Bill Blanken, a chemistry professor at Reedley College, claims that a diversity and equity policy in California’s community colleges amounts to a “loyalty oath.”
Photo courtesy of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
A federal judge has dismissed a case filed on behalf of professors claiming that California Community Colleges diversity and equity policies infringe on their academic freedom.
Professors at State Center Community College District, based in Fresno, had, in a suit filed in August 2023, sought to block the California Community Colleges from enforcing diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion (DEIA) principles.
But U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff, a Biden appointee who joined the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in 2024, wrote in an order Tuesday that the plaintiffs “failed to allege that there exists a credible threat of enforcement of the regulations against them.”
The plaintiff’s attorney, Daniel Ortner, with the free-speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said he was reviewing the decision and discussing it with his clients.
In 2022, the board of governors for the California Community Colleges adopted regulations requiring all 73 of its local districts to evaluate employees, including faculty, on their competency in working with a diverse student population. More than 7 out of 10 of California’s 2.1 million community students are not white, according to enrollment data from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.
State Center Community College District complied with these regulations with a faculty union contract approved in March 2023. The district declined through a spokesperson to comment on the case.
The push for new diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility policies came out of a long-running effort to improve student outcomes in the community colleges, but it picked up steam in the wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020.
The original complaint described the professors as critics of anti-racism, who instead support “race-neutral policies and perspectives that treat all students equally.” The complaint stated that requiring faculty to be evaluated on their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility principles is unconstitutional and has a chilling effect on their free speech rights. The professors said they feared receiving disciplinary action or being fired under these new regulations.
Lead plaintiff Loren Palsgaard, an English professor at Madera Community College, said in the complaint that he no longer assigned Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” because it “offer[s] perspectives that are different from the ‘anti-racism’ and ‘intersectionality’ perspective mandated by the DEIA Rules.” Reedley College chemistry professor Bill Blanken said he feared that not mentioning the races of Marie Curie or Robert Boyle means that “he will be accused of failing to adopt a ‘culturally responsive practices and a social justice lens.’”
Judge Sherriff wrote that many of the professors’ concerns arose from documents from the Chancellor’s Office, such as guidance, recommendations, model principles and a glossary of terms. He added that none of these recommendations were formally adopted or legally binding, and that what the professors largely objected to was not in their faculty contract.
Sherriff also noted that the Chancellor’s Office confirmed in court documents that it could not take any action against professors concerning their speech, because decisions regarding employees, such as hiring, performance evaluations and terminations, are the responsibility of the district. The Office also stated that they do not believe that the examples cited by the professors would be precluded by the diversity regulations.
In September, Sherriff dismissed a related suit on behalf of Bakersfield College history professor Daymon Johnson. Sherriff wrote in his order that Johnson lacked standing because the Kern Community College District that employed him had not yet imposed local policies implementing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility regulations.
In October, Johnson’s case was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The State Center Community College professors filed an amicus brief in November in support of Johnson, urging the court to “protect academic freedom across the state by vacating the district court’s decision.”
Sky Celine Page, 20, in her subsidized home, which recently opened as part of a collaborative effort between Pasadena City College, Pasadena Community Foundation and First Place for Youth. “If I wasn’t here, and I didn’t have the opportunity to not pay rent, I probably wouldn’t be in school,” she said.
Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales
Sky Celine Page was not so sure that school was for her. She had spent the end of middle school ditching class and high school catching up on assignments as she moved between foster homes, and she was ready to quit college after performing poorly her first two semesters.
“There was so much going on in my mind, and I was always so stressed out that I couldn’t just sit there and focus on schoolwork,” Page said.
Nearly three years ago, she was couch surfing after leaving a foster home, and with nowhere to sleep consistently, school was placed on the back burner.
Page is one of Los Angeles County’s transition-age youth — a term used to describe young adults aging out of the foster system. About 1,000 young people, 18 to 24 years old, age out in L.A. County each year, according to a 2024 report from the California Policy Lab. The same report also found that, in Los Angeles County, about 500 housing slots, including 206 housing vouchers, are available at any given time for youth who are no longer in care and have a closed case with the Department of Family and Child Services. This availability is likely insufficient to meet housing needs, and it doesn’t account for the challenges with accessing such resources, such as the difficulty of navigating complex public agencies.
Studies have shown that transition-age foster youth have a higher risk of homelessness, but there is no reliable count of how many currently are. Housing instability, which at times includes changing schools often, disrupts relationships that students may form with classmates and educators, all of which has been linked to negative impacts on test scores and high school graduation rates, according to multiple studies, including a 2015 brief from the National Education Policy Center.
A collaboration between Pasadena City College, Pasadena Community Foundation and First Place for Youth, an organization that supports successful transition of foster youth to adulthood, is providing housing to transition-age foster youth like Page, 20, who now lives in one of their units.
A six-unit rent-subsidized apartment complex near Pasadena City College, where Page is now a student, opened last August. Ten additional units are being built next door.
“Many of our students were going from group home to group home, carrying their stuff in a trash bag,” said David Sigala Gomez, educational adviser at the college’s program for students with experience in foster care, who provides case management to Page and her neighbors. “A lot of our students didn’t have much because they were moving around so much. So having the means to now buy new clothes, wear new shoes, it just brings a whole different perspective.”
Page’s new, fully-furnished studio apartment is decorated in various shades of pink, with books and school supplies spilling out of her desk that doubles as the dining table where she enjoys journaling. She lives a short drive from her college campus, where she will soon earn an associate degree in health sciences as she pursues nursing.
Page is finally stable and, as she put it, she is healing. Her life now is a paradigm shift from her life just a few years ago, when she was 18 and couch surfing. It is even further from her life at 14 when she first entered the foster system.
‘If I wasn’t here … I probably wouldn’t be in school’
Page was 6 when her mother died. She and her brother were sent to Palmdale in northern Los Angeles County to live with their father and stepmother, whom Page described as “a horrific person.”
Page tried to ignore both how her stepmother would lash out and make inappropriate comments about her and the silence from her father, who most often “turned the other cheek” during arguments, she said.
At 14, Page hit a breaking point. She was in school, but would ditch class often and walk the hallways “trying to make sense of everything that was going on” at home. She made the decision to open up about her disruptive home life to a teacher, who called the Department of Family and Child Services.
“After that, I never went back home,” Page said.
A series of short-term placements later, she was living in a foster home in the Pasadena area, the city where she still lives. She struggled with the transition into foster care and with every move from one placement to another.
“I look at that time and my heart was so broken … because I didn’t understand. I felt like I was being punished; I was trying to get help and now I’m around all these people I don’t know,” Page said. “I just didn’t realize at that time that it would be for the better, but it was hard. It was definitely a hard transition.”
The constant moves also weighed on her academically.
It’s an experience that Sigala Gomez, the educational adviser at Pasadena City College, noted is common among foster students. “I have really high-functioning students; their goal is a master’s degree, I have students who struggle just because of instabilities, moving from different schools,” he said, referring to the students he supports through the Next Up and STARS programs, both for foster youth. “For them, we really have to break it down: ‘Hey, you went to class two weeks in a row. That’s success. That’s a goal.’”
Page enrolled in high school but felt self-conscious about how often she moved and because she “didn’t have the nicest things,” she said. So, she opted to enroll in Pasadena Unified School District’s virtual academy.
It was there that she developed an interest in the sciences after completing an internship with the Huntington Medical Research Institute. When she fell behind on assignments in school, her teachers allowed her to catch up by turning in items late.
Despite the disruptions to her education, Page knew she wanted to graduate from high school. She was aware of the stigma that some foster youth feel when they are unable to complete high school, and she was determined to avoid giving “anybody more of a reason to make them think that I was uneducated,” she said.
It was around this time that she could no longer stay at the foster home where she had been living, so she put her items into a storage unit, and for the next half-year, couch surfed and worked two jobs.
The social worker she was assigned to didn’t appear to understand that she needed help urgently, Page said, so Page reported her — the first time she had taken such an action.
The next social worker quickly connected Page with First Place for Youth, an organization that seeks to break cycles of poverty among young adults aging out of foster care by providing housing.
Page was housed in Alhambra within weeks of making that connection. By this time, it was the fall of 2022. She decided to continue her studies, leaning on her love of learning that she couldn’t tap into for so many years. She struggled, but still enjoyed learning. The commute to Pasadena City College wasn’t helping, especially using public transportation.
She was unaware at the time that the same organization that had housed her was working on a collaboration to convert existing structures into housing near her campus.
The effort included an initial $2 million housing loan agreement with Heritage Housing Partners, the project developer, approved by the City Council’s finance committee in 2022, upped to nearly $2.4 million in 2023, plus $200,000 from the Pasadena Community Foundation and $10,000 from California Community Foundation.
The conversion was completed in August 2024, with First Place for Youth and Pasadena City College providing case management. The college also subsidizes the rent cost via Lancer Care, which is their basic-needs department, in conjunction with Extended Opportunity Programs & Services’ foster programs. The amount subsidized is $1,000 per unit, per month, said Sigala Gomez, and students must be transition-age nonminor dependents to qualify for a unit.
Since moving into her new apartment, Page is feeling more confident, her grades have improved, and she now has the freedom to reflect on her childhood.
“I’ve lived double the life experience,” said Page, contrasting herself with the average 20-year-old. “I’m figuring out, ‘OK, this is what 20-year-olds do. This is normal … this was not normal … this is part of my trauma.”
Page has spent the past two years adjusting to life on her terms. She sees her current housing as her chance at being able to focus solely on school without the burden of unstable housing or the high cost of living in her neighborhood. And that was precisely the point of these housing units, Sigala Gomez said.
With rent, utilities and most school costs covered, Page and her new neighbors have just one primary task: focusing on themselves as they enter adulthood.
“It allows me to go to school without having to worry and stress about cost,” said Page of her housing. “If I wasn’t here, and I didn’t have the opportunity to not pay rent, I probably wouldn’t be in school.”
United Teachers of Richmond gather at West Contra Costa school board meeting Wednesday to protest staff cuts approved a week earlier.
Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
San Pablo mom Gabriella Garcia said her fourth-grade son sometimes comes home in tears after being bullied about his speech impediment.
Her son receives help through Zoom calls with a speech specialist.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think this virtual format is effective for him,” Garcia said. “He continued to struggle with pronunciation, and it’s been tough for him.”
Garcia pleaded with the West Contra Costa Unified school board on Wednesday night to stop cutting staff, including speech specialists, so her son and others like him can continue getting the hands-on support they need.
Her son’s teacher at Lake Elementary School, Christina Baronian, said she and the other students often have difficulty understanding him and that the only support available is online and through a contractor.
“It’s awful,” Baronian said during public comments. “It’s not giving him the support he needs; he needs an in-person speech therapist. Then I found out (the district) just cut some of the very few in-person (speech therapists) we have. This is his right. This is his future.”
The United Teachers of Richmond also gathered at Wednesday night’s board meeting to protest the $13 million in budget cuts the board approved one week ago, saying the cuts are “unnecessary,” “harmful” and “devastating” to students. The $13 million in cuts will be spread over the next two school years.
“We greatly appreciate the dedicated staff who continually serve our students and community,” interim Superintendent Kim Moses said in a statement to EdSource. “Although reductions are necessary, we are taking great care to address these reductions with minimal impact on staff and students.”
More than 60 West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) educators showed up in person and virtually to urge the board to reconsider the fiscal solvency plan it passed. For nearly two hours, almost every speaker asked the board to reconsider the cuts. Union members wore matching red shirts, held up signs, and cheered after every public comment.
Community members at Wednesday’s board meeting chanted “revote” throughout the meeting.
A speech-language pathologist and member of United Teachers of Richmond addresses the West Contra Costa school board during Wednesday’s meeting to protest the staffing cuts the board approved one week prior, which included speech specialists.Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
“We are urging the board to keep our schools stable,” said United Teachers of Richmond President Francisco Ortiz. “This is going to have a destabilizing effect, and they (the board) have the authority to (avoid cutting staff).”
West Contra Costa Unified School District officials have said that to stay afloat, they need to cut a total of $32.7 million in funds between 2024 and 2027. The bulk of those cuts, $19.7 million, were slashed from the current school year’s budget.
Declining enrollment, expiration of Covid-19 relief funds, increased costs for special education programs, and underfunded mandates from state and federal governments left West Contra Costa strapped for cash, according to district officials. These struggles are being felt across the state, including nearby districts in San Francisco and Oakland which are grappling with budget cuts, school closures and consolidations.
Meanwhile, the California Teachers Association last week launched a statewide campaign called We Can’t Wait, uniting teachers in 32 school districts to leverage their administrations for higher pay and benefits, smaller class sizes, and mental health support. As part of the campaign, more than 100 San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond educators rallied in a downpour in front of Oakland City Hall.
Will the board revote?
No board member has indicated any plan to call for another vote on the budget.
Board members Leslie Reckler, Cinthia Hernandez, and Guadalupe Enllana voted for the plan. Jamela Smith-Folds abstained, and Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy was absent.
“These reductions are not secret,” board President Reckler wrote in an email to EdSource. “They are part of a years-long public fiscal solvency plan that was approved by the Contra Costa County Office of Education. Further, Labor has worked alongside board members and staff to identify reductions. These reductions are necessary to align adults to declining student counts.”
West Contra Costa has faced challenging budget deficits before. In 1991, the district became the first in the state to go insolvent and received a $29 million bailout loan, which took 21 years to pay off.
Board member Gonzalez-Hoy said in a statement that the district needs to stop concentrating on what to cut and begin focusing on where it needs to invest and how to bring in more revenue. He added that resources should be put into increasing enrollment, daily attendance and growing programs. He said he will ask the board president to form a task force to address these issues.
“We as a whole spend more time getting rid of what is broken instead of trying to fix it,” Gonzalez-Hoy said. “If we just keep concentrating on cuts and reduction, eventually we will disappear. We are deeply divided as a community, and it is time for us to come together for the future of our students.”
West Contra Costa is not currently considering school closures or consolidations, trustee Hernandez said in an emailed statement.
“As a board member, I deeply understand the profound impact these financial challenges have on our school community and the urgent need for essential services that may no longer be available,” Hernandez said. “These are difficult choices, and none were made lightly. However, our priority remains securing a fiscally responsible path forward that allows us to continue serving our students effectively.”
Vacanciesand staffing cuts
Emilia Calderón teaches math at Richmond High School, and she said she constantly has to sub for other classes during her free period because of the high number of vacancies.
“Every year they cut teachers, and even though we are lacking teachers, they (the district) still cut teachers,” she said. “And so I’m subbing for classes with vacant positions, and then it feels ridiculous to have them turn around and say, ‘We’re going to cut more teachers.’ How does that make sense?”
Over the next two school years, about 1.6% of the United Teachers of Richmond staff will be let go for a total savings of about $3.7 million, including teachers, social workers, speech therapists and assistant principals.
But with looming cuts, students and staff have also felt the weight of having longtime vacancies. How do these exist at the same time? It’s a question the teachers union and community has been grappling with, Ortiz said.
Francisco Ortiz, United Teachers of Richmond president, addresses the West Contra Costa school board on Wednesday during public comment to protest the staffing cuts the board approved one week prior.Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
West Contra Costa’s fiscal solvency plan uses multiyear projections based on fully-staffed schools, Ortiz said, which is about 1,600 educators. Currently, there are about 130 vacant positions, which is equivalent to nearly $19 million, he said.
“It creates this crisis that we have to reduce but we don’t have fully staffed people,” Ortiz said. “If we had a fully staffed school district, then that could potentially make sense, but we don’t have a fully staffed school district.”
But Moses said that when there are vacant positions, the district still needs to pay for substitutes, overtime or contractors to cover services.
“These replacement costs offset the salaries that have been set aside for the vacant positions,” Moses said. “Due to current vacancy levels, we expect that there will be a certificated job available for all current WCCUSD educators for the 2025-26 school year.”
The deadline for the district to send layoff notices is March 15.
“A lot of the folks we have in our district, they’re either homegrown or they choose to come here,” Ortiz said, referring to district educators. “We want to provide them with an incentive to stay in our district, and we’re currently not doing that with these haphazard or ill-conceived moves.”
But in the meantime, the educators who are choosing to stay in West Contra Costa are trying to help students in ways they weren’t trained to.
“We not only provide curriculum and teaching, but we’re literally like their parents sometimes and emotional support,” Calderón said. “Since they’re cutting all these social workers, guess who gets the brunt of that emotional support? I try my best, but I’m not a therapist, and it’s quite honestly dangerous to try and have a math teacher be a kid’s therapist.”
A speech language pathologist who is a member of United Teachers of Richmond addresses the West Contra Costa school board during the Feb. 12, 2025, meeting to protest the staffing cuts the board approved one week prior, which includes speech specialists.
Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
Many in the West Contra Costa Unified School District community say they want their next superintendent to be a leader who is accountable, transparent, accessible, innovative, and understands diverse communities.
“The No. 1 priority we should be looking for in the next superintendent should be someone rooted in the community … and (who) can take our weaknesses and turn them into strengths,” said West Contra Costa parent Nivette Moore. “Someone who can melt into all these cultures and understand how to maneuver in our community.”
Moore had attended one of the various town halls hosted by Leadership Associates, the search firm conducting the superintendent search. Sandy Sanchez Thorstenson, an associate at Leadership Associates, said the firm is listening to the district’s various communities for the qualities they want in their next leader, and meeting dozens of other groups and committees the district works with. Typically the outreach period lasts two weeks, but the firm is spending double the time listening to the West Contra Costa community.
“This is the most level of engagement I have experienced,” said Sanchez Thorstenson, who has been a recruiter for nine years.
Although participation in the town halls has ranged from a handful to about 20 people, the small group conversations are valuable and give the firm a deeper understanding of what the community needs and wants, said Jim Brown, senior adviser at Leadership Associates.
However, multiple town hall goers on Tuesday night said the small turnout is another example of how the district’s communication team often doesn’t reach the entire community. Just in the past five months, dozens of community members have complained about a lack of transparency and communication during board meetings.
Moore has two children who graduated from the district and a 10-year-old daughter who currently attendsNystrom Elementary School, said the disconnect and lack of consistent communication between parents, teachers, administrators and board members is an issue that persists.
“If we have that, we are never going to be able to have a functioning district and get out of the deficit we are in,” Moore said. “The superintendent should be able to figure out the issue and fix it. We want somebody to come in and who’s not going to be afraid to push the envelope.”
West Contra Costa’s next superintendent will also inherit the district’s struggles of the last five years, including low test scores, declining enrollment, teacher vacancies, chronic absenteeism and financial instability.
West Contra Costa has 54 schools in the Richmond, San Pablo and Pinole areas, with just under 30,000 students. The student population is majority students of color, and more than half of the students are low-income.
The district deserves a leader who will end the cycles of instability, said Francisco Ortiz, president of United Teachers of Richmond. The union is ready to partner with a leader who wants to collaborate, he said.
“Students can’t wait for fully staffed schools,” Ortiz said in an emailed statement to EdSource. “They can’t wait for a district that prioritizes retaining and attracting high-quality educators. And they can’t wait for a superintendent who will invest in the workforce that shapes their future.”
Sheryl Lane, a parent and executive director of Fierce Advocates, a Richmond organization focused on working with parents of color, said the district needs someone who has experience recruiting teachers, someone who wants to invest and stay in the district, and someone who is a strong advocate and eager to work with community partners.
Lane’s son, Ashton Desmangles, said the next superintendent should be invested in being accessible and in creating relationships with students. He’s an eighth-grade student at Korematsu Middle School and the only student on the district’s anti-racism team, an opportunity provided by Chris Hurst, the former superintendent, who retired in December after being on the job for three years. He was replaced by interim Superintendent Kim Moses.
Why it’s harder to recruit superintendents now
West Contra Costa is one of at least half a dozen districts in California trying to find a new superintendent during a time when many superintendents have retired or left because of heightened political climates at board meetings, stress and threats.
Finding superintendent candidates who meet the unique needs of school districts and their populations is always difficult, Brown said. Recently, politics surrounding education have been making it harder to recruit, the most intense he’s seen in his 20 years at Leadership Associates and 37 years as a superintendent, he said.
“Just the whole scene right now — there’s a note of uncertainty to it,” Brown said. “I’m referring to changes in school board around political issues, changes nationally now with the Department of Education under fire.”
Dwindling enrollment, school closures, budget cuts and the lingering effects of the pandemic have caused veteran superintendents to retire early and be replaced with less experienced educators. Newly elected board members have also pushed out superintendents. And districts are willing to pay top dollar to find a fit for the high-stress job.
West Contra Costa superintendents have also had to deal with staying fiscally solvent and avoiding a state takeover. The district slashed $32.7 million from its budget between 2024 and 2027, impacting programs and staffing. In 1991, the district became the first in the state to go insolvent and received a $29 million bailout loan, which took 21 years to pay off.
“Sometimes there are funding crises going on that make it more difficult for people to move (for the job),” Brown said. “But people who want a challenge in education, this is the kind of district you want to work in, because you can make a difference.”
The recent budget cuts have also put the district at odds with the United Teachers of Richmond. In the next two school years, $13 million in cuts will be made, which will deplete 1.6% of staff in the teachers’ union, including teachers, social workers, and speech therapists.
Union leadership has called the staffing cuts unnecessary because West Contra Costa’s fiscal solvency plan uses multiyear projections based on fully-staffed schools, which is about 1,600 educators. Currently, there are about 130 vacant positions, which is equivalent to nearly $19 million.
“The educators of United Teachers of Richmond are calling for a superintendent who brings proven leadership experience in urban districts and a commitment to collaboration, not exclusion,” Ortiz said. “We need a leader who partners with labor, values educators, and prioritizes stability — not one who deepens the vacancy crisis.”
Leadership Associates will identify potential candidates in February and March. The deadline for applications is March 24. Applications will be reviewed in April, and interviews will be conducted in May.
The district’s next superintendent is slated to be hired at the end of May or the beginning of June with a start date of July 1.
The next two meetings are Feb. 26 at Richmond High School from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. People can also join through Zoom; there’s also an online survey open until March 3.
Cerritos College students honing their skills in ironworking during hands-on training.
Credit: Courtesy Cerritos College
A college degree or certificate is a proven pathway to higher earnings, job stability and economic mobility. Yet, nearly half of California’s adults have not pursued higher education due to barriers like cost, rigid schedules and a lack of local options.
California set an ambitious goal: By 2030, 70% of working-age adults should hold a college degree or certificate. However, instead of making it easier to achieve this, public universities are blocking one of the most promising solutions — community college bachelor’s degree programs.
Cerritos College is leading the way with its first-of-its-kind field ironworker supervisor bachelor’s degree, which was developed with the California Field Ironworkers. The program creates a direct path from apprenticeship to high-paying supervisory roles. Designed for working professionals, it offers flexible online coursework that fits the schedules of full-time ironworkers.
With over 1,300 supervisor job openings annually in Los Angeles County alone, this program helps close critical workforce gaps while fostering regional social and economic mobility. First-line supervisors with a bachelor’s degree earn an average of $34,000 more in their annual salary than those with a high school diploma or associate degree. At under $11,000 in total tuition costs — less than half the price of even the most affordable public universities, our students can recoup their investment in as little as four months, making this program a powerful tool for upward mobility.
Beyond the numbers, programs like these change lives. Rocio Campos, an ironworker and mother, defied societal expectations to pursue a career in construction. While balancing work, family and education, Rocio gained the training and resources to grow her career in ironworks through the field ironworker apprenticeship program at Cerritos College. She aims to earn a bachelor’s degree in ironworker supervision once the program receives full approval, giving her a chance to advance into a supervisory role.
Community college bachelor’s degrees are game-changers, especially for underrepresented communities. At Cerritos College, 73% of students in the ironworker apprenticeship program come from diverse backgrounds, and active recruitment efforts are bringing more women into this historically male-dominated field. These programs don’t just increase wages; they provide economic mobility by helping workers build stability, advance their careers, and lift their families into greater financial security.
Several community colleges have received provisional approval to launch bachelor’s degree programs in health care, technology and public safety — fields where California urgently needs skilled professionals. However, many of these proposals remain under review because of objections from public universities, particularly within the CSU system. Despite meeting workforce demands and serving students who might not otherwise pursue a four-year degree, these programs face unnecessary roadblocks. The final approval ultimately rests with the California Community Colleges board of governors, but these initiatives risk being delayed indefinitely without broader policy support.
California cannot rely on four-year universities alone to meet its growing workforce needs. Expanding community college bachelor’s degree programs will strengthen industries, create more opportunities and solidify California’s leadership in workforce innovation. It’s time for policymakers, industry leaders and educators to support these programs and invest in the future of our state.
•••
Jose Fierro is the president/superintendent of Cerritos College in Norwalk. Cerritos College serves as a comprehensive community college for southeastern Los Angeles County.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Ricardo Alcaraz is taking three of his five courses online this semester at Santa Ana College: an anthropology class, business calculus and business law. It’s a course schedule that reflects a new reality and shift toward distance learning across California’s community colleges, largely sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Taking classes online, though, isn’t ideal for Alcaraz, who is majoring in business administration and plans to transfer to Cal State Fullerton this fall. He enjoys in-person classes because he likes to arrive early and ask questions of his professors. His online classes, on the other hand, are asynchronous, meaning there’s no live instruction, and he has to direct his questions via email.
But like hundreds of thousands of other students in California, Alcaraz opts to enroll in many online classes because they fit better into his schedule. While enrolled at Santa Ana, he has worked up to 20 hours a week at the college’s Undocu-Scholars Center, a resource center for the college’s undocumented students. He’s also the student trustee for the Rancho Santiago Community College District, requiring him to be at board meetings and many campus events.
“It’s been hard to adapt to online classes. But due to how busy I’ve been and needing to be present in different areas, I feel like it’s been very helpful in a way,” he said.
During the pandemic five years ago, a significant majority of California community classes shifted online. Despite some early confusion and bumps in adapting to online education, distance education has firmly taken hold in the years since.
More than 40% of community college classes remain online statewide as of this year, about double what it was before the pandemic, and a much higher rate of remote education than exists at the state’s four-year universities. That includes hybrid classes, which mix online and some required in-person instruction. Some colleges also offer HyFlex courses, which give students the option of attending online or in person. The vast majority of the system’s online classes, however, are taught fully online and asynchronously.
Many campuses also have no choice but to cater to students to stabilize their enrollments and finances. Enrollment across the state plummeted during the pandemic — dropping 19% statewide — and is still below pre-pandemic levels.
College leaders and instructors say online education has proven an effective enough teaching and learning method, especially for general education classes, the lower-level coursework students take before diving into much of their major studies. Statewide, students pass both synchronous and asynchronous online courses at only a slightly lower rate than students pass in-person courses.
Still, officials acknowledge that many students benefit from face-to-face instruction and social interactions with their peers. Such interactions are less common now than they were pre-pandemic, with many campuses quieter and noticeably less crowded. Some colleges have begun to consider how they can entice students to return to campus.
“For a lot of students and a lot of instructors, the preference is to be in the classroom,” said John Hetts, executive vice chancellor for the statewide community college system. “That regular personal contact matters. I think a lot of students feel it, but the challenge we have as a system is that the vast majority of our students work.
“So how do we balance that? I think that’s going to be the challenge for our institutions, to support students getting what they need to thrive, but also what they need to be able to work,” he added.
Los Angeles City College
Just prior to the pandemic,21% of community college classes were online. That rate ballooned to nearly 70% of classes in 2020-21.
Some hands-on programs, like respiratory care and other health programs, were taught in person even during the pandemic because they met the state’s definition of essential education. Beyond those, most community colleges required other classes to be held online throughout the 2020-21 academic year. The next year, colleges began reopening in-person classes, with vaccine mandates in place.
Taylor Squires, a second-year technical theater arts student at Saddleback College in Orange County, takes as many of her general education classes online as possible, and sometimes other courses too. This past fall, her entire course load was online.
“It depends on the semester, but the reasoning is pretty much the same: it frees up time in my day to go do other things,” Squires said.
The state’s four-year university systems are also offering more classes online now than they did pre-pandemic. They offer them at a lower rate than the community colleges, but many of their students take at least one class online every semester or quarter. At the University of California’s nineundergraduate campuses, 6.4% of course sections were fully online in 2023-24, up from 1.8% in the year leading up to the pandemic. That percentage does not include hybrid classes.
Before the pandemic, online classes were a rarity at the 23-campus California State University. More than 90% of course sections were taught in person in each school year between 2016-17 and 2018-19. Then, the start of the pandemic supercharged what had been a gradual trend toward virtual learning.
Cal State campuses have not fully reverted to the pre-pandemic norm now that their campuses are no longer subject to restrictions on in-person gatherings. In the 2023-24 school year, 73% of course sections were taught face-to-face, and 75% of students took at least one course online. The percentage of courses offered in a hybrid format has more than doubled between 2016-17 and 2023-24.
At community colleges, some hands-on classes and programs need to be taught face-to-face because of the nature of the work, like science labs or trade programs such as welding or construction.
Otherwise, most community colleges and their academic departments decide on instructional delivery methods based on what will bring the most enrollments. At the state’s largest district, the nine-college Los Angeles Community College District, between 40% and 50% of classes are now taught online each semester. Before the pandemic, between 10% and 15% of classes were taught online.
“Based on our assumption of student demand, we may plan that 40% of our classes need to be online and 60% need to be in person. And if that 60% doesn’t materialize, we may shift some of that to online to give students more time to enroll,” said Nicole Albo-Lopez, the district’s deputy chancellor.
At the communication and media studies department at Folsom Lake College, department chair Paula Cardwell said the “North Star” is to offer classes the way students want them.
Cardwell has been teaching online classes since 2007, much longer than most, and said she finds it can be done “really, really well.” She said students in her public speaking classes tend to give each other even better feedback in Zoom chats than they do in person because they are less worried about hurting one another’s feelings.
Cardwell added, however, that there are challenges, especially with the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the likelihood of students using it to write their assignments. “So we are rethinking which classes we teach online or how we teach them because of that,” Cardwell said.
Foothill College in Santa Clara County has also been rethinking its approach, hoping to ease isolation and improve student mental health. The college, where about half of the classes were remote even before the pandemic and 55% remain online, is actually seeing face-to-face enrollment increase at a faster rate than courses taught online. This quarter, enrollment is up about 19% for in-person classes, said Kristina Whalen, the college’s president.
The college has opened new in-person facilities, including a wellness lounge where students can relax in massage chairs, meditate or talk to staff about getting connected to mental health services.
“Students are looking for that social interaction and the services that a campus affords,” Whalen said.
But Foothill still relies heavily on distance education and is constantly trying to refine its online instruction, Whalen said. The college this year began requiring additional training to ensure faculty teaching online are still engaging with students, such as by providing prompt and personalized feedback on student coursework.
“Up and down the state, I think colleges are asking and answering that question about how they are monitoring their online instruction to ensure that it’s of a quality that matches our on-ground instruction,” Whalen said.
Hetts, the executive vice chancellor for the community college system, noted that the chancellor’s office provides a rubric to ensure online classes are high quality. But he added that much of the training and review of those classes happens locally.
At the Los Angeles district, faculty are required to be certified to teach online as part of their union contract. Most faculty opt in to additional training, such as one focused on using artificial intelligence in the classroom, said Albo-Lopez. Faculty are regularly looking to build new skills because they know distance education is their new normal, she added.
“It’s here to stay because it’s created a new niche of flexibility both for our students, but also for our workforce,” she said. “And I think that that’s something that is going to be really difficult to change back.”
EdSource staff writer Amy DiPierro contributed reporting to this article.Abby Offenhauser, a member of the EdSource California Student Journalism Corps, also contributed reporting.
