Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control reveals that 1 in 22 four-year-old children in California are on the autism spectrum, significantly surpassing the national average. This increase, attributed in part to early diagnosis in California, underscores the pressing need for effective interventions in our schools.
At Peres K-8 School in Richmond, lower elementary teachers have witnessed the rise in autism cases. Over the past two years, more students are grappling with emotional dysregulation, sensory issues and negative behaviors, prompting a surge in referrals for interventions and special education services. The strain on classroom teachers is palpable as they endeavor to meet the diverse needs of students on the autism spectrum while also attending to their other students.
This challenge is not unique to Peres; West Contra Costa Unified School District faces similar trends in many of its schools. In response, the district’s special education department has endeavored to equip its teachers with skills to manage these complex classrooms. Efforts include compensating special education teachers for completing online courses on the Autism Focused Intervention Resources and Modules website, offering coaching on evidence-based strategies, and adopting a social skills curriculum tailored to address social communication deficits prevalent among students with autism. However, resource limitations and high demand for support have limited the impact of these initiatives.
Behavioral issues pose significant hurdles to learning for both students with autism and their peers. For instance, a student on the spectrum may repetitively touch a peer due to social communication deficits, which, if left unaddressed, could escalate into more severe behaviors. Similarly, sensory needs may lead another student with autism to frequently leave their chair, disrupting the learning environment. Additionally, transitions between activities are common triggers for negative behaviors such as screaming or attempting to escape from the classroom.
As a former special education teacher in a class for students with extensive support needs, I recognize the critical importance of promptly addressing behavioral challenges to prevent disruptions that could affect not only the student’s learning experience but also that of the entire class. Collaboration among educators, support providers and families is paramount, particularly for families from low-income backgrounds who may lack resources. Providing families with practical, research-based strategies they can implement at home fosters continuity and promotes student success.
Now, as a special education teacher specializing in mild-to-moderate disabilities, I am more dedicated than ever to advocating for evidence-based practices that have been shown to be effective for learners with autism. For example, strategies grounded in research, such as visual supports and reinforcement, have demonstrated efficacy in managing classroom behavior and enhancing learning outcomes.
The California Autism Professional Training Network (CAPTAIN) champions the use of evidence-based practices statewide. Collaborating with diverse agencies, the network promotes interventions backed by scientific research, aiming to enhance outcomes for students with autism. Alongside visual supports and reinforcement, there are 26 other identified evidence-based practices accessible through the Autism Focused Intervention Resources and Modules (AFIRM) website. As an extension of the National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorder, the AFIRM website offers modules on planning for, using and monitoring evidence-based practices for learners with autism spectrum disorder from birth to 22 years of age. This resource serves as a valuable tool for educators striving to effectively implement evidence-based strategies.
While mastering these approaches may initially seem daunting, proficiency develops with practice. The long-term benefits of employing evidence-based practices are immeasurable, offering students with autism the opportunity to thrive alongside their peers in inclusive educational settings.
It is essential to acknowledge that autism is a spectrum, and a diagnosis does not automatically necessitate extensive support. With customized accommodations and assistance, students on the autism spectrum can thrive in the general education setting. Through dedicated collaborative efforts and the implementation of evidence-based practices, educators and families can pave the way for success in mainstream classrooms. It is imperative for districts to prioritize resources for professional development and coaching on evidence-based practices, ensuring that all students, including those with autism spectrum disorder, receive the necessary support to flourish in inclusive environments.
Every student, regardless of ability, deserves an educational environment where they can thrive. Let us commit to creating supportive and inclusive spaces where students on the autism spectrum can reach their full potential alongside their peers.
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Jenine Catudio is an education specialist for students with mild-moderate needs at Peres K-8 School in Richmond. From 2016-2021, Catudio, who was also a CAPTAIN Cadre member, served as a special education teacher in an extensive support needs classroom in the same school.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Anya Ayyappan, left, being sworn in as the student member of the California State Board of Education by Board President Linda Darling Hammond.
Credit: Courtesy California State Board of Education
As education policy and issues at school boards across California continue to grab headlines, it’s more important than ever that K-12 students — especially those in a state as diverse as ours — have a representative at the table who can voice concerns and have their opinions and input heard.
That’s why, as the current student member of the State Board of Education, I strongly encourage all eligible high school students to apply to be the student member for the 2025-26 school year. The application window is now open.
As student member, you can represent the voice and perspectives of millions of students across California. Your input ensures that student concerns and interests are considered in educational policymaking and decisions made by the State Board of Education. Your insights and experiences as a student can shape policies related to curriculum, standards, assessments and other aspects of education in California.
During my term, I have advocated for increased student involvement in decision-making processes like adopting instructional materials, designing local control and accountability plans and determining actionable goals based on school climate surveys. I have also forged connections with student leaders across California’s various regions, including the Central Valley and Northern California, that have been traditionally underrepresented.
These channels of communication allow for coordinated student-led initiatives and diverse input on items discussed by the state board. Based on my conversations with students, I have supported the integration of artificial intelligence in classrooms and increased project-based learning opportunities.
Recently, I joined the Statewide Model Curriculum Coordinating Council to review lesson plans on Native American history and culture, ensuring they capture authentic, diverse voices. I will be continuing this work beyond my term.
In addition to providing me with the opportunity to serve my state, this role has given me a deeper understanding of California’s education system. Seeing the incredible work that is being done, along with all the work that remains to be done, has had a profound impact on me, sparking my desire to continue exploring education policy in college.
Serving on the board provides you with a unique learning experience regarding governance, policymaking, and the educational system. You’ll gain valuable insights into how decisions are made at the state level and how they impact students and schools.
The application is the first step. The selection process starts with the board’s Screening Committee reviewing all applications and selecting 12 semifinalists. Of those 12, California law requires that student members of a school district governing board select six for further consideration by the State Board of Education. The state board uses the annual Student Advisory Board on Education conference — which takes place Nov. 10-13 in Sacramento — to perform this function.
At this conference, the semifinalists make individual presentations to all other advisory board participants about why they should be the next student member — an incredible opportunity to gain valuable experience and make personal connections. Following a secret ballot by the advisory board participants, six candidates will be submitted for further consideration by the state board’s Screening Committee.
Each of the final six candidates will be interviewed by the committee, after which committee will recommend three finalists to the State Board of Education. Following the board’s action to select the three finalists, the names of the three finalists will be sent to the governor for the final decision.
Hopefully, after reading this, many students will be inspired to apply. If you or someone you know qualifies for the student member position and wish to apply, you have from now through Sept. 20 to do so. And with summer coming soon, we encourage you to apply soon.
If appointed by the governor, you’ll have the opportunity to network with other board members, educators, policymakers and stakeholders in the education field. This networking can open doors to future opportunities and collaborations.
Serving on the board can enhance your leadership, communication and advocacy skills. It’s a chance to develop as a leader and make a meaningful impact on education in your state while also enhancing your resume and future academic or career opportunities.
Merely going through the process allows you the chance to gain valuable experience and provides many opportunities to help your community. It also helps you think more critically about the education system and how your help can impact students across our state.
As a student, your voice is powerful. I highly encourage you to apply!
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Anya Ayyappan is currently serving as the student member of the California StateBoard of Education. She is a senior at Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
The number of homeless students statewide increased by 9.3%, according to recently released state enrollment data. Out of 761 districts, 433 — or 57% — reported an increase in their number of homeless students. This map shows the change in the homeless student population by district from 2023–24 to 2024–25. Click on a district to see the percent change and the number of homeless students enrolled.
Note: A particularly sharp increase from one year to the next may be due to improved tracking or reporting practices. Please contact the district for further details.
Data source: California Department of Education and EdSource Data Analysis
Nearly 20,000 more homeless students were enrolled by the first Wednesday in October, known as Census Day, during the 2024-25 school year. This increase represents a 9.3% change from the previous school year, and it means the homeless student population in the state has surged 37% in the last decade.
Schools say the spike in homelessness is due both to families’ worsening financial troubles and improved identification efforts. Covid-era funding, refined data tracking, and improved training and protocol have resulted in schools being more likely to properly identify homeless students than in the past.
“It’s a combination of a perfect storm where you have all of these elements coming into play, which then speaks to that increase. The data is highlighting the need to continue these supports,” said Alejandra Chamberlain, youth services director for the Contra Costa County Office of Education.
Families are increasingly financially strained
Coachella Valley Unified School District’s homeless student enrollment tripled, a reflection of the economic struggles their families are experiencing, said Karina Vega, a district support counselor.
Increased fear of immigration enforcement is contributing to homelessness in the area. Vega shared how a student’s mother could no longer afford to pay rent after her husband was deported; another family lives in their car, and they travel each weekend across the Mexican border to spend time with a deported parent; others are constantly moving to stay off the radar of immigration officials because they fear being deported.
Many of her students live in inadequate housing. Electricity may need to be wired from one trailer to the next, water may have been shut off, or multiple families live in a small space due to financial hardship.
“We’ve seen more families than we’ve probably ever seen” experiencing homelessness, Vega said.
But she noted that students were identified at a greater rate after more school personnel learned that homelessness does not only mean someone is on the streets.
“The reality is, a lot of us that work for the school district grew up in the valley and some of these things that we see are typical, like trailer parks and inadequate housing,” Vega said.
This is where the (Riverside) county’s training on identifying all types of homelessness, an effort they have championed down to the school sites, has made a significant difference, she added.
In Mendocino County, many families who once held jobs in the waning marijuana industry are now struggling to make ends meet, said Blythe Post, coordinator of foster youth and homeless services at the Mendocino County Office of Education.
Their rural 89,000-person county is vast, but there are few affordable housing options to choose from, she said, pushing more and more of their students and families into homelessness.
But increased homelessness is only one part of the problem.
‘I anticipate we will see a huge drop’
Although the official number of homeless students continues to rise, liaisons believe the actual numbers are far higher.
Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, every public school district, county office of education and charter school is required to hire a local liaison to ensure that homeless youth are identified and have the educational services they need to succeed academically. This federal law is also the reason that schools have counts of homeless students at all.
This law may be at risk under the Trump administration if the U.S. Department of Education is shuttered or its funding is lumped into a block grant as stated in Trump’s budget proposal.
“There’s going to be more kids to count and fewer people to count them, and then fewer services,” said Margaret Olmos, director of the National Center for Youth Law’s Compassionate Education Systems.
Liaisons say accurate counts are difficult to reach for a host of reasons. The information is self-reported, and some families are reluctant to share their housing status with school personnel. It’s rare that a school liaison only serves homeless students. Most have divided attention because they are supporting foster students and low-income students. In smaller districts, they may be the support liaison for all students.
“There’s going to be more kids to count and fewer people to count them, and then fewer services,”
Margaret Olmos, National Center for Youth Law
In some ways, schools have been here before. During the 2022-23 school year, for example, the rate of homeless students enrolled in California schools rose 9% while overall student enrollment dipped.
Then, as now, families were confronting skyrocketing housing and cost-of-living expenses. The rolling impact of expiring eviction moratoriums put in place during the pandemic and the loss of housing due to disasters, including fires and floods, have further exacerbated the issue. And, similarly, liaisons attributed much of the increase to families being squeezed financially as identification practices were simultaneously improved.
But while the situation might appear familiar, liaisons say they are at a crossroads — and many do not think the odds are in their favor.
Liaisons said a 2021 state law requiring that schools include a housing questionnaire in enrollment packets has supported identification efforts. But many say what made the single, greatest difference is the one-time funding they received from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan – Homeless Children and Youth (ARP-HCY) federal grant. The total amounted to $98.76 million for California, which was spread to 92.1% of districts over several years.
“ARP-HCY was the first time you saw school districts and counties be incentivized to find and care and count — and they did,” Olmos said.
How districts and counties applied the funds varied widely. Liaisons said it depended on their school community’s needs. Some booked short-term motel stays for students whose families were being evicted or were on homeless shelter waiting lists or provided transportation to and from school. Other liaisons hired staff to improve data tracking or who spoke students’ native languages. Still, others established after-school care, provided baby supplies for students’ younger siblings, or purchased washers and dryers to provide free laundry services for families.
Some districts opted to focus a portion of funds on improving data tracking practices.
Mendocino County’s Round Valley Unified went from one homeless student to 199 in just one school year — one of the greatest surges in the state. That increase was a reflection of more data training and tightened protocols, Post said.
“When I see those jumps in numbers … that tells me that there’s a problem with identification or communication between who’s inputting the records and who’s submitting those data reports,” Post said.
What comes next?
There are no plans by either the federal or state government to replenish the one-time federal funds at anywhere near the same levels, which has left some liaisons to cut services and staff and lament a near future with lowered capacity to count and serve homeless students.
Map: Most California districts identified more homeless students this year
Use the map to view the change in the homeless student population by district from the 2023–24 to 2024–25 school year.
“There’s going to be a number of families that just fall under the radar,” Post said. “I anticipate we will see a huge drop in McKinney-Vento numbers; those families will just not be served or identified.”
Some districts do rely on funds from the federal McKinney-Vento law, but educators say the 1987 act was never adequately funded by the state or federal government. Funding cycles are every three years, and it’s a competitive grant that reaches few districts. California received less than $15 million in this funding for the 2022-23 school year, for example, which went to just 6% of the state’s school districts, according to an analysis by SchoolHouse Connection and the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions program.
The state has released billions of dollars in recent years to address general homelessness. But funds aimed at youth are often targeted to those over the age of 18, including $56 million in new grants announced Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
Liaisons have also long highlighted that few of those dollars ultimately reach students who are living doubled-up — where more than one family lives in a single home due to financial crises — which is how the majority of homeless students in the state and nationwide live. Doubling-up is identified as homelessness under the McKinney-Vento act, but not under other federal definitions of homelessness.
And while schools receive extra funding for homeless students from the state through the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, this stream is often limited in how it can be spent and is shared among several vulnerable student groups with differing needs.
“There is a part of really acknowledging to the community that other special populations receive state funding to be able to carry out the responsibilities and to dedicate staff to do that work” while homeless students rely on the limited federal dollars, said Chamberlain, who is also one of three leads for the state’s Homeless Education Technical Assistance Center network.
Advocates have pushed for the state to, at a minimum, match the McKinney-Vento dollars California receives, but that amount has yet to make it into the state budget.
Despite the increases, liaisons and advocates are clear that the rising numbers alongside decreasing dedicated funding puts kids at risk.
“If we cannot identify these kids early and serve them and ensure they go on to a choice-filled adulthood, they’re so much more likely to end up experiencing homelessness as an adult,” Olmos said.
EdSource reporter Emma Gallegos contributed to this story.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Friday that the state has released $470 million to 302 school districts, charters and county offices of education to fund the Golden State Pathways program.
The program allows students to “advance seamlessly from high school to college and career and provides the workforce needed for economic growth.”
“It’s an incredibly historic investment for the state,” said Anne Stanton, president of the Linked Learning Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates giving youth opportunities to learn about careers.
Both the state and federal governments previously made big investments in preparing students for college or career at the K-12 level, but the Golden State Pathways program is different in that it challenges school districts, colleges, employers and other community groups to create “pathways” — or a focused series of courses — that prepare K-12 students for college and career at the same time. These pathways aim to prepare students for well-paying careers in fields such as health care, education and technology, while also ensuring that they take 12 college credits through dual enrollment courses and the A-G classes needed to apply to public four-year universities.
“By establishing career technical pathways that are also college preparatory, the Golden State Pathways Program provides a game-changing opportunity for California’s young people,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Thurmond said in a statement.
The Golden State Pathways are an important part of the new master plan for education — Newsom’s vision to transform career education in California — which is expected by the year’s end.
The state is distributing the vast majority of the funding — $422 million — to enable schools to implement their plans in partnership with higher education and other community partners. The remaining $48 million will assist those who still need grants for planning.
All sorts of schools throughout the state — rural and urban, large and small — benefited from the funding.
Schools in the rural Northern California counties of Tehama and Humboldt — whose K-12 enrollment is under 30,000 students — jointly received about $30 million to implement and plan pathways to help students stay on track for college and careers with livable wages.
“That’s a big deal to have that kind of influx going to that many small schools,” said Jim Southwick, assistant superintendent of the Tehama County Office of Education, which plans to expand career pathways in education, health care, construction, manufacturing and agriculture.
Schools in Tehama had previously begun to implement career pathways at the high school level in concert with local employers and Shasta College. However, many students struggled to complete the pathways because they were ill-prepared in middle school, Southwick said.
But one middle school pilot program did successfully introduce students to career education, he added, leading to an influx of funding through the Golden State Pathways that will expand the program to other middle schools.
Long Beach Unified, the fourth-largest district in the state, received about $12 million through the Golden State Pathways program. District spokesperson Elvia Cano said the funding will provide counseling and extra support for students navigating dual enrollment, Advanced Placement courses, college aid, externships and other work-based learning opportunities.
The district also plans to increase access to dual enrollment through partner Long Beach Community College and to create a new pathway in arts, media and entertainment at select high schools.
Advocates are celebrating the governor’s commitment to the program despite the uncertainty surrounding the budget this year.
Linda Collins, founder and executive director of Career Ladders Project, which supports redesigning community colleges to support students, said, “It’s an impressive commitment at a time that it’s desperately needed.”
Newsom said in a statement that this funding will help students even if they don’t go to college , saying it “will be a game-changer for thousands of students as the state invests in pathways to good-paying, high-need careers — including those that don’t require college degrees.”
At the University of California, Irvine, the basic needs center offers a food pantry, housing support and more to meet students’ basic needs.
Photo: UCI Basic Needs Center
Few college students participate in the state’s CalFresh food program despite being eligible, according to a report published Tuesday by the University of California’s California Policy Lab.
The report’s authors found that CalFresh eligibility and students’ subsequent enrollment in the program depended significantly on which institution of higher learning they attended, age, housing situation, and other factors. The school they were enrolled in was often connected to the level of outreach they received informing them of the food benefits program and whether they received a certain financial aid grant that made them eligible for CalFresh.
“California in the last few years has been increasingly focused on this channel of potential support for college students. It’s one of the pieces that students can paste together to put together a financial package that allows them to go to college,” said Jesse Rothstein, report co-author, about the CalFresh program.
CalFresh, once known as food stamps, is designed to provide money for groceries for California residents, making it a significant support program for low-income students. College students are typically eligible for CalFresh if they meet the regular rules that everyone, whether a student or not, must meet, in addition to at least one of more than a dozen exemptions. Understanding the long list of eligibility criteria specific to students has long been seen as a significant barrier for students, according to the report.
“But because CalFresh is run by a different agency — it’s not part of the education system — I think it’s hard for students to navigate,” said Rothstein, Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy and Economics at UC Berkeley and the faculty director of the California Policy Lab’s UC Berkeley site.
The data for the report was collected by the UC’s California Policy Lab from four institutions: California Community College Chancellor’s Office, University of California Office of the President, California Department of Social Services and California Student Aid Commission.
In gathering data from these four agencies, the authors developed a database connecting college enrollment numbers, monthly CalFresh participation records, and annual federal financial aid (FAFSA) details.
The data points to differences in eligibility and take-up rates between students in the California community colleges and the UC campuses as well as which students actually enroll to receive the benefits if they are eligible.
Data from the fall of 2019, the semester immediately prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, provides one of the clearest examples. During that time, the data showed a significant discrepancy between students who were eligible for CalFresh versus those who applied to receive the food aid — and further disparities depending on whether students were enrolled in a community college or a UC.
They found that 20% of community college students, 33% of UC undergraduates and 7% of UC graduate students were likely eligible for CalFresh. Yet just 26% of eligible community college students, 22% of eligible UC undergraduates, and 27% of eligible UC graduate students actually enrolled to receive CalFresh benefits.
The authors suggest a few reasons for the discrepancies.
First, UC students are less likely to live at home with their parents, increasing their chances of being eligible for CalFresh.
Second, students in the community colleges are overall less likely to be eligible for CalFresh. This is because “the version of the Cal Grant given to UC students qualifies many of them for CalFresh eligibility, but the version given to CCC students does not,” per the report’s authors.
And, finally, the UC has increased outreach efforts to enroll more eligible students into basic needs programs like CalFresh. This would explain, the authors wrote, why the take-up rate among UC undergraduates has increased substantially since 2017, while the same rate among community college students has declined.
The authors note that they can only provide data estimates in the report because the multiple eligibility determination factors may be captured inaccurately, although errors were likely insignificant and “our estimates are a good approximation of the share of students who would be found eligible under individualized determinations.”
A deeper look into data from the fall of 2019 highlights important details, including:
The Central Coast’s UC Santa Barbara had the third-highest eligibility rate at 37% but the highest take-up rate at 37%
Of the community college regions statewide, the Central Valley had both the highest eligibility rate at 29% and the highest take-up rate at 33%, while the Bay Area had the lowest eligibility rate at 15% and the lowest take-up rate at 20%
Black and Latino students were more likely to be eligible than white or Asian peers regardless of the institution attended
When it came to actually enrolling in CalFresh, Black and Latino students were more likely to do so if attending a UC, but Latino students were less likely to enroll in the program if attending a community college
Students over the age of 23 had higher take-up rates than those 23 years and younger at both institutions
Some of those details were expected given the history of outreach out of certain institutions. Santa Barbara County and UC Santa Barbara, for example, have long worked toward smoothing out the process for students to both determine their CalFresh eligibility and to apply for the program.
Other details, such as the low take-up rates in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, highlight the potential need for additional outreach in regions with increasingly high housing and cost of living expenses. Among community college students in Los Angeles, just 5% of the population were both eligible and participating in CalFresh during the fall of 2019. That number is 3% during the same timeframe in the Bay Area.
The development of a new dataset
The report included data from millions of students who attended UC and community college campuses between the 2010-11 and 2021-22 school years. While the report’s authors were largely focused on the most recent data, they included previous years’ data that was consistent across the four agencies they had data sharing agreements with — and this happened to take them as far back as the 2010-11 school year.
The bulk of the project took about four years to complete, according to Rothstein, who noted that this project took “longer than most” he’s worked on in his career. The team first needed to execute data sharing agreements between each of the institutions included in the report and then clean it up to ensure accuracy.
“It’s really beyond the ability of the individual agencies to do this kind of project,” said Rothstein.“It just takes too long and requires too much collaboration between agencies.”
Notably missing from the institutions that shared their data was California State University, which is the nation’s largest four-year public university system.
The CSU “was more reluctant” to share their data, said Rothstein, and his team decided to move forward without that system’s information. He noted that his team plans to work on another edition of the report in which they hope to be able to include CSU data.
“Our hope is that by kind of developing long-term relationships with the agencies we can build the trust that’s required to do this kind of project,” said Rothstein. “We can also build the kind of specialized knowledge of the individual data sets that makes it possible.”
The story has been updated to reflect changes made to the report by the California Policy Lab.
An unprecedented glimpse into policing in California schools
EdSource filed public records requests with hundreds of California public schools to obtain nearly 46,000 incident logs documenting calls to police from and about 852 schools. Here’s what we found and the data we gathered.
I hav several friends who were attacked while working at public schools in CA. Our law enforcement officers are not allowed on campus of schools unless an emergency.
The principal and vice principal are not allowed to make kids responsible. The kids can do anything, throw things at teachers, talk when teachers are trying to teach, calling teachers names, sexual harassment, and that’s why teachers are leaving CA. Another issue is CRT … Read More
I hav several friends who were attacked while working at public schools in CA. Our law enforcement officers are not allowed on campus of schools unless an emergency.
The principal and vice principal are not allowed to make kids responsible. The kids can do anything, throw things at teachers, talk when teachers are trying to teach, calling teachers names, sexual harassment, and that’s why teachers are leaving CA. Another issue is CRT and sex offenders using girls bathroom and sports changing rooms and showers. One big mess. Sex offenders not made responsible. DAs paid off by Soros.
Middle schooler allegedly attacks classmate twice, choking him severely. Police recommend attempted murder charges to district attorney.
School staff calls police to report squirrel with injured leg in school courtyard.
Unknown man in swimsuit briefs adorned with Australian flag trespassing at high school pool. Lifeguard sees a man follow boys 9 and 12, into the locker room. Man strips, pulls back the shower curtain to see the boy and asks: “Does this make you uncomfortable?” Man flees. Police list indecent exposure and lewd acts as possible offenses.
Officer dispatched to investigate ringing school alarm. Burnt English muffin found in teachers’ lounge.
From Crescent City, Weed and Alturas in the far north to Calexico and El Cajon nearly 800 miles south, all along the Pacific Coast, across the sprawling Central Valley and up into the High Sierra and down into the Mojave Desert, police are dispatched to California schools thousands of times on any given day classes are in session.
Reasons are myriad: Students bringing guns and knives — and even a spear and a bow and arrow — to school, sexual assaults and “perversion reports” and fights. Then there are lost keys, malfunctioning alarms, and dogs — even cattle — loose on school grounds. Once, police were called for help with a swarm of bees.
Calling the Cops Investigation
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a continuing investigation into school policing in California.
Monday: San Bernardino County: growing hotspot for school-run police
Local reporting: Emma Gallegos (Kern County), Lasherica Thornton (Fresno), Mallika Seshadri (Los Angeles and San Bernardino County) and Monica Velez (Oakland)
Project manager and editor: Rose Ciotta, Investigations and Projects Editor
Database design, data gathering, scraping, cleaning: Daniel J. Willis, Thomas Peele and Justin Allen
Website design: Justin Allen
Graphics and website design: Yuxuan (Sunny) Xie
Social media, photo editor: Andrew Reed
Copy Editor: Chuck Carroll
Cops rush to reports of students attempting suicide and overdosing on drugs, bullying, sexual assault and unwanted touching. They surveil high schoolers leaving campuses for lunch. They break up fights between parents over spots in elementary school pickup queues. They haul drunken adults from the stands at school sporting events. They once investigated a teacher’s claim that someone stole $10,000 from her classroom desk.
Mostly the call logs capture the anguish of youngsters with mental health challenges, victims whose nude photos are showing up on social media for all to see and parents turning to school administrators to deal with it all.
The data offered a raw, first-blush look at why school staff summon cops, reasons that sometimes lead to juvenile and adult arrests.
All incidents included in the police logs largely remain out of public view due to state laws that shield juveniles and allow police to withhold information on investigations. As a result, the data collected as a representative sample of the state is also clearly an undercount of what routinely occurs in California schools.
An EdSource analysis found that nearly a third of all calls for police were for incidents deemed serious. After consulting police experts, EdSource tagged the data with a definition for serious incidents as those that reasonably required a police presence. Included among serious incidents are those tagged as violent, which include anything involving a violent act, including self-harm.
The share of serious incidents increases to 4 out of 10 when police patrols are set aside. They make up about a third of all records, but most have little detail on what police were doing at or near the school.
The analysis also showed that high school students in districts with their own police departments are policed at a higher rate than in districts that rely on municipal police and sheriffs.
School police calls across California
Four years after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, igniting a national revolt and the defund-the-police movement, only about 20 of California’s 977 public-school districts made significant changes to school policing.
Most that acted ended contracts with municipal police departments to post cops — commonly called school resource officers — in schools. And three districts that made changes reversed course and brought police back after short hiatuses.
EdSource’s investigation sampled records showing calls from and about schools to city and school district police departments and county sheriffs. In some cases, officers stationed in schools dispatch themselves to a problem by radioing their dispatcher. Schools without campus police often call 911. Typically, police record their activity as “patrol” or “school check,” vague descriptions that raise questions about the use of public resources.
Whenever a school resource officer ran along a corridor, one hand on a radio microphone, or a sheriff’s deputy raced along a country road with lights and sirens on to reach a distant rural school, they contributed to what data showed is a vast, continuing police presence in California’s pre-K to 12 public education, EdSource found.
The records resurfaced a debate lingering years after Floyd’s killing about how much policing schools need and if deploying armed officers does more harm than good.
Similarly to police debates at the municipal level, school policing can be polarizing. Across California, the issue emerges as a political divide, with some seeing the police as necessary to ensure safety and others seeing them as agents of racial injustice.
In 2021, the ACLU of Southern California issued ascathing report that recommended an end to school policing in the Golden State, calling it “discriminatory, costly, and counterproductive.” In schools with regularly assigned cops, students across “all groups” were more likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement, researchers found.
A 2020 University of Maryland study published in the journal Criminology and Public Policy, found school districts that increased policing through federal grants “did not increase school safety.” Researchers recommended improving safety through “the many alternatives” to police in schools.
In California, school policing is “a structure. It’s part of the budgets, it’s part of the vocabulary of the schools. It’s part of what the expectation is from the parents and the students,” said Southwestern Law School professor Jyoti Nanda, who has researched school policing for 25 years and calls it “completely unnecessary,” adding, America is the lone civilized country where it is practiced.
In rural California, school policing is seen as routine, allowing students to become “comfortable interacting with someone in a uniform, wearing a badge, and carrying a gun, so that as they grew older, they see those people as a friendly face, a resource that they could go to as opposed to someone that they should be afraid of,” Tulare County School Superintendent Tim Hire told EdSource. The practice is spreading in Tulare, where three small districts recently agreed to share a resource officer to travel among them.
Such decisions are often couched as safety matters, a vigilant effort to prevent the next school shooting and avoid the failure of Uvalde, Texas police to stop the gunman who slaughtered 19 students and two teachers in 2022.
When state Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, introduced legislation in February to require an armed police officer in each public school with more than 50 students, he described the need in base terms: “We need good guys and girls with guns, ready to act.”
Essayli’s idea is “a step backward,” Assembly Education Committee member Mia Bonta D-Alameda, said at a hearing where the bill died in April. “We know it to be true that there’s a disproportionate impact on Black and brown students when police officers are in schools.”
A matter of local control
The state Department of Education offers no guidance or best practices, calling policing a local matter, a spokesperson said. There’s little consistency statewide in whether police are deployed in schools. Nineteen school districts have their own police departments, including Los Angeles Unified, which refused to release its police call data, some with only a handful of officers.
Los Angeles Unified cut its police department’s budget by 35% in 2020 and banned officers from being posted in schools. Following reports of escalating violence, the district recently reinstated police to two schools through mid-June. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho had informed the school board that he was planning to return police to 20 schools, but he got community and trustee backlash.
Oakland Unified disbanded its police department in favor of non-police staffers to keep peace in schools and respond to emergencies. Principals were trained on when to call city police only as a last resort. Still, data shows eight of the district’s 18 traditional middle and high schools combined to call city police 225 times, with nearly half of them serious, between Jan. 15 and June 30, 2023. Reasons include assault with a deadly weapon, suicide attempts, battery and terrorist/criminal threats.
Retired Long Beach and San Diego school Superintendent Carl Cohn, who served on the California State Board of Education from 2011 to 2018, said Oakland’s model of deploying people to talk students through peaceful resolutions of disputes can work. In the early 1990s, he ran the Long Beach schools anti-gang task force, hiring people with “street cred,” including former gang members.
They “could stop instantly what was going on on a campus by their mere presence,” Cohn said. “Their credibility with youngsters that might be on the verge of gang affiliation was really powerful.”
Yet Cohn’s “not on board with this notion of ‘let’s abandon the school police altogether.’ It’s the type of thing where ultimately there’s enough bad things from time to time happening that the safety of children has to be front and center.” Police must be well-trained, and school officials must cooperate with them, he added.
Shutting down the Oakland Unified police department of 11 officers and changing its policing culture is tough and ongoing, said a leader of a racial-justice group that pushed for the change.
“There’s still the ideology of policing that exists on campus and is embedded in the infrastructure of schools that we’re also up against,” said Jessica Black, a Black Organizing Project activist. “The criminalization of young people, implicit bias, and anti-Black racist practices” still need to be confronted.
It was only after Floyd’s murder that Dr. Tony Moos, a physician, learned that her four children who had each attended high school in the affluent Santa Clara County city of Los Altos had “negative interactions” with school resources officers “that they’d kept to themselves,” she said.
Moos was motivated to act and got the city to examine school police practices and make changes.
After hearings that included a Black high school teacher saying a resource officer had once pushed her to the ground, the city pulled police from the high school. The city also replaced its police chief in 2022. The new hire, a Black woman, came with much-needed experience.
Out of public view
California law grants police wide powers to withhold documents, including investigatory records, requested under the Public Records Act without revealing how many such records are being withheld. Many departments withheld from EdSource some — or even all — of the school calls they received.
The same is true about what information police can reveal in news releases or public statements about individual school incidents, especially involving juveniles. The public is often then not informed about police activity in schools.
That means that the serious incidents — weapons, death threats, rapes, assaults, fights, drugs — that police are responding to in 3 out of 10 calls often remain confidential.
Police in Crescent City, Del Norte County, for example, didn’t release information about the attempted murder of a student at Crescent Elk Middle School by a classmate who allegedly repeatedly choked him on Jan. 23, 2023, until EdSource asked about the incident more than a year later.
When EdSource asked police in Avenal, Kings County to elaborate on a call record of a late-night report of “shots fired” at the city’s high school, a lawyer responded claiming the information was exempt from disclosure.
“The problem is that (the exemptions) apply to virtually everything law enforcement does. They never expire. So, every police report is potentially covered by the investigatory records exemption,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, an open government group. The lack of disclosure of police activity in schools makes it all the harder to determine what the correct level of policing should be, he added.
Given the importance of the issue, the lack of information is troubling, Loy said. The debate over school policing “should be held on the basis of full and complete data and not driven by anecdote.”
A day of policing
The one-day record of police responding to a school for serious incidents was 10, the data sample shows.
That was May 17, 2023, at Burroughs High School in the Sierra Sands Unified School District in Ridgecrest, a desert city of 28,000 in eastern Kern County near Death Valley.
The first occurred at 8:38 a.m. when a school resource officer arrested a student for battery and released him to his parents. District Assistant Superintendent Brian Auld, who’s in charge of security, told EdSource the student “didn’t even go to the police station.”
That was followed at 9:09 a.m. by reports of two students who appeared to be under the influence of drugs. They were evaluated and returned to class. Another report of two students apparently under the influence came in at 10:26 a.m. One student was impaired and released to their parents, Auld said.
Less than 10 minutes later, the resource officer responded to a student in “mental distress” who was taken for a psychological evaluation.
At 1:23 p.m., police were alerted to a terrorist threat that ended up involving a student threatening to beat up someone, Auld said.
About 20 minutes later, two girls began fighting in art class.
One grabbed what Auld called “an art project” — apparently a ceramic object — and allegedly swung it at the other girl’s head. Police called it assault with a deadly weapon, arresting the aggressor. “Deadly weapon sounds like a knife or a gun. The officer made the decision that (the object) could have done serious bodily harm,” Auld said. “I’m not downplaying it.”
At 3:14 p.m. a report of disturbing the peace came in. No details were provided.
At 10:26 p.m, a vandalism report to the police turned out to be benign — police found that soon-to-graduate seniors had decorated the school with toilet paper.
Ridgecrest is “a unique, isolated community” near a military base. The school district considers its relationship with the police as a successful partnership, Auld said.
District officials “have some, or even total, discretion regarding whether or not an arrest is made,” he added. The district has 15 counselors, mental health therapists and a registered behavioral therapist, Auld said. It’s also implementing restorative practices and social-emotional learning to “change behaviors before they result in suspensions, expulsions and arrests.”
The Kings of calls
The most total call and dispatch records in the data for one school that relies on calling 911 was Lemoore High School, in Lemoore, a city of 26,600 in Kings County with 471 calls over a nearly six-month period.
Lemoore police, which refers to school police as youth development officers, provided scant detail on the reasons for the calls, listing hundreds in records as premises checks.
In an interview, Lt. Alvaro Santos, who supervises Lemoore’s school policing, attributed the numbers to the department’s practice of having all available officers “drop what they’re doing” during the times students arrive at school and leave for lunch and later go home, basically surrounding the buildings, some on side streets out of view of students.
“They’re around the school. They could be either parked on a side street or they could be driving by looking for vehicle code violations or anything that would pose a danger to the students,” Santos said. He said the schools are near a main road through the city and that there are concerns about drunk drivers in the area.
More serious calls
Sampled data shows that middle schools have a higher rate of serious incidents reported to police than high schools. At Cesar Chavez Middle School, in East Palo Alto, 41% of calls to police reported violent incidents, threats and sexual misconduct, data shows.
In one of two calls that East Palo Alto police labeled “perversion report,” a student allegedly used a phone to make “a TikTok” of another girl using the restroom, according to a recording of a heavily redacted 911 call to police from a school official. Police refused to release any details.
Fresno’s Gaston Middle School is in a neighborhood plagued by violence, gangs and drugs, all of which follow students through the school doors, both police and Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson said.
A patrol car for a Fresno Unified student resource officer sits outside of Gaston Middle School and its health clinic. Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
“I would love for there to be no acts of any physical harm on another person, but that’s impossible,” Sgt. Anthony Alvarado said.
Fresno Unified has been debating what level of policing to have in its schools for several years. In 2020 police were pulled from the district’s middle schools but remained in high schools. After several violent incidents, police were returned to some middle schools in 2022 and the rest in 2023.
School “feels like a prison”
The daily presence of Kern High School District police at Mira Monte High in Bakersfield “feels ghetto,” sophomore Jose Delgado said.
The school “feels like a prison. It’s like they don’t trust us at all.”
Still, Delgado said, he understands the need for police, noting a lot of fights at the school. “It’s for the best, but it makes us feel ghetto.”
Data shows 163 police call records at Delgado’s school for the five-and-a-half month period. They describe incidents including assault with a deadly weapon, an irate parent, out-of-control juveniles and resisting a police officer.
Delgado’s sense of school as a prison and not being trusted are among the reasons why the negatives of school policing “completely outweigh the positives,” Nanda, the Southwestern Law School professor said.
The students who police typically interact with “are not the children that are doing well in school,” Nanda said. “Part of why there isn’t an outrage, a global outrage, is because it’s not impacting the people that are in power, the people who have agency.”
Children seeing police in schools can be akin to going to an airport and encountering armed officers at a security checkpoint, said University of Florida education professor Chris Curran, who has studied school policing extensively. “It’s natural to wonder what’s wrong, why are there people with guns?” he said. “You find yourself saying, ‘What do I not know about? What’s this danger that has necessitated assault rifles?’”
No state guidance
When he was a state Assembly member in 2020, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Assemblymember Mia Bonta’s spouse, clearly came down on the side of removing police from schools when he spoke at a forum after Floyd’s murder.
“It’s just really important to call out this incredible moment,” he said, lauding districts, including Oakland, that ended policing. “There’s a general dehumanization of children of color, a belief that they need to be surveilled and monitored and watched and policed.”
“The outcomes don’t make our students safer,” he said. School policing is “not achieving what we’re seeking,” a video of the forum shows. It was hosted by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource
Asked recently if Bonta’s position on school policing as the state’s top law enforcement officer mirrors what he said in 2020, his press secretary replied “no” via email.
Bonta, who’s expected to enter the 2026 governor’s race, “has always believed that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for school safety, and that schools need to work towards data-driven policies that fit their community,” Alexandra Duquet wrote.
“School resource officers can be an important component of ensuring students and school personnel safety,” Duquet wrote. “Their primary focus should be ensuring the safety of all on campus — not discipline — and they be given tools such as implicit bias training that ensure the equitable treatment of all students.”
Thurmond, a declared 2026 gubernatorial candidate, took no position on school policing during the forum. He recently told EdSource he favors “well-trained school resource officers to handle serious situations.” He also called for “more training of school staff so they’re not calling police for something that’s a student discipline matter.”
Thurmond also said that during his time as a member of the West Contra Costa Unified School District board from 2008-2012 he saw police officers help students, calling them “some of the best social workers I’ve worked with.”
State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who during Thurmond’s forum praised Oakland’s shuttering of its school police department, said in an interview that school districts should consider alternatives to police the way some cities have started using trained civilians to respond to 911 mental-health-crisis calls.
State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.Credit: AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
“Kids are emotional. Kids don’t have impulse control the way adults should, and to bring an officer in, especially since all of our officers are armed, can, rather than defuse the situation, make it worse,” Skinner said. Kids can act out what they experience at home or on the street, she added.
Skinner, the author of several major police accountability bills, also said she saw value in the data EdSource obtained and published.
Police logs can help officials decide if civilian staff should deal with more school incidents at a time when California’s suffering a police shortage, she said. That could leave sworn officers available for “real public safety needs. We never want to prevent a school from calling 911 if that’s needed. However, there might be some appropriate guidelines or boundaries that cities and schools could work out.”
Stopping a police chase
The executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, Mo Canady, a retired cop, said districts would be mistaken to remove resource officers from campuses. Police will always be needed to respond to schools, and “we need for students and faculty to be able to feel like this officer is more than just a law enforcement officer, that they really are another trusted adult in that school environment.” A trained and well-known officer, “may be the person who comes into a situation with the coolest head,” he said.
Loretta Whitson, executive director of the California School Counselors Association, has seen what can happen when police approach a student situation lacking the cool-headedness Canady described.
As a school counselor in the Monrovia Unified School District in Los Angeles County, she once worked with a child who ran away from school multiple times. Finally, an exasperated principal called the police, who chased after the student.
“The principal didn’t stop them. I felt as (officers) went on in their rant this kid is getting more damaged. So, I said, ‘Stop, stop,”’ Whitson said. “We already had a very damaged kid, and this wasn’t helping.” The student was later found to need special education services, she said.
Tom Nolan, a retired Boston police lieutenant turned sociologist who’s taught at several universities and studied school policing, said when law enforcement officers are called into a school situation, “they become the shot callers,” deciding what to do whether it is in the child’s best interest or not. Too often, principals are calling them for minor problems like lost keys and disciplinary matters, he said.
“The research is unequivocal in demonstrating that the police coming into schools, or police being assigned to schools, is almost always a bad idea. It has bad outcomes for children. It has bad outcomes for school safety.”
Nolan said police are not school counselors and shouldn’t play that role. “That’s something that’s a very specific skill set that is attained through years of graduate level study by mental health practitioners and clinicians.”
The California Police Chiefs Association declined to make anyone from its leadership available for an interview. In an email, its executive director described school policing as a matter best discussed at local levels.
Brian Marvel, president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, a powerful federation of police unions, wasn’t available for an interview, a spokesperson said. In a statement, Marvel, a San Diego police officer, said cops assigned to schools “play an important role in” schools. They act as “educators, emergency/crisis managers, first responders, informal counselors, mentors, and model the kind of behavior that builds trust and respect between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”
Data shows that sometimes, regardless of who might be available to counsel or advise a student, one may just do something dumb, like putting a death threat in writing.
On June 15, 2023, James Morris, the county administrator who also acts as Inglewood Unified superintendent, received a death threat via email, police call records show. Morris, a veteran administrator, was brought on to lift Inglewood out of years of state receivership because of fiscal woes.
“I can just say, generally, it was a student,” Morris said when asked about the threat. Police took a report, but Morris said he didn’t want charges filed.
“I’ve been doing this for 44 years. It takes a lot to rattle me,” he said. “It was a young person who just needed help.”
California’s children rank in the bottom third of all states in overall well-being, according to a new report released this week.
The authors of the report, “2024 KIDS COUNT Data Book: State Trends in Child Well-Being,” found that over half of California’s 3- and 4-year-olds are not in school, less than one-fourth of its eighth graders are proficient in math, and a greater number children and teens per 100,000 died than in previous years.
“One way to think about it is where we see the most progress are the states who are investing in their children — heavily in their children,” said Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, who oversaw the compilation of the report.
Now in its 35th year and published by the foundation, a private philanthropy and research organization, the annual report measures children’s well-being across 16 indicators within the categories of education, economic well-being, health, and family and community.
Out of all states, California ranked 43rd in economic well-being, 35th in education, 10th in health, and 37th in family and community.
California’s children fared better than most other states only in the health indicator. Even so, the number of babies with low birth-weight slightly increased from 7.1% in 2019 to 7.4% in 2022, as did the number of child and teen deaths, rising from 18 per 100,000 in 2019 to 22 per 100,000 in 2022.
“The movement in indicators generally follows investments, and it depends on the particular state of how they’re investing in their children,” Boissiere said.
This year’s report largely focused on comparisons between 2019 and 2022 data to provide a pre-pandemic and post-pandemic view of how children are faring, Boissiere said. Sources for the data included the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Impact of low well-being on chronic absenteeism
The authors noted that the report’s findings provide context to the conversation on chronic absenteeism, which is defined as missing 10% or more of the school year.
The percentage of chronically absent students in California skyrocketed from the pre-pandemic rate of 12.1% in the 2018-19 school year to 30% in 2021-22. The reasons for such high absenteeism vary from district to district and even from student to student, but experts agree that the issue is exacerbated when children’s basic needs are not being met.
“What we know is that it’s critically important that all children arrive in the classroom ready to learn and, in order for them to be ready to learn, their basic needs have to be met,” Boissiere said.
National data included in the report highlighted the relationship between absences and academic performance. The more students miss school, the lower their reading proficiency.
In 2022, the percentage of fourth-grade students nationwide scoring proficient at reading was 40% for students with zero absences in the month before they took the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Reading proficiency lowered to 34% with one to two absent days in that month; to 28% with three to four absences; 25% with five to 10 absences, and down to 14% for students who had more than 10 absences in the same one-month time frame prior to taking the NAEP.
The authors also found that racial inequities play a critical role in nearly all the index measures in the report.
“As a result of generations-long inequities and discriminatory policies and practices that persist, children of color face high hurdles to success on many indicators,” the authors wrote.
For example, the authors found “alarming increases” in the rate of child and teen death rates among Black children nationally, and that American Indian or Alaska Native children “were more than twice as likely to lack health insurance.”
Disaggregating racial demographic data also pointed to notable inequities.
For example, authors found that Asian and Pacific Islander children experienced one of the lowest rates of poverty nationally at 11%; the rate of poverty among Burmese children was 29%, 24% for Mongolian children, and 23% for Thai children. The national average for child poverty is 16%, per the report, highlighting the stark poverty rates for many Asian children nationwide.
Looking at distinct racial inequities, the authors found exceptions where children of color were faring better than the national average. For example, Black children were more likely to be in school at ages 3 and 4, to be insured, and to have a head of household with at least a high school diploma. Latino children and teens had lower death rates, and they were also less likely to have low birth-weight.
“Today, kids of color represent a majority of the children in the country, as well as in 14 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” the authors wrote. “The future success of our nation depends on our ability to ensure all children have the chance to be successful.”
