برچسب: costs

A learning recovery that wasn’t – missed opportunities and the ongoing costs of Covid
Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource

Money is running low, and time is short to help America’s students fully regain the learning they lost since the pandemic. Based on their continued academic struggles and mental health challenges, a report released Wednesday concluded most probably won’t.

The second yearly report by a national education research organization examining the impacts of Covid on K-12 education offered that sobering outlook while highlighting some notable state and local efforts nationwide. It also called for a shift in the mission of high school to make connections for students adrift in the wake of Covid. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called it “blurring the lines between high school, higher education, and the workforce” in an essay in the report.

“The State of the American Student: Fall 2023,” produced by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which is affiliated with Arizona State University, focused on older students — recent graduates or those nearing graduation from high school.

“We not only owe them restitution for extended school closures and missed proms — we owe them a special sense of urgency, given how little time they have left before transitioning to the next phase of their lives,” wrote Robin Lake, the center’s director.

Data on younger students has been easier to collect. By some indicators — higher graduation rates and higher grades overall — older students may appear to have rebounded from Covid. But those measures are deceiving, said Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education. Nationwide ACT college admission scores, which are the lowest in 30 years, point to grade inflation, and assessments by the company Renaissance Learning point to a steady decline in 10th grade math and reading scores since before the pandemic. Disparities in scores between Latino and Black students and white and Asian students underscore “staggering” inequalities.

Chronic absence rates are alarming, as are measures of mental health. The proportion of teenage girls reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 36% to 57%; 30% seriously considered suicide, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2021 report on youth risk behavior.

“The older the student, the more lingering the impact,” said Gene Kerns, chief academic officer of Renaissance. “The high school data is very alarming. If you’re a junior in high school, you only have one more year. There’s a time clock on this.”

Source: CD survey cited in CRPE’s T”he State of the American Student: Fall 2023″

According to the assessment publisher NWEA, it will take the average eighth grader 7.4 months to catch up to pre-pandemic levels in reading and 9.1 months in math. In the hardest-hit communities like Richmond, Virginia, and New Haven, Connecticut, students fell 18 months behind in math. Schools would have had to teach 150% of a typical year’s worth of material for three years in a row just to catch up. “It is magical thinking to expect they will make this happen without a major increase in instructional time,” wrote researchers Thomas Kane of Harvard and Sean Reardon of Stanford.

Tutoring’s unfilled promise

For whatever reasons — pandemic fatigue, a lack of state guidance, a labor shortage, the unwillingness of teachers to do after-school tutoring or summer school — districts have not achieved efforts at scale. Despite a consensus among researchers that high-quality, intensive tutoring is the most effective intervention, USC researchers found, based on a survey of 1,600 households, that less than 2% of students are “receiving tutoring that even meets a fairly moderate definition of ‘high-quality.’ And among those who likely need it most — students who receive grades C or lower — less than 4% are receiving high-quality tutoring.”

The report credited Texas, Tennessee and Colorado for launching “admirable tutoring efforts.” California piloted a tutoring and mentoring program, led by 3,200 college students reaching students in 33 districts through College Corps, a volunteer program, but mainly it’s been every district for itself. Some, like Los Angeles Unified, relied on remote tutoring that was more like homework help, while Oakland turned to the nonprofit Children Rising and to Oakland REACH, a parent empowerment group, to train its own tutors.

Having not heard crisis warnings from state or local leaders, many parents haven’t recognized the severity of the challenge, the report said. Good grades sent a contrary message; one USC survey found that only 23% of parents were interested in summer school, and 28% were interested in tutoring. Another survey cited in the report found that about 90% of parents, including those in Sacramento, believed their child was working at grade level or above.

At first, there was no “voice in the back of my head” to raise doubt, said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union.

Rodrigues and others in the report called for states to show more transparency for parents, with report cards that are candid about their children’s learning. It credited a half dozen states, such as Connecticut , for their candor.

Source: 2023 survey by Learning Heroes cited in CPRE’s “The State of the American Student: Fall 2023”

Money, labor troubles loom

Lake called tutoring “a massive missed opportunity” and added, “What also concerned us is that the wind seems to be going out of academic recovery efforts just at a time when we think things are about to get much harder for schools and for teachers.”

Those headwinds include, according to the report:
- The Sept. 30, 2024, deadline to commit spending money from the American Rescue Plan, the final and largest chunk of nearly $200 billion in federal Covid relief, about $13.5 billion for California.
- That, combined with declining enrollments in most states, including the majority of districts in California, will result in a drop in state attendance-based funding. The impact of the expected “fiscal cliff” will vary by district. But some districts, such as San Francisco and West Contra Costa, are already feeling the pinch.
- A continued staff and teacher shortage in California. Last year was the first reduction in new credentials in eight years. The 16% drop — 3,130 fewer credentialed teachers — will compound the difficulty of meeting the demand for elementary and special education teachers.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature’s allocation of $8 billion has the potential to expand mental and physical health programs for students and address academic inequalities — if used effectively. The money is split between creating thousands of community schools, funding six weeks of summer school and extending the day by three hours for low-income schools.

Since school budgets for the year are already set, there’s still time for districts to plan a major summer learning effort in 2024, Kane, the faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, wrote in his contribution to the report. The Biden administration could be persuaded to extend spending for one more year, although he and Lake agreed it should be restricted to proven strategies, like tutoring, summer learning and salary increases for an extended year.

“Part of the challenge has been the absence of political leadership,” Kane said. School district officials need the “political cover” to undertake significant reforms needed for students to catch up, he said.

States and districts need to provide high school students with hope and innovation, the report said. It’s called for federal funds for a “gap year” as an immediate strategy for coming out of the pandemic. An idea usually associated with privileged students who take a year of enrichment before college, this would involve investing in community colleges “to help kids get back on track and help them prepare for their next steps in a really creative and positive way,” the report said.

The report also recommended putting more emphasis on adult-student relationships, rethinking high school school-to-career pathways and investing in a “New American High School,” which Lake argues “would connect students to meaningful work in their communities and expert knowledge around the globe.”

It cited Purdue Polytech High School in Indiana, a public charter school network with higher ed and industry partnerships for careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, and Seckinger High School, an artificial intelligence-themed high school in Gwinnett County, Georgia. It pointed to Colorado, where about 53% of high school graduates earn college credit or industry credentials through dual and concurrent enrollment; the vision is for every high school student to graduate with an associate degree and an industry-recognized credential.

None of the examples pointed to California, although in the last several years, the state has funded nearly $1 billion in dual enrollment programs, apprenticeship opportunities and Golden State Pathways, for students to explore college and noncollegiate pathways by 10th grade. The executive order last month to establish a master plan for career education within 13 months should provide a wider vision pulling components together.

The aim moving forward, the report said, should be “a new definition of student success that focuses more on fulfillment and long-term happiness in careers than college as an end unto itself.”
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17/07/2025
Erratic results, high costs doomed this districtwide student improvement program
Students in a Fresno Unified classroom.

Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
Top Takeaways

Fresno Unified and its teachers union reached an agreement in mid-June to attempt to mitigate the impacts of a long-standing program ending.

The multimillion-dollar program was touted by the district as a way to close gaps between student groups less than three years ago.

Finances, inconsistent program implementation and varied results are some of the reasons the district says the program was eliminated.
The Fresno Unified School District and its teachers union have reached an agreement to terminate a decade-old, once-promising student improvement program that expanded from a pilot in a handful of low-performing schools to 40 of the district’s 67 elementary schools and one middle school.

Faced with rising program costs, declining enrollment and cuts in revenue, the district decided that inconsistent results could not justify the program’s high expense of almost $30 million.

“When you have finances crash with programmatic inconsistencies … just kind of created the perfect storm for us to go a different direction,” said David Chavez, district chief of human resources, who also worked for two former superintendents.

The Designated Schools program, which operated under three superintendents, was a district initiative to improve achievement through additional daily instruction by targeting the specific needs of students. The effort was extensive: 30 additional instructional minutes per day for students, 10 extra paid days of professional development for teachers, and either a math or reading coach in each school.

Under the agreement with the Fresno Teachers Association, the coaches will return to the classroom as regular teachers, and teachers will see a phaseout of their 10-day training over the next few years. For students, aside from losing 30 minutes of instruction, there will be no transition. They can participate in the after-school program they are already entitled to attend, where they may receive intervention or instruction from teachers who choose to participate.

Dismantling the previously praised program raises questions about how and why it went awry.

The district blames inconsistent program implementation across schools, but it failed to set standards or hold schools accountable to the program’s tenets.

Going Deeper: Who Designated Schools served

Designated Schools, affecting 24,000 students and over 1,250 educators across 41 campuses, were intended to close academic gaps among students and were typically located in neighborhoods with large numbers of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. In the extra 30 minutes, all students received additional instruction or intervention in some way.

Reading specialists at Wilson Elementary, a Designated School, used those extra minutes on remedial instruction for struggling fifth graders who were unable to read even at a third or fourth grade level, said Drew Colburn, a fifth grade teacher.

During intervention time, Colburn and other teachers divided their classes into small groups by proficiency level and targeted students’ weak points, allowing all students to get additional support, without missing core instruction.

At Wilson, following slight improvements, 18.6% and 12.1% of students achieved reading and math proficiency in the 2023-24 school year, according to Ed-Data.

Teachers say they saw improvements, which may not have been as apparent on summative state tests that the district evaluated to determine program effectiveness.

“If you take that 30 minutes away from them, they’re going to come to fifth grade with even more of a deficit,” Colburn said.

Inconsistent implementation or lack of oversight?

The first “Designated Schools” were actually three of the district’s lowest-performing schools. Fresno Unified gave teachers more time to plan, additional instruction time with students and extra support as part of the state’s turnaround model to reform persistently low-achieving schools.

The schools started to see improved student performance, including double-digit gains in some instances, according to district Superintendent Misty Her.

“We thought, ‘Can we take what happened there and now replicate it into other schools?’” said Her, who was a school administrator at the time.

In 2014-15, under the label of Designated Schools, two schools, along with nine others, implemented the model. Over the last decade and multiple years of implementation, the program expanded with the district being the initiative’s biggest advocate.

The model, when implemented as intended, supported improved student outcomes on state assessments for English and math, Fresno Unified said in May 2021 in its accountability plan for the 2021-22 school year, when the program cost $19.9 million across the 41 schools.

But, according to district leaders, schools implemented the program differently, undermining the effectiveness of the extra staff and extra 30 minutes, and leading to varying results.

Timeline of Designated School expansion, elimination

2014-15: Fresno Unified implemented the Designed Schools initiative at 10 elementary schools and one middle school

2015-16: 20 schools were added as Designated Schools

2016-17: 10 more elementary schools became Designated Schools

From 2017-2019: The model had improved scores on state assessments for low-income, foster youth and English learner student populations, according to district accountability plans.

2019: Annual funding for the program continued to increase, rising to over $18.6 million.

2020-21: Hanover Research conducted its analysis, showing mixed results from the program.

2021: Fresno Unified, in its accountability plan for the 2021-22 school year, said the initiative would “address the needs of students by providing extended time to accelerate learning and close the gap of learning loss resulting from the pandemic.”

2022: The district suggested expanding the program to its remaining two dozen elementary schools.

2023-24: Fresno Unified proposed phasing out the initiative before abandoning the idea later in the school year.

2024-25: The district announced the program’s elimination for the 2025-26 school year.

The district added a special assignment teacher to every Designated School, but gave schools the autonomy to use that position as they saw fit. Some schools used the position as an intervention teacher; others used the extra support to assist during class or pull students out for individualized or group instruction. A few schools required the specialists to take on multiple duties, consequently hindering their work in the classroom.

Laura Schwalm, chief of staff for California Education Partners, where she works with about 50 school districts on systemic change and improvement, said that before expanding an initiative, districts should have a plan, including how to fund it; set clear expectations; monitor the program and its results throughout the year to make adjustments; and invest in teachers and administrators to deliver the program.

An analysis of the program, conducted by Hanover Research in the 2020-21 school year, found that:
- Academic outcomes were mixed
- Program implementation varied across campuses, with only some schools aligning resources with data-driven practices
District administration had the authority and ability to address the program’s flaws. In fact, the Hanover report recommended that Fresno Unified establish a set of standards on how staff should use its additional time at Designated Schools.

The autonomy, alone, wasn’t the problem; a lack of district monitoring was. Schwalm said using different approaches could have led to improved student results and could have been used in other schools.

“If you’re not monitoring and not adjusting what you’re doing to get better results, then you can’t be surprised when you don’t get good results,” she said.

Former Superintendent Bob Nelson, who led the district from 2017 until 2024, said he and the district leadership “didn’t pay close enough attention to schools that were doing it well” to be models for other schools.

“The issue was we were not learning from the sites we had. That’s what was missing.”

Bob Nelson, former superintendent of Fresno Unified

According to a June 2022 accountability plan, the district still hailed the initiative as being “critical” to the achievement of English learners, socioeconomically disadvantaged students and foster youth.

By November 2022, Fresno Unified wanted to expand the initiative to all elementary schools to improve academic outcomes for students, according to contract negotiation documents with the teachers union.

“Less than a year and a half after they proposed every school site become a Designated School, they’re saying, ‘This program doesn’t work,’” said Manuel Bonilla, teachers union president.

Chavez, the chief of human resources, said Fresno Unified had evaluated the program’s effectiveness every year since its inception and that its continuation, especially since it was meant to be a pilot, had been a part of conversations for years.

But was it effective?

Parents, teachers and administrators told EdSource they believe students benefit from more time with their teachers. The extra 30 minutes amounted to 90 additional instructional hours each year.

“I believe it does give teachers a little bit more time to be able to work with each kid,” said Adriana Ramirez, a Wilson Elementary parent.

But both the district and teachers union agreed that its effectiveness was not a simple yes or no answer.

“Depending on the situation, some components were really good at this site, some weren’t at this (school), and one component that could have been good somewhere wasn’t necessarily really good at another place,” Chavez said.

There were “pockets of excellence,” he and other district officials admitted, but students were not seeing the academic gains the district envisioned.

Though not school-specific, the district provided data measuring the yearly progress of students at Designated Schools compared to students at non-designated schools.

EdSource also evaluated school-specific data from a GO Public Schools 2024 student outcome report based on the 2023-24 school year.

The district-provided and school-specific data is indicative that many schools were making progress under the initiative, as teachers say, while also depicting the district’s point that it was not across the board.

Without data from a 10-year longitudinal study, Bonilla, the teachers union president, said he couldn’t say whether the Designated Schools initiative was effective.

“Some of our teachers felt that it was effective and some teachers felt that there were components that could make it even more effective because it wasn’t,” Bonilla said.

Mitigating impact

The district and teachers union spent six months negotiating how to maintain student support through other programs.

The agreement approved on June 18 dedicates an additional $4 million in the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years for educators at Designated Schools to offer after-school literacy instruction or intervention.

Educators at Designated Schools, under the agreement, will have the right to refuse the work. If given the opportunity, Drew Colburn, a fifth grade Wilson Elementary teacher who was also a former after-school program coordinator, is confident educators are going to want to do that extra 30 minutes, if not more.

But if teachers decline the assignment, the after-school intervention won’t be as consistent or effective, he said.

And unfortunately, families won’t know the repercussions of the program’s elimination until this school year when it’s no longer in place, Ramirez said. “Parents,” she said, “won’t notice until it’s not there.”
Source link
11/07/2025
Erratic results, high costs doomed this district’s once-heralded student improvement program
Students in a Fresno Unified classroom.

Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
Top Takeaways

Fresno Unified and its teachers union reached an agreement in mid-June to attempt to mitigate the impacts of a long-standing program ending.

The multimillion-dollar program was touted by the district as a way to close gaps between student groups less than three years ago.

Finances, inconsistent program implementation and varied results are some of the reasons the district says the program was eliminated.
The Fresno Unified School District and its teachers union have reached an agreement to terminate a decade-old, once-promising student improvement program that expanded from a pilot in a handful of low-performing schools to 40 of the district’s 67 elementary schools and one middle school.

Faced with rising program costs, declining enrollment and cuts in revenue, the district decided that inconsistent results could not justify the program’s high expense of almost $30 million.

“When you have finances crash with programmatic inconsistencies … just kind of created the perfect storm for us to go a different direction,” said David Chavez, district chief of human resources, who also worked for two former superintendents.

The Designated Schools program, which operated under three superintendents, was a district initiative to improve achievement through additional daily instruction by targeting the specific needs of students. The effort was extensive: 30 additional instructional minutes per day for students, 10 extra paid days of professional development for teachers, and either a math or reading coach in each school.

Under the agreement with the Fresno Teachers Association, the coaches will return to the classroom as regular teachers, and teachers will see a phaseout of their 10-day training over the next few years. For students, aside from losing 30 minutes of instruction, there will be no transition. They can participate in the after-school program they are already entitled to attend, where they may receive intervention or instruction from teachers who choose to participate.

Dismantling the previously praised program raises questions about how and why it went awry.

The district blames inconsistent program implementation across schools, but it failed to set standards or hold schools accountable to the program’s tenets.

Going Deeper: Who Designated Schools served

Designated Schools, affecting 24,000 students and over 1,250 educators across 41 campuses, were intended to close academic gaps among students and were typically located in neighborhoods with large numbers of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. In the extra 30 minutes, all students received additional instruction or intervention in some way.

Reading specialists at Wilson Elementary, a Designated School, used those extra minutes on remedial instruction for struggling fifth graders who were unable to read even at a third or fourth grade level, said Drew Colburn, a fifth grade teacher.

During intervention time, Colburn and other teachers divided their classes into small groups by proficiency level and targeted students’ weak points, allowing all students to get additional support, without missing core instruction.

At Wilson, following slight improvements, 18.6% and 12.1% of students achieved reading and math proficiency in the 2023-24 school year, according to Ed-Data.

Teachers say they saw improvements, which may not have been as apparent on summative state tests that the district evaluated to determine program effectiveness.

“If you take that 30 minutes away from them, they’re going to come to fifth grade with even more of a deficit,” Colburn said.

Inconsistent implementation or lack of oversight?

The first “Designated Schools” were actually three of the district’s lowest-performing schools. Fresno Unified gave teachers more time to plan, additional instruction time with students and extra support as part of the state’s turnaround model to reform persistently low-achieving schools.

The schools started to see improved student performance, including double-digit gains in some instances, according to district Superintendent Misty Her.

“We thought, ‘Can we take what happened there and now replicate it into other schools?’” said Her, who was a school administrator at the time.

In 2014-15, under the label of Designated Schools, two schools, along with nine others, implemented the model. Over the last decade and multiple years of implementation, the program expanded with the district being the initiative’s biggest advocate.

The model, when implemented as intended, supported improved student outcomes on state assessments for English and math, Fresno Unified said in May 2021 in its accountability plan for the 2021-22 school year, when the program cost $19.9 million across the 41 schools.

But, according to district leaders, schools implemented the program differently, undermining the effectiveness of the extra staff and extra 30 minutes, and leading to varying results.

Timeline of Designated School expansion, elimination

2014-15: Fresno Unified implemented the Designed Schools initiative at 10 elementary schools and one middle school

2015-16: 20 schools were added as Designated Schools

2016-17: 10 more elementary schools became Designated Schools

From 2017-2019: The model had improved scores on state assessments for low-income, foster youth and English learner student populations, according to district accountability plans.

2019: Annual funding for the program continued to increase, rising to over $18.6 million.

2020-21: Hanover Research conducted its analysis, showing mixed results from the program.

2021: Fresno Unified, in its accountability plan for the 2021-22 school year, said the initiative would “address the needs of students by providing extended time to accelerate learning and close the gap of learning loss resulting from the pandemic.”

2022: The district suggested expanding the program to its remaining two dozen elementary schools.

2023-24: Fresno Unified proposed phasing out the initiative before abandoning the idea later in the school year.

2024-25: The district announced the program’s elimination for the 2025-26 school year.

The district added a special assignment teacher to every Designated School, but gave schools the autonomy to use that position as they saw fit. Some schools used the position as an intervention teacher; others used the extra support to assist during class or pull students out for individualized or group instruction. A few schools required the specialists to take on multiple duties, consequently hindering their work in the classroom.

Laura Schwalm, chief of staff for California Education Partners, where she works with about 50 school districts on systemic change and improvement, said that before expanding an initiative, districts should have a plan, including how to fund it; set clear expectations; monitor the program and its results throughout the year to make adjustments; and invest in teachers and administrators to deliver the program.

An analysis of the program, conducted by Hanover Research in the 2020-21 school year, found that:
- Academic outcomes were mixed
- Program implementation varied across campuses, with only some schools aligning resources with data-driven practices
District administration had the authority and ability to address the program’s flaws. In fact, the Hanover report recommended that Fresno Unified establish a set of standards on how staff should use its additional time at Designated Schools.

The autonomy, alone, wasn’t the problem; a lack of district monitoring was. Schwalm said using different approaches could have led to improved student results and could have been used in other schools.

“If you’re not monitoring and not adjusting what you’re doing to get better results, then you can’t be surprised when you don’t get good results,” she said.

Former Superintendent Bob Nelson, who led the district from 2017 until 2024, said he and the district leadership “didn’t pay close enough attention to schools that were doing it well” to be models for other schools.

“The issue was we were not learning from the sites we had. That’s what was missing.”

Bob Nelson, former superintendent of Fresno Unified

According to a June 2022 accountability plan, the district still hailed the initiative as being “critical” to the achievement of English learners, socioeconomically disadvantaged students and foster youth.

By November 2022, Fresno Unified wanted to expand the initiative to all elementary schools to improve academic outcomes for students, according to contract negotiation documents with the teachers union.

“Less than a year and a half after they proposed every school site become a Designated School, they’re saying, ‘This program doesn’t work,’” said Manuel Bonilla, teachers union president.

Chavez, the chief of human resources, said Fresno Unified had evaluated the program’s effectiveness every year since its inception and that its continuation, especially since it was meant to be a pilot, had been a part of conversations for years.

But was it effective?

Parents, teachers and administrators told EdSource they believe students benefit from more time with their teachers. The extra 30 minutes amounted to 90 additional instructional hours each year.

“I believe it does give teachers a little bit more time to be able to work with each kid,” said Adriana Ramirez, a Wilson Elementary parent.

But both the district and teachers union agreed that its effectiveness was not a simple yes or no answer.

“Depending on the situation, some components were really good at this site, some weren’t at this (school), and one component that could have been good somewhere wasn’t necessarily really good at another place,” Chavez said.

There were “pockets of excellence,” he and other district officials admitted, but students were not seeing the academic gains the district envisioned.

Though not school-specific, the district provided data measuring the yearly progress of students at Designated Schools compared to students at non-designated schools.

EdSource also evaluated school-specific data from a GO Public Schools 2024 student outcome report based on the 2023-24 school year.

The district-provided and school-specific data is indicative that many schools were making progress under the initiative, as teachers say, while also depicting the district’s point that it was not across the board.

Without data from a 10-year longitudinal study, Bonilla, the teachers union president, said he couldn’t say whether the Designated Schools initiative was effective.

“Some of our teachers felt that it was effective and some teachers felt that there were components that could make it even more effective because it wasn’t,” Bonilla said.

Mitigating impact

The district and teachers union spent six months negotiating how to maintain student support through other programs.

The agreement approved on June 18 dedicates an additional $4 million in the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years for educators at Designated Schools to offer after-school literacy instruction or intervention.

Educators at Designated Schools, under the agreement, will have the right to refuse the work. If given the opportunity, Drew Colburn, a fifth grade Wilson Elementary teacher who was also a former after-school program coordinator, is confident educators are going to want to do that extra 30 minutes, if not more.

But if teachers decline the assignment, the after-school intervention won’t be as consistent or effective, he said.

And unfortunately, families won’t know the repercussions of the program’s elimination until this school year when it’s no longer in place, Ramirez said. “Parents,” she said, “won’t notice until it’s not there.”
Source link
11/07/2025
California college students find creative solutions to manage graduation costs

Students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Green Campus team promote the university’s graduation gown reuse program. Students who borrow regalia from the program can return it in bins after the ceremony or return it by mail.

. Cal Poly/Courtesy

As college students across the state prepare to graduate, they are sometimes surprised by the costs associated with this rite of passage.

Besides the cost of regalia, graduating at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo also requires a $120 commencement fee, charged for each Cal Poly degree or credential program. Students at California State University, Dominguez Hills, will pay a $90 graduation application fee.

The cost to apply to graduate at San Diego State University is $112, while students at California State University, Fullerton, pay $115.

CSU spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith explained that each Cal State campus “sets its graduation fee. The fee covers the evaluation process to determine if the student has fulfilled the course requirements to earn a degree and graduate, as well as costs associated with the printing and mailing of the diploma.”

Added Bentley-Smith, “Portions of the fees can go to support putting on commencement, but it’s not the primary purpose of the fee.”

Beyond the fees, every student who wants to participate in the ceremony itself — commonly referred to as “walking” — is required to wear the campus’ approved regalia.

For example, at San Jose State University, where there is no graduation application fee, the SJSU university store sells its most basic regalia packs — cap, gown, degree-colored tassel, stole (also called a sash) and souvenir tassel — for $131.50.

The cost and one-time use for most students of this graduation attire — those with careers in academia often use regalia again — has spurred grassroots solutions to pop up across Cal State campuses.

With its simple all-black gown and cap requirement, CSU Dominguez Hills makes it easy for undergraduate students to opt out of purchasing their regalia from the student bookstore, with Amazon.com and third-party sellers a more popular option. It’s easy to find black caps and gowns online for $20.

Students also turn to Reddit and other social media platforms to find alumni and peers offering used caps and gowns at discounted prices or even for free.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” said Kenneth Lopez, a graduating senior majoring in business administration. “How is it that Amazon (is) selling it for cheaper and we’re getting maybe double or triple that (cost)?”

Lopez said that one way to defray these costs comes from the Latino Student Business Association, or LSBA, which is among several CSU Dominguez Hills organizations working to help students save money by partnering with local businesses such as Chick-fil-A, Panda Express and Shakey’s Pizza.

Lopez explained that the Latino Student Business Association, where he is the vice president of finance, reached out to local businesses all over Carson to set up fundraisers. The money, raised from a percentage of product sales, was put toward graduation stoles — a sash typically in the school’s colors with embroidery of the school’s name and year of graduation, costing about $50 — to give seniors a personal memento of their achievements.

Sonoma State University does not charge students a fee to graduate. The commencement gear, required for the ceremony, is sold through outside vendors, with a basic bachelor’s degree cap and gown set costing $95.

Aurelio Aguilar, a graduating senior at Sonoma State majoring in communications, found a more affordable alternative through the campus store: renting regalia. While it’s not well-advertised, he explained, he was able to rent the gear. “It came out to about $80 for the cap and gown, and the (tassel) they gave us for the top of the cap.”

At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, one grassroots program aims to fight the problem head-on. The university’s Grad Gown Reuse program has gained in popularity, offering students a sustainable solution to the one-time-purchase model.

Started in 2022, the program allows students to donate their graduation gowns instead of having them hang in their closets collecting dust.

Carina Ballek is a senior environmental earth and soil science major at Cal Poly and is also an intern with the Green Campus team at Cal Poly. Ballek and her team worked with Cal Poly’s Educational Opportunity Program to kick-start the program, receiving a donation of 90 gowns.

“Our gowns are so popular that they are signed out in two days,” Ballek said, highlighting the need for more donations.

“There has been more demand than there is supply,” said Amy Unruh, a sustainability and waste specialist within Cal Poly’s energy utilities and sustainability department. She believes that getting the word out could help draw in more donations.

Since the program’s start, hundreds of students have benefited from reusing regalia. Logistically speaking, the Gown Reuse program sets up a table outside of commencement so graduates can easily drop off their gowns directly after the ceremony. Recent graduates can also drop off their gowns at the office of sustainability, or mail them in.

“It’s important because, on a sustainability level, we’re saving lots of gowns from going to landfills,” Ballek said. She also noted that “graduates don’t have their full-time jobs yet and would rather not spend $90-$100 on a gown.”

San Diego State University student Maren Hawkins, a journalism media studies major, estimated that regalia cost was “$135 or $145, and buying it (meant) not buy(ing) food for two weeks.”

Added Hawkins, “I’ve talked to other students about how … it’s unreasonable, the amount of money we have to put in to graduate.”

Instead, Hawkins turned to people whom she could rely on: alumni friends.

“I was embarrassed to ask my friends to borrow their (cap and gown),” Hawkins said. “We’d never talked about not being able to afford graduation. Now, I’m grateful that I’m not spending this money on it, because I know they’d sit in my closet for the rest of my life.”

The only item Hawkins purchased was her stole for $35.

Another San Diego State student, interdisciplinary studies major Lizeth Garcia, felt similarly. She and her housemate, Abigail Polack, found ways to avoid the costs.

Garcia and Polack worked at San Diego State’s Aztec Market since junior year, and both continued working there because students who work for Aztec Shops can apply to receive free regalia.

“Might as well keep working there so they can pay for my (regalia),” Garcia said. She said that free regalia was her primary reason for working, adding, “We already knew that we had to pay for graduation.”

At Cal State Fullerton, a program to help students with regalia costs comes from a partnership between Basic Needs Services and Titan Shops.

Created in 2022, Cal State Fullerton’s Academic Regalia Support provides regalia to students experiencing “recent unanticipated hardship,” according to Victoria Ajemian, director of Basic Needs Services..

The program offers 100 bachelor’s degree regalia sets that students register to reserve starting in April. Not all of the requests are filled due to high volume and limited supplies.

Business administration major Tiffany Lo’s friend, Azurine Chang, applied. “She barely got it last month,” Lo said.

Lo didn’t need the program herself — she’d gotten regalia from alumni. “There was no question when I asked,” Lo said. “They’re like, ‘Hey, you can have it — it’s collecting dust in my closet.’” Lo, who is saving money to study abroad, only purchased the CSUF stole.

Lo also directed friends to Facebook Marketplace, where she saw offers for regalia from past years for $35 — tassel and all.

“My friend didn’t buy the tassel for 2025,” Lo said. “She was like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna just use the 2024 tassel. No one’s gonna notice when we’re all gonna go walk.’”

Layla Bakhshandeh is a graduating senior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, majoring in journalism and graphic communication; Marc Duran is a graduating senior at Sonoma State University, majoring in communications; Stephinie Phan is a graduating senior at California State University, Dominguez Hills, majoring in journalism; and Joshua Silla is a graduating senior at San Diego State University, majoring in journalism and media studies. All are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

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22/05/2025
Cal State board anticipates a ‘painful year’ as campuses cut costs

California State University officials meet for the July 2024 meeting of the board of trustees.

Credit: Ashley Bolter / EdSource

California State University is taking the forecast of a snowballing budget gap so seriously, even a recent message touting a new hire came with the equivalent of a financial weather advisory.

The nation’s largest university system welcomed Emily F. Cutrer as the new interim president of Sonoma State University last week with the stern reminder that she must address “enormous financial pressures” facing the university, where fall 2023 enrollment was down more than 36% over the last decade.

That sobering message was repeated to the system’s 23 campuses at the last board of trustees meeting before the fall term — a moment of truth when campus leaders aiming to reverse declines in student enrollment will find out if their bids to attract and retain students worked. Even if efforts to boost enrollment succeed, cutting costs could prove a necessity on many campuses, CSU officials warned. Board Chair Jack B. Clarke Jr., addressing school presidents directly, said they ultimately will determine how to manage limited resources.

“Presidents, we understand that you’re going to have to make some hard decisions and, within your campus communities and your general communities, you’re going to be criticized,” he said. “Understand that we’re behind you in terms of making the hard decisions.”

CSU could be staring down a $1 billion budget gap in the 2025-26 school year as the result of dwindling state support for higher education and rising costs, staff said at the July board of trustees meeting.

CSU has also unveiled a plan to reshuffle dollars from campuses that fall short of enrollment goals. In April, the system released a preliminary budget document sketching how the system could reallocate $32 million in enrollment funding from 12 campuses that didn’t meet resident enrollment targets or target increases and shift it into nine campuses where 2024-25 resident enrollment targets have been increased. A CSU spokesperson said the system is finalizing those plans over the coming weeks.

The system expects more budgetary trade-offs going forward, CSU Chief Financial Officer Steve Relyea said to trustees at their July meeting. Major expenses include a backlog of facilities and infrastructure projects, employee compensation costs and obligations the schools must meet under legal mandates such as Title IX, the federal law barring sex-based discrimination in schools.

“We anticipate negative impacts on academic offerings and student support services,” Relyea said. “The funding that we’re receiving, while it’s more, is still not sufficient to cover the increased cost on our current operations, and at this point universities will likely have to redirect significant dollars from existing university budgets to cover employee compensation commitments.”

Enrollment drops lead to cuts

CSU earlier this year agreed to a 10% raise for faculty represented by the California Faculty Association following a one-day strike. Trustees last week voted to approve salary increases for four campus leaders over the objections of some speakers during public comment.

The grim forecast underscores the challenges facing CSU at a time of flagging student enrollment across higher education amid declining public trust in the value of a college degree. Systemwide, fall 2023 enrollment stood more than 30,000 students shy of its 2020 peak.

Campus efforts to entice students back to campus include easing transfers into the system, reengaging students who started but did not finish a degree and more support for students of color. And CSU leaders say they remain focused on long-term goals like boosting graduation rates for historically underrepresented students and rebuilding trust in Title IX and other anti-discrimination programs.

Funding those priorities will require hard choices. Officials anticipate they can partially plug holes in the budget with reserve funds, but they said school presidents and the system itself must tighten their belts to cover the rest — cuts they acknowledged could prove painful and unpopular. The university system also will have to contend with pressure from faculty, who argue they should have a greater say in university decision-making.

Cuts are nothing new at some CSU campuses. In recent years, as enrollment fell more than 15% from pre-pandemic levels at schools including Cal State Channel Islands, San Francisco State and Sonoma State, campus leaders have held off on filling some open positions or launched voluntary separation programs to reduce staffing costs. Cal State Monterey Bay in May announced 16 layoffs and an additional 86 departures under an early retirement program. At Cal State East Bay, another campus that has seen a dip in enrollment, campus leaders in May announced that the school would no longer sponsor its women’s water polo to save money.

“Upending 19 student-athletes’ East Bay careers is without precedent,” said Jeff Newcomb, a lecturer and president of the California Faculty Association’s East Bay executive board, at the July meeting. “Going forward, authentic shared governance — it’s hard— but it’s crucial if we are to emerge from austerity measures with trust and strategic vitality.”

Take Sonoma State as another example.

The school has weathered enrollment declines with serious cost-cutting. To manage a budget shortfall, spokesperson Jeffery Keating said in a statement, Sonoma State has trimmed $21.4 million from its base budget since 2020-21 and plans an additional $7.5 million cut in 2024-25.

Some of those savings have come from reducing the number of faculty and staff, including through attrition and early retirement programs. Keating said faculty and staff headcount fell 22% between 2019 and 2023.

The aim has been “to protect student services and academic programs,” according to the statement, and the school doesn’t plan to scale back areas like financial aid, health services or career counseling.

He said the school sees some positive signs on the horizon: It projects that net student headcount will rise in 2024-25.

Across the system, CSU anticipates a $218 million shortfall this school year, according to a budget presentation. Making up the difference in funds likely will require tapping into reserves and “aggressively pursuing new students and working to retain current students,” said Ryan Storm, the system’s assistant vice chancellor for budget.

The budget presentation was not the first time Cal State has flashed financial warning signs.

The cost of educating CSU students far outstrips the money the system actually has to educate them, a 2023 report by CSU leaders found. Trustee Diego Arambula reminded colleagues last week that the gap between what the system estimated it should spend to meet student needs and what it does spend was $1.5 billion, and could grow as campuses trim their budgets.

The search for savings

The search for cost savings starts with the central office, Chancellor Mildred García said.

The Chancellor’s Office is reviewing each of its divisions in pursuit of “not efficiency for its own sake or purely for cost savings, but for mission-driven efficiency,” she said in a report to the trustees. In that vein, the office will split the division of academic and student affairs into two, a reorganization García said was estimated to save at least $500,000.

The July meeting also highlighted CSU’s smallest university — Cal Maritime — as both a cautionary tale and a possible inspiration for how the system’s campuses might share costs and academic programs in the future.

The board considered a proposal to merge the maritime academy into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in a bid to save the Vallejo-based maritime school following a steep drop in enrollment and rising overhead costs. The board will resume those discussions in September and make a final decision in November.

Cal Maritime interim President Michael J. Dumont told the board the school has “taken a chainsaw to every expense on our campus” in pursuit of financial sustainability. Trustees praised the proposal to integrate the maritime academy into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as an “elegant solution” that would save costs as the campuses consolidate administrative services and other operations.

CSU officials have left the door open for future campus mergers but say no additional integrations are immediately planned.

A document announcing the integration proposal said it’s in keeping with CSU’s goal to look for cost savings “from consolidation of certain administrative functions and from inter-campus cooperation and collaboration in the offering of programs and services.”

In response to questions about whether future campus mergers are likely, a CSU spokesperson cited a document that says CSU “must remain open to considering all options in the future to ensure the financial health of the system and its universities.”

That includes ongoing initiatives to save money short of full mergers, such as negotiating systemwide contracts with vendors and purchasing electricity for multiple campuses on the wholesale energy market.

“There are a lot of tools in the toolkit in addition to an integration like this,” CFO Relyea told trustees last week.

And Relyea noted that the $1 billion budget gap forecast for the 2025-26 school year is an estimate based on assumptions that could prove flawed. A shortfall could be avoided by making permanent cuts this school year, pausing new investments, bridging the gap with reserves and successfully lobbying the state for additional money, he added.

Some campuses might try to streamline their budgets in ways students won’t notice.

That’s the goal at Cal State Northridge, where administrators said that measures like cutting nonessential staff travel or delaying plans to replace older technology and equipment were among the ways they hope to save money.

“Everything that’s related to student success, we’re trying to shield that as much as we can,” said Edith Winterhalter, who leads the university’s budget department. “It’s really on the administrative side that we’re doing a lot of strategies to reduce our costs as much as we can.”

‘A painful year’

A wild card in CSU’s finances is its reliance on the California Legislature, which has funded roughly 60% of the school system’s operating costs in recent years. That can expose the university system to swings in state revenue.

CSU dodged the worst in this year’s budget. Early budget drafts proposed pushing a 5% funding hike that had been promised for 2024-25 into the following year. The final budget landed on a compromise: a one-time cut of $75 million, offset by an ongoing increase of $240 million. Staff attributed the improvement to an energetic lobbying campaign on behalf of the universities.

The budget outlook going forward is less rosy. Anticipating more lean years ahead, state legislators envision an 8% cut to CSU’s ongoing state funding in 2025-26, according to a CSU budget presentation. On top of that, state legislators have proposed that CSU front $252 million in the 2025-26 school year, which the state would subsequently reimburse in 2026-27. A similar spend-and-reimburse maneuver would occur in the 2026-27 school year.

Such an arrangement could prove risky for Cal State, Storm observed.

“If we spend, in advance, hundreds of millions of dollars and the state does not reimburse us, it would significantly deplete our one-time balances and reserves, and we could be left with new ongoing commitments and no new funding to support them,” he said.

That reality has compelled Cal State to look to grow other funding sources, including what students pay to attend its universities. Trustee Christopher Steinhauser defended the board’s previous decision to increase tuition by 6% annually starting this fall, saying the additional revenue will allow the system to save hundreds of jobs.

“We heard earlier in the spring we have to do less with less,” Steinhauser said. “This is going to be a painful year. … If we didn’t pass that tuition, we would be in a whole big mess, much bigger than we’re in now.”

CSU leaders have also pointed to other possible sources of funding, including operating campuses year round and pursuing more public-private partnerships. Trustee Larry L. Adamson urged university presidents to think creatively about raising money from philanthropic sources as one additional revenue stream.

“How many endowed chairs do we do every year in the CSU? And I think the answer is few to none,” he said during last week’s meeting. “We have to start doing more and more of that kind of thinking, as the UCs and privates do constantly. And instead of trying to just raise money for buildings, which we do a lot of, let’s start trying to raise money that offsets our actual ongoing expenses.”

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18/05/2025
San Francisco schools must avoid state takeover at all costs, education veteran warns

A sign in support of public school is seen outside a home next to Sutro Elementary School in San Francisco on Oct. 9, 2024. The school is among the 11 schools previously proposed for closure within San Francisco Unified School District amid decline in enrollment and budgetary woes.

Credit: Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

San Francisco must do everything it can to avert a state takeover of its schools.

That’s the stark message brought by Carl A. Cohn, the only outside educator to be brought in to help the team of city administrators set up by Mayor London Breed to help the school district overcome multiple crises, including a looming budget shortage, declining enrollment, and the departure of its superintendent, the second in two years.

“I remain a huge fan of local control,” said Cohn, a revered figure in education circles in California and nationally. “I fundamentally believe that if historically underserved students are going to be rescued, it is going to be by locals, not by state government or higher levels of authority.”

Carl A. Cohn

The challenges facing the 48,000-student district are being experienced to some degree by many others around the state. Just across the San Francisco Bay, Oakland Unified and West Contra Costa Unified, which includes Richmond, are grappling with comparable challenges.

San Francisco’s, however, seem especially acute.

“I think the loss of federal pandemic relief funds, coupled with declining enrollments will make things difficult for most districts, but San Francisco is probably ahead of the curve on this,” he said.

There’s little that Cohn, who projects calm and reassurance but can also be disarmingly direct, has not seen in his 50 years in an array of roles in public education.

He was superintendent of the San Diego and Long Beach school districts, the second- and third-largest in California after Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD). His 10-year tenure at Long Beach was especially noteworthy for fostering academic excellence and accountability, resulting in the district winning the prestigious Broad Prize For Urban Education.

He was appointed to the State Board of Education by then Gov. Jerry Brown, who later recruited him to lead a new state agency, the California Collaborative for Education Excellence.

He has been brought in to deal with various trouble spots over the years. He co-chaired a commission of the National Academy of Sciences to look into whether District of Columbia schools had exaggerated their academic results under the leadership of Michelle Rhee, then arguably the best-known, and most controversial, school superintendent in the nation.

He was the court-appointed monitor overseeing a consent decree to improve special education in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Currently, he is co-leading an initiative with Harvard professor Jennifer Cheatham to prepare school superintendents to cope with the political polarization roiling school districts across the country.

He has also been a mentor to generations of school superintendents, and trained many of them as a professor at Claremont Graduate University, and at the University of Southern California before that.

Cohn has never had to close schools himself and says that San Francisco must do everything it can to find alternatives to doing so. That is similar to a mindset Breed appears also to have embraced, and was a major reason behind the resignation of Superintendent Matt Wayne last week.

For now, at least, school closure plans are on hold. “The challenge with closing schools from a symbolic point of view is that it can be seen as the beginning of the death of a community,” Cohn says.

“There are multiple ways to cut a school district budget,” he says. “And if you have to, there are ways to do it so it is not a huge negative.”

He recalls being sent to Inglewood Unified a dozen years ago by then-State Board President Michael Kirst to take stock of the deep financial hole the Southern California district was in.

He found a lackadaisical attitude among school officials about the prospect of a state administrator with the power to overrule local decisionmaking. “They seemed to think the takeover wasn’t such a big deal, that after the bailout they would get their authority back,” he says. “And here we are, 12 years later, with the district nowhere near having an elected school board with any authority.”

The district is still overseen by an administrator appointed by the county.

Cohn has yet to meet Breed, but two weeks ago he came from Palm Springs, where he is based, to meet with the mayor’s School Stabilization Team made up of top San Francisco officials, co-led by Maria Su, the longtime head of the city’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families. In an unexpected move last week, the school board appointed Su to be the new superintendent, at least until June 2026.

He points out that, unlike other large urban districts in California, the city of San Francisco commendably contributes funding to its schools, which means it has a more direct stake in their functioning.

What is essential is strict oversight over how the district spends its money, he says. He recalls the first day he was given a tour of the administration offices at Long Beach Unified as a 31-year-old educator in the district.

On the second floor was a tiny office with a sign on the door reading “Position Control” right next to the budget office. He was told it was the most powerful office in the district — one that determined what staff could be hired at a school. “Even if you were the superintendent you could not get a position filled unless Position Control said it was in the current budget.”

In addition, each year the district’s research office issued what was called a “quota bulletin,” which decreed how many employees a school qualified for based on its enrollment. Its edicts, he says, were “treated as a sacred document that had been handed down from Mt. Sinai.”

A similar parsimonious ethos is in place in parochial schools. “What is notable about these schools is that they are not over resourced,” said Cohn, who advises the California Catholic Conference on its schools. “You won’t find an assistant principal, a counselor, a reading specialist unless the school has the enrollment to support it.”

“My impression is that these types of controls were not present in the San Francisco school system,” he says. “It’s important for spending to be based on actual enrollment and not on wishful spending.”

He says it would be important to bring all key parties together — the mayor’s stabilization team, incoming Superintendent Su and her deputy, board representatives, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a state-sponsored oversight agency — and put them all in the same room to have a “candid conversation.”

“Getting a handle on what exactly they need to do to retain local control seems like a real important value,” he said.

One thing schools can have no impact on is declining birthrates, Cohn points out. So other strategies to attract and retain students will be needed.

He notes that San Francisco has many private, parochial and charter groups — more than most communities. He suggests conducting focus groups with people who are opting out of more traditional public schools to find out more precisely “what it is that those schools are offering that San Francisco isn’t.”

That could suggest strategies that San Francisco could offer — from more child care to innovative magnet schools — to support families and to encourage them to enroll their children in district schools.

San Francisco schools are especially vulnerable to being taken over by the state. In recent years, when the state bails out a district financially, authority to appoint an administrator has been delegated to the county offices of education. But because San Francisco is both a city and a county, it would be subject to, in Cohn’s words,”an old-fashioned state administrator.”

With Mayor Breed up for reelection in two weeks, and with four of seven school board seats also on the ballot, the district faces many unknowns.

Regardless of what happens on Election Day, Cohn says a fundamental issue the district has to address is “what kinds of resources a school gets based on its enrollment so that future spending doesn’t spiral out of control because someone thinks ‘I need this’ or “I need that.’”

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07/05/2025
Hidden costs of college include, for many, commuting

The UC Riverside parking lot is filled with the cars of students who commute.

Credit: Omisha Sangani

As we head into a second year of delays and confusion around FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, it is more important than ever to revisit the daunting financial scene many college students face today.

Beyond tuition, students incur additional costs, including on-campus housing, meal plans and indirect costs not paid directly to their college/university. Indirect costs include, among other things, books, transportation, off-campus housing and a computer. For California students living off campus, indirect costs are roughly $21,000 a year (and are even higher for students who live on their own).

With an eye toward costs, many students opt to commute rather than stay on campus because it is cheaper, they can live with family (which may include caretaking for their parents, siblings, and/or children), or they have other responsibilities at home to maintain. For example, 60 % of UC students , 86% of CSU students, and 85% of all college students across the U.S. commute to campus.

The 3E Study is currently collecting economic, educational and health and well-being data from students at public California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) campuses over time. We asked participants about how things were going this past school year and their most satisfying and disappointing experiences at their institution.

One trend immediately emerged from the results: Attending their schools is expensive, and commuter students are struggling.

Many students in our study described having to drive over an hour each way to get to school every day. The challenges posed by their commute often prevent students from thriving, both academically and socially, during a critical time in their development.

The participant responses bring to life the grim picture:

“I expect to be exhausted as classes end every day. My commute has taken a greater toll (avg. 100 minutes one-way) on my time management than I anticipated, and this is the greatest factor preventing me from being more involved on campus,” one student says.

Other commuting students shared that “it’s a lot harder to make friends” and “I work part-time and commute three hours a day for school.”

Commuting is an issue of affordability that is exacerbating unequal education access. When low- and middle-income students do not have affordable housing options on or near campus, are facing too many other expenses even to consider on-campus housing, and/or are juggling other responsibilities like caregiving, they may have limited options for where to live, regardless of how far they are from campus.

Living at home and commuting to and from campus also introduces new financial stressors. Many commuter students struggle to pay for gas. While living at home may be more affordable than staying on campus, financing a new tank of gas every few days is no bargain.

One participant who commutes from Los Angeles to Riverside (roughly 55 miles) for school writes, “A limitation that I keep having is the lack of money … gas is basically now an absolute necessity for me to even consider earning a higher education.”

Expanding affordable options and resources for students is the key to minimizing these class-based inhibitors to college access. For example, some institutions are creating specialized orientation programs and resources, such as commuter centers (areas with dedicated commuter-specific facilities such as a fridge or computers), to help these students feel more connected and supported during their college experience.

To decrease the financial burden of commuting, colleges should partner with local transit agencies to offer free public transportation to all students (a program that many California colleges are already implementing). When determining financial aid allocations, schools should consider the cost of commuting as part of the cost of attendance for any students not living on campus. Creating special grant programs designed to reduce tuition costs for commuter students allows students to put tuition savings toward affording gas and/or car payments.

Commuter students statewide are facing high tuition and high indirect costs. Better supporting the costs of commuting will help ensure an equal chance for everyone to get an accessible college experience.

•••

Isabella Yalif is an undergraduate student in economics and sociology at Vanderbilt University.
Lindsay Hoyt is an associate professor of applied developmental psychology at Fordham University and co-leads the 3E study.
Alison Cohen is an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco and co-leads the 3E study.

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.

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06/05/2025
California school districts are weighed down by new costs of old sexual assaults
Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

School districts’ costs for compensating students victimized by sexual assault are escalating by billions of dollars. Many cases date back decades and were revived by a 2019 state law that widely expanded liability exposure to schools and other public agencies for past child sexual assaults.

An independent analysis of that law indicates a severe impact. Litigation will siphon tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars from general funds. Adverse jury verdicts and settlements could cost districts millions, potentially forcing layoffs and program reductions. Most districts will face record assessments to sustain shared insurance risk pools they contribute to.

In the worst case, districts will seek costly emergency state loans or bankruptcy protection — unless, the study said, the overall liability burden is spread “to protect the stability” of school districts.

California’s elementary and secondary school system “will survive the challenge presented by the claims of childhood sexual assault. But individual school districts, charter schools and other agencies may not,” concluded the sober assessment of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a state agency charged with preventing districts’ financial meltdowns.

Troy Flint, chief of communications for the California School Boards Association, said FCMAT’s report should prompt action. “We have called upon the state to develop a safety net to defray costs that threaten school districts with insolvency. The report is another opportunity to reiterate this request,” he said.

The report doesn’t name districts or describe how they’re coping. But one district that might not survive is Carpinteria Unified, a 1,900-student district south of Santa Barbara with a $42 million budget.

Next year, it’s scheduled for trial for four claims of sexual assault from the 1970s. The district lacks historical records, and the insurance company at the time went out of business, leaving the district on the hook, said Superintendent Diana Rigby. The abuser, a principal convicted of sexual assaults, has died, as have potential witnesses and the then superintendent, she said. Legal costs over several years will force budget cuts, she said.

“We all believe that victims deserve their due justice and compensation. Of course we do,” said Rigby. But “an unfavorable verdict would be catastrophic.”

Among its 22 recommendations, FCMAT proposes the state create a voluntary victims’ compensation fund like the one for victims of the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Victims would generally be compensated in a nonjudicial setting based on the crime’s severity and victims’ experiences. Legislators would decide if the state would share the funding burden.

The Legislature unanimously passed Assembly Bill 218, which precipitated the surge in lawsuits, in October 2019. The law:
- Extended the statute of limitations to file a child sexual assault lawsuit from age 26 (eight years after turning 18) to age 40.
- Extended the statute of limitations for those over 40 to within five years of when victims reasonably should have discovered repressed memories of a sexual assault.
- Enabled victims of assaults whose statutes of limitations had expired to file lawsuits by Dec. 31, 2022.
In 2023, the Legislature took the next step and passed Assembly Bill 452, which eliminated any statute of limitation for new lawsuits for sexual assaults filed after Jan. 1, 2024.

AB 218’s just intentions, unknown costs

The Legislature acted after a decade of shocking revelations and massive settlements, including by the Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Church, as well as the $169 million that Los Angeles Unified paid on 150 claims of sexual abuse by one teacher at Miramonte Elementary. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has acknowledged paying more than $1.5 billion from various settlements.

The Legislature signaled in AB 218 that schools, county offices of education, cities and public bodies with programs for children should be accountable for lifelong harm caused by sexual assaults under their watch. The author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzales, D-San Diego, said it would “confront the pervasive problem of cover-ups in institutions, from schools to sports leagues.”

The Legislature’s fiscal analysis cited “unknown costs” but projected higher insurance premiums.

Dave George, CEO of the Schools Excess Liability Fund (SELF), a public agency that provides school districts with catastrophic insurance coverage, added that districts had difficulty convincing legislators there would be “real money out of the pockets of districts” from rising costs of insurance and settlements. “The general response was, ‘Don’t worry about it — it’s just insurance,’” George said.

Hard information on claims is unavailable because there is no database on sexual assault outcomes. Creating a central repository is FCMAT’s first recommendation. The most recent data is from 2023.

FCMAT’s best estimate of the dollar value of claims filed because of the law was $2 billion to $3 billion for school districts, including about $500 million facing Los Angeles Unified. Other public agencies’ costs will significantly exceed that value, the report said.

But with many claims still in the courts, the final damages are unknown. Mike Fine, FCMAT’s CEO and coauthor of the report, acknowledged they might be higher than estimated. The average claim is about $2.5 million per victim, Fine said.

The estimate doesn’t include the cost of insurance, which has risen an estimated 700% — to about $255,000 for a 10,000-student district since the passage of AB 218, the report said, plus coverage now required of nonprofits and day care providers working in districts. It also doesn’t include new lawsuits being filed daily, said Fine.

George said SELF had two sexual assault claims open in 2020 and has received 400 claims for 600 plaintiffs since. SELF provides catastrophic insurance for claims up to $55 million for about 500 school districts. It notified them to expect $300 million to $400 million in supplementary assessments for ongoing and new AB 218 claims.

George said that districts settled all but two recent lawsuits before going to trial. One that didn’t — and paid a stiff price — was Moreno Valley in Riverside County, the state’s 23rd largest district. A jury found it responsible for failing to protect two middle school students from a teacher’s sexual abuse in the 1990s. The jury levied $135 million in damages.

Moreno Valley negotiated the price down to $45 million in order to pay a lump sum. SELF covered $15 million; Moreno Valley paid $30 million from its budget reserves.

But the district isn’t out of the woods. The teacher remained on the payroll for two decades, and the district still faces four more potentially expensive lawsuits. The district declined to comment for this story.

Adding to small districts’ financial vulnerability, said Fine, is that “a jury doesn’t distinguish between the size of the district and its ability to pay. Jurors can’t be told that information.”

Rising costs of ‘social inflation’

The report said that the $100-plus million settlements contribute to “social inflation” — rising costs because of more lawsuits, plaintiff-friendly verdicts and larger jury awards.

These factors also have created a “perilously unstable” commercial insurance market, which public agencies like SELF rely on for additional coverage, the report said.

Fine said that districts are already issuing “judgment obligation bonds” to make restitution. No district has sought an emergency state bailout as a last resort, but Fine said that will happen.

“Generally speaking, the smaller the district, the higher that risk,” Fine said.

The report suggests that the Legislature revise statutes to lengthen payoffs and settlement deadlines. It urges lawmakers to immediately study a victim compensation fund. But the focus is on creating “zero tolerance” of sexual assaults by mandating student training to promote awareness, expanding work history verification and increasing staff training.

Fine will present the report at legislative hearings. Leilani Aguinaldo, senior director of government relations for School Services of California, which advises districts, welcomes that opportunity. “It’s an excellent report. Schools have no resources for claims from decades ago,” she said.

Flint added, “The fears of schools are real.”
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21/04/2025