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  • New Hampshire: Vouchers Are Costly Subsidy for Mostly Affluent Families

    New Hampshire: Vouchers Are Costly Subsidy for Mostly Affluent Families


    Garry Rayno, veteran statehouse reporter for InDepth NH, writes here about the now-familiar voucher scam. Republican legislators claimed that low-income students would use vouchers to transfer to private schools that better met their needs. When New Hampshire removed income limits on families that want vouchers, the voucher program proved to be a subsidy for students who were already enrolled in private schools, mostly religious schools. The program is more costly than predicted, and public schools will see cuts to finance vouchers.

    Rayno has the story:

    Free money is free money so many New Hampshire parents in the last month lined up at the non-public schoolhouse door to grab what they can.

    The parents of the 11,000 students who applied for grants from the newly opened vault in the state treasury are not the ones advocates tout as the beneficiary of the Education Freedom Account program if New Hampshire resembles other state’s experiences when they transitioned to “universal vouchers.”

    In those states like Arizona, Ohio and North Carolina very few students left public schools to take a voucher, almost all of the new enrollees are students currently in religious and private schools or homeschooled as they are here in New Hampshire.

    These are parents who did not qualify when there was a salary cap of 350 percent of the federal poverty level or $74,025 for a family of two and $112,487 for a family of four, because they made too much money.

    Consequently, most of the new Granite State enrollees will have family incomes above $112,487 and if the average grant is similar to what it was last school year, $5,204, the state will be liable for well over $52 million this fiscal year because there are a number of exceptions for the cap that could add 1,000 or more students.

    As has been the history of the program, the number of students and the cost have always been way more than the department’s estimates.

    Lawmakers used estimates from Drew Cline, the State Board of Education Chair and the head of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a Libertarian organization, that were substantially less than 10,000, and they only budgeted $39 million for the first year of the biennium and $47.8 million for the second year when the salary cap will rise to 12,500 or when the cost is likely to be over $65 million.

    For the biennium, the program is likely to be $30 million more than budgeted or more than what was spent last school year for the program.

    The money comes from the Education Trust Fund which also pays for the state adequacy grant to school districts, charter school per-pupil grants (about twice the public school per-pupil grant), special education costs and the school building aid program.

    The fund was expected to be in deficit this year and require an infusion from the general fund to meet its obligations, when general fund revenues are shrinking and not be able to cover the cost.

    You can see where this is headed. The current crop of lawmakers in the majority will say they will have to cut back on state aid to public education just as the state Supreme Court agreed with a superior court ruling in the ConVal case that the state has failed to meet its constitutional obligation to pay for an adequate education for its students.

    The decision did not say the state is obligated to pay for an adequate education for students in religious and private schools or being homeschooled.

    The greatest vendor beneficiaries of the new state obligation according to out-of-date data from the administrator of the EFA program, The Children’s Scholarship Fund NH, are religious schools, followed by private schools and homeschooling parents.

    But the students in those programs are not the ones touted to benefit from the EFA program.

    Even before its beginning, voucher advocates touted the EFA program as an opportunity for low-income parents to find the best educational environment for their students if they do not do well in the public school environment.

    How many of these students actually left public schools since the program began to take EFA grants?

    The Department of Education lists the number of “switchers” for each year and a couple extra years before the program began. 

    The total for the first four years is 1,417 if you remove the two years prior to the start of the program that the department uses to derive its suspect 36 percent figure.

    The agency’s statistics also list the number of students who re-enrolled in public school after the first year and that number is 214, so the actual switchers over the first four years are 1,203.

    The total enrollment over the first four years is 14,192 which would be 8.5 percent and if you just account for the new students every year it would be less than 20 percent of the students that left public school to join the program at the most optimistic.

    More than 80 percent of the students who have enrolled in the program were not in public schools when they were awarded EFA grants that were as high as $8,670 last school year when students received the base per-student aid, as well as differential aid by qualifying for free and reduced lunches and special education services, at the same rates as public schools.

    While students in public schools and the EFA program have to meet the same criteria to receive the differential aid for free and reduced lunches, the students in the EFA seeking special education aid only need a medical professional to say they need the services and not the elaborate process students and parents have to traverse in the public school system.

    The next question is if EFA grants are a determining factor in being able to send your kid to a private or a religious school or is it essentially a subsidy allowing the family to take a trip to Europe or a ski vacation in the Rockies.

    Paying to send your child to the best private schools in the state is not cheap, for example attending St. Paul’s School in Concord costs $76,650 according to the school’s website including room and board, while Phillips Exeter costs $69,537 for boarding students and $54,312 for day students.

    Holderness, Dublin, Kimball Union, and Proctor Academy all cost about $80,000 a year for boarding students, with different rates for day students, and New Hampton costs about $75,000 for boarding students and $45,000 for day students.

    Derryfield, which only takes day students, costs $43,650 a year according to its website.

    Religious schools tuition varies a great deal, but Concord Christian costs $7,600 a year, while Laconia Christian, which received the most in EFA money for the 2021-2022 school year of any private or religious school according to data from the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH, the only year the organization reported vendor receipts, has a sliding rate of $7,536 for Kindergarten to fifth grade, $8,087 for grades six to eight, and $8,570 for high school.

    Trinity High School in Manchester costs $14,832 for the coming school year, while Bishop Brady in Concord charges $15,250 and Bishop Guertin in Nashua charges $17,225 plus $600 in fees, according to the schools’ websites.

    You can see why the religious schools are the prime beneficiary of the free money that is now available to every parent of a school age student in the state.

    If nothing else is done, about $120 million will be spent on the EFA program in the next two school years without much accountability.

    With that kind of tax money flowing mostly to religious schools, the program’s administrator should have to provide a yearly breakdown of where the money is being spent several months after every school year for public consumption.

    The Children’s Scholarship Program NH retains up to 10 percent of the grants as its administrative fee, which would be about $12 million over the biennium, making the organization the biggest beneficiary of the EFA program.

    This organization, with the blessing of former Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, refused to make program data available to the Legislative Budget Assistant’s Office for a performance audit of the program required by state law. 

    The limited audit is expected to be released by the end of the year.

    When a compliance check was done in-house by the Department of Education after the first two years of the EFA program of 100 applications, 25 percent contained errors that allowed students to enroll when the information provided was inadequate.

    People need to tell their state representatives and senators to make the program more accountable for the millions of dollars of state taxpayers’ money it spends.

    Because if they don’t demand transparency, the current crop of lawmakers will shift more public school costs on to your future property tax bills while blaming the public schools and not themselves for irresponsible spending.

    Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.



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  • Jennifer Frey: College Students Are Eager to Engage in the Liberal Arts

    Jennifer Frey: College Students Are Eager to Engage in the Liberal Arts


    Jennifer Frey served as Dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College. It required students to read deeply in classic tests and to converse vigorously with each other.

    More than a quarter of the student body signed up for this rigorous class.

    Yet two years after the Honor College opened, it was closed. Its leadrs said that students didn’t want this kind of education, the heavy focus on the liberal arts and the Great Cobversation about the meaning of truth goodness, and beauty. Dean Frey thinks the administrators were wrong.

    She wrote in The New York Times.

    University students, we’re told, are in crisis. Even at our most elite institutions, they have emaciated attention spans. They can’t — or just won’t — read books. They use artificial intelligence to write their essays. They lack resilience and are beset by mental healthcrises. They complain that they can’t speak their minds, hobbled by an oppressive ideological monoculture and censorship regimes. As a philosopher, I am most distressed by reports that students have no appetite to study the traditional liberal arts; they understand their coursework only as a step toward specific careers.

    Over the past two years as the inaugural dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College, focused on studying the classic texts of the Western tradition, I’ve seen little evidence of these trends. The curriculum I helped build and teach required students to read thousands of pages of difficult material every semester, decipher historical texts across disciplines and genres and debate ideas vigorously and civilly in small, Socratic seminars. It was tremendously popular among students, who not only do the reading but also engage in rigorous and lively conversations across deep differences in seminars, hallways and dorms. For the past two years, we attracted over a quarter of each freshman class to this reading-heavy, humanities-focused curriculum.

    Our success in Tulsa derives from our old-fashioned approach to liberal learning, which does not attempt to prepare students for any career but equips them to fashion meaningful and deeply fulfilling lives. This classical model of education, found in the work of both Plato and Aristotle, asks students to seek to discover what is true, good and beautiful, and to understand why. It is a truly liberating education because it requires deep and sustained reflection about the ultimate questions of human life. The goal is to achieve a modicum of self-knowledge and wisdom about our own humanity. It certainly captured the hearts and minds of our students.

    Sadly, this education has fared less well with my university’s new administration. After the former president and provost departed this year, the newly installed provost informed me that the Honors College must “go in a different direction.” That meant eliminating the entire dean’s office and associated staff positions as well as many of our distinctive programs and — through increased class sizes — effectively ending our small seminars. (A representative of the university told The Times that while it had “restructured” the Honors College, the university believes that academics and student experiences will “remain the same.”)

    The stated reason for these cuts was to save money — the same reason the University of Tulsa gave in 2019 when it targeted many of the same traditional forms of liberal learning for elimination. Back then, the administration attempted to turn the university into a vocational school. Those efforts largely failed, in part because of lack of student support for the new model.

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    An unpleasant truth has emerged in Tulsa over the years. It’s not that traditional liberal learning is out of step with student demand. Instead, it’s out of step with the priorities, values and desires of a powerful board of trustees with no apparent commitment to liberal education, and an administrative class that won’t fight for the liberal arts even when it attracts both students and major financial gifts. The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power.

    For those who do care to see liberal learning thrive on our campuses, the work my colleagues and I did at Tulsa should be a model. How did we do it? We created an intentional community where our students lived in the same dorm and studied the same texts. We shared wisdom, virtue and friendship as our goals. When a university education is truly rooted in the liberal arts, it can cultivate the interior habits of freedom that young people need to live well. Material success alone cannot help a person who lacks the ability to form a clear, informed vision of what is true, good and beautiful. But this vision is something our students both want and need.

    At Tulsa, we invited our students to enter “the great conversation” with some of the most influential thinkers of our inherited intellectual tradition. For their first two years they encountered a set curriculum of texts from Homer to Hannah Arendt. These texts were carefully chosen by an interdisciplinary faculty because they transcend their time and place in two senses: They influenced a broader tradition, and they had the potential to help our students reflect in a sustained way on what it means to be a good human being and citizen. Our seminars were led by faculty members who did not lecture or use secondary sources. Rather, the role of the faculty members was to foster and guide conversations among our students that allowed them to think through these questions for and among themselves.

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    That our students threw themselves into the task of reading and discussing the great works with one another should not shock. When we — students and teachers alike — share wisdom as a common goal, we will want to do the reading, to dispute one another, to exchange ideas and arguments, to propose amendments and to offer our personal insights. Liberal learning occurs in dialogue with those who object to us, who offer a different perspective or experience — who read the same book as we do in a completely different light.

    At the Honors College, we taught our students that wisdom is a distant goal, and that we need to work on ourselves as we try to approach it. We need to cultivate what our college called “the virtues of liberal learning.” For example, we need to cultivate the humility to recognize that we have much to learn from the past and from one another. We need to cultivate a love of truth for its own sake and the courage to speak our minds and to follow the truth wherever it may lead us — even when it leads us into difficult waters where our disagreements are deep and unsettling.

    When students realize their own humanity is at stake in their education, they are deeply invested in it. The problem with liberal education in today’s academy does not lie with our students. The real threat to liberal learning is from an administrative class that is content to offer students far less than their own humanity calls for — and deserves.



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  • Sports and play are even more essential for mental health after the pandemic

    Sports and play are even more essential for mental health after the pandemic


    Kids get a chance to stretch their legs and skills during physical exercise in Los Angeles in 2023.

    Courtesy LA84 Foundation

    Millions of young people across the nation have returned to school, yet students are still struggling to navigate the return to normal. Research shows us that  educators and policymakers can bring back joy in schools by prioritizing sport and play to build a supportive learning environment. One where we all win.

    The role of sports and play extends far beyond physical fitness. It profoundly impacts student social and emotional health and school connectedness. By instilling valuable life skills, fostering social bonds and promoting emotional well-being, sport and play contribute to a holistic educational experience that nurtures well-rounded individuals capable of transcending life’s challenges and thriving in diverse circumstances.

    With parents, educators and administrators now back in school, let’s not forget the Covid-19 pandemic ushered in a new set of challenges for youth, leading to a mental health crisis as declared by the U.S. Surgeon General in late 2021.

    While issues concerning the mental health of our kids had arisen long before the pandemic, nearly three years of isolation and increased screen time, death and uncertainty only magnified students’ stress, anxiety and depression. We warned this was a mounting mental health emergency in schools last year, but today it is in clearer focus. Results released in February from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey indicated startling trends. Nearly 3 in 5 teen girls (57%) said they felt “persistently sad or hopeless.” More than 40% of boys and girls responded they had felt so sad or hopeless within the past year they were unable to perform regular activities.

    According to a  2022 State of Youth Mental Health report which surveyed 2,000 parents, 68% have seen their children face significant mental and emotional challenges. Yet, recent studies have also found 60% of youth with major depression do not receive mental health treatment, many of them youth of color.

    These findings require us to not rush into school with a singular focus on closing the learning loss. Let’s instead look to accelerate opportunities through sport and play to help our kids reconnect to themselves, to their friends and to their schoolwork.

    Sport and play hold a profound significance in fostering social and emotional well-being and enhancing school connectedness for students. Beyond mere physical activity, engagement in sport and play cultivates essential life skills and nurtures interpersonal relationships.

    Policymakers across the country have recognized the value of sport and play in schools and are advancing this framework. California state Sen. Josh Newman authored Daily Recess for All, Senate Bill 291, which ensures students have access to a 30-minute recess for unstructured play and that it cannot be withheld as a form of punishment.

    The joy and spontaneity inherent in play promote emotional release and stress reduction. Engaging in recreational activities allows students to unwind, alleviate anxiety and recharge their mental faculties. This, in turn, equips them to navigate academic pressures and personal trials more effectively. One study found that 6-to-8-year-olds who exercised frequently had fewer symptoms of major depressive disorders two years later.

    This same study found 73% of parents believe that sport benefits their child’s mental health. Participating in sports teaches invaluable lessons in teamwork, communication and perseverance. Through wins and losses, individuals learn to handle success and setbacks, building resilience and boosting self-esteem. These experiences translate into the ability to cope with challenges outside the sports arena, contributing to a balanced social and emotional state.

    Sports and play serve as powerful catalysts for building social bonds. Students develop a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose in collaborative activities, breaking down barriers and forming connections that transcend differences. This inclusivity enhances the feeling of belonging, which is vital for a positive school environment.

    In a world increasingly driven by digital interactions, the physicality of sports and play offers a refreshing counterbalance. Face-to-face interactions during games and playtime nurture emotional intelligence and empathy, enriching interpersonal skills that are essential for healthy relationships in school — and later in life.

    Although it’s never been more needed in the educational environment, many public schools have defunded sports programs and offer physical education far less than they once did. That reinforces the pay-to-play model and leaves out the kids who have the least.

    Our data shows that as household income increases in LA County, so does activity levels for the children in the home. Children from homes with income under $35,000 a year play far less than kids from affluent households, and they are unable to access the resources they need to be active.

    These children are our future engineers, musicians, teachers, caregivers and leaders. Talent is universal, but opportunity is not. We can mend the kids’ lives who are suffering by providing access to the transformative power of sport and play, and help change a significant number of their destinies.

    •••

    Renata Simril is president & CEO of the LA84 Foundation, the legacy of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and a national leader advocating for the role of sport and play in positive youth development.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Trump wants to cut college access programs for low-income students; California educators are pushing back

    Trump wants to cut college access programs for low-income students; California educators are pushing back


    Students at a National TRIO Day Celebration at Cal Poly Pomona.

    Courtesy of Laura E. Ayon

    Around California this summer, low-income and first-generation students are staying in college dorms for the first time. High schoolers are camping beside the Klamath River. Undergraduates are presenting research at a symposium for budding scholars in Long Beach.

    All are part of federally funded TRIO programs — like Upward Bound and McNair Scholars — based on California campuses, from rural Columbia College neighboring Yosemite National Park to private four-year institutions in Los Angeles like the University of Southern California. TRIO reaches children as young as middle school, preparing them to enroll in college and providing mentorship, academic advice and research opportunities when they do. In California, the programs served over 100,000 participants in the 2023-24 academic year.

    “I really don’t think I could have made it through City College [of San Francisco] without them,” said Ekaterini Stamatakos, 22, a psychology major and TRIO student who earned an associate degree and then transferred to UCLA, where she will start her junior year this year. “I think these kinds of programs really go beyond whatever they might say on their profiles or the paragraphs that they have on their webpages — it really does make such an impact on students’ lives.”

    But hanging over TRIO programs like Talent Search and Student Support Services is a Trump administration proposal to eliminate them. If Congress enacts that plan, all TRIO Student Support Services — such as tutoring in reading, help with college applications and workshops in financial literacy — would be defunded starting in fiscal year 2026. Their funding is uncertain until Congress finalizes the appropriations bill later this year.

    TRIO, whose name derives from an original group of three programs but now includes eight, has largely prevailed in past funding battles. With an annual budget now exceeding $1 billion, it continues to garner significant bipartisan support. But a White House budget request released in the spring argues that TRIO programs, rooted in 1960s anti-poverty policy, are now “a relic of the past.”

    “Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means,” the budget request says. Colleges “should be using their own resources to engage with K-12 schools in their communities to recruit students, and then once those students are on campus, aid in their success through to graduation.”

    The threat has mobilized TRIO supporters to redouble a public awareness campaign aimed at persuading lawmakers to maintain the programs. In California, there were about 450 TRIO programs in the 2023-24 academic year, an EdSource analysis of federal data shows, with most of that funding flowing to programs housed at more than 100 colleges and universities.

    The proposal to sever funding for TRIO comes as the Trump administration has notched a U.S. Supreme Court victory that clears the way for mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education. This month, California joined a coalition of states suing for the release of $6.8 billion in federal school funding that has been frozen by the federal government. Since January, the White House has enacted or attempted a host of other changes affecting areas like financial aid and how the federal government interprets civil rights law. 

    TRIO programs based on California campuses like Sonoma State University, Cal Poly Pomona and UC Davis each receive millions of dollars annually and are funded to serve thousands of participants per campus, the analysis shows. Smaller TRIO programs, many at community colleges, may work with dozens or hundreds of students on a budget of less than $300,000. 

    At Cal Poly Humboldt, high school students and rising college freshmen this summer read an August Wilson play before venturing on a field trip to see it performed live at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. At Cal Poly Pomona, peer coaches prepare presentations for fellow students on such topics as artificial intelligence and summer internships. At Columbia College, a community college 50 miles northeast of Modesto, a TRIO director said she’s worked with everyone from 14-year-olds in dual enrollment programs to 72-year-olds advancing toward master’s degrees.

    Decades of consensus meets partisan divides

    Studies generally suggest TRIO has a positive effect on academic outcomes, such as enrolling in college or completing a degree. Supporters also tout the success of alumni — some of whom have gone on to become lawmakers, astronauts, and in many cases, leaders of local TRIO programs themselves — as evidence of a positive impact on families and communities. 

    “I have alumni whose kids are now in college and thriving, or have graduated college,” said Rafael Topete, who leads the TRIO Student Support Services Program at Cal State Long Beach. 

    But this is not the first time TRIO programs have faced Republican-led challenges. Under President Ronald Reagan, TRIO advocates blocked an attempt to halve the program’s budget. Bipartisan support again thwarted a bid to eliminate TRIO funding during the Clinton administration. 

    TRIO’s critics point to a U.S. Department of Education-sponsored 2009 study finding that Upward Bound did not have a statistically significant impact on overall postsecondary enrollment. (The Council for Opportunity in Education, which advocates for TRIO and other college access programs, later sponsored a rebuttal study, which found Upward Bound had a strong positive impact on students.)

    Two recent U.S. Government Accountability Office reports argue that the federal Department of Education could improve how it evaluates TRIO. The department has said further steps to verify data depend on the agency having adequate staff.

    Educational Talent Search and Cal-SOAP students at Cal State Long Beach attend a workshop to help rising seniors get ready for college applications and financial aid. (Courtesy of Jesus Maldonado)

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon this spring resurrected such accountability arguments to justify defunding the programs. “I just think that we aren’t able to see the effectiveness across the board that we would normally look to see with our federal spending,” McMahon said at a June budget hearing.

    People who work for TRIO programs object to those criticisms. In interviews, many named by memory the metrics they report as a condition of receiving federal funding, like high school graduation rates and college enrollment statistics. “Every year, we report data to verify we are doing what we said we would do,” said Kathy Kailikole, who has had a 30-year career in TRIO programs and currently works at San Diego State University.

    There are signs that TRIO remains a point of agreement in a Congress more often divided along party lines. Federal funding for TRIO has climbed from $838 million in 2014 to almost $1.2 billion in 2023. And of the 130 members in the Congressional TRIO Caucus, 26 are Republicans. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho are among the Republicans who have vocally questioned cuts to TRIO.

    Today’s bitter ideological divides may test that consensus. 

    In May, three Upward Bound grantees outside California received notice from the Department of Education that their funding would not be continued due to conflicts with Trump administration priorities, said Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education.

    A copy of one such cancellation letter provided to EdSource by Jones said the grants “violate the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.” 

    Overcoming distance and doubt in rural California 

    Jen Dyke directs the Upward Bound program at Cal Poly Humboldt where, years ago, she was once a student. Today, she travels hundreds of miles to recruit students from rural Hayfork, South Fork and Hoopa. It’s a region where rural schools often contend with high teacher turnover rates, low math test scores and an uncertain economic outlook, Dyke and her colleagues said. 

    “Timber is already gone. Fishing is already gone. Tourism is now something that is not super strong because of wildfires,” Dyke said during a lull in Upward Bound’s summer academy, which brings 27 high school-age students on campus to take classes and live in dorms. “So these areas that we serve are, once again, facing dismal futures if we also cut TRIO.”

    Cal Poly Humboldt’s TRIO initiatives are among dozens of TRIO programs in California — and more than 500 in the U.S. — that reach participants in predominantly rural communities and remote towns, an EdSource review of federal data found.

    Rose Sita Francia, who directs another Cal Poly Humboldt TRIO program called Talent Search, tries to expose students as early as sixth grade to careers that give them a reason to consider postsecondary education. The first step, she said, is to put college on the map for them — literally. 

    “Many students don’t know where Arcata is, where Cal Poly Humboldt is located,” she said. “And so we have teachers ask us regularly, ‘Will you show us some geography of college-going, and will you talk to us about trade school options as well?’”

    Associate degree students at Columbia College tour a Humboldt County forest while on a trip to visit Sonoma State University and Cal Poly Humboldt on Sept. 17, 2024. (Courtesy of Anneka Rogers Whitmer)

    Anneka Rogers Whitmer oversees TRIO programs housed at Columbia College, more than an hour’s drive from the two nearest four-year universities, Stanislaus State University and UC Merced. The college’s Educational Opportunity Center serves more than 1,000 people across five counties with just two staff members, who visit places like prisons and social service agencies. The TRIO staff have had to overcome distrust of college degrees, Whitmer said, by offering advice on how to apply for financial aid and where to find vocational training.

    “We’re an education desert, no doubt,” she said, “but we just have to think more creatively about how we’re going to reach the folks.”

    Ekaterini “Kat” Stamatakos and Ghislaine Maze pose for a photo at the City College of San Francisco commencement ceremony in May 2025. (Courtesy of Ghislaine Maze)

    ‘It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged’

    The program Ghislaine Maze coordinates at City College of San Francisco may be called the TRIO Writing Success Project, but it does much more than provide writing workshops and embedded tutors in English classes.

    “So many students are trying to figure things out on their own, on the fly, with just a few hours on campus,” said Maze, whose program is funded to serve 310 students on a budget of roughly $485,000 a year. “It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged.”

    Tight campus budgets may leave other academic advisers on campus so overbooked that students struggle to get appointments, she said. A trusted TRIO mentor can help navigate financial aid and plan a student’s academic schedule. “That’s where a program like ours kind of fits in,” Maze said.

    Before Ekaterini Stamatakos got to City College, she attended four high schools. She thinks she must have missed hundreds of days of school in that time, a consequence of housing instability. She struggled academically, but finished at a credit recovery school.

    Stamatakos, who goes by Kat, was retaking an English class at City College when a tutor from the TRIO Writing Success Project explained that it provided feedback on writing assignments, mentorship and a place to hang out at the library, complete with snacks. “This is perfect,” Stamatakos thought. “I’m just going to basically live there.”

    With assistance from a writing tutor, Stamatakos earned an ‘A’ in the course. “I don’t think I ever imagined that I would get an ‘A’ after my years of failing classes,” she said.





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  • UC regents appear to support future tuition increases, but are skeptical of bigger ones

    UC regents appear to support future tuition increases, but are skeptical of bigger ones


    Student walk up and down the Promenade to Shields Library at UC Davis.

    Credit: Gregory Urquiaga / UC Davis

    Top Takeaways
    • UC is likely to continue raising tuition for each incoming class and then freezing the cost for that cohort of students for up to six years. 
    • The rate of increase each year is based on inflation but has been capped at 5%. Regents appear opposed to increasing that cap.
    • UC is worried about federal cuts and uncertain state finances. Students are concerned about affordability.

    The University of California’s Board of Regents on Thursday indicated support for continuing to raise tuition for each incoming freshman class for at least several more years, though many regents appeared skeptical of hiking the maximum increase allowed each year. 

    Since the 2022-23 academic year, tuition has gone up for each incoming class of undergraduates, ranging from 3.5% to 5%. But the price was also then frozen for the duration of their enrollment, so long as they graduate within six years. The rate of increase each year is based largely on inflation, but is capped at 5%. 

    California residents who entered this past fall pay $14,436 in tuition and systemwide fees, not including some additional campus fees, living expenses and books, and will continue to pay that rate each year. For in-state freshmen starting this fall, their rate will be $14,934, about 3.4% higher. Out-of-state and international students pay significantly higher rates.

    When the regents approved the so-called tuition stability plan in July 2021, they agreed to reconsider it prior to the 2027-28 academic year. Most regents said they want to renew the cohort policy, describing it as a resounding success that has improved campus budgets and brought predictability to students and their families. In the past, tuition increases affected all students from all cohorts, whether freshmen or seniors, at the same time and the same rates, often raising costs in the middle of their education. 

    The regents did not take action Thursday to formally extend the plan and only discussed the policy. A vote on it may be scheduled as soon as November, officials said.

    A number of regents, however, appeared unlikely to support proposals from UC administrators to allow for even greater tuition increases, including one to increase the maximum tuition hike in a given year from 5% to 7%.

    “I think it’s remarkable the success we’ve had, and that’s why I want to continue it,” said Richard Leib, a regent and a past chair of the board. “But I also have the feeling that if it’s not broken, why are we trying to fix it?”

    UC staff said upping the maximum increases could help the system navigate budget problems, including federal cuts to research funding and state funding uncertainties. 

    The president of the UC Student Association, meanwhile, encouraged the regents to get rid of the policy altogether and keep tuition flat after the 2026-27 academic year.

    “In order to ensure that the university can be a space that is accessible to students financially, I strongly urge you all to not renew the cohort tuition model,” Aditi Hariharan, a fourth-year student at UC Davis, said during remarks to the board. She added that keeping the policy would threaten UC’s ability to enroll “a diverse range of students from all economic backgrounds.”

    In defending the plan, UC officials said Thursday that the policy has actually made attending UC less expensive for the system’s low-income students. 

    Shawn Brick, the system’s associate vice provost for student financial support, noted that the state’s Cal Grant program fully covers tuition and fees for qualifying students. Additionally, UC sets aside 45% of revenue generated from the tuition policy for financial aid. That, Brick said, has provided the system’s neediest students with additional aid for other expenses, such as textbooks, that was not previously available.

    Nathan Brostrom, the system’s chief financial officer, said the policy has also generated $375 million in new revenue for campus operations, which has been used to support faculty-to-student ratios and improve student services.

    At the same time, officials said the policy has not been a cure-all and that higher tuition revenue and state budget support have not kept pace with rising costs. 

    The UC staff on Thursday suggested three potential scenarios that would generate even more revenue from the tuition policy. One would be the proposal to increase the maximum annual increase to 7%. Another would be to add another increase, possibly 1%, on top of the inflation-based increase. The third option would be to reduce the amount of revenue that is set aside for financial aid, from 45% to 35%. 

    Most regents who spoke said they disapproved of the proposal to allow for annual increases as high as 7%. Maria Anguiano, the board’s vice chair, said she remains supportive of renewing the original policy, but added that tuition hikes of 7% “no longer feels modest.”

    State Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, an ex-officio voting member of the board, said increasing the cap to 7% would be a “very significant change” and suggested tabling the idea altogether. 

    “If we have an extraordinary circumstance where you all feel the need to increase tuition more than 5% in any given year, you should have to come back to this body and explain why,” she said. 

    Jay Sures was one of the only regents who appeared to support the proposal. He said federal changes and threats have created “true headwinds for this university system” and that there are “issues with what potential state funding could be going forward that could potentially pose a true existential threat” to the system.

    “What would happen if we did have a cap and our shortfall was such that we were in that sort of disaster situation? What are we going to be able to do if we put a cap on it today and we fall into that situation tomorrow?” Sures said.

    Before the UC staff brings an official proposal to the board, they plan to consult with incoming President James Milliken, who takes over on Aug. 1, said Brostrom, the chief financial officer.

    Janet Reilly, the board chair, said the current plan is to bring an action item to the board’s meeting in November, but added that could change.

    “I think that what you are hearing from this group is a lot of gratitude and much satisfaction with the program that we rolled out,” Reilly said. “But still there are questions to be answered.”





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  • Fresno Unified teachers very likely to strike. Here are the issues

    Fresno Unified teachers very likely to strike. Here are the issues


    More than a thousand members of the Fresno Teachers Association rallied in late May and vowed to strike if the union and school district fail to agree to a contract by Sept. 29, 2023.

    Credit: Courtesy of Fresno Teachers Association

    The state’s third-largest school district, Fresno Unified, and its teachers union have tried since November to agree on a contract that invests in teachers.

    The Fresno Teachers Association says its proposals are classroom-centered ideas to improve public education, including bettering teachers’ working environment, adding academic and social-emotional student support and increasing pay and benefits.

    FTA President Manuel Bonilla said the school district hasn’t responded in a meaningful way, “really showing they have a lack of vision and honor the status quo.”

    Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson disagrees.

    “One of the things that’s frequently said is, ‘You have no vision,’” said Nelson, regarding FTA’s claims. “Our vision was to sit down and create a new way of bargaining, where we would work collaboratively on the things that really matter.”

    Amid the tug-of-war of negotiations and a looming strike, both sides insist that they want to collaborate but continue to accuse the other side of stalling and impeding progress. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and more than 70,000 students who are still dealing with learning loss from the pandemic will inevitably bear the brunt of the fallout.

    While a compromise may be attainable on some issues, others — notably class size caps, lifetime medical benefits after retirement and ways of supporting students outside of class — are still elusive.

    Perhaps pay is negotiable

    The union argues that to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, Fresno Unified — the Central Valley’s largest employer with a $2.3 billion budget — should set the standard for salary and benefits, starting with raising pay to keep pace with rising inflation and the cost of living.

    Bonilla said that the district has been “defunding teachers” for the past decade.

    He cited a union analysis showing that, despite increased funding and a rising number of teachers, the district has invested a smaller portion of the overall budget on teacher salaries over the years. Ten years ago, for instance, the district allocated 41% of its budget to teacher salaries compared with 27% in the most recent budget.

    The school district’s analysis of salary, inflation and cost-of-living paints a different picture.

    District spokesperson Nikki Henry said that the district’s analysis of its salary increases between 2013-14 and 2022-23 shows that all staff have received 32.7% increases. On top of that, teachers received step increases and longevity stipends, amounting to an additional 40%. The salary increases outpace inflation over the same period, which was 30%, according to the district’s analysis.

    The district estimates that the 11% raises it’s offering would put the average teacher salary at over six figures. Despite teachers being at different levels of the pay schedule, Fresno Unified said teachers earn an average of $90,650, in pay alone, for 185 work days, based on a $490 average daily rate — a number Bonilla said is inflated.

    Based on Fresno Unified’s pay schedule, salary currently ranges from $56,013 for new teachers to about $102,000 for teachers with loads of experience, not including those with professional development.

    The district has also agreed to fund medical costs at 100%, Nelson said. But that action stemmed from a health management board vote about the district health care fund, not from negotiations, Bonilla said.

    One-hundred-percent district-funded health care happened, in part, Bonilla said, because there was enough money in the district’s health care fund to do so. The health care fund has a surplus of money, estimated at $47 million this school year, according to a June 2023 document shared with EdSource. At this level, FTA argues, the health fund can cover the costs of its proposal to restart lifetime medical benefits for retirees.

    No agreement on lifetime benefits

    Nelson maintains that restarting lifetime benefits puts the district’s fiscal solvency in jeopardy.

    “I’m not going to make any decisions that I think would put the district in long-term fiscal danger,” he said.

    Fresno Unified ended the practice in 2005, but 300 or so employees, including Superintendent Nelson, had qualified for lifetime benefits before it ended.

    For the hundreds of current employees still eligible for lifetime benefits, Nelson said, estimated future costs total more than $1 billion. And, if lifetime benefits are restored or based on 2020 hire dates as proposed, the future costs will grow by hundreds of millions of dollars.

    “It creates a fiscal cliff … a world of unknowns, none of which you can financially plan for,” he said.

    Class size average vs. class size cap. Caps can lower class sizes, union says

    Though lifetime retiree benefits are the top issue that the district won’t agree to, it’s not the only one.

    Ninety-three percent of Fresno Unified’s 1,800 teachers who responded to an August and September 2022 union poll either strongly agreed or agreed that lowering class sizes would improve student learning.

    Fresno Unified acknowledges the importance of smaller classes but “draws the line” on capping class size as the union proposed, stating that it forces schools to move students out of a class, or even a school, if a class reaches its cap.

    “I can’t rationalize that in any fair way,” Nelson said. Henry added that such stringent measures would split families who attend their neighborhood school.

    District wants contract to address student underperformance

    Bonilla said that Fresno Unified insists on tying student performance to teacher evaluations, which “unfairly penalizes the teacher” for factors out of their control.

    “The teacher could potentially be negatively impacted by that without having the authority to say, ‘We need to change these working conditions,’” Bonilla said about a teacher’s inability to control class size or students’ adverse experiences.

    District officials say that using students’ outcomes in teachers’ evaluations is not meant to be punitive but to help educators grow.

    Based on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, most Fresno Unified students did not meet state standards in 2022: 67.76% failed to meet the English language arts standards, and 79.18% didn’t reach the math standards.

    The school board is pressuring the district to address students’ underperformance, Nelson said.

    “If kids are not thriving in a setting, for whatever reason, we have an obligation to go figure out why — and unapologetically,” Nelson said.

    Proposals for student support shouldn’t be in the contract, the district argues

    Also on the negotiation table are the union’s ideas for student support, which the district says go beyond teachers’ working conditions and don’t belong in the teacher contract.

    Bonilla said most of the ideas came straight from educators, who work with students directly and know the factors outside the classroom that are impacting students’ ability to learn.

    With clothing closets at nearly two dozen schools, Henry said, Fresno Unified already practices some of the common-good measures. While the staff at those schools started the ventures themselves, she said, the district will offer $10,000 startup costs for other schools wanting to start the initiative.

    Last school year, Fresno Unified also provided new washers and dryers at each of its middle schools, also spearheaded by teachers.

    Nelson questions some of the other student-support ideas proposed by the union, such as utilizing school parking lots to serve the homeless population. “It’s not our area of expertise,” he said, adding that the district is willing to partner with experts serving that population.

    “Is it the school system’s job to fix everything in regards to societal things? Absolutely not,” Bonilla said. Like other districts with 55% or more of students living in poverty, or are English learners, foster youth or homeless, Fresno Unified receives 65% more of its base funding.

    In fact, 87% of Fresno Unified students fall into at least one of those categories, so on top of the more than $650 million in basic educational costs, the district gets over $249 million for its targeted students, according to the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan executive summary.

    Bonilla said the ideas, such as the parking lot for homeless families to park their cars, are meant to start a conversation with district leaders.

    “There are ideas on how we might do it because nobody else is thinking about these things,” he said. “Instead of coming to the table and designing something with us, they’d rather scrutinize the idea and shut down the conversation. Our ideas are not the end all, be all; they are a starting point. And if they have a better idea, let’s do that. But they don’t even want to have a conversation.”

    Ideas or not, it’s a part of FTA’s last, best and final offer, Nelson and Henry said.

    Nelson said the union has not deviated much from that proposal, even in July and September mediations, which to Nelson is an indicator that the union hasn’t moved toward a shared vision for the school district.

    The union shared a similar sentiment about the district, saying that since contract negotiations started in November, Fresno Unified has focused on defending what it currently does in regard to pay and benefits, class size and student support.

    Awaiting fact-finding report, which both sides have preconceived notions about

    Negotiations have led to a May promise to strike, to both sides declaring impasse in July and to failed mediation attempts in July and during a Sept. 5-7 fact-finding.

    “I’m holding out some hope that the fact-finder’s report will get us to a different state,” Nelson said.

    In the fact-finding stage, FTA and Fresno Unified made presentations to a neutral third party, who will make a recommendation.

    “They don’t come into this process trying to improve school systems,” Bonilla said. “They come into this process trying to settle a contract.”

    The fact finder will most likely focus on salary and benefits, Bonilla said, not lowering class size, for example.

    “That should be the leadership’s position of working with teachers in order to figure out how to design those systems,” Bonilla said, adding that Nelson will most likely propose adopting the findings, as-is, like he did in 2017 when teachers voted to strike but averted it. The teachers union, Bonilla said, will not write a “blank check” from someone who doesn’t know teachers’ day-to-day reality.

    Despite the union attempting to “invalidate” the findings, as Henry described it, district leadership remains confident in the report, which is expected early next week.

    If the union and district still don’t agree on a contract 10 days after the fact-finding report, the district must release that report to the public, leaving them with the option to impose a contract and allowing the union to vote to strike.

    FTA had already imposed a Sept. 29 deadline for the school district to agree on a contract or face an Oct. 18 strike vote, which teachers may feel is the only route left to take.

    Is striking the only option left?

    Many teachers, according to Bonilla, do not feel supported and are disappointed by the district’s response — or lack thereof — to what the union considers solution-based methods.

    “We went through the avenues that one should go through,” Bonilla said, noting how more than 100 teachers attended eight school board meetings. “We communicated with board members. We communicated with the superintendent.

    “We’re here because Superintendent Nelson has failed to give vision (and) direction.”

    Nelson’s vision, he said, was to change how bargaining traditionally happened: to be able to sit down and collaborate without a third party mediator having to step in.

    Thinking long term, Nelson continues to believe that coming to — and staying at — the bargaining table is the best route for Fresno Unified.

    “There’s no scenario — even the scenario by which they take the strike vote and actually strike — where you don’t have to sit down and have a productive discussion,” Nelson said.

    If and when that conversation takes place, Bonilla said, the administration must listen to teachers.

    “In many ways, we’re fighting for the heart and soul of this school district,” he said. “This model that doesn’t give voice to those actually in the classroom needs to end if we really want to be a school district that meets the needs of our students.”





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  • Community colleges are key to solving California’s toughest challenges

    Community colleges are key to solving California’s toughest challenges


    Students from Bakersfield College participate in an Intro to EV class.

    Courtesy: Bakersfield College

    I was introduced to community colleges when I left my hometown, Kollam, in southern India, to attend graduate school as a foreign student in California. The idea of open access, that anyone, even older adults, could attend college was astonishing to me.

    Now, 30 years later, I’ve been given the opportunity to lead the nation’s largest institution of higher education — the 116-campus, 1.9-million-student California Community College system, where almost half of our students are older adults.

    The Community College System is one of our state’s most valuable assets, our main engine of social mobility. We generate $128 billion in annual income for California, amounting to more than 4% of the state’s gross product.

    We are essential to the state’s achieving its ambitious goals in everything from climate policy, to growing a world-class labor force, to expanding the middle class. We are essential to the state’s ability to address a massive nursing shortage, support an aging population, prepare for an electric future in need of skilled and trained technicians and more.

    None of this can be done without the California Community Colleges.

    To fulfill this essential role, we must build on our successes, confront our continuing challenges and accelerate our progress. Our recently released planning document, “Vision 2030: A Roadmap for California Community Colleges,” outlines the steps to take. The plan envisions a higher education system more inclusive of all Californians and one that ensures access points for every learner across race, ethnicity, region, class, age and gender to enter a supported pathway with exit points to transfer or complete a community college baccalaureate or obtain a job with family-sustaining wages.

    I am excited that Vision 2030 reexamines what access means when we lead with equity: We can’t wait for individuals to come to college; we must take college to them. We will take college to our high schools and expand dual enrollment, we will take college to our justice-involved Californians, to our foster youth.

    We are the largest system of higher education in the nation, yet 6.8 million Californians — disproportionately people of color — have graduated from high school but have no college credentials. This group is likely to be low-income and struggle to find gainful employment. Our roadmap for the coming years addresses this fundamental question: Why has our system not yet reached these individuals? When those in need cannot find their way to college, we must find ways to bring college to them. This means partnering with community-based organizations, worker-represented organizations and industry leaders to implement options that would make college more accessible for these populations, such as short-term courses, workforce-aligned noncredit options, certificates and degrees.

    While recently some have questioned the value of college, the evidence is clear: Higher education remains a key to social mobility. We will prioritize skill-building for jobs that pay living wages while recognizing that a baccalaureate degree is a powerful predictor of higher wages.

    We will build on our traditional role in workforce training to meet Gov. Gavin Newsom’s priorities for our system in health care, education, STEM and climate change.

    In my previous roles heading Bakersfield College and later Kern Community College District, I worked closely with partners to establish a center for renewable energy making the case that community colleges are essential to all aspects of climate work — workforce development, community engagement and large-scale technology transfer for economic development. Our colleges are primed to build the next wave of climate action solutions like the creation of microgrids for grid resilience.

    California’s future is inextricably tied to its community colleges. We are committed to partnering together to solve some of California’s toughest challenges, engaging with purpose, creativity, thoughtfulness and urgency. Our time is now!

    •••

    Sonya Christian is chancellor of California’s 116 community colleges.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • The kids are watching; what lessons are we teaching?

    The kids are watching; what lessons are we teaching?


    A high school calculus teacher helps her students at Glendale High School work through a tough word problem.

    Credit: Lillian Mongeau/EdSource

    Superintendents around the nation have stepped down from their roles at alarming rates.

    Since the start of July, more than two dozen district leaders have abruptly resigned, retired or been fired by their school board, according to an EdWeek analysis of local news coverage. A number of superintendents in California have left their districts in the last year.

    Recently, board meetings have become a political arena for issues such as banned books, critical race theory and Pride Month. In June, while I was serving as superintendent of Glendale Unified School District I, recommended that the board adopt a resolution to designate June 2023 as LGBTQ+ Pride Month. But this exact resolution — adopted without issue for three consecutive years — now faced backlash from some in the community.

    The controversy contributed to my decision to retire, although I had recently received a stellar evaluation from the board and signed a four-year extension to my contract. How do democratic values show up when angry individuals interrupt public meetings, invade private lives and threaten the safety of leaders? How can students advocate for themselves? How do educators and school administrators navigate public forums where our students’ opportunity to learn is at stake?

    Students, listen up. Here is a final message from your superintendent: You have a voice and you have agency. Schools belong to you, so be thoughtful and organized, engage in civil discourse to improve conditions for learning and teaching. These words stand in sharp contrast to the lesson played out at the Glendale board meetings. What students observed was far from the civil discourse I encouraged Glendale students to practice.

    Practice civil discourse and engage in dialogue, not just with those who are alike in their thinking, and always show courage. Finding common ground makes us a more united and powerful community.

    To teachers: With the support of school leaders, site leaders, and superintendents — uphold our democratic values and prepare students to become responsible and productive citizens. Teachers deliver lessons about democracy that center on citizenship and encourage individuals to respect diverse perspectives and opinions.

    However, what played out in Glendale reminds us that we must step back and ask what lessons we teach our children. How do they make sense of the rhetoric that adults model for them? What does this mean in a nation committed to respect for the individual’s rights and commitment to the common good?

    To parents: Get involved and volunteer at your student’s school site for student well-being. Trust the teachers and administrators. The way you build trust is by building a relationship. Relational capital is the prerequisite or foundation for building trust within the school community and beyond.

    Relationships established among the district’s stakeholders stem from a strong sense of belonging and a highly developed cooperation capacity. Trust is earned through the display of relational and interpersonal skills. Meaningful engagement with stakeholders requires the exchange of lived experiences to address challenges by generating solutions and building common ground.

    For fellow superintendents who had similar experiences with their boards, I emphasize the following priorities:

    • Ensure a positive, collaborative and productive relationship with the board built on trust and communication.
    • Earn public trust, welcome community support and honor student voice.
    • Build positive and productive relationships with political and community leaders, parents and business organizations.
    • Celebrate the community and our diversity, culture, traditions, history and expectations.

    Our kids are watching! What lessons will they learn? Is there a place where we can find common ground, model respectful discourse and promote the common good? There are at least two sides to any debate. Let us cherish our freedoms and those differences of opinion. This is what makes our society strong and preserves trust in public education.

    •••

    Vivian Ekchian served as the superintendent of Glendale Unified School District and was named Los Angeles County Superintendent of the Year for 2022-23. She has an Ed.D. from USC Rossier. Maria Ott, USC Rossier professor of clinical education and an expert on school administration, contributed to this commentary.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • How are UC and CSU students managing the cost of textbooks?

    How are UC and CSU students managing the cost of textbooks?


    San Diego State University’s Equitable Access textbook program costs students $19.75 per credit, but some opt for cheaper textbooks outside of this program.

    One student who opted out is Kimberly Watkinson, leading her to search for textbooks on her own.

    “I do it through my own means. I buy them on Chegg or Amazon, or sometimes I look for students who have the same class as me, and maybe they can sell me their books,” she said.

    Some of her professors offer the class materials for free, through PDFs and other alternatives.

    “There are some classes, mostly in childhood development, where we only look at articles and they are usually free and posted on Canvas. Or they use books that are from friends of them,” Watkinson said.

    She added that collaborating with classmates is a good way to lower individual costs.

    “I’ve had classes where I even share a book with another person to do the assignments because it’s so expensive that I cannot afford it,” Watkinson said.

    While her textbook plans are constantly shifting and the costs are demanding, they haven’t had a bearing on her academic ambitions.

    “I learn about how much the books cost when I am in the class because there’s some professors who post how much they are,” Watkinson said. “But I haven’t dropped out because I find my ways around and maybe share with another person, buy it somewhere else, or rent it.”

    Kimberly’s story gathered by California Student Journalism Corps member Noah Lyons.





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  • Trump and Newsom are stealing from our children to avoid hard choices

    Trump and Newsom are stealing from our children to avoid hard choices


    From left, President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    Credit: Official White House photo / Molly Riley and AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli

    For all of their differences, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. President Donald Trump have one thing in common: both are stealing from the future to pay for their budgets.

    Trump’s thefts take the form of budget deficits that are financed by issuing U.S. Treasury securities that must be paid back by future budgets, plus interest, with money that future governments won’t be able to use for their own services. His latest budget is expected to add $4 trillion to the national debt.

    Newsom’s thefts take the form of drawing from budget reserves that are supposed to be used to provide services during recessions and borrowings from Special Funds that are supposed to provide special services. Newsom has taken so much from budget reserves that his own Department of Finance forecasts the next governor will face his or her first budget without reserves. He also skips or shorts deposits to retirement funds that set aside money for future retirement payments to employees.

    How did Trump and Newsom end up with deficits during an economic expansion? The short answer is that Trump cut taxes while Newsom increased spending. Deficits are expected to continue in both Washington, D.C., and Sacramento. To make matters worse, by issuing budget debt during economic expansions, Trump and Newsom set up future governments for a double whammy during recessions when those governments will have to cover Newsom’s and Trump’s thefts, even as their own tax revenues fall.

    Another thing Trump and Newsom have in common is throwing people off of Medicaid rolls while throwing money at favored classes. Trump’s latest budget subjects adults to work requirements, reduces funding and adds administrative hurdles, while Newsom’s latest budget imposes asset limits, freezes enrollment of new undocumented adults, and levies new fees on enrollees. Trump’s favored classes are corporations, higher-income taxpayers, tip-based workers and Social Security recipients who got tax cuts, while Newsom’s favored classes are government unions that got more jobs and higher salaries, and entertainment companies that got more corporate welfare.

    Trump and Newsom aren’t the only ones budgeting with thefts from the future. In his most recent budget, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho skipped an annual contribution to a fund set up to cover health care costs for retired employees. You would think he would know better since a principal reason for the deficit he is struggling with is past skips and shorts that have led LAUSD’s annual spending on retirement debt to nearly triple over the last 10 years to nearly $2 billion per year.

    Each has their own reasons for their actions — Trump asserts that tax cuts will eventually produce more tax revenues, while Newsom and Carvalho assert that deficit spending is needed now — but all are adding to past thefts that are already robbing citizens of huge levels of resources. The federal government is already spending more every year on interest than the $833 billion it spends on defense; California is already spending as much on bonded and retirement debt than on the $23 billion it sends to the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges systems combined; and LAUSD is already spending nearly 20% of its revenues on retirement costs.

    By their actions, Trump, Newsom and Carvalho have just added to those burdens. Our country desperately needs leaders who care about the future.

    •••

    David Crane is a lecturer in public policy at Stanford University and president of Govern for California, a political philanthropy that works to counter special interest influence over California governments.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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