Students from Sierra Foothill Charter School use butterfly nets to gently catch, observe and release riparian species on Stookey Preserve.
Credit: Courtesy of Mariposa Arts Council
Clay Muwin River doesn’t need a studio to make art. A teaching artist for the Mariposa County Unified School District, River creates pieces of art amid the butterflies and woodpeckers on the banks of Mariposa Creek, sharing the magic of art in nature with TK-6 students. It’s a practice deeply rooted in the Indigenous culture that courses through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in the heart of Gold Country, not far from Yosemite.
“Our cultural arts are deeply tied to our natural environment,” said River, a member of the Northeastern Passamaquoddy and Mi’kmaq nations but also an artist and storyteller grounded in the traditions of the Southern Sierra Miwuk. “We can’t actually practice our cultural arts without the environment being healthy.”
From weaving and quilting to pottery and mural painting, River taps into a native tradition in which art and nature have always been inextricably linked. The impulse to create is fueled by the beauty of the environment, the golden rolling foothills and green pastures.
“It’s one and the same,” said River. “I live and breathe this work. I didn’t choose it. It chose me.”
The mission of this art and environmental education camp, a collaboration between Mariposa County Unified School District (MCUSD), the Mariposa Arts Council and the Sierra Foothill Conservancy, is to give children a sense of connection to the natural landscape, how their lives are entwined with the health of the watershed, through a deeper understanding of art and ecology. This is arts education in the great outdoors, a limitless space where children’s imaginations can take flight.
A student from El Portal Elementary School makes observations and journals in Yosemite Valley, near Wahhoga Village.Credit: Courtesy of Mariposa Arts Council
“We are really focused on place-based education, being that we do have such a rich natural context around us and we want to make sure that our students are able to tap into that,” said Cara Goger, executive director of the Mariposa County Arts Council. “There are so many arts education opportunities that draw from the natural ecosystems and the cultural significance of Mariposa Creek.”
Cultural enrichment is woven together with scientific practice in an immersive art project. The students learn to harvest native plants, like elderberries, for food and medicine, while they are steeped in the richness of indigenous culture and the majesty of wildlife.
“I tell them to listen to their first teacher, the earth is the first teacher,” River said. “What is the ground telling you? What are the trees telling you? What are the animals telling you?”
A seamless integration of art, science and Indigenous culture, these day camps teach kids on many different levels at once, evoking all of their senses to engage their minds. That’s one reason River says challenging classroom behavior, which has spiked in the aftermath of the pandemic, seems to vanish in the open air.
“Being outside changes the children drastically for the better,” River said. “Behavior changes. It’s really different to sit in a chair inside a building for eight hours than to be outside looking at nature, rolling around in the grass, being able to take your shoes off and put your feet in the dirt. Children need that.”
Clay Muwin River tells a story to the children at Mariposa Creek.Credit: Courtesy of Mariposa Arts Council
A sense of place is the key here. Mariposa Creek is the unifying theme, providing the plants that are blended together to make dyes for watercolor painting, the willow stems for basket-weaving, and the clay for pottery-making. The creek is the star of the show, the source of both the art and the science that unfolds.
While some may associate the arts with densely populated, urban hubs, this art education program celebrates the universality of the artistic impulse. You don’t need a bustling downtown to find a thriving arts scene.
“So often we think of art in the built environment, the “house” art found in theaters and galleries,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents’ statewide arts initiative. “I appreciate the way this project nurtures civic engagement and acknowledges and connects the assets in the county that include the natural environment and the knowledge and culture of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation.”
The ongoing restoration of the creek, as a way to preserve the splendors of the foothills, is also at the heart of the project. The children learn about eliminating invasive species as part of fire mitigation efforts and studying the water to measure the health of the ecosystem.
“It’s a simple idea,” said River. “I’m showing them that water is life. If you look in the water and you see no life, if you don’t see any sort of microorganisms in there, no little tadpoles or fish, then the water is not well.”
All of these ecological lessons build off the connection the children already have with their environment. The creek emerges as an art studio and a laboratory rolled into one. The students also sometimes go on field trips to nearby Stookey Preserve and Yosemite’s Wahhoga Village.
“The kids are already out here playing in the creek, exploring their landscape,” said Goger. “When we build a curriculum that focuses on something they’re already familiar with, they bring their own knowledge and understanding to that. Hopefully, afterwards, their investment in that landscape is even deeper. One of the things we really try to drill down on with the restoration of the parkway is instilling the idea of stewardship of the land.”
Families have responded enthusiastically to the program, which launched in 2022 and has thus far been paid for with Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP) money, but may be expanded through Proposition 28 funding in the future. Administrators hope to build ways to connect the camp with in-classroom study and create an after-school program going forward.
“All my time in education, I have never seen such overwhelmingly positive parent surveys. It’s been fantastic,” said Lydia Lower, assistant superintendent for educational services for MCUSD. “Parents are seeing that their kids are engaged in really healthy, productive activities. And they’re learning not only from an academic standpoint but from a living standpoint. What does it feel like to express yourself? What does it feel like to be part of a collective? What does it feel like to be working for the betterment of your community?”
Ambitious goals are part of what elevates this arts camp into an experience that may fundamentally shift how children see the world. Certainly, the marriage of sustainability and survival, the way humans and the environment perish or flourish together, runs through all the art lessons River teaches.
“Place is all we have,” said River. “Not to keep going back to an indigenous view, but home has never been a building. That’s why tribes stay. Not just because that was the reserved parcel that was given. It’s the land that is home. We’re teaching children that if you take care of this space, it’ll be here forever for you. This can be forever home.”
Packed crowd anticipates discussion on Orange Unified Parental Notification Policy on Sept. 8, 2023.
Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource
A grassroots movement propelled by small contributions from teachers and local residents ousted two board members from an Orange County school district who supported controversial causes.
The victory came despite opposing big money contributions from conservative organizations, Republican political figures and business leaders.
More than 85% of the $227,000 raised by recall supporters came from over 400 individuals giving an average of about $450 each, with the rest coming mostly from teachers’ unions. More than 1 in 10 of the donations came from people who listed their employer as Orange Unified, including more than 25 teachers and board member Andrea Yamasaki.
The money raised, said the recall movement’s co-chair, Darshan Smaaladen, “reflects the passion for our schools and our students in the district, and the care that our entire community has that we have great public schools.”
By contrast, just under a third of the nearly $260,000 raised by opponents of the recall came from 115 individual donors, with the majority coming from conservative groups — led by the Lincoln Club of Orange County, which describes itself as “the oldest and largest conservative major donor organization in the state of California.”
The donations are listed in disclosure forms filed Feb. 17, with some additional large donations reported before the election in early March. Board members Madison Miner and Rick Ledesma — who were repeatedly accused of promoting their own political ideologies at the expense of student learning and well-being — were removed when the recall passed by 3,500 votes.
Following the money
The No OUSD Recall group received a number of hefty donations — and was led by the Lincoln Club of Orange County, which gave a series of donations totaling $80,500, just under the $83,261given by all individuals to that same campaign.
The Lincoln Club’s donations, which came from their State PAC and Issues PAC, accounted for 46% of the total campaign’s organizational contributions and 31% of donations across the board.
The Lincoln Club of Orange County is funded by various business groups, and more than half of its income comes from the group Angelenos for Outstanding State Leadership, which gets all its money from one organization singly funded by the McDonald’s Corp.
The McDonald’s Corp. did not respond to EdSource’s multiple requests for comment.
On top of the contributions from the Lincoln Club, three organizations connected to Mark Bucher — the CEO of the California Policy Center, a think tank that stands for the belief that “until we rein in government union power, there’s little hope for reform in our state” — collectively gave $66,000.
Bucher said in an interview with EdSource that he “was always an advocate” for the donations to the campaign.
He also said he previously served on the board of the Lincoln Club and that he left about a year ago.He claimed that unions have “financed the campaigns of just about every elected official,” and that the donations were an attempt to “offset, very frankly, corrupt practices.”
Bucher, who supported the election of Ledesma and Miner, also said that “the trustees that got recalled were doing a spectacular job of representing parents and citizens and kids, and they were attacked constantly for it, and school board meetings have been a circus. It’s just ridiculous.”
He added that his future in political advocacy and spending, including in the upcoming November election, depends on the candidates and issues at stake.
The law firm of Shawn Steel — the co-founder of the recall campaign, who has also served as the Republican Party of California’s national committeeman and wrote for the California Policy Center — also supported the No on Recall movement. Assemblyman Essayli, R-Riverside, who authored a failed statewide Assembly bill that would have required schools across California to notify parents if their child may be transgender, also contributed.
His bill AB 1314 laid the foundation for a similar policy that has been adopted by more than a half-dozen school districts throughout the state.
The Lincoln Club of Orange County’s executive director, Seth Morrison, along with Bucher criticized the teachers’ unions for backing the recall effort, and Morrison also claimed they were “tied in with a larger Democratic Party.”
He said that “they were looking for an excuse to do something like this. This is a bigger thing for them. …That’s something we saw, and we’re happy to engage to defend the people who just got elected.”
On the other hand, the recall campaign collected more money for their campaign from a number of individual contributions.
Most donors to the recall effort gave small amounts, and Smaaladen said that the recall movement’s strategy of asking community members to “donate in honor of” a teacher, along with their matching events, made a large impact on the campaign.
Among a wealth of smaller contributions is also a series of sizable donations from the Orange Unified Education Association, which gave $52,086.50 — or 74% of the campaign’s organizational money and 19.5% of total contributions.
Educators and the unions representing them played an important role in both organizational and individual contributions. Teachers — including both the union and individual educators — gave the recall campaign $61,048.82, or 22.9%, of its money.
Teachers unions from neighboring districts, alongside organizations and political action committees representing educators’ interests, also pitched in, giving just over $7,000 collectively.
Local organizations with political affiliations — including the Democratic Women of South Orange County and Democrats of North Orange County — carried far less weight, while the Josh Newman for Senate campaign donated $5,000.
Women for American Values and Ethics, which identifies itself as a “grassroots group dedicated to advancing progressive values and ethics,” gave $1,041 to the campaign, and the Community Action Fund of Planned Parenthood donated $2,500.
What drove each side of the recall
After OUSD’s board fired then-Superintendent Gunn Marie Hansen without explanation in January 2023, a group of OUSD parents and teachers banded together to start the grassroots recall movement.
The OUSD recall website explains that the group was motivated by decisions made by the school board, including a series of alleged violations to the Brown Act, banning the pride flag, passing a policy that requires school administrators to notify parents if their children show signs of being transgender and a temporary suspension of the district’s digital library because it included the book “The Music of What Happens,” a coming-of-age story about two boys who are in love.
“We knew that this board was not going to listen to parents and the district, and they weren’t going to do what was best for our students,” Smaaladen said. “We became this kind of ragtag group that has evolved into a grassroots movement of hundreds of involved parents.”
Smaaladen said the group opted to pursue the recall during the March primary in an effort to save the district money. The recall effort started gathering signatures in June2023, and by October had collected enough to place the recall question on the ballot.
Recall leaders also decided to focus their effort on Ledesma and Miner — and dropped the attempt against board member Angie Rumsey and board President John Ortega because they are up for re-election this coming November.
However, the No OUSD Recall group has repeatedly stated in social media posts dating back to April 2023 that the recall effort is an attempt to attack parents’ rights.
“When we won our elections to the OUSD Board less than two years ago, we did so on the promise of defending parents’ rights, fighting for curriculum transparency, working to improve test scores, prioritizing student safety and ensuring education is not replaced with indoctrination,” Miner said in a statement to EdSource.
“We proudly followed through on those promises, and the radical recall attempt is the resulting backlash.”
Now, the five remaining school board members will have to decide whether to appoint two new members or to hold a special election; plus, three of the remaining board members’ terms expire this year.
“It has been a tumultuous year with the numerous changes within Orange Unified. The voters have spoken, and I look forward to our board being able to move past the politics and collaboratively focus on how to best support our districts’ students,” said Orange Unified School board member Ana Page in a statement to EdSource.
“I deeply appreciate the diverse perspectives and expertise that my fellow trustees will bring to future civil discussions that directly impact OUSD students and look forward to continuing the valuable work of supporting public education.”
Beyond Orange Unified
Before the voting started, both sides believed that the recall election against Ledesma and Miner would be consequential — not just for their district but for the state, and possibly, the nation as a whole.
“We’re going to see more of this, which is all the more reason why … we’re getting involved to stop it, to tell them that turning around and recalling someone not even a year after they’ve been in office is just a waste of taxpayer dollars. It’s just wrong,” the Lincoln Club’s Morrison said.
Efforts to recall members of a school board aren’t uncommon in California and across the nation — though relatively few actually make it to the ballot, said Joshua Spivak, a senior research fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Law’s California Constitution Center and author of “Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom.”
Spivak said the number of school board recall efforts across the country grew especially during the Covid-19 pandemic — which he described as “arguably the biggest impact that a government ever had on our lives in our lifetime unless you were in WWII. But hardly any of them resulted in the removal of an elected official, he said.
Since then, the number of recalls has dwindled, Spivak said.
In 2023, he said there were 102 recall attempts across the country — 29 of which were in California. Michigan, which is known to be the state where recalls are most popular, had 35 attempts that same year.
“Orange Unified will be setting a precedent,” Smaaladen said before the election. “But I hope the precedent we set is to send a clear message to those that are elected to school boards: to listen to their community and to make moderate decisions that are in line with what is best for the students and not necessarily their own personal agendas.”
She added that the recall election has forced the community to pay more attention to local politics, which she said has already and will continue to “change the trajectory of the district.”
“I’ve had numerous voters say, ‘Oh, I didn’t vote in November 2022,’ or even ‘I voted for Madison and Rick, but, you know, I wasn’t really paying attention because everything was fine,’” Smaaladen said.
“And when things are fine, it’s good, you can let it be. But now (voters are) paying attention.”
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In eastern San Bernardino County, a cluster of five school districts take a different approach than nearly all the rest of California when it comes to school policing: they not only buy books for kids, they also buy bullets for cops. They run their own police departments.
There are just 19 school-run police forces in California spread over 10 counties. They include Los Angeles and San Diego unified, the state’s two largest districts. In all, 15% of California K-12 students — more than 863,000 kids —attend districts with their own police departments.
Those students are more likely to be exposed to police than students whose schools rely on officers from municipal police departments or sheriffs offices to respond, a far more common model, an EdSource analysis shows.
Studies show that student exposure to police raises fear and anxiety, especially for students of color who come from over-policed communities where friction with, and distrust of, police are common. A 2021 study by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California found that students of color and disabled students were far more likely to be arrested in schools with assigned officers than those without. Black students’ arrests were 7.4 times higher in schools with assigned law enforcement.
Outside of San Bernardino, school-run police departments are waning. Oakland Unified disbanded its force in 2020 after the videotaped murder of George Floyd, who died at the hands of city police in Minneapolis. Baldwin Park Unified in Los Angeles County closed its in 2021. Inglewood Unified’s will shutter at the end of this month. San Jose’s has but one officer — its chief.
Combined, the 19 school police departments in the state have fewer than 500 officers, state records show. Some have as few as four. Others have had troubles: police chiefs sued, arrested and a department sharply criticized for abusing students. The unified districts with their own police departments are: Apply Valley, Hesperia, San Bernardino City, Fontana Unified and Snowline Joint.
But San Bernardino’s cluster will soon expand. Trustees of the Victor Valley Union High School District, based in Victorville, voted in March to form a police department and begin searching for a chief to head it.
“We need to take our safety to another level,” district Superintendent Carl Coles said prior to the board’s unanimous votes. He cited no crime data or examples of student violence. He told EdSource by email that student suspension rates declined in the last year.
Among the reasons he gave in March: Victor Valley needs to keep up with its neighbors, five districts that have their own police departments, rather than rely on school resource officers provided by contract with the county sheriff.
Board members were quick toagree.
“The way things are right now, our resource officers, they get called away and sometimes you never see them,” trustee Rosalio Hinojos said before the vote. School-employed officers are more stable, always on campuses and “have a good rapport” with students, he said, referring to districts that employ their own officers. “I don’t think that’s happening right now.”
Just before the vote, Hinojos struck an ominous tone, saying it was “not a question of if, but a question of when” police would be needed in the nine-school district. He declined an EdSource request to clarify the remark.
Why San Bernardino?
San Bernardino, the largest U.S. county outside of Alaska and nearly the size of West Virginia, isn’t a place where much discussion about defunding police departments occurred after Floyd’s murder. It’s so deeply conservative that voters approved a 2022 ballot measure instructing officials to explore seceding from California.
“When you look across our county, we do have pockets of areas that may statistically have more crime that takes place,” San Bernardino County Schools Superintendent Ted Alejandre told EdSource.
“That may be one influence on why a school may want to have more protection.” He said his office gives no guidance on the matter, but added that local superintendents and school board members in the Inland Empire have deep interests in “keeping their campuses safe.”
In Fontana, a city of 212,000 known for its steel mill and NASCAR track, school police are deployed “full force at the high schools and middle schools and elementary schools,” board President Marcelino Serna said in an interview.
He cited fear of “school shootings” and potential threats “of people coming on campus,” as primary reasons for the department’s existence. “It’s sad that anyone would want to commit harm to any children. We’re always having to be vigilant.”
The department had 15 sworn officers as of April, state records show. The cops, Serna said, like to show off their police cars and dogs to students, as well as “their weaponry, if kids are wanting to see that.”
In nearby Apple Valley, a townof 75,000, police presence on campuses became spotty because deputies from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department were often called away from schools to perform other duties, Rick Roelle, an Apple Valley Unified School District board member and retired sheriff’s lieutenant, said in an interview.
That “would leave the schools kind of high and dry,” he said. The district formed its own police force in 2002. It had nine officers as of April, records show.
Apple Valley Unified has experienced rises in “drug use, violence and disruptive behavior,” Roelle said. “What we’re seeing today is violence where kids are getting kicked in the head, and they’re getting smashed up against walls, and they’re getting severely injured on campus. So, if there’s no police there to take someone into custody for doing that, who’s going to do it?”
An EdSource investigation into school policing gathered nearly 46,000 logs of calls for police from and about a sample of California schools from Jan. 15, 2023 to June 30, 2023. In Apple Valley, 4.9% of its nearly 1,500 calls were for fights, assaults, battery, and disturbing the peace — the second-lowest rate amongthe 10 districts with their own police departments included in EdSource’s sample. Inglewood Unified led the category with nearly half of its 196 calls reporting such events.
Apple Valley Superintendent Trenae Nelson declined interview requests, as did school Police Chief Cesar Molina. Nelson also didn’t respond to emailed questions about the police department.
Comparing districts with their own police and those that rely on outside departments:
Students in high schools with district-run police were more likely to encounter officers than other high schools. The average number of calls for police was 88 in districts with their own departments compared with 57 in districts with outside police.
School districts that employ police officers break up fights more than other districts: 4.6% of incidents in high schools without in-house departments were calls about fighting or disturbing the peace, compared with 6.6% in high schools with outside police.
School district police officers are dispatched to counsel students over 10 times more than other officers. In the 76 high schools with their own departments, police officers were dispatched to counsel students 63 times, and in the 209 high schools without their own district officers, they were called 16 times.
Police “really are just ill-suited to address mental health concerns, not because of training, but really it’s not their role or their expertise to be handling these types of things,” said Cal State Long Beach education associate professor Caroline Lopez-Perry, who studies school counseling.
Carl Cohn, a former State Board of Education member and superintendent at Long Beach Unified in the 1990s, said he was pressured to create a district police department by the school board after the 1992 riots triggered by the police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles.
A board member who was a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff “was adamant we needed it,” Cohn said.
But Cohn said he was skeptical, thinking, “Do we need to take scarce resources and actually set up our own school-district police force?” He had long meetings with city officials trying to create a coverage plan using Long Beach police officers that would meet district needs. When the department’s chief told him, “‘Look, if we can’t protect kids we shouldn’t be in business,’’ he went with the city. It was a decision he doesn’t regret. Other superintendents have expressed regrets to him over having school departments, calling them a financial drain, he said.
Who’s watching the watchers?
When school officials sign contracts with cities or sheriffs for school policing or just rely on responses to 911 calls, they tap into a system where a city manager oversees police, and in some cities where police commissions add a level of oversight. Elected sheriffs are answerable to voters about their departments.
When school districts create their own police departments, they take on that oversight themselves, which in California comes with laws limiting public accountability and granting officers deep job protection and privacy rights.
“Police just do a better job when they have accountability,” said Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, a nonprofit watchdog. At small agencies like school-police departments, more power is vested in fewer individuals, like a chief or small cadre of officers. They may not have trained internal affairs investigators, leaving chiefs to conduct their own misconduct probes. “There’s just not the infrastructure.” At small public agencies, “There’s little oversight that’s happening outside of the department as well.”
A leading California policing expert agreed.
“Any department or any entity that polices itself is ripe for corruption,” said retired state Superior Court Judge LaDoris H. Cordell, the first Black woman appointed to the bench in Northern California. She also worked for five years as the City of San Jose’s independent police auditor.
In response to EdSource questions to districts regarding outside oversight, officials at seven districts reported having none. Stockton Unified reported it has a community advisory group “which meets quarterly and reviews quarterly reports on employee statistics, complaints, and calls for service,” Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez told EdSource. In Riverside County, Val Verde Unified has a group of students, parents and others that meet with police but don’t have oversight authority.
While independent oversight of all law enforcement is critical, Cordell said, it should be especially so for school-run departments, considering they primarily police children. As San Jose’s police auditor, she published a multilanguage student handbook titled “A Student’s Guide to Police Practices” that advised juveniles on their rights during police encounters.
Her main concern about school policing, she said, is inequitable treatment of students of color. Some police “focus primarily on kids of color, Black and brown kids,” she said. “Just the melanin in the skin raises suspicion.”
Scandals
In April, the state Department of Justice (DOJ) ended five years of oversight of the Stockton Unified police after an investigation found officers “routinely violated the civil and constitutional rights of Black and Latino students and students with disabilities.”
DOJ investigators found police routinely arrested the students for “defiance, disorderly context, fights without injuries, using profanity and loitering” that civilian personnel should have handled.
“School police were out of control, arresting and traumatizing kids for acting like kids,” Linnea Nelson, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California said in a statement. “Those disparities still exist, and we will continue to monitor the District’s progress to prevent resurgent discrimination.”
Stockton school police took “important steps to address concerns regarding
interactions between police officers and students and to promote an equitable and positive learning environment,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
There have also been problems at school police departments involving leadership.
A former chief and lieutenant of the Inglewood school police department are scheduled for sentencing Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court after being charged in a 2022 corruption investigation.
According to court records, the former department lieutenant, Timothy Marks, hired then-Chief William T. Carter as a security guard at a marijuana facility in San Bernardino County. Carter worked there when he was supposed be on duty at the police department. He “boasted to his security coworkers of his ability to do whatever he wanted because he was a police chief,” prosecutors wrote in court papers, adding, Carter drove his school-police car to the job “using his lights and sirens to get there faster.”
After being charged with embezzlement, conspiracy and perjury, Carter and Marks both cut deals and pleaded no contest in April to petty theft. Carter agreed to repay the district $15,722 and Marks, $3,006. The agreement calls for each man to be sentenced to 50 hours of community service and a year of probation.
James Morris, a former school superintendent who is working to help the district out of years of state receivership because of fiscal woes, said he is “pleased that the outcome will return funding to the students of Inglewood Unified.”
In San Diego, Chief Alfonso Contreras of the school district police department abruptly retired last month after less than two years in the post after 11 officers — nearly a third of the department’s ranks — sued him in December. Those officers alleged that Conteras and several supervisors who are his friends, and one with whom he is romantically involved, discriminated against others based on sexual orientation, gender and race. Conteras had been on paid suspension since January. The lawsuit remains in early stages, court records show. San Diego Unified spokesperson Maureen Magee said she couldn’t discuss ongoing litigation.
A chief’s perspective
The president of the California Association of School Police Chiefs disagrees that these agencies, typically smaller than most municipalities’, need more oversight.
At smaller agencies, “you have to be even more critical of your department and policies to ensure you are always in compliance,” Mark Clark, chief of the Val Verde Unified School District Police in Perris, Riverside County, wrote in an email in response to questions.
Clark, who’s spent his career at school departments, said that the in-school department offers school districts more control over how officers on their campuses are hired and trained.
Clark wrote that he formed Val Verde’s committee in 2017. It’s made up of parents, staff, students and other organizations within the district that have made recommendations to the board on procedures, staffing, and equipment. Although it is not an oversight panel, its input has been helpful, he said.
The committee, he said, has offered “nothing but support for hiring more officers.”
EdSource reporter Michael Burke contributed to this story.
The West Contra Costa Unified School District may be on the verge of turning over control of its budget to the county after the school board rejected the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan on Wednesday night, limiting the chance of passing a 2024-25 district budget by July 1, as required by state law.
Without passing a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) — a document that sets district goals to improve student outcomes and how to achieve them — the board cannot vote on the proposed budget, said Kim Moses, associate superintendent of business services at West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD). The two are linked; the LCAP is a portion of the budget and gives the district a road map on how to allocate funding for its $484 million budget. The district risks losing local control over funding decisions. Trustees voting no said it didn’t reflect priorities of the community and was not transparent.
It’s a rare situation. Districts routinely pass budgets at the end of June to close the fiscal year and start a new one.
District and Contra Costa County Office of Education officials warn that a failure to pass a budget and LCAP by July 1 will cede financial control to the county office. The district can still act by midnight Sunday to avert a takeover, but district officials are assuming that will not happen.The board would still need to vote on the budget presented by the county.
The district also would face difficulties getting the county’s approval of the budget.The state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), which focuses on helping districts solve and prevent fiscal challenges, found in a recent analysis that the district had overspent, and concluded that the school board had been unable or unwilling to make cuts.
In a statement to EdSource, Moses wrote she was “deeply disappointed” that the board didn’t pass the LCAP. The responsibility to adopt the LCAP and 2024-25 school year budget will be in the hands of county officials. Until they impose the new plan and budget, Moses said, the district will revert to operating under last year’s budget.
“We are confident that the county will review our circumstance with a student-focused lens and do what is necessary to support our students,” the statement said. “In the interim, we will be able to continue processing payroll without interruptions, and we will be able to maintain all expenses related to the general operating costs within the district, such as utilities, required materials and supplies, and other operational necessities.”
But because the district is functioning on last year’s budget, some schools won’t receive the funds they need, and the district can’t move forward with new goals set, said Javetta Cleveland, a school business consultant for West Contra Costa.
“This is really serious to go forward without a budget — the district cannot operate without a budget,” Cleveland said during the meeting. “The district can’t meet or establish priorities without a budget.”
Cleveland asked the board to reconsider approving the LCAP and have the Contra Costa County Office of Education approve the LCAP with conditions that would allow revisions after receiving feedback from parents. But that didn’t happen.
Budget shortfalls
District officials are projecting a $31.8 million budget deficit over the next three school years, with about $11.5 million in shortfalls projected for the upcoming school year. The plan was to use reserve funds over three school years to make up the shortfall.
To address budget shortfalls, the board has also had to eliminate more than 200 positions since last year. The most recent cuts were voted on in March. But at the same time, the district was dealing with three complaints, including allegations that the district is out of compliance with the law because teacher vacancies have not been filled and classes are being covered by long-term or day-to-day substitutes, which district officials acknowledged was true.
“While the result of last night’s board meeting complicates an already challenging financial situation, members of the community should know that WCCUSD schools will continue to operate, and employees will continue to be paid as we work through the LCAP approval process,” said Marcus Walton, communications director for county office. “At this point, it is the role of the Contra Costa County Office of Education to support WCCUSD staff to address the board’s concerns and implement a budget as soon as possible.”
FCMAT conducted a fiscal health risk analysis on West Contra Costa in March and found the district is overspending.
While the FCMAT analysis concluded the district has a “high” chance of solving the budget deficit, it highlighted areas it considers high-risk, including some charter schools authorized by the district also being in financial distress; the district’s failure to forecast its general fund cash flow for the current and subsequent year, and the board’s inability to approve a plan to reduce or eliminate overspending.
FCMAT’s chief executive officer, Michael Fine, was not available for comment.
The vote
President Jamela Smith-Folds was the only trustee to vote yes on the LCAP. She said she wants to see more transparency but that it’s important to keep local control over the LCAP and budget.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t say that there are things we need to do differently, but I think everyone is acknowledging that,” Smith-Folds said. “Now the next step after you acknowledge that is to show change and consistency.”
Trustees Leslie Reckler and Mister Phillips voted down the LCAP. Phillips said it was because he doesn’t believe that what the community asked for is reflected in the document.
“I have consistently advocated for a balanced and focused budget since joining the school board in 2016,” Phillips said in an email. “The proposed budget was neither. With my vote, I invited our local county superintendent to the table. I hope that she will work with us to create a balanced and focused budget that prioritizes the school district’s strategic plan.”
Reckler said that for the last two years, she had continued to ask staff to show how programs and the LCAP performed, how community feedback is being incorporated, and how money is being spent.
“I’m frustrated I have to spend an entire weekend trying to figure out the changes in the LCAP. It should be self-evident,” Reckler said during the meeting. “This document seems to be less transparent than ever before. I don’t know how else to get your attention, and I won’t be held hostage. For these reasons, I am voting ‘no.’”
Trustee Otheree Christian abstained, saying that there needs to be more transparency in the LCAP but did not elaborate further or respond to requests for comments on why he chose not to vote.
Board member Demetrio Gonzalez Hoy was absent because of personal family reasons, according to his social media post. He called the vote a failure of the board, including his absence.
In a recent meeting with the District Local Control Accountability Plan Committee (DLCAP), made up of parents and members of community organizations, committee members shared their frustrations, saying they didn’t feel heard and needed more information about programs, Superintendent Chris Hurst said. Gonzalez Hoy said he agreed with the committee that there needs to be more transparency and in regards to spending priorities, community leaders need to be heard.
“With that said, what we should have done is ensure that this does not happen in the future and that the DLCAP committee is taken seriously in their charge,” Gonzalez Hoy’s post said. “Unfortunately, instead of advocating for that and ensuring this occurs, I believe that some on our board want certain adults leading our district to fail and that’s really what led to a vote last night.”
During Wednesday night’s meeting, many community members asked the board to stop making staffing cuts and to reject the LCAP and budget proposals, saying that both proposals didn’t meet student needs, and disenfranchised low-income, English learners, and students of color. Some speakers questioned if the LCAP complied with the law.
The district team that put together the LCAP said the planning document complies with the law, according to Moses, as do the officials at the county office of education that reviewed the document. The county gives the final stamp of approval after the board passes the LCAP, and if something needs to be fixed, they can approve the document with conditions, she added.
“I do know, with any large document, nothing is perfect in the first draft,” Moses said during the meeting. “I’m not sure if there is something we need to take a look at, but if so, I’ll restate this is a living document; if we do find that there is an area that needs more attention, we’ll give attention to that area.”
Moses said she agrees with the advocates — the district needs to serve students better. She and the district are committed to strengthening communication with the community and explaining how the strategies in the 203-page document are helping students.
As of Thursday evening, an emergency meeting has not been scheduled. The next board meeting is scheduled on July 17.
The story has been updated to clarify how operations of the district will proceed moving forward.
Riverside County teachers collaboratively learn with the Riverside County Office of Education math team around increasing student thinking.
Credit: Riverside County Office of Education
At the Riverside County Office of Education, we serve about 430,000 students across 23 districts, providing instructional support and other direct services in all content areas. In recent years, our state math assessment data has indicated a need for improvement in how our students learn math. As a state and county, we have struggled to show the hoped-for growth in math in our statewide Smarter Balanced Assessments.
We don’t believe that recommending all our districts adopt new textbooks or curricula would solve the problem because we’d still be teaching math the same way. Instead, we decided to align to evidence-based practices to change our math culture countywide.
This is how we, in collaboration with our districts, are working toward a better math learning experience for our students.
Our renewed focus on math culture aligns with national organizations like the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics. The work we are doing also aligns very well with the California’s newly revised math framework. A few of the goals of focusing on culture are to increase student access, build positive identity and develop agency within students. These align directly with the ideas in chapters 1 and 2 of the new framework. Our approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics, informed by national reports such as “Adding It Up” and instructional models like cognitively guided instruction (CGI) honors what students bring to the classroom and builds on it while focusing on a balance between procedural skills, conceptual understanding and application.
Due to numerous factors, mathematics instruction tends to spend a great deal of time on skills and procedures such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing for the purpose of getting answers. There is a continued focus on procedural skills in elementary mathematics. But, instead of drilling students on these processes over and over, we could be spending time helping them understand the mathematics behind the processes by encouraging them to share their thinking.
We’ve also seen an interplay between math culture improvements and equity. Changing people’s hearts and minds opens doors to more equitable access for students because educators start to recognize that there aren’t low, medium and high students. Rather, there are students who have had diverse opportunities to learn math, and we should listen to them about what they know and how they learn.
Ultimately, this culture shift is about student engagement. If students in a classroom are tuned out, we can choose to continue with the status quo, or we can help them see the beauty in math and how it connects to their lives and the things they care about.
We introduce ideas about math culture reform in our professional development contract work with districts. Districts reach out to us when they’d like to do customized professional development work to improve math teaching and learning.
The District Math Collaborative began with seven districts in spring 2022, and we have continued to grow. Collaboration has centered around reflecting on teaching and learning systems, how they affect students, and how to continuously improve them.
In addition, we have our annual Week of Math. This event is designed to allow educators, students and families to experience math differently — to find joy in mathematics. We partner with MIND Education to provide many of the games, stories and experiences through their MathMINDs program. We chose this program because it encourages the exploration, problem-solving and pattern-seeking that is the foundation of mathematics instruction we’d like to see in our classrooms. Students and their families delight in solving problems together, which builds community and reinforces the notion that everyone can be a “math person.”
The anecdotal feedback has been great. We’ve visited schools to measure implementation and conduct surveys on how students perceive the changes. In classrooms with high implementation, we hear that students are more engaged, and that students who were labeled as low or struggling with low participation are now talking and engaging in meaningful ways.
One of the schools that took the early initiative to work with us about five years ago — Quail Valley Elementary in Menifee Union School District — has exceeded state, county and district averages on assessments for the last two years in the grade levels with high implementation. We make sure to let all our districts know about this sort of success, because an important characteristic of culture is that it’s shared by a whole community.
Our advice to anyone seeking to improve math culture is to find people who are energized by your ideas and lift them up. In time, they’ll lift others up as well.
A Trinity High School student in Weaverville conducts a science experiment with the assistance of school resource officer Taylor Halsey, while fellow resource officer Greg Lindly observes.
Credit: Timbre Beck / EdSource
While some districts commit millions of dollars to resource officers, others struggle to find funding.
Trinity County, population 16,500, has cobbled together a school policing program using a state grant funded by taxes on marijuana sales.
The grant helps pay for two resource officers who cover nine widely spaced districts across the county’s 3,208 square miles, most of it national forest. Checking on one school requires a five-hour drive round trip on mountain roads, County Superintendent of Schools Fabio Robles said.
The officers, a deputy sheriff and a juvenile probation officer, balance their work at schools with other law enforcement duties.
They can only get to some schools a few times a year. “It’s a challenge,” Robles said in an interview in Weaverville, the county seat. The sheriff’s office and the probation department did not allow the officers to be interviewed for this story.
Only one district has a contract with the county. Trinity Alps Unified agreed to an open-ended agreement with the county in 2020. That agreement doesn’t address school discipline.
Robles said he wants to revisit the issue of contracts, but his priority is to keep the resource officer program running.
“We’ve taken a step back lately,” Robles said of formal agreements between the districts and the counties. Contracts “are something we should re-look at,” he said.
Most Los Angeles-area school districts, including Los Angeles Unified School District, are closed Thursday as fires continue to rage, significantly impacting the Southern California region. The map below shows the status of districts in the region, and will continue to be updated as the situation evolves. Data as of 1/10/2025 11 a.m.
Data source: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection; EdSource Research; Los Angeles County Office of Education
Minors detained at Los Padrinos juvenile hall in Los Angeles County.
Credit: Richard Ross
Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles County remains open a year after the state’s corrections oversight board deemed it “unsuitable for the confinement of minors” and four months after it ordered the center to shut down due to ongoing noncompliance with the state’s minimum standards for juvenile facilities.
The problems plaguing the facility, located in the southeast LA city of Downey, include insufficient probation officers, students arriving to class late, abysmal performance on standardized education testing, and the center’s heavy reliance on substitute teachers.
A court hearing that had been scheduled for Friday was to decide the hall’s fate, but L.A. County Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza deferred the decision until April, to allow for the completion of a re-inspection by the Bureau of State and Community Corrections, known as BSCC, the state agency that deemed it unsuitable after multiple inspections.
Advocates say they are concerned that the situation could impact the quality of education the youth are receiving.
“When we are thinking about young folks who are in these camps and halls, we want to make sure they’re having access to academic rigor that is deeper than just a packet, that they’re actually being challenged, and that they have the opportunity that when they leave these sites, to either return to their school of origin and be ready for the next thing — for trades, for college, for these things that allow them to be productive members of our community and society,” said Yasmine-Imani McMorrin, director of education equity at Children’s Defense Fund California.
While the issues found at Los Padrinos appear to be improving according to reports from an ongoing inspection, advocates are skeptical because such moments of compliance in the past were short-lived.
“We have a history of these independent bodies identifying issues with the education being provided, and then it might improve for a little bit, but then, once eyes are off or the settlement ends, we see those issues persist and get even worse,” said Vivian Wong, an education attorney and interim director of the Youth Justice Education Clinic at the Loyola Law Cchool, whose recent clients have included Los Padrinos students.
This chaotic history has led to the formation of groups like the Education Justice Coalition, which started in 2020 to advocate for the release of as many youth as possible at the height of the pandemic and high-quality education for detained youth.
Advocates like Wong insist that while conditions must improve inside the juvenile facilities, the priority should be to release youth back into their communities.
“Our policy recommendation, and something we’ve been consistently advocating for, is keeping people in the community as much as possible,” Wong said of the education coalition. “If you don’t have the staff, we should really question why young people are in here.”
In less than two years since its reopening, Los Padrinos has been plagued with accusations and findings of violence, allegedly incited by probation staff, and about the inadequacy of its programs, including the residents’ access to education. This site was to provide relief after two other juvenile halls, Central Juvenile Hall in Sylmar and the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Boyle Heights, were shuttered and deemed unsuitable given their ongoing problems. Issues included insufficient staffing, lack of proper training on the use-of-force policy, as well as youth being confined to their rooms for too long.
Los Padrinos itself was closed in 2019 amid allegations of abuse, with six officers charged with assault and child abuse the year of its closure, and a history of concerns about safety for both youth and probation officers. Then- California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the county, and the county office of education entered into settlements in 2021 after problems were revealed with access to education for the youth. A 2010 settlement in a class action lawsuit showed inadequate education programs for the youth in the county’s largest juvenile detention facility. Reforms focused on 13 major areas, including literacy, instruction, transition, special education, and after care.
School at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall
Over 230 youth are at Los Padrinos and, as of Jan. 6, 190 of them were attending the hall’s court school, which is operated by the county’s office of education. They are all pre-disposition youth who are awaiting court action or transfer to another facility.
The student population consists of 167 male students across 21 living units in the hall and 23 female students across two units. Students’ ages can range from 13 to 22 years old in grade levels from sixth to 12th. Some youth remain at Los Padrinos for months, up to a couple of years, but the average stay is about 22 days.
A typical day at Los Padrinos is supposed to go as follows: School is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m., and students remain for two class periods until 11:50 a.m. Then they return to their units for lunch for the next hour and a half, after which they return to class until 3 p.m. for their third and final period of the day. The only shortened day is Friday, which ends at 1 p.m. for teacher professional development.
Probation staff are tasked both with taking students from their units to their classroom and remaining in the classroom while class is in session.
But the BSCC’s inspection from December 2024 noted that inspections have found an “inability of facility staff to get youth to school on time due to lack of staff available for supervision within the classroom.”
The issue seems to have subsided at least once in the last year and a half. During an annual inspection in June last year, both the county office of education and youth reported that students had not been late to class in months due to low staffing. That inspection was conducted by the county’s Probation Oversight Commission, a group created by the county Board of Supervisors in 2020 to monitor and advise the Probation Department and the Board of Supervisors as they implement justice system reforms.
But that appears to be one of the few inspections since Los Padrinos reopened that found that students arrived at class on time. On-time arrival to class — of both students and teachers — has been listed as a problem during inspections more often than not.
It is unclear how many instructional minutes students have missed due to low staffing, but the 2024 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress showed that not a single 11th grader at Los Padrinos met the state standard for math, and just over 2% met the English standard.
Students enrolled in LA County’s juvenile court schools take additional assessments referred to as STAR Reading and Star Math, which measure achievement and growth in the two subject areas.
Assessment results for the fall of 2023 showed that 0% of students tested proficient in reading and less than 5% tested proficient in math.
In the most recent STAR assessments from winter 2024-25, “urgent intervention” was needed for nearly half of all students in reading and about 44% in math. Just about 10% of students met or surpassed the benchmark for reading; 11.5% in math. The remainder were either bordering on needing intervention, or they needed it already, in both subjects.
While the numbers indicate progress, they remain low for the students’ grade levels.
At Los Padrinos, there are currently no reading specialists on staff, according to Erin Simon, associate superintendent at the county’s office of education. Reading intervention is provided by students’ teachers.
Many students arrive with “very low reading levels,” she said, and the county education office has implemented intervention programs such as Read180 to increase reading levels.
“They’re adjusting to their environment; there’s mental health and trauma,” said Simon, who was hired nearly 11 months ago to provide oversight over the county’s juvenile facilities, with an emphasis on Los Padrinos.
“The complexity of it is knowing that many of those students only stay with us for a very short period of time, so we are always pushing to have more intervention and more instruction, but we also know that there are certain things that happen when a student gets here.”
She added that more counselors are available now to help Los Padrinos students address mental health concerns, first addressing social-emotional learning and mental health challenges and then moving into academic intervention programming.
On a typical day, students might be taught by their assigned and credentialed teacher, but it is not uncommon for a substitute to lead the class instead.
While Los Padrinos, the county’s largest juvenile hall, has 33 permanent, credentialed teachers — up from 26 in October 2023 — they rely on nine to 14 substitute teachers on a daily basis, according to Simon. There are also seven vacancies at this time.
“It does require a teacher who is really not afraid to work in those camps and halls; a teacher who can really build relationships with many of our students, knowing they have trauma and also some mental health issues, and so it does become a very difficult position to fill, especially at Los Padrinos,” Simon said.
On the day of last year’s inspection by the county’s probation oversight commission, there were seven full-time teachers on the job and 16 substitute teachers.
“It’s a huge problem, especially for this population, where they have adults come in and out of their lives, and, frequently, there is already so much instability in their education. They’re coming and going in and out of schools, transferring school districts,” said Wong about the reliance on substitutes. “If the teacher is not there, then they have to build up that trust again with the new person.”
It can be especially difficult for a student who requires accommodation in the classroom, as is the case with Wong’s clients. She said a client, currently at a county juvenile camp, was doing well in school after having developed a relationship with a teacher. But when the teacher was out for a month, the student could no longer access his curriculum in a similar fashion, “because every teacher implements accommodations differently.”
As the debate continues over whether Los Padrinos will close or remain open, in part depending on the result of the latest BSCC inspection that began last week, advocates are pushing to maintain the focus on the youth inside the hall.
“We’re dealing with fires and fire recovery, climate change, housing, homelessness, all these things that overlap with our young folks and their needs,” McMorrin said. “But it’s such a priority to get it right, because there is no do-over for these critical years of youth and to do what we can to prepare them for this world.”
