What are education leaders doing about transformingthe way schools address learning, behavior and emotional problems? The current answer, it seems, is: not much.
We do see increasing discussions among education leaders about transforming education in general. Naturally, much of the focus is on improving instruction and making major changes in how schools are managed (e.g., financed, administered, held accountable). However, when it comes to improving how schools play their role in providing support when students are not doing well, proposals for transformative changes generally are not forthcoming.
The result: As the number of learning, behavior and emotional problems increases, schools continue to react in inadequate ways.
What’s wrong with what schools are doing now?
All schools devote resources to coping with student problems. Some are able to offer a range of student and learning supports; others can provide only what is mandated. In the majority of schools, what is available usually covers relatively few students. More resources would help. But school budgets always are tight, and adding the number of student support staff that advocates call for is really not in the cards.
In general, districts plan and implement student and learning supports in a fragmented and piecemeal manner, generating a variety of specialized programs and services. Over many years, increasing concern about fragmented approaches has produced calls for “integrated services” and, recently, for “integrated support systems.”
However, by focusing primarily on fragmentation, policymakers and school improvement advocates fail to deal with a core underlying problem. What drives the fragmentation is the longstanding marginalization in school improvement policy of the role schools must play in addressing barriers to learning and teaching.
A fundamental challenge for education leaders and policymakers is ending this marginalization. Meeting the challenge requires escaping old ways of thinking about how schools address learning, behavior and emotional problems.
What might a transformed approach look like?
Addressing the pervasive and complex barriers that impede effective teaching and student learning requires a systemwide approach that comprehensively and equitably supports whole-child development and learning. This involves districts and schools rethinking how they frame the practices they use to address learning, behavior and emotional problems.
In this respect, the current widespread adoption of some form of a multitiered “continuum of interventions” (commonly known as MTSS) is a partial step in the right direction. This framework recognizes that a full range of intervention must include a focus on promoting whole-student healthy development, preventing problems, providing immediate assistance when problems appear, and ensuring assistance for serious and chronic special education concerns. But moving forward, our research has clarified the need to reframe each level of intervention into subsystems designed to weave together school and community resources.
Moreover, our research indicates that the various programs, services, initiatives and strategies can be grouped into six domains of classroom and schoolwide student and learning support. The six arenas encompass interventions that:
Embed student and learning supports into regular classroom strategies to enable learning and teaching
Support transitions (e.g., new grade, new school, before/after school, during lunch and other daily transitions)
Increase home and school connections and engagement
Respond to — and, where feasible, prevent — school and personal crises
Increase community involvement and collaborative engagement
Facilitate student and family access to special assistance.
Organizing the activity in this way helps clarify what supports are needed in and out of the classroom and across each level of the continuum to enable effective teaching and motivate student learning.
We recognize that the changes education leaders are already pursuing represent considerable challenges and that the changes we discuss can be daunting.
But maintaining the status quo is untenable, and just doing more tinkering will not meet the need.
Transforming how schools play their role in addressing barriers to learning and teaching into a unified, comprehensive and equitable system that is fully integrated into school improvement policy and practice is essential to enhancing equity of opportunity for students to succeed at school and beyond.
•••
Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor are co-directors of the Center for MH in Schools & Student/Learning Supports at UCLA, an initiative to improve outcomes for students by helping districts and their schools enhance how they address barriers to learning and teaching.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
From securing school entrances to making campuses more resilient to climate change, districts throughout the state are looking to voters to upgrade their facilities.
An EdSource Roundtable on Tuesday, “Election 2024: How voters can help repair California schools,” discussed what a $10 billion state bond and $50 billion in local construction bonds on the November ballot could make possible.
“To make the choice of going to an uncomfortable learning condition in our schools, or to stay at home … .is a choice that students should not have to make,” San Lorenzo Unified Superintendent Daryl Camp said during Tuesday’s discussion. “Students should be able to learn in an environment that’s comfortable for learning.”
Funding for school facilities
This November, California voters will decide whether to support school districts getting money for facilities through two avenues: a $10 billion state bond and, depending on individual location, a local bond measure.
State construction bonds require a 50% majority to pass, while local bonds need 55% of the vote.
The statewide bond — which would be approved by voters passing Proposition 2 — would give $8.5 billion to K-12 schools and another $1.5 billion to California’s community colleges. Voters haven’t passed a bond of its kind since 2016.
Of the funds for K-12 schools, $4 billion will be allocated toward modernizing, retrofitting and rehabilitating buildings, according to Sara Hinkley, the California program manager at UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities and Schools. Meanwhile, $3.3 billion would go toward new construction, and smaller amounts are designated for charter schools and career technical education.
But according to Hinkley, the vast majority of funding for school facilities in California comes from local bond measures.
Districts can also apply to have the California School Facilities Program match those funds on a project basis, but that money is set to expire in early 2025 unless voters pass Proposition 2 to add funding to it for the first time in eight years.
“I know a lot of districts have put measures on the ballot in November in hopes of being able to apply for and secure some of that state funding,” Hinkley said at Tuesday’s discussion. “And for a lot of districts, that is really the only way they’re going to be able to fund some of these projects.”
The difference bonds could make
Del Norte Unified School District has a motto: Keep the wet out.
In 1964, the district’s schools were rebuilt following a tsunami and flood. Now, Brie Fraley, a district parent who was on Tuesday’s panel, said some of the schools have leaky roofs and open ceilings.
It has been 16 years since the district in the state’s far north had a bond measure on the ballot — and Fraley is concerned about the lack of support so far.
“Unfortunately, we did a poll, and the majority of the community members here are not in favor of Measure H that the school board trustees are putting on the ballot,” Fraley said. “So I’m really concerned about access to statewide resources if our community isn’t supportive of it.”
Many districts have already benefited from passing local bond measures, the panelists agreed.
As a result of poor infrastructure and frequent break-ins, Hallie Lozano, a panelist who is a literacy coach at Dyer-Kelly Elementary in Sacramento County’s San Juan Unified, said their school was completely rebuilt after input from teachers, families and students.
They made the school entirely indoors, built it so visitors had to check in at the front office, added spaces for counselors and other interventionists and ensured there were enough bathrooms.
“It makes you feel more valued as a professional,” Lozano said during Tuesday’s discussion. “I think it makes students feel more valued as students, and the families recognize that we’re really giving everything we can to our students and the community.”
She added that the upgrades have also helped with teacher retention.
“Every year, somebody was leaving, or a few people were leaving,” she said. “And now we rarely have people leave unless there’s a promotion, or somebody’s moving out of the area. But it’s not something that happens like it did.”
Sara Noguchi, the superintendent of Modesto City Schools, said the local bond measure would help the district upgrade the 50- to 90-year-old facilities to 21st century standards.
At San Lorenzo Unified, Superintendent Camp is hoping voters pass a local bond measure to help bring air conditioning to its schools amid rising temperatures — in addition to safety and technological upgrades.
“The climate situation is real. It’s apparent. I feel it every day I visit classes, especially on the heat wave,” he said. “It’s not every day, but the days that it’s hot, I have to say, yeah, it’s a challenge getting students to be there and to stay there.”
Other considerations
As voters decide whether to pass their state and local bonds, superintendents have to weigh their schools’ needs with declining enrollments.
But Camp said a smaller enrollment doesn’t necessarily mean fewer schools. Instead, he said some facilities could be converted to purposes such as “wellness rooms” to meet the social-emotional needs of students.
Camp added that many schools will also need to make sure they have the facilities to accommodate 4-year-olds in transitional kindergarten.
Making sure the distribution of state funds is equitable is another concern, the panelists agreed, because wealth disparities between districts are vast.
“When I think about equity, I think about what is fair,” Fraley said during Tuesday’s discussion. “And then, if California wants to be the best in our academics, we need to be fair to all students, so that we all have a fair chance at meeting our academic goals.”
Thom Hartmann sums up what Trump is: a malignant narcissist intent on destroying every shred of our democracy and our ideals. we knew from his first term that he was a liar and a fraud. Yet here he is, acting with even more rage, vengeance, and destruction than before.
Let us not forget that Trump is enabled by the Republican Party. By their slim majorities in Congress. They have meekly watched as he terminated departments and agencies authorized by Congress. They have quietly given the power of the purse to Trump and Musk. They have watched as he turned himself into an emperor and made them useless. They could stop him. But they haven and they won’t.
He writes:
The Trump administration just gutted Meals on Wheels.
Seriously. Meals on Wheels!
Donald Trump didn’t just “disrupt” America; he detonated it. Like a political Chernobyl, he poisoned the very soil of our democratic republic, leaving behind a toxic cloud of cruelty, corruption, and chaos that will radiate through generations if we don’t contain it now.
He didn’t merely bring darkness; he cultivated it. He made it fashionable. He turned cruelty into currency and made ignorance a political virtue.
This man, a grotesque cocktail of malignant narcissism and petty vengeance, ripped the mask off American decency and showed the world our ugliest face. He caged children. Caged. Children. He laughed off their cries while his ghoulish acolytes used “Where are the children?” as a punchline for their next QAnon rally.
He welcomed white supremacists with winks and dog whistles, calling them “very fine people,” while spitting venom at Black athletes who dared kneel in peaceful protest.
He invited fascism to dinner and served it on gold-plated Trump steaks. He made lying the lingua franca of the right, burning truth to the ground like a carnival barker selling snake oil from a flaming soapbox.
And let’s not forget the blood on his hands: 1,193,165 dead from COVID by the time he left office, 400,000 of them unnecessarily, dismissed as nothing more than “a flu,” while he admitted — on tape — that he knew it was airborne and knew it was lethal. His apathy was homicidal, his incompetence catastrophic.
He tried to overthrow a fair election. He summoned a violent mob. He watched them beat cops with American flags and screamed “Fight like hell!” while cowering in the White House, delighting in the destruction like Nero fiddling as Rome burned.
And now, like some grotesque twist on historical fascism, Trump’s regime is quietly disappearing even legal U.S. residents — snatched off the streets by ICE and dumped into El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, a dystopian nightmare of concrete and cruelty.
One such man, Kilmar Ábrego García, had legal status and a home in Maryland. But Trump’s agents defied a federal court order and deported him anyway, vanishing him into a foreign hellhole so brutal it defies comprehension.
This isn’t policy: it’s a purge. A test run for authoritarian exile. And if Trump’s not stopped by Congress, the courts, or We The People in the streets, it won’t end there.
But somehow, he’s still here, waddling across the political stage like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of authoritarianism, bloated with power, empty of soul, and reeking of spray tan and sulfur.
Donald Trump didn’t just bring darkness: he’s a goddamn black hole, a gravity-well of cruelty sucking the light out of everything he touches. This is a man who desecrates everything good. Empathy? He mocks it. Truth? He slanders it. Democracy? He’d bulldoze it for a golf course. And if we let him continue, he won’t just end democracy — he’ll make damn sure it never rises again.
So the question is: are we awake yet?
Or will we let this orange-faced death-cult leader finish the job he started, grinning over the corpse of the America we once believed in?
Now is not the time to kneel: it’s the time to rise. Stay loud, stay vigilant, and show up. Every protest, every march, every call to DC, every raised voice chips away at the darkness.
Democracy isn’t a spectator sport: it’s a fight, and we damn well better show up for it.
New York State law requires private and religious schools to offer an education that is substantially equivalent to what is offered at secular public schools. Some Orthodox Jewish schools refuse to comply. Repeated inspections have found that the recalcitrant Yeshivas do not teach English and do not teach math and science in English.
Dr. Betty Rosa, an experienced educator and New York State Commissioner of Education, has insisted that Yeshivas comply with the law. She fears that their students are graduating from high school without the language skills required for higher education and the workplace.
The Hasidim are a tight-knit group that often votes as a bloc to enhance their political power. They vote for whoever promises to support their interests. Both parties compete for their endorsement.
New York lawmakers are considering a measure that would dramatically weaken their oversight over religious schools, potentially a major victory for the state’s Hasidic Jewish community.
The proposal, which could become part of a state budget deal, has raised profound concern among education experts, including the state education commissioner, Betty Rosa, who said in an interview that such changes amount to a “travesty” for children who attend religious schools that do not offer a basic secular education.
“We would be truly compromising the future of these young people,” by weakening the law, Ms. Rosa said. “As the architect of education in this system, how could I possibly support that decision,” she added.
Behind the scenes, a major sticking point appears to be whether the governor and the Legislature will agree to the changes on private school oversight, according to several people with direct knowledge of the negotiations, which may include a delay in any potential consequences for private schools that receive enormous sums of taxpayer dollars but sometimes flout state education law by not offering basic education in English or math.
The state is also considering lowering the standards that a school would have to meet in order to demonstrate that it is following the law.
Though the potential changes in state education law would technically apply to all private schools, they are chiefly relevant to Hasidic schools, which largely conduct religious lessons in Yiddish and Hebrew in their all-boys schools, known as yeshivas.
The potential deal is the result of years of lobbying by Hasidic leaders and their political representatives…
The Hasidic community has long seen government oversight of their schools as an existential threat, and it has emerged as their top political issue in recent years.
It has taken on fresh urgency in recent months, as the state education department, led by Ms. Rosa, has moved for the first time to enforce the law, after years of deliberation and delay….
There is little dispute, even among Hasidic leaders, that many yeshivas across the lower Hudson Valley and parts of Brooklyn are failing to provide an adequate secular education. Some religious leaders have boasted about their refusal to comply with the law and have barred families from having English books in their homes.
A 2022 New York Times investigation found that scores of all-boys yeshivas collected about $1 billion in government funding over a four-year period but failed to provide a basic education, and that teachers in some of the schools used corporal punishment.
It is clear why Hasidic leaders, who are deeply skeptical of any government oversight, would want to weaken and delay consequences for the schools they help run.
It is less obvious why elected officials would concede to those demands during this particular budget season. There is widespread speculation in Albany that Ms. Hochul, facing what may be a tough re-election fight next year, is hoping to curry favor from Hasidic officials, who could improve her chances with an endorsement….
Hasidic voters are increasingly conservative and tend to favor Republicans in general election contests.…
New York’s state education law related to private schools, which is known as the substantial equivalency law, has been on the books for more than a century.
It was an obscure, uncontroversial rule up until a few years ago, when graduates of Hasidic yeshivas who said they were denied a basic education filed a complaint with the state, claiming that their education left them unprepared to navigate the secular world and find decent jobs.
Not all screen time is created equal, and how kids spend it, whether creatively or passively, can make all the difference.
For instance, young children who watch a “Bluey” episode or play a memory game with their parents can build new cognitive and social-emotional skills early in their development. Also, teenagers can and have used their online networks to engage with social media-based mental health resources before they feel confident enough to reach out to a counselor or therapist.
But as children and adolescents have become increasingly isolated from their support systems at home and at school — exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic — they have become more vulnerable to threats such as cyberbullying and predatory behavior online. Kids’ first line of defense, ultimately, is an adult who has earned their trust and is able to guide them when necessary.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, in 2022, 21.6% of students who were bullied said the bullying had happened online, a nearly 6 percentage-point jump from those reporting being bullied online in 2019. A 2021 survey by the National Crime Prevention Council found that only about a third of victims blocked their bully online, and only about a tenth told their parents about the incident.
New risks like AI-generated imagery and financial sexual extortion also contribute to the 87% increase in online child sexual abuse reports since 2019, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As young children get online at earlier ages, preteens spend over half of their waking days on screens, and social media algorithms push harmful, addictive content to teen users, the threat of a dangerous interaction is often one unsolicited or derogatory message away.
Lawmakers and school administrators across the country are tackling online safety and well-being with policies such as banning cellphones in schools and restricting addictive algorithms on children and teenagers’ social media feeds. For Fareedah Shaheed, a children’s online safety expert, prevention and intervention start with the adults — parents, teachers and school counselors — interacting with kids on a daily basis.
Children’s online safety expert and consultant Fareedah Shaheed.
“I see the real change in those interpersonal relationships between (educators) and parents, people exchanging information they can use to start talking to (each other),” Shaheed told school administrators, counselors, teachers and advocates at a student wellness conference. “I believe the biggest impact is on the ground.”
EdSource interviewed Shaheed about her experiences and how adults can help keep young people safe online. Her remarks have been edited for length and clarity.
What can students learn about online safety from your early internet experiences?
When I was 13, I got my first smartphone. I started playing mobile games and talking to strangers online. I had a near miss with an online predator. I was (planning on) meeting someone at 16, when he was 40 years old. I was a very private teenager, and I kept my online life secret. So the only reason why I told my mom, ‘Hey, I’m just going to meet this guy that I met at an online game in the park,’ was because I was her only child, and I felt like it was the mature thing to tell her where I was going. But I wasn’t asking her for permission because she would’ve said no.
She knew that this was really serious if I was telling her this, because she knew I was a very private person. But she didn’t ask to look into my phone. And instead of her taking away my phone, getting upset with me, she just wanted to know, ‘Who’s this person? What’s his name? Why did you connect? Why do you like him? Why do you want to meet?’ And that changed my entire life because she came to me as an experienced friend, and I decided I did not want to go. That conversation saved me. From those experiences being groomed online and talking to strangers as a kid, I went into cybersecurity and threat intelligence, and I started doing workshops with organizations to raise awareness and then create some actionable impact on internet safety for kids.
What concerns about online safety do you hear from parents, educators and school counselors?
I hear a lot of stories about cyberbullying, kids talking to strangers online, being addicted to social media and making comparisons (online.) The hardest stories to hear are when parents lose their children. They lose their child through suicide, or they lose their child’s (trust) to someone targeting them. I heard from one parent that her son, who was groomed as a (child), was now grooming another child. The mental turmoil that she went through as a parent completely took her out. She came back from that, and told me her son is in therapy now (unpacking) his own history of abuse. She’s looking back at her life and retracing her steps as a parent, thinking, “What the hell did I do wrong?”
I advise parents to prioritize safe spaces, accountability, fun and empathy to protect kids online. We also have discussions over time about mental health resources and helping kids create a community around a shared problem, such as an after-school program for kids experiencing bullying. Many school counselors can also have a closer relationship with the student only because there is that degree of separation of, “You’re not my parent, and you’re not trying to control my life.” In certain circumstances, counselors have an easier time becoming the experienced friend role.
How have these threats, such as cyberbullying, grooming and sextortion, changed since you first used the internet?
We would always tell kids, “Don’t share pictures of yourself with other people, especially strangers,” right? Now you have AI (artificial intelligence). We’re at a point where it doesn’t matter if you don’t share (photos), someone can create something that looks real. I didn’t grow up with that. That’s a whole different ballgame. So I believe we have to act like everyone has been in this situation — anyone can experience extortion — and have mental health (resources) for those who are experiencing or experience this at some point.
New developments like AI can often feel inaccessible to parents and educators. How can adults protect kids if they don’t entirely understand the threat in the first place?
You don’t have to know more than your kids to protect them. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to protect them. You don’t have to know all the new slang to protect your kids, because what predators want are parents staying in the darkness. When you’re thinking about sextortion, AI, cyberbullying, predatory behavior, inappropriate content, screen time, all of these things rely on one domino effect. If you research the predatory handbook for targeting kids on Roblox or Minecraft, they’re not saying, “We want parents who don’t understand technology or the newest thing.” They’re saying, “We want parents who don’t know what their kids are going through emotionally.” They want parents who themselves struggle with mental illness, lack support or resources and feel isolated. That’s why the resources that will help protect kids are also support for parents — financial, self-care, mental health. That’s what matters more than parents knowing the latest thing.
Can school cellphone bans help protect kids online?
I believe there’s a better way to do it. Schools are trying to introduce something new to solve a huge problem, and I do believe that it’s necessary, but I don’t believe “ban” is the best term. I think “policy” is the best term. I believe schools have to have the students be part of the decision, otherwise it’s going to create a lot of friction. If the students are part of the decision, you understand how students are using the cellphone and how they can use it in a way that’s according to the policy and what’s best for them.
Many students don’t approach school counselors about their online problems, and many might not recognize that online interaction could be unsafe or outside the norm. In that case, how can schools better identify the issue and intervene?
Schools can help by giving them the tools to solve a problem that they don’t see, because the adults are not in control of what happens. Counselors can provide educational programs about mental health resources, talking through online scenarios and explaining the tools (students) can use to deal with a situation so that they can, one, identify it for themselves, and then two, know how to self-regulate. They can slowly work themselves out of the situation, whether it’s removing themselves from the relationship, blocking somebody, reporting somebody — no one has to know. Sometimes you can remove yourself from a situation and not have to talk to somebody about it. There should be resources for them when they need to talk about it and provide that support, but it’s also about making it normal to have those conversations in school, letting them hear different stories from other people, teaching them red flags and how to identify their own discomfort.
Can online threats present differently, especially for students in marginalized communities?
[A 2022 survey found that Black teens are about twice as likely as Hispanic or white teenagers to say they were targeted online for their race. Teenagers who identify as part of the LGBTQ community also face more harassment online related to their identities, including hateful language or sexual victimization, and have been found to be more susceptible to cyberbullying.]
Whether it was being a Black gamer girl online or posting on social media as a Black girl, I spent my entire childhood being bullied for being Black and for being the only Black girl in classes a lot of the time. It’s harder for kids from these backgrounds to have the tools and support systems to deal with the (bullying). So if there are other minority or underrepresented communities, they can also have that community at school. I’ve seen schools that have groups like Black Gamer Girl clubs — these five students that meet every Thursday after school, for example — that are really helpful for their mental health and for them to feel safe online. Schools can also have classes that serve them, in particular by giving them tools to deal with bullying, having conversations about what they see online if they’re creating content, how they make sense of someone saying something horrible about them, and then how to walk through that and emotionally regulate.
Teenagers also seek emotional support and information about their identities online. How can they identify the line between dangerous interactions and ones that might feel new and uncertain — and a little uncomfortable for parents — but might also help them feel more secure in themselves?
[For example, transgender and queer students often find acceptance in online communities known to reduce reports of depression and suicidal thoughts in LGBTQ youth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many reported being stuck at home with unsupportive parents, flocking to online communities for acceptance.]
It’s so much better for your child to be involved in communities that you may be uncomfortable with when you’re there to support them, even in your discomfort, than for your child to go behind your back and not tell you and get a burner phone. Most of the time, the community that your child is connecting with online is going to be OK, so long as they have your support and someone to talk to. It becomes dangerous when the parent or caretaker can’t be involved because the child thinks that they can’t share their experiences.
I loved anime. I loved cosplaying. I loved gaming. And the online world has a lot of communities that understand you, you feel safe and that you’re in a non-judgmental space. But then, when you go to school or are with your parents or friends who are outside that space, they might make you feel like you’re different or too much or too little or weird. The reason why I started talking to strangers wasn’t because I love talking to strangers, but because I didn’t feel accepted elsewhere. If you’re a teenager and you’re worried about your best friend speaking with older strangers online, for example, the best thing you can do is stay in their life in whatever capacity is safe for you. When something happens, you can be there for them in whatever capacity you have and help them out of that situation.
What advice do you have for educators and parents trying to introduce young children to the online world in a positive way?
When children are younger than 7 or 8, it’s all about play and their association with you and play, being there with them in the environment, eye contact and engaging with them. Sensical, from Common Sense, is a great organization that has screen time suggestions based on age that are fun and joyful. As children get older, (parents and educators) can start introducing more teaching concepts. For some digital literacy resources and activities, you have FBI Safe Online Surfing, Google’s Be Internet Awesome and Net Smartz Kids. Fun is one of the most underrated ways to protect kids online and help them with screen time too. It doesn’t matter if the online activity is the greatest activity in the world, if a teacher is stressed out, in what way can you find fun in the activity? For early educators like preschool teachers and kindergarten teachers, anytime I do a workshop with a school, I ask, “What do you need? What are you seeing? What is your capacity? What is the kids’ capacity? What are their ages, their background?” Then, we create something customized for them. But (educators) shouldn’t shy away from technology.
Classrooms for career technical education are cramped, and the Wasco Union High School District hopes to expand them with Proposition 2.
Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
After decades of disinvestment and neglect, it’s clear that California’s schools are in desperate need of repair. Many school districts across the state are struggling with dilapidated buildings, old classrooms and unsafe conditions for their students.
According to a recent report from the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of K-12 students in California are enrolled in schools that don’t meet our state’s minimum safety standards. This is obviously dangerous and completely unacceptable. Unsurprisingly, countless studies have shown that bad environmental conditions — including dirty air, lack of light and lack of safe building facilities — significantly decrease students’ academic achievement.
Unfortunately, with no dedicated resource pool and no new state school bond measures in almost a decade, California is almost out of money for school repairs. Unlike many other states, California does not have a dedicated funding stream for investments in school facilities, which makes districts across the state entirely reliant on raising money from state or local bonds for facility upgrades.
As a result, California’s school repair fund is expected to be depleted by this upcoming January, which would leave countless schools across the state without any ability to repair or upgrade their resources, sans a well-resourced PTA or local bond measure providing the funding. Wealthier districts might be able to skate by, but districts in low-income communities would be devastated.
As state superintendent of public instruction, I’ve overseen the administration of billions of dollars for K-12 school construction and modernization that came from the last state bond, but these funds were only a drop in the bucket that just scratched the surface of California’s immense needs and were depleted quickly.
That’s why Proposition 2, a bond measure this November that would provide $8.5 billion in facility renovations for TK-12 schools and $1.5 billion for community colleges, couldn’t come at a more urgent time. It’s a vitally necessary, common-sense step forward to provide critically needed upgrades to California’s schools.
To receive state bond money, districts must attempt to raise a local bond of their own and then apply to the State Facilities Program for a funding match — though districts that are unable to raise more than $15 million from a local bond can receive up to a 100% match.
The measure, along with the accompanying local bonds, would help upgrade facilities at public elementary, middle and high schools and community colleges across California to build more classrooms, modernize science labs, enhance gymnasiums, build performing arts centers, and replace aging buildings.
But most critically, Proposition 2 would help ensure basic 21st-century facility standards in every school across the state — helping low-income districts receive desperately needed funding to repair heating and air conditioning systems, repair leaky roofs, and remediate hazardous black mold. Some of the money is also earmarked for removing lead from water, creating transitional kindergarten classrooms and building career and technical education facilities.
Significantly, this proposal also includes significant equity-focused improvements to existing policy that would ensure this funding goes to the districts that most need it. Proposition 2 improves how state funds are distributed to school districts across the state, making it more equitable for less-affluent districts and those with higher numbers of English learners and foster youth.
Ten percent of the funds would be dedicated to small school districts that currently struggle to amass the funding for facility upgrades, and the formula for allocating state funding establishes a higher match to low-wealth districts that cannot afford to generate much local funding, as well as those with a high percentage of disadvantaged students.
Without Proposition 2, schools districts in smaller and lower-income areas would have no other way to pay for these critical improvements, as they struggle tremendously to raise enough local bond money to pay for school repair, making them completely reliant on funding from state bonds for facility repairs.
Additionally, while not the focus of the measure, the investments provided by Proposition 2 will also create tens of thousands of good-paying construction jobs across the state, which will boost local economies.
Ultimately, California’s schools have a desperate need to modernize our buildings, facilities and campuses, and the money needed to make the necessary repairs has been exhausted. Proposition 2 will provide an infusion of vitally important investments to our schools that will address the significant backlog of districts hoping to receive funding for repairs, and considerably improve the conditions of students across the state.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
School officials said they are currently working on dealing with the wave of new students coming from the Villages of Patterson development under construction. School officials and community members and school officials worry that the schools will not be able to handle another large-scale wave of development without a mitigation agreement.
Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
Education and housing are often inextricably linked, but policy decisions made in the two sectors are generally siloed, at times shaped and passed without considering how a housing policy might impact education and vice versa.
Megan Gallagher’s research bridges the two, focusing on housing and educational collaborations that support students’ academic outcomes. Some of her latest work as a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization focused on public policy, provides school officials and housing developers with ideas on how to partner together to desegregate schools by desegregating neighborhoods.
Gallagher has also co-authored a report that compiled a list of key housing characteristics that impact children’s educational outcomes:
Housing quality
Housing affordability
Housing stability
Neighborhood quality
Housing that builds wealth
In this Q&A, Gallagher details why those housing characteristics matter in a child’s education and the collaborations that can help children have a fair chance at achieving academic success. The interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
How does housing policy impact children’s educational outcomes? It’s really important when we try to understand the influence that housing has on kids’ educational outcomes, that (we look at) its unique contribution.
You could have families with the same income levels, (but) one is in a high-quality house and one is in a low-quality house. A low-quality house can influence a child’s health, ability to sleep, and feeling safe. And so, you could have a very different outcome for that child if they are in a lower-quality home.
You have outlined five characteristics of housing that have an impact on children’s educational outcomes. Why are those five characteristics so important? Those five characteristics have been studied a decent amount in housing policy literature. I didn’t conduct all the original research that went into these findings, I just sort of pulled it all together into one place. It is possible that there are aspects of housing that have not been measured historically that could also have an influence on education.
We know that low-quality housing — housing that has mold or electrical issues — is associated with lower kindergarten readiness scores. That causal relationship has been established. The relationship between spending too much on rent is connected to increased behavioral problems. Housing instability, and I would really put homelessness and housing insecurity into the housing instability bucket, really affects school stability and then has an effect on math and reading scores. We know that successful homeownership, so homeownership that allows families to build equity, increases the likelihood of attending college. We also know that neighborhood context, like violence, can disrupt academic progress and prevent children from succeeding in school.
So there is evidence that connects each one of these housing conditions to a variety of aspects of kids’ well-being and educational outcomes.
One of the things that we have not really done a very good job on is which of these aspects of housing matter the most or have the most influence. If we have a million dollars, what would we want to put that million dollars on to improve educational outcomes? I don’t think we have enough evidence right now to know exactly what would be the right pathway for that.
Do all five characteristics need to be in place for children to have the best possible educational outcomes? There’s not enough data right now for us to understand which of the five need to be in place or what the likelihood of succeeding is if you have one or two or three or four of them in place.
This is an area where we continue to need more understanding, more evidence, but I don’t think that we can wait to make policy decisions until we have all of that evidence.
Is the lack of sufficient research one of the outcomes of the disconnect between housing and education policy? Absolutely. I think the sectors are so siloed, many of the giant data collection investments that have happened at HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) or at the U.S. Department of Education have not had data elements that capture aspects of the other sector.
When we are looking at housing data in housing policy, there hasn’t been really detailed data collected about the children in the family — which schools they attend and how they’re doing — which could potentially allow data to be connected, likewise in the education world.
We run into lots of challenges in research with privacy where just because you can connect data, should you? Is that what program participants have agreed to when they’ve decided to enroll their children in public school or when they’ve decided to enroll in a housing subsidy program? In a lot of cases, the answer is no.
Some of the best data is really connected at the local level, where you have local policymakers that are working with local agencies that have asked permission and are connecting data to kind of fine-tune programs on the ground.
How do we reach a point where we have the information necessary to ensure academic success for all children? It has to happen at multiple levels. The federal government needs to encourage the Department of Ed and HUD to collaborate and to really support or incentivize collaboration in their discretionary grant programs. I really see it as the feds have an opportunity to lead and really support this kind of work.
But I also think that there are so many local organizations that are leading. I think a lot of the case study work that I have done can help to illustrate how flexibility and collaboration can really translate into a set of programs or practices that support kids’ education and stable, high-quality housing.
I know that philanthropy is really supporting a lot of exploration around sector alignment.
I feel really hopeful about this sort of broader vision for how we create policy that thinks about the way that multiple systems can influence how well a child is doing. But I also think that it’s not like there’s just all of this housing sitting there and kids are not living in it. A big part of this work is making sure that there continues to be a housing production pipeline that is developing housing to ensure that there’s enough housing at various price points so that everybody has the opportunity to live where they’d like to live.
The Atlanticpublished a fascinating story about Donald Trump’s surprising return from what seemed to be the disastrous end of his political career in 2021 to regain the presidency in 2024.
In 2021, he left the White House in disgrace: twice impeached, leader of a failed and violent effort to overturn the election, so bitter that he skipped Joe Biden’s inauguration. For four years, with the exception of an occasional slip of the tongue, he nourished the fantasy that he was the rightful winner in 2020.
Surely there were Republicans who thought he was finished, as did all Democrats. I remember how thrilled I was to think that I would never again have to see his face or hear his voice.
His redemption began when Congressman Kevin McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to pay homage to Trump. Trump spent most of the last four years plotting and planning for his return.
It begins with the story of how they won an interview with Trump. They filled out forms describing the reason for the interview and thought their request might be approved. But Trump personally rejected them, denouncing the reporters and the magazine as part of the leftist effort to embarrass him. Trump called Ashley Parker a “radical left lunatic.”
The reporters had spent many hours preparing for the interview, and they were determined to land it.
Soon after they were turned away, they decided to try another route. They obtained Trump’s private cell number, and they called him. He answered his phone, and they had a long conversation. During the conversation, he said matter-of-factly, “I run the country and I run the world.”
Humility was never his strong suit.
Trump eventually agreed to sit with them for an interview in the Oval Office with them and the magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who had been accidentally invited to be part of Defense Secretary’s Signal conversation about bonbing Yemen.
On March 27, Trump issued an executive order authorizing the cleansing of the Smithsonian Museums and other federal sites of anything that detracts from American greatness and patriotism.
Trump makes clear that he doesn’t want anything displayed that implies that racism exists. He specifically targets the 21 museums of Smithsonian Institute. He wants all exhibits to remind the public of America’s greatness. Any exhibits that don’t, he says, should be removed.
The executive order says, in part:
It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing. Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.
The executive order assigns to Vice-President JD Vance the job of cleansing the Smithsonian museums and all federal parks and cultural institutions of all derogatory content about our history. In doing this, Vance will be assisted by one Lindsey Halligan, Esq.
Who is Lindsey Halligan, the woman who will determine which parts of the nation’s story should be told? If you open the link, you will see that she is a beautiful woman with long blond hair. But that’s not all.
The first question is: What is improper ideology, exactly?
The second: Who is Lindsey Halligan, Esq.?
We have her on the phone, actually. She’s calling from the White House.
“I would say that improper ideology would be weaponizing history,” Halligan says. “We don’t need to overemphasize the negative to teach people that certain aspects of our nation’s history may have been bad.” That overemphasis “just makes us grow further and further apart.”
As for the second question: Halligan, 35, is a Trump attorney who seems to have tasked herself as a sort of commissioner — or expurgator, according to critics — of a premier cultural institution.
After moving to D.C. just before the inauguration to continue working for Trump as a special assistant and senior associate staff secretary, Halligan visited local cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian museums of Natural History, American History and American Art. She didn’t like everything she saw. Some exhibits, in her view, did not reflect the America she knows and loves.
“And so I talked to the president about it,” Halligan says, “and suggested an executive order, and he gave me his blessing, and here we are.”
Here we are: A former Fox News host is leading the Pentagon. A vaccine skeptic is running the Department of Health and Human Services. A former professional wrestling executive is head of the Department of Education.
And Lindsey Halligan, Esq., could turn a major cultural institution upside down.
How did she arrive at this point? Halligan grew up in Broomfield, Colorado, and went to a private Catholic high school, Holy Family, where she excelled at softball and basketball. Her parents worked in the audiology industry. Halligan’s sister, Gavin, a family-law attorney in Colorado, ran for a state House seat as a Republican in 2016 in a blue district and lost.
Halligan attended Regis University, a Jesuit university in Denver, where she studied politics and broadcast journalism. She was always interested in history, she says — particularly the Civil War and the westward expansion of the country.
She competed in the Miss Colorado USA pageant, making the semifinals in 2009 and earning third runner-up in 2010, according to photos and records of the events. This was back when Trump co-owned the organization that puts on the Miss Universe pageant, for which Miss Colorado USA is a preliminary event.
Cal Poly Pomona students host a voter registration table.
Credit: Courtesy of ASI, Cal Poly Pomona
Every Monday for the past few weeks, Cal Poly Pomona student Melvyn Hernandez has been manning a table outside the Bronco Student Center to register fellow students to vote. He comes prepared with snacks, prizes and a quiz testing students’ election year know-how.
“When it comes to things like Super Tuesday, or what a swing state is, or even who the major candidates are for the elections, a lot of students don’t really have the time to be aware of that,” said Hernandez, an architecture major. “A lot of students — even with how publicized the different debates and everything are– they’re too busy to be following it.”
Hernandez and volunteers across California’s colleges and universities are trying to add something important to the endless to-do list of the typical college student this fall: A crash course in Elections 101. In a year when barriers to students voting in states like North Carolina and Arizona have made headlines, California students are getting out the word about key election deadlines and directing their peers to nearby polling places. They’re also raising awareness about down-ballot conteststhat directly affectstudents’ lives — such as a proposed minimum wage increase — but which could get lost in the noise of a contentious presidential race.
Students and administrators involved in nonpartisan voter-turnout efforts at California State University campuses said their task this election cycle is to provide reliable information to a population that’s simultaneously pressed for time and overwhelmed by the volume of biased political messages. Students said another challenge is to galvanize potential voters disappointed by their options in the presidential race — and perhaps turned off from voting altogether.
“That’s the point of why we’re here,” Hernandez tells students if they’re embarrassed to admit they don’t know much about nominees and ballot measures. “So that you are aware and you can go ahead and further pursue finding out more about the candidates.”
Similar efforts are underway at many University of California (UC) campuses, community colleges and private schools.
Youth voter turnout has historically lagged the rates among older voters. But recent elections have seen larger shares of young voters. The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University estimates that 50% of voters age 18 to 29 voted in the 2020 election, up 11 points from 2016. That rate still trailed voter participation among older voters, though; 69% of voters 35 to 64 and 74% of voters 65 and older turned out in 2020.
A recognition that colleges should play a role in supporting young voters is part of the impetus behind the California Secretary of State’s California University and College Ballot Bowl Competition, a program that seeks to harness intercollegiate rivalry to encourage voter registration.
Going Deeper
You can look up the nearest polling place to you, including those on or near University of California and California Community College campuses, here. A list of early voting and vote-by-mail drop-off locations is here.
On-campus voting locations are another way to ease what could be students’ first time filling out a ballot. This year, for example, all Cal State campuses are home to one or more ballot drop-off locations, and many also serve as vote centers.
College students attending school outside their home county or state usually have a choice of where to register to vote.In California, students can register in the county where they’ve relocated for school or in the home county where their family lives.
Jackie Wu, a former Orange County election official who has worked with Cal State Fullerton on civic engagement, said that university administrators shouldn’t settle for low voter participation on campus just as they wouldn’t pass up a chance to increase slumping graduation rates.
College “is our last opportunity, in a structured system, to encourage voting and civic participation,” she said.
Offering students ‘little hints and pebbles’
Striking the right tone in an election awareness campaign can be a delicate balance for college administrators and student volunteers.
They’ve got to educate low-information would-be voters — the students who don’t know the answers to Hernandez’s questionnaire. Yet, they have to be mindful that omnipresent political advertising can leave studentsunsure of what to believe.And, of course, universities have tooffer fastidiously nonpartisan messages, even in a polarized political climate saturated with sensationalist campaigning in the mad dash before Election Day.
“There’s so much pressure put on everyone. You know, ‘The election is really important. Make sure you turn out to vote. The future depends on it,” said Wu. “A lot of times (students) may not feel like they know where to ask for help and who they can go to for help that isn’t trying to pressure them to vote a certain way.”
The solution: Lots of voter education events and some casual nudges.
Besides voter registration booths, Cal State students this fall have helped organizepanels about ballot propositions and forums where students can mingle with candidates for local office. Cal State Fullerton student government even had a table at the weekly on-campus farmer’s market to register voters, Wu said.
A custom coffee sleeve distributed at Cal Poly Pomona ahead of the 2024 election reminds students to vote.Credit: Courtesy of Cal Poly Pomona
Small reminders help, too. Jeanne Tran-Martin, Cal State’s interim director of student affairs programs, said some schools encourage students to confirm whether they are registered to vote by placing a link in their online student dashboards. This year, Cal Poly Pomona ordered custom coffee cup sleeves with a QR code linking to TurboVote, a website where students can register to vote.
“We’re not trying to get in anyone’s face and saying, ‘This is so important. Why aren’t you doing this?’” said Michelle Ellis Viorato, the campus’s civic and voter empowerment coordinator. “We’re just trying to drop little hints and pebbles to get people to think about, ‘Oh right, this is coming up. I need to remember to do this.’”
The low-key messaging could help Cal Poly Pomona to reach this fall’s voter turnout goal of 72%. That would be a slight increase from the school’s 70% voting rate in the last presidential election, according to a report by Tufts University’s Institute for Democracy & Higher Education, which estimates voter participation by merging student records and voting files. (You can look up the voter turnout records of selected other campuses here.)
For students already registered, breaking down the steps to cast a ballot can help to relieve some election-season jitters.
At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where about 94%of students were from outside the county and roughly 15% were from outside California as of last fall, voter registration volunteers have been fielding lots of questions about when and where students can find their ballots.
Tanner Schinderle, the secretary of executive staff at Associated Students, the school’s student government, said volunteers help students to think through their options, like getting absentee ballots, asking a parent to mail them their ballot or registering in San Luis Obispo County.
Encouraging students to ‘look down your ballot’
Voter registration has been a sprint at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which kicked off the fall term on Sept. 16, a late start compared with universities that operate on semesters rather than quarters.
Associated Students has averaged two to three voter registration drives per week, Schinderle estimates, thanks to more than 80 students trained on the process. Those students have been running a voter registration booth in the University Union Plaza. Volunteers also knocked on the doors of virtually every first-year student living on campus, Schinderle said, offering voter registration help.
The overall reaction has been positive, he added. But several students interviewed for this story said they’ve encountered peers frustrated with national politics.
“There’s a common attitude of, ‘Pick the lesser of two evils,’” said Cade Wheeler, a mechanical engineering student who is Cal Poly Pomona’s student body president.
Alejandra Lopez Sanchez, who serves as secretary of external affairs at Cal Poly Pomona Associated Students, said a few of the students she met at an on-campus voter outreach event in October remarked they weren’t sure if they would vote in this election.
“Especially for the presidential candidates, they’re like, ‘Who am I supposed to vote for if I don’t like either of them?’” she said.
But voters who look past the race for the presidency will find statewide contests that could make a concrete difference in students’ lives. Proposition 2, for example, would authorize a $10 billion state construction bond for TK-12 schools and community colleges. And for students working minimum wage jobs, Proposition 32 would set higher wage floors.
Speakers from the Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College share a presentation about ballot measures at a university housing complex at Cal Poly Pomona.Courtesy of Cal Poly Pomona
Weston Patrick, the secretary of external affairs at the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Associated Students, finds the best tactic is to refocus students on local races in San Luis Obispo that influence public transit systems, housing and other areas important to students.
“That was kind of a guiding principle, telling students, ‘Hey, if you’re not feeling thrilled about your choices at the top of the ballot’ — which we certainly did get some of that sentiment from some students — ‘look down your ballot,’” he said.
That’s why Patrick was excited to see students strike up conversations with candidates for San Luis Obispo City Council at an event Associated Students hosted on campus. (It probably didn’t hurt that students could grab a free doughnut if they talked to one or more candidates.)
IeseEsera, president of the systemwideCal State Student Association, said he hopes strong campus voter turnout will influence legislators shaping legislation relevant to students, like how much the state invests in higher education.
“We are tax-paying citizens who also pay tuition, for example, who also have to afford the same cost of living that you do and that our parents do,” Esera said.
Weighing the election’s impact on jobs and cost of living
Students said their peers are most concernedabout how the election could impact students’ tuition, cost of living and career outlook.
“In my generation, a lot of us talk about how expensive everything is, especially in California,” said Megan Shadrick, Cal Poly Pomona Associated Students vice president. “It can be pretty discouraging as we’re trying to move forward into our careers.”
Efforts to make voting easier could benefit students who are short on time because they’re working multiple jobs or managing a long commute.
One thing to know is that California voters can mail their ballots, drop them at any ballot box or deliver them to any polling place in the state. Similarly, Tran-Martin likes to remind students who plan to vote in person that if you are waiting in line to vote when the polls close at 8 p.m., you will still get to cast your ballot.
And when all else fails, a little positive peer pressure can help.
Bahar Ahmadi, a student studying environmental engineering at Cal Poly Pomona, volunteered at an election fair held on Oct. 10. Reached about a week later,Ahmadi, a first-time voter, said she might joina group of friends for moral support as they drop off ballots together.
“I feel like the first time doing it might feel intimidating alone,” she said.
