برچسب: community

‘My mission’: Dolores Huerta Elementary Principal Estela Lopez extends support to community

Dolores Huerta Elementary principal Estela Lopez. Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource

When Estela Lopez was about 7 years old, her brother told her she could join in on an adventure — provided she stayed strong, followed instructions and didn’t cry.

After school one day, Lopez and her older brother trekked across the street to their local school in what used to be South Central Los Angeles and climbed over the walls, jumping from one room to the next despite hearing their mother calling their names.

By chance, Lopez stumbled on a recycling bin packed with paper worksheets. She grew excited and rummaged for more.

“I went into the trash cans, and I started looking at different worksheets, and I started taking them out,” Lopez said. “I had a younger sister, I was like, ‘You know what, we’re going to play school. I’m going to be the teacher. You guys are going to listen to me.’”

What started out as play that day — with her sisters sometimes complaining, “You always want to be the teacher; you always want to have us doing work” — led Lopez to begin her journey as an educator, as she began to notice the positive effects of her methods at home.

“One of my sisters was very strong in reading, but I saw that my other sister was struggling,” she said, so she just helped them with their homework. “The expectation, since I was the oldest, was to get home, help my sisters with homework, help around the house while both of my parents were working 12 hours a day.”

The community Lopez grew up in lies in what is now South Los Angeles — and she still lives and works just a five-minute drive from where she was raised on 49th Street. But since she took over as the principal of Dolores Huerta Elementary, Lopez has gone beyond teaching reading and writing — working her way from being a coordinator who supports English learners, to assistant principal, to a principal who extended her reach far beyond the classroom to help families secure housing and deliver critical supplies during the height of the Covid pandemic.

Ryan J. Smith, the chief strategy officer at the LA-based organization Community Coalition that works to “upend systemic racism,” said Lopez has worked diligently with LAUSD and has established various community partnerships to help create safe passage routes near the school.

And when a parent can’t take their child to school, Lopez and assistant principal Sandra Sandoval step in.

“We had a kiddo last year who is being raised by grandpa, and he was having a hard time picking her up from school. He was going through chemo treatment. … And so we took turns walking her home and picking her up in the morning so she would get to school safely,” Sandoval said.

“We will do whatever we need to do to make sure that our kids are safe and getting to school and … at least being kids and not dealing with big people problems for six and a half, seven hours a day.”

Supporting students’ families

Virtual learning due to Covid was particularly challenging, Lopez said, as many students did not log onto their online coursework.

So, she and her fellow administrators began going door to door, but they quickly realized that a lot of the families also did not have masks to stay healthy.

“We would get to the homes, and we would ask them to come out, and they were like, ‘We don’t have any face masks,’ some of the essential things,” Lopez said. “So we started carrying them in the cars, and we started giving them to the families because these are the families we’re supporting. They don’t have face masks. They’re not protecting themselves.”

Around that same time — as rents skyrocketed — Lopez helped organize town halls and workshops for parents to learn about housing security in an attempt to avoid eviction.

“We find sometimes when we’re looking at enrollments, we see the same address three or four times,” Lopez said. “That means there’s three or four families living under one roof. And sometimes we find out it’s only a two-bedroom, and that’s what our kids deal with on a daily basis.”

According to Ryan, that level of community outreach is critical, and Lopez has acquired a “profound” understanding “that students need all things to thrive.”

A time to heal

For Lopez, however, that period of seclusion wasn’t just about supporting families in her community. It was also about healing herself.

Lopez missed the students when they were home during the pandemic. “I really did. I missed that laughter outside. I was only hearing the little birds,” she said. “But I think I needed that time because, during that time was when my son (Mauricio) passed away, and I wasn’t in a good place to be their school leader. I needed that time to cope, but I also needed that time to heal.”

Mauricio was the eldest of Lopez’s three sons, born when she was a 17-year-old high school senior.

She recalled that Mauricio was only 4 months old when he watched her take the stage as a high school graduate. And he watched her again, as an adult with a daughter of his own, when she shared her story for the first time at a celebration of the school’s 10th anniversary in 2019 — when Lopez also met civil rights icon Dolores Huerta in person for the first time and began her yearslong relationship with her.

“Sharing about becoming a teenage mom, sharing about the LA riots, sharing about the challenges of being a parent that was raising three Latino boys and the conversations with them. Sharing that I left (home) when I was only 15 years old. Sharing how difficult it was to grow up in a home where my dad was an alcoholic and how my ex-husband became an alcoholic and I didn’t want to continue that cycle with my son,” Lopez said.

While Ryan eventually convinced her to speak at the event, Lopez said, that was one of the hardest decisions she has had to make — but that it was ultimately an opportunity to honor the five most important people in her life who continually motivated her to keep going: her parents and her three sons, Mauricio, Ivan and Julian.

Lopez said that after she spoke, Huerta embraced her and said, “You’re strong, mi hija. You’re a strong woman.”

But in the wake of Mauricio’s death, Lopez questioned whether she should remain an educator.

“I went back and thought about the times that I wasn’t with him and the times that I felt that I invested so much on me and not on him … or my last conversation with him,” Lopez said.

“I was working on the main office to make it look pretty for our students, and he called me that Saturday, and he said, ‘Mom, are you coming home?’ And I said ‘Not yet, mi hijo.’ I said I want to finish painting the office because I don’t want to be here on Sunday. And he said, ‘That’s cool, mom. I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’”

Ultimately, Mauricio’s wife, Alejandra, showed Lopez her son’s social media posts, which reminded her of her purpose.

“I’m very proud of you, mama. You make me strong,” Mauricio had written. “Keep the work going. You’re helping the little kids out.”

Life at Dolores Huerta Elementary

Despite having had three sons and a granddaughter (who attends Dolores Huerta Elementary) of her own, Lopez has regarded the students as her “other children.”

“All I have to do sometimes is look at that window … and when they pass by, and they’re showing me their little cards or they’re smiling, that’s worth it,” she said.

When a student arrives late, Lopez said she immediately takes them to the cafeteria to eat something. When a student cries, she offers comfort. And when a student doesn’t seem responsive in the morning, she and her staff check on them throughout the day.

“I know how challenging it can be out there,” said Lopez, who views the school as a shelter for children from some of their difficulties. “I want to make sure that when we open the doors in the morning, everything is left outside.”

Students at the school, including Samantha Estrada Flores, said she has admired Lopez as an “amazing woman” who organizes fun activities for the children. And, Ernesto Gallardo, a fifth-grader running for student council president, said when he walks through the gates each morning, “I’m always happy.”

“At the beginning, when (Mauricio) passed away, it was hard for me to say I have three sons, but now, I have three sons: two with me, and one that’s not with me right now — but the one that taught me how to be a mom,” Lopez said. “And with that learning, I learned to be a strong leader and for my community to know that I’m here to support them in any way that I can. That’s my mission.”

Source link

08/07/2025
Legislative Analyst’s Office forecasts $19 billion state budget deficit for schools and community colleges

California State Capitol

Credit: Christopher Schodt for EdSource

Schools and community colleges likely will face a $19 billion, three-year state funding deficit, the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported Thursday. The funding for TK-12 this year is $108 billion.

The LAO’s annual projection is a forecast of what to expect from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first pass next month on the 2024-25 state budget. It reflects a decline in funding in Proposition 98, the 35-year-old constitutional amendment that determines the portion of the state’s general fund that must go to schools and community colleges. Complicating the picture is that about half of the education deficit covers money that schools and community colleges spent in 2022-23.

The overall projected state general fund budget deficit of $68 billion could also jeopardize 5% annual increases for the University of California and California State University systems that Gov. Gavin Newsom had agreed to, as well as children’s services not covered by Proposition 98.

The projected shortfall is the largest financial challenge schools and community colleges will face since the Great Recession budget of 2009. However, the LAO said that schools are better positioned now because of an education rainy-day fund that the Legislature was required to sock away in the record-high revenue years of the past half-decade.

Edgar Zazueta, executive director of the Association of California School Administrators, cautioned that state leaders must avoid the sort of harsh cuts made during the Great Recession. They included forcing districts to borrow billions of dollars with the expectation they would be repaid later.

“Fortunately, we have tools, including the Proposition 98 reserve, that we can leverage to protect Proposition 98 funding levels,” he said. “Even during fiscal times like these, public education must be prioritized and protected. We must continue to build on our state’s great momentum and investments that have been made these past few years.”

The LAO report lays out several options to balance school spending, some of them jarring for schools and community colleges.

One option is for the Legislature to preserve TK-14 funding approved last June and find the full $68 billion in cuts in the general fund. That would spare schools, but other programs for children outside of Proposition 98 funding would more likely be hit, including support and subsidized costs for child care.

The opposite approach — the most painful to schools and community colleges and politically risky for legislators — would be to revise the 2022-23 and the current 2023-24 Proposition 98 funding downward to meet the minimum required by law. That would slash funding by $9 billion from 2022-23 and $6.3 billion for the current year, with a ripple effect of lowering the minimum guarantee for 2024-25 by $3.5 billion.

The Legislature could ease the burden by draining the $8.1 billion rainy day fund. That would still leave about $10 billion in cuts. Billions of dollars in one-time funding, whether unspent so far this year, or allotted by the Legislature for the next several years, could be targets. These could include $1 billion as yet unallocated for developing community schools or money set aside for learning recovery and for after-school extended learning time. It could be politically unpopular for legislators to make significant school cuts in an election year. And they would have to approve a resolution that there is a fiscal emergency to reduce the Proposition 98 appropriation.

The third alternative is somewhere in the middle — cuts to K-14 and cuts from other general fund programs.

The Legislature had an inkling that economic conditions were worsening but no hard numbers when they passed the 2023-24 budget in June: The deadline for paying state and federal income taxes had been extended from April 15 to Oct. 16. So they didn’t know the impact on state revenues in 2022-23 and 2023-24 from slowing home sales, a drop in new startups in Silicon Valley, and from declining income of the top 1% of earners, who contribute 50% of the personal income tax receipts.

The LAO’s forecast for state revenues for the general fund shows a big drop in 2022-23, a flat line in 2023-24 and a slight uptick in the next fiscal year. But the gray area shows the possibility of an additional decline or a quick recovery.
Source: The Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The LAO cautioned that economic conditions are volatile, and revenues will remain unpredictable. A graph of its revenue outlook shows slow growth in 2024-25, with a large gray penumbra of uncertainty above and below that line.

Kevin Gordon, president of Capitol Advisors Group, an education consulting company based in Sacramento, said he was pleased that the LAO listed several options and did not recommend resetting funding to meet the Proposition 98 minimum, with “devastating cuts.”

“The numbers are worrisome, but the approaches laid out are significant efforts to demonstrate how lawmakers might work to protect basic investment in education funding,” he said.

Source link

06/07/2025
Community college faculty call for union to take stance against accused professor

Fresno City College campus.

Credit: Ashleigh Panoo / EdSource

The post has been updated to correct the position held by one of the union leaders mentioned in the story and to say that 50% of senators must be present and 75% must vote to remove the president.

Some professors in the State Center Community College District are calling for their union leaders to be transparent about their knowledge of the 2020 sexual misconduct findings against a colleague at Fresno City College who formerly taught at California State University, Fresno.

“Shocked” by EdSource’s report of the “alarming” allegations involving Tom Boroujeni, Laurie Taylor, an anthropology professor at Clovis Community College, which is also part of State Center, said she questioned union leadership and called for leaders to resign during a Dec. 1 meeting. Two professors at the meeting confirmed Taylor demanded union leadership resignations. Boroujeni is a Fresno City College communication instructor and also president of the school’s academic senate.

Union president Keith Ford forwarded EdSource’s interview request to the union’s executive vice president Ria Williams; Williams has not yet responded. Lacy Barnes, the union’s immediate past president and the Secretary Treasurer of the California Federation of Teachers, declined to comment.

“We, as union members, demand to know what our union leadership knew and when they knew it,” Taylor said in an interview with EdSource.

Boroujeni was found to have committed an “act of sexual violence” against a professor and colleague at nearby Fresno State in 2015 when he was a graduate student and adjunct instructor. The alleged victim is also a professor and Boroujeni’s colleague at Fresno City College. The State Center Community College District, parent agency to City College, learned of the “sexual misconduct investigation” when the alleged victim requested a no-contact order against Boroujeni, which was granted in the spring 2022 semester.

Boroujeni has taught at Fresno City College since 2015, the same year he began his academic career at Fresno State while still a graduate student. Fresno State couldn’t discipline him because he was a graduate student when the alleged violence occurred, Debbie Adishian-Astone, the school’s vice president for administration, told EdSource. Boroujeni resigned from Fresno State last year after officials said the act-of-sexual-violence report would be placed in his personnel file.

In his resignation, he agreed not to seek or accept work in the California State University system again.

But the matter had no immediate impact on his teaching career at Fresno City College, where the alleged victim teaches part-time in addition to her tenured position at Fresno State. State Center Community College District granted Boroujeni tenure in March. He assumed the academic senate presidency in May, after a two-year term as president-elect.

But the district put Boroujeni on paid leave on Nov. 30, a day after EdSource’s report.

This week, State Center officials remained tight-lipped over Boroujeni’s administrative leave because of “personnel matters subject to legal considerations related to privacy and to protect the integrity of any ongoing investigations,” a district spokesperson, Jill Wagner, wrote in an email.

A person familiar with the matter said the decision to put Boroujeni on administrative leave was because his presence on campus was disruptive and impacted the college’s ability to serve students, following EdSource’s report on the alleged sexual violence. Three instructors canceled class in response to the report.

Union response

The State Center Federation of Teachers represents faculty in the community college district. According to a statement obtained by EdSource, union officers would not comment on the sexual misconduct allegations publicly but could talk with members individually.

“We cannot comment specifically on this case or any other,” according to the union’s formal statement. “In no way does the Federation endorse or condone acts of harassment or violence in any circumstance.”

The union’s statement, Taylor said, seemed “dismissive and placating,” and “more could have been said.”

And Liz Romero, an early childhood education instructor at Clovis Community College, said she is also angry with the union over their response. She said she expected the union to take a position on the allegation of sexual violence against Boroujeni. Romero said it was “disheartening” that the union, through its statement, said their responsibility was to “defend the contract” and “defend the faculty’s rights to due process.”

“It seems like a disparity in power structure with a full-time faculty versus a part-time faculty,” Romero said about the union’s statement, “a man versus a woman, a person in leadership versus a person not in leadership. It feels very unbalanced.”

Academic Senate response

Professors who spoke to EdSource also directed their frustration at the Fresno City College Academic Senate, which Boroujeni leads.

In May 2023, Boroujeni started a two-year term as Fresno City College’s academic senate president, a role requiring that he works with the college’s administration in setting academic policy among other responsibilities. He became president-elect in May 2021 for a two-year term before ascending to the senate presidency seven months ago.

Romero, who has previously served as academic senate president at Clovis Community College, said the academic senate should remove Boroujeni as the president and hold a new election for the next president-elect. According to the bylaws of the Fresno City College academic senate, removing an officer requires a written petition detailing the rationale for the removal, with signatures from 25% of the academic senators; 50% of the senators must be present and 75% must vote to remove the president.

While Boroujeni is on administrative leave, the senate’s executive committee is using an acting president.

Past president Michael Takeda is the acting president while current president-elect Jackie Williams is on a sabbatical leave. Williams will become acting president in January if Boroujeni remains on leave.

The executive committee did not discuss Boroujeni during its Wednesday meeting.

“For now, there’s nothing really to discuss,” Takeda said.

Boroujeni did not respond to EdSource’s questions on Thursday.

As some faculty members expect more from the union, the college’s academic senate as well as the college and district, professors are finding ways to show solidarity with the alleged victim and to demand action.

For example, Romero said she won’t stay a union member if the union doesn’t take a stance on the matter.

“I don’t want my money to fund an organization that’s going to protect abusers,” she said. “That’s my only power in this situation. Everyone needs to do what they think is best for them, and I hope it’s always supporting victims of sexual assault and standing up for those with less power.”

Source link

06/07/2025
Community college students serve as basic needs support guides for peers

Xavier Navarro, left, was a student ambassador while attending Santa Ana College. In this photo, he was tabling with his adviser, Hope Nguyen.

Over 50 community college students in California currently serve as resource guides for peers in need of stable housing, food access and other basic needs.

The students are part of the California Community Colleges’ Student Ambassador Program, which trains students to share information on available resources, including CalFresh and housing stipends with their fellow students. The program uses peers to share such resources in an effort to reduce the stigma around accessing basic needs services.

“They’re students on the campus, on the ground floor, knowing what students need, knowing how their campus operates, what works, what doesn’t,” said Yuriko Curiel, an ambassador program specialist.

The need is acute. According to a recent report by The Community College League of California and the RP Group, only 32% of the 66,741 students who responded to their survey felt secure in meeting all their basic needs. Over half of respondents were concerned about running out of food; 3 out of 5 students experienced housing insecurity, and 1 in 4 reported experiencing homelessness.

Anecdotes from two recent student ambassadors, Adela Gonzales and Xavier Navarro, highlighted the program’s impact.

Gonzales said in a recent interview that she spoke with a student who was on his way to a Riverside City College parking structure where other students had died by suicide. The student told her that he was heading there because he was contemplating doing the same. But on that day, he came across Gonzales, who was handing out pamphlets regarding various student services, including mental health support.

Adela Gonzales was a student ambassador for two years at Riverside City College.

“I was able to talk with him … give him a little bit of validation, and then walk him to the Student Health and Psychological Center,” said Gonzales, who is studying biochemistry and sociology. “I still message him here and there to see how he’s doing.”

She said what most stood out in her work as an ambassador was how only a few students were aware of the campus’ psychology center or their crisis text hotline. Her interest in supporting other students prompted her to join the program two school years in a row.

At Santa Ana College, Navarro was working at the campus food pantry when he met a fellow student veteran, named Louie, who didn’t have a home.

Meeting Navarro, who was a student ambassador at the time, led to Louie being quickly connected to resources, including a housing voucher to book a hotel room for about a month, food assistance via CalFresh, a free bus pass, and a job at the same food pantry where he met Navarro.

“He was hurting, and it hurts you as a person because you want to help … and now that you have the tools, why not?” said Navarro, who is now an accounting student at Cal Poly Pomona University in Southern California.

It was Navarro’s own experience as a veteran that helped facilitate the initial conversation with Louie.

“We care about the students, we want the students to succeed,” Navarro said. “Because college is hard, it’s expensive, and it can be challenging. Not having a home, not having food. … Caring goes a long way, especially for a college student.”

Students’ identities are crucial in connecting with their peers, said Curiel, the program specialist who was an ambassador before she graduated from San Bernardino Valley College.

Yuriko Curiel was a student ambassador and now works as a specialist for the program
Courtesy of Yuriko Curiel

“Not only are they connecting with peers, they’re connecting with people who reflect their own community,” she said, noting that Navarro is a veteran; Gonzales, a former foster youth; Curiel was balancing work and school as a single mom during her time as an ambassador.

Ambassadors also often understand being food or housing insecure. Gonzales and Navarro, for example, both relied on CalFresh in the past. Gonzales also received a housing grant while enrolled in college because she couldn’t afford her rent after a roommate moved out of their shared apartment.

Gonzales and Navarro said that a common response they got from students was disbelief that they might qualify for CalFresh, the state’s food assistance program. Complex eligibility rules for students is a known barrier to the program.

“Not everybody on campus knows what’s available to them and how they can access, and even when they access that, there are still questions,” Gonzales said. “Being able to point them in the right direction and get the right information for them is very important.”

The ambassador program was launched in 2016. Students who join are expected to put in at least six to eight hours each month, for which they receive a stipend of $1,500 after completing the program.

The first cohort in 2016 included 20 students, while the current group includes 53 students. Previous groups have included over 100 ambassadors, according to Sarah London, external and executive communications director with the Foundation for California Community Colleges, which operates the program.

“The fluctuation in numbers is solely based on available funding,” said London. “Ideally, we’d have hundreds of ambassadors every year, so we strive to bring on more philanthropic funders to support and help us grow these efforts in the future.”

While student support services vary at the state’s 116 community colleges, some examples include CalFresh application assistance, low-cost auto insurance, a mental health crisis text hotline, and emergency financial aid grants, among others.

Students interested in joining the program must apply for a position and meet eligibility requirements, which include being at least 18 years old, enrolled in at least one unit for the fall and spring semesters during the school year in which they’re applying, and availability to attend a Zoom training.

Gonzales, Navarro and Curiel were all encouraged to apply for the program by staff members managing student organizations they had joined.

For example, Gonzales was part of Guardian Scholars, a chapter-based organization on college campuses that helps support former foster and homeless youth, before learning about the ambassadors program. A staff member with the group noticed that Gonzales often took the initiative by sharing basic needs information with her peers and suggested she apply to be an ambassador.

“I’ve always enjoyed providing resources for all my foster sisters,” she said, adding that joining the ambassador program felt like an extension of what she was already inclined to do in her personal life.

Student ambassadors use a variety of strategies to reach their peers, such as tabling during campus events, creating social media posts, sending out mass emails about available resources, and presenting to their classmates during class breaks.

“This is really investing in our next generation of leaders,” Curiel said. “I see our dean of student services coming out of this, our basic needs coordinators, or people doing public policy; I think that’s just the power of the program.”

Source link

03/07/2025
Community college adjunct professors optimistic as two lawsuits over pay progress

John Martin is a plaintiff in one lawsuit and is the chairman of the California Part-Time Faculty Association.

Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

A pair of recent court decisions may bode well for the state’s part-time community college professors, known as adjuncts, who have argued for years that they work unpaid hours to meet students’ needs.

In Southern California, roughly 1,200 adjuncts who brought a class-action lawsuit against the Long Beach Community College District in 2022 are preparing for mediation to resolve claims of lost pay.

A judge would have to approve any settlement.

That the case proceeded to mediation after a judge denied a district motion to throw it out “is having a pretty substantial impact” in California as some districts are “looking at renegotiating their terms by which they’re paying adjunct faculty,” said Eileen Goldsmith, a San Francisco labor lawyer who represents the Long Beach plaintiffs. “Our case really started that process.”

A spokesperson for the Long Beach district said she could not comment on ongoing litigation.

Many issues cited in both suits were detailed in EdSource’s 2022 series Gig by Gig at California Community Colleges. Adjuncts routinely claim they are exploited by only being paid for time spent teaching, not for designing syllabi, grading, and answering student emails. Yet they are considered the backbone of the community college system, numbering more than 30,000.

In Sacramento County, a Superior Court judge ruled in March in a separate 2022 lawsuit that adjuncts working at colleges across the state are employees of the community college system’s board of governors — a decision that could lead to uniformity in pay across the 116-college system, said Dan Galpern, a lawyer for John Martin, the plaintiff in the case. Martin, an adjunct in the Shasta and Butte community college districts, is also chair of the California Part-Time Faculty Association.

He claims in the lawsuit that the board and districts violated state wage-and-hour laws by not paying for time spent preparing for classes, writing curriculum, grading, and interacting with students outside of class.

Lawyers for the community college system sought to have the suit thrown out, arguing that adjuncts work for local districts, not the state.

In a decision rejecting the request for dismissal, Judge Jill H. Talley wrote that because “the statutory scheme of the community colleges” requires the board of governors “to provide oversight, establish minimum employment standards, and to advise local community college districts on the implementation of state laws,” the board has “an obligation that extends to faculty wages.”

Martin called the judge’s decision to go forward “a big victory.”

The decision may be appealed.

California Community Colleges “does not control the wages, hours, and working conditions of part-time professors at local community college districts, which are established through collective bargaining at each individual district,” Melissa Villarin, spokesperson for the chancellor’s office, wrote in an email.

“The chancellor’s office is disappointed that it was unable to persuade (Talley) to adopt its motion for summary judgment, and will evaluate its legal options as this litigation moves forward,” she said.

The favorable ruling in Martin’s case and the mediation in the Long Beach case are building momentum for adjuncts to continue to push for pay for all hours worked, said Karen Roberts, an art history professor for more than 20 years in Long Beach who is one of the lead plaintiffs in the case.

“I got into academia as an idealist,” Roberts said Tuesday. “Join the professor ranks and we’re all gonna join hands and sing Kumbaya.” But, she said, adjuncts can’t let themselves “be exploited. We live in a capitalist economy. We have a moral obligation to take care of ourselves financially.”

The lawsuit, should the mediation result in awards for lost pay, should motivate adjuncts to stay active in unions and trade groups, she said.

The suits are clearly being watched around the state and have the potential to have important impacts, Stephanie Goldman, the executive director of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, said in an interview Tuesday.

It’s too soon to know how they might impact college district funding through Proposition 98, the 1988 ballot measure that sets funding levels for K-12 schools and community colleges based on the state general fund.

“That’s a really big and heavy question,” Goldman said. “I think ultimately it depends on how the lawsuits turn out and the reasoning behind it.”

Still, she said, schools across California are carefully watching to see what happens.

“I don’t think anybody would be surprised if it had a ripple effect across the state,” she said.

Source link

02/07/2025
Community college math policy: Balancing big picture gains and classroom struggles

Is this a picture of something bad, or something good?

Cognitive scientists call this the global-local processing dilemma: Do we perceive the overall image, or focus on the details? Education policy often faces the same question: Can a policy be considered “good” if the overall data look promising, but the day-to-day experiences feel “bad?”

This tension is at the heart of California’s college math reforms.

Like the image, the story of these policies may look “good” from a distance, but “bad” up close.

Before recent reforms, community college students who needed extra math support were typically placed in remedial courses like elementary algebra. These classes didn’t count toward transfer requirements, and most students stuck in them never made it to a math course needed to transfer to a four-year university, such as college algebra or introductory statistics. This created an academic dead end for many.

A 2017 law, Assembly Bill 705, changed that. It used high school grades for placement and gave more students direct access to transfer-level courses, with corequisite support (a support course taken concurrently with a transfer-level course) when needed. Instead of multi-semester remediation, students could move into transfer-level math courses faster.

While challenges remain, the approach led to significant improvements. In 2016-17, before AB 705 was announced, only 27% of students passed a transfer-level math course within one year. But in 2019-20, the first full year of AB 705’s implementation, that number had nearly doubled to 51%. And by 2023-24, it reached 62%. About 30,000 more students were fulfilling their math requirements each year. The story is similar in English courses, and so it’s undeniable that AB 705 has helped California’s community college students get one step closer to transfer.

Despite these gains, many faculty don’t see AB 705 as a success. As one instructor put it, “There are a lot more people failing than before … largely students of color. … By making this change (i.e., AB 705) around equity, we’ve created an inequitable system.” And the data do show that pass rates have declined.

But here’s the catch: Far more students are now taking those courses. The graph below helps illustrate this shift using data from one community college district. Before AB 705, only a small fraction of students reached transfer-level math, but with high pass rates, as shown by the darker blue shading within the dashed box. After AB 705, access expanded, but pass rates declined from 80% to 70%. Critically, that’s 70% of a much larger group.

With such an improvement, why do some faculty feel like the policy is a failure?

Because of this paradox: AB 705 absolutely led to more students passing. But it also led to more students failing.

People respond more strongly to stories than to statistics, and losses loom larger than gains. The students we see struggling — their faces, their frustration, their stories — linger longer than a bar graph showing statewide gains. As faculty members, we know this all too well. We remember the students who didn’t make it. We think about what we could’ve done differently. We agonize over them.

And often, faculty haven’t been given the full picture. Our research has found that many instructors hadn’t even seen outcome data on AB 705’s impact. So, without that context, and given the classroom experience, it’s reasonable to assume the policy failed.

This disconnect is a classic challenge in public policy: a policy can be effective overall but still feel painful on the ground. And this tension is always a part of the hard work of building systemic justice. AB 705 succeeded in dismantling long-standing barriers and expanding access to transfer-level math. But that progress has introduced new classroom dynamics that feel personal, urgent and overwhelming to faculty. Good policy must account for both the big-picture gains and the human cost of change. Reforms don’t succeed on data alone. They require understanding, empathy and support for those doing the work.

And just as faculty were beginning to adjust to AB 705, we face Assembly Bill 1705, a sharper and even more controversial new policy. It asks colleges to stretch even more, limiting their ability to offer even prerequisite math courses. Understandably, many educators are still reeling. They’re trying to adapt to new expectations while managing unintended consequences in their classrooms. Recent guidance has softened the rollout, but confusion remains. The stakes are high, and many faculty feel mistrustful and angry.

If AB 705 taught us anything, it’s that mistrust grows when there’s a gap between what the data show and what people experience. This is why the next phase of work cannot be just about compliance or policy enforcement. It must be about storytelling, listening and solutions. Faculty need to see the big picture. Policymakers need to understand life on the ground. The policy “worked” in aggregate, but not without professional and emotional cost. If we ignore that, we risk undermining the very equity goals these reforms were meant to achieve.

Like the image above, the truth lies in seeing both levels clearly. We must acknowledge the trade-offs, the tension, and the very real pain of transition. Let’s take concerns seriously without retreating from hard-won progress. Let’s keep asking the harder, more honest questions: How do we support both students and faculty through ambitious change? How do we ensure that every student, not just the most prepared, has a real shot at success?

If we can do that, maybe we’ll find a way forward that is both honest and hopeful, one that sees the whole picture.

•••

Ji Y. Son, Ph.D., is a cognitive scientist and professor at California State University, Los Angeles and co-founder of CourseKata.org, a statistics and data science curriculum used by colleges and high schools.
Federick Ngo, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research examines higher education policy, with a focus on college access and community college students.

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.

Source link

18/06/2025
Rainy day fund would bail out schools, community colleges in Newsom’s 2024-25 state budget
Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses his proposed state budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, during a news conference in Sacramento on Jan. 10, 2024.

Credit: Office of the Governor

Gov. Gavin Newsom would protect schools and community colleges from the brunt of an $11.3 billion projected drop in state revenue for education, under a proposed 2024-25 state budget he released on Wednesday. The budget calls for covering all current levels of funding and existing commitments for new and expanded programs, plus a less than 1% cost-of-living increase for next year.

The three-year decline in revenue, both for schools and the overall $38.7 billion in the state general fund, is $30 billion less than the Legislative Analyst’s Office had projected a month ago, easing the burden of balancing the budget and avoiding the possibility of drastic budget cuts or late payments — at least for community colleges and TK-12.

However, Newsom is proposing to defer the promised 5% increases in revenue to both the University of California and California State University systems. UC and CSU would borrow that funding this year and get reimbursed in next year’s budget.

“We are deferring but not delaying, and there’s a distinction in the law that will allow UC and CSU just for one year to be able to borrow against that commitment,” Newsom said.

Newsom would protect schools and community colleges by withdrawing about $7 billion from the $10.8 billion TK-14 rainy day fund to cover the current year’s shortfall and meet the minimum obligation in 2024-25. The state would not seek reimbursement for what turned out to be funding above the minimum Proposition 98 statutory obligation for the prior two years.

Proposition 98 is the funding formula determining the portion of the state’s general fund that must be spent on TK-12 and community colleges. With the addition of transitional kindergarten, that share will rise about one percentage point to 39.5% of the general fund. In 2024-25, Proposition 98 funds will be $109.1 billion. That would be about $3.5 billion more than the revised projection for 2023-24, reflecting expectations of improved state revenues in the next fiscal year.

The Legislature was handicapped when it passed the 2023-24 budget last June. There were indications but no hard numbers that economic conditions were worsening, because the deadline for paying state and federal income taxes had been extended from April 15 to Oct. 16 in response to massive flooding last winter. As it turned out, state revenues had fallen sharply from slower home sales, a drop in new startups in Silicon Valley, and declining income of the top 1% of earners, who contribute 50% of the personal income tax receipts.

But with the stock market rebounding since then, Newsom said more optimistic revenue projections for next year and savings in state government operations would account for two-thirds of the difference between the state Department of Finance revenue projections and the legislative analyst’s forecast. A remedy for dealing with a two-year, $10-plus billion drop in Proposition 98 funding would account for the rest of the disparity. In a news conference, Newsom chided the “ready, fire, aim” projections of the news media and others for assuming a more dire financial outlook without the latest data.

Many districts, nonetheless, will face financial stress. More than two-thirds are facing declining enrollment, which will lower their share of state funding. And the 1% inflation adjustment for 2024-25 will not cover cost increases and, for some districts, negotiated staff raises. Districts are receiving an 8% cost-of-living adjustment this year, down from a 13% bump in 2022-23.

Newsom’s January budget will now undergo six months of negotiations with the Legislature over their priorities. Revenue updates by June will reveal whether his optimism will hold up, and what the Legislature must do if it doesn’t.

Newsom reiterated that the state would uphold its education commitments to schools using record post-Covid revenues. These include the addition of transitional kindergarten and appropriating $8 billion combined to create community schools and add summer programs and after-school hours for low-income students. These would continue to be funded at promised levels.

Also surviving is an additional $300 million for the state’s poorest schools. The governor said that this proposal, known as an “equity multiplier,” is also a high priority by the California Legislative Black Caucus. Another priority that Newsom mentioned is funding for the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.

“In the face of a large deficit, it’s reassuring that the governor committed to maintaining his transformative investments in education, including community schools, universal TK, and the equity multiplier,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney for the student advocacy nonprofit Public Advocates. “That the governor particularly called them out with a ‘don’t touch’ message to the Legislature indicates he’ll fight hard to maintain them.”

New ideas for mitigating student absences

Despite $6 billion in one-time state funding for post-pandemic learning recovery, chronic absences soared to 30% in 2022-23 and remained high last year. Statewide post-pandemic test scores also plummeted in math and English language arts in 2022-23 statewide and almost remained flat last year.

Recognizing that students can’t learn when they aren’t in school, Newsom is proposing changes in the law that will allow school districts to provide attendance recovery programs in response to chronic absences and loss in learning because of floods, wildfires and other climate conditions. Districts, in turn, would benefit from offsetting revenues lost from student absences. The new law would specify that districts could fund Saturday programs and intercessions to respond to students with many absences.

Districts would be required to offer students access to remote instruction, including enabling families to enroll in neighboring districts “for emergencies” lasting five or more days. A budget trailer bill will spell out details, including whether students could seek tutoring under this option.

The budget calls for $6 million to research hybrid and remote learning and develop new models.

“We have to use the experiences of recent years to think forward for ensuring that kids can gain access to the learning and instructional opportunities that they deserve,” said Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of Attendance Works, a group that tracks chronic absenteeism.

Addressing a teacher shortage

Newsom also proposes to relax some requirements to become a teacher, due to a persistent teacher shortage. Teacher candidates will no longer have to take a test or coursework to prove they have the basic skills to earn a credential, according to the state summary of the budget. The state will now recognize completion of a bachelor’s degree as satisfying the basic-skills requirement.

Currently, teacher candidates must pass the California Basic Educational Skills Test, a combination of other tests, or complete specific coursework to prove they have the basic skills to teach. The CBEST tests reading, math and writing skills and is usually taken before a student is accepted into a teacher preparation program.

The governor’s budget calls for streamlining the process of credentialing aspiring arts teachers in response to the passage of Proposition 28, the groundbreaking arts education initiative. It directs the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to create a new Elementary Arts and Music Education authorization for career technical education teachers. This pathway currently only exists for secondary education, and many arts education advocates have pressed to expand it to elementary school classrooms.

“Governor Newsom’s proposal is an important step in the right direction,” said Austin Beutner, the former superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, who authored Proposition 28. “The money from Prop 28 is the enabler, but students will only benefit when schools use it to hire great arts teachers in all grade levels.”

The budget summary also refers to several other proposals that will make it easier to become a teacher, although it offered no additional details about those proposals.

The budget proposal also includes:
- $20 million as the first step toward implementing the long-debated math framework that the State Board of Education adopted last July. A county office of education would be chosen to work with math experts and nonprofits to train math coaches and leaders, who in turn would teach high-quality instruction. State law would spell out that existing state learning loss funding should focus on teacher training in math.
- $5 million to increase support for the California Cradle-to-Career Data System.
- $122 million to increase funding for universal school meals.
The budget contains good and bad news for districts seeking immediate funding for facilities. Newsom would reduce the General Fund by delaying $550 million for new and retrofitted facilities for adding transitional kindergarten. And he proposes to cut $500 million he committed to the state School Facilities Program, which has run out of state funding. However, Newsom committed to negotiate a multibillion-dollar school facilities bond with the Legislature for the November 2024 ballot.

Questions on the size of the bond needed to win voter support and whether it should include higher education must be answered, Newsom said. “All that’s being worked on, but a real issue to address is that we’ve exhausted the previous bond, and it’s important to advance a new one.”

Higher education

In 2022, Newsom made agreements with both UC and CSU to give annual 5% base funding increases over five years in exchange for increasing enrollment and improving graduation rates.

Under his latest proposal, UC and CSU would borrow a combined $499 million this year — $258.8 million for UC and $240.2 million for CSU. That includes this year’s 5% increase for the systems as well as $31 million for UC to increase enrollment of resident undergraduate students.

If lawmakers agree to Newsom’s plan, the two systems would receive two years’ worth of 5% budget increases in next year’s state budget to make up for this year’s deferrals.

“These decisions will position our state and its students for a prosperous future once budgetary challenges subside,” Michael Drake, UC’s systemwide president, said in a statement Wednesday. “During economic downturns, the University of California’s role in California’s economic development is even more important, and we are grateful to state leaders for their visionary leadership and commitment to maintaining the funding compact.”

Cal State Chancellor Mildred Garcia said that given the state’s financial challenges, the governor’s plan acknowledges his financial commitment to CSU students while also attempting to address the state’s budget situation. But the proposal also puts the system in a precarious position.

“This proposal would deliver the same level of funding per fiscal year as originally outlined in the compact, although with additional risk to the CSU if the state’s budget condition further erodes and the state cannot fulfill this restructured commitment,” Garcia said. “We will explore our funding options to advance compact-related goals during the one-year delay and will proceed with financial prudence as we review the impacts and implications of this budget proposal.”

Newsom’s spending plan would not fund a significant expansion of the Cal Grant, the state’s main financial aid program. He and lawmakers agreed in 2022 to overhaul the Cal Grant beginning in 2024-25 by simplifying the awards and extending eligibility to more students, but only if state revenues were sufficient to do so. With the state facing a shortfall, the governor is not committing funding to that expansion, though negotiations on the issue are expected to continue through the spring. A spokesperson for Newsom’s Department of Finance said Wednesday that the department will wait until May to make a final determination.

Newsom also proposed doing away with a program that would provide interest-free loans to colleges and universities to build affordable student housing. In total, that would save $494 million for the state’s 2024-25 budget: $194 million that was appropriated last year plus $300 million this and every year through 2028-29.

Mike Fong, chair of the Assembly’s higher education committee, said in a statement that he’s disappointed that Newsom proposed eliminating the Student Housing Revolving Loan Fund and didn’t include funding to reform the Cal Grant.

“We must continue to find new ways to increase accessibility to higher education, especially for our most vulnerable communities who need these vital resources to complete higher education,” Fong said.

Early education

The budget largely holds steady for early education and child care. It maintains ongoing funding for the newly expanded transitional kindergarten program for 4-year-olds and earmarks $1.7 billion toward long-awaited increased pay for child care providers. It also continues to gradually add subsidized child care slots, with about $2 billion going to fund about 146,000 new slots to be filled by 2024-25, toward an ultimate goal of 200,000 new slots.

“Overall, the proposed budget stays true to the historic investments California has made in pre-K and child care,” said Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit organization that runs many Bay Area child care and preschool centers. “Yet schools and child care providers are struggling to expand due to a lack of staff, facilities funding, and post-pandemic challenges. We must do more now to support this growth, otherwise low-income babies and preschoolers will be left out.”

EdSource reporters Michael Burke, Ashley S. Smith, Mallika Seshadri, Betty Márquez Rosales, Karen D’Souza, Diana Lambert and Emma Gallegos contributed to the article.
Source link
17/06/2025
Newsom’s $8 billion fix to spare cuts to schools, community colleges may face tough sell

Gov. Gavin Newsom announces his 2024-25 state budget proposal, including his plans to deal with a projected deficit in Sacramento on Jan. 10.. Credit: Brontë Wittpenn / San Francisco Chronicle / Polaris

Gov. Gavin Newsom buoyed the hopes of school district and community college educators this month when, despite a sizable three-year decline in state revenue, he promised to protect schools and colleges from cuts and to uphold future spending commitments.

They might want to hold their applause until after the last act, when the Legislature passes the 2024-25 budget in June.

In an analysis of the state budget, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) cautioned that there are questions about how Newsom plans to close $8 billion of a huge revenue shortfall facing schools and community colleges.

Beyond meeting this challenge, the LAO also urged legislators to start planning for education spending beyond 2024-25, when flat or declining revenues are expected to raise difficult financial choices. They could pit funding of ongoing expenses against sustaining ambitious programs like summer and after-school programs for low-income students, additional community schools, money for teacher training in early literacy and math, and confronting post-pandemic learning setbacks.

“The state faces significant operating deficits in the coming years, which are the result of lower revenue estimates, as well as increased cost pressures,” the analyst said.

But the immediate enigma is Newsom’s strategy for the $8 billion.

Newsom is projecting that state revenues to run schools and community colleges will be short $14.3 billion over three years: the budget year that ended in 2022-23, the current budget year of 2023-24, and the coming year. That number is calculated as revenue through Proposition 98, the formula that determines the proportion of the state’s general fund that must be spent on schools and community colleges — about 40%.

Proposition 98 revenues are sometimes close but never exactly what a governor and the Legislature assume when they approve a budget. Revenues for the past and current years exceed or fall short of what they projected and not what they predict for the year ahead.

Budget analysts were particularly handicapped when calculating the 2023-24 budget. They didn’t anticipate the shortfall from 2022-23 and didn’t discover it until fall 2023, because of a six-month delay in the filing deadline for 2022 tax returns.

Newsom is proposing to divert $5.7 billion from the Proposition 98 rainy day fund to fill in the current year’s deficit as well as what’s needed to sustain a flat budget, plus a small cost of living increase, for 2024-25. Draining the rainy day fund would require the Legislature’s OK.

The remainder — and biggest piece — is the $9 billion revenue shortfall from 2022-23, which would be $8 billion after other automatic adjustments. That shortfall is technically an overpayment beyond the statutory minimum Proposition 98 funding guarantee. It fell dramatically from what the Legislature adopted in June 2022 to $98.3 billion that revenue actually produced. The biggest decline was in income tax receipts on the top 1% of earners.

School districts have already spent funding from 2022–23, including on staff pay raises that they negotiated with good faith estimates. Newsom and the Legislature could try to deduct that overpayment from the current and 2024-25 budgets, but such a move “would be devastating for students and staff,” Patti Herrera, vice president of the school consulting firm California School Services, told a workshop last week with more than 1,000 school district administrators in Sacramento.

As an alternative, Newsom proposes to find reductions from the non-Proposition 98 side of the general fund, which covers higher education, child care and all other non-education expenses, from prisons to climate change programs.

“We are super grateful there will be no attempts to claw back” the money given to school districts in a past year’s budget, Herrera said.

Newsom’s challenge is to make districts and community colleges financially whole without increasing the minimum Proposition 98 guarantee. Raising Proposition 98 could create a bigger obligation in the future, including potential deficits after 2024-25 — unless the Legislature raises taxes, a nonstarter in an election year.

Sign-up below to receive breaking news alerts from EdSource by text message.

How Newsom is going to do this is a mystery. The one-sentence reference to it in his budget summary says only, “The Budget proposes statutory changes to address roughly $8 billion of this decrease to avoid impacting existing LEA (school districts) and community college district budgets.”

Both the LAO and School Services said it’s their understanding from the Department of Finance that the payments from the general fund to cover the Proposition 98 overpayment would be made over five years, starting in 2025-26.

“We have some questions about that proposal. Probably the most pressing one is how is the state going to use revenue that it’s not going to collect for several years to address a funding shortfall that exists right now,” said Ken Kapphahn, the LAO’s principal fiscal and policy analyst for TK-12 education.

The questions are legal and political. The proposed statutory language, which may be released in a trailer bill in the coming weeks, will reveal how the state Department of Finance will finesse postponing balancing the 2022-23 budget that’s $8 billion out of kilter. Budget hearings next week in the Capitol may indicate how receptive legislative leaders are to further reducing general fund spending, which also is feeling a financial squeeze.

A search for the extra $8 billion

Additionally, Newsom is proposing several billion dollars of accounting maneuvers that will book spending in 2024-25 but delay and defer payments for programs and some state salaries until early 2025-26. Included are $500 million in deferred reimbursements to the University of California and California State University for the 5% budget increase that Newsom committed to funding in 2024-25.

“Many of these solutions involve moving costs to next year. That is one reason we have the state looking at a large deficit, not just this year, but the following year,” Kapphahn said. “I can’t recall another situation quite like this.”

Barring a recession, which neither LAO nor the Newsom administration is forecasting, both Newsom and the administration are projecting general fund deficits averaging about $30 billion annually in the three years after 2024-25. Pushing the $8 billion solution for the 2022-23 Proposition 98 deficit, along with other general fund delays and deferrals into those years will compound difficult choices, according to the LAO.

“Overall, the governor’s budget runs the risk of understating the degree of fiscal pressure facing the state in the future,” the LAO analysis said.

The LAO suggested other options for resolving the 2022-23 deficit. It recommended applying the remaining $3.8 billion from the Proposition 98 reserve fund that Newsom hasn’t touched and looking for reductions in unallocated one-time funding such as an unused $1 billion for community schools and canceling $500 million for electric school buses.

Even with no cuts to Proposition 98 next year, many school districts and charter schools will likely face their own deficits in 2024-25. That’s because the projected cost-of-living adjustment for next year will not be enough to cover the loss of revenue from declining enrollments. The COLA, tied to a federal formula measuring goods and services bought by state and local governments and not consumer products, is currently projected to be 0.76%; it would be the lowest increase in 40 years, with one exception, the year after the Great Recession, in 2009. This would come on the heels of two years of near record-high COLAs of 6.6% and 8.2%.

The analyst’s office projects the COLA may inch up to 1% by June, when the budget is set. At that rate, a hypothetical school district with 10,000 students would see declining revenues with an enrollment decline of only about 100 students.

Paso Robles Joint Unified School District in San Luis Obispo County, with about 6,000 students, is among those with declining enrollment since the pandemic. As a result, the district, with about 800 full-time employees, anticipates a reduction of five full-time staff members in 2024-25 and perhaps 40 layoff notices the following year, said Brad Pawlowski, the assistant superintendent for business services.

Pawlowski said he came away encouraged after School Services’ presentation that schools will be spared cuts in the next budget, while acknowledging it’s a long time between now and the budget’s adoption.

“We have seen a common message between the governor and the Legislature to protect education. And that does make me feel good,” he said. But doing so, he added, “will mean finding other ways to make that up outside of Prop. 98. That’s going to be the real challenge.”

Source link

16/06/2025
When Latinos pursue community college bachelor’s degrees, most find success

Los Angeles City College, one of the state’s 116 community colleges.

Larry Gordon/EdSource Today

Latino students are enrolling at low rates in bachelor’s degree programs at California’s community colleges. But many of those who do enroll are graduating quickly and finding work after leaving college.

That’s the takeaway from a new study by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute examining outcomes for Latino students in baccalaureate programs at 15 of the state’s community colleges. An increasing number of community colleges now offer such programs, giving students a simpler path to a four-year degree.

But, in many of the programs, Latino students are not applying or enrolling at high rates. Across the programs, which range from equine and ranch management at Feather River College to dental hygiene at West Los Angeles College, just 30.1% of students are Latino. That’s much lower than the 46% of students at those colleges who are Latino.

To address that gap, the study calls for greater recruitment of Latino students to the programs and for the state to invest more money in the programs.

However, for the students who do enroll, 64% of them finish their degree within two years after starting their upper-division coursework. That’s comparable to non-Latino students, 68% of whom graduate within two years after starting those classes.

Following graduation, the vast majority of Latino students in the bachelor’s degree majors — 94% of them — reported being employed. On average, they earned $22,600 more annually than they did prior to starting the program.

Those outcomes are encouraging, but the colleges could benefit from a “public awareness campaign” to make sure Latino students know about the bachelor’s degree programs available to them, said Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, one of the report’s authors.

“We have this tool now, so let’s make sure people are aware. We’re seeing very promising results once they’re there. But we want to make sure that they get there,” added Rios-Aguilar, who is a professor of education and the associate dean of equity, diversity and inclusion at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

The bachelor’s degrees are more affordable for students than attending a University of California or California State University campus. Students can finish their degree for just $10,560 in tuition and fees, less than half of what it costs at UC or Cal State. Lower-division classes at the community college are $46 per unit, while the upper-division courses in the bachelor’s degree programs cost the same $46 enrollment fee plus a supplemental $84 fee.

Community college students with financial need can often qualify for state aid to fully cover those costs. That typically includes a California College Promise Grant to cover their lower-division fees and a Cal Grant to cover the $84-per-unit upper-division fees.

The 15 programs examined in the study are California’s original 15 community college bachelor’s degree programs. The state established those programs in 2015 as part of a pilot program.

The state then built on that pilot program with the passage of a 2021 law that allows the community college system to approve up to 30 new bachelor’s degree programs annually. Since the fall of 2022, at least 18 additional programs have been approved, according to the state chancellor’s office.

Not every college included in the study struggled to enroll Latino students in the programs. At two colleges — Antelope Valley and Bakersfield — the share of Latino students in those programs exceeded the overall share of Latino students at the college.

At Bakersfield, which offers a bachelor’s degree in industrial automation, getting those students enrolled starts in high school. Students in the Kern High School District have the option of earning an associate degree in industrial automation while they work toward their high school graduation.

“This innovative collaboration enables these students to seamlessly transfer into our baccalaureate program. Innovations that bring opportunity to students help explain Bakersfield College’s success in successfully recruiting Latinx students to our program,” Jessica Wojtysiak, the college’s associate vice president of instruction, said in an email.

In addition to that program, Bakersfield also now offers a bachelor’s degree in research laboratory technology.

At another college, MiraCosta, the share of Latino students in the college’s bachelor’s degree program in biomanufacturing was only 0.8% less than the college’s overall share of Latino students.

“In our diverse and vibrant student body, we are proud to observe that the majority of those enrolling in our programs — specifically the bachelor’s degree in biomanufacturing — represent a majority of non-White/Asian backgrounds, showcasing our institution’s appeal across various ethnicities,” Dominique Ingato, MiraCosta’s biotechnology department chair, said in an email.

To ensure that other colleges have similar success, the study released Tuesday suggests that the state should invest more money in the community college bachelor’s degree programs.

That could include spending more on outreach, marketing and recruitment to attract more Latino students. It could also mean investing in “research infrastructure” at the colleges, Rios-Aguilar said. She pointed out that community colleges don’t have the same research capacity as traditional research institutions like UCLA and other four-year colleges.

“It’s important to highlight that community colleges are severely underfunded compared to other sectors of higher education and yet they’re doing these amazing things and these promising tools are emerging,” she added. “Colleges are working really hard to make this happen.”

Source link

13/06/2025
Let’s make STEM opportunity achievable, not illusory, for California community college students

A student uses a drill press to work on an engineering project.

Credit: Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages

The design of California’s higher education system has been influential for its twin goals of high-quality undergraduate education and broad access to college. Though our public universities are renowned for their research prowess, the focal point for access has been our extensive network of community colleges — now comprising 116 — offering students first- and second-year courses with the opportunity to transfer and earn a four-year degree at a university.

But for students seeking to transfer in STEM fields, that opportunity borders on illusory: While 16% of community college students nationally complete a bachelor’s degree, only 2% earn a degree in a STEM field. Misaligned math policies play a role in unnecessarily narrowing that path. Absent a coordinated statewide approach, that is unlikely to change.

It’s not just that a student seeking to transfer in, say, computer science has to take three to six semesters of math, depending on the transfer destination. Before even taking those courses, many community college students must first complete two or three math prerequisites. And, because the actual requirements may vary from campus to campus, some have to take extra courses to ensure they are eligible for junior status at more than one university.

To make matters worse, there are inconsistencies in whether four-year campuses articulate — or recognize — a given community college course. Plus, the tools available to students to navigate their options tend to be clunky and outdated. Some students have been forced to enroll at a different college to repeat an already completed math course when one of their prospective transfer campuses doesn’t accept the first college’s course.

This maze of inconsistent and opaque math requirements is among the barriers to STEM transfer identified in our recent report, “A Complex Equation: Confronting Math Barriers on the Path to STEM Transfer.” Because these barriers are often out of students’ control, it is up to institutions to fix them. But, under current state policies, the state’s higher ed systems have little apparent incentive to alleviate them and increase transfer access to some of the state’s most popular STEM majors.

In fact, it appears that at some campuses, it is not a priority to admit even those students who do clear the math hurdles and other STEM requirements, according to the California State Auditor. The education code requires universities to provide “adequate” space for transfer students — generally interpreted as meaning at least one-third of upper-division enrollments — in all “colleges or schools.” But some high-demand majors at some campuses are balanced heavily against transfer students.

In biology, for example, for academic years 2018-19 through 2022-23, only 14% of Cal State LA’s juniors and seniors were transfer students, with Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo enrolling just 12% and UC Santa Barbara 14%, the auditor found. UC Berkeley’s transfer enrollment in two highly ranked departments was even lower: 11% of enrollments in computer science and 9% in environmental science are transfer students. Many of these campuses appear to be turning away eligible students, the auditor found: For example, in 2022, Berkeley denied 95 transfer computer science applicants whose preparation was considered “best prepared” or “strongly prepared.”

Added oversight is currently the only mechanism for shifting such patterns. A legislated pilot program requires UC campuses, beginning with UCLA, to create paths to STEM transfer. But UCLA chose to focus the program on relatively low-enrollment majors — atmospheric sciences, geology, math, and environmental science — not popular ones such as biology, computer science or engineering that are already at capacity.

Barriers in articulation also prevent community college students from benefiting from pioneering instructional approaches. Take, for example, a redesigned math sequence at UCLA. The new course, which has been offered to UCLA undergraduates since 2013, covers some traditional calculus topics in the context of modeling dynamical biological systems. Students taking the innovative course earned “significantly” higher grades in subsequent STEM courses than students who took the traditional course, and their interest in the topic doubled.

The two-course sequence is the primary math requirement for UCLA’s biology undergrads. But community colleges have not been able to offer the course. Since it is not available within the CSU system or at other UC campuses, if a community college were to offer it, only students who successfully transfer to UCLA could apply it toward a life sciences degree. UCLA allows students to transfer with a traditional calculus course, but this means that transfer students are deprived of the benefits of the modernized curriculum.

Both UC and CSU can take steps to better prioritize transfer students in high-demand STEM majors, as the auditor recommends. But to set and achieve statewide goals for transfer participation and completion — including STEM-specific goals — and improve success for historically underrepresented groups requires a greater degree of coordination across all three higher education systems.

One step toward achieving that is establishing a coordinating body in line with a proposal currently circulating in Sacramento. Another is ensuring that students have up-to-date, accurate and actionable information about transfer and course articulation through modernized transfer planning tools. A third is supporting innovation in STEM education through the California Education Learning Lab.

These would be minor investments toward ensuring more efficient, transparent, and evidence-based use not only of the billions of dollars our state invests in education, but also of another precious resource: our students’ time.

•••

Pamela Burdman, Alexis Robin Hale, and Jenn BeVard work for Just Equations, a policy institute dedicated to enhancing the role of math in education equity.

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.

Source link

11/06/2025