended it. The moratorium expires in 2026.

    Fine said the idea behind the LAO-FCMAT report was to air issues and propose solutions in order to avoid another moratorium extension. “Come next year,” he said, “this will provide a foundation for a starting point of a discussion.”





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  • NYC: ICE Snatches High School Student Who Entered Legally

    NYC: ICE Snatches High School Student Who Entered Legally


    Michael Elden-Rooney wrote in Chalkbeat about the arrest and detention of a public high school student in New York City, which has spurred protests on the student’s behalf. He was attending a school for students learning English. His earnings after school were devoted to helping his mother and two younger siblings move out of a shelter and into an apartment. He entered the country legally. Mayor Eric Adams, who is indebted to Trump for pardoning him, has remained silent.

    The campaign pushing for the release of a Bronx high school student arrested by immigration authorities last week continued to escalate with a new legal petition challenging the validity of his detention.

    Attorneys for Dylan, 20, a native of Venezuela, made several moves Thursday they hope will slow, and ultimately stymie, the government’s efforts to fast-track his deportation following his arrest last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents after a routine court date.

    Dylan is the first known current New York City public school student to be detained by immigration authorities in President Donald Trump’s second term. In the days following Chalkbeat’s Monday report on Dylan’s arrest, his case has become national news and galvanized local efforts to oppose Trump’s immigration policies, including a rally Thursday on the steps of the city’s Education Department headquarters in lower Manhattan.

    Dylan’s attorneys from the New York Legal Assistance Group, or NYLAG, filed a “habeas corpus” petition late Thursday night in federal court in Western Pennsylvania, where Dylan is being held, arguing that immigration officials violated his due process rights by preventing him from making full use of the court system. They assert that Dylan is ineligible for “expedited” deportation because he had legal permission to enter the country under a Biden-era humanitarian program.

    Dylan’s arrest was part of a nationwide enforcement blitz where government lawyers move to dismiss migrants’ immigration cases, allowing authorities to arrest them on the spot and thrust them into a fast-tracked deportation process with fewer legal protections.

    Officials from the Department of Homeland security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new legal petition. They previously criticized former President Joseph Biden’s policy allowing migrants like Dylan to enter the country and said “ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been.”

    For the first week of his detention, Dylan’s lawyers could not reach him because he was shuttled so rapidly between four different states, according to a NYLAG spokesperson and his mother, Raiza, whose last name is being withheld at her request to avoid retaliation.

    His lawyers finally managed to make contact Wednesday morning — just in time to prepare him for an interview with an asylum officer about whether he has a “credible fear” of returning to Venezuela — a hurdle Dylan must clear to avoid immediate deportation.

    The interview took place early Thursday morning, with no advance notice to Dylan’s lawyers. They were only able to get a lawyer patched into the interview after Raiza alerted them shortly before, according to one of the attorneys….

    “Dylan’s arrest and ongoing detention cause him enormous and continued harm,” the filing alleges. “He has been ripped away from his high school studies, his work, and his mother and young siblings who rely on him.” The full-time student at ELLIS Prep, which caters to older newly arrived immigrants, has also been working part-time as a delivery worker, helping his mom and two younger siblings move out of a shelter and into their own apartment. 

    His attorneys argue that Dylan’s arrest and detention have curtailed his ability to access the court system — a violation of the due process rights guaranteed to anyone in the U.S., regardless of immigration status. In addition to his asylum claim, Dylan is applying for Special Immigration Juvenile Status, a type of legal protection for youth under 21 who can’t be reunited with both parents (his father passed away years ago), according to the petition.

    Dylan was scheduled to have a hearing in family court for that case Friday morning but was unlikely to be able to attend from detention — endangering his case, according to his attorneys.

    The lawyers argue that Dylan was never eligible for “expedited removal” in the first place, since the procedure is not meant for people who were “admitted or paroled” into the country like Dylan was, according to federal immigration law.

    Adding to the urgency of the situation is the fact that Dylan is facing severe gastrointestinal issues that doctors were still trying to diagnose when he was detained. “These specialists are currently in the process of assessing whether Dylan’s symptoms are the result of cancer or [Crohn’s] disease,” and recommended an “immediate in-person follow up appointment,” the filing states...

    Meanwhile, Dylan’s case has continued to pick up public attention. An online fundraiser that launched Wednesday to help Dylan’s mom with expenses related to his legal case and caring for her two younger children had collected more than $27,000 by Friday morning.

    And hundreds of supporters — including elected officials and city schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos — rallied outside of the Education Department’s downtown Manhattan headquarters calling for his release.

    Chants of “Free Dylan” echoed through the crowd of teachers union members, immigration advocates, students, and anti-Trump protesters.

    “Dylan is a student, a worker, and part of our community. He did everything right, and still, ICE tore him away from his life and family in New York,” U.S. Rep. Nydia Velasquez said in a statement, the second federal elected official to publicly challenge Dylan’s detention.



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  • LAUSD union members rally, demand an end to alleged ‘Carvalho cuts’

    LAUSD union members rally, demand an end to alleged ‘Carvalho cuts’


    Members of UTLA and SEIU Local 99 rally outside of Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters on May 7, 2024.

    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    Thousands of Los Angeles Unified School District teachers and employees took to the street outside the district headquarters on Tuesday to demand an end to what they describe as the “Carvalho cuts,” referring to the superintendent. 

    Members of both United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and SEIU Local 99, which represents roughly 30,000 workers in LAUSD, anticipate staffing and program cuts in the upcoming academic year, despite Los Angeles Unified having roughly $6.3 billion in its reserves. 

    “We’re out here making sure the district hears us and funds our positions properly,” said Conrado Guerrero, the SEIU Local 99 president, who has served as a building engineer in LAUSD for 27 years.

    “We’re so understaffed,” he said outside a district board meeting on Tuesday. “We’re being overworked, and they’re underpaying us. After a while, you just become a robot from working and don’t have time to be with your family.”

    UTLA also claims in a news release that the district has failed to set aside enough money to keep its current staffing and services and is instead planning to “reclaim an unprecedented portion of ‘carryover funds’ that schools rely on to address budget shortfalls.” 

    Amid declining enrollment, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told The 74 in an interview in December that LAUSD was implementing a targeted hiring freeze and may have to consider consolidating or closing some of its schools as pandemic aid funds run dry. 

    “Los Angeles Unified is committed to prioritizing investments that directly impact student learning and achievement,” an LAUSD spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource on Tuesday. “We are exploring a multi-faceted approach that combines fiscal responsibility with strategic resource allocation.  

    “We will protect our workforce and the historic compensation increases that were negotiated, and we will protect programs for our students.” 

    If the cuts take place, union members fear these positions, among others, could be at risk: 

    • special education assistants
    • campus aides
    • school supervision aides
    • pupil services 
    • attendance counselors
    • psychiatric social workers
    • school psychologists
    • library aides
    • IT and tech support staff
    • Art and music teachers

    The unions have stated that on top of reducing students’ access to services such as mental health and special needs support, the cuts will also lead to messy or dirty classrooms and larger class sizes. 

    Support for programs like the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan, community schools and English language learner programs could also take a hit, they say. 

    Cheryl Zarate, an eighth grade teacher at Thomas Starr King Middle School, said she found out about the cuts from her school principal and immediately felt “devastated.” 

    Thomas Starr King Middle School alone could lose as many as six campus aides, two counselors, school climate advocates, custodians and an assistant principal, Zarate said. School psychologists, she added, will no longer be available every day — and will only be on campus twice a week.

    These cuts, Zarate said, would have a particularly negative effect on students with disabilities and those who are struggling with mental health challenges. 

    “It scares me and the other educators to know that we have middle school students who go through mental fatigue and anxiety and, God forbid, have suicidal ideations,” Zarate said. 

    “Are we supposed to schedule out when a student is going to have a mental breakdown?” 

    Zarate added that LAUSD should be focused on keeping and supporting the staff, not prioritizing other initiatives such as the diagnostic assessment tool called iReady and its newly launched AI tool, Ed. 

    “All these projects … are not relevant to what we asked and fought for, which is a full-time staff … mental health, safety, a greener campus for our students,” Zarate said. 

    “That’s what we deserve. That’s what the students deserve.”

    Amid a sea of UTLA red and SEIU purple, the rally’s participants shook tambourines, waved pompoms and chanted “stop the cuts.”

    Among them was William Chavez, a social science teacher at Wilson High School, who has worked in LAUSD for a decade. 

    “We’re sending a clear, unified message to the superintendent and the school board that these deep cuts are unfair and unjust,” Chavez said. “We’ll all have to wear more hats. We’ll have to do even more work, and something’s got to give, and that really hurts the students.”

    Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • Federal Judge Restores Visa to Russian Harvard Scientist

    Federal Judge Restores Visa to Russian Harvard Scientist


    I wrote a post about this case a week ago. A scientist at Harvard, who left Russia as an anti-war dissenter, was detained at Logan Airport in Boston on her return from France because she had scientific samples that she did not declare. The samples–frog embryos on slides–posed no danger to anyone. She was immediately stripped of her visa, arrested, and sent to Louisiana to await deportation. A federal judge just granted her bail.

    I recall that Trump campaigned on a pledge to deport rapists, murderers, “the worst of the worst.” This young woman is a scientist who is working to find the causes of cancer. Why does he want to deport her?

    The New York Times reported:

    A federal judge on Wednesday said she would grant bail to Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist employed by Harvard University, in an immigration case stemming from Ms. Petrova’s failure to declare scientific samples she was carrying into the country.

    “There does not seem to be either a factual or legal basis for the immigration officer’s actions” in stripping Ms. Petrova of her visa on Feb. 16, Christina Reiss, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Vermont, said in a court hearing.

    The judge said the available evidence suggested that the samples Ms. Petrova carried into the country were “wholly non-hazardous, non-toxic, non-living, and posed a threat to no one.” She also said that “Ms. Petrova’s life and well-being are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” as the government has said it intends to do.

    Unlike other high-profile deportation cases involving academics, Ms. Petrova’s began with a customs violation. Returning to Boston from a vacation in France, she agreed to carry back samples of frog embryos from an affiliate laboratory at the request of her supervisor at Harvard Medical School.

    When the samples were discovered during an inspection of Ms. Petrova’s baggage at Logan Airport, the customs official canceled her visa on the spot and started deportation proceedings. She was transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where she remained for more than three months.

    “This is kind of a circular process, because it was the government that revoked her visa,” Judge Reiss said on Wednesday. “And it’s essentially saying, ‘We revoked your visa, now you have no documentation and now we’re going to place you in removal proceedings.’” 

    She concluded that “what happened in this case was extraordinary and novel,” and that if she did not take action in the case “there will be no determination” that Ms. Petrova’s constitutional rights had been violated.

    “Bail is necessary to make the habeas remedy effective in this case,” she said.

    However, it is unclear when the government will allow Ms. Petrova’s release on bail, or whether it will pursue its plan to deport her to Russia. The case has attracted high-level attention from officials in the Trump administration, who took an unusual step earlier this month, after Judge Reiss indicated she planned to release Ms. Petrova.

    Hours after that hearing, the Department of Justice unsealed felony smuggling charges against Ms. Petrova based on her failure to declare the scientific samples, and Ms. Petrova was arrested and transferred to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in Louisiana, where she remains. 

    Ms. Petrova’s next opportunity for release will come after she is transferred to Massachusetts to face the smuggling charges. But the government also issued a detainer on immigration charges, raising the possibility that, if a judge grants her bail in the criminal case, the government could ask ICE to detain her once again.

    Judge Reiss asked Jeffrey M. Hartman, the attorney representing the Department of Justice at the bail hearing, whether that would happen. 

    He said he did not think so, citing the recent releases of Mohsen Mahdawi, a student organizer at Columbia University, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University.

    “My understanding of the Ozturk and Mahdawi cases is that the government has not re-detained those noncitizens, and I would expect the government to adhere to the same course of action,” Mr. Hartman said. 

    Ms. Petrova, 31, the graduate of an elite Russian physics and technology institute, was recruited in 2023 to work at a laboratory at Harvard Medical School studying the earliest stages of cell development. The Kirschner Lab, where she worked, is exploring ways to repair damage to cells that lead to diseases like cancer.

    Ms. Petrova has admitted that she failed to declare the samples. Her lawyer has argued that this would ordinarily be treated as a minor infraction, punishable with a fine. 

    When Ms. Petrova told the customs officer that she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest if she returned there, she was transferred to ICE custody to wait for an asylum hearing, a process that can take months or years.



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  • Berkeley Unified faces federal investigation into charges of antisemitism

    Berkeley Unified faces federal investigation into charges of antisemitism


    Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel speaks before the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on May 8, 2024.

    Credit: YouTube

    This story was updated on May 8 to include hearing testimony and additional reporting.

    The Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education informed Berkeley Unified Tuesday that it will investigate charges that the district has failed to respond properly to rising incidents of antisemitism in its schools. 

    Berkeley Unified Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel acknowledged receiving the notification letter during a grilling on Capitol Hill Wednesday during which she said the district investigated nine formal complaints by parents of antisemitism against students.

    “However, antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley Unified,” she told members of a subcommittee of the House Education and Workforce Committee. “When investigations show that an antisemitic event has occurred, we take action to teach correct and redirect our students.” She declined to specify what those actions were, citing state and federal confidentiality laws. 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1M4yPBKdT8

    Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel speaks before the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on May 8, 2024.

    The Office of Civil Rights is responding to a Feb. 28 complaint by two Jewish civil rights organizations urging an investigation into the “virulent wave of antisemitism” aimed at Israeli and Jewish students in Berkeley Unified schools. The “bullying and harassment” started after the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas of Israelis and the brutal retaliation by the Israeli army in Gaza.

    In its letter, the Office of Civil Rights said it would investigate two issues. One is whether the alleged harassment by students and teachers violated Jewish students’ protections based on national origin (shared national ancestry) under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The second issue is whether students and teachers threatened to retaliate against two parents who had complained about harassment.

    The complaint cites an instance in which an elementary school teacher threatened a parent who complained about her pro-Palestinian instruction. The name and alleged specific threat were redacted.

    This week, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League expanded its 41-page complaint on May 6. It amplified its request for an investigation, stating that “the already-hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” has worsened. It said that recent school board meetings “have devolved into vicious attacks on Berkeley Jewish parents by (Berkeley Unified) faculty members shouting defamatory lies and anti-Semitic tropes about Jews.”

    “Jew hatred is escalating at an alarming level,” the updated complaint said.

    The complaint asserts that the district has “created a hostile environment that leaves Jewish and Israeli students feeling marginalized, attacked, frightened, and alienated to the point where many feel compelled to hide their Jewish or Israeli identity.” It cited the hostile atmosphere at school board meetings where Jewish parents were taunted, including one mother who said her son and other students were called “dirty Jews” and “kikes,” an epithet for a Jew.  

    “Non-Jewish students are led by their teachers’ example to believe that they can freely denigrate their Jewish and Israeli classmates, telling them, e.g., that ‘it is excellent what Hamas did to Israel’ and ‘you have a big nose because you are a stupid Jew,’” the complaint said.

    Berkeley, synonymous with decades of protests, from the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam War through Black Lives Matter protests, is now a flash point of acrimony over how the Palestinian and Israeli conflict is being taught in its schools, including a district-adopted Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum that views Israel and Zionists as oppressors.  

    The resulting antisemitism is why district Ford Morthel was summoned to for questioning at a Republican-led House hearing titled “Confronting Pervasive Antisemitism in K-12 Schools.”

    At a recent Berkeley Unified board meeting, Ford Morthel said she viewed the civil rights complaint as “an opportunity to further examine our practices, procedures and policies and to ensure compliance with federal laws and to make sure that we are truly advancing towards our mission and our values for all of our students.”

    In the complaint, the civil rights organizations charged that district has not responded to “scores of complaints” by parents, and neither the school board, which has regularly heard evidence from parents at meetings, nor has Ford Morthel intervened or indicated concern, the complaint said. 

    With names redacted, the complaint and follow-up cited dozens of instances of antisemitic behavior based on firsthand observations and students’ accounts to their parents. 

    “In every case and every incident that we listed, there was notification, and sometimes parents begged for help with certain things, and there was either not an adequate response or no response,” said Marci Miller, a California-based attorney with the Brandeis Center.

    During the hearing Wednesday, Ford Morthel cautioned that personnel actions are also private and legally protected in California. “So non-disclosure can again be confused with inaction. We work proactively to cultivate respect, understanding, and love in our diverse district, modeling how to uplift and honor each individual that makes up the beautiful fabrics of our schools.”

    But Miller said after the hearing that parents notified teachers and administrators many more times than the nine formal complaints that Ford Morthel cited and rarely heard back. “The district certainly did not do enough to address the problem,” she said.

    The complaint details the following:

    On Oct. 18, Berkeley teachers promoted an unauthorized walkout of school without parental permission in support of Gaza. Students from Berkeley High chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a phrase that implies the elimination of Jews from Israel. Students at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School also walked out. Parents said they heard students say “Kill the Jews”, “F— Israel” and “Kill Israel.” A second walkout occurred on March 20. 

    A ninth-grade art teacher at Berkeley High showed violent pro-Hamas videos and papered his classroom walls with anti-Israel and antisemitic images, including a fist holding a Palestinian flag pushing through a Star of David. A girl in the class ran from the class “shaking and crying”; her parents complained about the hostile environment. She was transferred to another class, where the teacher began wearing a “Free Palestine” patch on her clothing. After CNN and other media cited the first art teacher in reports on antisemitism in the district, the district put the teacher, identified as Eric Norberg, on paid administrative leave.

    Right after Oct. 7, a second-grade teacher at Malcolm X Elementary displayed a large Palestinian flag facing students and teachers walking to school in the classroom window. She had her class write “anti-hate” messages on sticky notes, including “Stop Bombing Babies,” which the teacher posted outside the classroom of the only Jewish teacher in the school, the complaint alleged.

    The complaint said that in all cases where Jewish parents complained, the district’s response has been to transfer students to other classes but not to discipline or confront the teacher. Shuttling students between classes to separate them from hostile teachers does not comply with federal civil rights laws, which require training and intervention for the offending teachers and for the larger school community as well.

    The complaint said that the district has disregarded its own policy on teaching controversial issues by allowing teachers to impose one-sided views of the Gaza conflict. The district’s rules restrict a teacher from using “his/her position to forward his/her own religious, political, economic or social bias” and require that “all sides of the issue are given a proper hearing, using established facts as primary evidence.”

    Jewish parents in Berkeley are also opposing the renewal of a contract for developing an ethnic studies curriculum in partnership with the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium. It’s offering a version of ethnic studies that the California School Board rejected and that Gov. Gavin Newsom has criticized. 

    This proposed curriculum, which is under development and has not been publicly released, is scheduled to be taught throughout K-12 starting next fall. In their letter to the school board, the parents called it “a non-inclusive, biased, divisive, and one-sided ideological world view.”

    After teachers this year developed lessons on the Israel-Palestine conflict for ninth graders, parent Yossi Fendel sued the district for the lesson plans he charged were denied to him. The lawsuit also claims that the lessons he was allowed to view were biased against Israel and violated the district’s policy on teaching controversial issues, the publication Berkleyside reported.

    Matt Meyer, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, had declined to comment about the complaint. But in a comment at the April 10 school board meeting, he said, “Never have I seen such personal attacks or the attempt to micromanage our educators.”

    “I’m not claiming that teaching controversial topics in a community that has starkly different opinions is an easy task, but our teachers should be able to do this without the threat of a district complaint being outed in the media or threatened in random emails,” he said. “If something is not exactly right, it will be corrected. But the tactic of an attempted wholesale silencing of valid perspectives about a global conflict does not serve the goal of educating our students and preparing them for the wider world.”

    In a joint statement Wednesday, Meyer and California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas said they were confident Ford Morthell and district staff would conduct appropriate investigations into allegations of antisemitism. They said they were concerned that the current corrosive political climate “is having a chilling effect on our classrooms, where some teachers are deciding not to teach age-appropriate, factual lessons about a global conflict for fear of being harassed.” 

    In comments during school board meetings, some teachers also said parents’ complaints were an effort to squelch discussion of what they described as the Israeli genocide in Gaza. At a recent meeting, Christina Harb, a Palestinian American teacher, said,  “A small group of very entitled parents who are uncomfortable with the reality of what’s happening are trying to conflate the issue of Palestine with the issue of antisemitism, undermining the seriousness of both issues.”

    But Ilana Pearlman, an outspoken Jewish parent of two Berkeley Unified students , dismissed that criticism, and said that Berkeley children have been the victims of their peers and teachers acting badly. She says she keeps hoping it will end.

    “When I’ve spoken at school board meetings, I’ve made a very important distinction to only discuss overt cases of antisemitism. So nobody can come at me with wild accusations of suppressing anti-war voices,” she said. “I’ve stuck to just the bare-bones facts of Jews being called stupid at elementary schools, of another parent of a second grader who told me students are calling Jewish students baby killers.

    “What I’m really finding troubling is not only are we not being believed, but there’s this approach of digging heels in further to say that we’re making up bogus lies,” she said. “I want for our kids to be safe, and I want for the classrooms to stop being politicized. And what that looks like is leaders leading and denouncing antisemitism in its tracks as it’s happening.”

    Ford Mortel was joined at the hearing  by superintendents of  New York City, the nation’s largest school district,  and Montgomery County, Maryland. Both experienced highly publicized incidents of antisemitism since the Oct. 7 massacre of Jews in Israel by Hamas and the ongoing Israeli military response that has led to an estimated 35,000 deaths in Gaza. Rep. Aaron Bean, R-FL, chaired the hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education. 

    The Education and Workforce Committee has previously interrogated college presidents over their responses to campus antisemitism, leading to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Columbia University’s president recently also faced tough questioning.





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  • Amid division, attempt to remove Fresno City College academic senate president fails

    Amid division, attempt to remove Fresno City College academic senate president fails


    Tenured communication instructor Tom Boroujeni, who is on involuntary administrative leave, spoke at the May 8, 2024, Fresno City College Academic Senate meeting, in which the senate voted on removing him as president.

    Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource

    This story has been updated with the exact number of yes, no and abstention votes counted. The membership secretary for the academic senate provided the numbers to EdSource Thursday evening. A statement about the votes has also been clarified.

    The Fresno City College Academic Senate on Wednesday failed to take action on tenured communication instructor Tom Boroujeni, who has been on involuntary administrative leave since Nov. 30 but has refused to step down as president. 

    During the final meeting of the semester, not enough members of the senate voted to remove Boroujeni as president, and not enough voted to table the removal until next semester in August. Many senators abstained from the votes. Even though more instructors voted to remove him as president than to table the matter, without a majority, the academic senate will end the semester and likely start a new school year under the leadership of the president-elect and acting president, Jackie Williams. 

    It leaves the academic senate in limbo, said theater design instructor Christina McCollam-Martinez, who had filed two petitions to remove Boroujeni as president.

    “We can’t move forward; we’re stuck,” McCollam-Martinez said during the meeting. “When you don’t get to choose anymore, you get stuck; you don’t have an option.”

    Members of the senate were divided over whether a removal impacts due process, speaks to one’s belief about the allegations, puts the senate back on track or sends a message about faculty rights — a contention made by Boroujeni. 

    “I’m not doing that (stepping down) because I’m an advocate for faculty,” Boroujeni told his colleagues during the meeting, at which he had permission to speak, not as a member of the academic senate but as a member of the public. He did not speak as a community member, though, but twice during discussions by the senators.

    Boroujeni was put on leave following a Nov. 29 EdSource report that revealed that a Fresno State investigation determined that Boroujeni committed an “act of sexual violence” against a professor and colleague who also works at Fresno City College. Some professors canceled classes. Boroujeni denied that any sexual violence took place. He also claimed that the Fresno City College suspension stemmed from disagreements with State Center Community College District over academic policies.

    With a recent change in Fresno City College senate bylaws, the executive board recommended the removal of Boroujeni because his administrative-leave status caused Williams to become acting president with no one serving as president-elect, a key post on the executive board. 

    ”Voting to remove the current president is not about whether they did or did not do what they are on leave for,” said Alana Jeydel, a history and political science professor. “It’s simply about the fact that our senate can’t go for a semester or possibly longer with someone who hasn’t been here. … We need the person who’s been here for the past semester to keep working for us.” 

    No longer “silent” about what to do when an officer is on leave, the bylaws now state that a leave of absence can trigger a process to fill the vacancy. The bylaws of many academic senates across the state reportedly have language requiring a senator to relinquish the seat for any leave. 

    A removal would have made Williams president starting next semester and led to elections for a president-elect. 

    Though no decision was made about Boroujeni’s role as president, the failed attempt to remove him is indicative of the division at the college. Eleven senators at the meeting abstained from the removal vote.

    Waiting on outcome of investigation?

    When the community college district put Boroujeni on paid leave in late November, the district also launched an investigation.

    Boroujeni told his colleagues that his administrative leave, which district and college administration hasn’t publicly disclosed details about, is not related to the Fresno State case but to three Fresno City College complaints filed months ahead of the district’s decision to place him on leave, following EdSource’s report on the Fresno State sexual violence investigation and subsequent decision by his colleagues to cancel classes. 

    Boroujeni said that the investigation was set to end this week but was extended until May 31. He has characterized the complaints as allegations of “gender discrimination.” 

    “The road map that you need is: Wait for the investigation to end,” Boroujeni told his colleagues before their vote. “If there is anything in the investigation, use that to remove me because that will give you the ammunition so you can preserve the power of the academic senate.” 

    Because the college has not yet concluded the investigation, some instructors said they preferred to wait on the outcome before voting on the removal. Nikki Visveshwara and Eileen Gonzalez, professors in the nursing department, said Boroujeni has the right to due process. 

    “I think we should’ve waited to find out what the judgment from the district was … so that we have full information when we’re making the vote,” said Michael Takeda, past academic senate president and member of the executive board, who did not support the recommendation for Boroujeni’s removal. 

    Expecting a judgment or specific details to be publicized or shared by the district may not be realistic. Over the last six months, district spokesperson Jill Wagner has not disclosed details of the investigation, stating that it is a personnel matter. 

    Even when it is resolved, “we don’t necessarily talk about it because it’s still a human resources matter,” Wagner told EdSource in mid-February. Wagner did not immediately respond to requests for additional information or comment on Wednesday.  But, when the investigation concludes, the findings will be subject to California’s Public Records Act which requires the release of personnel investigations when allegations are confirmed.

    “Unacceptable to have this cloud hanging over us”

    Boroujeni has taught at Fresno City College since 2015, the same year he began his academic career at Fresno State while still a graduate student. The victim of the alleged sexual misconduct is also a professor and Boroujeni’s colleague at the community college. The State Center Community College District, parent agency to Fresno City College, learned of the sexual misconduct investigation when the alleged victim requested a no-contact order, which was granted in the spring semester of 2022.

    Fresno State opened the investigation in 2020 based on the federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX, records show. The investigation determined that Boroujeni committed sexual violence in 2015. At the time of the incident, Boroujeni was a part-time instructor at Fresno City College while finishing a master’s degree at Fresno State, records show.

    Boroujeni was never disciplined in the sexual violence matter because he was a graduate student when the alleged violence occurred. Boroujeni resigned from Fresno State in 2022 after officials said the act-of-sexual-violence report would be placed in his personnel file.

    Despite Boroujeni’s assertions linking the senate’s proposed action to the investigation, most of the professors who spoke in favor of the removal said their position had nothing to do with the allegations but the senate’s ability to perform its duties.

    Business instructor Robert Schmalle, who didn’t take a position on the allegations against Boroujeni, reminded his colleagues that the academic senate is a political body making political decisions. 

    Both he and anthropology professor German Loffler said keeping Boroujeni as president reflects poorly on the college and senate.

    “It’s just simply unacceptable to have this cloud hanging over us,” Schmalle said. 

    And a removal is not about the administrative leave, Jeydel, the political science professor, reiterated. 

    “It’s simply to replace somebody who is on leave — for whatever reason it is,” she said. “I don’t see the vote as about passing judgment on what one person has or has not done.”

    The academic senate president works with the college’s administration in setting academic policy and represents the senate and faculty at college, districtwide and public meetings. 

    Amended bylaws have been months in the making

    With an April 24 change in bylaws, Wednesday’s meeting was the first time that the senate has been able to vote on action to handle Boroujeni’s inability to fulfill the duties of president during his leave. 

    The academic senate amended its bylaws last month, but the process has been months in the making, dating back to before Boroujeni was placed on leave. 

    But Boroujeni accused the academic senate of changing the bylaws due to his leave. 

    The bylaws, according to Williams, were addressed the entire semester with proposed changes being brought to the senate for feedback.

    “It was not precipitated or initiated in response to President Boroujeni being placed on administrative leave,” she said. “There was already the plan for revise.” 

    She told EdSource in January that as the senate went line by line through the bylaws, members learned that the bylaws were silent on what to do when officers are on leave.

    Language on quorum, absenteeism, proxy attendance, officers and officer responsibilities were tweaked alongside the addition of: “In special circumstances, e.g., the removal/resignation of multiple officers, or leaves of absences of an officer, the Executive Board shall determine the process for filling the vacancies.”

    Before the bylaws were amended, the only way to remove Boroujeni was through a petition with at least 25% of senators signing to initiate a vote, during which 50% must be present, and 75% must vote for removal. The revision changed the voting requirement to two-thirds, or 66%.

    Since December, there have been three petitions calling for Boroujeni’s removal as president. 

    Under the added process in the bylaws, removing Boroujeni, who is on leave, required a majority vote of members present. Of the 62 members present, 29 voted to remove him and 15 voted to table the removal. Thirty-two votes would have constituted the majority. 

    Boroujeni: Stepping down hurts faculty

    Before McCollam-Martinez, the theater design instructor, started the second and third petitions to remove Boroujeni as president, she sought clarity from a past president of the academic senate for California Community Colleges about how most colleges handle a leave of absence. 

    She learned that most presidents step down because of the mere fact that he or she cannot fulfill the duties of the role. 

    “Normally, that’s what would happen,” she said. 

    Boroujeni said during the meeting that stepping down would have been the “easy thing” to do. 

    “Let me explain to you why I haven’t stepped down. Stepping down would send a very specific message to the administration — that you can put the president on leave and that the president will step down,” he said.

    He spoke not once as a community member as he had permission to but twice during the senators’ discussions, which further fractured the already splintered community college community, said a college employee who attended the meeting but asked for anonymity.  

    The community college district counsel and Fresno City College president confirmed to EdSource that Boroujeni requested permission to speak as a community member, not as a senator. 

    “It reflects his character of manipulation and bullying,” the college employee said. 





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