Surrounded by education leaders from around the state, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond reacts to President-elect Donald Trump’s education agenda at a news conference in Sacramento on Nov. 8, 2024.
Credit: California Department of Education
California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond vowed on Friday to fight President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, which he said represented a “clear threat to what our students need to have a good education and a great life.”
“We cannot be caught flatfooted,” Thurmond said, during a news conference.
Thurmond made his pronouncement in Sacramento on Friday while flanked by legislators and education and labor leaders holding up signs saying “Education Is For Everyone” and “Protect All Students.”
Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump has vowed to abolish the department, a long-standing and so far unfulfilled pledge made by Republican leaders dating back to former President Ronald Reagan.
Thurmond said there are concerns that abolishing the department would put at risk some $8 billion that California receives in federal funds for programs serving students with disabilities and those attending low-income schools, both public and private.
“We will not allow that to happen,” he said. “The law will not allow that to happen.”
He observed, for example, that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA, guarantees students in special education programs a “free and appropriate education,” and to receive a range of special education services in an individualized education program drawn up for every special education student.
Thurmond said Trump’s plan to defund the Department of Education would also harm students whose civil rights are violated and investigated through the Office of Civil Rights, including victims of racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, hate and bias toward LGBTQ students.
“To tear down and abolish an organization that provides protections for our students is a threat to the well-being of our students and our families and of Americans,” Thurmond said.
It was also not clear what would happen to student financial aid that the department administers, Thurmond said.
The first line of defense in the fight against Trump’s education plan is the Congress, Thurmond said. He said his department is reaching out to legislators to affirm their commitment to public education — an issue that he says surpasses partisan labels.
“Let me be clear,” Thurmond said. “This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue of continuing to assure that students have access to the resources that they are entitled to under the law. And we will continue to do that, and we will work with the members of Congress to ask them to stand and support our students.”
But Thurmond said that the California Department of Education is also preparing for a worst-case scenario: large-scale cuts to federal funding. In that case, he said, he is working with the California Legislature on a backup plan.
“If it comes to it, as a contingency, we are prepared to introduce legislation that would backfill funding for special education programs, Title I programs and programs that are similar in its scope,” Thurmond said. Title I money supplements state and local education funding for low-income students.
Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, the chair of the Assembly Education Committee, said that the state is prepared to stand up for all the students who are targeted by Trump’s policy proposals and rhetoric. He pointed to the threat of deportations of undocumented immigrants that would hurt large numbers of children of immigrants, as well as threats to other student populations.
“It is the job of every teacher, every school board member, every principal, every elected representative in the state of California who believes in public education, it is time for us to stand up to protect all of these kids,” he said. “When we are facing a bully who is targeting our most vulnerable students, we all need to stand up.”
“We need to get ready now for what is going to start on Jan. 20,” Muratsuchi said, referring to Trump’s second inauguration.
In the wake of Trump’s attacks on immigrants, Cruz-Gonzalez said it is important to remind school staff of those protections so that students and families will continue to feel safe and protected when they attend school.
“It’s not enough to know that we have laws on the books,” Cruz-Gonzalez said. “We have to work together in coalition and ensure our superintendents, our school board members and our teachers know what to do to protect these rights.”
The right to public education is the “cornerstone of democracy,” said Chinua Rhodes, school board member at Sacramento City Unified School District.
“This is not just a political battle, it is a moral one,” Rhodes said. “Our schools should not abandon the most needy.”
During small group reading instruction, AmeriCorps member Valerie Caballero reminds third graders in Porterville Unified to use their fingers to follow along as they read a passage.
Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource
Twenty-three-year-old Valerie Caballero worked with seven third-graders, guiding numerous activities on decoding words, on Thursday at Roche Elementary in Portersville. In another small group of three students, teacher Shelly Noble focused on building reading comprehension. The rest of the class, also in small groups, read independently or completed literacy assignments online, until it was time for the groups to change stations – to go to Caballero or Noble.
Caballero is one of 85 community members trained as AmeriCorps volunteers to tutor and support over 2,000 students at 10 elementary schools in Porterville Unified.
The AmeriCorps program deployed her and others to third to fifth grade classrooms to provide students with additional time for reading and math intervention that they wouldn’t get elsewhere.
“Families rely on programs like AmeriCorps to give their child one-on-one support and attention that they need,” Caballero said.
Fifth grader Jizelle Alvarado, who has benefited from the AmeriCorps program since her third grade year, said volunteer Stephanie Rector has helped her read at a better pace and to multiply three-digit numbers. Without hesitation, the fifth grader said she and other students would still be struggling with reading and math if not for Rector’s daily support.
Last Friday, the program was one of many whose survival became uncertain because of the reduction of federal AmeriCorps grants by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, under the Trump administration.
Nearly $400 million in AmeriCorps funding was cut, jeopardizing more than 1,000 programs and the jobs of tens of thousands of employees, tutors, mentors and volunteers, the national volunteer service organization reported.
Attorney General Rob Bonta announced in a statement earlier this week that California has “taken action to hold the Trump Administration and DOGE accountable to the law.” Two dozen states, including California, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Trump administration for “dismantling AmeriCorps.”
Unless the lawsuit prevails, the AmeriCorps funding cuts – estimated at $60 million for educational, economic, environmental, health and disaster response services in the state – will impact 87 programs and over 5,600 positions, according to Cassandra González-Kester, communications manager for California Volunteers, the state service organization that receives most AmeriCorps grant funding and disperses it to schools, nonprofit organizations and other entities to address critical community needs.
“These cuts affect service members who responded to the LA Fires, the tutors and mentors for our young students, as well as those who care for seniors,” she said. “School districts and non-profit organizations throughout the state are already feeling these severe impacts.”
But the nearly 14,000-student Porterville Unified has decided to use its own funds to continue the program until May 30, the last day of school — something not all schools and organizations will be able to do, so many communities will be left without critical services.
Thousands of students receiving support through AmeriCorps may have those services upended or interrupted – if they haven’t already – by the sudden cancellation of grants by the Trump administration.
The cuts are hurting the most vulnerable: kids in need of reading and math intervention; students struggling with chronic absenteeism; families experiencing housing instability; and communities recovering from natural disasters. The end of services could exacerbate existing inequalities and worsen future prospects.
“If we aren’t able to continue this work (beyond this school year),” Warren said, “it’s going to leave a huge void, and our students are definitely going to feel the effects of that.”
People supporting their community
AmeriCorps, an independent agency of the U.S. government, supports volunteer and service efforts in California and across the country by providing opportunities for community members to meet local needs and address pressing issues, including academic support and intervention for students, youth mentoring as well as homelessness, food insecurity, health and other key areas in communities.
Due to the range of programs that AmeriCorps supports, thousands of families in California alone will lose services, if they haven’t already.
“We recognize the impact this has across all programs and staff, not just in our state but nationwide,” said Monica Ramirez, the executive director of First 5 Madera, which operates the Madera Family Resource Center in the Central San Joaquin Valley.
The Madera Family Resource Center, a comprehensive hub for families with children aged 0 to 5, is partially funded by federal AmeriCorps money. The center provides weekly playgroups, preschool readiness programs, developmental screenings and resource referrals to support early childhood development. After getting notice about the AmeriCorps funding cuts, which had, in part, made services possible, the resource center, which extends services to Chowchilla, Eastern Madera County, and the Madera Ranchos, closed its doors this week.
Porterville Unified’s ‘Building Communities, Changing Lives’ is largely funded by AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps awarded the district more than $1.6 million in federal funds and the district matched those funds with about $1.2 million this school year.
Most of that funding goes toward living stipends for AmeriCorps members, community members and college students who may be tutors, mentors or in other roles.
Covering the operating costs for 85 AmeriCorps members who provide 35 hours of weekly student intervention and support is approximately $210,000 for May, an expense the district likely won’t be able to foot without the AmeriCorps funds.
“I don’t see another way to move forward without the AmeriCorps funding,” Warren said.
State agencies, such as California Volunteers, are trying to fill the void for impacted groups, Fresno State College Corps director Mellissa Jessen-Hiser said. The state, she said, will fund the college corps members’ continued work at places such as the food bank, Poverello House, a homeless shelter in Fresno, and Fresno Unified schools for the rest of the semester.
The federal government has provided more than half of the funding for some of California’s AmeriCorps programming, with the agency’s members supporting 17,000 foster youth with education and employment, and tutoring or mentoring 73,833 students in 2023-24, according to California Volunteers.
Volunteers play a ‘vital role’ in student progress
Of the more than 2,000 students that Porterville Unified AmeriCorps members provide one-on-one and small-group instruction, tutoring and intervention to, 1,657 are in need of academic support, based on this year’s district assessments.
Members work with at least 25 students each day over 10 months of the school year; they focus on reading and literacy, helping struggling students get to grade level.
“It’s going to create a larger learning gap if they’re not receiving this extra support,” said Caballero, the tutor.
Based on mid-year data from this school year, 44% of students served by AmeriCorps members have improved by at least one proficiency level on their reading assessment, demonstrating meaningful academic progress, Warren, the program director, reported.
Lasherica Thornton/ EdSourceLasherica Thornton/ EdSourceLasherica Thornton/ EdSourceRoche Elementary third grade teacher Shelly Noble said students receive at least three rounds of daily reading intervention from their time with her, with AmeriCorps volunteer Valerie Caballero and from the school’s intervention specialist. Through Valerie Porterville Unified’s ‘Building Communities, Changing Lives’ AmeriCorps program, Cabellero not only provides small group instruction but also supports students individually.
And with an extra person in the classroom working alongside them, teachers gain the ability to focus on the academic struggles of students who need it most.
Without AmeriCorps, “we will not see the growth in reading and writing that we see because the majority (of the work) will be put on myself,” said Noble, the third grade teacher.
The AmeriCorps members also build meaningful connections with students, extending their support beyond academics and making students feel valued, thereby creating an engaging and supportive learning environment.
“We’re able to really see the effects of having those members work with those students and the impacts that they’re making,” Warren said.
Federal funding cuts trickle down to schools
The California Reading Corps and Math Corps, or Ampact Educational Programs, across Fresno, San Mateo, San Joaquin, Merced, Tulare, Santa Barbara and Riverside counties have supported thousands of students with academic intervention, including over 6,000 students last school year. AmeriCorps members prepare students for kindergarten, get elementary students on track to grade-level proficiency by third grade and have seventh graders algebra-ready by eighth grade, according to program information for this school year. Its more than $3.1 million in federal funding is one of California’s 87 impacted programs.
Thomas Elementary in Fresno Unified, which has used the AmeriCorps reading support program, doesn’t plan to use the Reading Corps next school year due to the possible federal cuts, the district confirmed.
Under the 30-year-old Kern Community Mentoring program, three dozen AmeriCorps members have mentored over 700 high-needs students in the urban and rural communities of Kern County each year, according to Robert Meszaros, communications director with the Kern County Superintendent of Schools that administers the program.
By providing encouragement, guidance and support, they address the “whole child”, a philosophy that is evident in several AmeriCorps programs, specifically those focused on mentorship.
Each year, mentors help at least 20 students improve their academics, attendance, behavior and engagement, and based on data from the program, more than half of the mentees improve their attendance and reduce suspensions.
With the cuts to AmeriCorps, Meszaros said, it may mean the loss of the program.
Alternative funding, other options
Programs impacted by the federal funding cuts are exploring options to continue serving the community. Some are seeking support from their state representatives, who can advocate on their behalf at the state and possibly national level.
“Not sure what the next steps are,” Warren said. Porterville Unified is looking for alternative funding sources, such as state grants.
So is the Kern County education office for the AmeriCorps mentoring program it runs.
“Ultimately if that funding can’t be sourced from other resources,” Warren said, ”then it goes away and we’re left with a big void.”
While it’s unclear at the moment whether the multimillion-dollar cuts will stand, the people working in AmeriCorps programs urged decision-makers to realize the people affected.
In the words of Caballero, the Porterville Unified tutor: “think about students’ needs.”
“Bye, Jose, I’ll see you Monday. Have a good weekend. Go Dodgers.”
That’s my standard weekly sign-off to Jose Hernandez, the third grader I tutor at Jackson Elementary in Altadena, a Title I school near where I live.
To say he’s a huge Dodgers fan doesn’t quite capture it, and, like most of the world, he loves Shohei Ohtani. In fact, he made it to the recent Jackie Robinson Day at Dodger stadium and was pretty excited to show up to school the next day with his new Dodgers cap with Ohtani’s name emblazoned across it.
He’s not always the chattiest, but I’ve learned if I happen to say the right thing, all kinds of information comes pouring out. So I learned he’d been to the game because we happened to be reading a book about Robinson in one of our sessions. It was part of the 10 minutes of read-aloud I do at the beginning of our 45 minutes together.
“Ohhhhh,” I said, “that’s why your usual Dodger cap suddenly upgraded to this special Ohtani one.”
“Yeah,” he explained, “it was Jackie Robinson Day, and he was playing. And that was cool.”
I’ve been doing two reading sessions with Jose a week — Monday mornings and Wednesday afternoons — since October, before I started this job as CEO of EdSource. The synchronicity wasn’t deliberate, but it has turned out to be a really helpful window into what’s happening on the ground in California’s public schools. And what it takes to help a kid who’s at least a grade level behind make a dent in the gap.
It took me a while to get the hang of tutoring. My kids are now 16 and 20, and teaching them to read is but a distant memory. I’m not sure where I’d even start, but luckily I haven’t had to figure it out myself. I’ve been volunteering through Reading Partners. They use an evidence-based curriculum, based on the science of how children learn to read.
It’s very structured — I write an agenda on a small white board, we start with 10 minutes of me reading while he follows along, then it’s his turn. We work our way lesson by lesson, Jose reading and filling out the worksheets that reinforce his comprehension.
Sometimes we work on breaking unfamiliar words into identifiable parts, which quite frankly often makes me think about how illogical English is.
“Well, so this time -ch sounds like sh, but yeah, you’re right, in that other word it was ch”.
Other times we advance through comprehension skills, like how to pull out the author’s main point or how to identify main characters. Some come more easily than others to Jose, but he hangs in there, and I’m often surprised at how much he understands from a story he seems to be struggling through.
Six months in, I felt like we were both getting in a groove and couldn’t believe the school year was coming to an end. Then came the email, a surprise this past Sunday at 8:30 pm.
No warning.
I suppose we should have seen it coming — in mid-April, the Trump administration targeted some 400 million dollars worth of federal AmeriCorps grants for elimination, but it wasn’t clear how that might affect Reading Partners, one of their programs. When we talked about it at tutoring that week, my amazing coordinator, Kaiya, seemed to think we were OK for the present. Now, a dozen states have filed lawsuits to block the overall AmeriCorps cuts, but confusion reigns.
The writing, as they say, is on the wall.
Reading Partners targets kids up to fourth grade who are reading anywhere from six months to 2.5 years behind their grade level. The research shows what a difference one-on-one help with reading can make in closing the gap. So what of Jose and the 54 other kids getting help with their reading at Jackson Elementary? Or of the nearly 800 kids across Los Angeles?
These kids from Jackson have already had more than their share of challenges this year. Jackson was one of the schools closed for several weeks after the Eaton fire in Altadena — the structure was fine, but had to be cleaned top to bottom to get rid of smoke damage. Jose’s family was displaced for even longer, so he was arriving at school late for several weeks, presumably while his parents navigated a new morning commute from the hotel in which they were staying. But the fire also meant most of the kids at Jackson also lost the midyear assessment that Reading Partners does to track whether the tutoring has been making a difference. End-of-year assessments were supposed to start this week, so with the hit to AmeriCorps, that all gets a lot more complicated.
As of this writing, it looks like some of the Reading Partners coordinators will be coming back, but not as AmeriCorps, and we will get a few more tutoring sessions after all. Whiplash. I can’t help but wonder how much the kids know about all of this.
I hope Jose improved in the months we worked together. I don’t think I was the greatest tutor, but I tried my best. I’d like to think it made a difference.
The books we were reading got harder. He kept advancing in the lessons. He got better and better at sounding out unfamiliar words with less prompting from me.
But I know reading was a struggle for him, and I can’t say I imparted a love of reading in him. He seemed to enjoy our time together, and once, when I picked him up at the after-school program at the school, a couple of his buddies asked how they could get tutors. I’ll take that as a sign of something.
Meantime, he and I were a few chapters into “James and the Giant Peach” at our last session. We may never get to the happy ending at the book’s conclusion, but now, with the reprieve, perhaps we can get far enough to at least see the hideous aunts perish.
•••
Deborah Clark is CEO of EdSource.
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Students walking on the campus of California State University, Dominguez Hills on Nov. 19., 2024.
Amy DiPierro
The University of California and California State University are facing nearly an 8% reduction to their state funding for 2025-26 under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal unveiled Friday, raising concerns about the impact on their campuses.
Top officials at both of the state’s public university systems immediately warned that the cuts, which were telegraphed in last year’s budget agreement, would result in larger class sizes and fewer available courses. They hope the Legislature will restore some of those funds before the budget is finalized this summer.
UC, which has 10 campuses, would see a decline of $396.6 million in funding while the 23-campus CSU would lose $375.2 million under the governor’s proposal for next year.
Newsom also plans to defer previously promised budget increases of 5% — part of his multiyear compact agreements with the systems — until 2027-28.
CSU Chancellor Mildred García expressed disappointment that the governor’s budget maintains cuts even in light of a rosier state budget outlook than previously projected — and said she hopes that funding will be restored if state revenues improve. The CSU enrolls more than 460,000 students, the great majority of them undergraduates.
“The impact of such deep funding cuts will have significant real-world consequences, both in and out of the classroom,” García said in a statement. “Larger class sizes, fewer course offerings and a reduced workforce will hinder students’ ability to graduate on time and weaken California’s ability to meet its increasing demands for a diverse and highly educated workforce.”
UC President Michael Drake offered fewer specifics but said he is concerned over how the cuts might affect “our students and campus services.” UC enrolls just shy of 300,000 students.
Newsom’s proposal is only the start of the budget process. He and lawmakers will negotiate over the next several months as updated revenue projections become periodically available before the budget is finalized in the summer.
The state’s system of 116 community colleges fared better and would receive $230.4 million in new general funding as part of a small cost-of-living increase under Proposition 98, the voter-approved formula that determines how much money K-12 schools and community colleges receive from California’s general fund.The system enrolled more than 1.4 million students as of fall 2023.
Community college leaders responded favorably to the proposed budget’s support for career education and workforce development. “The governor’s emphasis on career education and recognition of prior learning aligns with our colleges’ mission to assist 6.8 million adults in advancing their career paths through their local community colleges,” Nan Gomez-Heitzeberg, a member of the California Community College trustees, said in a statement.
State funding is only one source of revenue for the two universitysystems,which also get money from student tuition and fees as well as federal support.
In total, the governor’s budget proposes $45.1 billion for the state’s three higher education segments –UC, CSUand California Community Colleges — plus the California Student Aid Commission, which administers the enormous Cal Grant aid programs and others.
Under Newsom’s multiyear compact agreements, first announced in 2022, UC and CSU were due to receive 5% annual budget increases in exchange for making progress toward goals like increasing graduation rates, eliminating equity gaps in college completion and enrolling more California residents. With Newsom planning to cut funding and defer those increases, achieving the goals could prove challenging.
“In the absence of that incentive, I think we in the equity community and students are going to have to really ensure that we are demanding that our CSU and UC leaders continue to hold the line and honor their commitment to students even in leaner fiscal times,” said Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit organization that advocates for expanding college access in California.
Cal State’s 2025-26 budget request pleaded for the state not to cut its base funding and not to defer the money promised in the system’s previous agreement with the Newsom administration. CSU officials estimated that a 7.95% cut was tantamount to what’s needed to serve more than 36,000 full-time students.
The CSU system sought an operating budget of $9.2 billion, $593 million more than in 2024-25. That includes money for line items CSU officials say they can’t avoid, like increases to liability and property insurance and health care premiums. The budget request argues that a funding cut “would severely constrain” CSU’s ability to deliver on other top priorities, like programming for students’ basic needs and mental health.
In contrast, Newsom’s budget proposal was met with a warmer response from the chancellor of the state’s community college system, Sonya Christian, who said it “supports the priorities” of the system. In addition to the cost-of-living increases, Newsom’s budget includes several new funding proposals for the community colleges. They include:
$168 million in one-time funding for a “statewide technology transformation” project that will streamline data collection across the system, including automating credit transfers between colleges
$100 million to expand “credit for prior learning,” under which colleges award credit for skills learned outside the classroom, such as in a job or by volunteering
$30 million in ongoing funding to expand the Rising Scholars Network, programs that provide services for current and formerly incarcerated students
Friday’s proposal also includes a nearly 8% cut for the California Student Aid Commission, but its programs would still receive a hefty $3.1 billion. Most of that money — $2.6 billion — would go toward the Cal Grant program, which provides aid awards for roughly 417,000 students. The remainder would fund the Middle Class Scholarship and the Golden State Teacher Grant Program, which aids students studying to become teachers who commit to working in high-need schools.
“The governor’s proposed budget recognizes the role of financial aid in students accessing the life-changing opportunities of California’s higher education institutions,” Daisy Gonzales, executive director of the commission, said in a statement.
Christopher J. Nellum, the executive director of EdTrust-West, said the January budget maintains the state’s commitment to educational equity. But he said the state should “aggressively invest more in education and keep California focused on ensuring any new resources advance racial equity” in anticipation of the incoming Trump administration,which has signaled its opposition to diversity programs.
Emmanuel Rodriguez, the senior director of policy and advocacy for California at The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS), said in a statement that the state must also ensure the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education is adequately equipped “to shield Californians from anticipated federal regulatory changes that will leave students more vulnerable than ever to predatory, low-quality colleges.” The bureau has the authority to disciplinepostsecondary institutions if they don’t provide the promised education or prove to be fraudulent.
At Sonoma State University, lower enrollment is worsening financial cutbacks.
Credit: Ally Valiente / EdSource
When Kaitlin Anderson committed to play golf for Sonoma State University, she posed proudly in a Seawolves sweatshirt.But last week, school officials announced that they plan to end all NCAA sports next year, part of a bid to balance the school’s budget amid sliding enrollment and anticipated cuts to state funding. Anderson, a business marketing major from Peoria, Arizona, now is thinking that she might leave the campus.
“I will not be coming back here” if the golf program is eliminated, said Anderson, a first-year student. “I think this school will not do well after doing all this because half the reason we have so many people is because of athletics.”
Sonoma State, one of the 23 campuses in the California State University (CSU) system, is perhaps the most extreme example of how public universities in the state are tightening their belts in the wake of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January budget proposal and troubling enrollment drops at some campuses. The governor’s plan calls for a nearly 8% reduction in state funding in 2025-26 for both CSU and the University of California (UC), while also deferring previously promised budget increases of 5% until 2027-28.
The governor’s proposal is not final, and later revisions could paint a rosier financial picture for higher education. But CSU leaders have warned that the plan, if implemented, couldresult in fewer course sections and larger class sizes, along with some cuts in student services.
Sonoma State has been taking in less money from tuition and fees as its student body has shrunk 39% over the past decade due to changes in local demographics and some continuing fallout from wildfires in the region. In addition to the sports closures, it is also planning to close six academic departments and eliminate two dozen majors in an effort to plug a nearly $24 million budget deficit.
Several other CSU campuses are warning about possible impacts of the governor’s proposal.Stanislaus State, which serves more than 9,000 students in the San Joaquin Valley, could face a $20 million deficit after accounting for the January budget proposal, a Jan. 22 email from the president’s office said. Sacramento State, with a student body of more than 30,000, anticipates making a $45 million one-time cut. CSU Channel Islands officials have outlined plans to permanently reduce the Ventura County campus’s budget by $17 million in recurring expenses in 2025-26, saying that expenses per-student exceed the state average by thousands of dollars.
Reduced state support could be missed most at schools like Sonoma State, one of 11 CSU campuses where enrollment has dropped over the last decade, reducing revenue from tuition and fees. Enrollment this fall was also a mixed bag, rising year-over-year at 15 CSU campuses and falling at eight.
At the Sonoma State campus in Rohnert Park, students responded to the news about the end to NCAA Division II intercollegiate sports and academic cuts with a mixture of anger and disbelief. A video published by the Press Democrat newspaper in nearby Santa Rosa shows an emotionally charged town hall meeting among student-athletes, coaches and university leaders. “So you think that we’re easily replaceable?” one attendee asked interim President Emily Cutrer. (“No, that’s not what I was saying,” she replied.) As tensions escalated, students erupted into bitter laughter and shouted interjections. “Do we get our money back for the semester?” one student asked, prompting applause.
A group called Save Seawolves Athletics has filed a federal civil rights complaint arguing that Sonoma State’s plan to end the school’s NCAA Division II athletics program will impact minority students disproportionately, spokesperson and assistant men’s soccer coach Benjamin Ziemer said. The group is also considering filing a lawsuit.
Signs of belt-tightening were also common this fall at San Francisco State, where enrollment is down 26% over the decade. Students and faculty members in December protested academic job cuts by staging a mock funeral march. Earlier in the fall, the university’s J. Paul Leonard Library announced that it expects to trim its budget 30% over the next two years, reducing its spending on resources like books and journals. The university offered 443 fewer course sections in fall 2024 than in fall 2023, a decline of nearly 11%, according to university data. President Lynn Mahoney said in a December message to the campus that the school is planning for “significant reductions in the 2025-26 budget” totaling about $25 million.
Leaders at California State University, Dominguez Hills — where enrollment has fallen a slighter 3% since 2015, but 20% from its peak in fall 2020 — have already whittled $19 million from the school’s base budget since the 2023-24 school year. If state funding is slashed in 2025-26, campus officials have outlined plans to shave another $12 million, and have contemplated reducing the number of course sections, among other things.
“I don’t want to cut out Psych 101, but if we have a thousand less students here, then maybe I don’t need 20 sections of Psych 101; maybe I only need 12,” President Thomas A. Parham said at a Nov. 7 budget town hall. “What we are trying to do is reduce the number of sections and, in some cases, fill those higher, so that instead of 15 students there might be 25 in them. But we are still trying to keep the academic integrity intact, even as we work smarter around the limited resources we have.”
Some faculty and students at Dominguez Hills are worried. Elenna Hernandez, a double major in sociology and Chicano studies entering the last semester of her senior year, said the tighter finances have been evident at La Casita, a Latino cultural center where she works on campus. She said La Casita, which receives campus funding, isn’t staying open as late as it has in the past and received less funding for its Day of the Dead celebration. The center is important to her because it runs workshops where students can learn about Latino history and culture.
“A lot of students don’t have access to this education,” she said, noting that more than 60% of the student body is Latino. “The classroom doesn’t teach it, necessarily, unless you’re in an ethnic studies class.”
Stanislaus State University President Britt Rios-Ellis said last week in an email to the campus that the university is considering several ways to balance its budget, including reducing the number of courses and looking to save money on utility costs.
Miranda Gonzalez, a fourth-year business administration major at Stanislaus State and president of the school’s Associated Students student government organization, said she initially was surprised that CSU would need to trim its budget at all in light of a decision to increase tuition 6% each year starting this past fall and ending in the 2028-29 school year. Full-time undergraduate students currently pay $6,084 for the academic year, plus an additional $420 per semester if they are from out of state.
“It was kind of a shock that the CSU was going to be cutting their budget when they just raised tuition as well,” she said, adding that lawmakers and campus leaders should remember that any reduction “ultimately impacts the lives of our students, faculty and staff.”
State funding is not the only source of revenue for the CSU and UC systems, which also get money from student tuition and fees, the federal government and other sources like housing, parking and philanthropies.
The revenue picture is not gloomy at every Cal State campus.
Cal State Fullerton, which has the largest student body in the system, saw enrollment grow 4% to roughly 43,000 students between 2023 and 2024. The steady growth provides the campus with a revenue cushionthat has potentially saved jobs, campus President Ronald S. Rochon said.
“We are at a record enrollment, and because of the enrollment, we continue to have the kind of revenue to keep our lights on, people employed and our campus moving forward,” Rochon said in a Nov. 7 presentation to the university’s Academic Senate. “This is something that we all should be taking very, very seriously. We should not rest on our laurels with regard to where we are with enrollment.”
The California Faculty Association, which represents CSU employees including tenure-track faculty, lecturers and librarians, argued last spring that the university system should tap its financial reserves to balance shortfalls. CSU officials, however, say that reserves leave them only enough money to cover 34 days of operations systemwide.
UC’s fiscal outlook is less dire. Enrollment is stable across its 10 campuses and is even increasing at several. Some campuses, like UC Berkeley, may not have to make cuts at all to department budgets. A Berkeley spokesperson cited increased revenues from investments and noted that Berkeley will benefit from a systemwide 10% tuition hike for out-of-state students that kicks in this year. Berkeley enrolls about 3,300 undergraduates from other states and another 3,200 international students.
Other campuses, however, likely would have to make cuts under Newsom’s proposed budget, including to core academic services. The system as a whole faces a potential $504 million budget hole,due to the possible drop in state funding paired with rising costs. “I think this budget challenge does require us to focus more on some campus budgets than we have perhaps traditionally,” Michael Cohen, who chairs the finance committee of UC’s board of regents, said at a meeting last week.
UC Riverside has already saved some money on salariesbecause of retirements and other employee turnover, said Gerry Bomotti, vice chancellor for budget and planning at the campus. Still, the campus could face a deficit next year because ofincreasing compensation costs on top of possible cuts in state funding. Bomotti said the campus will try to minimize anyharm to academic units if reductions are needed.
“Our priority obviously is serving students and supporting our faculty and our enrollment. We tend to always give that priority,” he said.
California’s 116 community colleges, which enrolled more than 1.4 million students as of fall 2023, could face a more favorable 2025-26 budget year than the state’s two university systems. The colleges would get about $230 million in new general funding through Proposition 98, the formula used to allocate money from California’s general fund to K-12 schools and community colleges.
By some measures, the past decade has seen more state and local dollars flowing into California’s public colleges and universities. State and local spending on higher education in California has been at a historic high in recent years on a per-student basis, hitting $14,622 per full-time equivalent student in 2023, up from $10,026 in 2014, according to an analysis by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, which takes into account funding for both two-year and four-year institutions. Looking at four-year schools alone, the association calculated that California spent $3,500 more per student than the U.S. average in 2023. Living costs and salaries, however, are often higher in California than in many other states.
Marc Duran, a member of the EdSource California Student Journalism Corps, contributed to this story.
This article has been updated with the correct spelling of Kaitlin Anderson’s last name and to clarify her plans if the golf program is eliminated.
The New York Times published a leaked plan to reorganize the Trump State Department; Rubio disowned it. Its goal is to align the State Department and foreign policy with Trump’s “America First” agenda. It’s a very scary vision of Fortress America, cut off from the rest of the world, with no concern for democracy, climate change, human rights, or Africa.
The Times reported:
A draft of a Trump administration executive order proposes a drastic restructuring of the State Department, including eliminating almost all of its Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent.
The draft also calls for cutting offices at State Department headquarters that address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns.
The purpose of the executive order, which could be signed soon by President Trump, is to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the State Department and “streamline mission delivery” while cutting “waste, fraud and abuse,” according to a copy of the 16-page draft order obtained by The New York Times. The department is supposed to make the changes by Oct. 1.
Some of the proposed changes outlined in the draft document would require congressional notification and no doubt be challenged by lawmakers, including mass closures of diplomatic missions and headquarters bureaus, as well as an overhaul of the diplomatic corps. Substantial parts of it, if officials tried to enact them, would likely face lawsuits.
Elements of the executive order could change before final White House review or before Mr. Trump signs it, if he decides to do so. Neither the State Department nor the White House National Security Council had immediate comment on the draft order early Sunday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote a short comment on social media after this article was published calling it “fake news…”
Major structural changes to the State Department would be accompanied by efforts to lay off both career diplomats, known as foreign service officers, and civil service employees, who usually work in the department’s headquarters in Washington, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans. The department would begin putting large numbers of workers on paid leave and sending out notices of termination, they said.
The draft executive order calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats, and it lays out new criteria for hiring, including “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”
The draft says the department must greatly expand its use of artificial intelligence to help draft documents, and to undertake “policy development and review” and “operational planning.”
The proposed reorganization would get rid of regional bureaus that help make and enact policy in large parts of the globe.
Instead, the draft says, those functions would fall under four “corps”: Eurasia Corps, consisting of Europe, Russia and Central Asia; Mid-East Corps, consisting of Arab nations, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan; Latin America Corps, consisting of Central America, South America and the Caribbean; and Indo-Pacific Corps, consisting of East Asia, Southeast Asia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.
One of the most drastic proposed changes would be eliminating the bureau of African affairs, which oversees policy in sub-Saharan Africa. It would be replaced by a much smaller special envoy office for African affairs that would report to the White House National Security Council. The office would focus on a handful of issues, including “coordinated counterterrorism operations” and “strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.”
The draft also said all “nonessential” embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa would be closed by Oct. 1. Diplomats would be sent to Africa on “targeted, mission-driven deployments,” the document said.
Canada operations would be put into a new North American affairs office under Mr. Rubio’s authority, and it would be run by a “significantly reduced team,” the draft said. The department would also severely shrink the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.
A special education class at West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
TOP TAKEAWAYS
Federal cuts are directly impacting programs designed to support students with disabilities in their transition to adulthood and programs that train special education teachers.
These cuts have caused significant concern from advocates and educators for disabled students.
Regional special education administrators in California are calling on Congress to rescind the cuts and for the state to fill the gap in the meantime.
Jake, a 17-year-old junior, is beginning to think about life after he graduates from Mt. Carmel High School in San Diego County.
This is a daunting task for any teen, but his mother, Angela, says it’s been especially thorny for Jake, who is on the autism spectrum, has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and struggles with anxiety.
The prospect of getting a job one day soon has made him “suicidal,” said Angela, who asked not to share her family’s last name to protect her son’s privacy about his diagnoses. She said her son has told her, “I’m going to be homeless; I won’t get a job.”
So Angela was thrilled when Jake was accepted into a new program at his school, Charting My Path for Future Success, which helps students with disabilities navigate into adulthood. In late January, Jake began to meet with a caseworker who seemed to understand his needs. At the time, Angela thought, “My prayers have been answered,” she said.
“We don’t have a clear understanding of why this decision was made or why this particular grant program was cut so suddenly,” said Stacey McCrath-Smith, director of special education at Poway Unified. “It was very upsetting to our staff. It was hard to explain to families and parents.”
An email from the U.S. Department of Education said the grant was “deemed to be inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” Representatives from the department did not respond to questions from EdSource.
Educators and disability advocates in California are raising the alarm about federal cuts that are already affecting programs that support students with disabilities. That includes research like Charting My Path for Future Success, but also cuts to special education teacher training.
The disability advocacy community is in defense mode, said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy for The Arc, a national advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“There are many, many pieces that we’re concerned about,” Linscott said.
Linscott and other advocates for disabled students worry that other Trump administration proposals, such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and cutting Medicaid, could further harm disabled students. But some cuts have already taken effect.
The morning after the district was told its grant funding was cut off, Poway Unified notified four teachers being trained to help disabled teens transition to adulthood that they would immediately be reassigned to other positions in the district. This is despite early signs of success, such as one nonverbal student who had become highly engaged in sessions about career planning in a way he had never been in academic classes, McCrath-Smith said.
Jake will no longer receive training to help prepare him for college and employment. Now he will not receive mentoring or lessons on goal-setting, finding an apartment and other skills. His mother said he struggles with real-world topics like banking or how a resume works. She’s been looking for alternatives, but is unsure how her son will find help for his unique needs.
“It was like a gut punch,” Angela said.
Educators’ worries extend beyond the 420 students in California, including students at Sweetwater Union High and Mt. Diablo Unified school districts, who were a part of the national study.
“The recent and abrupt elimination of critical funding and research developments will significantly impact important ongoing special education research and services to students, not only in our member [local education agencies], but in others who would ultimately benefit from the results of their research,” according to a letter written on behalf of the SELPA (Special Education Local Plan Area) Administrators of California, California County Superintendents, the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education and the three districts hit by the cuts.
The March 21 letter calls on Congress to compel the U.S. Department of Education to reverse its decision, and for the California Legislature to bridge the immediate funding gap of $2.8 million for this “vital” special education research.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of researchers against the U.S. Department of Education this month challenged whether the executive branch has the constitutional power to cut nearly $900 million from the Institute of Education Sciences. The suit called the department’s actions “dramatic, unreasoned and unlawful,” noting that the canceled grants left students with disabilities “in the lurch, with no time or help to even transition out of the Charting My Path Program.”
Cuts to special education teacher training
The Trump administration also abruptly terminated $600 million in federal teacher training grants, including programs to address the acute shortage of special education teachers who work with California’s nearly 840,000 students with disabilities.
Three SELPAs in the state reported losing funding to create a pipeline of special education teachers, according to a March 25 letter sent to California state and federal legislators on behalf of the affected districts, SELPA Administrators of California and California County Superintendents.
Under these cuts, the Tulare County SELPA reported that it will lose about $10 million, San Diego’s South County SELPA will lose $4.1 million and the West San Gabriel SELPA will lose up to $650,000. Those cuts are in limbo now as they’re also being challenged in court.
Teacher shortages can impede the education of students with disabilities, said Tamara Schiern, executive director of the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA. When districts are unable to fill openings for these positions, they either hire teachers who are not fully credentialed or long-term substitutes.
According to a federal survey, there’s both a state and nationwide shortage of teachers with the appropriate special education credentials, with 40% of districts reporting in 2020-21 that they struggled to staff special education roles.
The West San Gabriel Valley SELPA typically has 30 vacancies to fill each year in its 14 districts, and it would struggle to find credentialed teachers for eight to 12 of them, Schiern said.
In one example, Schiern said a string of long-term substitute teachers was covering a class of elementary school students with autism. Parents complained, and then the district, which she declined to disclose, asked the SELPA for help. The agency was able to help set the classroom up and model instructional strategies, but when a new substitute teacher came in, the agency had to start from scratch again.
“That’s what a teacher shortage looks like on the ground,” Schiern said.
This is why the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA began a program to train teacher residents specifically in special education. Funding came from state and district sources, but districts with high-need students received federal reimbursement for their share. This year, the program supported 27 teacher residents; ultimately, the goal was to cover 40 residents.
But federal cuts to the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant mean that the annual stipend for the residents will be slashed from $37,000 to $27,000; the coordinator for the program was cut, and only half the number of teacher residents can be supported, Schiern said.
In the meantime, the letter from special education administrators and superintendents asks California’s congressional delegation to pressure the U.S. Department of Education to reinstate the funding and the state legislators to cover the $14.9 million shortfall.
“The sudden loss of federal funding for teacher residency grant programs will have a significant and profound impact on an already fragile system,” reads the letter.
The San Gabriel Valley is a community that is ethnically and racially diverse, with a large population of immigrants and English learners. The region’s SELPA looks to parents and paraprofessionals to recruit special education teachers who can reflect that demographic diversity, Schiern said, adding that representation matters in education for both students and parents — a point backed by research.
This made the program attractive for California to fund, but it also may have made the program a target for the Trump administration, which has canceled contracts for programs that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.
“I can’t help but feel that that could be part of the issue,” Schiern said. “A lot of what California does is at odds with the federal government right now.”
We want to hear from you
A new administration always brings change, and education is once again at the center of the national conversation. As we track these developments, we want to hear from you. What policies are you interested in reading about? What questions do you have about how federal decisions might shape education in California? How will this change affect disabled students in California?
United Teachers of Richmond gather at West Contra Costa school board meeting Wednesday to protest staff cuts approved a week earlier.
Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
San Pablo mom Gabriella Garcia said her fourth-grade son sometimes comes home in tears after being bullied about his speech impediment.
Her son receives help through Zoom calls with a speech specialist.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think this virtual format is effective for him,” Garcia said. “He continued to struggle with pronunciation, and it’s been tough for him.”
Garcia pleaded with the West Contra Costa Unified school board on Wednesday night to stop cutting staff, including speech specialists, so her son and others like him can continue getting the hands-on support they need.
Her son’s teacher at Lake Elementary School, Christina Baronian, said she and the other students often have difficulty understanding him and that the only support available is online and through a contractor.
“It’s awful,” Baronian said during public comments. “It’s not giving him the support he needs; he needs an in-person speech therapist. Then I found out (the district) just cut some of the very few in-person (speech therapists) we have. This is his right. This is his future.”
The United Teachers of Richmond also gathered at Wednesday night’s board meeting to protest the $13 million in budget cuts the board approved one week ago, saying the cuts are “unnecessary,” “harmful” and “devastating” to students. The $13 million in cuts will be spread over the next two school years.
“We greatly appreciate the dedicated staff who continually serve our students and community,” interim Superintendent Kim Moses said in a statement to EdSource. “Although reductions are necessary, we are taking great care to address these reductions with minimal impact on staff and students.”
More than 60 West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) educators showed up in person and virtually to urge the board to reconsider the fiscal solvency plan it passed. For nearly two hours, almost every speaker asked the board to reconsider the cuts. Union members wore matching red shirts, held up signs, and cheered after every public comment.
Community members at Wednesday’s board meeting chanted “revote” throughout the meeting.
A speech-language pathologist and member of United Teachers of Richmond addresses the West Contra Costa school board during Wednesday’s meeting to protest the staffing cuts the board approved one week prior, which included speech specialists.Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
“We are urging the board to keep our schools stable,” said United Teachers of Richmond President Francisco Ortiz. “This is going to have a destabilizing effect, and they (the board) have the authority to (avoid cutting staff).”
West Contra Costa Unified School District officials have said that to stay afloat, they need to cut a total of $32.7 million in funds between 2024 and 2027. The bulk of those cuts, $19.7 million, were slashed from the current school year’s budget.
Declining enrollment, expiration of Covid-19 relief funds, increased costs for special education programs, and underfunded mandates from state and federal governments left West Contra Costa strapped for cash, according to district officials. These struggles are being felt across the state, including nearby districts in San Francisco and Oakland which are grappling with budget cuts, school closures and consolidations.
Meanwhile, the California Teachers Association last week launched a statewide campaign called We Can’t Wait, uniting teachers in 32 school districts to leverage their administrations for higher pay and benefits, smaller class sizes, and mental health support. As part of the campaign, more than 100 San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond educators rallied in a downpour in front of Oakland City Hall.
Will the board revote?
No board member has indicated any plan to call for another vote on the budget.
Board members Leslie Reckler, Cinthia Hernandez, and Guadalupe Enllana voted for the plan. Jamela Smith-Folds abstained, and Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy was absent.
“These reductions are not secret,” board President Reckler wrote in an email to EdSource. “They are part of a years-long public fiscal solvency plan that was approved by the Contra Costa County Office of Education. Further, Labor has worked alongside board members and staff to identify reductions. These reductions are necessary to align adults to declining student counts.”
West Contra Costa has faced challenging budget deficits before. In 1991, the district became the first in the state to go insolvent and received a $29 million bailout loan, which took 21 years to pay off.
Board member Gonzalez-Hoy said in a statement that the district needs to stop concentrating on what to cut and begin focusing on where it needs to invest and how to bring in more revenue. He added that resources should be put into increasing enrollment, daily attendance and growing programs. He said he will ask the board president to form a task force to address these issues.
“We as a whole spend more time getting rid of what is broken instead of trying to fix it,” Gonzalez-Hoy said. “If we just keep concentrating on cuts and reduction, eventually we will disappear. We are deeply divided as a community, and it is time for us to come together for the future of our students.”
West Contra Costa is not currently considering school closures or consolidations, trustee Hernandez said in an emailed statement.
“As a board member, I deeply understand the profound impact these financial challenges have on our school community and the urgent need for essential services that may no longer be available,” Hernandez said. “These are difficult choices, and none were made lightly. However, our priority remains securing a fiscally responsible path forward that allows us to continue serving our students effectively.”
Vacanciesand staffing cuts
Emilia Calderón teaches math at Richmond High School, and she said she constantly has to sub for other classes during her free period because of the high number of vacancies.
“Every year they cut teachers, and even though we are lacking teachers, they (the district) still cut teachers,” she said. “And so I’m subbing for classes with vacant positions, and then it feels ridiculous to have them turn around and say, ‘We’re going to cut more teachers.’ How does that make sense?”
Over the next two school years, about 1.6% of the United Teachers of Richmond staff will be let go for a total savings of about $3.7 million, including teachers, social workers, speech therapists and assistant principals.
But with looming cuts, students and staff have also felt the weight of having longtime vacancies. How do these exist at the same time? It’s a question the teachers union and community has been grappling with, Ortiz said.
Francisco Ortiz, United Teachers of Richmond president, addresses the West Contra Costa school board on Wednesday during public comment to protest the staffing cuts the board approved one week prior.Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
West Contra Costa’s fiscal solvency plan uses multiyear projections based on fully-staffed schools, Ortiz said, which is about 1,600 educators. Currently, there are about 130 vacant positions, which is equivalent to nearly $19 million, he said.
“It creates this crisis that we have to reduce but we don’t have fully staffed people,” Ortiz said. “If we had a fully staffed school district, then that could potentially make sense, but we don’t have a fully staffed school district.”
But Moses said that when there are vacant positions, the district still needs to pay for substitutes, overtime or contractors to cover services.
“These replacement costs offset the salaries that have been set aside for the vacant positions,” Moses said. “Due to current vacancy levels, we expect that there will be a certificated job available for all current WCCUSD educators for the 2025-26 school year.”
The deadline for the district to send layoff notices is March 15.
“A lot of the folks we have in our district, they’re either homegrown or they choose to come here,” Ortiz said, referring to district educators. “We want to provide them with an incentive to stay in our district, and we’re currently not doing that with these haphazard or ill-conceived moves.”
But in the meantime, the educators who are choosing to stay in West Contra Costa are trying to help students in ways they weren’t trained to.
“We not only provide curriculum and teaching, but we’re literally like their parents sometimes and emotional support,” Calderón said. “Since they’re cutting all these social workers, guess who gets the brunt of that emotional support? I try my best, but I’m not a therapist, and it’s quite honestly dangerous to try and have a math teacher be a kid’s therapist.”
United Teachers of Richmond gather at West Contra Costa school board meeting Wednesday to protest staff cuts approved a week earlier.
Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource
In a move consistent with dozens of California school districts, West Contra Costa Unified board members have had to choose between eliminating staff and services for students or exploding its budget deficit.
At the start of the debate at Wednesday night’s school board meeting, the district had proposed cutting about 177 staffing positions and, after nearly three hours of debate, the board voted 3-1 to cut all but eight. But saving those eight positions jeopardizes funding for services for at-risk students.
“Ultimately, with these decisions, our students will suffer the most without the staff that is needed to provide them with an excellent education that they deserve and which is necessary to decrease the longstanding education gaps for the district’s Black and brown students,” said Sheryl Lane, executive director of Fierce Advocates, a Richmond organization focused on working with parents of color.
Out of the positions that are being eliminated, 122 are already vacant, according to district officials. And so far, the district has also received 27 resignations and 47 retirement notices.
It’s unclear if there will be layoffs, but on Feb. 6, interim Superintendent Kim Moses said that because of vacancy levels, the district administrators “expect that there will be a certificated job available for all current WCCUSD (West Contra Costa Unified School District) educators for the 2025-26 school year.”
Throughout this month, educators, parents, students and community members showed up in large numbers to speak, as they have in all board meetings since the budget talks started, urging the board to reconsider cutting staff positions.
“We saw today the dysfunction,” United Teachers of Richmond President Francisco Ortiz said during the meeting. “We need collaboration. Every single cabinet member has my direct phone number. Every board member has my phone number. We have been excluded from the decision-making process and in the collaboration since the new administration took over. This situation has been imposed on us, but we’re ready to fight.”
A split board
It took nine amended resolutions for a vote to pass on Wednesday night. Trustee Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy attempted to save high school teachers, school counselors, social workers, psychologists, speech therapists, and career technical education educators.
But the board was split.
Board President Leslie Reckler and trustee Guadalupe Enllana voted down the motions while Gonzalez-Hoy and trustee Cinthia Hernandez were determined to save some staffing positions.
The successful resolution saved one part-time psychologist position, one part-time and seven full-time high school teachers. Reckler voted down the resolution and trustee Jamela Smith-Folds was absent.
In an email to EdSource, Reckler argued the board had already approved the fiscal solvency plan and if the cuts weren’t passed, “it shows the board to be an unreliable steward of public funds, and I will not be lumped into that category.”
“My prime responsibility is to ensure the long-term fiscal solvency of the school district and ensure continued local control in decision-making,” Reckler said. “Last night’s vote will make it more difficult for the school district.”
The top priority for Gonzalez-Hoy was to save the high school teacher positions because cutting them would have caused some schools to go from a seven-period day to six, he said. English learners, students with disabilities and students who need more academic support would be most affected because they often need to take on extra courses and benefit from having more class periods.
“I could not in good conscience make those reductions, knowing the unintended impact they would have,” he said. “Even though it was a very difficult conversation and decision, I did vote to cut the majority of the positions, in part due to our ability to possibly retain some of those positions through grants, but also due to our financial situation.”
In an emailed statement, Enllana said the board and district can no longer continue to be “driven by individual interests but must prioritize the needs of all students.”
“There is a clear distinction between needs and wants. Our first responsibility is to secure what our students need, and then work towards fulfilling the wants under our current budget.”
California schools are in a budget crisis
This week, other Bay Area school boards also made the difficult decision to lay off employees for the coming school year. Oakland’s school board voted to cut 100 positions, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. According to KQED, San Francisco Unified will also send pink slips to more than 500 employees.
West Contra Costa Unified has to balance between the need for fiscal solvency and keeping the schools adequately staffed with teachers, social workers, psychologists and other support staff.
“These decisions by the school board are tough ones and speak to the structural changes needed at the state level to change the revenue it receives that can go towards funding local school districts, like WCCUSD,” Lane said.
The district has been under financial stress since last year and could risk insolvency if its fiscal plan isn’t followed.
When districts can’t get out of deficits, they risk being taken over by the state and losing local control over budget decisions. Twenty-six years ago, West Contra Costa became the first district in the state to go insolvent and received a $29 million bailout loan, which took 21 years to pay off.
To stay out of a deficit, West Contra Costa has to cut $32.7 million in costs between 2024 and 2027. District officials have said about 84% of the budget is used to pay salaries and benefits — the reason staffing cuts would be unavoidable.
The district needs to put forth a fiscal solvency plan approved by the Contra Costa County Office of Education to avoid going insolvent and risking a takeover, Moses said. The staffing cuts are tied to the plan and must happen for the district to stay on track. The board approved the plan earlier this month.
“It would be multiple millions of dollars of impact to the general fund if we don’t take action,” Moses said during the meeting. “The response to the county, if that is the case, I think we would be sending a strong message that we are not addressing our fiscal stability, and that would not be advisable as they are oversight agents.”
The price of compromise
Saving the high school teacher and psychologist positions will add $1.5 million to $1.75 million to the deficit, Moses said. The district doesn’t have a choice but to use funds that are meant for student services and will likely have to dip into the $4 million set aside for math curriculum.
“We value all staff and their dedication to our community; however, the fiscal health of our district has to be prioritized as the foundation for our ability to continue normal district operations,” Moses said in a news release Thursday. “I am concerned about the added fiscal uncertainty we face after last night’s board meeting.”
Cutting the money for teacher and math support is a step backward for the district, which makes it more difficult for educators to help students improve, said Natalie Walchuk, vice president of local impact at GO Public Schools, an organization advocating for equitable public education.In West Contra Costa, only 1 in 4 students are performing at grade level in math and just 6.1% of seniors are ready for college-level math.
“Teachers need the right tools and resources to support their students, yet the district has lagged for years in adopting a new math curriculum,” Walchuk said. “While we recognize the difficult financial decisions the board had to make, it is critical that the district prioritizes student learning.”
The positions on the chopping block came from two pots of money — the general fund, which accounts for 40 positions, and grants, which cover 137 positions. Money for grant-funded positions is either expiring or has been used faster than projected, said Camille Johnson, associate superintendent of human resources.
Trying to save the grant-funded positions would add to the deficit, Moses said. Although the district staff is working to secure more grants, the funds districts receive from the federal government are uncertain.
“We were not in a position to consult the (teachers) union because we do not have money to pay for these positions,” Moses said during the meeting. “Negotiations in terms of what stays and what goes was not possible in this scenario because it’s strictly driven by money that is expiring or money we aren’t responsible for assigning.”
The district doesn’t have a choice but to eliminate some positions because they are dependent on school sites approving the positions in their budgets, Moses said. If approved, about 78 positions could be reinstated.
The Sonoma State University men’s soccer team practices in the rain recently on the campus in Rohnert Park. Division II sports are on the chopping block to save money.
Credit: Amy DiPierro / EdSource
On the soccer pitch, inthe physics classroom and in the office of a trusted professor, students at Sonoma State University are confronting a demoralizing challenge: What happens if my program gets cut?
The Rohnert Park campus, 50 miles north of San Francisco, has announced a contentious proposal to close a $24 million budget deficit by nixing six academic departments entirely, eliminating about two dozenmajor degree programs and cutting all NCAA Division II sports, among other measures.
Sonoma State’s experience is the most dire example of the cost reductions at many of the 23 Cal State campuses, which in total serve more than 450,000 students around the state. The university system’s leaders say cuts are prompted by an anticipated decrease in state funding, rising costs and, on some campuses,slumping enrollment figures. The number of students at Sonoma State has plunged dramatically, from 9,400 students in 2015 to a nadir of about 5,800 in2024.
On a recentvisit to the campus, an EdSource reporter spent time with students, faculty and coachesdirectly impacted by the expected cuts. The most defiant promised to fight for reprieves or backed state legislators’ demands for a turnaround plan. This month, some students sued to try to block proposed cuts.
But mostly, students and faculty expressed worry that this could be the last time a Sonoma State undergraduate sees the advanced math explaining why light moves more slowly in air than in a vacuum, ponders the differences between second and third wave feminism or masters the subtle finesse of playing one-touch soccer in the rain.
Geology: ‘All of that will be gone’
Jackson Kaiser grew up at the foot of Mount Konocti in Lake County, part of a volcanic field three hours north of San Francisco that feeds what is reckoned to be the largest geothermal complex in the world. “I had a lot of questions that I didn’t know how to answer,” he said. And that’s why he majored in geology at Sonoma State University.
But the department that has turned Kaiser’s curiosity into a promising career may soon disappear.Kaiser could be among the last 40 or so Sonoma State geology majors, according to a professor in the department, if the university goes ahead with plans to eliminate the department. Sonoma State spokesperson Jeff Keating confirmed that all tenured and tenure-track geology faculty have received layoff notices, though several may be asked to teach temporarily.
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Kaiser reverently held his favorite rock samples in theclassroom where geology majors take most of their classes. “The idea that that place won’t be here to come back to, that I won’t have an alma mater — it feels like our administration doesn’t want me to be a proud Seawolf,” he said,referring to the campus mascot.
Student Jackson Kaiser, who grew up fascinated by a volcanic field near a large geothermal complex north of San Francisco, laments that he may be among the last geology majors at Sonoma State.Amy DiPierro
Kaiser, 36, was working in the produce department of a Safeway grocery store when he found himself researching the chemical formulas of minerals. He marveled at their straight lines and geometric forms, so elegant they appear unnatural. He wanted to know more.
So around 2022,Kaiser, his partner and their two children, now 4 and 6, started commuting an hour and half or more every weekday from Lake County to Sonoma State, sending the kids to the Children’s School on campus while both parents took undergraduate classes. These days, Kaiser bunks with classmates from Monday to Friday, returning home to his family on weekends. “It’s not great,” he said. “But I’m working towards a better future, where I’ll have a real career and not just be working in a grocery store.”
His chosen career can have high stakes. After all, Kaiser said, it was a careful geological study in the 1960s that ultimately blocked a plan to build a nuclear power plant just 30 minutes from campus on a site traversed by the San Andreas Fault. A geological assessment is often a necessity for construction projects, especially in a region where debris flows can follow climate change-fueled wildfires. But geologists worry their numbers are waning despite growing demand for their skills.
A geology classroom on the campus of Sonoma State University on Feb. 12,Amy DiPierro
Kaiser, who will graduate at the end of the summer, has been collecting business cards from potential employers like geologic consulting firms. Thanks to the department’s frequent field trips, he’s had opportunities to practice skills like mapping, sample collection and paleontology.
He’s also taken part in department traditions, like feasting on watermelon at the summit after mountainous hikes or visiting the mammoth fossil that Sonoma State students excavated in 1981. “I hate the thought,” he said, “that all of that will be gone.”
Soccer: ‘Play all the way through’
The weather was lousy, but there they were in the rain at 9:15 a.m., the Sonoma State University men’s soccer team, lacing up their boots and stowing their belongings in white garbage bags to keep them dry. They had come from nearby Santa Rosa and far away Kapolei, Hawaii, to attendthe university. Together, they navigated the difficult reality that this could be their team’s last season,no matter how well they played.
There was Carson Sterling, a freshman center back from 18 miles north in Windsor, whose father and mother played soccer for Sonoma State before him. There was defender Cameron Fisk, a junior from Los Angeles studying business marketing, who had rebounded from injuries to play this fall.And, of course, there washead coach Marcus Ziemer, leading the Seawolves for the 34th year.
Ziemer watched the players warm up, his eyes shielded from the drizzle under a black baseball cap and glasses. Since he started as head coach in 1991, the men’s soccer team has won eight conference championships and earned its first and only national title in 2002.
But now things are grim. The university announced on Jan. 22 that it planned to eliminate men’s soccer along with the school’s other NCAA sports, among other austerities.
“It’s a very difficult kind of limbo right now,” he said. “We’re fighting hard to try and save the program and some of the other majors as well, trying to get them to reconsider.”
The Sonoma State University men’s soccer team practices recently in Rohnert Park. With the school’s whole Division II sports program potentially being cut, some team players are looking to transfer through the NCAA portal.Amy DiPierro
Ziemer himself is in limbo, too. Unless efforts to save the Sonoma State Division II sports programs succeed, his contract will end on June 30. He would probably retire rather than seek another coaching job.
In the meantime, Ziemer and his four assistant coaches have advised players who wish to continue their collegiate soccer careers to enter the NCAA transfer portal,expressing interest in moving to other schools. A few already have offers.
“I’m just grateful that with everything going on, we have coaches like them that are willing to help us and see other opportunities,” said Fisk, who has entered the transfer portal while the Sonoma State team’s status is uncertain.
But for now, the team’s focus was on preparing the Seawolves for a challenging spring season, including matchups against NCAA Division I and semi-professional sides. Practice started with dynamic stretches, then a frenetic game of keep-away and a shooting drill to loosen quads grown stiff in the damp.
“The energy is still really high,” said Sterling, who is in talks with soccer programs at other schools. “Obviously, it’s a kind of bad situation, and we’re just hoping for the best. But we’re going to play all the way through no matter what, and we’re going to play hard for each other.”
The squad split into teams for a scrimmage, an assistant coach barking urgent encouragement as they played. He called a time-out. “What does it take? Communication. Thinking one pass, two passes, three passes ahead. Moving, adjusting, being aware,” he yelled, his voice booming over the slick turf. “So because we’re struggling, should we say, ‘Ehh, f— it, move on.’? Or should we grow through it? Let’s grow through it — let’s grow through it together!”
The Sonoma State University men’s soccer team practices in the rain recently in Rohnert Park.Amy DiPierro
Women’s and gender studies: ‘I didn’t get that anywhere else’
Under the fluorescent lights of a windowless basement classroom, Xochilt Martinez Balladares and about 20 other students eagerly awaited a discussion on queer and trans theory. But before they could unpack works by critical heavyweights like Adrienne Rich, they trained their attention on an issuecloser at hand: the plan to dismantle the Sonoma State University Women’s and Gender Studies Department.
If the proposal goes forward, Sonoma State will offer the last women’s and gender studies classes in spring 2026. That could mark the end of a more than 50-year run that started with the founding of the program in the early 1970s and evolved into the Women’s and Gender Studies Department in 2001. Several students said the plan compounds their feeling that historically marginalized groups are under attack as the Trump administration seeks to end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Martinez and her classmates also argued that the department teaches skills central to future careers, while providing community when they need it most. For Martinez, a women’s and gender studies major and Chicano and Latino studies minor, the long-term goal is to go into immigration law. In the short-term, she is considering a social work degree so she can work with at-risk youth and families.
“I almost dropped out twice because I felt very out of place,” said Martinez, 32. But she persevered thanks to a women’s and gender studies instructor who “talked to me on a personal level and made sure that I could continue my education. I didn’t get that anywhere else.”
The department typically attracts 25 to 35 majors a year, said Don Romesburg, the professor who teaches the theory course, but many more students who aren’t majors take its classes. Campus spokesperson Keating confirmed that all the department’s professors have been laid off, but said the university “will continue to support and encourage the teaching of courses that support women’s rights and the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community.”
Janis Phillips, 46,an education graduate student, said the loss of the department makes her question whether the university shares her commitment to students’ social and emotional learning.
“When students feel safe and seen and heard on campuses, that is one of the best predictors of academic success,” she said, facing her classmates around the circle of desks. “So to take a bunch of students and make them feel like they are not seen and not heard will be detrimental to their academic success.”
Students said the major prepares them for careers as psychologists, marriage and family therapists or health care providers. Because majors have to complete a community service requirement, students work with local organizations that help unhoused families, prevent sexual assault and support LGBTQ youth. “We’ve really taken seriously this question that parents often ask their students, which is, ‘What would you do with that degree?’” Romesburg said.
Despite the uncertain future of the department, students are doing the reading, Romesburg said, mindful that those who come behind them might not get the same opportunity. “They’re ready to roll up their sleeves and do project-based work, where they’re really generating ideas and reflections and engaging with the material,” he said.
A flier is posted to a bulletin board on the campus of Sonoma State University.
Physics: ‘Watching something that you love die’
The physics students filing into Scott Severson’s 9:30 a.m. optics class brightened with the wide-eyed surprise of children peeking at a gift: a sturdy wooden crate.
“It’s Christmas in our labs,” Severson said, gesturing toward the crate, which was filled with professional-gradelaboratory hardware. “We ordered this in better days,” he added, and a few students chuckled.
The Sonoma State Physics and Astronomy Department has indeed seen better days. Its alumni have gone on to lead companies, earn advanced degrees and become professors themselves. One of the department’s proudest moments came in 2016, when professor Lynn Cominsky was part of the team that documented a phenomenon called gravitational waves, an achievement that won three of her collaboratorsthe Nobel Prize. Cominsky said she has raised more than $43 million in grants for Sonoma State.
Such prestige has not shielded the Physics and Astronomy Department from cost-cutting plans. Though the department will avoid total elimination, Sonoma State plans to phase out its physics major. It is giving 30 majors two years to graduate and leaving 10 first-year students to find another degree or transfer, Severson said. After that, physics faculty memberswill only teach physics courses for students in other programs, like biology or engineering.
Already, one of the department’s lecturers has received a layoff notice, according to the university. Severson said he and three other remaining tenured faculty will cover the teaching load as the physics degree winds down. He doesn’t anticipate that tenured faculty will lose their jobs, but said some may seek work elsewhere or retire.
Troy Wilson and Jeffery Reedy at Sonoma State University demonstrate an experiment created as part of a program aimed at introducing middle and high school students to STEM fields on Feb. 12.Amy DiPierro
Ending the physics major also could reverberate at Cominsky’s EdEon STEM Learning program, which creates educational materials aimed at inspiring middle and high school students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
EdEon’s work depends on Sonoma State undergraduates, Cominsky said, and currently employs between 15 and 20 students in fields including physics. “None of the research grants I write would have been possible without physics majors,” she said.
Meanwhile, the students in Severson’s optics class watched as he played them a video illustrating the spiral of two black holes.
“I want you to notice the colors of this,” said Severson, who has taught at the university since 2007. “The brighter the red, the greater the distortion of spacetime as this is happening.”
Among the optics students was Madison Ambriz, who plans to graduate at the end of fall 2025.Ambriz spent the summer learning to assemble circuit boards as part of a collaboration to upgrade the Large Hadron Collider, a famed particle accelerator used to test physicists’ theoretical predictions. “I had such a blast with it,” she said, but her enthusiasm has been tempered by the feeling that it’s too late to save the major.
“It doesn’t matter what we say, doesn’t matter how heartbroken we are, doesn’t matter what the numbers say, they’re still going to cut the [major],” Ambriz said. “And it’s just watching something that you love die, and it’s horrible.”
