California needs to mandate bilingual education in districts with significant numbers of English learners and invest much more to support districts to offer it, according to a new report released Thursday.
The authors said California is far behind other states in enrolling students in bilingual programs, despite having published documents like the English Learner Roadmap and Global California 2030, that lay out a vision for significantly expanding bilingual education in the state.
“It’s particularly significant because of the loud promises the state has made on behalf of bilingual education,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes down to actual resources devoted, they’ve come so far short.”
The authors of the report recommend three main actions for California state leaders to take: Expand bilingual education programs with more funding and requirements for districts to offer them; prioritize enrollment of English learners in bilingual programs; and invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs.
In order to expand bilingual education programs, the authors said California should follow the lead of Texas and pass legislation that requires districts to offer bilingual education if they have at least 20 students in any grade level that speak the same home language. In addition, they recommend the state provide districts more funding for every student enrolled in a bilingual program.
The authors said this “carrot and stick” approach in Texas has helped the state enroll a much higher percentage (36.7%) of English learners in bilingual programs. In contrast, California has enrolled only 16.4 % of English learners in bilingual programs.
The report cites research that shows bilingual education improves academic achievement, progress in learning English, retention of home language, high school graduation and college attendance, in addition to other benefits.
“Bilingual education should not be a partisan issue, because of the vast and wide-reaching benefits of it,” said Ilana Umansky, associate professor of education at the University of Oregon and one of the authors of the report. “It’s very telling that a state like Texas mandates bilingual education in a lot of circumstances and incentivizes bilingual education and has twice the enrollment of English learners in bilingual education as California.”
In addition to expanding the number of bilingual programs, the authors also called on state and district leaders to make sure there are spaces set aside in bilingual programs for English learners, that they are located in neighborhoods where English learners live or that they can easily reach by transportation.
“It’s critical to prioritize English learners, because it’s English-learner-classified students that most need and benefit from bilingual programs,” Umansky said.
Umansky said many dual-language immersion programs are often located in neighborhoods where most families speak English, because English-speaking parents are often the loudest advocates pushing for them. And she said some districts outright bar recent immigrant students from enrolling in bilingual programs, incorrectly assuming they are not beneficial for them.
Finally, the report’s authors are recommending the state also invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs and in making such programs more affordable for students. They pointed out that after voters passed Proposition 227 in 1998, limiting bilingual education in California, many bilingual teacher preparation programs were closed.
“Prop 227 had such a devastating effect on traditional bilingual teacher programs, we have got to invest in them. They have to be bigger, they have to be stronger, and we have to have support for the programs and support for the students,” Umansky said.
Proposition 227 was overturned in 2016, when voters passed a separate measure, Proposition 58.
“California has put its foot down about saying, ‘We believe in multilingualism, we’re going to get students to be multilingual,’” Umansky said. “Now is the moment to really start putting money and efforts behind those intentions.”
Kindergarten teacher Carla Randazzo watches a student write alphabet letters on a white board at Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.
Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP Photo
California’s students have struggled in the five years since the pandemic closed schools across the state. But kids in many schools are bouncing back, returning to pre-Covid achievement levels. What’s working? How have some districts innovated to turn kids’ learning curves upward once again?
After analyzing student-level statewide data and visiting nine districts in each of the past three years, our team has made these discoveries:
Mindful policies make a difference
Nationwide, the pandemic erased nearly two decades of progress in math and reading. In California, average math proficiency decreased by 6.4 percentage points between 2019 and 2022, and reading proficiency dropped by 4 percentage points. Our work shows a modest positive effect of early reopening and federal recovery investments over this period. This highlights the importance of keeping schools open when it is safe to do so and prioritizing high-need students in reopening. Federal stimulus dollars also helped during this period.
Our statewide work further shows that districts blended, braided and sequenced multiple funding sources to extend instructional learning time, strengthen staffing and provide learning supports.
We also studied the impact of recovery investments and specific district recovery programs. We did not find that increased federal Covid funding to schools increased student test scores post-pandemic. However, districts that devoted funds to teacher retention efforts and extended learning time showed more improvement in student attendance, a key to improving academic outcomes.
Cross-sector partnerships advance whole-child development
Prolonged school closure, social isolation, economic anxiety, housing and food insecurity, Covid-19 infection, and the loss of loved ones exacerbated a national mental health crisis already underway before the pandemic. In 2021, 42% of high school students nationwide experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 32% attempted or seriously considered attempting suicide. As schools reopened, educators found themselves dealing with not just academic learning, but also support for basic needs (such as food and health care), mental health, and life skills (such as relationship skills).
Some districts pivoted to fostering whole-child development. For example, Compton Unified partnered with community health providers to offer health care services (such as vaccinations and check-ups), and Del Norte Unified leveraged Medi-Cal reimbursements to provide mental health counseling and therapy sessions. Educators will still need to deal with the academic, behavioral and life-skills needs for years to come. More cross-sector partnerships with public health, social services and housing would better equip schools to address these challenges.
School innovations foster a rebound in learning
Overall spending infusions have helped students rebound, but the impact has been relatively small. More important is how Covid relief funds were spent by districts. Our longitudinal case study of nine districts revealed some substantial organizational changes — reforms that may stick over time.
One large structural reform was the investment in student well-being. Before the pandemic, student well-being was considered mostly secondary to instruction and academic achievement. However, the pandemic highlighted the need to integrate life skills into instruction. As a result, districts invested in new program materials and moved resources to hire counselors, social workers, psychologists, and increased student access to school-based supports. Some even built new community centers where students and families come together.
A smaller scale, yet key, reform is districts’ investment in career pathways. Districts like Compton and Milpitas Unified offer a wide variety of pathways — from E-sports to computer science to early education — that are tied to on-the-job internships and certificates. These pathways have played an important role in engaging students and connecting them with employment opportunities.
Districts also tried new approaches to the structure of schooling and classroom practices. For example, Glendale Unified shifted to a seven-period block schedule that allowed middle and high school students to add an elective course that sparked their interest. In Poway Unified, small groups of students meet with teachers and classroom aides to focus on specific skill areas.
Digital innovations engage students, but gaps remain
Many districts have turned to digital innovations to motivate kids. In Poway, coaches embedded in the classroom work with teachers to build learning stations, where stronger students work in teams, freeing teachers to provide more direct instruction to kids at risk of falling behind.
Unfortunately, since the pandemic, the digital divide has narrowed, but it has not been eliminated.
In spring 2020, when schools abruptly shifted online, 40% of California households with school-age children did not have reliable internet or devices for distance learning. Over time, the state has made remarkable progress in device access, but not as much progress with internet access. The lack of progress could be attributed to multiple factors, including the absence of pre-existing infrastructure and affordability challenges. Federal and state governments provided unprecedented investments (such as the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program and California Senate Bill 356) to address barriers to universal broadband access; however, communities face significant challenges in building out infrastructure and improving affordability.
The pandemic provided an unprecedented opportunity to rethink and restart public education. Given the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, learning disruptions will become the new norm for many communities throughout the U.S.
By learning from the example of districts that have demonstrated resilience and success in pandemic recovery, we can better prepare for future disruptions and build a more resilient public education that supports all students.
•••
Niu Gao is a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Julian Betts is a professor at UC San Diego. Jonathan Isler and Piper Stanger are administrators at the California Department of Education.
Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, was part of the research team and contributed to this report.
This collaboration research is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X230002 to the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Any errors or misinterpretations belong to the authors and do not reflect the views of the institute, the U.S. Department of Education or the California Department of Education.
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.
Many California school districts pay cities and counties millions of dollars a year to put law enforcement officers on campuses, moving tax dollars allocated for education to policing with little oversight by elected school boards, an EdSource investigation found.
Not every district has what are commonly called school resource officers. Many call 911 if they need help, and 20 have their own police departments. Others contract with cities and counties, which provide resource officers from the ranks of local police, sheriffs, and probation departments.
Those districts provided a combined 118 contracts, entered into between 2018 and 2024, with some paying as many as three cities and counties for resource officers. The agreements, along with school board agendas and videos of meetings, show that district leaders rarely scrutinize the spending publicly.
School boards routinely approve policing contracts without discussion, often bundling them with routine items, such as field trips and cookies for staff meetings, into a single vote. The practice, known as using a “consent agenda,” alarms government transparency experts. EdSource found some boards approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for school resource officers using consent votes.
Although the federal government recommends that school districts review their policing programs annually, most of the contracts EdSource reviewed did not require yearly evaluations. In the few districts that required written reports on officers’ activities, police agencies didn’t submit them — and school officials rarely asked to see them.
The state Education Department offers no guidance to districts on policing contracts, said Elizabeth Sanders, an agency spokesperson.
“Consent items can be horrifically abused.”
David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition
The contracts EdSource obtained show districts spending at least $85 million on school resource officers. But their total costs are likely much higher. Roughly 20% of those contracts don’t include specific dollar amounts.
Instead, they mention unspecified charges based on law-enforcement union contracts negotiated by cities and counties. As a result, school boards sometimes approve contracts without a clear record of how much public money they have agreed to spend.
EdSource found that many districts are not only paying for officers whose positions are already funded by local governments, but also for using police cars, uniforms and cellphones.
The costs to schools surprised policing experts and public watchdogs.
“It’s protect and serve — and profit,” said retired state Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell, who also served as San Jose’s independent police auditor from 2010 to 2015.
She said cities and counties should provide resource officers to schools without charging.
“Shame on them for making this into a money-making operation,” Cordell said.
‘An enhanced service’
In many districts, the cost of a contract for a resource officer often exceeds the salary of a mid-career teacher.
The Holtville Unified School District in Imperial County has a one-year contract with the county for a sheriff’s deputy not to exceed $192,038.40.
That’s enough money to fund the salaries of nearly two teachers, according to teacher pay disclosure forms filed with the state.
The contract requires the district to pay for the officer’s “training, equipment, uniform, vehicle, supplies and employee benefits,” Undersheriff Robert Benavidez wrote in an email. Holtville Superintendent Celso Ruiz did not respond to questions about spending on officers.
Some districts spend more than a million dollars a year on resource officers.
The Elk Grove Unified School District has 67 schools and 62,000 students, and pays the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office $8.5 million over three years to provide six deputies.
The contract, which expires in June, includes nearly $648,000 for patrol cars and $15,000 for cellphone bills, and guarantees deputies five hours of overtime per week. The district also pays the city of Elk Grove $951,000 over three years for three officers.
Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a sheriff’s office spokesperson, said the district is “paying for an enhanced service,” requiring deputies to spend all day in schools.
Asked whether deputies assigned to the district were counted in the sheriff’s annual budget funded by the county, Gandhi replied, “Yes, for regular sheriff services.”
But when deputies work in schools, he said, they provide a service for which the sheriff’s entitled to charge.
“These are not officers that are simply responding to emergencies,” Gandhi said. “They’re on campus. That’s their full-time assignment. They’re helping the administration. It’s a presence issue. It’s something we value.”
If Elk Grove Unified were to end its contract with the county, which it could do with 30 days’ notice, the deputies would “be assigned to regular, other, sheriff functions, in patrol, investigations, corrections, whatever,” Gandhi said, noting that the sheriff’s office has a large number of vacant, budgeted positions.
‘Double taxation’
Many districts pay more than half or all of the salaries for officers whose positions are already funded by cities and counties.
In Ventura County, the Oxnard Union High School District currently has contracts with two cities and the sheriff’s office. The largest is a $2.23 million deal with the city of Oxnard for five police officers, which includes 75% of the city’s costs for the officers’ salaries and benefits.
The district pays for the full costs of one deputy as part of its three-year, $625,000 pact with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. It also has a deal with the city of Camarillo for police services.
Oxnard Union board member Karen Sher, who describes herself as an advocate for school resource officers, told EdSource that charging districts for officers whose positions are already funded amounts to “double taxation.”
“The taxpayer’s paying twice for the same services,” Sher said.
“I really don’t understand how this is not a bigger issue. I have asked the question publicly. I can’t even tell you how many times, and I have never gotten an answer,” she said.
Former Oxnard Police Cmdr. Louis Mc Arthur was in charge of school resource officers before being elected as the city’s mayor in November 2024.Credit: J. Marie / EdSource
Oxnard Mayor Luis Mc Arthur, who, until taking office on Dec. 8, was the Oxnard Police commander in charge of school resource officers, said the city can’t afford to provide the officers without charging the school system. The department’s 2024-25 budget is $105 million, records show.
“We’re strapped financially and also short-staffed,” McArthur said.
“We can argue philosophically if it’s the responsibility of police to fund” resource officers, but the charges will likely continue, he said.
Districts should not fund officers who are already on government payrolls, said David Kline, vice president of communications for the California Taxpayers Association, which advocates for limiting taxes.
“If taxpayers are paying for two police officer positions, they should be getting two police officers,” Kline said. “They shouldn’t be paying twice for the same officer.”
Not all municipalities charge for providing resource officers.
Last year, voters in the Central Valley cities of Manteca and Lathrop passed sales-tax measures funding a range of services, including resource officers for the Manteca Unified School District, which supported the measures.
“We don’t believe in double taxation,” said Victoria Brunn, the district’s chief business and information officer.
But the Manteca district also has a two-year, $274,000 contract with the Stockton Unified School District, which has its own police department, for one officer.
Cost-sharing is common across the country, said Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers. The percentage of an officer’s salary that districts pay varies widely, he said. “Some may pay 25%, while others will pay 100%.”
Canady recommends that school boards review policing contracts annually. “You get to the end of the school year and no one thinks, ‘Hey, we need to take an hour or two here and sit down with people that are going to be making decisions and at least review this thing.’”
‘In case of an armed intruder’
A poll released earlier this month by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that 4 out of 5 public school parents are worried about a mass shooting at their local school, and nearly as many support having at least one armed police officer on campus while school is in session.
The Anderson Union High School District’s three-year contract with the Shasta County Probation Department does not mention school security. But Superintendent Brian Parker said that’s why the district is paying $1.6 million for three resource officers through 2027.
Anderson Union High School in Anderson in Shasta County.Credit: Thomas Peele / EdSource
“The main reason our board and our community want officers on campus is to provide security in case of an armed intruder,” Parker wrote in an email. “Thankfully, that hasn’t happened in our district.”
Many contracts require officers to divide their time between several campuses, which could reduce their ability to respond quickly to a shooting.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there were about 24,900 school resource officers in 2019. The federal government does not collect data on school shootings, but according to a Washington Post database, there have been at least 428 school shootings in the United States since 1999, including 72 in California.
Whether the presence of school resource officers makes schools and students safer remains the subject of research and debate. In 2024, policy analysts at the Rand Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, reviewed dozens of studies and found, “the presence of SROs (school resource officers) may reduce some types of crime and increase the detection of weapons and drugs on campus.”
But, the Rand analysts wrote, “research has also shown that the presence of SROs inflicts costs on students. Students at schools with SROs are more likely to face disciplinary action by school administrations and more law enforcement contact in general. Black and Latino students may be particularly affected.”
‘We wanted to look at everything’
Last year, the Folsom Cordova Unified School Board decided to examine its policing contracts with the city of Folsom and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, which totaled $502,000. Those contracts had remained largely unchanged for 12 years, said board President Christopher Clark.
Christopher Clark, president of the Folsom Cordova Unified School Board.Credit: Folsom Cordova Unified
“What we wanted to do as a school district is be transparent. We wanted to look at everything in the contract,” Clark told EdSource.
At a board meeting last May to discuss the contracts, speakers expressed concerns about the impact police officers had on Black and Latino students.
Van Merrill, a student board member, said he worried about having “armed police officers on campus.” He said the district has many students who come from groups that “have been historically discriminated against and arrested and killed by police.”
Earl F. Smith, a parent who attempted to speak to police about a problem with his daughter at school, told the board that a Folsom High School administrator described him to a resource officer as “an angry, raving black man.”
“I’m scared to go to Folsom High School,” Smith said. He referred to the 2018 fatal shooting of a 22-year-old unarmed Black man by two Sacramento Police Department officers who said they mistook his phone for a handgun.
“It’s easy to make wrong decisions. It’s hard on the officer. It’s hard on the community,” Smith said. “ I would like the board to consider the perspective that maybe only a certain amount of students would feel comfortable with an officer.”
In a telephone interview, Smith said, “I don’t think there should be an officer at a school walking around with a gun.”
Clark, the board president, who is Black, told EdSource that Smith “absolutely” voiced valid concerns. “I’m speaking as an African American,” said Clark. “We are stereotyped. Oh, yeah. I’ve been stereotyped by a police officer.”
The board eventually approved a change to the contract, requiring officers to spend more time patrolling the areas around schools and to respond to emergencies in schools when needed.
“What works for me is that these officers are actually patrolling the area,” Clark told EdSource. “If there happens to be an emergency, the response time is within three and a half minutes. I believe in safety for our kids.”
‘Unaware’ of requirements
The U.S. Justice Department recommends that law-enforcement agencies and school districts “conduct an annual assessment” of resource-officer programs to ensure that they are adequately addressing all expectations, successes, and challenges.”
Both school and police leadership should review law enforcement data and records to help determine whether officers “are using their law-enforcement powers judiciously,” according to the department’s recommendations.
But many school districts don’t seek or receive such data even when they require it by contract.
The Manteca Unified School District in San Joaquin County has a one-year, $125,000 contract for a resource office with the Stockton Unified School District, which has its own police department. The contract requires officers to document “the type, nature and/or description of activities performed each shift” to help school officials evaluate the program’s effectiveness. The reports are to be provided quarterly.
The contract also requires Stockton Unified Police to provide “copies of incident, crime, service and other police-generated reports, search warrants and other public documents which concern substantial actual or potential criminal activity.”
But EdSource found that Stockton Unified police gave no such documents to Manteca. Asked why the reports weren’t provided, Stockton Unified Chief Mayra Franco said she didn’t know anything about them.
“We were unaware of this requirement,” she wrote in an email, adding that her department would start providing the documents.
Brunn, Manteca Unified’s chief business officer, called the failure of Stockton Unified to provide the documents “very unfortunate.” But she also said no one in her district asked for them.
”We had employee changes during that time frame. It’s not what we would have preferred to have happened,” she said.
Parker, the Anderson Union High School District superintendent, said its contract with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, which used to provide school resource officers, required deputies to prepare quarterly activity reports on their activities and provide them to the district “upon request.”
But the district “never requested them,” Parker said, and no longer has a contract with the sheriff’s office. The district’s current contract with the Shasta County Probation Department doesn’t include any reporting requirements.
Canady, of the school resource officer association, questioned whether reports are necessary.
“What would go in a report?” he said. “I don’t think it’s something that school districts have been demanding. If you’re in a good partnership with the law enforcement agency, there shouldn’t be any need for reports.”
Last year, during the debate about law enforcement contracts for the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, school board member Kara Lofthouse said that reports are crucial to understanding the effectiveness of policing programs.
They are needed “so that we can determine whether or not it’s a smart decision” to continue to pay for police. Without them, Lofthouse added, “we cannot make a sound decision on what’s best for our district.”
She said officers should write reports to “show the schools that they’re going to, even if they’re doing nothing, even if they’re checking in with the principal and they have lunch with a couple of kids. That’s really the report I want to see. I want to see what their time is being spent doing.”
The Tracy Unified School District’s contract with the city of Tracy requires police to provide “statistics related to crime if requested.” But the district told EdSource that it did not have any documents with that data. It also did not respond directly to questions about how it determined whether policing services were successful.
“Our district works extremely closely with our officers and Tracy Police. We communicate through in-person meetings, phone calls, etc.,” Bobbie Etcheverry, a district spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Consent votes
Some school boards approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for resource officers using catch-all consent votes, records show.
Policing contracts require more scrutiny and “should not be on consent agendas,” said Barbara Fedders, a University of North Carolina law professor who has written about school policing in California and is a school board member herself.
“Your contract language for a playground provider doesn’t implicate your values as a school district in the same way that a (contract) with the police does,” Fedders said.
“Consent items can be horrifically abused,” said David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition, which advocates for government transparency and press freedoms.
Loy said that two school board votes identified by EdSource may have violated the Brown Act, the state law requiring local legislative bodies to conduct open and transparent meetings.
The agenda for Elk Grove Unified’s board meeting, section VI.10, specifies that the contracts on the attached list “are under the bid limit of $99,100.
In June 2022, Elk Grove Unified’s school board approved its current contracts with the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office and the city of Elk Grove on a consent vote.
The meeting’s consent agenda stated that all the items under consideration cost no more than $99,100. But the contracts with the Sheriff’s Office and the city included payments for $2.7 million and $317,000, respectively.
The list referenced by the agenda includes two law enforcement contracts worth a combined $3 million, both well over the stated $99,100.
“If an agency says, ‘Don’t worry, nothing to see here, everything on the consent agenda is under $99,100,’ and in fact, what’s on the consent agenda is more than $99,100 over the life of the contract, that is itself a Brown Act violation,” Loy said. “I would argue strongly in court you cannot mislead the public.”
Kristen Coates, the district’s deputy superintendent, wrote in an email that the district did not violate the Brown Act because the law contains “no requirement to agendize items based on dollar figures.”
She declined multiple requests to be interviewed. Board President Michael Vargas did not return messages.
A vote in San Joaquin County also raises questions about how boards approve police contracts.
In 2022, Tracy Unified’s board voted for a consent agenda that included “routine agreements, expenditures, and notices of completions.” As part of that vote, the board approved a $900,000 contract with the city of Tracy to provide three resource officers.
The contract was not listed on the consent agenda. A report attached to the larger meeting agenda said the contract was for $450,000 over two years. The board did not discuss the contract before voting.
“The public obligated $900,000, not $450,000,” Loy said. “As a best practice, these things should not be on consent. The public has a right to know what the total obligation is for the life of the contract.”
In an interview, Tracy Superintendent Robert Pecot did not explain why the agenda misstated the contract’s cost. “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “People are welcome to come to our meetings.”
Loy said lawmakers need to amend the Brown Act “to limit the use of consent agendas.” Items such as school policing contracts should be debated, he said. “You should go through the full democratic process. It definitely cries out for significant policy reform.”
Bret Harte Union High School in Angels Camp in Calaveras County.Credit: Thomas Peele / EdSource
‘Sloppy’ practices
Some school boards wait months or even years to ratify contracts for resource officers and, in a few cases, long after those contracts have taken effect or expired, EdSource found. Under state law, school superintendents can agree to contract terms, but those agreements aren’t valid until school boards approve them, a process known as ratification.
The Bret Harte Union High School District in Calaveras County has a one-year policing contract with the city of Angels Camp with a start date listed as July 2, 2024. The district’s board voted to ratify that contract on Feb. 4, 2025. By that time, the city had billed the district more than $35,000 for a resource officer, records show.
Long ratification delays are “an extremely bad budgeting practice,” said Kline of the California Taxpayers Association. “What happens if the school board votes ‘no’ on a contract seven months after it’s been signed?”
It’s “a huge transparency issue,” he added. “The taxpayers haven’t had their notice and chance to voice their opinions.”
Bret Harte’s board also didn’t ratify a separate contract with Angels Camp until two years after it had expired, voting only after EdSource raised questions about it.
Superintendent Scott Nanik initially claimed that the district couldn’t produce a policing contract for the 2022-23 school year. But Angels Camp records show the city billed the district nearly $45,000 for policing services for that school year.
Nanik had signed the document on Aug. 2, 2022. Last month, the board voted without comment to retroactively ratify the deal.
Byron Smith, a lawyer for the district, wrote in an email that the late ratification vote was taken under a portion of state law allowing school districts the “flexibility to create their own unique solutions” and to spend money “not inconsistent with the purposes for which the funds were appropriated.”
Bret Harte leaders “are committed to doing things the right and legal way,” Smith said.
Professor David Levine of UC Law San Francisco said the board likely voted to ward off any potential litigation by making the contract “a proper expenditure.”
“Imagine if you had a gadfly saying it wasn’t a proper use of public funds,” and suing because there was never a vote, Levine said. The district had been “clearly sloppy,” he added.
School boards “should be approving contracts before the related work begins, not afterward,” said Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association.
EdSource found another school board, Benicia Unified in Solano County, that had not voted to ratify a $225,000 policing contract with the city of Benicia for the 2023-2025 school years.
In response to a reporter’s questions, Benicia Superintendent Damon Wright acknowledged the district made a mistake. “The contract should have been formally brought back to the board for final approval,” he said.
On April 10, three months before the contract expires, the board approved the agreement, without discussion, on the consent agenda.
Seventh-graders work together on homework in their school library.
Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages
Mental health has been at the center of former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy’s personal journey to recovery from addiction as well as his public career as a policymaker, author and advocate.
In 2008, while representing Rhode Island in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kennedy wasthe lead author of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, a federal law that requires health insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental health and addiction care and general physical health care, such as diabetes or cancer treatment.
Forner U.S. Rep, Patrick J. Kennedy, D-R.I.
Kennedy, who has long been vocal about pursuing treatment for his substance use and bipolar disorder, remains an advocate for greater access to mental health care. Earlier this year, he published his book “Profiles in Mental Health Courage” — a reference to his late uncle and former President John F. Kennedy’s classic “Profiles in Courage” — detailing how people from diverse backgrounds across the country have taken on mental illness and addiction. In October, he was a keynote speaker at the annual student wellness conference Wellness Together in Anaheim, where he spoke about his advocacy as founder of the mental health policy nonprofit The Kennedy Forum.
“As we turn the corner on stigma related to suicide and overdose, we need to finally focus a lot more on solutions early on in a person’s life,” Kennedy said in an interview with EdSource. Not only are young people less likely to seek help due to stigma, but are also less likely to be properly insured, incurring high out-of-pocket costs for treatment when they need it.
For Kennedy, the key to addressing the youth mental health and addiction crisis is increasing and sustaining funding for care on the local, state and federal levels. He emphasized that schools desperately need the bulk of that funding, given that early intervention significantly reduces a child’s chance of developing a serious mental illness in adulthood.
California has, in recent years, invested heavily in expanding mental health support for children and adolescents. The state’s next challenge, Kennedy said, is sustaining these crucial services.
In 2019, the state embarked on a $4.7 billion Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, focused mainly on recruiting and training new mental health providers across the state’s school system. To help sustain these programs, the state Department of Health Care Services plans to make new public school-based mental health services billable to both Medi-Cal and commercial health insurance, making California’s multi-payer fee schedule one of the largest school reimbursement programs in the country.
EdSource interviewed Kennedy about expanding mental health care for students and families. His remarks have been edited for length and clarity.
How do we address the enduring impact of stigma on our health and education systems?
We need greater literacy (regarding mental health) across the board. Many don’t know these mentalillnesses as brain illnesses, and they don’t understand that they’re treatable. If we knew we could treat them successfully, which we can, especially if we go in early, how can we think about them differently? We don’t let cancer get to stage four to treat it. We screen it, screen it, screen it. It’s embedded in my medical chart. My doctor asks me 15 ways about my risk for stroke and cancer. We need to do that with mental health.
We could address so much of this if we just incorporated better mental health services within our community. So many families have their mental health symptoms exacerbated by lack of stable housing, no supportive employment and a lack of community to help. They become isolated, which is the worst thing for those struggling with their mental health.
Why does the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act matter for young people today?
It used to be the case where, if you had a mental illness, you had to pay higher co-pays, premiums and deductibles to get mental health treatment than you would to get diabetes treatment or asthma treatment. Unlike for physical illnesses, insurance companies would cap the total of dollars you could spend as a patient on mental health. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act established that insurance companies could not discriminate and treat the brain any differently than any other organ of the body.
Ultimately, we can’t treat everyone based upon bake sales. We have to change the metrics of what constitutes value in our mental health system. We have to get this embedded in regular insurance.
How can California ensure that new school-based coverage for mental health care is effective in the long term?
We have to figure out how to reorient the insurance process so that there’s a way of capturing the return on investment from an earlier investment. The state is the one that has the most to say about overall state coverage for mental health early on, in order to reduce future obligations on the state’s part, which means picking up the pieces of a broken population that hasn’t properly been supported by coverage through early intervention services.
We need to get organized as voters. There’s not a family out there that doesn’t have these issues affecting a member of their family, who hasn’t lost a loved one to suicide or overdose. There’s a huge need for mental health treatment because we keep waiting till people are in a crisis. Why not make this a public health issue and really embed resources in elementary and secondary schools so students can take care of themselves?
What role should the federal government play in addressing youth mental health?
We need to have Federally Qualified Health Centers in every public school in America. They could open satellites in each of the schools that can help treat kids where they are. A lot of kids, particularly from minority communities, are not going to get mental health care after school. You could bring tele-mental health into a school nurse’s office, so it’s not just where you get an aspirin, but a real clinic in the school where you could be meeting kids’ health needs writ large. You’d also need ongoing intensive care to connect them to the community health center outside.
We already fund Federally Qualified Health Centers. It’s supported on a bipartisan basis. It covers the uninsured as well as the insured. These centers and Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers cover a lot of rural areas and health deserts, and they can provide general counseling and support services. They have a board of directors, who are all people in the community who know the resources in the community and can pull together a more wraparound, holistic approach.
So many kids come to school from homes where there’s violence, addiction or mental illness. We need to reach the whole family. In many states where Republicans don’t have good benefits for their people, the centers provide a valuable safety valve for their constituents to get health care. We just need to take that model to scale in schools. The easiest thing is to run all of these through existing bureaucracies, so you’re not trying to create a new system from whole cloth.
How can students help address mental health?
I would say to young people that there are two major ways they can really help the system. One, they can learn about how to prevent mental health challenges themselves through learning about their own brain and learning coping skills and problem-solving skills. We can focus on a lot more upstream, or proactive, mechanisms early in a student’s life, when they can start to build different coping skills and learn how to manage their emotions.
And second, if they’re interested in going into the mental health space, they can create a much better track to get into the mental health field. We just don’t have enough hands on deck to really meet the enormity of the need for those who desperately need treatment. Not only do we need to build that infrastructure and access, but also build a workforce pipeline for those trying to go into the field in greater numbers.
It’s got everything to do with young people. These are illnesses where 50% of them occur before the age of 14, and 75% occur before the age of 25. They’re illnesses of the young; they can take you hostage and take out whole parts of your life, when, ordinarily, you’d be in the most productive period in your life as a young person.
A teacher reviews students’ project notes on a computer.
Credit: Allison Shelley for EDUimages
TOp takeaways
California issued 17,328 new teaching credentials during the 2023-24 school year, an 18% increase.
At the beginning of this school year, district officials estimated they needed about 25,000 new teachers to fill their classrooms.
Enrollment in teacher candidate programs dropped by more than 3,000 teacher candidates between 2019-20 and last school year.
California issued 18% more teaching credentials last school year, compared with the previous year, but education experts remain only cautiously optimistic. The uptick comes after two years of declines, a drop in enrollment in teacher preparation programs and apprehension about federal and state funding.
During the 2023-24 school year, 17,328 teachers earned a preliminary or clear credential — 2,666 more than the previous year. This was the first increase in new credentialed teachers since 2020-21, when the pandemic shuttered schools, according to the recently released “Teacher Supply in California” report to the Legislature.
The increase offers a glimmer of hope amid an enduring teacher shortage. However, the new teachers may not be enough to fill the classrooms vacated by retiring teachers and to replace teachers with emergency permits and waivers. New threats to teacher preparation funding could also hurt program enrollment, erasing last year’s gains.
“At a time when schools across the nation are facing teacher shortages, the growth in California’s newly credentialed teachers indicates that state investments in teacher recruitment are beginning to pay off,” said Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. “While these findings are a bright spot for California’s education system, we recognize the significant shortage of qualified teachers that still exists and encourage those interested in positively impacting our state’s youth to consider teaching as a profession.”
California has spent $1 billion since 2018 to recruit and retain teachers to end the state’s teacher shortage. State leaders directed the funding to financial support for teacher candidates, to grants for residency programs, and to make it easier for school support staff to earn a degree and a teaching credential.
Some teachers aren’t properly credentialed
Without enough fully credentialed teachers to fill all the classrooms, school districts have had to hire teachers on intern credentials and emergency-style permits and waivers. Last school year, 5% of the state’s teachers were not qualified to teach the classes they taught, according to state data.
California’s teacher supply has been in a constant state of flux since the Great Recession, which began in 2007, caused large-scale teacher layoffs. The number of new California teaching credentials was 14,810 in 2013, before beginning a seven-year climb to 19,673 in 2020-21. The Covid pandemic interrupted that ascent, resulting in two years of decreases that ended last school year.
Although the numbers have increased, there still aren’t enough fully credentialed teachers to fill all of California’s classrooms. Before the beginning of this school year, district officials estimated they would have to collectively hire nearly 25,000 new teachers — 169 more than in the 2023-24 school year, according to the California Department of Education data.
Declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs could further impact the number of fully credentialed teachers in the classroom. Enrollment dropped from 41,978 in 2019-20 to 38,596 last school year. While new enrollment increased by 1,166 students between 2022-23 and last school year, there were 3,309 fewer continuing students.
The California Center on Teaching Careers had a full cohort of teacher candidates in its program at the beginning of the school year, but that number has dwindled in the last several months as federal funding became questionable, Lopez said. He suspects the students left when the financial incentives dried up, or after finding other, more affordable pathways.
“Grant programs are designed to make high-quality preparation more affordable,” said Dana Grayson, teacher workforce director at WestEd. “If there are disruptions in access to that funding, I think we might expect that could impact the number of teachers that are able to get those credentials and complete their certification.
“I think similarly, the programs themselves, if they have uncertainty in their funding landscape, it could lead to hesitancy, or an inability to be able to scale or sustain programming,” she said.
Schools still in need of teachers
The increased number of credentials will bring some relief to school districts that have struggled to fill teaching jobs in subjects like math, science and special education.
The number of math credentials has increased over the last four years, with 1,247 new credentials issued last school year — a 15% increase over the prior year. The number of science credentials rose 7%, or 74 credentials, last school year — but only after four consecutive years of declines.
Nearly 3,500 teachers earned education specialist credentials last school year, compared with 3,051 the year before. Even with the increase, however, fewer new special education credentials were issued last school year than in any of the previous four years, except 2022-23.
Most emergency-style permits still going up
But this year’s report on teaching credentials is not all good. Despite a decrease in some emergency-style waivers and permits, there have been increases in others, as well as in intern credentials, between 2022-23 and last school year:
“I do think these (credential) numbers represent a promising uptick in getting more fully credentialed teachers in the state,” Grayson said. “But, I think sustainability planning is going to be really important to make sure we can support preparation programs, maintaining that affordability and access toward getting those full credentials.”
In the first months of the first Trump administration in 2017, a father in Los Angeles was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after dropping his 12-year-old daughter off at school.
The ripple effect was immediate.
“Right away there was a drop in attendance in L.A. schools because parents were thinking, ‘Oh, if I drop off my kids, ICE is going to pick me up,’” said Ana Mendoza, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Southern California and director of the organization’s Education Equity Project. “The need for safety and sanctuary policies became really salient because students weren’t going to schools or families were tentative about their participation in schools.”
In the wake of this year’s presidential election, there is again widespread uncertainty among immigrant families in California about what is to come, given President-elect Donald Trump’s promises of mass deportation.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta recently released updated guidelines and model policies about what K-12 schools, colleges and universities can and cannot do under state and federal law, regarding keeping immigrant students and families’ data private, when to allow an immigration enforcement officer on campus, how to respond to the detention or deportation of a student’s family member, and how to respond to bullying or harassment of a student based on immigration status.
The original guidelines and policies were released in 2018 by then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra, after California passed Assembly Bill 699, requiring schools to pass policies that limited collaboration with immigration enforcement. Bonta is now asking schools to update their policies.
“School districts should be examining what their board policies are and to make sure they’re updated and take any measures to make sure that families feel safe,” Mendoza said.
An estimated 1 in 10, or 1 million, children in California have at least one undocumented parent. And about 133,000 children in California public schools are undocumented themselves, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
In California’s colleges and universities, an estimated 86,800 students are undocumented, and about 6,800 employees in TK-12 schools, colleges and universities have temporary work permits and protection from deportation under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.
“Undocumented students and faculty and staff are afraid for their safety, and this will impact their retention and enrollment in higher education if they’re not feeling safe or they’re feeling targeted,” said Luz Bertadillo, director of campus engagement for the Presidents’ Alliance for Higher Education and Immigration, a national organization of college and university leaders. “For campuses to have a strong stance on what they’re doing to support undocumented students is important, or at least letting their students know they’re thinking about them and they’re taking action. Even though they cannot guarantee their safety, at least they’re taking those initiatives to safeguard.”
What rights do immigrant students and family members have at school and college, regardless of their immigration status?
The right to attend public school
All children present in the United States, regardless of immigration status, have a right to attend public school. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Plyler v. Doe that states cannot deny students a free, public education based on their immigration status or their parents or guardians’ immigration status. Some states — including California in 1994 with Proposition 187 — and school districts have since attempted to pass laws that would either deny enrollment to students who did not have valid immigration status or report their status to authorities, but all these laws have been struck down by courts.
California schools are not allowed to request or collect information about Social Security numbers, immigration status or U.S. citizenship when enrolling students. Students and parents do not have to answer questions from schools about their immigration status, citizenship or whether they have a Social Security number.
“This often comes up in requests for student documents,” Mendoza said. “I had an intake once where a parent gave a passport during enrollment, and the front office person was asking the parent for a visa. No. The school has no right to ask for documents about your citizenship or immigration status.”
Schools can ask for some information like a student’s place of birth, when they first came to the U.S. or attended school in the U.S., in order to determine whether a student is eligible for special federal or state programs for recently arrived immigrant students or English learners. However, parents are not required to give schools this information, and schools cannot use this information to prevent children from enrolling in school. The Office of the Attorney General suggests that schools should collect this information separately from enrolling students.
Privacy of school records
The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, restricts schools from sharing students’ personal information in most cases with other agencies or organizations, including federal immigration authorities. The law requires that schools get a parent or guardian’s consent before releasing any student information to another agency or organization, or if the student is 18 or older, schools must get consent from the student.
However, in some cases, schools may be required to provide information without consent in response to a court order or judicial subpoena.
Colleges are also restricted from sharing information except in certain cases. Bertadillo said her organization recommends that college leaders have conversations with all the different departments that might manage information about students’ or families’ immigration status, such as information technology, admissions, registrar, and financial aid, to review their practices for storing or sharing the data.
“We hear some campuses have citizenship status on their transcripts and those transcripts get sent to graduate schools, to jobs, and that’s essentially outing students,” Bertadillo said.
She said it’s important for colleges and schools to pass or revisit procedures about what to do if immigration officials ask for data or attempt to enter a campus.
“A lot of institutions created them back in Trump 1.0. We’re recommending they reaffirm or revisit them, so that the campus knows that this is in place,” Bertadillo said.
Safe haven at school
The Department of Homeland Security has designated schools and colleges as protected areas where immigration enforcement should be avoided as much as possible. President-elect Trump has said he may rescind this policy.
In the event that ICE officers do enter schools or ask to question students, the attorney general’s guidelines say school staff should ask officers for a judicial warrant. Without a judicial warrant, school staff are not required to give an ICE officer permission to enter the school or conduct a search, or to provide information or records about a student or family, the guidelines say.
A bill introduced by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond would establish a “safe zone” of 1 mile around schools and prohibit schools from allowing ICE to enter a campus or share information without a judicial warrant.
Under California law, schools must notify parents or guardians if they release a student to a law-enforcement officer, except in cases of suspected child abuse or neglect.
California law does not require schools to notify parents or guardians before law enforcement officers question a child at school, but it does not prohibit schools from notifying them either. California’s attorney general suggests that school districts and charter schools should create policies that require notification of parents or guardians before a law enforcement officer questions or removes a student, unless that officer has a judicial warrant or court order.
In addition, the attorney general says if a police officer or immigration agent tries to enter a school or talk to a student for purposes of immigration enforcement, the superintendent or principal should e-mail the Bureau of Children’s Justice in the California Department of Justice.
“Schools should retrain their staff on their visitor management policies, to make sure everyone who comes onto campus, including law enforcement, is questioned about what their purpose is, and that school staff is trained on what to do if law enforcement asks to see information about students or staff,” said Mendoza.
Support from school if a family member is detained or deported
If a student reports that their parents or guardians were detained or deported, California law requires that the school must follow parents’ instructions about whom to contact in an emergency. The attorney general’s guidance says “schools should not contact Child Protective Services unless the school is unsuccessful in arranging for the care of the child through the emergency contact information.”
The guidance also suggests that schools should help students and family members contact legal assistance, their consulate, and help them locate their detained family members through ICE’s detainee locator system.
Mendoza said it is important to note that if a student’s parents are detained or deported, and as a result they have to go live with another family member, at that point, they are eligible for support for homeless students under the federal McKinney-Vento Act.
Protection from discrimination and harassment
Federal law prohibits discrimination and harassment based on race, national origin, color, sex, age, disability and religion. California’s law AB 699 also made immigration status a protected characteristic, meaning that schools are required to have policies that prohibit discrimination, harassment and bullying based on immigration status.
Mendoza said it’s important for families and students who experience bullying or harassment to know they can submit complaints through their schools or to different agencies in California. “There are advocates out there willing to support them if their schools do not act in accordance with best practices or with the law,” Mendoza said.
Free lunch, subsidized child care and special education
In California, all students have a right to a free school lunch, since the 2022-23 school year. In addition, some students whose families are considered low-income qualify for subsidized child care, either all day for infants and preschoolers, or after school for school-age children. Students with disabilities have a right to special education to meet their needs, under federal law.
Immigrant families are often afraid to apply for public services because they are worried this will count against them when applying for permanent residency. This is largely due to the “public charge” test, which immigration officers use to determine whether green-card applicants are likely to depend on public benefits.
Currently, immigration officers can only consider whether applicants have used cash assistance for income, like SSI or CalWORKs, or long-term institutionalized care paid for by public insurance, such as Medi-Cal. They do not consider school lunch, child care or food stamps. And officers are not allowed to look at whether applicants’ family members, like U.S. citizen children, use public benefits. During the first Trump administration, the president changed this policy to include family members and some other benefits. It is unclear whether he may attempt to change this again in the future. However, even under the changes during his first term, school lunch and child care were not included.
In-state tuition and scholarships for college
Under the California Dream Act, undocumented students qualify for in-state tuition and state financial aid at California colleges and universities if they attended high school for three or more years or attained credits at community college or adult school and graduated from high school or attained an associate degree or finished minimum transfer requirements at a California community college. The number of students applying for the California Dream Act has plummeted in recent years.
Kindergarten students at George Washington Elementary in Lodi listen to teacher Kristen McDaniel read “Your Teachers Pet Creature” on the first day of school on July 30, 2024.
Credit: Diana Lambert / EdSource
The Social Security Fairness Act, signed by President Joe Biden on Sunday, will increase retirement benefits for many educators and other public sector workers, including nearly 290,000 in California.
The act repeals both the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset laws, which reduced Social Security benefits for workers who are entitled to public pensions, such as firefighters, police officers and teachers, according to the Social Security Department.
The change in the laws does not mean that California teachers, who do not pay into Social Security, will all get benefits. Instead, teachers who paid into Social Security while working in non-teaching jobs will be eligible for their full Social Security benefits, as will those eligible for spousal and survivor benefits.
Teachers who had previous careers, or who worked second jobs or summer jobs, benefit from the repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision, said Staci Maiers, spokesperson for the National Education Association.
California is one of 15 states that does not enroll its teachers in Social Security. Instead, teachers receive pensions from the California Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS.
“This is about fairness. These unjust Social Security penalties have robbed public service workers of their hard-earned benefits for far too long,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association in a media release. “They have hurt educators and their families — and damaged the education profession, making it harder to attract and retain educators. And that means students are impacted, too.”
At a press conference Sunday, President Joe Biden said the Social Security Fairness Act would mean an increase on average of $360 a month for workers that have been impacted by the laws. There will also be a lump sum retroactive payment to make up for the benefits that workers should have received in 2024, Biden said. No date has been announced for those payments.
“The bill I’m signing today is about a simple proposition,” Biden said. “Americans who have worked hard all their lives to earn an honest living should be able to retire with economic security and dignity.”
“It’s a game-changer for a lot of educators,” said Kathy Wylie, a retired teacher who lives in Mendocino. Wylie, who is a few years away from drawing Social Security, worked for a technology company for 15 years before embarking on a 17-year career in education.
She expects that the bump in retirement funds could encourage some veteran teachers to retire early.
Biden signed the legislation following decades of advocacy from the National Education Association, the International Association of Fire Fighters and the California Retired Teachers Association. The bipartisan bill was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 12 and the U.S. Senate on Dec. 21.
The amendments to the Social Security Act apply to monthly benefits after December 2023. The Social Security Department is evaluating how to implement the new law, according to its website.
Kindergarten teacher Carla Randazzo watches a student write alphabet letters on a white board at Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.
Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP Photo
Insufficient school funding is hurting California teachers and their students, according to “The State of California Public Schools,” a report from the California Teachers Association released Tuesday.
The lack of funding has meant insufficient wages and high health insurance premiums for teachers, crowded classrooms and a lack of support staff, according to the report, which is based on a December survey of almost 2,000 TK-12 educators.
Most of the educators surveyed said that their pay is too low to afford housing near their jobs and that their salaries aren’t keeping up with the rising costs of groceries, childcare and other necessary expenses.
Ninety-one percent of the educators surveyed who rent reported that they can’t afford to buy a home. Only 12% of the teachers surveyed said they were able to save a comfortable amount for the future, while 31% said they are living paycheck to paycheck.
“Many educators are spread thin and frankly aren’t able to make ends meet financially, and are working in a public school system that continues to be underfunded year after year,” said CTA President David Golberg at a press conference Tuesday.
The California Teachers Association represents 310,000 of the state’s educators, including teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, librarians, education support professionals and some higher education faculty and staff. The survey was conducted for the union by GBAO Strategies, a public opinion research and political strategy firm.
Teachers who took part in the survey, which targeted teachers throughout the state to provide a representative demographic, overwhelmingly agreed that California schools don’t pay high enough salaries to teachers or have the resources to meet the needs of the students.
Eighty-four percent said there aren’t enough staff, resources or training to support special education students, and 76% reported that classrooms are overcrowded. Sixty-eight percent said students lack access to mental health support.
California ranked 18th in per pupil spending in 2021-22, the most recent year nationally comparable data is available – slightly above the national average, according to a November report by the Public Policy Institute of California. When the difference in labor costs were taken into account, California dropped to 34th. In the five years between the 2018-19 school year and the 2023-24 school year, education funding increased nearly 34% in California, according to the PPIC.
“We’re not even in the top 10 when we compare ourselves to other states,” Goldberg said. “So, that shows you the real disconnect from the wealth that exists in our state and the resources that are going to students and educators.”
Almost a third of the teachers surveyed have taken second jobs or gig work to make ends meet, 37% have delayed or gone without medical care and 65% have skipped family vacations because of financial constraints, according to the report.
“These are not extra frills,” Goldberg said. “These are things that we consider part of just the everyday life that us, as human beings and as workers, a dignified life would entail. And, you see that a lot of educators are living with a scarcity around even the most basic things.”
Four out of 10 of the educators surveyed said they are considering leaving the profession in the next few years. Nearly 80% of the teachers said that finances were the primary reason they would consider the job change.
Sacramento-area TK teacher Kristina Caswell said a recent increase in the cost of healthcare premiums at her district swallowed up the recent raise she received. She said the affordability tool on the Covered California website rates her healthcare costs for a family of five as unaffordable.
“I will spend money on my students before I will think about going to that doctor’s appointment that I need and spending that money on maybe a prescription that I need if I get sick,” she said. “That’s something I will stop and think about. Whereas when I’m thinking about my students, I don’t (stop to) think about spending the money.”
Despite their concerns, 77% of teachers surveyed said they still find their job rewarding, although 62% are dissatisfied with their overall working conditions.
“I’m really thankful and grateful that I have the job that I have,” Caswell said. “I absolutely love my job. I adore my students, I adore the families that I serve.”
Children line up to drink water from a fountain inside Cuyama Elementary School in Santa Barbara County.
Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Photo
It’s that time again when I line up my predictions for the year only to see events conspire to knock them down like bowling pins.
As you recall, I lay down my wager in fensters. You can, too, on a scale of 1 fenster — no way it’ll happen — to 5 – it’s bird-brain obvious (at least to you). Fensters are a cryptocurrency redeemable only in Russian rubles; currently trading at about 110 per U.S. dollar. Predict right, and you’ll be rich in no time!
2025 will be rife with conflict; you know that. It will start Jan. 20, when President Donald Trump will announce that POTUS 47 v. California will be the main attraction on his UFC fight card. Trump’s tag team of both a Republican Congress, though barely a majority, and a conservative Supreme Court will be formidable.
Since it’s often difficult to know from day to day whether Trump’s acts are grounded in personal vendettas or conservative principles, that will complicate predictions. Insiders also say his decisions change based on the last person he speaks with. Safe to say it won’t be me.
With that caution, grab your spreadsheet.
Trump’s agenda
Mass deportations could turn hundreds of thousands of kids’ lives upside down, and massive shifts in education policies could jeopardize billions of dollars in federal funding for low-income kids.
Public reaction will determine whether Trump deports tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants with criminal records or indiscriminately sends back millions of people, as he implied. Most Americans found Trump’s policy early in his first term of separating children from parent border crossers abhorrent. Scenes on social media of ICE agents’ midnight raids, leaving kids without a working parent and potentially homeless, could have the same effect. And Central Valley farmers dependent on immigrants to harvest crops will warn Trump of financial disaster; other factories dependent on immigrants to do jobs other Americans don’t want will, too.
Trump will rely on shock and awe instead: swift raids of meat-packing plants and of visible sites targeting immigrant neighborhoods in California’s sanctuary cities — to send a message: You’re not welcome here.
And it will work, as measured by fear among children, violations of habeas corpus (laws pertaining to detention and imprisonment), and, in the end, declines in illegal crossings at the border, a trend that already started, under widespread pressure, in the final year of the Biden presidency.
The likelihood that Trump’s deportations will number closer to 100,000 than a million
The likelihood that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will open immigrant detention centers, one each in Northern California and Southern California
The likelihood that chronic absence rates in California school districts with large undocumented immigrant populations will soar to higher than 40%
The likelihood that the number of California high school seniors in those same districts who will not fill out the federal application for college financial aid known as FAFSA because of worry about outing an undocumented parent will increase significantly
The likelihood that the Trump administration will challenge the 1981 Supreme Court decision that children present in the United States have a right to attend public school, regardless of their immigration status and that of their parents
Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education
One of the late President Jimmy Carter’s accomplishments was the creation of the Department of Education. Forty-five years later, Trump wants to dissolve it and divide responsibilities among other federal bureaucracies: Title I funding for children in poverty to the Department of Health and Human Services; federal student loans and Pell grants to the Department of Treasury. That would take congressional approval, and past efforts over the years to eliminate it — a popular Republican idea — never came close to passing.
The likelihood that Trump could get majorities in Congress to eliminate the department
With or without a department, Trump could make radical changes that could impact billions of federal education dollars for California. He could turn Title I’s $18.8 billion funding for low-income children into a block grant and let states decide how to spend it. California, which had spats with the Obama administration over how to mesh state and federal funding, might welcome that. But poor kids in other states will be at the whim of governors and legislators who won’t be held accountable.
The likelihood Trump will cut 10% to 20% from Title I funding but leave funding for special education, the Individual Disabilities Education Act, traditionally an area of bipartisan agreement, intact
The likelihood Trump will call cuts in money for Title I and the Department of Education bureaucracy a down payment for a federal K-12 voucher program
Mini-fight over state budget
Later this week, Gov. Newsom will release his 2025-26 budget. If the Legislative Aalyst’s Office was right in its revenue projections, there will be a small cost-of-living adjustment for education programs and at least $3 billion for new spending — petty change compared with Newsom’s big initiatives for community schools and after-school programs when money flowed.
A piece of it could go toward improving math. It’s been ignored for too long.
California students perform abysmally in math: Only 31% were proficient on state tests in 2024, compared with 47% in English language arts — nothing to brag about either. In the last National Assessment of Educational Progress results, California fourth graders’ scores were behind 30 other states.
The State Board of Education approved new, ambitious math standards, amid much controversy, two years ago. The state has not jump-started statewide training for them since. But the board will adopt a new list of approved curriculum materials this summer, signaling it’s time to get rolling.
The likelihood that Newsom will include hundreds of millions of dollars for buying textbooks, training math coaches and encouraging collaboration time among teachers.
Ethnic studies tensions
Conflicts over ethnic studies, which have been simmering since the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 101 in 2021 requiring high schools to teach it will come to a head this year.
At the center of the controversy is the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and affiliated groups pushing an alternative version of the ethnic studies framework that the State Board of Education approved in 2021. The state framework, a guide, not a mandated curriculum, places ethnic studies in the context of an evolving American story, with a focus on struggles, progress and cultural influences of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native Americans.
The liberated version stresses the ongoing repression of those groups through a critique of white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, plus, for good measure, instruction in anti-Zionism and Palestinian liberation. UC and CSU ethnic studies faculty members have led efforts to promote it, with substantial consulting contracts with several dozen districts.
AB 101’s mandate for teaching ethnic studies, starting in the fall of 2025 and requiring it for a high school diploma in 2029-30, is contingent on state funding. And that hasn’t happened, according to the Department of Finance. Meanwhile, the Legislative Jewish Caucus will reintroduce legislation to require more public disclosure before districts adopt an ethnic studies curriculum. In his Golden State Plan to Counter Antisemitism, Newsom promised to work with the caucus to strengthen AB 101 to “ensure all ethnic studies courses are free from bias, bigotry, and discriminatory content.”
Some scenarios:
The likelihood Newsom will press for amendments to AB 101 as a requirement for funding the AB 101 mandate
The likelihood that Newsom and the Legislature fund the AB 101 mandate, at least to keep it on schedule, for now
The likelihood the Jewish Caucus-led bill to strengthen transparency and AB 101’s anti-bias protections will pass with Newsom’s support
Amending the funding formula
Revising the Local Control Funding Formula, which parcels out 80% of state funding for TK-12, may get some juice this year — if not to actually amend the 12-year-old law, then at least to formally study the idea.
At an Assembly hearing last fall, the state’s leading education researchers and education advocates agreed that the landmark finance reform remains fundamentally sound, and the heart of the formula — steering more money to low-income, foster, and homeless students, as well as English learners — should be kept. However, with performance gaps stubbornly high between low-income and non-low-income students and among racial and ethnic groups, researchers also suggested significant changes to the law. The challenge is that some ideas are in conflict, and some could be expensive.
In his budgets, Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed more money to the most impoverished, low-performing schools. However, some school groups want to focus more money on raising the formula’s base funding for all students. Others want to focus attention on districts in the middle, with 35% to 55% low-income and English learners, who get less aid per student than in districts like Oakland, with higher concentrations of eligible students.
The outcome will affect how much money your school district gets, so keep an eye on what’s happening.
The likelihood that the funding formula will be amended this year
The likelihood there will be a two-year study with intent to pass legislation next year
What about tutoring?
At his preview Monday on the 2025-26 state budget, Newsom barely mentioned education. But a one-word reference to “tutoring” woke me up.
In my 2023 predictions column, I wagered three fensters that Newsom would expand a promising effort for state-driven and funded early-grades tutoring in a big way. Last year, looking back, I wrote, “It was wise advice couched as a prediction, which Gov. Newsom ignored. (It’s still a good idea.)”
So it is. Newsom created the structure for tutoring at scale when he created California College Corps. It recruits 10,000 college students and pays them $10,000 toward their college expenses in exchange for 450 community public service hours. Newsom, in setting it up, made tutoring an option. What he didn’t do is make it a priority and ask school districts, which received $6.3 billion in learning recovery money over multiple years, to make intensive, small-group “high-dosage” tutoring their priority, too. Other states, like Tennessee, have, and Maryland this year became the latest.
The likelihood that Newsom will include high-dosage tutoring in math and reading for early grades, in partnership with tutoring nonprofits, school districts, and university teacher credentialing programs
TK for all (who choose)
Starting this fall, any child who turns 4 by Sept. 1 can attend publicly funded transitional kindergarten in California. The date will mark the successful end of a four-year transition period and a $2.4 billion state investment.
“Done,” said Newsom pointing to the word stamped on a slide during a preview of the budget on Monday.
Well, not quite.
The hope of TK, the year between preschool and kindergarten, is to prepare young children for school through play and learning, thus preventing an opportunity gap from developing in a year of peak brain growth. For school districts, adding this 14th year of school offers the only hope for a source of revenue when enrollment in all grades in many districts is declining.
But in its first and initial years of full operation, TK will likely be under-enrolled statewide. There are a number of reasons. By design, the Newsom administration and Legislature are offering multiple options for parents of 4-year-olds. There are transitional kindergarten, state-funded preschools, private preschools, and state-funded vouchers for several care options, plus federal Head Start.
The state has provided financial incentives for providers to shift to serving 2- and 3-year-olds, but it will take time. The state had assumed that transitional kindergarten would draw parents attracted to classes taught by credentialed teachers in a neighborhood elementary school. Some parents prefer their preschool with an adult-child ratio of 8-to-1, instead of 12-to-1 in transitional kindergarten (a credentialed teacher and an aide in a class of up to 24) and a preschool teacher who speaks Spanish or another native language, said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, who has been researching transitional kindergarten in California.
And many elementary schools don’t have the bigger classrooms to accommodate TK and kindergarten, or they can’t find enough credentialed teachers and aides to staff them.
In coming years, transitional kindergarten enrollment will reach closer to serving all 4-year-olds, an estimated 400,000 next year.
For now, the likelihood that transitional kindergarten will serve more than 60% of a target population
Keep on your radar
Equity in funding: Voters approved a $10 billion state construction bond, providing critical matching funding to districts that passed local bonds. But despite small fixes in Proposition 2, the first-come, first-served system favors school districts with the highest property values — whether commercial downtowns or expensive homes. The higher tax burden for low-wealth districts is why some schools are pristine and fancy, while those in neighboring districts are antiquated and decrepit. The nonprofit law firm Public Advocates threatened to file a lawsuit last fall, and hasn’t said whether it will follow through. But it would be a landmark case.
In the 1971 landmark decision in Serrano v. Priest, the California Supreme Court ruled that a school funding system tied to local property taxes violated students’ constitutional rights. Challenging the state’s reliance on districts’ disparate local property wealth to fund school facilities could be the equivalent.
Rethinking high school: Anaheim Union High School Districtis among the districts thinking about how the high school day could be more relevant to students’ personal and career aspirations. Anaheim Union is exploring how an expanded block schedule, team teaching, interdisciplinary courses, artificial intelligence, online learning, and job apprenticeships could transform learning.
The six-period day, education code rules in instructional minutes, and seat time may be obstacles to change and perpetuate mindsets. For now, discussions have been more conceptual than specific. The State Board of Education has a broad power to grant waivers from the state education code; State Board President Linda Darling-Hammond said the board is open to considering them. This may be the year a district or group of districts take up her offer.
Thanks for reading the column. One more toast to 2025!
Gov. Gavin Newsom outlines his proposed 2025-26 $322 billion state budget during a news conference at California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock on Jan. 6..
Credit: AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli
The article was updated on Jan, 10 to include more reactions to the budget proposal and note that Newsom did not include funding for ethnic studies.
California school districts would receive $2.5 billion through a small cost-of-living increase, plus additional funding to train math and reading coaches, expand summer and after-school programs, and help launch the state’s Master Plan for Career Education in the proposed 2025-26 state budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom released Friday.
But countering a stable funding forecast for schools and community colleges, Newsom said both the University of California and California State University should expect as deep as an 8% cut in ongoing state money.
Newsom’s budget included a strong caution. He warned that revenues could change between now and May, when he revises his budget proposal, because of potential global financial instability, volatility in stock market prices, and likely conflicts with President Donald Trump that could jeopardize federal funding.
“California is facing a new federal administration that has expressed unalloyed and uninformed hostility toward the state, threatening the funding of essential services for political stunts,” Newsom stated in the introduction to the 2025-26 budget. The governor, who previewed the budget Monday, was in Los Angeles responding to the wildfires and not at a news conferenceFriday by the Department of Finance.
Christopher J. Nellum, executive director of the advocacy no-profit Education Trust-West, urged Newsom and the Legislature to stand firm on behalf of “many students of color and multilingual learners (who) are feeling uncertain and concerned.”
“We’re glad to see Gov. Newsom affirming that California is a state that believes in and invests in educational equity,” he said. “If the incoming federal administration does what it says it will, state policymakers will find themselves standing between harm and the people of California”.
The bulk of state funding for the state’s nearly 1,000 school districts, 1,300 charter schools and community colleges is through Proposition 98, a 1988 voter-approved formula. The budget projected that Proposition 98 funding will be flat in 2025-26 at $118.9 billion, $300 million less than $119.2 billion in 2024-25. To avoid overfunding, the state, for now, will assume 2024-25 funding will end up $1.6 billion less, according to the budget.
Per-pupil funding from Proposition 98 would rise to $18,918 and to $24,764 per pupil, including federal funding and other state money, such as pension contributions for teachers and other school employees.
Bad news for UC and CSU
Both the University of California and California State University should expect as deep as an 8% decrease in ongoing general fund dollars under Newsom’s proposed budget for 2025-26. That’s a decline of $396.6 million at UC and $375.2 million at CSU, which officials say would affect academics and student services.
UC President Michael Drake said he’s concerned about the impact that the cuts would have “on our students and campus services.”
CSU Chancellor Mildred García expressed disappointment that the governor’s budget maintains plans for a 7.95% cut in light of a rosier state budget outlook than previously projected — and said she hopes that ongoing funding will be restored if state revenues improve.
“The impact of such deep funding cuts will have significant real-world consequences, both in and out of the classroom,” García said in a statement. “Larger class sizes, fewer course offerings and a reduced workforce will hinder students’ ability to graduate on time and weaken California’s ability to meet its increasing demands for a diverse and highly educated workforce.”
The two four-year systems were each due to receive a 5% base increase in 2025-26, but the state would also defer that commitment until 2027-28, a move that was telegraphed in the 2024 budget agreement. UC additionally would have to wait until 2027-28 for a $31 million commitment offsetting revenue it lost by enrolling fewer out-of-state undergraduates and more in-state students.
The State budget Process
Governor’s initial budget proposal:
Must be released by Jan. 10.
Assumes an estimate of revenues the state will collect over the next 18 months (by June 30, 2026). Actual revenues are often significantly different based on economic conditions, federal policy and unforeseen events, like the destructive fires in Los Angeles.
May revision: In mid-May, Newsom will submit a revised budget with an updated revenue forecast.
Legislature’s response: The Assembly and Senate have until June 15 to hold hearings and respond with their own version.
Negotiation: Behind closed doors, Legislative leaders and the governor settle differences. Lawmakers sign off, and the governor signs the final version.
About 40% of the state’s general fund will go to schools and community colleges. The bulk goes to keeping schools running, but in some years new money is spent on new programs, like, in recent years, transitional kindergarten and community schools.
Governors increasingly have used the budget to rewrite statutes outside of the legislative process. That’s why it’s important to read the fine print in massive “budget trailer bills” written after the budget is passed.
New programs for schools
The expiration of about $3 billion for spending in 2024-25, will free up money for one-time funding beyond the 2.4% cost of living increase for transitional kindergarten through grade 12.
These include:
Transitional kindergarten (TK): The budget completes the four-year phase-in for the new program, which serves as a bridge between preschool and kindergarten for all 4-year-olds. In fulfilling a commitment, Newsom is also providing $1.5 billion to lower the student-to-teacher ratio from 12:1 to 10:1 in every transitional kindergarten classroom. This is key to maintaining quality because younger children need more personal attention, experts say.
“This is great news,” said Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit that runs many Bay Area child care centers. “With this move to a smaller class size, TK takes an important step to becoming the high quality pre-k experience all children deserve.”
Literacy instruction: The budget would double the $500 million for literacy coaches appropriated in two recent budgets and enable the funding to include math coaches. It also includes:
$40 million for training and materials to inaugurate annual universal screening of kindergartners through second-graders for potential learning challenges, including dyslexia.
$5 million to launch Literacy Network, a clearinghouse for state-developed literacy resources and support to districts with persistent performance challenges.
Summer and after-school programs: The state will extend the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program for grades TK-6 for districts in which 55% of students are low-income students, English learners, or students in foster care. That will require an additional $435 million. Until now, funding was for only districts with 75% or more of qualifying students.
Teacher recruitment: The budget proposal includes $300 million for teacher recruitment, including $150 million in financial assistance to teacher candidates. With $50 million, it would revive dwindling funding in the Golden State Teacher Grant program, which awards up to $20,000 to students enrolled in teacher preparation programs who commit to work in priority schools or in the California State Preschool Program.
A $1.8 billion discretionary funding: Districts will have discretion over a newStudent Support and Discretionary Block Grant, but will be encouraged to spend it on professional development for teachers in reading instruction, especially for English learners; teacher training in the new math standards; and additional efforts to address the teacher shortage.
Career education: In multiple ways, the budget supports Newsom’s proposed Master Plan for Career Education, whose goal is to make it easier for Californians of all ages and backgrounds to find jobs in high-wage, high-growth fields.
$100 million to support community colleges in validating the experience students bring from their jobs, the military, internships or even volunteering.
$5 million in ongoing funding to establish a planning agency to put the master plan into practice and $4 million to support regional coordination for career education and training.
The budget would also allow districts to use funding from the $1.8 billion discretionary block grant to expand career pathways and dual enrollment.
Funding for career education comes through many different programs, which school leaders describe as both a blessing and a curse. The budget directs the Department of Education to examine how it could consolidate applications for all these different grants into one single application process.
Barring a big drop in revenue, the 2025-26 proposal would mark a return to normal following the current year’s jury-rigged budget. To avoid education cuts and deal with the hangover from pandemic revenue complications, in the past two budgets, Newsom and the Legislature drained the $8.4 billion Proposition 98 rainy day fund and withheld hundreds of millions of dollars, called deferrals, from districts. The proposed budget would eliminate the deferrals and rebuild the rainy day fund to $1.5 billion.
No money for ethnic studies
One much anticipated question was whether Newsom would include funding to implement a high school ethnic studies course. He did not. A spokesperson from the Department of Finance said that there were many demands for spending with limited resources. Ethnic studies was not among the priorities.
A lack of funding to pay for teachers’ time and materials would delay the Legislature’s 2021 mandate for all high schools to offer a semester course in ethnic studies, starting in 2025-26 and to require that all students take it in order to graduate from high school, starting in 2029-30.
After multiple drafts and thousands of public comments, the State Board of Education adopted a voluntary framework for teaching ethnic studies in 2021. Since then, there have been conflicts and lawsuits over districts that have adoped curriculums promoted by the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium. Without naming the Liberated version, the ethnic studies law said that districts should not adopt elements of it “due to concerns related to bias, bigotry, and discrimination.” Without funding, that warning also would not take effect.
A lack of funding also might short-circuit a proposal pushed by UC ethnic studies faculty to require a high school ethnic studies course as an admission requirement with course criteria that UC would create. In December, the UC Academic Senate postponed a vote on the proposal until April; one reason was the uncertain status of California’s ethnic studies mandate.
More budget reactions
Other responses to the budget proposal were mixed.
Vernon Billy, CEO of the California School Boards Association, said the proposed budget appears to avoid direct cuts, while spending more for transitional kindergarten. “But before we offer unqualified praise, we’ll need to evaluate the actual language in the education budget trailer bill to be released in February — especially since the budget summary contains provisions that seem to open the door for shortchanging Proposition 98 under certain conditions.”
Lance Izumi, senior director of education studies at the conservative Pacific Research Institute, said, “Governor Newsom said that education is ‘all about human capital.’ It is revealing, then, that the governor discussed his proposed 2025-25 education budget only in terms of inputs — the increase in Prop. 98 and total education funding, the increase in per-pupil funding, and the increase in spending directed at particular education programs such as before/after-school and summer school.”
“Human capital,” he added, ”is about improving the knowledge and skills of students. The fact that he did not include any evidence that the increased education spending during his administration has raised student achievement and therefore increased their human capital is a glaring omission.”
Ted Lempert, president of the nonprofit advocacy organization Children Now, said, “We applaud the governor’s focus on continued support for kids in his proposed budget, including TK, community schools, after-school, and career education. But much more is needed.” Noting that California ranks at the bottom of states in terms of the ratio of teachers, counselors and nurses to students, he added, “We look forward to working on increasing support for child care, education, mental health, youth homelessness and youth in foster care.”
Jessie Ryan, the president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, said it’s likely that K-12 school districts in the Los Angeles area will decide to dedicate new block grant funding to wildfire recovery, rather than investments in services for undocumented students or other vulnerable populations.
“That is a very real possibility,” she said. “We’re moving towards financial stability, but we’re not at restoration, and we’re going to have to continue to do everything in our power to protect our most vulnerable students, recognizing that we still have limited resources to do just that.”
David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, said he also is concerned that the state might not fund its full obligation to Proposition 98. “We are excited to see so many transformative education initiatives supported by CTA members come to fruition in this state budget, including investments in transitional kindergarten, school nutrition and professional development. However, we are concerned that the proposed budget does not allocate the full funding guaranteed by Proposition 98. In the coming months, our union will carefully monitor the required funding levels for schools and community colleges to ensure full funding is provided to our students in a timely manner, without unnecessary delay.”
Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said the commission is grateful for continued investments in addressing the teacher shortage.“Funding for teacher recruitment helps to improve affordability and access to teacher preparation programs and helps to ensure that students receive the high-quality education they deserve,” she said.
Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, which advocates for English learners, said, “We are encouraged to see the governor prioritizing key areas of importance, including a $10 million one-time allocation for statewide English language proficiency screeners to support multilingual learners in transitional kindergarten. Additionally, we applaud the emphasis on the English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework as the foundational guide for literacy instruction—an essential focus that we strongly support.”
Max Arias, chief spokesperson and chair of Child Care Providers United, a union that is negotiating with the state to increase reimbursements for its 40,000 child care workers, said the union is disappointed with Newsom’s proposed budget for child care.
“Continuing on the path proposed in this budget — poverty wages with untimely payments — doesn’t just hurt providers and their families, it hurts the parents with essential jobs like grocery clerks, janitors and delivery drivers who can’t go to work without quality, affordable child care,” he said.
Emmanuel Rodriguez, the senior director of policy and advocacy for California at The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS), called on the state to use programs like the Cal Grant and Middle Class Scholarship to help students from mixed-status families, who may decide not to apply for federal financial aid. Rodriguez said the state must also ensure the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education has an adequate budget framework “to shield Californians from anticipated federal regulatory changes that will leave students more vulnerable than ever to predatory, low-quality colleges.”
