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  • Lawsuits charge antisemitism, civil rights violations at California charter school and high school district

    Lawsuits charge antisemitism, civil rights violations at California charter school and high school district


    Sequoia Union High School District in Redwood City.

    Credit: Flickr

    The parents of a former student of a San Jose charter school and six families in a wealthy Bay Area high school district have filed separate lawsuits charging “rampant” civil rights violations resulting from bullying, taunting, ostracism and other forms of antisemitic conduct. In the lawsuit brought against the Sequoia Union High School District, the families claim school officials ignored and showed “a deliberate indifference to the problem.”

    Both lawsuits, which were filed in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, say the discrimination escalated following the October 2023 attack on Israeli communities by Hamas and the Israeli retaliation and invasion of Gaza. 

    The lawsuit against the Sequoia Union High School District also reflects tension over how the ongoing conflict in Gaza has been taught in two Sequoia Union high schools as well as other districts engulfed in investigations and litigation. 

    The Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education is investigating whether Berkeley Unified failed to respond to rising incidents of antisemitism in its schools. Last month, several Jewish teachers in Los Angeles filed a lawsuit to overturn collective bargaining laws that they said force them to belong to a teachers union that helped create an ethnic studies curriculum that “is patently antisemitic.”

    Next month, an Orange County Superior Court judge will consider two nationally known Jewish legal groups’ motion to void an ethnic studies curriculum in Santa Ana Unified. They claim it was written by teachers and staff members who privately expressed antisemitic remarks and excluded Jewish community members from participating in the curriculum process.

    In their lawsuit, filed Friday, the six Sequoia Union High School District families named Woodside High Principal Karen Van Putten and three administrators of Woodside High, where five of the students attend, as well as Menlo-Atherton High School Principal Karl Losekoot, Sequoia Union Superintendent Crystal Leach, two district administrators, all five district board members, and Gregory Gruszynski, a history teacher at Woodside High.

    Placing the lawsuit in a wider context, lawyers for the Sequoia Union lawsuit said “leftist academics” have spread an ideology that “falsely portrays Jews as oppressors, engaged in ‘exploitive capitalism’ in the West and or ‘colonialism’ in the Middle East.”  

    “The result is not only a reprehensible failure of pedagogy but a hostile learning environment for Jewish students” — including in some Sequoia Union classes where the ideology is taught, the Sequoia lawsuit said.

    It cites as a relevant party but not a defendant the Liberated Ethnics Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, whose member groups are selling curriculum and training teachers in dozens of California districts. 

    Curriculum issues are not directly at issue in the lawsuit against University Prep Academy in San Jose. In that case, student Ella Miller, 13, and her parents filed the lawsuit on Oct. 23 against the charter middle and high school and its executive director. After months of abuse during which students taunted her as “the Jew” or “Jew,” Miller withdrew from the school and now attends a private school, the lawsuit said.

    The lawsuit also named as defendants the Santa Clara County Office of Education, which approved and oversees the charter school, and the California Department of Education, including State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. The lawsuit claims county and state officials failed to respond to the family’s formal complaint that Ella’s rights had been violated or to intervene after learning of her mistreatment.

    The 55-page filing does imply some teachers were hostile to Israel. Ella’s father, Shai Miller, an Israeli, said he noticed on back-to-school night that Israel was erased from maps of the modern Middle East in Ella’s history class.

    Ella, who identifies as an Israeli American and speaks fluent Hebrew, has spent summers in Israel with cousins, the lawsuit said. The Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, in which 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, distressed her and her family. She was visibly upset in history class on Oct. 9, the first day back in school after the attack, the lawsuit states. But before allowing her to go to the bathroom to collect herself, her teacher told her she had to read aloud something he had written “to the effect that, in the past, Palestinians and Jews had gotten along.”

    The lawsuit alleges that “this requirement to publicly espouse a position that was at odds with present-day reality was overwhelmingly oppressive and humiliating. It also further identified Ella as ‘the Jew’ to her classmates.” 

    Did history teacher show bias?

    Allegations of prejudiced classroom instruction that included antisemitic materials are a central element of the lawsuit against Woodside and Menlo-Atherton, two of four high schools in Sequoia Union, a demographically diverse, 10,000-student high school district. 

    Of Woodside High’s 1,646 students, 50% are Hispanic, 42% are white, 4% are Asian and 1% are Black. Only 28% were identified as low-income. Its students include low-income sections of Redwood City, and Woodside and Atherton, which are among the wealthiest ZIP codes in the United States.

    The lawsuit claimed that Gruszynski, a Woodside High history teacher who currently chairs the bargaining committee for the Sequoia District Teachers Association, “singled out and harassed L.K. (all plaintiff students are identified with initials), the only openly Jewish student” in his 10th grade world history class.” Gruszynski displayed a “Free Palestine” bumper sticker on his classroom wall. The lawsuit stated that he “mocked her beliefs, undermined her attempts to provide factual information to classmates, and coerced her into endorsing his biased and ahistorical views to achieve satisfactory grades on exams.”

    On a multiple-choice test, for example, the correct answer to the definition of Hamas, which the United States government has designated a terrorist organization, was a “Palestinian political party which is continuing to fight against Israel.”

    “In this way,” the lawsuit said, “Gruszynski forced a Jewish student to condemn Israel and disavow her beliefs in order to receive a passing grade.” The lawsuit said that L.K. returned home in tears after Gruszynski’s classes and decided she could not participate in any further classroom discussions “without inviting further harassment.”                       

    L.K.’s father, Sam Kasle, filed a complaint against Gruszynski, who refused to meet with him. Kasle requested to see Gruszynski’s course materials, which he, like other parents, had a right to review, but the district rejected that request. In response to the complaint, the vice principal disputed that Gruszynski made L.K. feel “uncomfortable” or “browbeaten,” and considered the case closed without reporting any action taken.

    Student handbook guarantees civil rights

    David Porter, University Prep Academy’s executive director, said the school’s attorney advised him not to comment on the lawsuit because it is an ongoing complaint. However, he did say that as the case proceeds, “what actually happened will come forward.”

    He added, “Our student handbook’s policies around bullying and discrimination are strict, and we follow them as written.”

    The school’s staff and student handbook for 2023-24 was expansive on protecting students’ civil rights, and the lawsuit extensively quotes from it. “The University Preparatory Academy Board and Staff commit to raise our voices against racism, unconscious bias, intolerance, injustice, and discrimination starting by reflecting on our own policies and actions,” it read.

    Another section that the lawsuit cites states that, “To the extent possible, UPA will make reasonable efforts to prevent students from being discriminated against, harassed, intimidated and/or bullied, and will take action to investigate, respond, and address and report on such behaviors in a timely manner.”

    David Rosenberg-Wohl, the family’s attorney, said the anti-discrimination language “is obviously important to the school, and so if the school does not honor it, that’s relevant because it suggests that one group does not count.”

    “Everybody talks the talk,” he said.

    In the days following Hamas’s attack, the discrimination against Ella intensified, the lawsuit said. This was before the Israeli army’s counter-attack and continued occupation, in which Gaza health officials say more than 40,000 Palestinian people, including many women and children, have been killed, and hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been displaced.

    The lawsuit further alleges that two girls, who said they were Palestinian, told Ella, “Jews are terrorists,” and asked her, “Do you know your family in Israel is living on stolen land?” Of dozens of girls who had been friendly to her, only one girl would speak to her.

    Students began to call her “White Ella,” progressing to “White Ella’s family are terrorists;” two boys chased her around the school, yelling, “We want you to die,” the lawsuit said.

    During the three months between Oct. 7, 2023, and Jan. 9, 2024, when Ella withdrew from University Prep Academy, the family had multiple meetings with school administrators, including Porter, the school’s executive director, but felt that the school failed to acknowledge and address the bigotry and harassment she faced. 

    Complaints with no response

    On Jan. 22, Ellla’s mother, Elisa, filed a formal complaint with the Santa Clara County Office of Education, the charter school’s authorizer. By law, the office had until March 24 — 60 days — to respond. On May 6, according to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for the Bay Area Jewish Committee met with May Ann Dewan, then county superintendent, to request that she intervene and answer the complaint. In its answer on May 14, the county said the complaint does not fall within its oversight of University Prep Academy, and the complaint could be filed instead with the California Department of Education.

    Miller did that, and, on June 10, the department notified her that the complaint had been forwarded to Porter, who had until July 13 to respond.

    Since then, the lawsuit said, there has been no response from Porter, the school, the county office, or the state Education Department. “Doing nothing … despite knowing of the anguish of Ella and her family, was deliberate indifference,” it said.

    The family is seeking damages for Ella’s emotional and physical stress, the cost of a private school, and her lost access to educational opportunities.

    Long-standing ‘antisemitic sentiment’

    The lawsuit by the Sequoia Union families also cited “deliberate indifference to anti-Jewish harassment,” which it said started well before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. In one incident, according to the lawsuit, a long-term substitute teacher, who continues to teach at Menlo-Atherton High, asked plaintiff W.K. about his background. Told that his family is Jewish, the teacher allegedly shared jokes about the Holocaust with a group of students: “How do you fit 10,000 Jews in a Volkswagen?” she asked. “In the ashtray.”

    After the start of the Israeli-Hamas conflict on Oct 7, however, antisemitic incidents “surged,” the lawsuit said, citing several examples.

    A group of Woodside students yelled, “Go back to where you came from!” to another Jewish student at Woodside High. No disciplinary action followed, the lawsuit said.

    About that same time, a group of Menlo-Atherton students taunted plaintiff W.K. on the way to class, calling him a “kike” and said, “All Jews should die.”

    On Nov. 1, two swastikas were etched into the pavement in Woodside High. (Swastikas had been drawn on bathroom walls in Menlo-Atherton high a year earlier.) Two days later, Woodside High Principal Karen Van Putten emailed the Woodside community that an extensive investigation by school administrators and the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department confirmed that the swastikas were actually “spiritual symbol[s] from Japanese Buddhism known as Manji popularized by anime.” 

    The lawsuit called the investigation a “sham” that, in fact, did not involve the sheriff’s department. Citing administrators’ dismissal of the swastika incident, other derogatory remarks, and the failure of Van Putten and the Sequoia school board to address incidents, Scott and Lori Lyle, parents of a 12th grader at Woodside High, filed a detailed formal complaint.

    With no answer and no action taken in response for more than 200 days, the Jewish families filed their lawsuit, citing violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, the First Amendment’s right to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech, as well as protections under California education laws and the state constitution.

    Filing a lawsuit is a huge step for families, said Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director for The Deborah Project. “Students don’t want to embarrass teachers, risk ridicule and humiliation. All of the families went through internal procedures. They tried to speak with principals; they filed complaints to see if they could rectify their situations, but all felt let down. A lawsuit was the next option.”

    The families are seeking the court to order a dozen remedies. They include:

    • prohibiting discrimination and harassment of their children;
    • prohibiting the district from engaging in any antisemitic conduct; 
    • ordering the district to implement a comprehensive policy addressing antisemitism;
    • providing training for all teachers, administrators and staff in strategies to promote empathy and respect for Jewish individuals and their connection to Israel;
    • terminating any teachers found to have engaged in antisemitic discrimination; and
    • creating transparent requirements for disclosing course materials to the public.

    The families also call for appointing a special master to monitor compliance with the court’s orders for three years.

    The Deborah Project, a public interest law firm that defends the civil rights of Jews in educational settings, with pro bono assistance of California attorneys in the global law firm Ropes and Gray, are representing the families. The case is Kasle, et al. v. Van Putten, et al.

    Naomi Hunter, public information officer for Sequoia Union, said the district has not yet been served with the lawsuit. “We support a safe environment for all students, and we are very concerned any time we receive a complaint about a hostile environment, but we cannot respond further until we have more information,” she said.





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  • What high school graduating classes might look like in 2041

    What high school graduating classes might look like in 2041


    Credit: Fermin Leal / EdSource

    More graduates in California and nationwide will walk across the stage to receive their high school diplomas in the spring of 2025 than in more than a decade — and more than in decades to come.   

    The “Knocking at the College Door” report, released Wednesday by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, predicts how many students might graduate across each state in the country, how demographics might shift, and the extent to which the Covid-19 pandemic could have an impact still. 

    The researchers anticipate that the number of students graduating from high schools in the United States will peak next year and then fall gradually until 2041. The number of California graduates is expected to drop across all racial and ethnic demographics — except for multiracial students, who are expected to increase by more than 200%.

    “After years of growth, higher education in the United States now faces a decline in the size of the traditional college-going population as well as shifting demographic patterns within that population,” the organization’s president, Demarée K. Michelau, stated in the foreword of the report.

    “These enrollment factors and the pressures of inflation and constraints on government funds combine to present the most perplexing set of issues to face higher education planners and administrators in a generation,” the foreword continued. 

    Here are the key takeaways from the report. 

    The number of high school graduates is expected to peak in 2025 

    The number of students graduating from public high schools in both the state and the nation is projected to peak in 2025. 

    After that, the number is expected to fall steadily from about 3.5 million nationally to 3.1 million in 2041, largely because of declining birth and fertility rates, but also because students are projected to take longer to finish their K-12 journeys. 

    The report notes that net migration and mortality also play a role. 

    California is one of five high-population states that are expected to make up about three-quarters of the national decline, according to the report.

    “When we hit the peak in 2025 and then start declining with the number of high school graduates, that puts more downward pressure on those postsecondary moments,” said report co-author Patrick Lane, who spoke at a press briefing Monday.

    “So what are the responses?” Lane asked. “How do we address concerns that students have about value?” 

    Distributions across race and ethnicity will likely change

    Nationwide, Hispanic or multiracial students should make up a greater proportion of high school graduates, while the share of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds will decline, according to the report. 

    But, according to data from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, multiracial students are the only group projected to see an increase in California. 

    Specifically, in California, between 2023 and 2041: 

    • Multiracial students are projected to increase 224%.
    • Hispanic students are projected to decrease 25%.
    • American Indian and Alaska Native students are projected to decrease 58%.
    • Black students are projected to decrease 62%.
    • Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students are projected to decrease 35%.
    • White students are projected to decrease 53%. 

    Not everywhere in the country will see the same trends 

    The report projects that the decline in the Western U.S. will mirror the nationwide trend. And California’s decline — anticipated to be roughly 29% across both public and private schools — is expected to account for roughly three-quarters of the regional decline.

    Meanwhile, the report states that the South will continue to defy broader national trends — first seeing some growth and later a smaller decline. 

    The pandemic might have a smaller impact than anticipated  

    According to the report, the Covid-19 pandemic may lead to a slight drop in the number of high school graduates nationwide — only 1% less than what the organization previously projected for 2037. 

    The 1% change is “within the usual fluctuations,” but the report also states that the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education has historically underreported the number of future graduates and that they have found evidence “of a substantial number of students no longer enrolled, suggesting a modest impact overall.” 

    The decline, according to the report, is a result of falling enrollments in both public and private schools. And while the decline is smaller than anticipated, Lane said it will have an impact on the economy. 

    “When we look around our region, and more broadly around the country, we see workforce shortages in virtually any important employment sector that you can think of, from health care, teaching, nursing, engineering, to things that may not be as high on people’s radar, like diesel technicians. It’s a huge deal for a lot of the West,” Lane said at a press briefing Monday. 

    “But if these declining high school graduate numbers translate into even more downward pressure on enrollments,” Lane said, “it’ll be hard to meet some of these workforce demands.” 





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  • UC faculty to consider its own high school ethnic studies mandate

    UC faculty to consider its own high school ethnic studies mandate


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    KEY TAKEAWAYS
    • The UC course criteria would promote the Liberated Ethnic Studies perspective.
    • It would likely become the default ethnic studies course in K-12 districts.
    • It would contradict the state’s own voluntary, open-ended model curriculum.

    School districts are looking to the May revision of the state budget to learn if Gov. Gavin Newsom will press ahead with a mandate to offer a high school ethnic studies course whose implementation is contingent on state funding. That will be unlikely.

    Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and a Newsom adviser, confirmed Tuesday that, given current revenue forecasts, Newsom will not be funding the mandate. He conveyed that message to a representative of the UC Academic Senate, he said.

    On Wednesday, however, representatives of the University of California faculty will decide whether to recommend that U.C. regents not wait for state funding and instead independently mandate a course. They’ll vote on a proposal (see pages 39 to 57) to require an ethnic studies course, incorporating criteria and content that Newsom and the State Board of Education have already rejected as politically extreme, for admissions to UC campuses. 

    Opponents said that adopting the proposal, which had been nearly five years in the making, would be unwise and probably illegal. 

    “Requiring such a course would entangle the university in the sorts of political and ideological disputes over ethnic studies course content that are currently roiling school districts across the state and the nation,” wrote Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA, and Matt Malkan, an astronomy professor at UCLA, in a letter to the UC Faculty Assembly of the Senate, the body that will take up the issue on Wednesday. An earlier version was signed by 440 members of the UC faculty.

    Sander and Malkan also said that the proposal “would effectively force hundreds of schools to invest large sums in creating the mandated curriculum and finding or hiring teachers to teach it”  – a step that “would probably ultimately be found to be illegal” if UC acted unilaterally.

    If the Assembly passes the proposal, it would be forwarded to UC President Michael Drake and then to the UC Regents this summer for final approval. 

    Ethnic studies faculty at UC campuses pushed for including ethnic studies among the 15 courses required for admissions, known as “A-G.” It would be satisfied through an English, history or an elective course taught through an ethnic studies lens, as UC defines it.  Ethnic studies would become “H”, a new area of concentration.  

    When adopting legislation in 2016 authorizing the creation of a voluntary, model ethnic studies curriculum, the Legislature was vague about what it intended for an ethnic studies course. It said the objective was to prepare pupils to be “global citizens with an appreciation for the contributions of multiple cultures”; school districts could “adapt courses to reflect the pupil demographics in their communities.”

    UC’s proposed criteria for high schools would take a more directive and controversial approach, reflecting the content of many college-level courses. 

    “Ethnic studies is aimed at producing critical knowledge about power, inequality, and inequity as well as the efforts of marginalized and oppressed racialized peoples to challenge systemic violence and the institutional structures that perpetuate racial injustice,” wrote the co-lead writers, UC Riverside teaching professor Wallace Cleaves and UC Santa Cruz critical race and ethnic studies and literature professor Christine Hong, in a preface explaining the intent of the criteria.

    Hong and Cleaves say it is appropriate to set rigorous course criteria for students entering UC because ethnic studies faculty created the foundational theories and instructional strategies for the academic discipline, and the State Board and local district teachers lack their expertise. 

    But the effect of adopting their course for entry into UC would be an end-run around the state board’s open-ended guidance. It would also deviate from many legislators’ vision of ethnic studies as the study of the cultures and achievements of minority groups, as well as their past and ongoing struggles with racism and discrimination. 

    The UC criteria would become the standard version that high schools would offer. In turn, UC and CSU  ethnic studies faculty would become the go-to private consultants for creating districts’ curricula and training teachers. 

    Emergence of Liberated Ethnic Studies

    UC and CSU ethnic studies faculty were primary writers of the first draft of the state’s model curriculum in 2019, but President Linda Darling-Hammond and other members of the State Board rejected it as biased, and the board hired new writers. The California Legislative Jewish Caucus objected to its characterization of Israel as an oppressive white colonial state and the call for a boycott of companies doing business with Israel.  

    “A model curriculum should be accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state and align with Governor Newsom’s vision of a California for all,” Darling-Hammond’s statement said. 

    The writers of the initial draft disavowed the final, revised model curriculum that the State Board passed in 2021. They then formed the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and have encouraged school districts to adopt the original draft as the true alternative. More than two dozen districts have. Both Hong and Cleaves are affiliated with the consortium.

    Having gone through five revisions, the final proposal before the Assembly (pages 10 to 18)  is a toned-down version, but its purpose and guidelines for developing skills are clear. For example, toward the goal of “Applying critical analysis,” it reads, “Study histories of imperialism, dehumanization, and genocide to expose their continuity to present-day laws, ideologies, knowledge systems, dominant cultures, institutions, and structures that perpetuate racial violence, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression.”

    Sander said,  “It’s still very clearly a liberated course by which I mean it’s very ideological. It has a particular point of view on various controversial issues.”

    Under Assembly Bill 1010, the 2021 state law, high schools would have to offer a one-semester ethnic studies course starting in fall 2025 and students would have to take it for a high school diploma starting in 2029-30. Legislators explicitly referenced the rejected first draft in the law. “It is the intent of the Legislature that (districts) not use the portions of the draft model curriculum that were not adopted … due to concerns related to bias, bigotry, and discrimination,” it reads.

    Since then, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Newsom administration have reminded school districts to follow the law’s requirements for “inclusivity, sensitivity, and accuracy.”

    “We have been advised, however, that some vendors are offering materials that may not meet the requirements of AB 101,” Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and an education adviser to Newsom, wrote in a memo to districts in 2023. 

    The “liberated” version has prompted several lawsuits (see here, here and here) by Jewish families and supportive law firms charging that its one-sided perspective fosters discrimination.  

    A “target” for President Trump?

    The vote Wednesday coincides with fraught relations with the Trump administration. The president has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from school districts and California universities that fail to curb antisemitism and teach undefined “woke” ideology on race, including critical race theory.

    “Passing the course criteria now would be like putting a target on our back,” Sander said in an interview, and undermine the university’s best defense against Trump’s effort to dictate who to hire and what ideas can be taught.

    “It is fundamentally wrong, and inconsistent with the very spirit of a university, to mandate courses that are framed by an ideology – whether that ideology comes from the left or from the right,” he said.





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  • Months after fire, Pali High moves into Santa Monica Sears building  

    Months after fire, Pali High moves into Santa Monica Sears building  


    Students return to Pali South in Santa Monica on April 22.

    Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource

    It was like the first day of school on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica. 

    Campus security directed parents as they mapped out drop-off routes. Staff greeted students, who lugged backpacks, musical instruments and sports gear. High schoolers embraced and marveled at their new campus. 

    But unlike most first days of school, even seniors on the verge of graduating wandered around, asking where to go. Teachers wondered where to lock their bikes. 

    “[I’m] definitely nervous,” said Aurora Robles, a freshman. “I don’t think I would know where any of my classes are or where any of my friends are.” 

    It’s April 22 — more than three months since the Palisades Fire ravaged over 23,000 acres in Los Angeles and destroyed roughly 30% of the historic Palisades Charter High School, which is known for its appearances in films such as “Carrie” and “Freaky Friday.” 

    Unlike other schools in both Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified that returned to in-person learning weeks after the fires, Pali High’s roughly 2,500 students had been learning online. 

    And as of Tuesday, its students, teachers, administrators and staff can call an old Sears building — now called Pali South — their new, temporary home. It took roughly eight weeks to transform the industrial building into a learning space complete with the school’s lettering, Lauren Howland, a spokesperson for the City of Santa Monica, told KTLA. 

    “I’m happy to welcome the administrators, educators and students of Palisades Charter High School back to in-person learning,” said Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement released Tuesday.

    “While this home is only temporary until we can get them back to their regular site, the partnership and collaboration between state and local officials to get this new site up and running shows the spirit of our recovery. This is an important step forward for the Palisades community as we rebuild and rise together.”

    The Los Angeles Unified School District is chipping in with about $300 million to help Pali High rebuild over the next few years. And debris from the original campus has already been cleared by the Army Corps — with the hope that the campus community can return to its true home with portable classrooms at some point in the next year, according to LAUSD School Board Member Nick Melvoin, who spoke at a town hall for the Pali High community earlier this month. 

    “I definitely didn’t expect it would happen,” said senior Lucas Nehoray. “I told a lot of people that I just didn’t think it would have time to come to fruition at a different site. But here it is… I’m really happy.” 

    Despite being used to online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, several students expressed their excitement at being back. Some of them, including senior Samantha Murillo, hadn’t seen their peers since December, before winter break. 

    “I get to see my friends after five, six months,” Murillo said. “But I’m also kind of thrown off a little bit because it’s a whole different location…It’s weird, but in a good way.” 

    Others said they were looking forward to learning more in person — especially with AP exams around the corner in May. 

    The “last few months have been easier academically,” Nehoray said. “I’m glad I’m in person and I can actually learn.”





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  • Education concerns remain high at LA County juvenile hall

    Education concerns remain high at LA County juvenile hall


    Minors detained at Los Padrinos juvenile hall in Los Angeles County.

    Credit: Richard Ross

    Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles County remains open a year after the state’s corrections oversight board deemed it “unsuitable for the confinement of minors” and four months after it ordered the center to shut down due to ongoing noncompliance with the state’s minimum standards for juvenile facilities.

    The problems plaguing the facility, located in the southeast LA city of Downey, include insufficient probation officers, students arriving to class late, abysmal performance on standardized education testing, and the center’s heavy reliance on substitute teachers.

    A court hearing that had been scheduled for Friday was to decide the hall’s fate, but L.A. County Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza deferred the decision until April, to allow for the completion of a re-inspection by the Bureau of State and Community Corrections, known as BSCC, the state agency that deemed it unsuitable after multiple inspections.

    Advocates say they are concerned that the situation could impact the quality of education the youth are receiving.

    “When we are thinking about young folks who are in these camps and halls, we want to make sure they’re having access to academic rigor that is deeper than just a packet, that they’re actually being challenged, and that they have the opportunity that when they leave these sites, to either return to their school of origin and be ready for the next thing — for trades, for college, for these things that allow them to be productive members of our community and society,” said Yasmine-Imani McMorrin, director of education equity at Children’s Defense Fund California.

    While the issues found at Los Padrinos appear to be improving according to reports from an ongoing inspection, advocates are skeptical because such moments of compliance in the past were short-lived.

    “We have a history of these independent bodies identifying issues with the education being provided, and then it might improve for a little bit, but then, once eyes are off or the settlement ends, we see those issues persist and get even worse,” said Vivian Wong, an education attorney and interim director of the Youth Justice Education Clinic at the Loyola Law Cchool, whose recent clients have included Los Padrinos students.

    This chaotic history has led to the formation of groups like the Education Justice Coalition, which started in 2020 to advocate for the release of as many youth as possible at the height of the pandemic and high-quality education for detained youth.

    Advocates like Wong insist that while conditions must improve inside the juvenile facilities, the priority should be to release youth back into their communities.

    “Our policy recommendation, and something we’ve been consistently advocating for, is keeping people in the community as much as possible,” Wong said of the education coalition. “If you don’t have the staff, we should really question why young people are in here.”

    In less than two years since its reopening, Los Padrinos has been plagued with accusations and findings of violence, allegedly incited by probation staff, and about the inadequacy of its programs, including the residents’ access to education. This site was to provide relief after two other juvenile halls, Central Juvenile Hall in Sylmar and the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Boyle Heights, were shuttered and deemed unsuitable given their ongoing problems. Issues included insufficient staffing, lack of proper training on the use-of-force policy, as well as youth being confined to their rooms for too long.

    Los Padrinos itself was closed in 2019 amid allegations of abuse, with six officers charged with assault and child abuse the year of its closure, and a history of concerns about safety for both youth and probation officers. Then- California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the county, and the county office of education entered into settlements in 2021 after problems were revealed with access to education for the youth. A 2010 settlement in a class action lawsuit showed inadequate education programs for the youth in the county’s largest juvenile detention facility. Reforms focused on 13 major areas, including literacy, instruction, transition, special education, and after care.

    School at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall

    Over 230 youth are at Los Padrinos and, as of Jan. 6, 190 of them were attending the hall’s court school, which is operated by the county’s office of education. They are all pre-disposition youth who are awaiting court action or transfer to another facility.

    The student population consists of 167 male students across 21 living units in the hall and 23 female students across two units. Students’ ages can range from 13 to 22 years old in grade levels from sixth to 12th. Some youth remain at Los Padrinos for months, up to a couple of years, but the average stay is about 22 days.

    A typical day at Los Padrinos is supposed to go as follows: School is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m., and students remain for two class periods until 11:50 a.m. Then they return to their units for lunch for the next hour and a half, after which they return to class until 3 p.m. for their third and final period of the day. The only shortened day is Friday, which ends at 1 p.m. for teacher professional development.

    Probation staff are tasked both with taking students from their units to their classroom and remaining in the classroom while class is in session.

    But the BSCC’s inspection from December 2024 noted that inspections have found an “inability of facility staff to get youth to school on time due to lack of staff available for supervision within the classroom.”

    The issue seems to have subsided at least once in the last year and a half. During an annual inspection in June last year, both the county office of education and youth reported that students had not been late to class in months due to low staffing. That inspection was conducted by the county’s Probation Oversight Commission, a group created by the county Board of Supervisors in 2020 to monitor and advise the Probation Department and the Board of Supervisors as they implement justice system reforms.

    But that appears to be one of the few inspections since Los Padrinos reopened that found that students arrived at class on time. On-time arrival to class — of both students and teachers — has been listed as a problem during inspections more often than not.

    It is unclear how many instructional minutes students have missed due to low staffing, but the 2024 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress showed that not a single 11th grader at Los Padrinos met the state standard for math, and just over 2% met the English standard.

    Students enrolled in LA County’s juvenile court schools take additional assessments referred to as STAR Reading and Star Math, which measure achievement and growth in the two subject areas.

    Assessment results for the fall of 2023 showed that 0% of students tested proficient in reading and less than 5% tested proficient in math.

    In the most recent STAR assessments from winter 2024-25, “urgent intervention” was needed for nearly half of all students in reading and about 44% in math. Just about 10% of students met or surpassed the benchmark for reading; 11.5% in math. The remainder were either bordering on needing intervention, or they needed it already, in both subjects.

    While the numbers indicate progress, they remain low for the students’ grade levels.

    At Los Padrinos, there are currently no reading specialists on staff, according to Erin Simon, associate superintendent at the county’s office of education. Reading intervention is provided by students’ teachers.

    Many students arrive with “very low reading levels,” she said, and the county education office has implemented intervention programs such as Read180 to increase reading levels.

    “They’re adjusting to their environment; there’s mental health and trauma,” said Simon, who was hired nearly 11 months ago to provide oversight over the county’s juvenile facilities, with an emphasis on Los Padrinos.

    “The complexity of it is knowing that many of those students only stay with us for a very short period of time, so we are always pushing to have more intervention and more instruction, but we also know that there are certain things that happen when a student gets here.”

    She added that more counselors are available now to help Los Padrinos students address mental health concerns, first addressing social-emotional learning and mental health challenges and then moving into academic intervention programming.

    On a typical day, students might be taught by their assigned and credentialed teacher, but it is not uncommon for a substitute to lead the class instead.

    While Los Padrinos, the county’s largest juvenile hall, has 33 permanent, credentialed teachers — up from 26 in October 2023 — they rely on nine to 14 substitute teachers on a daily basis, according to Simon. There are also seven vacancies at this time.

    “It does require a teacher who is really not afraid to work in those camps and halls; a teacher who can really build relationships with many of our students, knowing they have trauma and also some mental health issues, and so it does become a very difficult position to fill, especially at Los Padrinos,” Simon said.

    On the day of last year’s inspection by the county’s probation oversight commission, there were seven full-time teachers on the job and 16 substitute teachers.

    “It’s a huge problem, especially for this population, where they have adults come in and out of their lives, and, frequently, there is already so much instability in their education. They’re coming and going in and out of schools, transferring school districts,” said Wong about the reliance on substitutes. “If the teacher is not there, then they have to build up that trust again with the new person.”

    It can be especially difficult for a student who requires accommodation in the classroom, as is the case with Wong’s clients. She said a client, currently at a county juvenile camp, was doing well in school after having developed a relationship with a teacher. But when the teacher was out for a month, the student could no longer access his curriculum in a similar fashion, “because every teacher implements accommodations differently.”

    As the debate continues over whether Los Padrinos will close or remain open, in part depending on the result of the latest BSCC inspection that began last week, advocates are pushing to maintain the focus on the youth inside the hall.

    “We’re dealing with fires and fire recovery, climate change, housing, homelessness, all these things that overlap with our young folks and their needs,” McMorrin said. “But it’s such a priority to get it right, because there is no do-over for these critical years of youth and to do what we can to prepare them for this world.”





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  • Where are California’s high school students?

    Where are California’s high school students?


    High school students in a math class.

    Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages

    As California schools continue their post-pandemic recovery, a troubling pattern has emerged: High schoolers aren’t showing up.

    Recent midyear attendance data reveals that while elementary school attendance has improved significantly, high school chronic absenteeism remains stubbornly high.

    Nationally and in California, chronic absenteeism numbers tell a concerning story about older students. While California’s average chronic absence rate, based on the sample in the new report, fell to 20.46% (down from 29.04% in 2022-23), high school students continue to struggle.

    Over 28% of California high school seniors included in the report have been chronically absent this school year. We must rethink approaches to engaging older students to improve high school attendance.

    When students miss school, they miss more than just instruction. They miss opportunities to connect with supportive adults and peers — connections directly linked to academic success and well-being.

    Research from YouthTruth, which surveys elementary, middle and high school students, reveals that only 40% of high school students feel they belong at school, compared with 47% of middle schoolers. Only 22% of high school students report that their teachers understand their lives outside school — the lowest percentage since before the pandemic.

    Traditional attendance approaches that work for elementary students don’t resonate with teenagers navigating complex social pressures, growing independence, and increasing responsibilities. Many high school students juggle jobs, family care duties and mental health challenges that are not as prevalent in younger grades.

    The California Safe and Supportive Schools initiative identifies school connectedness as fundamental to attendance. When high schoolers have even one strong connection with a teacher or staff member who understands their life beyond academics, attendance improves dramatically. Schools can implement connection mapping to identify which students could benefit from more connections.

    Schools can also leverage peer influence. According to YouthTruth, 68% of high school students want to help improve their communities, but only 30% report having opportunities to create positive change. Student-led attendance initiatives consistently outperform adult-directed programs. For example, a peer-led “attendance influencer” program has an impact exceeding what other systems can achieve.

    Educators must also seek to understand and address the specific attendance barriers older students face. Many chronically absent teens are helping to support their families, caring for siblings or facing transportation limitations. Flexible scheduling options, transportation assistance and partnerships with local employers can help address these obstacles.

    Communication must shift from punitive to supportive to effectively reach students and families. A recent K-12 family survey revealed that more than 71% of families want messages celebrating good attendance or improvements to share with their child, while only 37% of respondents reported receiving regular communication about steps they can take to improve attendance. Schools that successfully address absenteeism use data to identify patterns and engage students and families in collaborative solutions-finding rather than blame.

    Finally, we must address the mental health component of attendance. Nearly half of all California students (48%) cite depression, stress or anxiety as obstacles to learning — yet only 41% of students nationally report having an adult at school to talk to.

    This “support gap” is particularly pronounced among at-risk student populations. About 77% of LGBTQ+ students cite mental health challenges as barriers to learning, compared with 41% of their peers. While 46% of white students report having an adult at school they can talk to, the percentage is significantly lower for other racial groups, between 37-44%.

    The good news? When targeted strategies are implemented, improvement can happen quickly. Effective approaches to building a culture of belonging include:

    • Teacher-student connection time: Brief but regular one-on-one check-ins to understand students’ lives outside school.
    • Student voice channels: Creating opportunities for students to provide feedback and lead attendance initiatives that resonate with peers.
    • Positive communication: Shifting from absence-focused messages to celebrating improvements and recognizing attendance gains.
    • Data-driven intervention: Using integrated attendance, academic and behavioral data to identify early warning signs and track what works.

    As California continues to invest in attendance improvement, we must tailor our approaches to different grade levels. Our high schoolers don’t want automated calls or perfect attendance certificates. They need meaningful connections, relevant engagement and practical support for real-life barriers.

    California’s future leaders walk our high school hallways — when they show up. Meeting these students where they are isn’t just good policy, it’s our obligation to the next generation of leaders, innovators and citizens.

    •••

    Kara Stern is director of education and engagement at SchoolStatus, a company that provides school districts with data tools and communication support for student engagement. 

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





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