Pinole Valley High School principal Kibby Kleiman will be replaced next school year.
Credit: Spartan Ink / Pinole Valley High student newspaper
The news that a beloved high school principal in West Contra Costa Unified School District won’t be returning next school year has led the community to rally behind him in hopes school district officials will reconsider his reassignment.
Students are holding a rally at Pinole Valley High School on Wednesday morning in support of their principal, Kibby Kleiman. In the last week, hundreds of people have shown support for the longtime principal. Over the weekend, someone even wrote “Kibby” in white letters on the hill that borders the school.
Someone wrote “Kibby” on the hill that neighbors Pinole Valley High School following the news that the principal, Kibby Kleiman, will be replaced next school year. Credit: Courtesy of Erion Nick
“Kibby has always supported me and is always willing to work with students, no matter what we’re going through,” said Austin Snyder, vice president of Project Student Advocacy, a student club that organized the rally. “I feel like Kibby would do it for us.”
The rally follows in the wake of the March 6 school board meeting where hundreds of students, staff and community members — including the mayor of the East Bay city of Pinole — showed up to support Kleiman and share stories about why he was so special to the school and community. About 400 people attended in person and via Zoom, according to West Contra Costa Unified School District officials. More than 100 spoke during the meeting’s public comment period, many of whom were asking the board to keep Kleiman as principal.
“The comments made by students and parents and the whole community should outweigh any concern that the superintendent and the board would have that led to this action,” Mayor Maureen Toms said during the board meeting’s public comment period. “He is beloved in the community and has worked hard to build the trust and relationships between the school district and the city.”
That trust, which hasn’t always existed, could be “eroded” if Kleiman is removed, Toms said. She and her two children all graduated from Pinole Valley High.
Why replace him? WCCUSD officials declined to answer questions about why Kleiman is being replaced, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters.
During the meeting, the board voted during closed session to let go of one elementary and one secondary principal. No other details were provided.
“We understand that the recent personnel matter regarding the release and non-re-election of the two principals is a sensitive issue for our community,” WCCUSD spokesperson Raechelle Forrest said in an email. “The Board is aware of the frustrations of students, staff, and community members, and they are taking this matter very seriously.”
Kleiman declined to comment.
Camila Garcia Gomez, a ninth grader at Pinole Valley High, said she lost respect for the school board because it is supposed to represent the community.
“So many people came out and spoke for Kibby, and they still ignored that,” Garcia Gomez said. “I wish the school board would understand or give a valid reason, but they won’t speak on it.”
The district hasn’t communicated to parents why Kleiman is being replaced, said Josie Garay, Garcia Gomez’s mom. She said parents are upset and don’t feel heard. Unlike Kleiman, other principals her two children have had “weren’t that involved in school or invested in the kids at schools.”
“When there’s an issue, he’s always listening to the kids,” Garay added.
Kleiman has devoted his career in education to Pinole Valley High. He was a teacher there for nearly 20 years, an assistant principal for about five years, and has been the principal for the last decade. People described him as the kind of principal who knows every student’s name, drives two hours to cheer on the football team, never misses a PTSA meeting, checks in with students, and is a problem solver.
One parent said it would be “detrimental” for students if Kleiman was no longer principal. An alumnus said he was “irreplaceable.” A district staffer of 35 years said he was in the “pantheon of greatness.”
Tiffany McCoy said that after hearing the news, her son said he doesn’t want to return to Pinole Valley High if Kleiman isn’t there. Kleiman took the time to get to know her son and make sure he was comfortable around him.
“He said, ‘Mom I can go to him for anything,’” McCoy said. “Not any other principal or administrator has done that. That’s why he’s had such a huge impact on my son.”
A Change.org petition was started last week in support of keeping Kleiman as principal and has more than 1,000 signatures.
Project Student Advocacy is an example of why students feel heard by Kleiman, Erion Nick, president of the student club, said. The club meets every other week, and students can come to talk about their concerns. Nick and Snyder, vice president, relay those concerns to Kleiman and work together to find solutions.
“Kibby is nothing but supportive to students and gives his undying support to any program, clubs, or just events in general — that’s probably why there’s such a huge outcry,” Nick said. “They are trying to get rid of someone who really cares about the school and staff.”
Advocates are calling for $13 million in dedicated state funding and for the adoption of a bill that would support homeless students and youth exiting foster care as schools face the expiration of significant pandemic-era federal funding this year.
The bill, introduced by Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, proposes making it easier for local organizations that serve foster youth to provide direct services. It also mandates those same programs be informed when foster students opt out of applying for federal financial aid, and it requires districts to detail how they plan to increase identification of students experiencing homelessness.
Youth exiting the foster care system face a disproportionate risk of homelessness, and some state programs dedicated to offering them housing support would be eliminated if the state’s proposed budget is approved as it currently stands.
“If we do not have the basic infrastructure in the state to identify them and do any preventative work, we are going to continue to fail this population and then see chronic adult homelessness grow, which is the issue everyone says they care about,” said Margaret Olmos, director of the National Center for Youth Law’s compassionate education systems team in California.
The proposed funding allocation would partially replace the federal money — which must be obligated before October and spent by January next year — while the bill seeks to implement three provisions, directing existing resources toward supporting foster and homeless youth while working to increase their high school graduation and college enrollment rates.
The bill “really highlights the need that we have to do all we can … to be very intentional about our foster youth and outcomes of them maybe having a pathway straight into homelessness unless we intervene,” said Quirk-Silva. “This is a way to work with them through the education system.”
The call for state funding specific to homeless youth, which school staff and advocates have long campaigned for, and for the adoption of the bill, come in a year that California faces a budget deficit in the billions and as rates of student homelessness in many counties have surpassed pre-pandemic rates.
“We’re not deaf to the environment. … What we know is when there is a budget deficit that the number of families and children experiencing homelessness is just going to go up,” Olmos said.
Advocates see both the call for $13 million in dedicated state funding and the adoption of Assembly Bill 2137 as necessary steps in preventing the rise of youth homelessness.
State data and recent studies show that students experiencing homelessness and those in the foster care system are significantly more likely to be chronically absent from school, be suspended, have lower grades, experience higher school instability, or drop out of school.
Dedicated state funding
In 2021, California received nearly $100 million to aid in the identification, enrollment and school engagement of youth experiencing homelessness. This was one-time federal pandemic-era funding under the American Rescue Plan.
Since then, school staff have hailed the funding as critical in their efforts to stay current on which of their students were homeless and how to best support them, whether by offering their families short-term stays in motels after an eviction, hiring staff to contact families they believe might be experiencing homelessness, distributing debit cards for gas, and more.
Students identified as homeless in California are eligible to receive some resources, but the state does not dedicate funding that is specific to this population of students. Some states, such as Washington, have allocated state dollars toward replacing the American Rescue Plan funds before they sunset.
While the state’s funding formula for education gives some funds for high-needs students, including those identified as homeless, it’s not proportionate to the number of homeless students living across the state. In practice, homeless students account for less than 1% of planned spending in the funding formula, according to a report published last year by the Public Policy Institute of California.
Additionally, this state funding is tied to first identifying students who are homeless — an effort that school staff say in and of itself needs to first be funded.
“This is the one subgroup that has to self-identify,” said Olmos. “None of this works if you do not have somebody who is there to count and care about that population.”
There is some dedicated funding at the federal level, such as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, but those grants are distributed in California as part of a competitive grant process, making them extremely limited. During the 2018-19 school year, for example, just 73 of California’s nearly 2,300 local education agencies were awarded McKinney-Vento funding; only 103 applied for the grants, according to a state audit.
McKinney-Vento grants to California totaled about $13 million annually prior to the pandemic, and the call for $13 million in state funding would match that amount.
That amount would not have the same statewide impact that schools felt with the American Rescue Plan funds, but Olmos said that “it’s at least, for the first time, a commitment” from the state.
Proposal to refine current resources
Quirk-Silva, the legislator who introduced Assembly Bill 2137, hopes the bill will help prevent youth homelessness by supporting current foster youth in schools. She was an elementary school teacher for 30 years before being elected to represent District 67, which includes cities from Cerritos in Los Angeles County to Fullerton in Orange County.
“We know they’re part of the population (of homeless youth), and we have to do everything we can before they leave their placements,” said Quirk-Silva. “Some do go to college, and that does help them, but many of them aren’t on that track, and that’s where they become even more vulnerable.”
In refining existing resources, the bill seeks to implement three provisions with the goal of keeping foster youth engaged in school by addressing their individual needs.
The first of the bill’s provisions would increase flexibility for county Foster Youth Services Coordinating Programs, which coordinate with local educational agencies to provide resources such as tutoring and FAFSA support for foster youth students, when offering direct support services to students.
Currently, the county programs, known as FYSCPs, can only offer such services after receiving written certification from the local educational agency confirming they are “unable, using any other state, federal, local, or private funds, to provide the direct services.”
This requirement, according to the bill co-sponsors, which also includes advocacy organization John Burton Advocates for Youth, is a barrier because many local educational agencies, or LEAs, “are reluctant to provide written certification that they cannot address the needs of foster youth resulting in FYSCPs having to forgo providing these services, even when clearly indicated and when funding is available to do so.”
The second provision would request that the coordinating programs be informed if students fill out a form opting out of applying for federal financial aid, so they may intervene and advise foster youth about their options post-high school.
The third and final provision in the bill would require districts to detail in their three-year strategic plans how they plan to increase identification of students experiencing homelessness.
Assemblymember Quirk-Silva said she expects her colleagues to support the bill. There are currently no estimates for how much the bill would cost, if adopted.
“What I’ve seen as a classroom teacher is this is a very vulnerable population,” she said. “Often they need the most support and many times they get the least amount of support.”
An LAUSD student tries out Ed, the district’s new AI assistant for students.
Credit: Los Angeles Unified / X
Los Angeles Unified School District students will soon have their own individualized AI tool, a “personal assistant,” to help them with everyday tasks and remind them about school work when they forget.
The tool, named Ed, is the first of its kind in the nation and will be able to accommodate students verbally and on screen in 100 languages.
“What we are announcing here today is a vision that was built over years of thinking about it, but only one year in actually bringing the necessary partners together — to give a voice, to give a simple life, to give a color, to give an experience,” said Superintendent Alberto Carvalho during Wednesday’s inaugural event at the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center. “And what has emerged is Ed.”
Ed includes a number of features. It will, for example, be able to remind students of upcoming tests, inform them of the cafeteria menu, provide updates on school buses and even wake them up in the morning, Carvalho said.
“Ed will tell Maria ‘You’re falling a little behind in reading, but we got you – click here,’” Carvalho said. “Maria will click, and, without the need for an additional sign on … (it will) open the doors to all of the resources to elevate each student’s needs.”
Carvalho said this tool will not replace the many people in LAUSD who teach and support students on a daily basis.
During the pilot period, Ed will be available immediately to 55,000 students in 101 elementary, middle and senior high schools. Once an initial pilot period is over and the program proves successful, Carvalho said it would expand to the whole district.
“Just like humans are not perfect — although sometimes, in certain political circles, some say they are — the technology produced by humans isn’t perfect either,” Carvalho said.
“With all of the protections against the vulnerabilities, there is always a concern. That’s why we are over vigilant.”
Carvalho also tried to dispel potential cybersecurity concerns — emphasizing that the district has had support from local, state and national agencies in monitoring the program’s evolution.
He also said Ed is currently operating at 93% accuracy, several percentage points above the gold standard of 85% to 87% for ChatGPT.
A strong set of filters will also ensure the program is free from any kind of offensive language, Carvalho added.
More than 100 people, including LAUSD school board members, partners from various universities and businesses as well as representatives of local and state government officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, attended Ed’s inauguration.
The event space was decorated with balloon archways and various photo backdrops — along with Lego building tables, face painting, juice stations and food trucks to celebrate the occasion. Students also sat at tables testing out various features provided by Ed, while the parent interface was displayed on iPads.
“It is the power of artificial intelligence that will allow us for real-time understanding of where students are and where they need to go,” Carvalho said.
“It is the power of this technology to ensure that we will meet every one of our students where they are and accelerate them academically and in terms of enrichment towards their full potential.”
Sun Valley Apartments provide homes to LAUSD families that have experienced chronic homelessness.
Credit: Mallika Seshadri
Twenty-five units of permanent, supportive housing have been made available to families of LAUSD students who have experienced chronic homelessness.
After more than seven years of collaboration, district officials and partners — including Many Mansions, a nonprofit that provides affordable housing to Los Angeles County and Ventura County residents — cut the ribbon for the new Sun King Apartments on Monday and vowed this would be the first of many structures to come.
“I am filled with hope and determination to continue bringing housing opportunities to more LAUSD families in need,” said school board member Kelly Gonez on Monday. “Because while we’re not in the housing business, we are in the business of doing everything we can to advocate for our students and families.”
High rates of poverty “should not be the reality in the richest country on Earth, in the richest state in the nation, in one of the richest counties of this state,” district Superintendent Alberto Carvalho added.
The Sun King Apartments — consisting of one, two and three bedroom apartments — are located in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, where Gonez said there are several elementary schools where more than 20% of students are homeless.
The apartments’ residents are supported through a voucher, and their rent is based on a sliding scale.
In addition to the housing, residents will have access to a range of youth services — including after-school tutoring, summer camps, family events and school supplies, according to Rick Schroeder, president and CEO of Many Mansions.
Several of the district’s partners and collaborators on the project attended Monday’s event, including U.S. Rep. Tony Cárdenas, City Council member Imelda Padilla and the city’s chief housing and homelessness officer, Lourdes Castro Ramirez, along with business partners.
‘Not stopping here’
Annika, Angel and their daughter, Faith, live in one of the Sun King Apartments.
The parents, whose last names were not provided, met at a homeless shelter 16 months ago.
In late December, they — along with their daughter, Faith — moved into the Sun King Apartments.
“We all started a new chapter of our lives, and it has filled us with the highest hopes, blessings and glory,” Annika said Monday. “With the thanks to Many Mansions, we have been able to create a safe and stable chapter of life and a new home for our daughter, Faith.”
Noting that homelessness among school-aged children has increased, Carvalho said Monday that similar projects to house members of the Los Angeles community are critical. He said the Sun King Apartments project is something “that we need to replicate and amplify very quickly.” The superintendent did not provide details or a timeline for when additional housing is expected.
This initial effort took more than seven years, but Carvalho hopes future projects will take less time.
So far, the district has put out a request for information for seven potential properties — some of which may also serve as workforce housing for teachers and classified personnel, Carvalho said.
He declined to share how many people the district is ultimately looking to house and said Los Angeles Unified School District would pursue options that do not cost them financially.
“How do you tackle (homelessness)? One unit at a time, 25 units in a building, many buildings, many mansions across our entire community,” Carvalho said.
“And why do we do this? … Families today live on the third floor. They see the mountains. They see the street. They’re close to the school where their baby girl attends. They feel maybe for the first time somebody paid attention, they’re important.”
The March 5 primary proved to be a good day for passing school parcel taxes, but not so good for school construction bonds.
With fewer than 1% of votes statewide remaining to be counted, it appears likely voters in 10 of 11 districts approved parcel taxes. Although a small sample size, the 91% passage rate beats the historic 65% pass rate for primary elections, according to Michael Coleman, who publishes election results at CaliforniaCityFinance.com (see note below). The sole defeat was the Petaluma Joint Union High School District’s eight-year proposed tax at $89 per parcel.
Voters in 24 of 40 school districts passed school facilities bonds: 60% compared with the historic 73% primary election approval rate. And the winners include two tiny school districts in Sonoma County that looked like they would be defeated on election night but picked up enough mail-in or provisional votes to eke out a win.
It takes a 55% majority vote to pass a bond, and in Fort Ross School District, two votes made the difference for the $2.1 million bond; the 158 to 126 vote was 55.6% to 44.3%. Supporters of the $13 million bond in the Harmony Union School District picked up 6 percentage points since election night to end with 56.3% of the vote.
School districts can choose the March primary or November general election for a parcel tax or school bond. Most traditionally choose November, when more voters cast votes. But others gamble on the primary election, when there’s less competition, with fewer state bond issues and many initiatives competing for dollars on the ballot.
The most recent proposal for a state school construction bond, which would have provided matching funding for local school bonds, was also on the statewide primary ballot in March 2020, and it lost — the first in decades to lose. But it coincided with the emergence of the Covid pandemic, adding an edge of anxiety for voters. It also had the misfortune of coincidentally being designated Proposition 13, which likely caused confusion among voters with the 1978 anti-tax initiative that substantially restricted property tax increases and required a two-thirds voter majority to pass new taxes, including parcel taxes. (Voters lowered that threshold for school facilities bonds to 55% with Proposition 39 in 2000.)
The Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s aides are negotiating whether to place a school facilities bond proposal on the November ballot. With student enrollment declining statewide, most of the money would be designated for renovations and repairs, not new construction.
Brianna Garcia, vice president of School Services of California, a school consulting company, doubted that the lower-than-average passage rate for bonds would predict the outcome in November for local and state bond proposals. Many more districts will place bonds before voters, and the passage rate will revert to the norm for November elections, which is over 80%, she said.
While agreeing with Garcia, Eric Bonniksen, superintendent of Placerville Elementary School District in El Dorado County, cautioned that people struggling financially “are looking at every avenue to fit within their budgets, including school bonds.” A drop in interest rates, even if not large, which economists are forecasting, “may make people feel better about the economic outlook,” he said
Voters, Bonniksen said, want to see something visible, like remodeling a building, reconstructing a field or painting a school. “If a bond only fixes sewer and electrical lines, they will question, ‘What did you do for this money?’” he said.
Voters passed about $3 billion worth of projects, not including interest, generally paid over 30 years at rates of $15 per $100,000 of assessed property value in Sunnyvale to $60 per $100,000 of assessed property value in Benicia, Hayward, Culver City and Desert Sands unified districts. The largest bonds approved are for $675 million in Desert Sands, $550 million in Hayward, and $358 million in Culver City.
The largest bond that failed was for $517 million in Tamalpais Union High School District in Marin County; as of March 22, it was 1.25 percentage points shy of 55%. Opponents, led by the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers, questioned the scale of the work and said the money would disproportionately go to Tamalpais High, with not enough to two other high schools. The district last approved a construction bond two decades ago.
Parcel taxes
Only about 1 in 8 school districts, primarily in the Bay Area and districts with wealthier families in the Los Angeles area, have passed one. Parcel taxes are one of the few sources of funding for districts to supplement state or local funding. Because Proposition 13 bans tax increases based on a property’s value, parcel taxes must be a uniform amount per property, regardless of whether it’s a cottage, a 10-bedroom house, or an apartment building.
Courts have ruled, however, that parcel taxes can be assessed by the square footage, and three of the 11 on the ballot (54 cents per square foot per year in Berkeley Unified, 55 cents in Albany Unified, and 58.5 cents in Alameda) passed. School boards in high-cost Bay Area districts argue that parcel taxes are critical because state funding under the Local Control Funding Formula doesn’t take regional costs into consideration.
The approved parcel taxes range from $75 per year for eight years in Martinez Unified to a $768 per year extension of an existing parcel tax, with an annual cost of living adjustment, in Davis Joint Unified.
Note: Updated data indicated that parcel taxes in Manhattan Beach Unified and Petaluma City Elementary School District, along with bond proposals in Fort Ross and Harmony Union school districts picked up enough support to pass.
A student heads toward the Student Services building at Los Angeles Pierce College
Credit: Delilah Brumer/EdSource
Waiting for college financial aid offers has been worrying for Kamila Juarez, a high school senior at Grace Davis High School in Modesto. The prolonged timeline of this process, caused by a delayed release of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has added to the uncertainty.
“It’s kind of stressful, just because I know that when I do know how much I get, it’s going to be pretty fast,” Juarez said. “So knowing that I have all this waiting time, I can’t really do much about it besides apply for scholarships and wait to hear back from those scholarships. It’s pretty suspenseful.”
With FAFSA’s availability issues, about 5.7 million students have successfully completed the application, compared to the average of 17 million applicants at this point in previous years. The compressed time schedule strained families applying for financial aid.
The Education Department’s deadline for getting student financial aid data to colleges and universities was last week, so schools are only now receiving that information. And on Friday, complications piled up, as the Education Department announced that a miscalculation in “the formula of the FAFSA resulted in incorrect financial need information for several hundred thousand students being sent to colleges and universities.”
The delays led all nine UC campuses to push back their Intent to Register deadline to May 15, while all 23 CSU campuses to no earlier than May 15. Despite the 15-day commitment deadline extension, some students said they are facing difficulties in making a decision without knowing their financial aid package for the 2024-25 academic year.
Juarez said she has received scholarships from Sonoma State University and California State University, Monterey Bay but is waiting until she knows what financial aid she’ll get from every school before making her decision.
“My biggest (factor), I would say, is financial aid, as well as location,” Juarez said.
Juarez said she hopes to be able to go to either Cal Poly San Luis Obispo or UCLA and major in city planning or geography and environmental science.
Finean Hunter-Kenney, a senior from Lowell High School in San Francisco, said the FAFSA delays have also heavily impacted his decision in committing to college.
“I can’t make any decision on where to go to college without all the financial info,” he said. “Right now I’m in the process of committing to Chapman University to play baseball, but I can’t make that decision final until I see how much FAFSA will pay for, because the tuition is really expensive.”
Hunter-Kenney said he feels pressure to say “yes,” because the deadline is May 1, but he can’t accept the offer until FAFSA releases financial aid information. For him, there is “definitely a limit” when it comes to the cost of tuition, and while aid is not “make or break,” it will still affect his college decision.
“I am pretty stressed about where to go,” Hunter-Kenney said. “The financial aspect is stressful as well, because without all the information, I don’t know how much in loans I’m going to have to take out, and that’s something I want to know before I decide to go anywhere.”
For Isabella Gentile, a communication studies major at Pasadena City College, financial aid was one of the main reasons she decided to focus her transfer applications on in-state public universities and avoid the financial uncertainty that can come with private or out-of-state schools.
“I know I would receive more money from (my) grant if I attended a UC school versus if I attended a private school, which impacted my decision to not apply to somewhere like USC,” Gentile said.
However, Gentile also said that the transfer and financial aid process has been “good and easy” overall, because she was able to submit everything she needed to.
Other students filling out this year’s FAFSA have faced technical difficulties, according to Laura Burtness, a college and career adviser at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo. Some of these issues are related to her students’ citizenship status.
“There is difficulty for mixed residency families, or families where not all claim U.S. citizenship,” Burtness said. Error messages and application rejections have been common when parents don’t have social security numbers — classified as “eligible non-citizens” for FAFSA purposes. Families calling the help line have reportedly been met with recordings of outdated information or advice to try to fill out the form again later.
The Education Department announced in late February that students who have at least one parent without a social security number would be able to successfully submit FAFSA forms in the first half of March.
Burtness mentioned the urgency and concern she’s had for the students she has worked with all year.
“I think this is going to be a big deal because we’re running out of time. Hillsdale’s graduation is on May 30, and we’re doing anything we can to help,” she said.
Los Angeles Pierce College political science major Eric Guerrero faced the more common technical difficulties; he said he spent weeks troubleshooting his FAFSA form before he was able to submit it in late January.
Guerrero plans to transfer to a four-year university this fall and has his sights set on UCLA. He said the challenges he faced with FAFSA have made his transfer process harder.
“Every time I tried it, it was crashing or it wouldn’t load,” Guerrero said. “It was so hectic. Trying to get it done was horrible, and I was really nervous. Eventually, one random night at like 2 in the morning, it finally went through.”
Ashley Bolter is a fourth-year journalism student minoring in French and ethnic studies at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science. Kelcie Lee is a first-year student at UC Berkeley majoring in history and sociology. Abbie Phillips is a third-year journalism student minoring in Spanish at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. All are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
New general education requirements created for transfer students will now apply to all students, including first-time freshmen in the California State University.
Cal State trustees voted Wednesday to create a unified, simplified general education pathway for all students, despite opposition from faculty and students that the decision would eliminate classes that contribute to lifelong learning.
The decision effectively replaces the “CSU GE Breadth” and reduces the number of general education required credits from 39 to 34, by eliminating additional humanities and arts courses and classes identified as lifelong learning and self-development. However, it also adds a laboratory class to the requirements. Students would still be able to take many of these courses as electives.
The simplified pathway, known as Cal-GETC or the California General Education Transfer Curriculum, was first proposed in May 2022 as part of the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act of 2021 as a way to improve the transfer experience for community college students entering the University of California and Cal State systems. The curriculum was developed by the academic senates of the CSU, the UC and the community colleges and goes into effect in the fall of 2025.
Although the new transfer pathway was created with community college students in mind, Cal State administrators and trustees chose to apply it to first-time freshmen, too.
About 60% of Cal State’s first-year applicants have some type of transfer credit, many of them earned through dual enrollment courses taken in high school, said April Grommo, CSU’s vice chancellor for enrollment management,adding that some continuing CSU students also complete general education courses through their local community colleges. Without creating one pathway, Grommo said about 25% of undergraduates would have to complete more general education requirements.
“Aligning general education for all CSU students provides an equitable set of degree requirements for all undergraduate students,” she said.
Trustees said proceeding with two different systems could lead to equity concerns.
“I am concerned that if we have one path for community college transfers and one path for those students who begin with us, that there might be a feeling of inequity,” trustee Jack Clarke Jr., said.
Although most Cal State faculty support the new simplified path for transfer students, many said they opposed applying it to students who enter the system as freshmen.
Beth Steffel, chair of CSU’s academic senate, said despite claims that students can still take these courses, there is a chance that courses will be eliminated if not designated as part of general education.
“If a course is not required, it will not be offered,” Steffel said. “Resource constraints ensure this reality.”
Eliminating the courses from general education requirements could also have unintended consequences by reducing the potential for students to learn other languages through arts and humanities and create costs by adding an additional science laboratory, Steffel said.
Steven Filling, an accounting professor at Stanislaus State, said losing the courses provided in CSU GE Breadth rquirements would be detrimental to students who enter the system as freshmen because they would miss out on the extra skills gained from social learning, communication and critical thinking.
For example, kinesiology classes, which is the study of movement, fall under the lifelong learning and self-development courses. Students interested in business fields like accounting, for example, could take golfing courses to prepare them for meeting with clients.
“If you’ve never played golf and have no clue about it, well, you may have a little bit of trouble,” Filling said.
These classes are called “lifelong learning” because they help students discover how to cope and deal with the world around them, he said.
There’s another reason some CSU faculty oppose Cal-GETC: Much of the curriculum was chosen with the UC system in mind.
“The UC has a pretty strong position of, ‘Well, if we don’t agree to it, we’re not going to do it,’” Filling said. “If you look at Cal-GETC, you’ll notice a strange similarity between that and the UC’s present (general education) programming.”
Filling said one problem with that is the UC and Cal State systems have different missions and, although there is overlap, educate different types of students. For example, the UCs are tasked with admitting the top 9% of high school graduates.
“To think that somebody in the top 5% of their high school class is going to be at exactly the same level as somebody who is at the 30th percentile is unrealistic,” he said.
“It’s clear our students need different things than what UC students do,” he said. “It may be the case that the community colleges, with the resources they have, can provide the additional support those students need to get them up to the level where UC students are. It’s far from clear to me that that works for students coming into the CSU.”
The new simplified pathway represents both systems, said Laura Massa, Cal State’s interim vice chancellor for academic and faculty programs. For example, Cal-GETC includes ethnic studies and oral communication requirements that were required for CSU but not UC.
Student trustee Diana Aguilar-Cruz said some of the opposition from students arises from their rising distrust of the board and administration’s decisions. Students have been calling for some analysis of the current general education path before making any change.
“Especially with all the prior decisions that we’ve been making throughout the year,” Aguilar-Cruz said, referring to the tuition increase. “They really need to see this data. … That has really fractured the trust that students have.”
However, trustees saidthey did not want to proceed with two different systems for meeting general education requirements.
Despite opposition from faculty and students to the change, Cal State officials said they worked collaboratively with both groups on understanding the pros and cons and took both groups into consideration.
“Shared governance doesn’t always mean agreement,” CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia said. “The success, sustainability and continued growth of our institution depends on our ability to recruit, serve and guide our students through our universities to remove barriers that sometimes we put in their way and provide clear and direct pathways to a degree and a fulfilling profession for us. And for me, I believe a single GE pattern for all CSU students achieves that goal, and it advances our mission of student success for all.”
Teaching artists lead students through improv exercises during a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.
Top Takeaways
Many school districts are using comedy and improv workshops to teach students social-emotional skills, encourage self-expression and foster social connection.
Through the comedy program Laughing Together, professional comedians and mental health clinicians develop workshops based on exercises that can improve student mental health.
Game-based learning and interactive play can engage students who might have fallen behind academically or socially during the pandemic.
“If you were an object, what object would you be?”
Chris Gethard, a veteran comedian and improv teacher, posed this question to a group of high school students in Northern California at a Laughing Together workshop he was leading. He remembered one who identified as a fruit.
“When I was a kid, I convinced myself that I hated avocados,” Gethard remembered the student saying. “And then I tried one, and I actually love ’em. And that’s been my experience the past few years as I’m learning to love and embrace myself.”
It quickly became obvious to Gethard that the improv wasn’t about avocado or any fruit for that matter. It was a big moment, and the student was taking a big risk to figure out something about themselves — their gender identity in real time.
“Young people right now are living in a world where those experiences are often held up in the spotlight and politicized,” Gethard said. “So to see a kid being able to take a comedy exercise, which feels light and accessible and not too heavy, they can let their guard down and take a big swing like that.”
Many school districts are turning to comedy as a way of supporting student mental health. In 2023, Gethard co-founded Laughing Together, a program based on research that comedy can be an effective tool for students’ social-emotional learning and social connection with their peers.
Nearly 6,500 students and educators across 26 different schools, districts, or youth organizations, have taken part in their workshops since Gethard co-founded the program with Marlon Morgan, CEO of parent nonprofit Wellness Together.
“One of the reasons that we [partnered with Gethard] is that he had already shared about his own mental health through his comedy special on HBO,” said Morgan, who is also a former school counselor. “He can make dark and scary things funny, which really helps students gain insight into their own emotions and become better at connecting with each other.”
‘Taking chances in the spotlight’
Research shows that students who practice social-emotional skills in safe environments with well-defined goals have improved social behavior, emotional regulation and academic performance.
“We have clinical psychologists who go through all the improv exercises,” Gethard said. “They get to say — ‘these ones are about making people funny, and they also prioritize nonverbal communication, strengthening eye contact, being comfortable with failure and taking some chances in the spotlight.’”
Christina Patterson, a senior and peer counselor at Lincoln High School in Stockton, said pandemic shutdowns forced her to spend nearly entire days scrolling through social media, hoping for something new to interact with (“But, there never is anything new,” she added).
For the first time since her school implemented a cellphone ban, Patterson said taking part in the Laughing Together workshop, even for an hour, met the level of engagement she had always been looking for on her phone. Like Patterson, students in recent years report better cognitive, social and academic outcomes through game-basedlearning and interactive play, compared to lecture-based instruction.
“I feel engaged with people who are interactive — they’re not trying to teach at you, but they’re trying to teach with you together,” Patterson said.
Laughing Together workshops are led by one of the program’s teaching artists, including professional comedians, actors and performers, alongside children’s psychologists, drawing on art, play and game therapy research, to develop social-emotional learning and communication skill-building into each exercise. For Gethard, a workshop is successful if he can teach students something without them realizing it.
“We want kids to leave feeling more connected and comfortable with each other, not like they just watched a slide show or that they were just spoon-fed these lessons,” he said. “We want them to feel that they’re allowed to at least throw an idea out there, and no one’s going to judge them, pick them apart, or criticize them.”
Sofia Stewart-Lopez, a senior and peer counselor at Lincoln High School, helped set up a peer-to-peer summit, where she and other student mentors took part in a Laughing Together workshop. She remembered starting the day anxious about a big presentation about mental health resources she had later in the day, but after a few skits and improv games, she felt more confident, relaxed and connected to the people around her.
“I learned that a big part of balancing heavy topics of mental health, like anxiety, depression or substance abuse, is learning how to combat them with things that can help you with those feelings,” Stewart-Lopez said.
Markus Alcantar, a senior and a peer counselor at Lincoln High School, said his favorite part of the workshop was one in which he got to become an apple. He had to think on his feet about why he felt like one, and then he improvised a skit with someone who had decided they were a tree. In another exercise, he said a volunteer started with juggling a ball, after which students added another ball, followed by another, and then another — until they couldn’t keep up anymore.
“It was a fun representation of how you can have a lot of things going on in your head mentally, and that you can learn to unravel those thoughts and organize them for yourself and other people,” Alcantar said.
About 1 in 5 teenagers, and most of Stewart-Lopez’s friends at school, she said, have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression. So the workshop, she said, was particularly helpful in understanding how laughter exactly works in the brain — like how endorphins and serotonin receptors can alleviate some feelings of sadness or anxiety — to be able to have fun and build healthy coping skills with friends at school.
“The [improv exercises] also taught us that thinking on our feet better prepares us to be able to respond in different types of situations,” Stewart-Lopez said. “We learned that different people need different types of support, which betters us as mentors.”
Middle school students attend a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.
Most recently, Gethard completed nine workshops at a high school where over half of the student body are on Individualized Education Plans (IEP), or accommodations for students with learning, developmental, or behavioral disabilities. During the first workshop, he noticed most students reaching for their phones in the middle of an exercise or while on stage. To ease students into the experience, he’d tell them to simply take a breath and try to be present.
“After the first few workshops, a teacher came up to me and said, ‘their ability to lock in and focus on that is leaps and bounds compared to week one,” Gethard said. “She said, ‘they just never got their ability to focus back after Covid, but if we can keep going with this, it’s going to change the game for these kids in the room.’”
Rates of anxiety and depression — which shot up by 70% among California children between 2017 and 2022 — are the top health-related drivers of absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic. Research indicates that reduced social interaction, coupled with overreliance on screen time, also worsened students’ social cognition skills, such as cooperation and communication, and executive functions, such as attention and memory.
Alcantar was in seventh grade when schools shut down, and when he returned to in-person instruction as a high school freshman, he said he found it difficult for him to initiate conversations with people around him. Stewart-Lopez said that after schools lifted mask mandates, she kept hers on for a while because she was worried about meeting social expectations about what she should look like.
“The pandemic had added to my sense of anxiety about, ‘What if I don’t fit in? What if I’m different from everybody else?” she said.
For Stewart-Lopez, laughter feels like home. It’s how she and her sisters got through their parents’ separation and also how she plans to take new risks with new people at college this year.
“We’re creating that safe place for students to get real-time responses to the risks they’re taking — and everyone’s taking risks — which makes it okay,” said Morgan, the CEO of nonprofit Wellness Together.
Fresno Unified School District board member Keshia Thomas speaks during a 2022 news conference.
Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
Among accusations of racism, intimidation and political play, ensuing from a March 20 decision by the Fresno Unified School District board to interview internal candidates first in the process to hire a superintendent, some district employees have faced harassment and threats, with some members of the Hmong community also citing attacks against them.
Sources, including district spokesperson Nikki Henry, told EdSource that board members and Deputy Superintendent Misty Her — a candidate for the open position and the presumptive interim superintendent — have been threatened. Her, specifically, has faced racial harassment, Henry said.
“It’s not fair to staff, and it’s not fair to the process,” school board member Keshia Thomas said.
During last week’s board meeting, Kao Xiong, CEO of the Hmong Business Incubator Center, a community-based organization serving the underrepresented Hmong community, said his group has been monitoring racial tensions related to the superintendent search.
Community member John Thao spoke about the “painful” and “hurtful” words someone told him in the wake of the superintendent’s search: “‘Your kind will never be superintendent.’”
On Jan. 22, when Superintendent Bob Nelson announced his plans to leave Fresno Unified, the district announced that if a permanent superintendent isn’t named by his final days, Her would be named interim superintendent.
Plans to name Her as interim superintendent put her at the center of the search as a favored candidate even though she’s not the only internal applicant. Her became the highest-ranking Hmong K-12 professional in 2021 when she was hired as deputy superintendent.
Stacy Williams, a community member who spoke at last week’s meeting, accused the board of favoring Her as the next superintendent for their own political gain.
“I know some of you have something to gain by using the Hmong community as your political pawn for when you want to run for something,” Williams said. A similar sentiment had been expressed in an opinion piece on news site GV Wire, which accused some board members of “pandering to the Hmong community for votes” in their November re-election bids.
Process is compromised
After the March 20 closed meeting of the school board, during which the board decided to interview internal candidates before deciding on how to proceed with the hiring process, details of the 4-3 decision and how each board member voted were leaked to the media, instigating community anger that propelled the board to reverse course in a 5-2 vote last Wednesday and postpone the scheduled internal interviews.
Beyond the threats, the search for the top leader of the state’s third-largest school system is engulfed in community angst about an alleged lack of transparency as well as accusations that the process has been tainted by politics.
Simply put, some say the search process has become “compromised.” But the reason for that conclusion varies, depending on whom you ask.
Trustee Thomas said the process is compromised because board members and staff are afraid but helpless to protect themselves and their families from threats and harassment, incited by the turmoil that the leaked information has caused.
“I don’t know what the next steps are going to be because everybody is uncertain, scared and wants to protect their families and protect employees from the nonsense,” Thomas told EdSource before the board voted to cancel the interviews of in-house candidates. “So now, we may have to pivot and try to figure out: how do we stop the unnecessary nonsense?”
Manuel Bonilla, president of the Fresno Teachers Association, on the other hand, said the process was compromised from the moment the board decided to prioritize district employees rather than conducting an “extensive search to find the best candidate … creating the appearance that politics matter more than students.”
Fifteen community members who spoke at last Wednesday’s board meeting agreed that politics has permeated the process one way or another.
“Is this politics as usual?” asked Terri Kimber-Edwards, who attended Fresno Unified schools, is a parent to former students, and was a teacher and school and district administrator. “Is there some agenda? Are there backroom deals?”
Accusations of a personal or political agenda
A recently launched political action committee, Moving the Central Valley Forward, sent mailers to Fresno residents, asking them to run for a seat in the Roosevelt and Hoover High areas, represented by Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas and Claudia Cazares, who are up for re-election in November. Both trustees’ names were leaked as part of the board majority that voted to start the superintendent search with internal candidates.
Jonasson Rosas did not confirm or deny her part in the March 20 decision because it happened in a closed-door session, and Cazares could not be reached for comment. Both have since voted to cancel the internal candidate interviews. In fact, Cazares led the charge to change the scope of the search at last Wednesday’s meeting.
Board member Andy Levine, who represents the Fresno High area, is also up for re-election but was not included in the mailer, although the area is listed on the political action committee’s website. Last week, Levine stated on Facebook and told EdSource that he supported opening the search to both internal and external candidates from the start.
Board members are not the only ones being accused of having a political agenda in the superintendent search.
Thomas, who says she stands by her decision to interview internal candidates first, questioned the teachers union’s involvement in the April 2 news conference called by board President Susan Wittrup to challenge the board’s decision.
At that news conference, community leaders, including members of the teachers union, urged Fresno Unified board members to conduct the search the “right way,” with a scope that includes at least statewide candidates, and in an open and transparent way, led by and with community involvement.
Thomas said the labor union’s top leaders want to apply for the superintendency, which they couldn’t have done under the board’s original plan to interview internal candidates first.
District leaders, principals, teachers and other staff would be considered internal candidates who could apply.
Union presidents are district employees and could have applied; however, other union leaders and representatives would not have been able to unless the search was expanded to include external candidates.
Fresno Teachers Association leaders Louis Jamerson, pictured in the center, and Manuel Bonilla sign a tentative labor agreement between the teachers union and Fresno Unified School District last October. Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
The teachers union’s executive director, Louis Jamerson, said he’ll apply to be Fresno Unified’s superintendent if the process is opened to external candidates, but added that questions about the union’s involvement in the search process are “ridiculous.”
The union’s executive board endorses Jamerson’s plan to become superintendent and Bonilla, FTA president, as deputy superintendent.
“We have some support from our executive board and from our teachers to pursue this,” Jamerson said, referring to his public announcement in February to 200 educators who gave him a standing ovation.
“But that assumes that that’s possible. I don’t know, ultimately, how the board is going to decide on this process,” Jamerson said. “There could be another hurdle that prevents me from being able to apply. But if there are no hurdles, in terms of the ability for me to apply to become the superintendent, I will apply.”
FTA involvement isn’t unique to this search
The teachers union has been involved in the superintendent search process dating back to 2005, when Mike Hanson was hired, and 2017, when Nelson was selected.
Jamerson said that ensuring that the right superintendent is selected isn’t the only action the union takes to improve the education of students in Fresno Unified, where most students are still not meeting state standards.
“In my almost 10-year tenure at FTA, we have been involved in trying to do our best, from where we are, to try to … move this rock up a hill in terms of our students: our student safety, our student academic outcomes, our students’ ability to learn, read, do math — all of that,” Jamerson said about work the union engages in.
Trustee Jonasson Rosas said the situation is causing uneasiness at the district’s many schools, where students are now preparing for testing and other end-of-year obligations, such as college applications. Students who spoke during the April 3 meeting confirmed their worry.
“It’s unsettling for our school sites,” Jonasson Rosas said, “and I’m concerned about the effects that our schools are having because of this.”
Edison High senior Yunah Vang was one of seven students who stood at the podium during last Wednesday’s meeting, though not all spoke.
”Instead of preparing for my graduation or getting ready for my prom, my classmates and I are here addressing issues that we are supposed to trust adults with,” Vang said.
But regardless of how the search unfolds, the next superintendent must address the district’s struggles with student performance, including children’s ability to read and teens’ college readiness.
For third grade — the school year believed to be pivotal in determining reading proficiency and predicting future success — less than 1 in 3 third-graders are at grade level, a GO Public Schools 2023 student outcome report on Fresno Unified showed.
Of high school seniors in Fresno Unified, according to the report, under 20% are ready for college courses in English while less than 5% are ready for college math courses. College readiness is defined by a student exceeding standards on the 11th grade standardized tests.
It’s still unclear how the superintendent selection process will proceed. It’s possible that the board will update the community about the next phase of the process at its meeting on April 10.
Many are wondering whether qualified candidates will risk applying and being part of a process that has questionable community support or to work under a fractured school board. EdSource found that less experienced superintendents are becoming common across the state as there is a rise in superintendents leaving the job; many who are leaving cite threats, stress and politics.
“Interested candidates are going to be looking at the process thus far,” said Henry, the district’s spokesperson. “They’re going to be looking at how the board operates, how district leadership operates, how our schools operate. They’re going to take a deep dive and decide if this is the right fit for them, so I think it’s yet to be seen if this has a positive or negative impact on a wider search.”
As a former public school kid who grew up in Southern California, I recall racing through the lunch line to quickly grab a cardboard tray and scarf down a soggy, plastic-wrapped meal in the scant time available to me. By the time the bell rang, there were often many students still waiting in the lunch line, having to rush back to class with a slice of pizza in hand.
These seemingly small memories may have a big impact on behavior, with research from the University of Michigan showing that 1 in 8 American adults show signs of food addictions.
Universal school lunch programs are now active in eight states, including California, with many more looking to follow. This is a huge stride forward in increasing nutrition access for public school students. But there is a notable gap in that there are no federal regulations mandating a minimum amount of time for school meals. Students across the country, including at California public schools, have been stuck dumping their meals out and rushing back to class.
Schools play a pivotal role in shaping young minds, but how effective are school lunch programs if children are left hungry waiting in a meal line or rushed through their meals?
To try to achieve equity in K-12 schools, policymakers and educators have rightfully prioritized the need for food access in schools. This movement could extend the positive effects in a low-cost way by implementing sufficient time for lunch in school. There’s plenty of research on how food can improve test scores, and a 2021 study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that middle school students given 20 seated minutes for lunch ate more fruits and vegetables.
Time is a critical aspect of food — time to eat, digest and engage in a social, communal experience that extends beyond just a full stomach. Think of iconic scenes in iconic movies like “Mean Girls” and “The Breakfast Club” that take place during cafeteria time — these are hallmarks of youth that deserve ample time. Food is vital to culture and relationship-building, teaching kids important lessons of socialization and connection that endure for life. Although planning school schedules can be a crunch to ensure required instructional minutes are met, cutting lunch times short is not a sufficient or sustainable solution for students.
By establishing a minimum duration for school meals, schools will acknowledge that fostering a healthy relationship with food is important to setting kids up for a positive future. There may not be one right solution for all schools, but the California Department of Education has suggested making sure lunch is at least 20 minutes, having recess before lunch, requiring a specific amount of time sitting, and ensuring students can get through the food lines quickly.
The interplay of cafeteria, community and classroom (the 3 Cs) reflects how K-12 schools extend beyond students’ desks. Young students are sponges of knowledge, and giving them the building blocks of mindful eating by encouraging longer lunch times can enhance efforts to help students live healthy lives and impact their lifelong eating habits. As mental health advocates call for increased mindfulness in our educational institutions, this philosophy must be extended to the cafeteria.
Now is the perfect time for schools to become environments where students feel empowered to make smart choices about the food they consume. Even with universal free school lunches, parents should continue investigating and asking their children about the food they are getting in school — and whether they’re able to spend time eating it.
Let’s bridge the gap between educational equity and nutritional equity, pushing for a system that enables well-nourished, mindful students to embrace learning during their time at school.
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Julia Ransom is a senior at Stanford University studying human biology.
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