اینترنت

برچسب: districts

  • Numerous districts don’t heed federal advice to bar police from enforcing school rules

    Numerous districts don’t heed federal advice to bar police from enforcing school rules


    Policing experts say that discipline is the responsibility of school administrators, not law enforcement.

    Many California school districts’ contracts for policing services do not prohibit officers from involvement in routine student disciplinary matters, despite the federal government’s guidance that administrators are responsible for handling those issues, an EdSource investigation found.

    EdSource obtained 118 contracts between 89 districts across the state and the cities and counties that provide them with school resources officers from local police, sheriff’s and probation departments. More than half either allow police to enforce school rules and code of conduct violations, such as using profanity or wearing inappropriate clothing, or don’t address disciplinary issues.

    The U.S. Department of Justice advises that agreements for what are generally called school resource officers “clearly indicate” that officers will not be responsible for requests to resolve routine discipline problems involving students. That guidance aims to “prevent unnecessary law enforcement involvement in noncriminal student misbehavior.” (A spokesperson for the department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services did not respond to multiple requests to elaborate on the department’s recommendations.) 

    Jyoti Nanda, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, said that officers lack the training necessary to respond to behavioral issues that can result in student discipline.

    “Well-trained educators can handle all of the disciplinary issues,” Nanda said. “When police enforce school rules as opposed to criminal law, they are overreaching their footprint” in ways that are “deeply damaging to children.” 

    Many policing contracts also put resource officers in vaguely defined roles. 

    They are to act as “informal counselors,” “mentors,” “role models” and exemplars of “good citizenship.” Some contracts are meant to “promote a positive image of law enforcement.” One agreement refers to them as “youth development officers.” Another says their duties include serving as “a visual deterrent to aberrant behavior.”

    Some give police authority to enforce school rules and code-of-conduct violations, such as using profanity or public displays of affection, that could result in a student being disciplined. 

    Some contracts say that officers will teach classes, without specifying the courses or training requirements.

    The Anderson Union High School District’s contract with the Shasta County Probation Department requires resource officers to “provide class instruction as identified by the district and approved by the county.” Superintendent Brian Parker did not respond to questions about that requirement.

    The varying roles officers play can result in legal risks to students, according to University of North Carolina law professor Barbara Fedders, who has argued for removing school resource officers.

    “Relationship forming and being nice and all of that is misleading. Because if you then need to question the kids, you’re going to be able to take advantage of that relationship and use it for law enforcement purposes,” Fedders said in an interview.

    ‘Situations that arise from student conduct’

    Some contracts don’t differentiate between officers’ roles in investigating school rule violations and potential crimes.

    The Fullerton Joint Union High School District, which straddles Los Angeles and Orange counties, has policing contracts totaling more than $800,000 with the cities of Fullerton, La Habra and Buena Park. Each requires resource officers to “investigate situations that arise from student conduct at school.” The agreements also authorize officers to search students if they believe, or have reasonable suspicion, that something illegal occurred, or are “directed to do so by a school administrator.” 

    Fullerton Union High School in Orange County.
    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    Legal experts were critical of those terms.

    The language in the contract “sends the wrong message not only to officers but to students and parents and teachers because it’s so vague,” said retired Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell, who also served as San Jose’s independent police auditor from 2015 to 2020.

    “It’s pretty much at the discretion of an administrator, or even the officer, to just decide if there’s something suspicious, or they think may be illegal,” Cordell said. “We’re not talking here about probable cause. Who’s the reasonable person? The officer? The administrator? Who knows?”

    District Superintendent Steven McLaughlin, Assistant Superintendent Ruben Hernandez, school board President Vickie Calhoun, and Dr. Chester Jeng, who was board president when the contracts were ratified on a consent agenda vote, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The city managers of Fullerton, La Habra, and Buena Park also did not reply to messages seeking comment.

    Khadijah Silver, a supervising civil rights attorney for the Washington, D.C.-based Lawyers For Good Government, also criticized Fullerton’s contract language.

    “It’s basically saying, anytime a kid acts up, you’re free to go violate their civil rights and interrogate them off of the school’s premises and all of that,” Silver said. “It’s unconstitutionally overbroad language that fails to define or delineate any bounds of appropriate police behavior whatsoever.”

    ‘What any reasonable adult would do’

    Some legal experts say that by allowing officers to enforce school rules, districts create situations that are confusing and intimidating to students. Nanda said that officers’ involvement in discipline is often “ambiguous.” Students, she added, may not understand why an officer stops them in the hallway: Is it for an alleged crime or a violation of school rules?

    “Are they just walking the child over to the principal’s office, or are they interviewing the child and taking police notes? How does that play out?” she said. The presence of resource officers can result in harsher discipline for students, “particularly for Black students, male students and students with disabilities,” according to a 2023 study by researchers at State University of New York, Albany, “even though officers are typically not trained to, and often do not intend to, become involved in minor disciplinary matters in the school.”

    Although the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers recommends that districts prohibit officers from “becoming involved in formal school discipline situations,” its executive director, Mo Canady, said in an interview that he thinks officers should get involved in situations that could result in discipline. 

    When officers see a young person misbehaving and get involved, they’re doing “what any reasonable adult would do,” Canady said. “Adults should never walk by and ignore a situation like that. I don’t care if we’re at a shopping mall, whatever it is.”

    Asked whether there is a difference between an adult and an armed police officer intervening when a juvenile misbehaves, Canady said: “That’s why one of the issues that we harp on constantly is the importance of good relationships that (officers) build with students.”

    California’s Department of Education does not provide guidance on the use of school resource officers, Elizabeth Sanders, an agency spokesperson, said. 

    The California School Boards Association provides districts with what it calls a “sample policy” on policing contracts, which recommends that the duties of resource officers should “not include the handling of student code of conduct violations or routine disciplinary matters that should be addressed by school administrators or conduct that would be better addressed by mental health professionals.”

    Troy Flint, spokesperson for the association, said district leaders are free to “interpret the sample policy in a way that captures their community’s desired approach to law enforcement on campus. We recognize there’s a diversity of opinion throughout the state about the role security personnel should play on campus or whether they should be there at all.”

    ‘Why are we policing our students?’ 

    The Oxnard Union High School District has contracts with two law enforcement agencies that clearly prohibit resource officers’ involvement in disciplinary matters.

    The district’s $2.33 million contract with the city of Oxnard states that police are to distinguish “between disciplinary misconduct to be handled by school officials from criminal offenses.” The contract also says that officers “are responsible for criminal public order offenses” and “should not get involved in school discipline issues.” A separate contract with the city of Camarillo contains similar language. Both contracts require officers to establish “clear probable cause” before searching a student.

    Oxnard Union High District Superintendent Tom McCoy chats with school resource officers Alexus Santos,left, and Sgt. Hannah Estrada on the campus of Pacifica High School in Oxnard.
    Credit: J. Marie / EdSource

    But the district’s contract with Ventura County for one resource officer does not address discipline. Superintendent Tom McCoy said in an interview that it is “well understood and discussed in meetings” that resource officers provided by the county do not enforce discipline. It’s never been an issue. They are very aware of our policies.”

    The district has a policy that is not in its policing contracts and that allows students to request “a person of the same gender or gender identity or a staff member familiar to them to be present” if they are questioned by law enforcement.

    McCoy added that the district requires students who “are questioned or interviewed by police on campus also must be referred for counseling and wellness services on the same day to address any specific needs identified through the interview process.”

    Karen Sher, the school board member whom McCoy credited with helping create the district’s policy, said her experience teaching at a school with resource officers led her to ask herself, “‘Why are we policing our children?’”

    Oxnard Union High School District board member Karen Sher.
    Credit: J. Marie / EdSource

    Sher said she believes that officers have a role to play in school safety, but she also worries about how their presence might affect disadvantaged students. About 16% of district students lack stable housing, she said.

    “How on earth does anyone believe those students have not had an interaction, both positive or negative, with police?” Sher asked. “We expect them to come to school, see police cars in front of their school, and expect them to feel good about that? That’s a very entitled perspective.”

    Eric Wiatt, a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy who has worked at Adolfo Camarillo High School for the past three years, said adjusting to being a resource officer took time. 

    “The first year was a learning experience of communicating with (students) and developing a rapport. It wasn’t natural in me. You know, all the different social media platforms that are used and the different slang they use,” Wiatt said in an interview.

    He says he spends a lot of time investigating bullying and threats made on social media.

    School resource officer Eric Wiatt from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department patrols the campus of Adolfo Camarillo High School in Camarillo.
    Credit: J. Marie / EdSource

    “We actually dig into them. We take every threat very seriously. We do a full investigation,” Wiatt said.

    When he’s not investigating threats, Wiatt walks the campus wearing a bulletproof vest over his uniform and a pistol holstered to his hip. He often eats lunch with students.

    Riley Young, a 16-year-old junior whom school officials selected to be interviewed by EdSource, described Wiatt as calm and helpful.

    “I’d been getting in trouble,” she said. “He helped me realize that being good in school and in life was important.”

    ‘Providing clarity’

    District leaders provided a range of reasons why their policing contracts don’t address whether resource officers can be involved in disciplinary matters.

    The Madera Unified School District’s contract with the city of Madera for resource officers doesn’t address disciplinary issues. Superintendent Todd Lile said the idea that officers would enforce discipline “has never been present and, as a result, has never been explicitly called out in contractual language.” Police are “not thought of or expected to keep control of a campus,” he said.

    The Lucia Mar Unified School District has two contracts for resource officers. Its agreement with the city of Arroyo Grande prohibits officers from enforcing discipline. But its contract with San Luis Obispo County does not address disciplinary matters.

    Amy Jacobs, a district spokesperson, said Lucia Mar has a policy prohibiting law enforcement’s involvement in discipline, but Jacobs didn’t provide an answer when asked why that policy wasn’t written into the contract with the sheriff’s office.

    The Galt Union High School District board in Sacramento County agreed to a three-year contract with the city of Galt for three resource officers in 2023. The agreement did not address police involvement in discipline. But shortly after Anna Trunnell became district superintendent in 2024, the contract was revised. 

    It now states that resource officers “will not be responsible for requests to resolve routine discipline problems involving students. They will not respond to incidents that do not pose any threat of safety or would not be considered crimes if they occurred outside of the school.”

    Trunnell said the new language “assists in providing clarity when responding to student needs.”

    The lack of clarity in many school policing contracts is “profoundly alarming,” said Nanda, the Southwestern law professor.

    “It’s crucial,” she said, “for parents, educators and administrators to pay attention to the who, what and why of officers in our schools.”





    Source link

  • California school districts spend millions on policing, with little scrutiny

    California school districts spend millions on policing, with little scrutiny


    Many California school districts pay cities and counties millions of dollars a year to put law enforcement officers on campuses, moving tax dollars allocated for education to policing with little oversight by elected school boards, an EdSource investigation found.

    Not every district has what are commonly called school resource officers. Many call 911 if they need help, and 20 have their own police departments. Others contract with cities and counties, which provide resource officers from the ranks of local police, sheriffs, and probation departments.

    California doesn’t collect data on school policing. Using public records act requests, EdSource obtained policing contracts from 89 districts, nearly 10% of the state’s total.

    Those districts provided a combined 118 contracts, entered into between 2018 and 2024, with some paying as many as three cities and counties for resource officers. The agreements, along with school board agendas and videos of meetings, show that district leaders rarely scrutinize the spending publicly. 

    School boards routinely approve policing contracts without discussion, often bundling them with routine items, such as field trips and cookies for staff meetings, into a single vote. The practice, known as using a “consent agenda,” alarms government transparency experts. EdSource found some boards approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for school resource officers using consent votes.

    Although the federal government recommends that school districts review their policing programs annually, most of the contracts EdSource reviewed did not require yearly evaluations. In the few districts that required written reports on officers’ activities, police agencies didn’t submit them — and school officials rarely asked to see them.

    The state Education Department offers no guidance to districts on policing contracts, said Elizabeth Sanders, an agency spokesperson.

    “Consent items can be horrifically abused.”

    David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition

    The contracts EdSource obtained show districts spending at least $85 million on school resource officers. But their total costs are likely much higher. Roughly 20% of those contracts don’t include specific dollar amounts.

    Instead, they mention unspecified charges based on law-enforcement union contracts negotiated by cities and counties. As a result, school boards sometimes approve contracts without a clear record of how much public money they have agreed to spend.

    EdSource found that many districts are not only paying for officers whose positions are already funded by local governments, but also for using police cars, uniforms and cellphones.

    The costs to schools surprised policing experts and public watchdogs.

    “It’s protect and serve — and profit,” said retired state Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell, who also served as San Jose’s independent police auditor from 2010 to 2015.

    She said cities and counties should provide resource officers to schools without charging.

    “Shame on them for making this into a money-making operation,” Cordell said.

    ‘An enhanced service’

    In many districts, the cost of a contract for a resource officer often exceeds the salary of a mid-career teacher.

    The Holtville Unified School District in Imperial County has a one-year contract with the county for a sheriff’s deputy not to exceed $192,038.40. 

    That’s enough money to fund the salaries of nearly two teachers, according to teacher pay disclosure forms filed with the state.

    The contract requires the district to pay for the officer’s “training, equipment, uniform, vehicle, supplies and employee benefits,” Undersheriff Robert Benavidez wrote in an email. Holtville Superintendent Celso Ruiz did not respond to questions about spending on officers.

    Some districts spend more than a million dollars a year on resource officers. 

    The Elk Grove Unified School District has 67 schools and 62,000 students, and pays the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office $8.5 million over three years to provide six deputies.

    The contract, which expires in June, includes nearly $648,000 for patrol cars and $15,000 for cellphone bills, and guarantees deputies five hours of overtime per week. The district also pays the city of Elk Grove $951,000 over three years for three officers.

    Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a sheriff’s office spokesperson, said the district is “paying for an enhanced service,” requiring deputies to spend all day in schools.

    Asked whether deputies assigned to the district were counted in the sheriff’s annual budget funded by the county, Gandhi replied, “Yes, for regular sheriff services.” 

    But when deputies work in schools, he said, they provide a service for which the sheriff’s entitled to charge.

    “These are not officers that are simply responding to emergencies,” Gandhi said. “They’re on campus. That’s their full-time assignment. They’re helping the administration. It’s a presence issue. It’s something we value.”

    If Elk Grove Unified were to end its contract with the county, which it could do with 30 days’ notice, the deputies would “be assigned to regular, other, sheriff functions, in patrol, investigations, corrections, whatever,” Gandhi said, noting that the sheriff’s office has a large number of vacant, budgeted positions. 

    ‘Double taxation’

    Many districts pay more than half or all of the salaries for officers whose positions are already funded by cities and counties.

    In Ventura County, the Oxnard Union High School District currently has contracts with two cities and the sheriff’s office. The largest is a $2.23 million deal with the city of Oxnard for five police officers, which includes 75% of the city’s costs for the officers’ salaries and benefits.

    The district pays for the full costs of one deputy as part of its three-year, $625,000 pact with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. It also has a deal with the city of Camarillo for police services. 

    Oxnard Union board member Karen Sher, who describes herself as an advocate for school resource officers, told EdSource that charging districts for officers whose positions are already funded amounts to “double taxation.”

    “The taxpayer’s paying twice for the same services,” Sher said.

    “I really don’t understand how this is not a bigger issue. I have asked the question publicly. I can’t even tell you how many times, and I have never gotten an answer,” she said. 

    Former Oxnard Police Cmdr. Louis Mc Arthur was in charge of school resource officers before being elected as the city’s mayor in November 2024.
    Credit: J. Marie / EdSource

    Oxnard Mayor Luis Mc Arthur, who, until taking office on Dec. 8, was the Oxnard Police commander in charge of school resource officers, said the city can’t afford to provide the officers without charging the school system. The department’s 2024-25 budget is $105 million, records show. 

    “We’re strapped financially and also short-staffed,” McArthur said.

    “We can argue philosophically if it’s the responsibility of police to fund” resource officers, but the charges will likely continue, he said.  

    Districts should not fund officers who are already on government payrolls, said David Kline, vice president of communications for the California Taxpayers Association, which advocates for limiting taxes. 

    “If taxpayers are paying for two police officer positions, they should be getting two police officers,” Kline said. “They shouldn’t be paying twice for the same officer.”

    Not all municipalities charge for providing resource officers.

    Last year, voters in the Central Valley cities of Manteca and Lathrop passed sales-tax measures funding a range of services, including resource officers for the Manteca Unified School District, which supported the measures.

    “We don’t believe in double taxation,” said Victoria Brunn, the district’s chief business and information officer.

    But the Manteca district also has a two-year, $274,000 contract with the Stockton Unified School District, which has its own police department, for one officer.

    Cost-sharing is common across the country, said Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers. The percentage of an officer’s salary that districts pay varies widely, he said. “Some may pay 25%, while others will pay 100%.”

    Canady recommends that school boards review policing contracts annually. “You get to the end of the school year and no one thinks, ‘Hey, we need to take an hour or two here and sit down with people that are going to be making decisions and at least review this thing.’”

    ‘In case of an armed intruder’

    A poll released earlier this month by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that 4 out of 5 public school parents are worried about a mass shooting at their local school, and nearly as many support having at least one armed police officer on campus while school is in session.

    The contracts EdSource obtained rarely mention the role armed officers play in student safety.

    The Anderson Union High School District’s three-year contract with the Shasta County Probation Department does not mention school security. But Superintendent Brian Parker said that’s why the district is paying $1.6 million for three resource officers through 2027.

    Anderson Union High School in Anderson in Shasta County.
    Credit: Thomas Peele / EdSource

    “The main reason our board and our community want officers on campus is to provide security in case of an armed intruder,” Parker wrote in an email. “Thankfully, that hasn’t happened in our district.”

    Many contracts require officers to divide their time between several campuses, which could reduce their ability to respond quickly to a shooting.

    According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there were about 24,900 school resource officers in 2019. The federal government does not collect data on school shootings, but according to a Washington Post database, there have been at least 428 school shootings in the United States since 1999, including 72 in California. 

    Whether the presence of school resource officers makes schools and students safer remains the subject of research and debate. In 2024, policy analysts  at the Rand Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, reviewed dozens of studies and found, “the presence of SROs (school resource officers) may reduce some types of crime and increase the detection of weapons and drugs on campus.”

    But, the Rand analysts wrote, “research has also shown that the presence of SROs inflicts costs on students. Students at schools with SROs are more likely to face disciplinary action by school administrations and more law enforcement contact in general. Black and Latino students may be particularly affected.”

    ‘We wanted to look at everything’

    Last year, the Folsom Cordova Unified School Board decided to examine its policing contracts with the city of Folsom and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, which totaled $502,000. Those contracts had remained largely unchanged for 12 years, said board President Christopher Clark.

    Christopher Clark, president of the Folsom Cordova Unified School Board.
    Credit: Folsom Cordova Unified

    “What we wanted to do as a school district is be transparent. We wanted to look at everything in the contract,” Clark told EdSource.

    At a board meeting last May to discuss the contracts, speakers expressed concerns about the impact police officers had on Black and Latino students.

    Van Merrill, a student board member, said he worried about having “armed police officers on campus.” He said the district has many students who come from groups that “have been historically discriminated against and arrested and killed by police.”

    Earl F. Smith, a parent who attempted to speak to police about a problem with his daughter at school, told the board that a Folsom High School administrator described him to a resource officer as “an angry, raving black man.” 

    “I’m scared to go to Folsom High School,” Smith said. He referred to the 2018 fatal shooting of a 22-year-old unarmed Black man by two Sacramento Police Department officers who said they mistook his phone for a handgun.

    “It’s easy to make wrong decisions. It’s hard on the officer. It’s hard on the community,” Smith said. “ I would like the board to consider the perspective that maybe only a certain amount of students would feel comfortable with an officer.”

    In a telephone interview, Smith said, “I don’t think there should be an officer at a school walking around with a gun.”

    Clark, the board president, who is Black, told EdSource that Smith “absolutely” voiced valid concerns. “I’m speaking as an African American,” said Clark. “We are stereotyped. Oh, yeah. I’ve been stereotyped by a police officer.”

    The board eventually approved a change to the contract, requiring officers to spend more time patrolling the areas around schools and to respond to emergencies in schools when needed.

    “What works for me is that these officers are actually patrolling the area,” Clark told EdSource. “If there happens to be an emergency, the response time is within three and a half minutes. I believe in safety for our kids.”

    ‘Unaware’ of requirements

    The U.S. Justice Department recommends that law-enforcement agencies and school districts “conduct an annual assessment” of resource-officer programs to ensure that they are adequately addressing all expectations, successes, and challenges.”

    Both school and police leadership should review law enforcement data and records to help determine whether officers “are using their law-enforcement powers judiciously,” according to the department’s recommendations.

    But many school districts don’t seek or receive such data even when they require it by contract. 

    The Manteca Unified School District in San Joaquin County has a one-year, $125,000 contract for a resource office with the Stockton Unified School District, which has its own police department. The contract requires officers to document “the type, nature and/or description of activities performed each shift” to help school officials evaluate the program’s effectiveness. The reports are to be provided quarterly.

    The contract also requires Stockton Unified Police to provide “copies of incident, crime, service and other police-generated reports, search warrants and other public documents which concern substantial actual or potential criminal activity.” 

    But EdSource found that Stockton Unified police gave no such documents to Manteca. Asked why the reports weren’t provided, Stockton Unified Chief Mayra Franco said she didn’t know anything about them.

    “We were unaware of this requirement,” she wrote in an email, adding that her department would start providing the documents. 

    Brunn, Manteca Unified’s chief business officer, called the failure of Stockton Unified to provide the documents “very unfortunate.” But she also said no one in her district asked for them. 

    ”We had employee changes during that time frame. It’s not what we would have preferred to have happened,” she said.

    Parker, the Anderson Union High School District superintendent, said its contract with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, which used to provide school resource officers, required deputies to prepare quarterly activity reports on their activities and provide them to the district “upon request.”

    But the district “never requested them,” Parker said, and no longer has a contract with the sheriff’s office. The district’s current contract with the Shasta County Probation Department doesn’t include any reporting requirements. 

    Canady, of the school resource officer association, questioned whether reports are necessary.

    “What would go in a report?” he said. “I don’t think it’s something that school districts have been demanding. If you’re in a good partnership with the law enforcement agency, there shouldn’t be any need for reports.”

    Last year, during the debate about law enforcement contracts for the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, school board member Kara Lofthouse said that reports are crucial to understanding the effectiveness of policing programs.

    They are needed “so that we can determine whether or not it’s a smart decision” to continue to pay for police. Without them, Lofthouse added, “we cannot make a sound decision on what’s best for our district.”

    She said officers should write reports to “show the schools that they’re going to, even if they’re doing nothing, even if they’re checking in with the principal and they have lunch with a couple of kids. That’s really the report I want to see. I want to see what their time is being spent doing.”

    The Tracy Unified School District’s contract with the city of Tracy requires police to provide “statistics related to crime if requested.” But the district told EdSource that it did not have any documents with that data. It also did not respond directly to questions about how it determined whether policing services were successful.

    “Our district works extremely closely with our officers and Tracy Police. We communicate through in-person meetings, phone calls, etc.,” Bobbie Etcheverry, a district spokesperson, wrote in an email. 

    Consent votes

    Some school boards approved hundreds of thousands of dollars for resource officers using catch-all consent votes, records show.

    Policing contracts require more scrutiny and “should not be on consent agendas,” said Barbara Fedders, a University of North Carolina law professor who has written about school policing in California and is a school board member herself.

    “Your contract language for a playground provider doesn’t implicate your values as a school district in the same way that a (contract) with the police does,” Fedders said.

    “Consent items can be horrifically abused,” said David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition, which advocates for government transparency and press freedoms.

    Loy said that two school board votes identified by EdSource may have violated the Brown Act, the state law requiring local legislative bodies to conduct open and transparent meetings.

    The agenda for Elk Grove Unified’s board meeting, section VI.10, specifies that the contracts on the attached list “are under the bid limit of $99,100.

    In June 2022, Elk Grove Unified’s school board approved its current contracts with the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office and the city of Elk Grove on a consent vote.

    The meeting’s consent agenda stated that all the items under consideration cost no more than $99,100. But the contracts with the Sheriff’s Office and the city included payments for $2.7 million and $317,000, respectively.

    The list referenced by the agenda includes two law enforcement contracts worth a combined $3 million, both well over the stated $99,100.

    “If an agency says, ‘Don’t worry, nothing to see here, everything on the consent agenda is under $99,100,’ and in fact, what’s on the consent agenda is more than $99,100 over the life of the contract, that is itself a Brown Act violation,” Loy said. “I would argue strongly in court you cannot mislead the public.”

    Kristen Coates, the district’s deputy superintendent, wrote in an email that the district did not violate the Brown Act because the law contains “no requirement to agendize items based on dollar figures.”

    She declined multiple requests to be interviewed. Board President Michael Vargas did not return messages.

    A vote in San Joaquin County also raises questions about how boards approve police contracts.

    In 2022, Tracy Unified’s board voted for a consent agenda that included “routine agreements, expenditures, and notices of completions.” As part of that vote, the board approved a $900,000 contract with the city of Tracy to provide three resource officers.

    The contract was not listed on the consent agenda. A report attached to the larger meeting agenda said the contract was for $450,000 over two years. The board did not discuss the contract before voting.

    “The public obligated $900,000, not $450,000,” Loy said. “As a best practice, these things should not be on consent. The public has a right to know what the total obligation is for the life of the contract.”

    In an interview, Tracy Superintendent Robert Pecot did not explain why the agenda misstated the contract’s cost. “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “People are welcome to come to our meetings.”

    Loy said lawmakers need to amend the Brown Act “to limit the use of consent agendas.” Items such as school policing contracts should be debated, he said. “You should go through the full democratic process. It definitely cries out for significant policy reform.”

    Bret Harte Union High School in Angels Camp in Calaveras County.
    Credit: Thomas Peele / EdSource

    ‘Sloppy’ practices

    Some school boards wait months or even years to ratify contracts for resource officers and, in a few cases, long after those contracts have taken effect or expired, EdSource found. Under state law, school superintendents can agree to contract terms, but those agreements aren’t valid until school boards approve them, a process known as ratification.

    The Bret Harte Union High School District in Calaveras County has a one-year policing contract with the city of Angels Camp with a start date listed as July 2, 2024. The district’s board voted to ratify that contract on Feb. 4, 2025. By that time, the city had billed the district more than $35,000 for a resource officer, records show.

    Long ratification delays are “an extremely bad budgeting practice,” said Kline of the California Taxpayers Association. “What happens if the school board votes ‘no’ on a contract seven months after it’s been signed?” 

    It’s “a huge transparency issue,” he added. “The taxpayers haven’t had their notice and chance to voice their opinions.”  

    Bret Harte’s board also didn’t ratify a separate contract with Angels Camp until two years after it had expired, voting only after EdSource raised questions about it.

    Superintendent Scott Nanik initially claimed that the district couldn’t produce a policing contract for the 2022-23 school year. But Angels Camp records show the city billed the district nearly $45,000 for policing services for that school year.

    Nanik had signed the document on Aug. 2, 2022.  Last month, the board voted without comment to retroactively ratify the deal.

    Byron Smith, a lawyer for the district, wrote in an email that the late ratification vote was taken under a portion of state law allowing school districts the “flexibility to create their own unique solutions” and to spend money “not inconsistent with the purposes for which the funds were appropriated.”

    Bret Harte leaders “are committed to doing things the right and legal way,” Smith said.

    Professor David Levine of UC Law San Francisco said the board likely voted to ward off any potential litigation by making the contract “a proper expenditure.”

    “Imagine if you had a gadfly saying it wasn’t a proper use of public funds,” and suing because there was never a vote, Levine said. The district had been “clearly sloppy,” he added.  

    School boards “should be approving contracts before the related work begins, not afterward,” said Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association.

    EdSource found another school board, Benicia Unified in Solano County, that had not voted to ratify a $225,000 policing contract with the city of Benicia for the 2023-2025 school years.

    In response to a reporter’s questions, Benicia Superintendent Damon Wright acknowledged the district made a mistake. “The contract should have been formally brought back to the board for final approval,” he said.

    On April 10, three months before the contract expires, the board approved the agreement, without discussion, on the consent agenda.





    Source link

  • Schools damaged and districts closed due to fires in Los Angeles County

    Schools damaged and districts closed due to fires in Los Angeles County


    Most Los Angeles-area school districts, including Los Angeles Unified School District, are closed Thursday as fires continue to rage, significantly impacting the Southern California region. The map below shows the status of districts in the region, and will continue to be updated as the situation evolves. Data as of 1/10/2025 11 a.m.

    Data source: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection; EdSource Research; Los Angeles County Office of Education

    Note: Charter schools’ enrollment not included.

    Read more:





    Source link

  • What Los Angeles schools can learn from Northern California districts that survived wildfires

    What Los Angeles schools can learn from Northern California districts that survived wildfires


    Paradise Elementary in Butte County was one of nearly 19,000 structures destroyed in the November 2018 Camp fire.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    Diann Kitamura was superintendent of Santa Rosa City Schools in 2017 when the Tubbs fire became the most destructive fire in state history, burning through nearly 37,000 acres and destroying two school structures, plus the homes of about 800 students and 100 staff.

    That record was broken the following year, when the Camp fire tore through Butte County, including the town of Paradise, where eight of nine school structures were damaged or destroyed; more than 50,000 people were displaced, and 85 people were killed. Meagan Meloy heads the homeless and foster youth services department at the Butte County Office of Education, which stepped in to support the thousands of students who were suddenly homeless from one day to the next.

    Now, more than seven years for Kitamura and six years for Meloy after leading their Northern California school districts through the fire recovery efforts, they discuss lessons they learned and offer tips to the districts dealing with the aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County on how they could ease the suffering of their communities.

    At the time of the Tubbs fire, there had been no recent fires impacting schools on that scale, and Kitamura had no model to guide her and her team. She now extends support to other districts going through their own recovery process.

    Both Kitamura and Meloy say they believe their experiences can help school leaders across Los Angeles County as they deal with the widespread devastation of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

    Former State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, center, and former Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura, right, at the Hidden Valley Satellite school, Santa Rosa, after the school was destroyed in the Tubbs fire in 2017.
    Credit: Diann Kitamura

    Kitamura said it’s important to understand that the impact of fires goes beyond the people whose homes burned down: “Even if their school didn’t burn, their home might have burned; even if their home might not have burned, their school had burned.”

    She added that despite the complex tasks involved, leaders should stay focused on what most matters. “It was really my own common sense and my deep, deep, deep care and love for my students, my staff and my families that guided the decisions every step of the way of how I was going to operate,” Kitamura said.

    To ensure the physical and emotional well-being of their school communities, Kitamura said, leaders must think of a wide range of tasks, including making sure the business department is creating budget codes specific to disaster-related expenses, determining what instructional materials were destroyed and need replacing, identifying what resources the Federal Emergency Management Agency can offer, beefing up air quality monitoring across the areas that burned, figuring out if the insurance policies are adequate, and more.

    “It’s going to be a long process, and it’ll come in waves,” said Meloy of fire recovery efforts in Butte County.

    ‘Create some kind of normality for students as soon as possible’

    Meloy said the immediate need after a fire is to ensure the safety of all students and staff, and she highlighted the importance of finding a place and time for the greater school community to gather, given the impact of such a crisis.

    “It maybe can’t happen immediately, but as soon as possible, when it’s safe and feasible, provide opportunities for the school community to just come together, support one another socially, emotionally,” she said. “Create some kind of normality for students as soon as possible.”

    Meagan Meloy working at the Local Assistance Center after the Park fire in Butte County during the summer of 2024.
    Credit: Meagan Meloy

    Use systems that are already in place to help as many families as possible. For instance, students whose families lose their homes to fires are likely to qualify for resources available to students experiencing homelessness. That’s because homelessness among children and youth is defined broadly under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which mandates that every school district, county office of education and charter school hire a local liaison to ensure that homeless youth are identified and education services are coordinated to increase these students’ chances of succeeding academically.

    This federal law defines homeless students, in part, as “children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; or are abandoned in hospitals.”

    Districts typically already have systems in place for this student group to ensure students have stability across three basic needs: shelter, food, and gas — the same needs that Kitamura noted are most urgent for students displaced by fires.

    But Meloy, who has worked with the county education office for 21 years, offers a warning about the language used when communicating with families about their children’s education rights while they search for stable, permanent housing.

    “A lot of the families that lost their homes in the Camp fire had never experienced homelessness before and weren’t comfortable with self-identifying. (Consider) using terms like ‘displaced,’ ‘temporary,’ ‘not stable’ rather than that label of homeless or homelessness that can be kind of off-putting to people. They may not want to even think of themselves as fitting under that category,” Meloy said.

    While students displaced by fires may be eligible for student homelessness resources, schools and districts are often limited in the amount of funding available for this student group and in how funding can be used.

    For example, homeless liaisons cannot typically purchase gas gift cards to hand out to families who need help transporting their children to school.

    To meet some of the needs that education funding typically cannot be applied to, Meloy and her team relied on funding from a local foundation, North Valley Community Foundation, which received donations from a wide range of sources.

    “Without that, I don’t know how we would have met the need for transportation,” she said.

    Schools in Los Angeles County can also tap into the network of partners that liaisons and other school staff often work with. Both Meloy and Kitamura noted that their schools faced difficulties managing an influx of physical donations after fires.

    Meloy said while some donations such as school supplies were helpful for her team of liaisons, they were not “really best equipped to” sort through donations like food and clothing.

    It’s best for liaisons to work with “partner agencies who already have storage and systems for disbursing other items” so that they and other school staff can “stay focused on the school stuff,” she said.

    It can also be helpful to communicate to the public that cash donations are most helpful in recovery efforts.

    “I know that sounds maybe not appropriate … but in Santa Rosa City Schools, I had to haul out nine truck and trailer loads of stuff, and people who are displaced, they have no place to hold stuff,” said Kitamura, who is now the deputy superintendent of equitable education services with the Sonoma County Office of Education. “What they need is food, shelter and gasoline in most cases right now.”

    Meloy also underscored what she called “secondary homelessness.”

    For example, a family with sufficient home insurance might be able to purchase another home that had previously been a rental, which might then cause a group of renters to go on the search for housing.

    “It’s families who maybe were not directly impacted in the sense that they lost their home in the fire, but it ripples out into the housing market and pushes people out,” Meloy said.

    Addressing both physical and emotional needs

    With the majority of Paradise Unified schools destroyed, enrolling students at neighboring schools became a primary task for Meloy and her staff.

    To streamline the process, Meloy’s department asked every school district to identify an enrollment point of contact for families displaced by the Camp fire. Families were asked to text or call 211, the state’s local community services number, to be connected with a district point of contact, who worked with each family to help them decide where to enroll their children.

    As student enrollment was handled in Butte County, Meloy noticed that the trauma that students had experienced became clearer and that the wide range of support, from mental health counseling to transportation to tutoring, might become difficult to track over time.

    Meloy’s recommendation to L.A. County education staff is to create a filter in the district’s student information system that can be applied to students who were affected by fires. With this filter, school staff can have “some kind of a system where those students can then be flagged for extra support” over several years.

    That filter can become particularly helpful when students’ trauma around fires is triggered by conditions similar to those that can spark fires. For example, Kitamura’s students dealt with power shut-offs during strong winds, poor air quality, and smoke traveling from other regional fires for years following the Tubbs fire. “The trauma from the fires is exacerbated” each time, said Kitamura.

    Meloy said staff should be “prepared to see behaviors that would be consistent with someone who has experienced trauma.” In her case, she saw some students begin acting out in class by fighting or throwing things, while some other students became more shut down, dissociating while in class, and being extra quiet.

    “Understand that it’s a trauma response,” said Meloy. “If it’s a windy day, it’s probably going to be, years from now, a tough day at school.”

    To support Los Angeles County schools with mental health counseling, Kitamura is currently recruiting a group of counselors from across several Northern California schools who are prepared to offer counseling for students.

    “I only learned after experience with the fire to do these kinds of things for other districts,” said Kitamura, who is in contact with the LA County Office of Education regarding this effort.

    Meloy offered a reminder to not underestimate the trauma that staff membrs have also experienced: “In a classroom with students who have experienced this trauma, when you’ve experienced it yourself, it can be really overwhelming, so don’t forget about the staff and the support they need.”

    Kitamura also recommended that the LA education office “beef up” on air quality monitoring; “make sure they are ready to go; make sure they are accurate, and make sure that the places you’re measuring are close to the places where the most burn happens.”

    Lessons in preparation

    Kitamura and Meloy also noted that once the emergency was over, they moved to planning for future fires.

    Kitamura’s district, for example, established a redundant server in a separate location so officials could still communicate with their school community in the event that their primary servers went down or were burned.

    Meloy noted the lack of dedicated, ongoing funding for the work that homeless liaisons do — and how it undermines all planning. Both Kitamura and Meloy called on legislators to provide funding support for students displaced by fires, given that the issue now surges regularly across the state.

    “It is no longer, sadly, an isolated, once-in-a-decade event. It is continuing to happen. I had been thinking about, from the homeless liaison perspective, wildfires being a rural issue,” Meloy said. “But it’s really everywhere. I would love to see some dedicated funding for that.”

    As Kitamura put it: “There will be more wildfires. There will be more crises. So … we better plan accordingly.”





    Source link

  • Why the state should bend spending rules for small rural school districts

    Why the state should bend spending rules for small rural school districts


    TRANSCRIPT

    Louise Simpson, superintendent of Mark Twain Union Elementary School District in Angles Camp, near Yosemite, is frustrated by state rules restricting how small rural districts like hers can spend expanded learning funding.

    Here’s why.

    What I’m hoping to do today is to light the fire so that we can explore unrestricting the expanded learning opportunity program funds.

    That was such a well-intentioned and important program for so many districts. It’s known by the acronym ELOP, and it was designed to make additional learning and enrichment opportunities in the school day. But it brought some really burdensome requirements with it, including a 9-hour day and 30 extra days of school.

    And while that sounds really great, what’s happened for our small rural districts, is the reality of creating a program just isn’t feasible. And I’ll tell you why:

    First, my kids are on the bus for more than an hour each way. They already have a big long day, and adding academics after school for enrichment is not super feasible for two reasons: One is we have a very difficult time finding qualified staff to run it. And the second one is, with the bus-driver shortage, we just don’t have the transportation.

    So, many kids that would benefit from this program really don’t have the opportunity, and they are being left behind.

    Our budget situation is so, so dire with steep declining enrollment, and we need to use the money that we’re already allocated for super-effective programs.

    I came out of retirement this year because this little system was struggling, and only one in 10 kids are proficient in math and only one in four can read — and that’s unconscionable.

    And I can fix it, but I need some help using the money that’s already been given to me to use during the day. We have a really cool program that we built with the Sierra K-16 Collaborative Partnership involving peer tutors. It allowed me to get $320,000 to fund an intervention teacher and pay 20 high school kids to come in and tutor my kids. And it’s working, but those funds expire in a year.

    I need that ELOP money to be made flexible so that I can teach our kids the core foundational skills they need to be successful. That includes being able to use it during the school day. So many folks can’t find a way to make this funding effective that they’re actually giving it back, and that’s not okay.

    We need to come to some agreements where it can be working for everyone. Let me take and share with you what unrestricting these funds could really do for kids.

    This is our peer tutoring program. It’s funded in conjunction with Sierra K16.

    (short video of tutors working with students)

    I hope you’ll join me in reaching out to all of our legislators and asking them to provide small rural districts flexibility in how we use those funds.





    Source link

  • CTA chapters band together to leverage districts for higher pay, smaller classes, more resources

    CTA chapters band together to leverage districts for higher pay, smaller classes, more resources


    A group of Bay Area teacher unions rally outside Oakland City Hall on Feb. 4, 2025, demanding fully staffed schools, better wages, more resources, smaller class sizes, and safety improvements.

    Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource

    A California Teachers Association campaign is uniting teachers in 32 school districts to leverage their administrations for higher pay and benefits, smaller class sizes, and mental health support and other resources for students.

    The school districts, from San Diego to Sacramento, employ 77,000 teachers and serve 1 million students. 

    The “We Can’t Wait” campaign, launched during a webinar Tuesday, will offer a united platform that CTA President David Goldberg said will build broader pressure statewide. 

    “That’s never happened before across districts,” Goldberg said during the webinar. “They (the chapters) believe that can force change now, and together we’re demanding that every school district prioritize fully staffed schools, competitive wages and benefits to recruit and retain quality educators, and safe and stable schools where every child can learn and thrive.”

    The CTA represents 310,000 of the state’s educators, including teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, librarians, education support professionals and some higher education faculty and staff. 

    The collaboration includes some of the state’s largest school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Diego Unified, San Francisco Unified, Oakland Unified and Sacramento Unified.

    Participating union chapters from 10 of the largest districts have contracts expiring on June 30, according to California Teachers Association leaders. The other districts have contracts expiring near that time. While union chapters aren’t permitted to bargain across school districts, the multiyear campaign allows them to support one another, Goldberg said.

    In Sacramento County, for example, three of the larger school districts are part of the coalition. That means all three districts would be negotiating contracts with their unions at about the same time, and — if all three fail to come to an agreement — could ultimately end up at an impasse or even with strikes, all at the same time.

    Union locals held rallies across the state to celebrate the campaign. At a rally of Bay Area educators in Oakland on Tuesday afternoon, the crowd of more than 100 chanted “We Can’t Wait” in the pouring rain. Students, teachers and politicians spoke about the need to keep schools open, increase teacher pay and add resources for students.

    A group of Bay Area teacher unions rally outside Oakland City Hall on Feb. 4, 2025, demanding fully staffed schools, better wages, more resources, smaller class sizes, and safety improvements.
    Credit: Monica Velez / EdSource

    “We see the impact that understaffing has on our teachers and on our classmates when we don’t have enough teachers to cover classes to the point classes are cut,” Skyline High School student Ra’Maur Cash said. “It makes me so sad because so many of our students at our schools love the class that they go to, and when we don’t have enough teachers to teach those classes, classes were cut.”

    U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon, who represents Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda and surrounding cities, didn’t attend the rally, but an aide read her statement, which said she stands in solidarity with rallying Bay Area educators.

    “Now is the time to act,” Simon wrote. “We must demand fully funded, well-staffed schools where teachers thrive and students succeed. The future of our children depends on it. Together, we will secure a brighter, more equitable future for every child in America.”

    California teacher pay isn’t keeping up with inflation or the cost of housing, CTA leaders said in the webinar, citing “California Teacher Pay: Decades of Falling Behind,” research by Sylvia Allegretto from the Center for Economic and Policy research based in Washington, D.C. 

    The pay gap between teachers and other professionals with similar educations has widened for four decades, according to the research.

    “That really influences the teacher shortages, the retaining of current teachers, the recruitment of future teachers into the profession,” Allegretto said at the webinar. “And here in California … the high cost of living is a serious problem. The complexity of these challenges calls for a massive coordinated effort.”

    California teachers have the highest average pay in the nation, compared with teachers in other states, according to National Education Association (NEA) data that does not factor in the cost of living.

    In 2024, the average starting salary for a California teacher was $55,283 and the average salary was $95,160, according to the NEA.

    The high cost of living in California, especially the cost of housing and health care, still keeps many teachers from meeting their most basic needs, Goldberg said when asked about the NEA data.

    “We are facing a crisis in our public schools,” Goldberg said. “There are not enough educators on our school campuses. California ranks in the bottom five of states for class-size ratio. We rank 48th in the nation for access to school counselors. The resources we do have are constantly under attack.”

    Local union chapter leaders plan to approach school district administrators in the coming weeks to begin bargaining, according to CTA leaders. 

    By aligning their contracts, the unions are raising awareness in the major metro areas of the need to invest in schools, said Ken Jacobs, senior policy adviser at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. 

    “CTA is correct to say this is unprecedented for teachers’ unions,” Jacobs told EdSource. “We have seen success in private sector unions aligning contracts across regions. The best recent example is UNITE HERE locals successfully carrying out coordinated hotel strikes around the country.”

    But how will districts afford raises and other increased costs when some are inching closer to the fiscal cliff and considering buyouts, layoffs or school closures?

    “It is really a matter of priorities,” said Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, president of the Oakland Education Association.

    Oakland Unified’s school board is considering merging schools and making other cuts to close budget deficits, but Taiz-Rancifer said the district has the resources to keep schools open and to put teachers and other resources in the classroom. 

    Parent and executive director of Parent Voices Oakland, Clarissa Doutherd, who was at the rally in Oakland Tuesday afternoon, agrees.

    “When underfunding leads to the threats of budget cuts and closures … that jeopardizes our school communities,” Doutherd said. “When we unite across the Bay Area and across California to demand that districts prioritize spending that directly impacts our children and our schools, so that our kids have stability, so that our kids have fully staffed schools that aren’t in threat of closure every single other year.”





    Source link

  • California school districts are weighed down by new costs of old sexual assaults

    California school districts are weighed down by new costs of old sexual assaults


    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    School districts’ costs for compensating students victimized by sexual assault are escalating by billions of dollars. Many cases date back decades and were revived by a 2019 state law that widely expanded liability exposure to schools and other public agencies for past child sexual assaults. 

    An independent analysis of that law indicates a severe impact. Litigation will siphon tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars from general funds. Adverse jury verdicts and settlements could cost districts millions, potentially forcing layoffs and program reductions. Most districts will face record assessments to sustain shared insurance risk pools they contribute to. 

    In the worst case, districts will seek costly emergency state loans or bankruptcy protection — unless, the study said, the overall liability burden is spread “to protect the stability” of school districts.

    California’s elementary and secondary school system “will survive the challenge presented by the claims of childhood sexual assault. But individual school districts, charter schools and other agencies may not,” concluded the sober assessment of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a state agency charged with preventing districts’ financial meltdowns.

    Troy Flint, chief of communications for the California School Boards Association, said FCMAT’s report should prompt action. “We have called upon the state to develop a safety net to defray costs that threaten school districts with insolvency. The report is another opportunity to reiterate this request,” he said.

    The report doesn’t name districts or describe how they’re coping. But one district that might not survive is Carpinteria Unified, a 1,900-student district south of Santa Barbara with a $42 million budget. 

    Next year, it’s scheduled for trial for four claims of sexual assault from the 1970s. The district lacks historical records, and the insurance company at the time went out of business, leaving the district on the hook, said Superintendent Diana Rigby. The abuser, a principal convicted of sexual assaults, has died, as have potential witnesses and the then superintendent, she said. Legal costs over several years will force budget cuts, she said. 

    “We all believe that victims deserve their due justice and compensation. Of course we do,” said Rigby. But “an unfavorable verdict would be catastrophic.”

    Among its 22 recommendations, FCMAT proposes the state create a voluntary victims’ compensation fund like the one for victims of the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Victims would generally be compensated in a nonjudicial setting based on the crime’s severity and victims’ experiences. Legislators would decide if the state would share the funding burden.

    The Legislature unanimously passed Assembly Bill 218, which precipitated the surge in lawsuits, in October 2019. The law:

    • Extended the statute of limitations to file a child sexual assault lawsuit from age 26 (eight years after turning 18) to age 40.  
    • Extended the statute of limitations for those over 40 to within five years of when victims reasonably should have discovered repressed memories of a sexual assault.
    • Enabled victims of assaults whose statutes of limitations had expired to file lawsuits by Dec. 31, 2022.

    In 2023, the Legislature took the next step and passed Assembly Bill 452, which eliminated any statute of limitation for new lawsuits for sexual assaults filed after Jan. 1, 2024.

    AB 218’s just intentions, unknown costs

    The Legislature acted after a decade of shocking revelations and massive settlements, including by the Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Church, as well as the $169 million that Los Angeles Unified paid on 150 claims of sexual abuse by one teacher at Miramonte Elementary. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has acknowledged paying more than $1.5 billion from various settlements. 

    The Legislature signaled in AB 218 that schools, county offices of education, cities and public bodies with programs for children should be accountable for lifelong harm caused by sexual assaults under their watch.  The author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzales, D-San Diego, said it would “confront the pervasive problem of cover-ups in institutions, from schools to sports leagues.”

    The Legislature’s fiscal analysis cited “unknown costs” but projected higher insurance premiums.

    Dave George, CEO of the Schools Excess Liability Fund (SELF), a public agency that provides school districts with catastrophic insurance coverage, added that districts had difficulty convincing legislators there would be “real money out of the pockets of districts” from rising costs of insurance and settlements. “The general response was, ‘Don’t worry about it — it’s just insurance,’” George said. 

    Hard information on claims is unavailable because there is no database on sexual assault outcomes. Creating a central repository is FCMAT’s first recommendation. The most recent data is from 2023.

    FCMAT’s best estimate of the dollar value of claims filed because of the law was $2 billion to $3 billion for school districts, including about $500 million facing Los Angeles Unified. Other public agencies’ costs will significantly exceed that value, the report said. 

    But with many claims still in the courts, the final damages are unknown. Mike Fine, FCMAT’s CEO and coauthor of the report, acknowledged they might be higher than estimated. The average claim is about $2.5 million per victim, Fine said.

    The estimate doesn’t include the cost of insurance, which has risen an estimated 700% — to about $255,000 for a 10,000-student district since the passage of AB 218, the report said, plus coverage now required of nonprofits and day care providers working in districts. It also doesn’t include new lawsuits being filed daily, said Fine. 

    George said SELF had two sexual assault claims open in 2020 and has received 400 claims for 600 plaintiffs since. SELF provides catastrophic insurance for claims up to $55 million for about 500 school districts. It notified them to expect $300 million to $400 million in supplementary assessments for ongoing and new AB 218 claims.

    George said that districts settled all but two recent lawsuits before going to trial. One that didn’t — and paid a stiff price — was Moreno Valley in Riverside County, the state’s 23rd largest district. A jury found it responsible for failing to protect two middle school students from a teacher’s sexual abuse in the 1990s. The jury levied $135 million in damages.

    Moreno Valley negotiated the price down to $45 million in order to pay a lump sum. SELF covered $15 million; Moreno Valley paid $30 million from its budget reserves.

    But the district isn’t out of the woods. The teacher remained on the payroll for two decades, and the district still faces four more potentially expensive lawsuits. The district declined to comment for this story.

    Adding to small districts’ financial vulnerability, said Fine, is that “a jury doesn’t distinguish between the size of the district and its ability to pay. Jurors can’t be told that information.” 

    Rising costs of ‘social inflation’

    The report said that the $100-plus million settlements contribute to “social inflation” — rising costs because of more lawsuits, plaintiff-friendly verdicts and larger jury awards.

    These factors also have created a “perilously unstable” commercial insurance market, which public agencies like SELF rely on for additional coverage, the report said.

    Fine said that districts are already issuing “judgment obligation bonds” to make restitution. No district has sought an emergency state bailout as a last resort, but Fine said that will happen.

    “Generally speaking, the smaller the district, the higher that risk,” Fine said. 

    The report suggests that the Legislature revise statutes to lengthen payoffs and settlement deadlines. It urges lawmakers to immediately study a victim compensation fund. But the focus is on creating “zero tolerance” of sexual assaults by mandating student training to promote awareness, expanding work history verification and increasing staff training.

    Fine will present the report at legislative hearings. Leilani Aguinaldo, senior director of government relations for School Services of California, which advises districts, welcomes that opportunity. “It’s an excellent report. Schools have no resources for claims from decades ago,” she said. 

    Flint added, “The fears of schools are real.”





    Source link

  • New Stanford database tracks learning loss, gain in California and districts nationwide

    New Stanford database tracks learning loss, gain in California and districts nationwide


    A student writes math problems in a fourth grade classroom at William Jefferson Clinton Elementary in Compton on Feb. 6, 2025.

    Credit: AP Photo/Eric Thayer

    A unique database that enables people to compare standardized test scores among nearly all districts and states found that California experienced slightly less learning loss than the national average in the four years following the 2020 pandemic.

    The Education Recovery Scorecard, which researchers from Stanford University, Harvard University and Dartmouth College developed, also identified those districts that have escalated learning recovery and those that had fallen farthest behind. 

    Those whose test scores improved in either math, reading or both, include Compton Unified and Monterey Peninsula, both with high proportions of low-income students, as well as Chino Valley Unified and Bonita Unified, whose students gained nearly a half-grade level of learning compared with pre-pandemic 2019.

    The Associated Press, in conjunction with the researchers, published Tuesday a wealth of information from 43 states with 8,718 districts for which data was available, including the nearly 1,000 districts in California. They affirm what other analyses of states and the nation have found: The decline in scores in both reading and math, as a result of the pandemic, was severe.

    Although no state reached their pre-pandemic scores in both math and reading, many individual districts did. The scorecard found that 31% of California students attended districts scoring above 2019 levels in math, with 12% of students in districts scoring above 2019 levels in reading, and 10% in districts that have recovered in both.

    That’s significantly higher than the national average: Only 17% of students nationally in grades three to eight are in districts whose average math score on the scorecard was above that of 2019.

    However, keep in mind that California had much more ground to make up. In 2019, California’s average score in math was already half a grade behind the national average. While in 2024, the gap between California and the nation had narrowed to 36% in math, scores nationally and in California both had lost ground. As a result, California’s 2019 score in math was 82% of a year of learning below the 2019 national average.

    Some of the biggest districts, including San Bernardino City, Long Beach and San Juan remain more than half a grade equivalent behind in math from five years before.

    Reading scores followed a similar trend. In 2019, the gap between the nation and California was 29%; in 2024, it had narrowed to 22%, yet had dropped to 69% of a grade below the 2019 national average.

    As the state’s two largest districts with nearly 10% of California’s enrollment, Los Angeles and San Diego may have lifted the state’s overall average. Los Angeles in 2024 was within a few percentage points of its 2019 scores in reading and math; San Diego’s pandemic decline was significantly less than the state’s.

    The scorecard makes comparisons possible on a single scale based on percentages of an expected year of growth. It equalizes states’ scores by aligning them to their results on the National Assessment of Academic Progress (NAEP), the common test that a representative sample of students in all states take every two years.

    Going Deeper

    The Associated Press analyzed data from the Education Recovery Scorecard, produced by Harvard’s Tom Kane and Stanford’s Sean Reardon, which uses state test score data to compare districts across states and regions on post-pandemic learning recovery. The AP provided data analysis and reporting for this story.

    Researchers from Stanford, Harvard and Dartmouth created the Education Recovery Scorecard using a longitudinal database developed by the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Because states use different tests with different measures for determining what constitutes proficiency, apples-to-apples comparisons of learning losses and gains across the nation normally can’t be made. Some states’ scores for proficiency are “easier” to achieve than in other states.

    The scorecard affirmed trends that others have found by analyzing NAEP and California’s Smarter Balanced scores and results nationally. 

    • Achievement gaps by income and race and ethnicity widened during the pandemic. The highest-income districts were nearly four times more likely to recover in both reading and math than the lowest-income districts. The disparity in math scores between students in affluent and low-income districts grew by 11% since the start of the pandemic; the disparity in scores between students in predominantly non-minority and predominantly minority districts grew by 15%.
    • High rates of absenteeism, especially in high poverty districts, have slowed recovery. One of the report’s recommendations is to recruit mayors, employers and other community leaders; total responsibility shouldn’t rest with schools, the report said. Help could include launching public information campaigns, funding extracurricular activities to draw students to school; and assisting with transportation, the report said.
    • Federal Covid relief for schools, especially $122 billion from the American Rescue Plan passed in 2021, appeared to stem even bigger learning losses in the higher poverty districts — by about 10% of a grade equivalent. But how districts spent the money mattered. In examining federal spending in California, which required more extensive reporting on expenditures, researchers found that spending on intensive tutoring and after-school and summer school programs tended to yield the most effective results. 

    “The slide in average NAEP scores masks a pernicious inequality: Scores have declined far more in America’s middle- and low-income communities than in its wealthy ones. The good news is that it could have been worse: The federal investment in public schools during the pandemic paid off, limiting academic losses in high-poverty districts,” professor Sean Reardon, faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford and a lead researcher on the scorecard, told the AP.

    Along with Compton Unified, whose impressive improvement started before Covid and was undeterred by it, Bonita Unified, a 10,000-student district where 36% of students are eligible for free or reduced meals, raised both reading and math scores to a third of a grade level above 2019 results. In a letter to parents, Bonita Superintendent Matt Wien praised “the sense of purpose that is felt throughout the district and drives our students and employees alike.” He also pointed to hiring elementary school intervention teachers and comprehensive instruction during summer programs.

    Chino Valley Unified scores rose in 2024 to 43% of a grade above 2019 in math and 34% in reading. Deputy Superintendent Grace Park cited the collaboration of teacher teams that developed an essential set of learning standards in every grade, followed by designing lessons and assessments, then monitoring their effectiveness. She also noted that the district was the first in San Bernardino County to return to the classroom when the pandemic eased.

    Economist Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and a collaborator on the scorecard, said it is essential for districts to apply lessons of the recovery. He and Reardon stressed focusing on which of the “science of reading” reforms that districts have tried most improved early literacy.

    “The rescue phase is over. The federal relief dollars are gone. It is time to pivot from short-term recovery to longer-term challenges such as reducing absenteeism and addressing the slide in literacy,” Kane said.

    One advantage California has is a $6.8 billion pot of state money that is replacing the expired federal Covid funds. Distributed based on districts’ low-income enrollment, districts can use the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant through 2027-28 on tutoring and other research-proven strategies, along with mental health and student well-being. The funding is a second chance.





    Source link

  • Districts offer early retirement. Are students collateral damage?

    Districts offer early retirement. Are students collateral damage?


    San Francisco Unified School District office building.

    Credit: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

    California school districts that are at risk of falling off the fiscal cliff are increasingly turning to early retirement incentives as a humane way to balance their budgets, but students could be the ones who lose.

    Many California school districts are facing large budget deficits brought on by continuing declining student enrollment and lower cost-of-living increases in state funding, said Michael Fine, chief executive officer of the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. Districts also have expanded their staffing in recent years, using federal Covid-19 funding that has since gone away.

    The state’s schools spend about 80% of their funding on staff salaries and benefits, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. This leaves districts to choose between unpopular options such as layoffs, school closures and early retirement incentives if budget cuts are needed.

    Early retirements often leave school districts with more inexperienced and under-prepared teachers, which research has shown can have a negative impact on student performance, particularly in high-needs schools.

    This school year, two of the state’s largest districts, San Diego Unified and San Francisco Unified, are offering to pay older, veteran teachers and staff to retire early. Santa Ana Unified and Paso Robles Joint Unified offered an early retirement incentive to their staff earlier this school year. 

    “Part of the cost savings that come with a SERP (supplemental early retirement plan) is, because school districts have a step and column salary schedule, that you realize savings by having teachers that are higher on the salary schedule retire,” said Amy Baer, associate superintendent of human resources for San Francisco Unified School District. 

    “They’re replaced with teachers who are lower on the salary schedule, so it would bring down the number of experienced teachers that you are going to have,” she said.

    In hard-to-fill areas, such as special education, math, science and bilingual education, districts sometimes have to hire under-prepared teachers who have not completed teacher training to fill vacant jobs.

    “We are concerned that the early retirement incentive could exacerbate the existing vacancies for special education we have continued to experience for the last five school years,” said San Diego Education Association President Kyle Weinberg.

    The districts are not excluding teachers in hard-to-fill jobs from retirement incentives. 

    “I think it would be difficult, if challenged legally, that you won’t honor a math credential, but you will honor an English credential (for the incentive),” Fine said.

    Deficits mean staff cuts

    San Francisco Unified leaders, with the help of state-appointed advisers, are trying to reduce the district’s deficit by $113 million. District officials estimate it will have to cut 535 positions, with about 300 coming from early retirements, according to district officials.

    To help meet that goal, San Francisco Unified is offering an early retirement incentive to all staff aged 55 or older, who have more than five years of consecutive service. In return, the district will pay them the equivalent of 60% of their current salary, according to documents from Keenan & Associates, the company administering the plan. The deadline to apply for the supplemental early retirement plan is Feb. 21. 

    San Francisco Unified officials have indicated layoffs will still be needed to bridge the district’s budget deficit.

    San Diego Unified offered an early retirement incentive earlier this school year as part of an effort to eliminate a $112 million projected deficit. The district had 965 employees, including 478 teachers, apply for the incentive — 27% more than expected by the Jan. 15 deadline. The district hasn’t announced how much they expect the retirements will save.

    The supplemental early retirement plan was open to employees eligible to retire under the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), or CalPERS, a public pension service for state workers, by June 30. The district is offering staff 70% of their pay, capped at $124,000 — the top step in the teacher salary schedule. The money will be put in an annuity and paid out over five years.

    District officials at San Diego Unified also have not ruled out layoffs, but expect them to be minimal. 

    “The higher number of people taking early retirement is another positive step toward our goal of delivering a balanced budget in June,” said Fabi Bagula, San Diego Unified School District interim superintendent, in a statement. “The increased number of retirees provides us an opportunity to work with site administrators to assess the way we have been doing things and reimagine our staffing approach to better serve our students and families.”

    Santa Ana Unified offered teachers and other certificated members of the teachers union an early retirement incentive in October, in an effort to reduce a $180 million structural deficit. Although 160 teachers accepted the deal, the district still expects to lay off at least 100 more certificated employees before the end of the year, said Ron Hacker, associate superintendent and chief business official.

    The school board recently voted to reopen the window for early retirement applications and to extend it until May, according to LAist.

    More under-prepared teachers

    Schools in San Francisco and San Diego counties made some of the most requests for emergency-style teaching permits and waivers during the 2022-23 school year, according to California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) data. 

    Districts request emergency-style permits to allow teachers who have not completed testing, coursework and student teaching, to work on provisional intern permits, intern credentials and short-term staff permits when they can’t find enough credentialed teachers. Waivers and limited-assignment permits allow credentialed teachers to teach classes on subjects outside their credential.

    San Diego County is among the top 10 counties to request intern credentials, short-term staff permits and limited assignment teaching permits in 2022-23, according to the CTC. San Diego Unified serves 114,000 students — just under a quarter of the students in San Diego County.

    That year, San Diego Unified had 55 teachers working on intern credentials, 68 on short-term staffing permits, two on provisional intern permits, 98 on limited assignment permits and three on waivers, according to state data.

     The district, the second largest in the state, had 5,051 teachers in 2022-23, the most recent year state data is available.

    San Francisco Unified, which serves 55,452 students, currently has 59 intern teachers and about 230 teachers on various other emergency-style permits, according to the district. 

    The district, which serves all but about 1,000 students in San Francisco County, has 3,364 TK-12 teachers and 128 early childhood educators. The county was listed among the top 10 counties to request district intern credentials and waivers during the 2022-23 school year, according to commission data. 

    Teacher shortage persists

    At a Dec. 10 San Francisco Unified school board meeting, parents and community members complained about long-term substitute teachers teaching in classrooms where there is no credentialed teacher.

    Parent Cheryl Thornton urged the board not to eliminate 500 positions, saying the district already is struggling with empty positions. “We should prioritize central office positions and look for extra funding,” she said.

    Another parent complained that her autistic son, who attends James Lick Middle School, has substitutes instead of a regular teacher. “We need a teacher as soon as possible,” she said.

    San Francisco Unified, like most districts, has a shortage of teachers in special education and other high-needs areas. District leaders say they don’t know yet whether losing veteran teachers in these subjects could result in more under-prepared teachers working on emergency-style permits.

    “It’s really too soon to say what the impact would be next year, but we are committed to making sure that our students do continue to get rigorous and enriching programs in our schools,” said Laura Dudnick, spokeswoman for the district.

    The San Diego solution

    In San Diego Unified, 57 special education teachers are taking the early retirement incentive, San Diego Education Association President Weinberg said. That means more classrooms being taught by long-term substitutes, he said.

    Concern from the teachers union resulted in a program that will retrain district teachers to be special education teachers while they work in those positions next school year. In a deal bargained with the union, the district will pay all the costs associated with earning a special education credential, he said. 

    The union will propose making this program a permanent part of its contract, and is working with unions in other large districts throughout the state to make similar agreements, Weinberg said.

    “We are optimistic that this will become the template for how we address the staffing crisis around special education moving forward, and provide a path for educators within our unit who are in more precarious contracts like temporary contracts or who would be potentially laid off or who are visiting (long-term substitute) teachers to be able to get a special education credential and make the commitment to teach in one of these vital special education roles,” Weinberg said.

    San Francisco is contracting with Keenan & Associates and San Diego with Pacific Life Insurance company to administer their early retirement programs. 

    “I have never seen an early retirement that actually saves the money that the vendor tells you it’s going to save,” Fine said. 

    Despite that, Fine supports the use of early retirement incentives.

    “I think we have to treat people with absolute dignity, and layoffs just destroy morale,” Fine said. “And when morale is destroyed, instruction is destroyed. So, when the morale of our teachers in the classroom is low, instruction is not as good as it should be. And you can’t harm kids that way. So I guess it’s a fine balance.”





    Source link

  • Which districts are on California’s latest financial danger lists — and why

    Which districts are on California’s latest financial danger lists — and why


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    The article was updated on March 3 to clarify the period of the school year covered by the two interim financial reports and to include the status of West Contra Costa Unified.

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    Oakland, San Francisco and Hayward have joined four smaller districts on the five-alarm fire list of the state’s most financially stressed districts — those flirting with insolvency.

    They join 32 districts on a second, cautionary list where there’s smoke but no fiscal flames — yet. The second list, released last week, includes Sacramento Unified, several small rural districts where a small drop in enrollment can pose a financial threat, and two San Jose elementary districts, Alum Rock and Franklin-McKinley, which are closing multiple schools in the fall. Not on the list so far this year is West Contra Costa Unified, which is struggling to stay afloat and received a special “lack of going concern” designation the past three years.

    The 39 districts combined are more than last year and four times as many as in 2022-23, when state and federal revenues overflowed. Still, the updated total accounts for only about 4% of the state’s districts.

    Michael Fine, CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a state agency whose job is to monitor districts’ finances to prevent insolvency, blamed the financial pressures on declining enrollments and the termination of record federal Covid aid for schools. 

    Both factors are forcing districts to make difficult choices that will affect students. Some districts are offering retirement buyouts and/or laying off teachers, counselors and other staff because staff salaries constitute about 80% of overall costs. Many districts on the list also bear the cost of vacillation — a failure to act sooner to cut costs before deficits mount, Fine said.    

    “From my standpoint as an advocate of best practice, there should be nobody on the list because the two predominant factors are predictable,” Fine said. “Why weren’t they dealing with these a year ago, two years ago, and three years ago?”

    Those questions are appropriate for Oakland Unified. Since pre-pandemic 2018-19, its enrollment has fallen 7% — by 2,608 students to 33,916. The district received a total of $280 million in emergency Covid relief in 2021 and 2022, but that expired on Sept. 30, 2024, as that aid did for all districts.

    With many of its elementary schools housing around 300 students, Oakland Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Tramell proposed plans to close small schools, potentially saving millions of dollars, and, in December, to merge 10 elementary schools into five. The school board rejected the plans. In 2023, following a seven-day strike, the district, aiming to reduce the exodus of teachers to better-paying area districts in a high-cost region, gave teachers a 10% raise and a $5,000 one-time bonus. All of those factors have led to a mammoth $95 million deficit out of a $960 million budget.

    “It didn’t feel like we had a deficit growing because we had all the one-time money,” Johnson-Trammell told The Oaklandside last week. “We have to continue to give raises. It’s not a crisis. We made investments, and we have to figure out a way to pay for it.”

    California’s early warning system

    Each year, between passing their annual budgets, all school districts must file two reports to FCMAT that summarize their current financial health and project ahead. Oakland and the other six most-distressed districts filed a “negative” status in their first interim report. This means they likely won’t be able to meet financial obligations, including payroll, in the current or next fiscal year. The 32 other districts filed a “qualified” status, meaning they’re on track to run out of money in the next two fiscal years.

    Districts self-certify their reports. They filed their first interim report on Dec. 15, covering the four months, through Oct. 31, since the July 1 fiscal year began. The second interim report, filed March 15, covers the year through Jan. 31, enabling districts to factor in revenue estimates from the governor’s initial budget, including the projected cost-of-living increase they rely on. March 15 is also the deadline for notifying employees if they could be laid off — key evidence of how districts are dealing with a potential revenue problem.

    How are negative-status districts responding?

    Oakland had certified as “qualified” for 14 straight reports before filing a negative status in the latest report. 

    “Oakland is not a surprise; it’s been struggling,” Fine said. “It hasn’t taken the necessary corrective action that it has needed. The district adopts lots of plans and lots of documents, but then carries few of those out.”

    However, last week, Oakland’s school board passed a plan to eliminate 97 positions for teachers, administrators and noncertificated jobs, including tutors, case managers and attendance monitors. More ideas are on the table.

    Across the bay, San Francisco Unified has been in turmoil, reflected in the recall of two board members and the resignation of its last superintendent. It initially filed a negative financial status in 2023-24.  

    Last month, to resolve a $113 million deficit, equal to about 10% of the district’s budget, San Francisco’s board voted to approve preliminary layoff notices for 395 teachers, social workers and counselors, 164 teachers aides, and 278 administrators and other staff. Retirements and resignations will likely result in fewer layoffs.

    Hayward wasn’t on the state’s radar for financial troubles, Fine said, but a new superintendent and chief business officer “inherited some issues and did the right thing” by self-certifying negative. “They would be an example of a district that will most likely turn the corner,” he said.

    Most of the seven districts will work their way off the negative list, he said. Two that probably won’t are Plumas Unified and Weed Union Elementary, Fine said.

    “We’re very, very concerned about Plumas,” Fine said.  “They have already borrowed to a point they can’t pay back, and there has been some finessing of the data to make it look better than it is.” The only district in Plumas County, it has four schools, about 1,700 students and a $42 million budget.

    Weed Union is an unusual case. The one-school district with a $7.5 million budget is the first in a decade to operate without an approved budget, having been rejected by the Siskiyou County Office of Education and the California Department of Education. Its problem, said Fine, is that it is overextended on a facility upgrade, and the burden of paying for it will overwhelm the district’s operating budget.

    If insolvent, what then?

    A district that runs out of money will get a state loan but lose its autonomy, and a state-appointed trustee will oversee the district’s operations. The district will honor existing contracts, but the trustee will have veto power over new contracts and other decisions that the school board makes. The district will bear the cost of the state’s oversight and legal fees and interest on a 20-year loan. 

    “It gets worse before it gets better,” Fine said. “Receivership takes away local control.” In the 34 years since the Legislature created FCMAT and the oversight process, only eight districts have needed a bailout loan. The most recent is Inglewood Unified, which received $29 million in 2012. Oakland would be the first two-timer. It’s still 18 months away from paying off the $100 million it received in 2003 and 2006.

    Is this the most precarious year for districts?

    Far from it. In the second interim report in 2011-12, 176 districts filed a “qualified” status and a dozen were “negative” – together, about one in five districts. Amid plummeting state revenues in the wake of the Great Recession, the state cut $6 billion and delayed payments to K-12 districts. The average district had not set aside nearly enough money in reserve for a crisis. This year, the average district has set aside 22% of its operating budget in reserve, more than three times as much.

    The difference is “night and day,” said Fine. “During the Great Recession, the state made cuts to district revenues. Today, the issues are all local.”





    Source link