برچسب: deal

The Senate Passes Trump’s Big Ugly Budget Deal, and Vouchers Are in It
The U.S. Senate just passed Trump’s massive budget bill, which renews tax cuts for the rich and makes deep cuts to Medicaid, about $1 trillion. Three Republican Senators voted against it: Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Susan Collins of Maine. Vice-President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Many hoped that Lisa Murkowski of Alaska would also oppose the bill but the leadership bought her off by adding special exemptions and benefits for Alaskans.

In The Washington Post:

Combined with the impact of Trump’s tariffs — which the White House has argued will help pay for the bill’s tax cuts and new spending — the bottom 80 percent of households would see their take-home incomes fall, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

“The right way to understand this bill is it is the largest wealth transfer from the poorest Americans to the richest Americans in modern history,” said Natasha Sarin, the Budget Lab’s president.

Shortly before the bill passed, I received two reports on the education section. Contrary to earlier reports, the Republicans restored vouchers. Apparently they satisfied the objections of the Senate Parliamentarian or decided to ignore them.

Leigh Dingerson, public school advocate who works for “In the Public Interest,” sent out this update shortly before the Senate passed the bill. The biggest takeaway: Vouchers are in again.

For the last 24 hours (more, actually), the Senate has been voting on a slew of amendments to the bill. Most are going down along party lines. At the same time, the Senate parliamentarian has been reviewing the bill for germaneness. She has struck out several provisions including, initially, the voucher language (this was Friday). But it was reinserted Saturday morning. Since then, some tweaks to the voucher language were made in an effort to win over some reluctant senators. Each time the language was changed, it had to go back through the parliamentarian.

This morning at about 2:15 am, Senator Hirono, along with Senators Reed, Kaine and van Hollen, presented their amendment on the floor of the Senate — an amendment to strike the voucher section altogether. That amendment needed 51 votes to pass. It got 50. All the Democrats voted in favor. All Republicans with the exception of Senators Fischer, Collins and Murkowski opposed it.

The voucher language currently in the bill has some important differences from where it started. Here are some key changes to the bill:
- The tax credit is permanent, and now unlimited. There is no federal ceiling on how much can be spent. Republicans removed the $4 billion volume cap on the total amount of donations.
- But!! Current language limits the amount a donor can get a tax credit on: The text now allows any individual to donate to an SGO for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit worth $1,700 (rather than 10% of adjusted gross income originally).
- States can now “opt in” to the program and must provide a list of approved scholarship granting organizations. And the bill clarifies that SGOs can only administer school vouchers within their state. This eliminates our worry that an SGO in Florida, for example, could hand out vouchers in Nebraska.
- The Senate has removed the provision asserting that there shall be no Federal control over private or religious schools. In other words, the door has been opened to federal regulation of schools funded with federal vouchers.
- The bill provides broad authority for the Secretary of Treasury to regulate the program, including explicit authority to regulate scholarship granting organizations and opening the door to regulate private schools.
So as you can see, there have been a lot of changes, some good, some bad.

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The NATIONAL COALITION FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION released the following statement:

National Coalition for Public Education Denounces Senate Vote on Private School Voucher Program in “OBBB”

Today, the Senate voted to include an uncapped national private school voucher program in its budget reconciliation bill. This represents the first time a majority of the lawmakers in the U.S. Senate have ever supported sending public dollars to private schools. Now that both chambers have voiced their support for private school voucher provisions, it is likely to become law this year, forcing tax dollars to support private religious schools that can pick and choose who they educate and discriminate explicitly against students with disabilities.

Vouchers divert critical funds from public schools, which 90% of American families choose for their children to attend. Vouchers often go to students who never attended public schools in the first place, which drains taxpayer funds to subsidize private school tuition for well-off families who could afford it without money from the government. Under this harmful program, there will be no accountability for money sent to private schools, nor would the private schools be bound by key provisions of federal civil rights laws, which public schools follow.

If this becomes law, the federal government will give a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to people who give money to use for payments for children to attend private schools or be homeschooled. This was not done previously with any other 501(c)3 donation in our history, and no other non-profit classified as a 501(c)3) would benefit from this one-to-one tax lowering scheme.

America’s public schools educate all students in every community. Private schools that take taxpayer-funded vouchers, however, often discriminate against students for any number of reasons, including based on their disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, English language ability, academic abilities, disciplinary history, ability to pay tuition, or what their family looks like. The language that was in the House-passed bill about private schools maintaining policies that do not take into account whether or not a student has an Individualized Education Program (though these are not full protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) was stripped in the Senate bill and supporters of the voucher provision criticized this language.

Public schools are a cornerstone of American democracy. NCPE condemns Congress diverting billions of dollars away from public education and toward discriminatory, ineffective private school vouchers
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02/07/2025
Thomas Ultican: Billionaires and Charter Schools in California: A Toxic Deal

Thomas Ultican reviews the current state of billionaire support for charter schools in California. Most people, certainly the charter industry, has long forgotten or never knew that the original charter school idea was that they would be created by teachers and operate under the aegis of local school boards. The reason for the linkage was that charter schools were supposed to be places that tried innovative practices, especially for the neediest students, and fed their results to their host district. They were supposed to be like R&D centers for local school districts.

They were not supposed to compete with public schools but to help public schools.

They were not supposed to undermine public schools. They were not supposed to be for-profit or operated as chains or entrepreneurs.

Here is Tom’s report on what’s happening today.

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03/06/2025
How pro-Palestinian protesters at one UC campus got a deal

The bell tower and UCR sign on the campus of UC Riverside.

Credit: UC Riverside / Stan Lim

Sitting across from UC Riverside Chancellor Kim Wilcox inside a conference room on the campus, Samia Alkam presented him with her Palestinian identification card.

A doctoral student at Riverside, Alkam’s identification limits her to the West Bank in Palestine. She explained to Wilcox that even though she also has American citizenship, Israel bars West Bank residents like her from traveling to places such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem without a special permit or visa.

That was relevant to the matter at hand, as Wilcox and Alkam deliberated over what to do about a summer abroad program offered by Riverside’s School of Business. As part of the program, students visit Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Days earlier, pro-Palestinian student protesters at Riverside erected an encampment and demanded administrators cut ties with Israel. Alkam, the lead negotiator for students, implored Wilcox to discontinue the abroad program, arguing it violated the university’s anti-discrimination policy because not all students could participate regardless of their country of national origin.

“They have students who are on campus who can’t participate in that program just because of their birth status,” Alkam told EdSource later. “It was really important for me to illustrate that in a very visual way for them.”

According to the U.S. State Department, American citizens who are also residents of the West Bank need a visa or permit to enter Israel. Other Americans can use their passport to visit for business or tourism purposes without a visa.

Focusing on the study abroad program reflected the students’ strategy to try winning tangible changes at Riverside even if they couldn’t get the campus to divest financially from companies tied to Israel amid its war on Gaza, a key demand of protesters at campuses across the country.

Aided by their faculty adviser, Christine Victorino, who previously was Wilcox’s chief of staff, the students came to the negotiating table with what they believed were reasonable asks. A spokesperson for Riverside said nobody on Wilcox’s staff was available for an interview, but directed EdSource to Victorino. With an intimate knowledge of how the chancellor’s office operates, she advised the students on making requests that had a chance to be successful.

On the second night of negotiations, Alkam and other negotiators met with Wilcox for seven hours inside the conference room at Riverside’s Hinderaker Hall. By the next morning, they had their deal, which included terminating the abroad program.

Rather than single out the program in Israel, Wilcox discontinued all of the business school’s global programs, which also operate in Oxford, Cuba, Vietnam, Brazil, China, Egypt and Jordan. Wilcox’s office declined to comment for this story, but according to his office’s website, officials learned “through our dialogue” during the negotiations that the abroad program was not “consistent with university policies.”

As part of the deal, Wilcox also agreed to consider whether campus vendors should be permitted to sell Sabra hummus products. Students at Riverside and other campuses across the country for years have targeted Sabra. One of Sabra’s owners is the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that has long been scrutinized by pro-Palestinian activists over its support for the Israeli Defense Forces.

While not committing to divestment, Wilcox said he would start a process to review the Riverside campus endowment’s investments. That was the most Wilcox could do because Riverside doesn’t manage its own endowment; instead, UC’s systemwide investments office does. Under the agreement, Riverside will explore the possibility of managing the endowment itself.

Wilcox made the concessions after two days of negotiations. In exchange, student protesters agreed to end their encampment just four days after they initially erected it. The campus also avoided the violence between pro-Palistinian protesters and Israeli supporters that had occurred earlier that week at UCLA, which negotiators believed was a motivating factor for Wilcox to get a deal.

As college protesters across California have demanded their campuses cut ties with Israel, few have gotten any formal concessions. Across most campuses, negotiations have either stalled or ended altogether. Several campuses have even resorted to calling in police to forcibly disband encampments and arrest students.

But at Riverside, the spring quarter is ending with little fanfare. A stark contrast to several other University of California campuses, Riverside has remained peaceful in the weeks since the agreement, which remains one of the few deals reached by campus protesters and administrators across California. Others to make deals include UC Berkeley and Sacramento State.

Of UC’s seven campuses on the quarter calendar where classes continued into this month, Riverside was also the only one where academic workers did not strike. Graduate assistants and other student workers did strike at the six other campuses, arguing that UC violated union members’ rights by retaliating against them for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.

“I knew that I would look more revolutionary if we stood firm and we kept our encampment up for longer, and we started getting arrests and getting the same press coverage as other universities,” Alkam said. “But to me, it was more important to get the material changes that we did get.”

Avoiding violence

Two nights prior to the main negotiating session at Riverside, counterdemonstrators at UCLA violently attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment there, injuring student protesters and sending some to the hospital.

Wilcox, students believed, did not want to risk a similar situation unfolding at his campus, which prides itself on being one of the most ethnically diverse and welcoming universities, including for Middle Eastern students. Riverside was the first in the nation to have a Middle Eastern Student Center, according to its website.

“Their whole image is centered around them being progressive and them being diverse,” Alkam said. “They felt so much pressure to not look like UCLA.”

Victorino, the faculty adviser for the students, agreed. She said in an interview that “as a former administrator, the main concern” was the possibility of violence.

It was that kind of insight into the chancellor’s office and how it operates that Victorino was able to provide to the students. Before last year, she had spent seven years as Wilcox’s chief of staff. In that role, she helped Wilcox navigate several major controversies and challenges, including the Covid-19 pandemic and a restructuring of the campus police department.

Victorino, now a professor of practice in Riverside’s school of education, only got involved in the encampment negotiations after being approached by Alkam. Alkam was previously Victorino’s teaching assistant and asked her to be the students’ adviser. Unsure if she wanted to involve herself in the negotiations, Victorino sought advice from Wilcox. He encouraged her to accept the role, so she did.

She helped the students understand what would and wouldn’t be possible. Victorino, for example, explained to the students that Riverside’s endowment is managed by the systemwide office, giving Wilcox little control over the campus investments. With that information, the students compromised on their original demand calling for Riverside to immediately divest its endowment funds from any companies related to Israel.

Victorino even told them how Wilcox might react to certain requests. “We kind of just role-played what the meeting would be like,” Victorino said.

Elsewhere, negotiations stall

More than a month since their deal, Riverside remains one of the few campuses where protesters and officials found common ground.

At other campuses, like UC Santa Cruz, negotiations have gone south. About two weeks ago at that campus, after weeks of stalled negotiations, Chancellor Cynthia Larive called in police who disbanded an encampment there and arrested students. Police also have dismantled encampments and arrested protesters at campuses such as UC Irvine, UC San Diego and UCLA, where a second encampment was erected.

Complicating the negotiations is the governance structure of the 10-campus University of California and 23-campus California State University systems. Both systems are governed by centralized boards and systemwide president’s and chancellor’s offices, limiting the autonomy of campus-level administrators.

CSU system officials publicly scolded one campus president, Sonoma State President Mike Lee, for agreeing to seek “divestment strategies” and to not engage in study abroad programs in Israel. Lee was placed on administrative leave and, two days later, said he would retire.

“The chancellor and presidents have been in constant contact during protest activities on campuses with the intent that decisions at the university level are made in consultation with the Chancellor’s Office,” CSU spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith said in a statement to EdSource.

A UC spokesperson declined to comment. But UC said in a statement in April that it “opposes calls for boycott against and divestment from Israel.”

At Santa Cruz, protesters initially set up their encampment about six weeks ago, but it has been more than a month since administrators have negotiated with them. Student protesters last submitted a set of demands to Larive’s staff on May 10, but “there’s been no official communication between us and the administration since then,” said Jamie Hindery, an undergraduate student at the campus and a spokesperson for the protesters.

A Santa Cruz spokesperson did not return a request for comment on this story.

Larive in a statement said the encampment was unlawful and a “dangerous blockade from the campus entrance.” She added that the encampment “disrupted campus operations and threatened safety, including delaying access of emergency vehicles.”

Protesters, however, dispute that. “Copious eyewitness testimony, backed by photos and video evidence, contradict this account,” the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine said in a statement responding to Larive.

Hindery said the police activity eliminated any chance of negotiations resuming. It’s a reality he believes is true across most UC campuses, where finals are happening this week and commencement ceremonies are scheduled for this weekend. “People don’t want to attend their own graduations. Students feel betrayed and unsafe,” he said. “I would be very surprised if campus-level negotiations were to restart any time soon.”

Meanwhile, at Riverside, Alkam credited administrators for choosing “peace and safety” and compromising with the students.

“That’s something that the other campuses should have learned from, and they definitely didn’t,” she said.

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25/05/2025
SF State drops investments in arms makers in deal with pro-Palestinian students

A Cease Fire Now sign hangs on a tent on the grass as tents are set up in The Quad during a Students for Gaza rally at San Francisco State University on April 29, 2024.

Credit: Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

San Francisco State has pulled investments from three companies it says don’t meet its human rights standards following pressure from pro-Palestinian student activists.

The moves resulted in changes to the university’s $163 million investment portfolio.

SF State Foundation confirmed Wednesday that it has sold its Lockheed Martin corporate bond position and stock positions in Leonardo, an Italian multinational defense company, and Palantir Technologies, a U.S.-based data analysis firm that has worked with the Israeli Defense Ministry.

The foundation also screened out a fourth company, the construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, based on a pre-existing policy that steers the foundation away from investments in fossil fuels. The company has become a target of groups advocating divestment from Israel. They claim Caterpillar’s heavy equipment has been turned into weapons by Israel in the Palestinian territory.

College students around the country have pushed universities to remove companies aligned with Israel from investment portfolios. Student activists have met resistance from California State University system officials, who have said they won’t tinker with investment policies in reaction to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Instead, students on some campuses have focused their energy on school-level foundation endowments, but say their goal remains to influence the entire system’s investment policies.

San Francisco State students made headway by training their attention on the university foundation’s investment screens, standards used to make sure investments are consistent with the school’s values, like racial justice, social justice and climate change. The SF State Foundation shed investments in the four companies as the result of implementing those screens and not because it agreed to sell specific companies.

The changes come following a summer of Zoom meetings held by a work group composed of representatives from Students for Gaza, SF State Foundation investment committee, faculty and administrators.

The work group proposed a revised investment policy that says the foundation will not invest in arms makers and will “strive not to invest in companies that consistently, knowingly and directly facilitate or enable severe violations of international law and human rights.” The draft does not name any specific country or conflict.

The proposed policy is slated for a final vote in December. The foundation’s investment committee decided to act on the suggested revisions in the meantime, identifying the investments in Lockheed Martin, Leonardo and Palantir under the human rights screens.

The foundation also will unveil a new website disclosing more information about its endowment by the end of September.

“Through the work of the many students involved in GUPS (General Union of Palestine Students) at SFSU and SFG (Students for Gaza), we have been able to successfully ensure our money is not funding GENOCIDE ‼️” an Aug. 27 announcement on Instagram by the group Students for Gaza at San Francisco State said.

Sheldon Gen, a faculty representative to the SF State Foundation, said the work group landed on draft policy language that aligns the university’s investment policies with its values, without singling out a specific conflict, country or geographic area.

“What we did at San Francisco State isn’t going to end the conflict in Gaza, but we did find some space where students can have agency and be heard ― and not only that, but really, honestly improve our university,” he said.

Jeff Jackanicz, the president of the SF State Foundation, thanked students who participated in the work group in an Aug. 22 email to the campus outlining proposed changes to the foundation’s environmental, social and governance, or ESG, strategies.

“We have been lauded for being a leader in ESG investment before, and with credit to Students for Gaza, our revised policy affirms our leading role in values-driven advising,” Jackanicz wrote.

Students for Gaza scheduled a rally and news conference Thursday at 12:15 p.m. in San Francisco State’s Malcolm X Plaza to announce the investment changes.

A ‘tangible’ bid for divestment

The decision to tighten investment screens at San Francisco State follows a wave of campus protests calling on Israel to end an assault on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people, according to the local health ministry. The current fighting started on Oct. 7 when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel, killing more than 1,000 people and abducting hundreds more.

Rama Ali Kased, an associate professor of race and resistance studies and an adviser to students in the work group, said some on her campus were surprised to learn the university had any investments in arms makers. Asking the university to cut ties with those firms was “tangible and understandable,” she said — which made the case to drop those investments easier.

The SF State Foundation is the auxiliary organization responsible for raising private funding for the university and managing the university’s endowment, money the university funnels into facilities, scholarships and other university programs.

The foundation’s endowment spent $8.9 million of its income across the university in the 2022-23 fiscal year, according to Cal State records, and ranked as the seventh-largest in the Cal State system by market value.

This is not the first time that SF State has revised its foundation investment criteria following feedback from student activists. In 2013, the foundation limited direct investments in coal and tar sands, a step Cal State says was a first among U.S. public universities.

Each of the 23 campuses in the California State University system, as well as the Chancellor’s Office, has a separate endowment managed by an auxiliary organization. Together, the CSU endowments had a market value of $2.5 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year, growing roughly 8.7% year-over-year.

The Chancellor’s Office on April 30 released a statement saying that Cal State “does not intend to alter existing investment policies related to Israel or the Israel-Hamas conflict” because such divestment “impinges on the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas on our campuses.”

Campus leaders nonetheless have some flexibility to manage their own endowments.

Sacramento State on May 8 announced new investment policy language as a concession to pro-Palestinian student groups. That language does not mention Israel specifically but instead directs the school’s foundation “to investigate socially responsible investment strategies which include not having direct investments in corporations and funds that profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights.”

Less than a week after the Sacramento State announcement, SF State agreed to revise its investment policies in consultation with student encampment representatives, setting in motion this summer’s work group.

But an incident at another Cal State campus suggests there are limits to how much leeway campus leaders have to negotiate with student protesters.

Mike Lee, then-president of Sonoma State University, announced on May 14 that he had reached an accord with protesters to review the school foundation’s investments and form an advisory council that would include a local chapter of the group Students for Justice in Palestine.

Lee was forced to backpedal soon afterward. The CSU placed him on administrative leave the following day, saying he announced the agreement without proper approvals. Lee decided to go back into retirement soon afterward.

The path to a deal

To Lynn Mahoney, the president of San Francisco State University, the student encampment pitched on her campus for roughly two weeks this spring had roots in a range of student concerns, from dizzying Bay Area housing costs to the climate change crisis.

“If these young people aren’t angry, they’re not paying attention,” Mahoney said.

That perspective shaped the way Mahoney responded when students organized protests in April. Mahoney agreed to participate in an open bargaining session held in the school’s Malcolm X Plaza, fielding questions from students and sharing information about the university’s investment practices.

“I just strongly urge presidents: Approach the students with respect, even if they’re out there hollering horrible things about you,” she said. “Approach them with respect. They’re your students.”

Kased said that by meeting with students at the encampment this spring, Mahoney and student protest leaders set a tone that allowed for the work group to continue over the summer.

“That move provided a space for students to feel empowered, but to say, ‘Look, we may not agree with President Mahoney on everything, but we’re going to sit down,’” Kased said.

The summer’s work group also benefited from a governance structure students developed during the spring encampment, Kased said, when students elected leaders to represent them and similarly identified faculty to act as spokespeople and liaisons in negotiations with the administration.

People who attended the meetings said they tended to be collegial rather than confrontational, and that rare moments of tension between students and campus officials were quickly quelled.

“These were tough discussions,” Gen said. “It’s the kind of discussion that professors aspire to have with their students in classes, quite honestly — challenging ones, where they raise tough questions, explore implications of perspectives and, most importantly, find some route for agency.”

Gen said the discussions with students this summer echoed previous debates within the foundation’s investment committee regarding whether to divest from specific countries due to their records on human rights. The committee has avoided naming specific countries in its policies, he said, instead articulating values its investments should reflect.

“We have a diversity of students who are on all sides of this specific issue here, too, and we weren’t going to alienate one student group for another,” he said. “They’re all our students.”

‘Not about money’

Some foundation investments are easier to screen than others.

Noam Perry, who works with activists leading divestment campaigns as part of his role at the American Friends Service Committee, acted as a de facto translator between San Francisco State students and university officials this summer.

He said one place where the work group made progress was by identifying specific investments held in separately managed accounts, an investment vehicle tailored to the university.

A foundation document dated Aug. 14 says the foundation will screen out “any company deriving more [than] 5% of revenue from weapons manufacturing, involved in the private prison industry, or engaging in detention at borders” from separately managed accounts.

But it can be harder to get a clear picture of other investment vehicles. Perry said that the foundation works with some asset managers that apply quantitative investment strategies. That means the manager buys and sells stocks dynamically — and the stock holdings change every day.

“That’s where conversations became really tense,” said Perry. “Because from the students’ perspective … this is unacceptable, because there’s no way that this vendor could ever be aligned with the responsible investment policy that the university is seeking. And from the university’s perspective, that’s where there’s revenue to be lost. They never said they had zero tolerance for having these companies. It’s always about minimizing exposure and reducing the risk that they’re invested in these (companies).”

Perry said how the foundation should handle such investments in the future remains an open question.

Jackanicz’s Aug. 22 email to the campus said the university’s “commingled investment strategies already align strongly with core environmental, social and governance (ESG) values.” He said the foundation believes “we can engage with fund managers over time to discuss changes that could have further positive impacts.”

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14/05/2025
School boards association lawsuit claims provision in California budget deal is unconstitutional

Credit: Flickr

This article was rewritten and reposted on Sept. 27 to clarify that the lawsuit’s aim is to prevent underfunding of Proposition 98 in future years. The earlier version misstated that the lawsuit asserted the current state budget as enacted also violated the funding law.

Although the 2024-25 state budget shields school districts and community colleges from funding cuts, the California School Boards Association is suing the Newsom administration over a provision that the school boards association claims is unconstitutional.

The change to the Education Code would deny schools money they would be entitled to under some conditions in future years, setting a dangerous precedent, CSBA argued in a lawsuit filed this week.

The school boards association is asking the Superior Court in Sacramento County to invalidate that section in the education budget bill. CSBA argues it violates the letter and spirit of Proposition 98, the formula that determines how much of the General Fund must be allocated to schools and community colleges.

The Department of Finance inserted the little-known statutory wording into the budget trailer bill in the final days of the legislative session in June, with no discussion or notice. It was not mentioned in the budget analysis that legislators reviewed before passing the budget.

“CSBA’s defense of voter‐approved Proposition 98 is nonnegotiable, as is the obligation of the state to follow the Constitution that governs it,” CSBA President Albert Gonzalez, a Santa Clara Unified school board member, said in a statement.

On behalf of Newsom, the California Department of Finance refuted CSBA assertions in a series of exchanges with legislative leaders in July. All of its actions were legal, Joe Stephenshaw, director of the Department of Finance, wrote.

The lawsuit would not affect this year’s budget, which took effect July 1. However, the tense negotiations and controversial revenue maneuvers preceding the budget’s passage were very much on the minds of Newsom’s financial advisors when they wrote the statutory change that the school boards association opposes.

It pertains to the unusual challenge that Newsom and the Legislature found themselves in trying to write the 2023-24 budget. Because of the devasting impacts of winter storms and floods, the federal government and the state pushed back the tax collection deadline from April to November 2023. Without having tax receipts in hand, Newsom and the Legislature made a best-guess estimate of what Prop. 98 minimum guarantee would be for 2022-23. As it turned out, the minimum guarantee was $8.8 billion less than what they appropriated.

Rather than cut funding for school districts and community colleges after the 2022-23 fiscal year had ended and money had been spent, Newsom left what he called “an overappropriation” alone. Two of the main formulas to determine the Prop 98 minimum guarantee incorporate what the state spent on schools in the prior year. So, the over-appropriation in 2022-23 would increase the amount that the state owed schools in 2023-24, 2024-25 and beyond. his initial 2024-25 budget in January, Newsom proposed allowing schools to keep the $8.8 billion for 2022-23 but to exclude the money when calculating the Prop. 98 minimum guarantee for 2023-24 and 2024-25.

CSBA and other education groups opposed that move. They said that dropping Prop. 98 below what the Legislature had approved violated the initiative that voters passed in 1988.

In most years, the Legislature’s Prop. 98 appropriation becomes the base amount for the following year, then is adjusted for enrollment growth or decline, inflation, or increases in economic growth per student. That assures that Prop. 98 minimum funding guarantee will grow over time, CSBA said.

Faced with strong opposition from a coalition of school groups, Newsom eventually gave up on lowering the minimum guarantee. But still short of funding to pay for it, Newsom turned to a series of multiyear maneuvers: suspending the minimum guarantee in 2023-24, deferring funding from one year to the next, draining the rainy day fund, and creating a multi-billion dollar debt that the General Fund, not future Prop. 98 revenues, would pay back over several years. All of these tactics were legal.

Newsom tries again

But Newsom and Finance officials hadn’t given up on the idea of revising the Prop. 98 minimum guarantee downward when tax revenues come up short. They quietly inserted language into the trailer bill to limit the state’s funding vulnerability in the event of another tax filing delay in the future.

It says that when the filing deadline for personal and corporate income taxpayers is pushed back at least two weeks, then the state will revert to the previous year’s minimum guarantee. After the new taxes are collected, the state will recalculate the new Prop. 98 minimum and determine the difference between the original and revised Prop. 98 minimum. The “excess” appropriation won’t be able to raise the Prop. 98 minimum that year and for subsequent years, the statute says.

CSBA criticized this “unlawful provision” for “artificially lowering the baseline upon which future years’ school funding is established.” The lawsuit argues that voters passed it to assure a “stable and predictable source of funding that is not subject to political influence or manipulation.”

“When the Newsom administration proposed a budget maneuver in January to exclude some school funding from the Prop 98 formulas, education groups opposed it because it was unconstitutional. The budget language passed this summer to allow a similar manipulation of the guarantee in the future would be similarly unconstitutional,” said Rob Manwaring, senior policy and fiscal advisor for the nonprofit Children Now and an advisor on the lawsuit.

Delays in the tax deadline as occurred in 2022 and laid out in the provision will presumably be rare, but CSBA said the integrity of Prop. 98 must be preserved.

The Legislature has no authority to amend the wording of Prop. 98 – only voters can do that, CSBA argued.

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10/05/2025
Legislative deal on reading instruction reached in the nick of time
Credit: Allison Shelley / American Education
KEY TAKEAWAYS

The new bill will offer state-approved training and textbooks to all TK-5th-grade teachers.

State-sanctioned training will be voluntary, part of the compromise.

A shift toward in evidence-based strategies, including phonics, moves away from local control.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has nudged parties at odds on how early literacy should be taught to agree to legislation that could significantly advance reading proficiency in California.

After weeks of intense talks following months of stalled negotiations, a new bill that Rivas, D-Salinas, will co-author will have a hearing April 30, the deadline for an initial committee vote on new bills. Assembly Bill 1454 will call for providing potentially all transitional kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers with training and textbooks that stress what’s known as structured literacy, starting with phonics in the early grades. (The bill, which will be co-authored by Rivas, Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, and Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, had not yet been published as of Wednesday; it will soon replace the current AB 1854, an unrelated bill.)

The bill won’t end the resistance of critics who argue that structured literacy, with an emphasis on foundational skills, is too narrow and can set back the progress of English learners who need more vocabulary and oral language strategies.

But passage of the bill would move California toward a consistent statewide approach to reading instruction. The legislation will also follow the lead of other states whose adoption of evidence-based strategies, known as the science of reading, have contributed to wide gains in proficiency on both state tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP in the early grades.

By contrast, on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the 41 percentage point gap in proficiency between economically and non-economically disadvantaged students in California was among the widest in the nation, and growing. Only 8% of Black and 23% of Hispanic fourth graders in California were proficient in reading, compared with 56% of white and 67% of Asian students.

Until now, California had avoided controversy by ceding control over reading instruction to local schools. The state did not collect information from districts on the reading strategies they used and the textbooks they purchased. Newly credentialed elementary grade teachers who were trained in the science of reading could be hired by districts using textbooks that conflicted with what they had just learned in credentialing programs.

“This legislation is essential, important progress, and it reflects agreement and robust consensus on ways to provide educators the evidence-based tools they need to support California’s diverse students,” said Rivas in a statement. “We must make sure every child, no matter their background, has the opportunity to become a confident and thriving reader.”

Also supporting the compromise is Californians Together, a nonprofit organization that advocates for English learners and biliteracy programs. It had opposed the original bill, Assembly Bill 1121, authored by Rubio. But in the statement that Rivas released, Hernandez said, “We appreciate Speaker Rivas’s leadership in bringing this legislation forward, and we remain committed to ensuring that any new literacy policy fully supports English learners.”

A year ago, amid opposition from the California Teachers Association, the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), and Californians Together, Rivas pulled Rubio’s bill and asked critics and supporters to come back in 2025 with a compromise. When that failed to happen, Rivas got involved and directly pressed for a deal. The opponents met with Rubio and advocacy nonprofits EdVoice and Families In Schools, Decoding Dyslexia CA and the California NAACP, the organizations co-sponsoring AB 1121.

Rubio, who had expressed frustration with the opponents, thanked Rivas for his leadership and called AB 1454 “a significant step toward addressing very real concerns with our student outcomes while supplying teachers with the tools to ensure success in their roles.”

CTA has not yet decided its position on the new bill, said CTA President David Goldberg, while noting that it “is in a far better place thanks to the leadership of Speaker Rivas and the coalition of educators working on behalf of students to ensure a viable and responsible approach to a truly important issue.”

Jeffrey Freitas, the president of the smaller California Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, gave the new bill a full endorsement. “CFT members have been calling for more robust and improved literacy training and support to better meet the needs of our students,” he said. “We urge Governor Newsom and the Legislature to fully fund this important legislation, so that California teachers can immediately access the training.”

What’s in the bill

Although AB 1454 had not yet been released as of Wednesday morning, a 13-page analysis by staff of the Assembly Education Committee for the hearing had been posted.

The main elements of Rubio’s bill, calling for a state-vetted choice of teacher training, along with materials aligned with instruction that the State Board of Education will approve, are in AB 1454. However, one key difference is that the teacher instruction, mandated under AB 1121, will be voluntary.

“It is no longer required, but we feel good about it,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice. “We believe districts will want to take advantage of it and get the professional development they need.”

Also, language was added that satisfied Californians Together. There is more emphasis on aligning training with the California English Language Arts/English Language Development framework, Hernandez said, and the bill will explicitly call out “linguistically and culturally responsive” strategies. It will also highlight dual language instruction. “That’s a step in the right direction,” Hernandez said.

The bill will require the California Department of Education to consult with a range of groups, presumably including the English learner community and advocates for dyslexics, who strongly support phonics-based instruction.

According to the Assembly analysis, the bill will require:
- CDE to identify effective professional development in TK to grade 5 by Sept. 1, 2026 and for districts receiving funding for training to report to the state how many teachers received the training by 2029.
- the State Board of Education to update its list of acceptable English language arts and English language development instructional materials;
- the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to update school administrator standards to include training on how to support effective literacy instruction. Muratsuchi, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, had proposed this idea in his own literacy bill this year. He also participated in the negotiations.
Funding for the training and materials is unresolved, for now. Gov. Newsom proposed $250 million for literacy instruction in his initial 2025-26 budget. Money is expected to be tight, but Rivas, as speaker, will be at the table with Newsom for final budget talks in June.
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30/04/2025