Thousands of teachers could be added to the state’s workforce next school year because of a California Commission on Teacher Credentialing decision to offer teacher candidates who almost pass their teaching performance assessment a chance to earn a preliminary credential without retaking the test.
Beginning early next year, teacher candidates who come within -1.0 standard error of measurement — generally about two or three points — of passing either the California Teaching Performance Assessment or the edTPA, can earn their credential if their preparation program determines they are prepared, commissioners voted on Friday. This decision will not impact teacher candidates who take the Fresno Assessment of Student Teachers.
“To be clear, the recommendation is not proposing lowering the standard, rather it would expand the ways in which candidates could demonstrate their readiness to begin teaching,” said Amy Reising, chief deputy director of the commission on Friday.
Performance assessments are required to earn a teaching credential in California. Candidates demonstrate their competence by submitting evidence of their instructional practice through video clips and written reflections on their practice. Student candidates who select the CalTPA must complete two assessments or cycles.
“The secondary passing standard would be targeted toward candidates who fell just short of the current adopted passing standards set for these assessments, but may have demonstrated classroom readiness through other measures at the local level and within their programs,” Reising said.
Preparation programs can recommend eligible candidates for a preliminary credential by documenting that they have demonstrated proficiency in each of the seven domains in the state Teaching Performance Expectations, according to the commission.
The decision came after commissioners reviewed a report at their October meeting that revealed that a majority of teacher candidates who failed performance assessments over the last five years were extremely close to passing. If the new standard had been used over the last two years, 2,000 of the 2,731 teacher candidates who failed cycle one of the CalTPA , 953 candidates of the 1,152 who didn’t pass cycle 2 of the CalTPA, and 360 of the 1,124 candidates who failed the edTPA would have passed the assessment and earned a credential, according to the commission.
Teacher candidates whose score is too low on their performance assessment to take advantage of the secondary passing standard can work with their teacher preparation program to revise or resubmit their work, said Anita Fitzhugh, spokesperson for the commission. The assessment can be submitted at any time at no cost because the state waived the fees. It takes about three weeks to receive a score.
Commission staff also plan to work with teacher preparation programs to develop a formal process to identify and support programs with low teacher performance assessment passing rates, according to staff reports.
An enduring teacher shortage has put pressure on the state to remove hurdles to earning a teaching credential. In July 2021, legislation gave teacher candidates the option to take approved coursework instead of the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, or the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET.
The commission’s new plan isn’t without controversy. One concern from speakers at Friday’s meeting was that the decision would undermine Senate Bill 488, which requires the commission to replace the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment with a teaching performance assessment.
Commission staff said that the secondary passing standard for the two performance assessments will not impact the literacy performance assessment that is under development and is expected to be piloted in the spring and field-tested the following school year.
“A separate standard-setting study will be conducted in Spring 2025 to recommend passing standards for the literacy performance assessment,” Reising said in an email on Monday.
According to commission staff, a work group made up of teachers, administrators, mentor teachers and university faculty will convene in July to study and make recommendations on how to improve all three of the state’s performance assessments. It will consider best practices, the challenges of implementation and how to ensure reliable scoring.
More than 50 people submitted comments to the commission on the state’s performance assessments. Most urged commissioners to either eliminate or revamp the performance assessments.
“TPAs are vastly subjective, depending on who is scoring the assessment; rubric-based explanations and feedback upon results are very vague,” said Aly Gerdes, a teacher at Evergreen Elementary School District in San Jose. “I truthfully do not see the inherent value in CalTPA and believe it needs to be abolished or replaced with something that is worthwhile and will do more than add an extra stressor to teacher-candidates’ lives.”
Many speakers and letter writers said the high-stakes assessment is detrimental to teacher candidates.
“On a personal level, the stress and pressure associated with the TPA can be overwhelming,” wrote teacher Cheena Molsen.
“The weight of high-stakes evaluations can adversely affect the well-being and morale of educators, potentially diminishing their effectiveness in the classroom. The toll it takes on the personal lives of teachers should not be underestimated, as the pursuit of excellence in education should not come at the cost of educators’ mental and emotional well-being.”
The overreliance on undersupported part-time faculty in the nation’s community colleges dates back to the 1970s during the era of neoliberal reform — the defunding of public education and the beginning of the corporatization of higher education in the United States. Decades of research show that the systemic overreliance on part-time faculty correlates closely with declining rates of student success.
Furthermore, when faculty are equitably compensated and thus able to provide high-quality student-faculty engagement in and out of the classroom, students succeed at significantly higher rates.
Nonetheless, part-time faculty do not have job security, often teach at several different colleges, struggle to earn a living wage, are generally not paid for office hours, and are not compensated equally for the same work as their full-time counterparts. This two-tiered structure was never meant to be permanent. It has deprived students and colleges of having a fully supported faculty, and has mostly remained hidden from the public.
It is time for the California Community Colleges to address the hypocrisy at the heart of its institutions: decades of disinvestment from the faculty and thus, students. Transitioning from a two-tiered to a nontiered — unified faculty— model will better serve the students, colleges and the state of California. The concept of a unified faculty emphasizes the elimination of the two employment tiers — part-time and full-time — to create a nontiered structure.
This model is based on faculty and collegewide unity as opposed to the current structure that has produced a divided faculty, inequitable service to students, and stagnant or diminishing student outcomes. The K-12 system and the Vancouver model at Vancouver Community College exemplify education systems structured around a unified faculty model.
A unified faculty model would vastly improve student success rates and the efficiency of the California Community Colleges by prioritizing student-faculty engagement in and out of the classroom, ensuring a culture of academic freedom, increasing the number of faculty participating in college governance and institutional effectiveness processes, fulfilling the system’s civic engagement mission to prepare Californians to become active participants in the state’s democratic processes, and increasing college and systemwide fiscal stability.
In 1988, AB 1725, a landmark community college bill, codified in California education law the goal to have 75% of its credit instruction taught by full-time faculty. Given its overreliance on an undersupported part-time faculty, however, the system has never come close to achieving this goal. The fact that the state established such a goal and has invested in some yearly budget increases to improve part-time faculty conditions indicates California’s awareness of the problem and interest in addressing the inequities of the two-tiered model.
Taking inspiration from the Vancouver model, many of the California Community Colleges’ system partners and stakeholders have been preparing to launch a systemwide transition to a unified faculty model. While the creation and adoption of legislation could also support this transition, legislation is not necessary for a transition to begin at the college level. Individual colleges, for example, could pilot a unified faculty model to demonstrate its efficacy.
A statewide transition to a unified faculty model will require leadership and coalition-building among the statewide faculty unions, academic senate, Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, the Chancellor’s Office, and other stakeholder groups.
In the past two decades, the California Community Colleges system has undergone significant “reform,” narrowing students’ educational opportunities and shrinking the student body by more than 1 million students. For example, remedial instruction, English as a second language programs, and lifelong learning courses have been cut or severely reduced without public debate.
During this period, the system’s student outcomes have declined, stagnated or only slightly improved despite decades of so-called reform efforts. Furthermore, the system has not successfully met its transfer, employment, or equity goals over the past five years. After decades of narrowing the student experience, defunding instructional programs and curriculum, and deprofessionalizing the faculty, the community college system has failed the California public.
Investing in a unified faculty model would remedy the California Community College system that is currently struggling to bring back the millions of students who have been pushed out of their colleges. Prioritizing the faculty’s vital role in students’ lives, California will set a precedent for a truly inclusive and equitable educational system that will empower millions of students to positively impact the economy and democracy of California, the nation and the world.
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Debbie Klein is an anthropology professor at Gavilan College in Gilroy and a former president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges.
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.
A family gets information at Fort Miller Middle School’s Health and Wellness Fair in Fresno.
Photo courtesy of Eric Calderon-Phangrath
Children’s health advocates are sounding alarm bells about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to freeze public health insurance enrollment for undocumented adults.
They say the move will put those adults’ children at risk of poor health care and well-being.
California has gradually expanded Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance for low-income people, to undocumented immigrants, including those with temporary status such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. First, undocumented children were included in 2016, then young adults 19-25 in 2019, then seniors 50 and older in 2022, and finally those ages 26-49 in January 2024.
Before the expansion, undocumented immigrants only qualified for Medi-Cal in emergencies, during pregnancy, and for long-term care. California is paying for the expansion on its own, without federal dollars.
Now, faced with a deficit, Newsom is proposing to freeze new enrollment in Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrant adults and charge current undocumented enrollees a $100 monthly premium starting in 2027.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have been pressuring states like California to stop providing benefits to undocumented immigrants, saying tax dollars should not be used for people who are in the country without permission.
In announcing the proposed cuts, though, Newsom said they were to balance the budget. He said his beliefs have not changed. He touted his promises to expand health care to all, regardless of immigration status, both as mayor of San Francisco and governor of California.
“It’s my value. It’s what I believe, I hold dear. I believe it’s a universal right. And I have for six years championed that,” Newsom said. “This is a tough budget in that respect.”
He said there are now 1.6 million undocumented adults enrolled in Medi-Cal, about 5.3% of total enrollment.
“Our approach was not to kick people off and not to roll back the expansion, but to level set on what we can do and what we can’t do,” Newsom said.
Though undocumented children would not be affected directly by the changes, advocates say that restricting health insurance for undocumented adults will affect their children, the vast majority of whom are U.S. citizens. An estimated 1 in 10 California children have at least one parent who is “undocumented” or has temporary protections from deportation, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.
“We are disheartened,” wrote Avo Makdessian, executive director of the First 5 Association of California, an organization that represents the state’s county commissions supporting children in the first five years of life, in a statement released after Newsom’s announcement of his revised budget. “When Medi-Cal coverage is scaled back for adults without legal status, children in those families suffer. Decades of research are clear: Healthy parents lead to healthy kids.”
Ted Lempert, president of the nonprofit organization Children Now, said, “Children Now is deeply concerned with the proposed cuts to Medi-Cal.”
“We urge the governor and Legislature to consider that when parents lose coverage, kids are less likely to get the health care they need, so the proposal to hurt parents hurts kids as well,” Lempert said.
Mayra Alvarez, president of The Children’s Partnership, an organization that advocates for children’s health equity, said studies show that when parents become eligible for Medi-Cal, they are more likely to learn about health insurance options available to their children and enroll them.
“This ‘welcome mat’ effect can lead to a noticeable increase in the number of children covered by Medi-Cal or similar programs, even without changes in their individual eligibility,” Alvarez said. “Conversely, when a parent or family member is sick and unable to work or provide care, kids suffer as a result.”
Dolores, 65, is a grandmother who enrolled in Medi-Cal under the expansion for undocumented immigrants. She said losing it would affect not only her but also her children and grandchildren. She did not share her last name because of fear of immigration enforcement.
Months after enrolling three years ago, Dolores suffered a stroke.
“If I hadn’t had Medi-Cal, I don’t know how I would have gotten health care,” she said in Spanish. “It helped me then, and it is still helping me so much.”
Her enrollment in Medi-Cal has also helped her family, including her grandchildren, who live with her, she said. At a health center in Victorville, she has been able to take nutrition classes and Zumba, and she has learned about healthy foods to cook for her family. She said her 4-year-old granddaughter follows her every move, exercises with her, and has benefited from her grandma’s improved health.
“You know children are like sponges — everything they see, they absorb,” she said.
Dolores said she could not afford to pay $100 a month for Medi-Cal, as proposed by Newsom. She has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, but after the stroke, she has not been able to return to work.
Alvarez added that when state residents are uninsured, that creates other costs in emergency health care.
“Cynically discriminating against our state’s immigrant communities by rolling back Medi-Cal eligibility is not only unconscionable, but doing so will only result in costs being shifted elsewhere,” she said.
Alvarez recommended that the governor and Legislature balance the budget in other ways, such as “closing corporate tax loopholes and making the wealthy pay their fair share, drawing down reserves that exist for times like this, and scaling back spending in more appropriate places, such as the state’s bloated prison budget.”
A woman holds a placard saying “No human is illegal” during an August 7, 2023, march on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Credit: Michael Ho Wai Lee / SOPA Images/Sipa USA
Tens of thousands of children in California stand to benefit from a new executive order by the Biden administration that would provide a pathway to citizenship for their parents.
Advocates said the new program will improve children’s financial security, physical health, mental health and will help them stay focused in school.
Biden announced in June a new program that will allow undocumented immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens to apply for permanent residency without returning to their home countries, if they have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years and have no criminal record. In the past, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens could apply for permanent residency, but they had to return to their home countries to finalize the process and could be barred from the U.S. for up to 10 years. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will begin accepting applications in August.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that about 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens and 50,000 children of applicants who are stepchildren of U.S. citizens will be eligible for the new program nationwide. About 120,000 spouses of U.S. citizens will be eligible for the program in California, according to an analysis by the organization FWD.us of data from the 2022 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Many of those eligible likely have children. An estimated 1 in 10 children in California have at least one undocumented parent, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty. It is not clear how many of them also have a U.S. citizen parent.
“When this was announced, it was like a huge sigh of relief,” said Mayra Alvarez, president of The Children’s Partnership, a nonprofit children’s advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. “The opportunity that families are going to be able to stay together as they apply for permanent residency is a direct commitment to child well-being. It’s an acknowledgment that parents and caregivers are critical to children’s healthy development.”
Some research shows that the fear of deportation of a parent or caregiver impacts children’s ability to do well in school.
“Absenteeism, repeating a grade and dropping out are all more likely” for children who have an undocumented parent, said Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, associate professor of education at UC Santa Barbara. She added that undocumented parents are also less likely to apply for public programs for which their U.S. citizen children are eligible, like Head Start, food stamps and public health insurance.
Modesto resident Mirna Cisneros, whose husband and three children are U.S. citizens, said she was elated when she found out about the new policy.
“Imagine, I even cried when I found out,” Cisneros said in Spanish. Still, she said she won’t truly believe it until she is actually able to apply for permanent residency.
Cisneros came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1999, when she was 17. She met her husband in Florida, and later moved with him to California. Though her husband is a U.S. citizen, she has not been able to obtain permanent residency through him. She was going to apply, but stopped the process after realizing that she would have to return to Mexico and might have to stay there for 10 years.
Cisneros said her three children, who are 17, 16 and 11 years old and are also U.S. citizens, have told her many times they are afraid she will be deported. She said her middle son told her, “’Mamá, I’m always thinking about what will happen if they grab you and take you to Mexico. I’m going to miss you. What will happen if we can’t see you?’”
If she is able to get permanent residency, she said, it would allow her to work in better-paying jobs to help support her family. She currently bakes and decorates cakes from her home.
Being able to apply for permanent residency would also give her children more flexibility and freedom to choose where they want to attend college, Cisneros said. Her oldest daughter is set to graduate from high school next year and has told her she wants to attend college out of state, in Florida, but because Cisneros avoids traveling by plane because of her immigration status, her daughter has been planning to give up that dream to attend school closer to home.
“We know that as soon as they’re able to get a work permit and have the stability of knowing that they’re not going to be deported, that parent will be able to access better employment. That will mean better salaries, better types of jobs that allow parents to be more engaged in their children’s schooling, and that’s going to lead to mental and physical health benefits for parents and children,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). The nonprofit organization was one of two dozen groups that sent a letter to the Biden administration in May asking for the change in policy.
Cervantes pointed to research about how children benefited when their parents received work permits and protection from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, introduced by then-President Barack Obama in 2012 that has allowed hundreds of thousands of people who were brought to the United States as children to temporarily remain in the country and obtain work permits. In one study, children whose mothers were eligible for the deferral program had 50% fewer diagnoses of adjustment and anxiety disorders.
However, Sattin-Bajaj expressed concern that many immigrants may be hesitant to apply because of the upcoming presidential election and the uncertainty of whether such a policy would be maintained under a new administration, particularly if led by former President Donald Trump.
“I don’t have a lot of confidence that there’s euphoria right now, because things move so slowly, and it feels like a storm is brewing,” said Sattin-Bajaj.
Top Republican leaders have rejected the program. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, issued a statement saying, “Biden only cares about one thing — power — and that’s why he is giving mass amnesty and citizenship to hundreds of thousands of illegals who he knows will ultimately vote for him and the Open Border Democrat Party.”
Those who qualify for the new program would not be able to vote until they receive citizenship, and they would not be able to apply for citizenship until three years after they get permanent residency.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson issued a statement saying he expects the program to be challenged in court and accused President Joe Biden of trying to “play both sides.”
“The President may think our homeland security is some kind of game that he can try to use for political points, but Americans know this amnesty plan will only incentivize more illegal immigration and endanger Americans,” Johnson said.
Melinda Gonzalez, 14, poses at Fresno High School where she’ll be a freshman in Fresno on Aug. 14, 2024.
Credit: Gary Kazanjian / AP Photo
MEDFORD, Mass. (AP) – Flerentin “Flex” Jean-Baptiste missed so much school he had to repeat his freshman year at Medford High outside Boston. At school, “you do the same thing every day,” said Jean-Baptiste, who was absent 30 days his first year. “That gets very frustrating.”
Then his principal did something nearly unheard of: She let students play organized sports during lunch — if they attended all their classes. In other words, she offered high schoolers recess.
“It gave me something to look forward to,” said Jean-Baptiste, 16. The following year, he cut his absences in half. Schoolwide, the share of students who were chronically absent declined from 35% in March 2023 to 23% in March 2024 — one of the steepest declines among Massachusetts high schools.
Fleretin “Flex” Jean-Baptiste, 16, of Medford, Mass., poses for a photo at Medford High School on Aug. 2, 2024, in Medford, Mass. Jean-Baptiste’s attendance has improved since the school made the gym available to attending students during the school day, in one example of how schools in the state have succeeded in reducing chronic absenteeism. Credit: Josh Reynolds / AP Photo
Years after Covid-19 upended American schooling, nearly every state is still struggling with attendance, according to data collected by The Associated Press and Stanford University economist Thomas Dee.
Roughly 1 in 4 students in the 2022-23 school year remained chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of the school year. That represents about 12 million children in the 42 states and Washington, D.C., where data is available.
Before the pandemic, only 15% of students missed that much school.
Society may have largely moved on from Covid, but schools say they are still battling the effects of pandemic school closures. After as much as a year at home, school for many kids has felt overwhelming, boring or socially stressful. More than ever, kids and parents are deciding it’s OK to stay home, which makes catching up even harder.
In all but one state, Arkansas, absence rates remain higher than they were pre-pandemic. Still, the problem appears to have passed its peak; almost every state saw absenteeism improve at least slightly from 2021-22 to 2022-23.
Schools are working to identify students with slipping attendance, then providing help. They’re working to close communication gaps with parents, who often aren’t aware their child is missing so much school or why it’s problematic.
So far, the solutions that appear to be helping are simple — like postcards to parents that compare a child’s attendance with peers. But to make more progress, experts say, schools must get creative to address their students’ needs.
$50 per week
In California, Oakland Unified’s chronic absenteeism has been skyrocketing from 34.4% pre-pandemic to 61.4% in the 2022-23 school year, excluding charter schools — one of the few districts in the state where rates increased even as schools reopened for in-person instruction. For the last school year, Oakland reported a drop to 31.9%,
editors note
This in-depth report on chronic absenteeism is part of an EdSource partnership with the Associated Press and Stanford Professor Thomas Dee.
One solution has been for the district to ask students what would convince them to come to class.
Money, the students replied, and a mentor.
A grant-funded program launched in spring 2023 paid 45 students $50 weekly for perfect attendance. Students also checked in daily with an assigned adult and completed weekly mental health assessments.
Paying students isn’t a permanent or sustainable fix, said Zaia Vera, Oakland’s head of social-emotional learning.
But many absent students lacked stable housing or were helping to support their families. “The money is the hook that got them in the door,” Vera said.
More than 60% improved their attendance after taking part, Vera said. The program is expected to continue, along with districtwide efforts aimed at creating a sense of belonging.
A caring teacher made a difference for Golden Tachiquin, 18, who graduated from Oakland’s Skyline High School this spring. When she started 10th grade after a remote freshman year, she felt lost and anxious. She realized only later these feelings caused the nausea and dizziness that kept her home sick. She was absent at least 25 days that year.
But she bonded with an Afro-Latina teacher who understood her culturally and made Tachiquin, a straight-A student, feel her poor attendance didn’t define her.
“I didn’t dread going to her class,” Tachiquin said.
Another teacher had the opposite effect. “She would say, ‘Wow, guess who decided to come today?’ ” Tachiquin recalled. “I started skipping her class even more.”
In Massachusetts, Medford High School requires administrators to greet and talk with students each morning, especially those with a history of missing school.
But the lunchtime gym sessions have been the biggest driver of improved attendance, Principal Marta Cabral said. High schoolers need freedom and an opportunity to move their bodies, she said. “They’re here for seven hours a day. They should have a little fun.”
Stubborn circumstances
Chronically absent students are at higher risk of illiteracy and eventually dropping out. They also miss the meals, counseling and socialization provided at school.
At Fresno’s Fort Miller Middle School, where half the students were chronically absent, two reasons kept coming up: dirty laundry and no transportation.
The Central Valley school bought a washer and dryer for students’ use, along with a Chevy Suburban to pick up students who missed the bus. Overall, Fresno’s chronic absenteeism improved to 35% in 2022-23.
Melinda Gonzalez, 14, missed the school bus about once a week and would call for rides in the Suburban.
“I don’t have a car; my parents couldn’t drive me to school,” Gonzalez said. “Getting that ride made a big difference.”
How sick is too sick?
When chronic absence surged to around 50% in Fresno, officials realized they had to remedy pandemic-era mindsets about keeping kids home sick.
“Unless your student has a fever or threw up in the last 24 hours, you are coming to school. That’s what we want,” said Abigail Arii, director of student support services.
Often, said Noreida Perez, who oversees attendance at Fresno Unifed, parents aren’t aware physical symptoms can point to mental health struggles — such as when a child doesn’t feel up to leaving their bedroom.
More than a dozen states now let students take mental health days as excused absences. But staying home can become a vicious cycle, said Hedy Chang, of Attendance Works, which works with schools on absenteeism.
“If you continue to stay home from school, you feel more disengaged,” she said. “You get farther behind.”
In Alaska, 45% of students missed significant school last year. In Amy Lloyd’s high school English classes in Juneau, some families now treat attendance as optional. Last term, several students missed school for extended vacations.
“I don’t really know how to reset the expectation that was crushed when we sat in front of the computer for that year,” Lloyd said.
EdSource contributed to this report.
Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.
Photo: Andrew Reed/EdSource
A recently filed lawsuit against the West Contra Costa Unified School District could set a new precedent for how districts in California handle and comply with complaints filed by students, educators and community members.
The lawsuit, filed by civil rights law firm Public Advocates last month, alleges the school district failed to remedy issues in the required time frame for nearly 50 “Williams complaints” filed by teachers, students and parents since June 2023. The bulk of the complaints were about poor building conditions at Stege Elementary School, and three were filed about teacher vacancies. There are five complainants, including four educators and a parent, who are suing the district.
West Contra Costa is the first district in the state to be sued under the Williams v. California settlement in 2004, a landmark case that established the Williams complaint process, and the right to textbooks, safe schools and qualified teachers for all California public school students. Public Advocates attorneys led that charge 20 years ago and are now turning to the courts to uphold the standards it set and to stop the unlawful practice of filling full-time teacher positions with rolling substitutes.
“It’s important for districts to know that this is a process that can be enforced by the courts, and they can be subject to a court order when they don’t abide by this specific process,” said Dane Shikman, attorney with Munger, Tolles, & Olson LLP, who is assisting with the lawsuit.
Public Advocates attorney Karissa Provenza said she hopes the lawsuit sets a precedent and that other districts that aren’t complying with the Williams complaint process “fall in line.”
The law firm has kept a close watch on West Contra Costa for years, and Provenza has spent the last few years building relationships with educators, organizers and families. But it shouldn’t just be those districts that Public Advocates attorneys are watching that are held accountable.
“We know there are issues across the board when it comes to districts following through with Williams complaints,” Provenza said. “We’re hoping this (lawsuit) can stand out.”
Anyone can file a Williams complaint, and school districts have up to 30 days to fix the issue and 45 days to respond to the complaint in court. District officials responded to the 45 building condition complaints at Stege Elementary School six months later, and only after plaintiffs’ attorneys repeatedly reminded the district of its legal obligation, the lawsuit alleges.
“It’s a highly informal process that the districts often get away with something less than a full remedy of the complaints, or they delay on getting a response back,” Shikman said.
According to the lawsuit, West Contra Costa’s response “acknowledged the complaints, cited a nonexistent section of the Education Code, claimed the district had no duty to respond within the statutory 45-day timeline, and promised to provide a substantive response with an update by January 12, 2024.”
That response never came, the lawsuit says.
The complaints said the Richmond school had moldy walls, inoperable windows, classrooms reaching more than 90 degrees without ventilation, and broken floor tiles. Lead and asbestos were also found after the district hired an environmental firm to test building materials.
“One of the worst conditions for the students’ learning and teaching was probably the heat,” said Stege teacher Sam Cleare, who is one of the complainants in the lawsuit. “My first year there, we even watched crayons melt outside, but it wasn’t even that much hotter outside than it was inside.”
A student in the after-school program at Stege Elementary School in the West Contra Costa Unified School District.Credit: Sam Cleare
Building conditions at Stege Elementary were never improved, and district officials have “repeatedly” acknowledged conditions at Stege were “dangerous,” the lawsuit says. Superintendent Chris Hurst announced the school was closing for repairs on July 23, four days after the lawsuit was filed and hazardous materials were detected during the removal of window panels.
District officials did not respond to requests for comment on this story and have previously said they don’t comment on litigation.
Unlawful practices
District officials did respond to the three complaints about teacher vacancies, the lawsuit says, but the positions weren’t filled within 30 days and solutions weren’t reported.
Hurst addressed teacher vacancies at a recent board meeting and said the district is “working hard” to fill all positions before the start of the school year this week. The district has posted on job boards and social media platforms, attended job fairs and is partnering with residency programs to recruit teachers.
“But the district’s statutory mandate is not just to ‘try hard’ to recruit teachers; it is to actually provide every student with a permanent, qualified teacher,” the lawsuit says.
If positions aren’t filled, the district’s plan is to fall back on substitutes, which is the reason teacher vacancy complaints were filed in the first place. The complaints said it was illegal to rely on substitutes long-term and in the district’s response, officials acknowledged its practices were unlawful.
Provenza said she is not surprised the district continues to rely on substitutes.
“I wish I could start hearing that they were going to start shifting their ways, but unfortunately, it seems like relying unlawfully on substitutes is something that they’re going to continue to do,” Provenza said.
The district has relied on day-to-day, 30-day, and 60-day substitutes to fill teacher vacancies. Teachers have also had to pick up extra classes or have had students added to their classrooms, often from different grades. This school year, the district is also asking credentialed staff who aren’t usually in the classroom to step in.
“Substitutes did not follow curricula or assign homework as a dedicated year-long educator would have, and students in those classrooms were denied the stability and consistency that a permanent qualified teacher provides,” the lawsuit says.
Complaints were filed at Stege Elementary, Helms Middle and Kennedy High schools, some of the district’s highest-need schools, where more than 80% of students are low-income. Substitutes were used for an entire school year in some classes, the lawsuit says.
Some students at Kennedy High weren’t sure they would receive grades at the end of the last school year because they never had a permanent teacher, according to the lawsuit. Permanent teachers weren’t assigned to an English language development class, a reading and writing class, a P.E. class, and two music classes.
Most of Kennedy’s students are Hispanic or Latino and Black or African American — 73% and 18% respectively in the 2022-23 school year, the most recent year of available state data. That same school year, 84% of students did not meet grade-level math standards and nearly 58% did not meet reading standards.
A math, science and English class at Helms Middle did not have permanent teachers the last school year, the lawsuit alleges. Nearly 70% of Helms students did not meet grade-level literacy standards and 82% did not meet math standards for the 2022-23 school year, data shows.
Helms Middle mostly serves Hispanic and Latino students, almost 83% in the 2022-23 school year. The next largest population is Black or African American, about 7%. Almost half the students (47%) are also English learners.
There weren’t permanent teachers in a kindergarten, third grade, fourth grade, and second and third grade split class at Stege Elementary last year, according to the lawsuit.
Most of the student population is Black or African American, nearly 39% in the 2022-23 school year, and Hispanic or Latino, 34%. About 73% of students did not meet grade-level standards in math and 75% did not meet literacy standards.
The lawsuit calls the teacher vacancy problems in the district a “crisis.”
West Contra Costa “faces more teacher vacancies than its neighboring districts and continuously under performs in retaining fully prepared and properly assigned teachers,” the lawsuit says. “Quality teachers are the leading school-related factor contributing to a student’s success.”
Students have complained to the board during public comment about teacher vacancies this past school year, saying they aren’t motivated to attend class with consistently different teachers. One high school student said they weren’t learning any new materials in math class.
According to the lawsuit, the district hasn’t reported any solutions to fill teacher positions and blamed the vacancies on the statewide teacher shortage. The lawsuit gave various solutions, including assigning certified teachers of other subjects to vacant classes, using emergency teaching permits, and hiring university interns and retired teachers.
Last year, West Contra Costa did tap into retirees to help fill vacancies, but it’s unclear how many and if these efforts are continuing. The district has said it can’t hire retired teachers for a full school year, the lawsuit alleges, but attorneys claim that under SB 765, districts can do so.
Problems filling teacher vacancies are also connected to poor working environments, Provenza said. It’s difficult to attract and retain teachers when they don’t feel supported, are overworked, and lose prep periods to cover other classes.
‘This year made staying very challenging’
Educators, parents and community members have fought for better conditions at Stege Elementary for years, and for teacher Sam Cleare, her advocacy efforts began with the 45 Williams complaints.
She called the conditions at Stege “inhumane” and “unbearable” and said there was nowhere to escape the heat.
“Students felt sick,” Cleare said. “I felt lightheaded. Not only was it difficult or impossible to learn, but it felt unsafe as well.”
Sam Cleare, a third-grade teacher, has taken a job with the teachers union.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Cleare remembers the windows starting to fall apart when trying to open them and said once she cut her finger on the edge of a window. She taught at Stege for the last seven years, and said it was her dream to retire there. But she’s decided to take a job with the teachers union.
“I will miss working at Stege terribly, but this year made staying very challenging,” Cleare said. “Many teachers struggle to stay at the school due to the working conditions.”
On top of teacher vacancies, Stege has battled dwindling enrollment, chronic absenteeism and a long-awaited renovation for nearly a decade. The building was slated to be remodeled by the 2020-21 school year, but there have been delays. Last November, the board approved an increased budget for renovations, from $2.9 million to $43 million, because of the severe need for repairs.
Parents and community members have been frustrated by the delays and lack of funding going toward repairs. The concerns resurfaced at a Stege community meeting last week when parents were calling out district officials for not addressing the health hazards and safety concerns sooner.
District officials shared an annual report on Stege with the community, the Facility Inspection Tool, a visual inspection that determines if a school needs repairs. According to the report, Stege received a “good” rating, which means “the school is maintained in good repair with a number of non-critical deficiencies noted. These deficiencies are isolated, and/or resulting from minor wear and tear, and/or in the process of being mitigated.”
Meeting attendees were outraged by the conclusion of the inspection, which was done last August, and said it was offensive. Parents and educators told stories about sewage coming out of the toilets when flushing, drywall issues, and complained that students were subject to unhealthy conditions.
With the temporary closure of Stege Elementary, students and staff are starting the 2024-25 school year at Dejon Middle School.
West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
More than 1 in 4 school districts are asking local voters to approve a record $39 billion in school construction bonds on the Nov. 5 ballot. Those that pass will jockey for some of the $10 billion in matching state funding that Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature are asking voters to approve by passing Proposition 2.
The facility needs of districts are huge and growing, even as the state’s overall enrollment is projected to decline over the next two decades.
Decades-old “portable” classrooms are falling apart; many air conditioners are malfunctioning, and classrooms without them are sweltering. Roofs leak, plumbing is corroding, wiring is fraying.
Parents worry about open access to insecure campuses. Schools lack room for new transitional kindergarten classes and plans for climate-resilient, energy-efficient buildings. Increasingly popular career and vocational education programs need up-to-date spaces.
Districts’ priorities will vary, and so will their capacity to pay for them. As in the past, districts with high property values, which often correlate to higher-than-average incomes of homeowners, will have a leg up on their property-poor neighbors in terms of what they can ask their taxpayers to approve. Some districts will check off items on their wish list; other districts will resort to triage, fixing what’s most falling apart.
In March 2020, amid first reports of a new pandemic on the horizon, statewide voters defeated a state construction bond with an unlucky ballot number. As a result, the state fell further behind in helping districts repair and rebuild school facilities.
“The defeat of Proposition 13 in 2020 and the pandemic made local districts more hesitant to put bonds on the ballot in 2022, so there is a lot of pent-up need,” said Sara Hinkley, California program manager for the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley, which has extensively analyzed facilities needs in the state.
“The number of bond measures and the total amount reflect the aging and deferred maintenance of California schools, as well as the increasing urgency of HVAC and schoolyard upgrades to grapple with extreme heat.”
The center estimates that 85% of classrooms in California are more than 25 years old; 30% are between 50 and 70 years old, and about 10% are 70 years old or older.
Proposition 2 won’t significantly reform a first-come, first-served funding system if it passes, but it will clear out a backlog of unfunded school projects and partially replenish a state-building fund that has run dry.
With so much on the ballot competing for attention, Proposition 2 may escape many voters’ attention. Here are answers to questions that should help you fill out your ballot.
What’s on the ballot this year?
School districts have placed 252 bond proposals to raise $39.3 billion; 15 community college districts are asking voters to pass $10.6 billion worth of bonds, for a total of 267 proposed bonds valued at $49.9 billion. They range from a proposed $9 billion bond issue in Los Angeles, the state’s largest district, to $3 million sought by Pleasant View Elementary School District for repairs to its only school in Porterville.
How is school construction funded?
Unlike school districts’ operating money, which mostly comes from the state’s general fund, school construction and repairs remain largely a local responsibility, paid for by bonds funded by property taxes. Over the past 20 years, voters approved $181 billion in local bonds for public school and community college facility projects, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
That compares with $31.8 billion over the same period in state facilities bonds passed for school district and community college construction, plus $4.6 billion from the general fund that Gov. Gavin Newsom directed toward school construction. Altogether, the state has chosen to bear only 17% — one-sixth — of the total costs of school construction since 2001.
Bonds are essentially loans that are paid back, commonly over 25 or 30 years, with interest. In the past 10 years, interest rates have ranged from about 2% to nearly 5% and now are coming down again. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates it would cost the general fund about $500 million annually for 35 years to pay back Proposition 2’s principal and interest.
What does it take to pass a bond?
The passage of a local bond requires a 55% approval rate. Despite the higher threshold than a simple majority, voters have approved 80% of local bonds on the ballot since 2001, according to CaliforniaFinance.com. The exception was in 2020, when voters defeated about half of local bonds, along with Proposition 13. The passage rate bounced back in 2022 to 72% — perhaps a good omen for proposals on Nov. 5 .
It takes only a 50% majority to pass a state construction bond. A voter survey in September by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 54% of likely voters said they would vote yes on Proposition 2, with 44% voting no.
The bulk of state funding for school and community college construction came in the early 2000s, during fast-growing enrollment and boom years for the state economy. However, the state issued no state bonds for a decade after 2006. The 2016 bond, Proposition 51, the last that voters approved, allocated $7 billion for K-12 and $2 billion for the state’s 115 community colleges. All of that funding has been distributed.
Are there limits to how much districts can tax property owners for school bonds?
Yes. Property taxes from school construction are capped at $60 per $100,000 of assessed valuation for unified districts, $30 per $100,000 for elementary or high school districts, and $25 per $100,000 for community college districts. A person whose home assessed value is at $400,000 (often significantly less than the market value) could pay up to $240 in annual property taxes in a unified district to pay off bonds’ principal and interest. Districts will stretch out the timeline for projects to stay under the limit.
How will Proposition 2 be divvied up?
The $10 billion will split:
$1.5 billion for community colleges
$8.5 billion for TK-12 districts, allocated as follows:
$4 billion for repairs, replacement of portables at least 20 years old, and other modernization work
$3.3 billion for new construction
$600 million for facilities for career and technical education programs
$600 million for facilities for charter schools
$115 million set aside to remove lead in school water
Will all of this money go toward new projects?
No.
Unfunded projects left over from Prop. 51 in 2016 that are deemed eligible for funding will go to the front of the line. That’s how the system worked in the past when there wasn’t enough money to go around, and the Legislature applied the same language to Prop. 2. The rationale is that districts spent time and money hiring architects and engineers and drawing up plans, and shouldn’t be penalized for efforts done in good faith.
Those existing projects could consume half of the $8.5 billion for TK-12 funding. As of Aug. 31, the Office of Public Instruction, which tracks projects for funding, reported 1,000 school projects requesting $3.9 billion were already in line, with requests dating back to 2022. These break down to 812 modernization projects potentially eligible for $2.6 billion and 189 new construction projects eligible for $1.3 billion. The deadline for school districts to apply is Oct. 31, so the list may yet grow.
The Office of Public Construction cautioned that although the districts have filed paperwork, they have not been evaluated and approved for funding by the State Allocation Board under the rules in effect for Proposition 51. Some may have been built with local funding and are waiting for a state match.
With $40 billion in local projects on the ballot and probably a net of $4 billion available for modernization and new construction, there likely will not be enough to fund more than a portion, leading to the establishment of a new list of unfunded projects.
How does the match work?
The state awards matching money to districts to defray the qualifying cost of individual school projects; it does not provide a lump sum award for all of the districts’ requests. The state pays a uniform amount per student based on a school’s enrollment. Districts with growing enrollment, buildings over 75 years old, and a shortage of space can receive funding for new construction.
As with past state bonds, the state will split the cost of new construction; the state will contribute a higher match for modernization projects — 60% by the state and 40% by the district.
A new feature in Proposition 2 will provide a slightly larger state match — up to an additional 5 percentage points on a sliding scale system to districts with both high rates of low-income students, foster children and English learners, and, to a lesser extent, with a small bonding capacity per student, another measure of ability to issue construction bonds. Low-income districts like Fresno Unified and Los Angeles Unified will be eligible for 65% state assistance for renovations and 55% for new construction, lowering their share to 35% and 45%, respectively.
Is the formula fair?
Analyses by the Public Policy Institute of California and the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley have concluded that the current system favors property-wealthy districts. Property-poor districts serving low-income families can’t afford bonds to qualify for state modernization subsidies to repair and upgrade schools.
The center’s data showed that the quintile of districts with the lowest assessed property value — those with a median of $798,000 of assessed value per student — received $2,970 per student in state modernization funding from 2000 to 2023, while the districts in the highest quintile, where the median assessed property value was $2.3 million per student, received $7,910 per student — more than two-and-a-half times as much.
Another factor is that matching money is distributed first-come, first-served, which favors large districts and small property-wealthy districts with an in-house staff of architects and project managers adept at navigating complex funding requirements.
Does Proposition 2 address these complaints?
To an extent, yes.
Proposition 2 would dedicate 10% of new funding for modernization and new construction to small districts, defined as those with fewer than 2,501 students. First-come, first-served wouldn’t apply to them.
Proposition 2 would expand financial hardship assistance in which the state pays for the total cost of projects in districts whose tax bases are too low to issue a bond. Eligibility would triple the threshold for hardship aid from a maximum of $5 million to $15 million in total assessed value; additional dozens of mostly rural districts would become eligible. Some have never issued a bond to fix schools that urgently need attention. Since 1998, about 3% of state bond money has been spent on hardship aid.
The higher state match for districts with large proportions of low-income students and English learners is a step toward addressing inequalities. However, critics led by the public interest law firm Public Advocates charge that it does not go far enough and uses flawed measures. Districts like 3,500-student Del Norte in the far north of the state and 46,000-student San Bernardino Unified in Southern California would need an 80% to 90% state match to raise enough money to fix critical conditions and add facilities that property-wealthy districts take for granted, they argue.
What else is new in Proposition 2?
The bond will allow districts to seek a supplemental grant to construct or renovate transitional kindergarten classrooms and build gyms, all-purpose rooms, or kitchens in schools that lack them.
Districts must write an overall plan documenting the age and uses of all facilities when submitting a proposal for Prop. 2 funding. The lack of data has made it difficult to determine building needs statewide.
What would happen if Proposition 2 is defeated?
In the last 30 years, voters have nixed state construction bonds twice, but never twice in a row. If voters do that next month, the unmet building needs of districts struggling to address them will mount. The price to fix them will rise, forcing difficult choices on how to scale back and reorder priorities.
The $9 billion bond issue passed in 2016 would cost $11.8 billion to cover the same work in 2024, 31% more, according to a U.S. inflation calculator. A $10 billion bond passed in 2002 would require $17.5 billon in funding today.
The escalation in materials and labor costs since the pandemic may continue to soar — or maybe not. Voters on Prop. 2 will have to decide whether to take that gamble.
“We believe that voters will understand the value of making the critical repairs and classroom upgrades that our students need and deserve,“ said Rebekah Kalleen, legislative advocate for the Coalition for Adequate School Housing or CASH, the lobby representing school districts and school construction contractors campaigning for Prop. 2.
As states across the nation release their annual data from tests administered to students in the 2023-24 school year, we’re beginning to get a clearer picture of how far along we are in our post-pandemic recovery. The release of California test data today shows our public schools are continuing to turn the corner on pandemic recovery, with gains on most assessments, while highlighting areas where we have more work to do.
Overall, the percentages of California students meeting or exceeding the proficiency standards for English language arts (ELA), mathematics, and science increased. This is encouraging given that the population of socioeconomically disadvantaged students tested increased again over the past year — as it has for each of the last three years — this time from 63% to 65% — an increase of more than 60,000 students. The number of students experiencing homelessness also rose once again. Despite the challenges they face, achievement levels for socioeconomically disadvantaged students increased more than the statewide average in all three subjects at every grade level.
Furthermore, Black and Latino students showed positive score trends in mathematics across all grades, and the stubborn achievement gaps long experienced by Black students began to close with gains larger than the statewide averages in math and ELA at several grade levels. The same was true for foster youth.
These gains for California’s most vulnerable students are likely due in large part to the investments made by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and efforts to target inequities in life circumstances and educational opportunities. These include programs like the California community schools initiative that provides wraparound whole child supports, the expanded learning opportunities program (ELO-P) that provides academic support and enrichment after school and over the summer, the literacy coaching initiative, and the equity multiplier — all targeted to high-poverty schools. Attracting and keeping better prepared teachers in these schools has also been enabled by the Golden State Teacher Grants for new teachers and incentives for accomplished veterans who are National Board certified.
It is encouraging that overall scores are up, but there is more work needed. And an accurate understanding of what’s being measured and what the scores mean is critically important for diagnosing and improving student learning.
Smarter Balanced assessments are administered in California and 11 other states and territories that helped develop the tests. California’s Smarter Balanced assessments are more rigorous than those in most other states as they focus on higher-order skills and critical thinking, and measure more standards.
For example, whereas most states’ English language arts assessments test only reading and use only multiple-choice questions, California’s tests include reading, writing, listening, and even research, as well as open-ended questions and performance tasks that require students to analyze multiple sources of evidence and explain their conclusions.
Each Smarter Balanced assessment measures grade-level content along a continuum. Higher test score performance represents a student’s ability to handle greater complexity as they use evidence, analyze and solve real-world problems, and communicate their thinking.
Smarter Balanced defines benchmarks at levels 2, 3 and 4 respectively as foundational, proficient, or advanced levels of grade-level skills, while a “1” shows “inconsistent” demonstrations of grade-level skills. In the case of English language arts, students as early as grade three who achieve levels 2 or above are reading, writing and demonstrating research skills.
As an example, a sixth-grade writing prompt asks students to research and explain the impact of the 1893 World’s Fair, and different levels of performance show different levels of sophistication, from communicating a few facts to elaborating on how the activities of the fair led to other human accomplishments with long-term impact:
To understand where improvements are most needed, educators can look at “claim scores” on the assessment — measures of what students have shown they know and can do on specific topics. These show, for example, that 25% of students statewide score below the standard in reading, but 31% score below the standard in writing — an area for greater focus. Since research shows that writing improves reading, ensuring that students are receiving regular writing instruction and practice will improve performance in both areas of literacy.
Similarly, in mathematics, California assessments are more sophisticated than those in many other states, as they measure math concepts and procedures (where many state tests begin and end), plus data analysis, problem-solving, and how well students communicate their reasoning through additional performance tasks in which students must solve a complex real-world problem and communicate their reasoning.
The states that created and use these assessments believe that when students are asked to learn and show higher-order skills, they are better prepared for later schooling and life than if they were only prepared to bubble in answers on a multiple-choice test.
A recent study from Washington state provided evidence for this belief. The study found that over half of students who scored a “Level 2 / Nearly Meets” on the Smarter Balanced high school mathematics test (and more than one-third of those who scored a 1) successfully enrolled in post-secondary learning without additional remedial courses, and the large majority succeeded. Among those who scored a 3 or 4, 70% and 82% respectively attended college, and nearly all were successful.
We hope that educators, parents and policymakers will not only understand and act on what they learn from these assessments, but also use the evidence productively for improving teaching and learning. Smarter Balanced assessments include lesson plans and interim assessments teachers can choose to examine student learning and adjust their teaching throughout the year. The score reports also provide information about the levels at which students are reading and computing, linked to resources parents can access directly to support their children — supplemented by what they know authentically about what their children are learning and doing at home and school.
Students’ engagement, parents’ observations, teachers’ reports and classroom-based assignments will always provide more detailed, timely and useful information about individual students’ interests, needs and progress. Hopefully, these assessments can provide a useful adjunct if we know what they mean and how to use them productively.
Courtesy: California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office
With each passing year, we learn how a changing climate can affect our lives. For most Californians, two things stand out: bigger, more destructive wildfires and long-term threats to our precious water supply.
There are proven solutions to these challenges, enabling us to shift to prevention instead of simply responding to growing natural disasters fueled by climate change. The longer we wait to make this change, the greater the consequences and the costs.
Proposition 4, on the Nov. 5 ballot, represents a strategic investment in California’s environment, its economy and its people. The $10 billion bond measure dedicates $1.5 billion to preventing wildfires and smoke by creating fire breaks near communities, improving forest health to reduce wildfire intensity, supporting specialized firefighting equipment, and deploying early detection and response systems. To protect safe drinking water supplies, it provides $3.8 billion to treat groundwater contaminants, recharge aquifers, rebuild crumbling water infrastructure, and restore watersheds.
It also provides an important opportunity for California’s community colleges and the students we serve.
Proposition 4 will create important jobs in an evolving green economy. The question is how we build the workforce needed to do the work ahead.
California’s Community Colleges are uniquely positioned to ensure Proposition 4 dollars are leveraged to usher in this new workforce. If it passes, students will see new opportunities in career technical education programs that align with industry needs, including:
Expansion of clean energy training programs: Proposition 4 could support programs in solar energy installation, wind turbine maintenance and battery storage technology. By equipping students with these skills, community colleges can prepare them for high-demand jobs in the renewable energy sector, which is projected to grow as California expands its clean energy infrastructure.
Green construction and sustainable building techniques: The bond could provide resources to expand programs in sustainable construction, teaching students energy-efficient building methods and retrofitting techniques. These skills are crucial as California ramps up efforts to build climate-resilient infrastructure, creating jobs for students in green construction.
Water management and conservation technology: As the state faces ongoing water challenges, Proposition 4 could help community colleges develop programs focused on water conservation and management. Students trained in operating water technologies and wastewater treatment would be in high demand across various sectors, especially agriculture and public utilities.
Electric vehicle (EV) maintenance and infrastructure: With the rapid shift toward electric vehicles, funding from Proposition 4 could be used to expand EV technology programs, preparing students to service EVs and maintain charging stations. This would align with the state’s push to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles, creating opportunities for students in a growing market.
Work-based learning and internships in climate projects: Proposition 4 could enable partnerships between community colleges and green industry employers to provide internships and hands-on experience. Students could work on real-world projects in renewable energy, water management, or green construction, giving them practical skills and a competitive edge in the job market.
By dedicating at least 40% of its investment to disadvantaged communities, Proposition 4 ensures that these communities must be part of the work ahead, not witnesses to it.
As an educator, I see opportunity. California’s 116 community colleges are distributed across the state and are deeply embedded in their communities, particularly those in rural areas. When natural disasters strike, these communities find shelter at their community college campuses. Proposition 4 is a chance for California to build out its climate infrastructure efficiently by leaning on its community colleges in two ways: (1) sites for infrastructure deployment and (2) for workforce development. By expanding access to green job training programs, Proposition 4 will enable Californians from all backgrounds to participate in climate jobs of the future.
The students in our community colleges today will be the innovators, technicians and leaders of tomorrow. Proposition 4, through its focus on climate resilience, offers the chance to support these students in gaining the skills they need to succeed in an evolving job market while preventing wildfires, providing safe drinking water, protecting California’s iconic natural heritage, and contributing to the state’s clean energy transition. If we invest in them now, we invest in California’s future.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Kindergarten students at George Washington Elementary in Lodi listen to teacher Kristen McDaniel read “Your Teachers Pet Creature” on the first day of school on July 30, 2024.
Credit: Diana Lambert / EdSource
The Social Security Fairness Act, signed by President Joe Biden on Sunday, will increase retirement benefits for many educators and other public sector workers, including nearly 290,000 in California.
The act repeals both the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset laws, which reduced Social Security benefits for workers who are entitled to public pensions, such as firefighters, police officers and teachers, according to the Social Security Department.
The change in the laws does not mean that California teachers, who do not pay into Social Security, will all get benefits. Instead, teachers who paid into Social Security while working in non-teaching jobs will be eligible for their full Social Security benefits, as will those eligible for spousal and survivor benefits.
Teachers who had previous careers, or who worked second jobs or summer jobs, benefit from the repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision, said Staci Maiers, spokesperson for the National Education Association.
California is one of 15 states that does not enroll its teachers in Social Security. Instead, teachers receive pensions from the California Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS.
“This is about fairness. These unjust Social Security penalties have robbed public service workers of their hard-earned benefits for far too long,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association in a media release. “They have hurt educators and their families — and damaged the education profession, making it harder to attract and retain educators. And that means students are impacted, too.”
At a press conference Sunday, President Joe Biden said the Social Security Fairness Act would mean an increase on average of $360 a month for workers that have been impacted by the laws. There will also be a lump sum retroactive payment to make up for the benefits that workers should have received in 2024, Biden said. No date has been announced for those payments.
“The bill I’m signing today is about a simple proposition,” Biden said. “Americans who have worked hard all their lives to earn an honest living should be able to retire with economic security and dignity.”
“It’s a game-changer for a lot of educators,” said Kathy Wylie, a retired teacher who lives in Mendocino. Wylie, who is a few years away from drawing Social Security, worked for a technology company for 15 years before embarking on a 17-year career in education.
She expects that the bump in retirement funds could encourage some veteran teachers to retire early.
Biden signed the legislation following decades of advocacy from the National Education Association, the International Association of Fire Fighters and the California Retired Teachers Association. The bipartisan bill was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 12 and the U.S. Senate on Dec. 21.
The amendments to the Social Security Act apply to monthly benefits after December 2023. The Social Security Department is evaluating how to implement the new law, according to its website.
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