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  • Fresno teachers union rejects district’s offer of pay increases, expanded medical benefits

    Fresno teachers union rejects district’s offer of pay increases, expanded medical benefits


    More than a thousand members of the Fresno Teachers Association rallied in late May and vowed to strike if the union and school district fail to agree to a contract by Sept. 29, 2023.

    Credit: Courtesy of Fresno Teachers Association

    The Fresno Teachers Association swiftly rejected the latest proposal by Fresno Unified Friday because the offer does not raise teachers’ pay enough to keep pace with inflation and cost-of-living increases, union president Manuel Bonilla said.

    The district’s offer, which Superintendent Bob Nelson said is “above and beyond” educators’ requests, came only days ahead of Wednesday’s teachers union vote on whether to strike.

    “No new investments to reduce class size. No new investments to reduce special education (caseloads). A salary that doesn’t keep up with inflation. They want to cut our healthcare (contribution),” Bonilla said. “Those are the four remaining items we don’t agree on.”

    Both the school district and teachers union admit that they’ve failed to agree on “critical” items, such as salary and class size, but Nelson said there’s been “significant progress” with the district’s proposals, including, 19% pay increases over the next three years, expanded medical benefits for the rest of employees’ lives, even after retirement, and changes to class size overages.

    “I believe this is a historic proposal for… pay increases and health benefits like we’ve never seen before in Fresno Unified.“ Trustee Susan Wittrup said.

    But Bonilla said the Fresno Teachers Association disagrees with the district’s characterization of the offer.

    More pay on the table

    For salary, the district is now proposing 19% salary increases or 14% in raises and 5% in one-time payments — up from its previous offer of 11% raises.

    Over three years, that includes:

    • A 8.5% raise this school year
    • A 3% raise and a 2.5% one-time payment in the 2024-25 school year
    • A 2.5% raise and a 2.5% one-time payment in 2025-26

    The 3% and 2.5% raises for the next two school years are contingent on the school district having an Average Daily Attendance (ADA) of 92%, according to the revised proposal. The district’s ADA currently hovers around 92%, district spokesperson Nikki Henry said.  If the district doesn’t meet that threshold, the district and union would have to negotiate the raises again. If cost-of-living adjustments increase, so would the raises.

    The raises put teachers’ average salary at $103,000, Nelson estimated.

    Despite increases in recent years, teacher pay in Fresno and across California still failed to keep up with rising inflation, according to The Fresno Bee.

    Plus, starting pay and max salary for teachers in other Central Valley school districts outrank the pay of teachers in Fresno Unified, though the district is the largest in the region, Bonilla said.

    Based on Fresno Unified’s pay schedule, salary currently ranges from $56,013 for new teachers to about $102,000 for teachers with loads of experience, not including those with professional development.

    Based on a compensation comparison of 16 districts across the Central Valley, data provided by the union, the $56,013 for new teachers and $102,000 max salary rank at the bottom among the other school districts.

    Fresno Unified’s proposal also still comes with a cut to how much the district contributes to the healthcare fund, Bonilla noted. The health fund, in part, determines employee healthcare benefits.

    The suggested contribution cut saves the district money, which Fresno Unified will use to fund its proposed salary increases, Bonilla asserts.

    “They want to reduce the amount of money that goes into our health fund so that they can use some of it to pay for the salary increases,” Bonilla told EdSource.





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  • Erratic results, high costs doomed this district’s once-heralded student improvement program

    Erratic results, high costs doomed this district’s once-heralded student improvement program


    Students in a Fresno Unified classroom.

    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    Top Takeaways
    • Fresno Unified and its teachers union reached an agreement in mid-June to attempt to mitigate the impacts of a long-standing program ending. 
    • The multimillion-dollar program was touted by the district as a way to close gaps between student groups less than three years ago. 
    • Finances, inconsistent program implementation and varied results are some of the reasons the district says the program was eliminated. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Going Deeper: Who Designated Schools served 

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Inconsistent implementation or lack of oversight?

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Timeline of Designated School expansion, elimination

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

    2015-16: 20 schools were added as Designated Schools

    2016-17: 10 more elementary schools became Designated Schools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    An analysis of the program, conducted by Hanover Research in the 2020-21 school year, found that:

    • Academic outcomes were mixed
    • Program implementation varied across campuses, with only some schools aligning resources with data-driven practices 

    District administration had the authority and ability to address the program’s flaws. In fact, the Hanover report recommended that Fresno Unified establish a set of standards on how staff should use its additional time at Designated Schools. 

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

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

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

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

    Bob Nelson, former superintendent of Fresno Unified

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

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

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

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

    But was it effective? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    chart visualization

    chart visualization

    chart visualization

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

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

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

    Mitigating impact

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

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

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

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

    And unfortunately, families won’t know the repercussions of the program’s elimination until this school year when it’s no longer in place, Ramirez said. “Parents,” she said, “won’t notice until it’s not there.”





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  • Districts groan as state board sets in motion Newsom’s big changes to funding formula

    Districts groan as state board sets in motion Newsom’s big changes to funding formula


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

     In pursuit of narrowing cavernous gaps in student achievement, Gov. Gavin Newsom this year made changes to the Local Control Funding Formula, the state’s school funding law, that are among the most far-reaching since the law’s adoption a decade ago. School districts are bracing for the extra paperwork and demands. 

    Newsom’s directive requires that starting in 2024-25, districts and charter schools spell out how they will address poor performance and target funding for improvements in every school where one or more of the state’s 13 student groups rank red — the lowest of five performance bands on the California School Dashboard. Until now, state law required only improvement efforts for districts as a whole. 

    The revision was made in the language of the governor’s proposed state budget in January. It was discussed in legislative budget subcommittees as one of many items in the education budget but didn’t receive a separate and detailed review.

    Last week, the State Board of Education implemented the changes with regulations on what school districts must do to raise the achievement of the schools’ lowest-performing students. They include setting specific goals, committing to actions and spending to achieve them, and a new requirement — determining how to measure if those strategies are effective by the end of three years and what to do if they aren’t. 

    Before they voted, board members heard repeated warnings from dozens of superintendents and school district administrators that piling on more extensive documentation would make districts’ three-year strategic plans, called the Local Control and Accountability Plans, unbearably long and unreadable. 

    “In smaller school districts, where time and resources are already significantly limited, the current requirements of the LCAP add an undue burden,” Helio Brasil, superintendent of Keys Union School District, a two-school district in Stanislaus County, wrote to the board. 

    “In my experience, every addition of a new table or box or check box or prompt to the LCAP makes it less and less useful as the tool to promote equity-focused, locally informed strategic resource allocation,” Joshua Schultz, deputy superintendent of the Napa County Office of Education, testified. “Already, practitioners in the field will tell you that the LCAP document is not useful for informing and engaging educational partners because of its length and complexity.”

    Equity multiplier schools

    Included in the revisions is a new category of “equity multiplier” schools serving many of the state’s most vulnerable students. Among the factors for their selection are the proportions of students from low-income families and parents lacking a high school diploma, and school stability — the rate of student transience.  Many will likely be small alternative high schools serving students who have been expelled, bullied and struggled at standard high schools or are at risk of dropping out.

    The idea was initially proposed by Black educators through a bill authored by Assemblymember Akilah Weber, D-San Diego, to dedicate $300 million to improve the achievement of Black students as the lowest-scoring student group on the dashboard. Newsom agreed to the new level of funding, but, concerned about violating Proposition 209, the 1996 voter initiative that bans affirmative action in public schools, he broadened the idea. The money will require districts to address and fund the specific needs of any lowest-performing student group on any dashboard indicator — whether math scores or absenteeism and graduation rates — and create overall goals for a school. Weber and the California Association of African American School Administrators endorsed the final plan.

    The schools have yet to be designated, but the California Department of Education is projecting there could be 1,000 schools. Many will likely have student groups performing in the red and will have to address them like other schools. But equity multiplier schools additionally will be eligible for technical help from designated county offices of education and their share of the extra $300 million, based on student enrollment. 

    Intense focus on school spending

    While not providing explicit funding for each student group, districts are held accountable for their performance. Student groups are determined by race and ethnicity, family income, students learning English, students with disabilities, and foster and homeless youth. Next month, the California Department of Education will release the 2023 dashboard, with color ratings for the first time since Covid interrupted testing in March 2020.

    The statutory revisions will mark a major shift in attention and accountability for the billions of dollars in extra “supplemental” and “concentration” money that the funding formula provides to districts annually based on the enrollment numbers of English learners and low-income, homeless and foster students. 

    The state already reports in the dashboard every school’s test scores and other indicators of student performance. Some districts funnel supplemental and concentration dollars directly to high-needs schools, as Los Angeles Unified does through its Student Needs and Equity Index. But the state steers funding formula dollars only to districts, which in turn determine how the funds are spent: which schools get tutors, extra counselors, teacher training or additional aides. Districts determine whether supplemental and concentration dollars are given to schools or through the central office. Districts are not required to track supplemental and concentration funding by school.  

    Stepped up accountability

    The revisions indicate Newsom agrees that either not enough funding reached the schools where high-needs students attended or funds were spent ineffectively.

    “The experience of the past decade is that we haven’t seen districts consistently identify schools with specific needs and take actions tailored to those needs,” said Brooks Allen, an adviser to Newsom and executive director of the State Board of Education.

    There has been overall progress in raising graduation rates and cutting suspension rates statewide. But the vast differences in proficiency rates on state test scores between Black (17% in math in 2023), white (48.2% in math) and Asian students (70% in math) have not narrowed, and absenteeism rates remain disproportionately high among Black and Hispanic students.

    “Newsom is saying we should move faster and stronger to close gaps in outcomes,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney for Public Advocates, a public interest law firm, one of the advocacy groups that called for the changes that Newsom adopted.

    The latest iteration of the LCAP template is at least the sixth in the past nine years. The state board designed the LCAP both as a strategic plan for district improvement and as an accountability tool to verify that districts are directing the $13 billion in supplemental and concentration funding to students for whom it was intended.

    Over time, the goals of accessibility and transparency have worked at cross-purposes. A previous iteration, for example, eliminated a potentially huge spending loophole, which the California State Auditor and Public Advocates identified, allowing districts to dump unspent supplemental and concentration dollars into their next year’s general fund to spend for any purpose on all students. Fixing it required adding yet another section to the LCAP accounting for the unspent money from year to year.

    A challenge to follow the money

    The Legislature hasn’t dedicated funding for research or evaluations to determine whether the funding formula was working. Consistent with his view that legislators should not meddle with local control, former Gov. Jerry Brown, the funding formula’s architect, made it difficult to compare districts’ spending from the funding formula and fought proposals to standardize spending through accounting codes.

    Despite the obstacles of limited data, researchers have persisted and found evidence for optimism and skepticism. In separate research studies, both UC Berkeley labor economist Rucker Johnson and Public Policy of Institute of California research fellow Julien Lafortune concluded that the funding formula succeeded in creating a much more equitable finance system and worked as designed for those districts getting the most extra money — those in which low-income students and English learners account for at least 95% of enrollment. Johnson calculated that a $1,000 increase in per-student funding, sustained for three consecutive years in the highest-poverty districts, produced significant increases in math and reading scores.

    But Lafortune, in an analysis he co-authored this year, also found that 60% of districts do not report spending on high-need students at or above the level of supplemental and concentration funding they receive. His 2021 research found that statewide only about 55% of supplemental and concentration dollars reached school sites whose students generated the funding, although some of the remaining money could have funded districtwide activities benefiting those schools. 

    Thus, there have been increasing calls from advocates for low-income students for more fine-grained reporting on spending.

    “We don’t report in a standardized way how much we spent at a school site. Getting that would go a long way to build trust that districts are doing what the policy intended,” said Rob Manwaring, senior policy and fiscal adviser for Children Now.

    Despite efforts by California Department of Education staff to eliminate redundancies, combine goals for multiple equity multiplier schools, and convert spending listings into data tables, the latest version will undoubtedly lengthen LCAPs that already are often several hundred pages for medium and large school districts, and will take extra labor to complete.

    The LCAP instructions will increase from 45 to 57 pages. Districts will have to engage parents, students, and teachers in every equity multiplier school and document how the engagement shaped goals and actions. Districts will add dozens to hundreds of entries for schools with student groups in the red.

    “No one wants to fill out paperwork for the sake of it,” said Allen. “But if the result leads districts to conduct further needs and data analyses, and not a compliance exercise, the result could lead to positive change and better support for kids who need it most.”

    Representatives of advocacy groups who had been calling for more transparency in the LCAP expressed support for the revised template. “The governor’s proposal,  combined with other improvements, would get California closer to ensuring equitable educational opportunities and outcomes,” wrote Guillermo Mayer, president and CEO of Public Advocates, and Christopher Nellum, executive director of The Education Trust-West, a nonprofit organization, in an EdSource commentary earlier this year.

    In letters and comments to the state board, no superintendent or lobbyist for school groups commended Newsom’s decision to strengthen the funding formula law and add a new category of highest-need schools. Instead, celebrating seemingly small victories, many praised Department of Education administrators for holding the line by making only those changes to the template that were required by law. They also called for additional efforts to slim down the LCAP.

    Advocates and school administrators are hoping that software engineers from Silicon Valley and artificial intelligence will somehow resolve their differences. They’re assuming an interactive, electronic template can reduce confusion and duplication with links to both AI-generated LCAP summaries for curious parents and detailed financial data for accountability hawks. 

    “I’m sure there’s technology out there that can help to take that large document that’s now being streamlined and put it into an even more user-friendly format for those who desire (it),” said state board Vice President Cynthia Glover Woods, who, she said, had read more than her share of LCAPs as chief academic officer of the Riverside County Office of Education.

    The idea of an electronic fix has been mentioned for several years — so far to no avail. 





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  • As ethnic studies mandate withers, it’s clear state leaders misled districts

    As ethnic studies mandate withers, it’s clear state leaders misled districts


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    Last week, the California Legislature let its widely heralded 2021 high school ethnic studies bill, AB 101, silently lapse after it and Gov. Gavin Newsom passed a 2025-26 state budget that did not appropriate funds for it. Without that funding, school districts will not be bound by AB 101’s Fall 2025 deadline to offer students an ethnic studies course. 

    Ethnic studies’ popularity has been built on a false narrative: that California requires high school students to pass an ethnic studies course to earn a diploma. What’s been omitted from this narrative is that shortly before AB 101’s passage the Legislature added a barely noticed but hugely consequential sentence to AB 101 — that the ethnic studies graduation requirement will become “operative only upon an appropriation of funds” in separate legislation.

    In other words, from its inception, AB 101 was, and remains, aspirational. 

    Upon learning this surprising news, Mountain View-Los Altos High School District Superintendent Eric Volta dubbed the state’s ruse “a hot mess” (view recording hour 3:37). “Everyone was moving in one direction until December,” he said, scrambling with limited resources to meet the state’s pressing deadline.

    The Senate Appropriations Committee estimated that an ethnic studies requirement would cost taxpayers a staggering $276 million a year — for a subject rife with controversy and concern.

    California’s decision not to trigger AB 101 was undoubtedly made easier given the turmoil wracking school districts that had already prepared this coursework, including Newsom’s alma mater, Tamalpais Union. Heated school board meetings extended into the night when ethnic studies landed on board agendas. Parents statewide were distraught to see their districts selecting “liberated” ethnic studies like in Tamalpais, centered on race-based resentment that seemed to encourage armed militancy.

    Attorney General Bonta, in a rare Legal Alert sent to all local superintendents and school board members, obliquely signaled the state’s hesitation to move forward. This public alarm and skittishness followed state leaders’ receipt of a detailed June 2023 policy paper from the non-partisan Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, cc’d to 3,000 school board superintendents and trustees, alerting them that the California Legislature did not appear to require ethnic studies after all. The Los Angeles Times and EdSource confirmed it, EdSource reporting that state officials agreed — “no money, no requirement to develop or offer classes.”

    The California Department of Education’s (CDE) years of silence on this funding caveat, pertaining to the first change in the state’s graduation requirements in decades, is not what local education leaders and taxpaying parents should expect from a state agency with a $300 million annual administrative budget and a duty to help districts operate their schools. 

    This silence was not just consequential for California’s 430 school districts with high schools. It became a recurring issue for the University of California’s Academic Senate and its governing bodies as they contemplated making passing an ethnic studies course a UC admissions requirement, grounded largely in the mistaken belief that the state requires high school students to enroll in it. The Academic Senate rejected that proposal in April after a letter signed by hundreds of UC faculty members pointed out its many flaws, including this faulty premise.

    It appears that CDE’s silence about this funding caveat was intentional. Believing for years that ethnic studies was mandated, school districts developed courses expecting the state to cover their expenses. Neither the CDE nor the State Board of Education advised school districts differently. In fact, CDE’s website states that students must take ethnic studies to graduate. The state board’s comment that ethnic studies is not required was in 2025, and directed only to the University of California’s Academic Senate. 

    Over one-quarter of California school districts with high schools now offer ethnic studies, 85% employing the controversial liberated ethnic studies framework according to my recent sampling. Liberated Ethnic Studies is political education, teaching students to view the world through the narrow lenses of skin color and oppression, often so they will try to change it with anti-Western activism.

    School districts just now learning about this reprieve are reversing course or pausing their ethnic studies work. In January, San Dieguito Union turned its new required 9th-grade Ethnic Studies English course into an elective, only to discover that student interest in the course was so low that it might not offer the class at all its high schools. This spring, Ramona Unified, Glendora Unified, Chino Valley Unified, and others paused their work mid-stream. Parents in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Newsom’s Tamalpais Union are pressing their school boards to do the same.

    The lesson here for local school leaders: verify narratives before acting, including those advanced by California state education officials.

    •••

    Lauren Janov is a California lawyer, education policy analyst, and political strategist. She is a legal consultant for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, advised the University of California faculty team which opposed a proposed Ethnic Studies admissions requirement, and co-founded the Palo Alto Parent Alliance. The opinions expressed are her own.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Inside the IT Engine Room: What School Districts Must Fix Before the Bell Rings

    Inside the IT Engine Room: What School Districts Must Fix Before the Bell Rings


    Jul 6
    2025

    Inside the IT Engine Room: What School Districts Must Fix Before the Bell Rings

    Scott Rupp

    By Scott Rupp, editor, Education IT Reporter.

    There’s a myth that school buildings go quiet during summer. Walk the halls in July, and you’ll hear the click of keyboards, the hum of laptops updating en masse, and the buzz of tech teams scrambling to patch systems, reset devices, and prepare for the digital demands of another school year.

    For school district IT leaders, summer is less a break and more a deadline. It’s the one narrow window to assess, upgrade, secure, and strategize before the onslaught of helpdesk tickets, classroom rollouts, and surprise crises hit like a storm on the first day of school.

    As we look toward the 2025–2026 academic year, here’s what’s top of mind for these unsung heroes and why the work they do now may define how smoothly (or chaotically) the year ahead unfolds.

    The Cybersecurity Time Bomb

    In recent years, K–12 schools have become ransomware ground zero. Attackers aren’t guessing anymore—they know schools often run aging infrastructure, have limited security staff, and store goldmines of sensitive student data. And they’re exploiting that knowledge.

    Overworked IT directors are spending their summers asking hard questions: Have we patched every exposed system? Can we trust our third-party vendors? What happens if our SIS goes down the first week of school?

    Some districts are making real progress adopting Zero Trust models, running phishing simulations, building incident response plans—but for many, it still feels like putting duct tape on a submarine. Funding is thin, awareness is spotty, and the stakes have never been higher.

    The Chromebook Cliff

    Remember the great rush to 1:1 device programs during the pandemic? Well, those devices—millions of them—are aging out. Batteries are failing. Screens are cracked. Charging carts are breaking down.

    Summer is when IT departments try to get ahead of it all. They’re running diagnostics, triaging broken units, and scrambling to figure out how to replace entire fleets when budgets are stretched thin.

    For many, it’s a sobering realization: the quick fixes of 2020 are now long-term operational burdens. And unless they make smart decisions now standardizing device types, implementing MDM tools, tracking asset lifecycle—they’ll be trapped in a repair-and-replace cycle for years to come.

    The EdTech Hangover

    If you ever thought your school was using too many apps, you’re probably right. On average, districts use more than 1,400 digital tools each year. Many of them do the same things. Few of them talk to each other.

    Educators are overwhelmed. Students are confused. And IT departments? They’re spending hours troubleshooting login issues and fielding support calls for tools no one really needed in the first place.

    This summer, more districts are taking stock. They’re auditing usage, sunsetting underperforming tools, and trying to simplify the learning experience. It’s less about cutting costs (though that helps) and more about cutting the noise. Because when every tool claims to be “the future of learning,” it’s hard to know what’s actually helping.

    Wi-Fi Woes and Connectivity Gaps

    For most schools, Wi-Fi has become as critical as plumbing. And yet, network infrastructure often goes untouched for years, only getting attention when something breaks.

    Summer gives IT teams the chance to breathe and look at the bigger picture: Are access points where they need to be? Can the network handle a hallway full of AI-enabled learning apps? What about those students at home who still can’t get online?

    Upgrades to Wi-Fi 6, bandwidth increases, and expanded mesh networks are top of the to-do list. So is partnering with local ISPs to keep students connected off campus. Because in 2025, learning doesn’t stop at the school gate and neither should connectivity.

    Student Data, Privacy, and the Compliance Tightrope

    With each new app, platform, or analytics dashboard comes a fresh load of student data. Grades, attendance, behavior, even biometrics in some cases. And districts are under more pressure than ever to safeguard it all.

    IT leaders are spending these weeks re-reading vendor contracts, updating privacy policies, and working with legal teams to stay compliant with laws like FERPA and COPPA. They’re building guardrails—who can access what data, for how long, and under what conditions.

    It’s tedious work. But with parents increasingly tuned in to digital privacy—and regulators watching closely; it’s no longer optional. If schools want trust, they have to earn it, and transparency about data practices is where that starts.

    The AI Question No One Has Answered Yet

    Every superintendent is asking about AI. Should we use it in classrooms? Can it reduce administrative burden? How do we prevent cheating? What about bias? What about the data?

    Some districts are experimenting with mixed results. Others are standing back, watching carefully. What’s clear is that IT leaders need to be part of these conversations, not pulled in after the fact to clean up the mess.

    This summer, a few are drafting AI use policies, conducting risk assessments, and exploring partnerships with ethical AI vendors. It’s early days, but one thing’s certain: AI is coming to education whether we’re ready or not.

    The Human Challenge: Burnout and Brain Drain

    Technology isn’t the only thing under strain. The people managing it are, too.

    Districts are struggling to recruit and retain qualified IT staff. The work is hard, the pay often lags behind the private sector, and the burnout is real. One person managing thousands of devices, users, and tickets? It’s not sustainable.

    Forward-thinking districts are investing in automation, cross-training, and shared service models across regions. They’re advocating for better staffing ratios. Because even the best systems crumble without the people to maintain them.

    A Narrow Window for Real Change

    The clock is ticking. In a few short weeks, teachers will return. Students will log in. And any cracks in the system will widen under pressure.

    Summer isn’t just a time to fix what’s broken—it’s a chance to reset. To rethink what’s necessary, what’s working, and what no longer fits. For school district IT leaders, it’s not just about avoiding disaster. It’s about building infrastructure that supports every learner, teacher, and admin not just for this year, but for years to come.

    Because education is changing. And the technology behind it has to keep up.



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  • Districts need more options to ensure stability, continuity for students

    Districts need more options to ensure stability, continuity for students


    A teacher kicks off a lesson during an AP research class.

    Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages

    As a former teacher and principal, and a current school board member, I am intimately familiar with the impact of the teacher shortage and consider it one of California’s most pressing and intractable problems. To address this multifaceted issue, schools need a wide array of options, including Assembly Bill 1224, pending state legislation that would increase continuity of instruction when teachers are out on leave and when a school struggles to fill a teacher vacancy.

    Authored by Assemblymember Avelino Valencia and co-sponsored by the California Schools Boards Association, the Association of California School Administrators, the California County Superintendents, and the California Association of School Business Officials, AB 1224 would allow substitute teachers to serve in a single classroom for up to 60 days, provided the school district or county office of education can demonstrate it made reasonable efforts to recruit a full-time teacher before retaining the substitute. Until every classroom has a qualified full-time teacher, let’s at least make sure every classroom has a consistent one.

    When the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated already dire teacher shortages, the state temporarily expanded the 30-day limit on substitute teaching to 60 days, a measure that was effective in responding to vacancies and extended absences. That statute expired in July 2024, but with upcoming Senate Education Committee amendments, AB 1224 would revive its provisions for another three years. Using the lessons learned from the successful trial run, the bill would extend the time a substitute can stay in a single assignment from 30 to 60 days in general education and from 20 to 60 days in special education.

    In a perfect world, every classroom would have a fully certificated teacher on the first day of class, the last day of class and every day between. As a lifelong educator, I know the value of having a full-time teacher share their learning and wisdom with students on a consistent basis. But there simply aren’t enough full-time teachers to go around. So, we must make policy and governance decisions that reflect the current reality while simultaneously working to build a better system that sets substitutes and students up for success. 

    Local educational agencies rely on substitutes, but current law forbids a substitute teacher from serving in the same classroom for more than 30 consecutive days. In cases where a school district or county office of education cannot identify a full-time teacher, such as a mid-year departure or one that occurs before the start of the school year, this can lead to a revolving door of substitute teachers that disrupts instruction and destabilizes the classroom environment. These impacts are felt most acutely in low-income and rural schools, and the burden falls disproportionately on English learners, minority students and students from families of modest means. Without AB 1224, students already cycle through different substitutes every few weeks, so the real debate isn’t about lowering standards, it’s about increasing stability.

    An insufficient pipeline of newly credentialed teachers and attrition from the profession means that the teacher shortage will persist. Thus, staffing schools — particularly in hard-to-fill areas like special education, math and science — will remain a daunting task. AB 1224 responds to that challenge by adding another tool to the toolbox that schools can use to fill gaps in their instructional workforce.

    Critics of AB 1224 claim it would diminish the push to recruit credentialed educators. Real world evidence shows the opposite. Examples abound of LEAs raising salaries, implementing incentive pay, offering signing bonuses, expanding mentorship programs, deploying advertising campaigns, hosting virtual and in-person job fairs, building staff housing for educators, and developing internal pipelines through teacher academies or programs for classified staff who want to transition to the teaching profession. Additional guardrails to preserve the primacy of full-time teachers include collective bargaining agreements governing the hiring process and a bill provision requiring that schools document their efforts to recruit full-time teachers.

     It’s disingenuous to suggest extending substitute assignments would undermine the search for long-term solutions to the teacher crisis. It’s also poor logic based on a false binary and an idealized labor market that doesn’t actually exist. This is not a choice between AB 1224 or full-time teacher recruitment; we can and must pursue both remedies. New federal and state programs targeting the teacher shortage are promising but take years, if not generations, to bear fruit when immediate relief is essential. Waiting for long-term pipelines to mature does nothing for students in classrooms today — AB 1224 provides the immediate help schools need to increase stability in the classroom.

    •••

    Bettye Lusk is president of the California School Boards Association. Lusk is a former teacher and principal in the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, where she currently serves on the Board of Education. 

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • How local districts and universities responded to storms pounding Southern California

    How local districts and universities responded to storms pounding Southern California


    The San Joaquin River has swollen beyond its usual riverbanks thanks to record rainfall. Melting snowfall threatens to flood the city of Firebaugh and six of its seven schools.

    Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource

    As severe weather conditions continue to pound the state, some school districts and university campuses throughout Southern California closed or made adjustments to instruction Monday — while others have opted to remain open.

    On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in eight counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura. 

    “California: this is a serious storm with dangerous and potentially life-threatening impacts. Please pay attention to any emergency orders or alerts from local officials,” the governor said in a news release. “California is ready with a record number of emergency assets on the ground to respond to the impacts of this storm.”

    As a result, several Cal State campuses moved classes online Monday, including Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State San Bernardino, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Los Angeles and Cal State Northridge. 

    Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brownaid also announced that county schools will be closed Monday, including Santa Barbara Unified School District— which will announce any closures beyond Monday later today. 

    The Los Angeles Unified School District, however, announced they would keep the vast majority of their campuses open — with the exception of Vinedale College Preparatory Academy and the Topanga Elementary Charter School. 

    District maintenance teams were instructed to arrive at school sites at 5 a.m. Monday to assess their safety and accessibility, according to a district post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday. The district also said in an X post it they would closely monitor campuses that are most likely to be asffected by the storm and that guidance from the city and county would determine any additional closures. 

    “We recognize the severity this storm can cause, especially in certain communities, and urge everyone to be careful and cautious,” read a district statement released at about 6:15 a.m. Monday. 

    “Please use your best judgment based on the conditions where you live and your ability to safely travel to your school/work location.” 

    LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho also said in a letter to staff and families on Sunday that district leaders “remain confident” in their ability to provide “the necessary instructional and operational support to students,” especially those who rely on their school-provided meals.

    A statement by SEIU Local 99, the union representing classified school employees, emphasized the importance of safe working conditions and constant communication with the district. 

    “Regardless of where you work, safety is the priority. Please give yourself extra time for your commute and use extreme caution. No one should lose pay due to the unsafe conditions created by the storm,” the statement read. 

    The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, however, has taken a split approach, with campuses in Santa Monica remaining open and those in Malibu closing. 

    Farther south, the San Diego County of Office of Education’s Project Rest has helped nearly 100 San Diego Unified School District families affected by the storms secure motel vouchers, CBS8 reported. 

    Kristy Drake, who works at the district’s Office of Children and Youth in Transition, told CBS8: “We are not going to leave any of our families outdoors or in their cars, so we are extending and hopeful that some more stable housing relief will show up very, very soon.” 





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  • Property-poor districts demand fairer funding for school facilities

    Property-poor districts demand fairer funding for school facilities


    Construction site at Murray Elementary in Dublin Unified in 2022.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    A public-interest law firm threatened Wednesday to sue Gov. Gavin Newsom and state officials unless they create a fairer system of subsidizing the costs of school facilities. That system must be as equitable as the Local Control Funding Formula, the decade-old formula for funding schools’ operating budgets, Public Advocates demanded in a lengthy letter.  

    At a news conference announcing their demand, Public Advocates and school board members, superintendents and parents with decrepit, inadequate and unhealthy school buildings charged that the state’s school facilities program discriminates against districts with low property values. Districts with high property values gobble up most of the state’s matching subsidies to modernize schools, while property-poor districts serving low-income families can’t afford local school bonds to qualify for state subsidies to build comparable facilities, they said.

    “It is our clear call to get this right,” said Gary Hardie, a school board member in Lynwood Unified in Los Angeles County. “We have not solved our facilities needs — not because we don’t fight each and every day for our young people, but we are up against policies that prevent us from doing the best we can do for our community.” 

    Hardie is one of four potential plaintiffs in a lawsuit. The others are Building Healthy Communities – Monterey County, Inland Congregations United for Change, and True North Organizing Network, which works with families across Tribal Lands and the broader North Coast region.

    In  1971, the California Supreme Court struck down the school funding system based on local property taxes as violating the constitutional right of students in low-wealth districts to have an equal education. In the letter to Newsom, Public Advocates argued the current system of funding school facilities is no better than the property-tax-based system that the court rejected in the Serrano v. Priest decision. 

    “Study after study has acknowledged the open secret here: Some districts get to build swimming pools and performing arts centers, while others suffer through leaky roofs and black mold,” said John Affeldt, Public Advocates’ managing attorney and director of education equity. Citing a 2022 study by the Public Policy Institute of California, he said that lower-wealth districts have received nearly 60% less state modernization funding than higher-wealth districts since 1998.

    “The discriminatory design of the state’s facility funding system is no accident,” he said. “It has been intentionally baked into the system, and its disparate results are wholly foreseeable.”

    Hardie, a native of Lynwood, called his city “culturally rich” but under-resourced as a result of federal redlining policies that divided Lynwood’s Black and brown communities with highways that lowered property values. 

    Lynwood Superintendent Gudiel Crosthwaite said that this week the district of 12,000 students “had about 40 classrooms that were leaking due to the rains, and last year it was a different 60 classrooms.”  While other districts are modernizing labs and performing arts theaters, he said Lynwood was forced to demolish the only major auditorium in the city because of the building’s condition. In the district, 99% of students are Black or Hispanic, and 94% are from low-income families.

    Going Deeper
    Credit: bike-R on flickr

    Read more EdSource coverage about school facilities funding, planning and construction. California school districts rely on state and local bonds and developer fees to fund facilities. As this funding has fluctuated over time, research has found significant disparities in their capacity to keep up facilities that adequately meet students’ needs.

    Public Advocates’ 21-page demand letter coincides with the start of negotiations between legislative leaders and the Newsom administration over the size and details of a school facilities bond for the November ballot. Two bills must be reconciled. Assembly Bill 247, by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, calls for a $14 billion TK-12 and community college state bond. Senate Bill 28, by Sen. Steven Glazer, D-Orinda, calls for a $15 billion bond that includes funding for UC and CSU.

    Neither bill, at this point, gives a funding breakdown. However, AB 247 includes a possible framework for reform, with a point system that favors low-wealth and low-family income districts with a slightly larger state subsidy. Affeldt, of Public Advocates, dismisses this as inadequate for failing to provide enough funding to address the stark disparities in the current system.

    There is little disagreement that a state school bond is needed. Money from the last state school bond, Proposition 51 (2016), with $7 billion in state support for K-12 and $2 billion for community colleges, has been allocated, and about $2 billion in state-approved projects are in the queue for the next round. There is also a demand to remove lead in school water and to shield schools from the impacts of climate change through better air filtration systems, flood protection and heat abatement.

    Under the state program, districts pass local bonds through property taxes, and the state matches the money through a state-funded bond issue paid off through state taxes. For new construction, the state splits the cost. For modernization projects — renovating facilities at least 25 years old and portables at least 20 years old — the district pays 40% and the state 60% of a project’s cost.

    Public Advocates is calling for addressing only the modernization program, not new construction. Affeldt said that the 60% guarantee for all districts, regardless of their ability to raise far more money than property-poor districts, provides substantially more modernization funds per pupil to higher-wealth districts.

    The current facility program also includes a hardship program for small districts with so little assessed property that they can’t afford a school bond. However, the current qualifying criteria — a maximum of $5 million of assessed value — are strict and don’t account for the high construction costs in remote areas. AB 247 would raise the limit to $15 billion. 

    Between 1998 and 2016, the state provided $42 billion of the $166 billion that school districts raised for new construction and modernization, according to a report by Jeff Vincent, who co-directs the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley and has done extensive research into the school facility program and its disparities.

    Spokespersons for Newsom and Muratsuchi did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment.

    Long-standing complaints

    The issues raised by Public Advocates are not new.

    In 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown called for major changes in the facilities program, and opposed the measure when school districts and construction lobbies wouldn’t compromise. Brown wanted to concentrate state aid on low-income, low-property-wealth districts and end the first-come, first-served basis for allocating state matches, which he said favored wealthy and big districts, like Los Angeles Unified, with large facilities planners that can quickly apply. Voters passed the $9 billion Proposition 51 ($7 billion for K-12 schools and $2 billion for community colleges) anyway.

    In 2018, Vincent co-authored a study that documented the disparities among districts’ ability to raise money through local bonds. He found that districts with the most assessed property value raised more than triple the amount of bond revenue per student than districts with the least assessed value per student.

    With calls for reform escalating, Newsom took up the cause in negotiating a $15 million bond for the March 2020 ballot. The down-to-the-wire talks led to concessions. Instead of first-come, first-served, the bond issue set priorities for state funding. They started with districts facing critical health and safety issues, like mold in schools or seismic hazards, small districts facing financial hardship, schools needing lead abatement, and districts facing overcrowding.

    The agreement also established a ranking system that factored in school districts’ ability to fund construction, as measured by bonding capacity per student and the percentage of students who are low-income, fosters, homeless, and English learners — the same measure for extra state money under the Local Control Funding Formula. Based on their point total, districts could qualify for a bonus 1% to 5% of state funding above the 60% match for modernization and 50% match for new construction.

    The changes were not implemented after voters rejected the bond issue 47% to 53%. It was the first defeat of a statewide school bond in more than 40 years. Some attributed the loss to anxiety over Covid, whose infections were making the news; others blamed its unfortunate but coincidental title —Proposition 13 — and confusion with the 1978 tax-cutting initiative.

    In September 2020, after Newsom and school districts reached a deal on what would become Proposition 13, Vincent told EdSource, “State leaders took the much-needed first step in putting forth a new program and a new wealth-adjusted funding formula. However, providing poor districts with a few more percentage points of funding may not remedy the inequities we’ve seen. It will be important to watch things closely in coming years.”

    Public Advocates and the complainants say now is the time for the much-needed second step. 

    If negotiations fail, a lawsuit in the fall could complicate the chances of passage, if not derail, a bond measure in November. Knowing that, Affeldt said, “I hope that the serious threat of litigation and negative publicity that will come with that will make all of the players realize that we need a more aggressive overhaul of the system.”





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  • LAUSD’s 100 priority schools target district’s highest-need students

    LAUSD’s 100 priority schools target district’s highest-need students


    LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho interacting with a student.

    Credit: LAUSD

    This story has been updated to remove demographic data, which the CDE has reported may not be accurate.

    Shortly after Alberto Carvalho became superintendent of LAUSD two years ago, he created a 100-day plan and named the district’s top 100 priority schools. 

    At the time, neither Carvalho nor district staff publicly identified the schools. However, LAUSD has continuously maintained that the schools are some of the district’s lowest-performing campuses in all measures, and that they would serve as the focal point of various district initiatives, such as decisions on adding additional instructional days to help students recover from pandemic learning loss and the new policy precluding charter schools from sharing their campuses. 

    LAUSD’s 100 priority schools, which is being made public for the first time because EdSource sought it, were selected based on considerations about what schools had the greatest need to improve in areas such as attendance rates, performance on the state Smarter Balanced Assessment and interim assessments, rates of completion of college-required courses (known as A-G), and proportion of students who are English learners, a district spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource this month. 

    The district also ensures that the principals of these priority schools participate in special programs where they can identify and express their schools’ special needs in academics, facilities or human resources. 

    The principals then receive an immediate response from support personnel with the goal of rapidly accelerating student achievement, the district spokesperson said. 

    EdSource does not have accurate demographic data for the 100 Priority Schools or the district because California Department of Education’s DataQuest website has noted inaccurate reporting from LAUSD.

    Schools on the LAUSD priority list 

    1. 107th Street Elementary School
    2. 109th Street Elementary School
    3. 112th Street Elementary School
    4. 28th Street Elementary
    5. 42nd Street Elementary School
    6. 49th Street Elementary School
    7. 52nd Street Elementary School 
    8. 54th Street Elementary
    9. 59th Street Elementary
    10. 75th Street Elementary
    11. 93rd Street Elementary
    12. 95th Street Elementary
    13. Alta Loma Elementary School
    14. Dr Maya Angelou Community Senior High
    15. Aragon Avenue Elementary
    16. Audubon Middle School
    17. Bancroft Middle School
    18. Bethune Middle School
    19. Blythe Street Elementary School
    20. Tom Bradley Global Awareness Magnet
    21. Budlong Avenue Elementary School
    22. Bushnell Way Elementary School
    23. Camellia Avenue Elementary
    24. George Washington Carver Middle School
    25. Century Park Elementary School
    26. Cesar Chavez Elementary School
    27. Cimarron Avenue Elementary
    28. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Middle School
    29. Coliseum Street Elementary
    30. Columbus Avenue Elementary
    31. Compton Ave Elementary School
    32. Contreras Learning Center-School of Social Justice
    33. Crenshaw High School STEMM Magnet
    34. Susan Miller Dorsey Senior High
    35. Charles Drew Middle School
    36. Mervyn M. Dymally High School
    37. Thomas Alva Edison Middle School 
    38. Lovelia P Flournoy Elementary
    39. John C. Fremont Senior High
    40. Gage Middle School
    41. Samuel Gompers Middle School
    42. Grape Street Elementary
    43. Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School
    44. Haddon Avenue Elementary
    45. Harmony Elementary School
    46. Harrison Street Elementary
    47. Bret Harte Preparatory Middle School
    48. Augustus F. Hawkins High School
    49. Hillcrest Drive Elementary
    50. Hillside Elementary
    1. Holmes Avenue Elementary
    2. Hooper Avenue Elementary
    3. Thomas Jefferson Senior High
    4. Dr James Edward Jones Primary Center
    5. Jordan High School
    6. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary
    7. La Salle Avenue Elementary
    8. Gerald A. Lawson Academy of the Arts, Mathematics and Science
    9. Limerick Avenue Elementary
    10. Los Angeles Academy Middle School
    11. John W. Mack Elementary
    12. Charles Maclay Middle School
    13. Main Street Elementary
    14. Manhattan Place Elementary
    15. Mann UCLA Community School
    16. Manual Arts Senior High School
    17. Marina Del Rey Middle School
    18. Edwin Markham Middle School 
    19. McKinley Avenue Elementary
    20. Miramonte Elementary
    21. John Muir Middle School
    22. Murchison Street Elementary
    23. Napa Street Elementary
    24. Nevin Avenue Elementary
    25. Normandie Avenue Elementary
    26. Northridge Middle School
    27. Norwood Street Elementary School
    28. Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy
    29. Panorama High School
    30. Rosa Parks Learning Center
    31. Pio Pico Middle School
    32. Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte Elementary
    33. Leo Politi Elementary School
    34. Ramona Elementary
    35. Sally Ride Elementary: A SMArT Academy
    36. Carlos Santana Arts Academy
    37. Francisco Sepulveda Middle School
    38. Sheridan St Elementary School
    39. Hilda L Solis Learning Academy
    40. Southeast Middle School
    41. Trinity Street Elementary
    42. Valerio Street Elementary School
    43. Van Nuys Middle School
    44. George Washington Preparatory Senior High
    45. Lenicia B Weemes Elementary
    46. West Athens Elementary
    47. Western Avenue T.E.C.H. Magnet
    48. Charles White Elementary School
    49. Woodcrest Elementary
    50. YES Academy

    Enrollment numbers at LAUSD’s priority schools 

    LAUSD’s overall enrollment, excluding charter schools, is 533,495. Based on census day enrollment data from the 2022-23 academic year, 53,959 students attend the district’s priority schools. 

    Of the 100 priority schools, there are 12 high schools, 20 middle schools and 63 elementary schools. Two are listed as K-12 schools, while three are alternative schools of choice. 

    Chronic absenteeism rates 

    The schools sustained a chronic absenteeism rate of 38.2% in the 2022-23 academic year, meaning that 38.2% of students missed at least 10% of school. 

    LAUSD on the whole, however, sustained a 32.8% rate of chronic absenteeism. 

    Performance on state assessments 

    Just over 23% of students attending priority schools have met or exceeded English standards, while 16.12% have met or exceeded math standards. 

    By comparison, across the district, 41.17% of students met or exceeded state standards in English, according to Smarter Balanced test results, while 30.5% met or exceeded state standards in math. 

    High school graduation rates 

    During the 2022-23 academic year, LAUSD sustained a graduation rate of 90.4, while, on average, nearly 80.74% of students enrolled at Priority high schools graduated. 

    Rate of  A-G requirements completion 

    Across LAUSD, 43.8% of students in the 2022-23 academic year did not complete the A-G requirements and were thus ineligible for admission to the California State University and University of California systems. 

    At the priority schools, however, 69.18% graduates did not complete their A-G requirements. 

    Yuxuan Xie, EdSource data visualization specialist, contributed data analysis to this report.





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  • California, districts try to recruit and retain Black teachers; advocates say more should be done

    California, districts try to recruit and retain Black teachers; advocates say more should be done


    A middle school science teacher explains a lesson on climate change using a SMART board.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Recruiting and retaining Black teachers has taken on new urgency in recent years as California lawmakers try to ease the state’s teacher shortage. The state and individual school districts have launched initiatives to recruit teachers of color, but educators and advocates say more needs to be done.

    Hiring a diverse group of teachers helps all students, but the impact is particularly significant for students of color, who then score higher on tests and are more likely to graduate from college, according to the Learning Policy Institute. A recently released report also found that Black boys are less likely to be identified for special education when they have a Black teacher.

    BLACK TEACHERS: HOW TO RECRUIT THEM AND MAKE THEM STAY

    This is the third part of a special series on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California. The recruitment and hiring of Black educators has lagged, even as a teacher shortage has given the task new urgency.

    Our series looks at the obstacles that keep Black people from becoming teachers, and the bias and lack of support some face when they join the profession.

    In the last five years, state lawmakers have made earning a credential easier and more affordable, and have offered incentives for school staff to become teachers — all moves meant to ease the teacher shortage and help to diversify the educator workforce.

    Despite efforts by the state and school districts, the number of Black teachers doesn’t seem to be increasing. Black teachers say that to keep them in the classroom, teacher preparation must be more affordable, pay and benefits increased, and more done to ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

    “Black educators specifically said that they felt like they were being pushed out of the state of California,” said Jalisa Evans, chief executive director of the Black Educator Advocates Network of a recent survey of Black teachers. “When we look at the future of Black educators for the state, it can go either way, because what Black educators are feeling right now is that they’re not welcome.”

    Task force offers recommendations

    State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called diversifying the teacher workforce a priority and established the California Department of Education Educator Diversity Advisory Group in 2021. 

    The advisory group has made several recommendations, including beginning a public relations campaign and offering sustained funding to recruit and retain teachers of color, and providing guidance and accountability to school districts on the matter. The group also wants universities, community groups and school districts to enter into partnerships to build pathways for teachers of color.

    Since then, California has created a set of public service announcements and a video to help recruit teachers and has invested $10 million to help people of color to become school administrators, said Travis Bristol, chairman of the advisory group and an associate professor of education at UC Berkeley. Staff from county offices of education also have been meeting to share ideas on how they can support districts’ efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color, he said.

    The state also has invested more than $350 million over the past six years to fund teacher residency programs, and recently passed legislation to ensure residents are paid a minimum salary. Residents work alongside an experienced teacher-mentor for a year of clinical training while completing coursework in a university preparation program — a time commitment that often precludes them from taking a job.

    Legislators have also proposed a bill that would require that student teachers be paid. Completing the 600 hours of unpaid student teaching required by the state, while paying for tuition, books, supplies and living expenses, is a challenge for many Black teacher candidates.

    Black teacher candidates typically take on much more student debt than their white counterparts, in part, because of the large racial wealth gap in the United States. A 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that the median white family had $184,000 in family wealth (property and cash), while the median Latino family had $38,000 and the median Black family had $23,000.

    Lack of data makes it difficult to know what is working

    It’s difficult to know if state efforts are working. California hasn’t released any data on teacher demographics since the 2018-19 school year, although the data is submitted annually by school districts. The California Department of Education (CDE) did not provide updated data or interviews requested by EdSource for this story.

    The most recent data from CDE shows the number of Black teachers in California declined from 4.2% in 2009 to 3.9% during the 2018-19 school year. The National Center for Education Statistics data from the 2020-21 show that Black teachers made up 3.8% of the state educator workforce. 

    Having current data is a critical first step to understanding the problem and addressing it, said Mayra Lara, director of Southern California partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust-West, an education research and advocacy organization.

    “Let’s be clear: The California Department of Education needs to annually publish educator demographic and experience data,” Lara said. “It has failed to do so for the past four years. … Without this data, families, communities and decision-makers really are in the dark when it comes to the diversity of the educator workforce.” 

    LA Unified losing Black teachers despite efforts

    While most state programs focus on recruiting and retaining all teachers of color, some California school districts have initiatives focused solely on recruiting Black teachers.

    The state’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, passed the Black Student Excellence through Educator Diversity, Preparation and Retention resolution two years ago. It required district staff to develop a strategic plan to ensure schools have Black teachers, administrators and mental health workers, and to advocate for programs that offer pathways for Black people to become teachers. 

    When the resolution was passed, in February 2022, Los Angeles Unified had 1,889 Black teachers —  9% of its teacher workforce. The following school year, that number declined to 1,823 or 7.9% of district teachers. The number of Black teachers in the district has gone down each year since 2016. The district did not provide data for the current school year.

    Robert Whitman, director of the Educational Transformation Office at LA Unified, attributed the decrease, in part, to the difficulty attracting teachers to the district, primarily because of the area’s high cost of living.

    “Those who are coming out of colleges now, in some cases, we find that they can make more money doing other things,” Whitman said. “And so, they may not necessarily see education as the most viable option.”

    The underrepresentation of people of color prompted the district to create its own in-house credentialing program, approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Whitman said. The program allows classified staff, such as substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, administrative assistants and bus drivers, to become credentialed teachers while earning a salary and benefits at their original jobs.

    Grow-your-own programs such as this, and the state’s Classified School Employee Credentialing program, and a soon-to-be launched apprenticeship program, are meant to diversify the educator workforce because school staff recruited from the community more closely match the demographics of the student body than traditionally trained and recruited teachers, according to research.

    Los Angeles Unified has other initiatives to increase the number of Black educators in the district, Whitman said, including working with universities and colleges to bring Black teachers, counselors and psychiatric social workers to their campuses. The district also has programs that help school workers earn a credential for free, and channels employees completing a bachelor’s degree toward the district’s teacher preparation program where they can begin teaching while earning their credential.

    All new teachers at Los Angeles Unified are supported by mentors and affinity groups, which have been well received by Black teachers, who credit them with inspiring and helping them to see themselves as leaders in the district, Whitman said.

    Oakland has more Black teachers than students

    Recruiting and retaining Black teachers is an important part of the Oakland Unified three-year strategic plan, said Sarah Glasband, director of recruitment and retention for the district. To achieve its goals, the district has launched several partnerships that make an apprenticeship program, and a residency program that includes a housing subsidy, possible. A partnership with the Black Teacher Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization, offers affinity groups, workshops and seminars to support the district’s Black teachers.

    The district also has a Classified School Employee Program funded by the state and a new high school program to train future teachers. District pathway programs have an average attrition rate of less than 10%, Glasband said.

    This year, 21.3% of the district’s K-12 teachers are Black, compared with 20.3% of their student population, according to district data. Oakland Unified had a retention rate of about 85% for Black teachers between 2019 and 2023.

    Better pay, a path to leadership will help teachers stay

    Black teachers interviewed by EdSource and researchers say that to keep them in the classroom, more needs to be done to make teacher preparation affordable, improve pay and benefits, and ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

    The Black Educator Advocates Network  came up with five recommendations after surveying 128 former and current Black teachers in California about what it would take to keep them in the classroom:

    • Hire more Black educators and staff
    • Build an anti-racist, culturally responsive and inclusive school environment
    • Create safe spaces for Black educators and students to come together
    • Provide and require culturally responsive training for all staff
    • Recognize, provide leadership opportunities and include Black educators in decision making

    Teachers interviewed by EdSource said paying teachers more also would make it easier for them to stay.

    “I don’t want to say that it’s the pay that’s going to get more Black teachers,” Brooke Sims, a Stockton teacher, told EdSource. “But you get better pay, you get better health care.”

    The average teacher salary in the state is $88,508, with the average starting pay at $51,600, according to the 2023 National Education Association report, “State of Educator Pay in America.” California’s minimum living wage was $54,070 last year, according to the report.

    State efforts, such as an initiative that pays teachers $5,000 annually for five years after they earn National Board Certification, will help with pay parity across school districts, Bristol said. Teachers prove through assessments and a portfolio that they meet the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. To be eligible for the grant, teachers must work at least half of their time in a high-needs school. Teachers who qualify are also given $2,500 to cover the cost of certification.

    This incentive will help teachers continue their education and improve their practice, said Los Angeles teacher Petrina Miller. “It’s awesome,” she said.

    Teacher candidates must be actively recruited

    Many Black college students have not considered a teaching career because they have never had a Black teacher, said Preston Jackson, who teaches physical education at California Middle School in Sacramento. Those who consider a teaching career are often deterred by the cost of teacher preparation, taking required tests and unpaid student teaching.

    “In order to increase the number of Black teachers in schools, it has to become deliberate,” Jackson said. “You have to actively recruit and actively seek them out to bring them into the profession.”

    Since starting in 2005, Jackson has been one of only a handful of Black teachers at his school.

    “And for almost every single one of my kids, I’m the first Black teacher they’ve ever had,” said Jackson. “…  And for some of them, I’m the first one they’ve ever seen.” 

    Mentors are needed to help retain new teachers

    Mentor teachers are the key ingredient to helping new Black educators transition successfully into teaching, according to teachers interviewed by EdSource. Alicia Simba says she could have taken a job for $25,000 more annually in a Bay Area district with few Black teachers or students, but opted to take a lower salary to work in Oakland Unified.

    But like many young teachers, Simba knew she wanted mentors to help her navigate her first years in the classroom. She works alongside Black teachers in Oakland Unified who have more than 20 years of teaching experience. One of her mentor teachers shared her experience of teaching on the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Other teachers told her about teaching in the 1980s during the crack cocaine epidemic.

    “It really helps dispel some of the sort of narratives that I hear, which is that being a teacher is completely unsustainable,” Simba said. “Like, there’s no way that anyone could ever be a teacher long term, which are things that, you know, I’ve heard my friends say, and I’ve thought it myself.” 

    The most obvious way to retain Black teachers would be to make sure they are treated the same as non-Black teachers, said Brenda Walker, a Black teacher and president of the Associated Chino Teachers.

    “If you are a district administrator, site administrator, site or colleague, parent or student,  my bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and my special education credential are just as valuable and carry as much weight, and are as respected as any other educator,” she said.

    “However, it’s just as critical for all those groups to acknowledge and respect the unique cultural experience I bring to the table and acknowledge and respect that I’m a proud product of my ancestral history.”





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