A family gets information at Fort Miller Middle School’s Health and Wellness Fair in Fresno.
Photo courtesy of Eric Calderon-Phangrath
Children’s health advocates are sounding alarm bells about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to freeze public health insurance enrollment for undocumented adults.
They say the move will put those adults’ children at risk of poor health care and well-being.
California has gradually expanded Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance for low-income people, to undocumented immigrants, including those with temporary status such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. First, undocumented children were included in 2016, then young adults 19-25 in 2019, then seniors 50 and older in 2022, and finally those ages 26-49 in January 2024.
Before the expansion, undocumented immigrants only qualified for Medi-Cal in emergencies, during pregnancy, and for long-term care. California is paying for the expansion on its own, without federal dollars.
Now, faced with a deficit, Newsom is proposing to freeze new enrollment in Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrant adults and charge current undocumented enrollees a $100 monthly premium starting in 2027.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have been pressuring states like California to stop providing benefits to undocumented immigrants, saying tax dollars should not be used for people who are in the country without permission.
In announcing the proposed cuts, though, Newsom said they were to balance the budget. He said his beliefs have not changed. He touted his promises to expand health care to all, regardless of immigration status, both as mayor of San Francisco and governor of California.
“It’s my value. It’s what I believe, I hold dear. I believe it’s a universal right. And I have for six years championed that,” Newsom said. “This is a tough budget in that respect.”
He said there are now 1.6 million undocumented adults enrolled in Medi-Cal, about 5.3% of total enrollment.
“Our approach was not to kick people off and not to roll back the expansion, but to level set on what we can do and what we can’t do,” Newsom said.
Though undocumented children would not be affected directly by the changes, advocates say that restricting health insurance for undocumented adults will affect their children, the vast majority of whom are U.S. citizens. An estimated 1 in 10 California children have at least one parent who is “undocumented” or has temporary protections from deportation, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.
“We are disheartened,” wrote Avo Makdessian, executive director of the First 5 Association of California, an organization that represents the state’s county commissions supporting children in the first five years of life, in a statement released after Newsom’s announcement of his revised budget. “When Medi-Cal coverage is scaled back for adults without legal status, children in those families suffer. Decades of research are clear: Healthy parents lead to healthy kids.”
Ted Lempert, president of the nonprofit organization Children Now, said, “Children Now is deeply concerned with the proposed cuts to Medi-Cal.”
“We urge the governor and Legislature to consider that when parents lose coverage, kids are less likely to get the health care they need, so the proposal to hurt parents hurts kids as well,” Lempert said.
Mayra Alvarez, president of The Children’s Partnership, an organization that advocates for children’s health equity, said studies show that when parents become eligible for Medi-Cal, they are more likely to learn about health insurance options available to their children and enroll them.
“This ‘welcome mat’ effect can lead to a noticeable increase in the number of children covered by Medi-Cal or similar programs, even without changes in their individual eligibility,” Alvarez said. “Conversely, when a parent or family member is sick and unable to work or provide care, kids suffer as a result.”
Dolores, 65, is a grandmother who enrolled in Medi-Cal under the expansion for undocumented immigrants. She said losing it would affect not only her but also her children and grandchildren. She did not share her last name because of fear of immigration enforcement.
Months after enrolling three years ago, Dolores suffered a stroke.
“If I hadn’t had Medi-Cal, I don’t know how I would have gotten health care,” she said in Spanish. “It helped me then, and it is still helping me so much.”
Her enrollment in Medi-Cal has also helped her family, including her grandchildren, who live with her, she said. At a health center in Victorville, she has been able to take nutrition classes and Zumba, and she has learned about healthy foods to cook for her family. She said her 4-year-old granddaughter follows her every move, exercises with her, and has benefited from her grandma’s improved health.
“You know children are like sponges — everything they see, they absorb,” she said.
Dolores said she could not afford to pay $100 a month for Medi-Cal, as proposed by Newsom. She has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, but after the stroke, she has not been able to return to work.
Alvarez added that when state residents are uninsured, that creates other costs in emergency health care.
“Cynically discriminating against our state’s immigrant communities by rolling back Medi-Cal eligibility is not only unconscionable, but doing so will only result in costs being shifted elsewhere,” she said.
Alvarez recommended that the governor and Legislature balance the budget in other ways, such as “closing corporate tax loopholes and making the wealthy pay their fair share, drawing down reserves that exist for times like this, and scaling back spending in more appropriate places, such as the state’s bloated prison budget.”
The burned remains of the Paradise Elementary school on Nov. 9, 2018, in Paradise. Blocks and blocks of homes and businesses in the Northern California town were destroyed by a wildfire.
Credit: AP/Rich Pedroncelli
Starting next March, California school districts will be required to post a plan on their websites outlining how they will provide instruction to students within 10 school days of an emergency that keeps children from attending classes. They should also make contact with students and families within five days of the emergency. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the education trailer bill as part of the 2024-25 budget.
The plan must be operative by July 1, 2025.
Local educational agencies — school districts, charter schools and county offices of education — that do not develop an instructional continuity plan as part of their school safety plan will not be eligible to recover lost state attendance funding if schools close or a significant number of students are unable to attend because of an emergency.
In a separate action, the trailer bill also addresses chronic absenteeism by authorizing school districts to provide attendance recovery programs during school breaks, weekends or after school, to allow students to make up for up to 10 days of school missed for any reason. Beginning next July, districts that offer the programs will be able to recover state funds lost when students in the program were previously absent from school.
The legislation comes four years after California schools closed for more than a year because of a worldwide pandemic. Since then, chronic absenteeism rates have more than doubled. Wildfires and flooding also have closed schools across the state with increasing frequency in recent years.
“Given the effects of public health emergencies and the significant and growing number of natural disasters that the state has faced in recent years, there is an increased need for local educational agencies to provide instructional continuity for pupils when conditions make in-person instruction infeasible for all or some pupils,” according to the trailer bill.
The instructional continuity plan must describe how districts will provide in-person or remote instruction to students, including potentially temporarily reassigning them to other school districts. Students who are reassigned during an emergency will not have to comply with any residency requirements for attendance in that district.
Penalties removed
The legislation has changed dramatically since the May budget revision, which would have given districts five days to offer students instruction after an emergency, and penalized them financially if they didn’t.
The revisions are due, in part, to heavy opposition from a coalition of nine education organizations, including the California Teachers Association, California School Boards Association and California County Superintendents.
“There are countless instances where the physical infrastructure and human capacity necessary to comply with this requirement does not exist: roads, landlines, internet connectivity, access to devices, access to shelter, family and staff displacement, etc.,” said California County Superintendents in a May letter to the chairs of the Senate and Assembly budget committees. “When this occurs, a LEA may find it impossible to offer remote instruction.”
Derick Lennox, senior director for governmental relations and legal affairs for the association said, “There was the feeling that the state does not understand the challenges that schools face to locate and serve the basic needs of their students and families during a serious emergency.”
As an alternative, the coalition asked for a proactive planning process without financial penalties, and lawmakers agreed, Lennox said.
El Dorado County Superintendent of Schools Ed Manansala said that the proactive, constructive tone of the new legislation is more productive than the punitive tack legislators took in the original version.
Manansala said it isn’t feasible to expect schools to deliver instruction 10 days after schools close in an emergency.
El Dorado County has had at least 70 wildfires of varying sizes between 2004 and 2023, the largest being in August 2021, according to CalFire. It burned 221,835 acres and razed Walt Tyler Elementary School in Grizzly Flats.
“We had teachers and students that were being displaced out of their communities,” Manansala said.
Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools Nicole Glentzer first experienced the extended closure of schools in 2017 when a fire burned 36,000 acres.
Glentzer, who worked at nearby Ukiah Unified School District at the time, had to evacuate her home. She moved into the district office and went to work making decisions about school closures. The district’s schools were closed for five days.
Since then, the county on the state’s north coast has been ravaged by numerous fires, including two of the nation’s largest, which together burned more than 1.41 million acres in multiple counties in 2018 and 2020.
Schools in Mendocino County also have been closed recently because of flooding and power outages.
Glentzer said that while she is satisfied with the revamped language in the legislation, she cringes when she hears that small districts, with small staffs, are expected to come up with plans similar to larger districts. The Mendocino County Office of Education will help the 12 school districts in its county by providing sample plans and templates, she said.
Attendance recovery
State chronic absentee numbers have skyrocketed from 12.1% in 2018-19 to 30% in 2021-22, according to an analysis of California data. Chronic absenteeism rates are determined by the number of students who miss at least 10% of school days in a given year.
Attendance recovery programs like the one required by the new legislation can help districts reduce their chronic absenteeism and regain the average daily attendance funding lost when students miss school. The programs must be taught by credentialed teachers and be aligned to grade-level standards and to each student’s regular instructional program, according to the legislation.
Attendance recovery programs can be funded through the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program at school sites where the after-school or summer enrichment programs are being offered and operated by the school district.
“In my mind, it’s a whole theme that the administration and Legislature are going for, around addressing chronic absenteeism — one of the top issues facing students today,” Lennox said. “And, they basically outlined a few different strategies to do it.”
Melinda Gonzalez, 14, poses at Fresno High School where she’ll be a freshman in Fresno on Aug. 14, 2024.
Credit: Gary Kazanjian / AP Photo
MEDFORD, Mass. (AP) – Flerentin “Flex” Jean-Baptiste missed so much school he had to repeat his freshman year at Medford High outside Boston. At school, “you do the same thing every day,” said Jean-Baptiste, who was absent 30 days his first year. “That gets very frustrating.”
Then his principal did something nearly unheard of: She let students play organized sports during lunch — if they attended all their classes. In other words, she offered high schoolers recess.
“It gave me something to look forward to,” said Jean-Baptiste, 16. The following year, he cut his absences in half. Schoolwide, the share of students who were chronically absent declined from 35% in March 2023 to 23% in March 2024 — one of the steepest declines among Massachusetts high schools.
Fleretin “Flex” Jean-Baptiste, 16, of Medford, Mass., poses for a photo at Medford High School on Aug. 2, 2024, in Medford, Mass. Jean-Baptiste’s attendance has improved since the school made the gym available to attending students during the school day, in one example of how schools in the state have succeeded in reducing chronic absenteeism. Credit: Josh Reynolds / AP Photo
Years after Covid-19 upended American schooling, nearly every state is still struggling with attendance, according to data collected by The Associated Press and Stanford University economist Thomas Dee.
Roughly 1 in 4 students in the 2022-23 school year remained chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of the school year. That represents about 12 million children in the 42 states and Washington, D.C., where data is available.
Before the pandemic, only 15% of students missed that much school.
Society may have largely moved on from Covid, but schools say they are still battling the effects of pandemic school closures. After as much as a year at home, school for many kids has felt overwhelming, boring or socially stressful. More than ever, kids and parents are deciding it’s OK to stay home, which makes catching up even harder.
In all but one state, Arkansas, absence rates remain higher than they were pre-pandemic. Still, the problem appears to have passed its peak; almost every state saw absenteeism improve at least slightly from 2021-22 to 2022-23.
Schools are working to identify students with slipping attendance, then providing help. They’re working to close communication gaps with parents, who often aren’t aware their child is missing so much school or why it’s problematic.
So far, the solutions that appear to be helping are simple — like postcards to parents that compare a child’s attendance with peers. But to make more progress, experts say, schools must get creative to address their students’ needs.
$50 per week
In California, Oakland Unified’s chronic absenteeism has been skyrocketing from 34.4% pre-pandemic to 61.4% in the 2022-23 school year, excluding charter schools — one of the few districts in the state where rates increased even as schools reopened for in-person instruction. For the last school year, Oakland reported a drop to 31.9%,
editors note
This in-depth report on chronic absenteeism is part of an EdSource partnership with the Associated Press and Stanford Professor Thomas Dee.
One solution has been for the district to ask students what would convince them to come to class.
Money, the students replied, and a mentor.
A grant-funded program launched in spring 2023 paid 45 students $50 weekly for perfect attendance. Students also checked in daily with an assigned adult and completed weekly mental health assessments.
Paying students isn’t a permanent or sustainable fix, said Zaia Vera, Oakland’s head of social-emotional learning.
But many absent students lacked stable housing or were helping to support their families. “The money is the hook that got them in the door,” Vera said.
More than 60% improved their attendance after taking part, Vera said. The program is expected to continue, along with districtwide efforts aimed at creating a sense of belonging.
A caring teacher made a difference for Golden Tachiquin, 18, who graduated from Oakland’s Skyline High School this spring. When she started 10th grade after a remote freshman year, she felt lost and anxious. She realized only later these feelings caused the nausea and dizziness that kept her home sick. She was absent at least 25 days that year.
But she bonded with an Afro-Latina teacher who understood her culturally and made Tachiquin, a straight-A student, feel her poor attendance didn’t define her.
“I didn’t dread going to her class,” Tachiquin said.
Another teacher had the opposite effect. “She would say, ‘Wow, guess who decided to come today?’ ” Tachiquin recalled. “I started skipping her class even more.”
In Massachusetts, Medford High School requires administrators to greet and talk with students each morning, especially those with a history of missing school.
But the lunchtime gym sessions have been the biggest driver of improved attendance, Principal Marta Cabral said. High schoolers need freedom and an opportunity to move their bodies, she said. “They’re here for seven hours a day. They should have a little fun.”
Stubborn circumstances
Chronically absent students are at higher risk of illiteracy and eventually dropping out. They also miss the meals, counseling and socialization provided at school.
At Fresno’s Fort Miller Middle School, where half the students were chronically absent, two reasons kept coming up: dirty laundry and no transportation.
The Central Valley school bought a washer and dryer for students’ use, along with a Chevy Suburban to pick up students who missed the bus. Overall, Fresno’s chronic absenteeism improved to 35% in 2022-23.
Melinda Gonzalez, 14, missed the school bus about once a week and would call for rides in the Suburban.
“I don’t have a car; my parents couldn’t drive me to school,” Gonzalez said. “Getting that ride made a big difference.”
How sick is too sick?
When chronic absence surged to around 50% in Fresno, officials realized they had to remedy pandemic-era mindsets about keeping kids home sick.
“Unless your student has a fever or threw up in the last 24 hours, you are coming to school. That’s what we want,” said Abigail Arii, director of student support services.
Often, said Noreida Perez, who oversees attendance at Fresno Unifed, parents aren’t aware physical symptoms can point to mental health struggles — such as when a child doesn’t feel up to leaving their bedroom.
More than a dozen states now let students take mental health days as excused absences. But staying home can become a vicious cycle, said Hedy Chang, of Attendance Works, which works with schools on absenteeism.
“If you continue to stay home from school, you feel more disengaged,” she said. “You get farther behind.”
In Alaska, 45% of students missed significant school last year. In Amy Lloyd’s high school English classes in Juneau, some families now treat attendance as optional. Last term, several students missed school for extended vacations.
“I don’t really know how to reset the expectation that was crushed when we sat in front of the computer for that year,” Lloyd said.
EdSource contributed to this report.
Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Daniel Mendoza makes his own paintbrushes. It may have started out as a way to save money, but it also reflects his aesthetic as a veteran preschool teacher who uses painting to engage pint-sized students.
“The brushes happened out of a necessity of wanting to make things big,” said the child development specialist who is also a painter. “If you’re familiar with preschool teachers, we make super low salaries starting out. I had to stay on a budget.”
Daniel Mendoza uses art as a way to spark engagement in preschool.Credit: Daniel Mendoza
Instead of downsizing his plans to teach small children how to create epic murals or Jackson Pollock-style canvases, Mendoza got creative. The brushes became a symbol of his DIY vibe.
“I came up with this mop-style brush,” said the 44-year-old, with customary modesty. “It really allowed me to feel even more connected to this work and a part of who I am and what I’m trying to convey, down to the materials themselves.”
While he started out as a musician and now works primarily in visual arts, he says the leap to education was a no-brainer for him.
“It wasn’t really a stretch for me to move worlds,” said Mendoza, the program administrator for the Placer County Office of Education early childhood education department. “Music and visual arts are so interconnected. Even education is the same in ways. It takes thinking in that creative mindset.”
Much like the preschoolers he spent 10 years teaching, Mendoza embraces big messes. One of the first things students saw when they came into his classroom was a drippy, paint-splattered canvas.
Now, he teaches other educators how to unleash the power of creativity in the classroom. Some teachers are afraid of making a big mess, but he relishes it.
“Art is intrinsic to who we are as humans,” he said. “It’s tied to our identity and our outlook on how we view the world. Think about the aesthetics of art, and how that is tied to everyday life. What we like to wear, eat, listen to … We want to create, it’s deep in who we are.”
Mendoza, who grew up on a pistachio farm, seeing nature as his playground, believes that children are naturally artists. They love to get down-and-dirty, and they often focus more on the process than the product. Sometimes a child will concentrate so hard on a piece they seem to lose themselves in the work, only to run off as soon as it’s finished.
“They love making the art,” he quips, “not putting their name on it.”
Little children think outside the box by default, experts say. The challenge is how to let them grow that impulse even as they grow up.
“Preschoolers live in their creative mindset, all the time. It’s the perfect space for me,” he said. “Art gives children a voice. It opens the door for them to share their feelings, their thoughts, their ideas.”
Having grown up in a low-income immigrant family, Mendoza is passionate about making sure all children have the same exposure to the arts that high-income families often take for granted.
“I was a Head Start kid, I know what it’s like to struggle,” said Mendoza. “It’s sad because when we think about the circle, generational poverty or generational addiction as opposed to generational wealth and prosperity. Some of these children will stay in this lower socioeconomic status as they grow into adults. That’s how they exist. Giving them tools like art, dancing, painting, gives them an understanding of freedom, of expression, of identity.”
Mendoza views teaching as an art form of its own, cultivating his pedagogy with the same depth of dedication as his mixed-medium artworks.
“He approaches his work like an artist — with creativity,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents Statewide Arts Initiative, “but also with an educator’s understanding of how to remove enough limitations to engage in play and art-making both individually and collectively.”
Preschool teacher Daniel Mendoza with some of his students.credit: Daniel Mendoza
Sometimes Mendoza worries that no matter how much headway he makes in the early years, encouraging children to think for themselves and embrace their creativity, that it all gets lost by middle school, when the intense pressure on achieving high test scores can diminish the love of learning.
“I feel that so many don’t see that connection, the connection art has to culture, individuality and community,” he says ruefully. “It might be a lack of education or awareness, but this conversation is missing. Helping connect what is seen as a ‘luxury’ to those learning goals and foundations that are important to families, gives us an opportunity to show the massive impact the arts have on children’s learning and ability to reach their maximum potential in school and throughout life. We all need the arts, not just children.”
He partly blames the laser focus on numeracy and literacy for creating a more stressful environment for children that also hasn’t moved the needle academically.
“Math scores are down,” he notes. “We have done math all day, and then we did this after-school math program, and now we’re sending math homework home, and that’s still not working. So now we’re going to double down and kids are going to do math on the weekends. I’ve watched a lot of baseball. That’s three strikes right there.”
By contrast, art teaches focus, he says. It demands that you slow your roll, pay attention and then reflect on the nuance. That depth of concentration and perception pays off in all the other subject areas, experts say.
“He has the seamless ability to integrate the arts with other content areas,” said Jennifer Hicks, assistant superintendent of educational services at the Placer County Office of Education. “When children experience art with Daniel, they are experiencing math, they are experiencing literacy, they are experiencing science.”
Mendoza says he almost got arrested once at the old Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas for spending too much time looking at a painting. The lights turned off, and when security guards appeared, they assumed he was up to no good.
“Art is an invitation to have an inner dialogue,” he said. “To examine yourself, what you think, what you feel.”
Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Mendoza
One of the most noticeable things about Mendoza is his exuberance for art and learning for their own sake. That’s partly why small children often gravitate to him, even when he and his wife are just out shopping at Target, because he radiates warmth.
“Daniel is joyful,” said Hicks. “ His passion for early education is apparent in everything he does. He’s always ready to take on a new project or implement an innovative idea. He has a magical way of communicating with children, teaching them language, expression and how to be good humans.”
While his time is jam-packed with training preschool teachers, painting and teaching about the creative process in children at Sierra College, when he needs to recharge creatively, he always heads back into the classroom to the little ones who are his muses.
“If my tank is low, I go hang out at one of our classrooms,” he said. “The children are always so awesome at refilling that creative tank for me.”
When Stephanie Martinez Anaya was a senior at Hamilton High in Anza in 2023, her college success coach told her about scholarship money for college or career training.
The money — between $500 and $1,500 automatically deposited and waiting in an interest-bearing savings account — is from the California Kids Investment and Development Savings program (CalKIDS), a state initiative for eligible low-income students and English learners enrolled in the public school system.
Launched in 2022, CalKIDS is intended to help families save for and lower the costs of college or career training.
“Even if expenses come up,” Martinez Anaya said, “I won’t have to worry about that.”
And unexpected expenses did arise once in college. She ended up using her $530, $30 of which was interest, to purchase homework access for her classes at the University of California Riverside.
The Cal-SOAP-CalKIDS partnership illustrates how the state can raise awareness about CalKIDS by using personal, relatable stories in local communities, said Libby Schaaf, co-author of Advancing CalKIDS, a research report on strategies to increase the college participation rate for low-income families.
Her research reinforces that CalKIDS must increase, incorporate and integrate community partnerships into each aspect of its outreach to expand access among eligible students.
Low-income public school students and English learners, identified by the California Department of Education, are automatically awarded $500 if they:
Were in grades 1-12 during the 2021-22 school year
Were enrolled in first grade during the 2022-23 school year, or
Are first graders in subsequent school years, meaning the number of eligible student accounts grows each year.
An additional $500 is deposited for students identified as foster youth and another $500 for students classified as homeless.
Children born in California, regardless of their parents’ income, are now granted $100 in an account. More than 1 million newborn accounts are currently eligible.
Over 3.9 million school-aged children now qualify for at least $500 in free money with CalKIDS.
As of March 31, only 12% of students had registered for their CalKIDS account, up by nearly 4 percentage points since last year but still far from reaching most of the state’s students.
Not quite 3 years old, “CalKIDS is still in its early development stage, so now is an impactful time to explore potential refinements and additions to its operational and programmatic approaches,” Schaaf said in her report.
Schaaf’s research recommends strategic actions to increase the number of claimed accounts.
“A lot of the challenges are going to require other people to step up,” she said. “Some might require counties or school districts to take more actions.”
The CalKIDS team has started implementing some of those strategies.
“My dad didn’t finish college, himself,” Schaaf said, reflecting on the personal experience that led to her work. “He was a traveling shoe salesman, and he made this big point of how important education was. He started investing and built up these little funds for me and my sister to go to college.”
Schaaf’s research, conducted over the past year, is based on her experience with Oakland Promise as well as a literature review; work with the CalKIDS Institute at UCLA; in-depth interviews with 14 CalKIDS partners and 15 college and career savings account experts and leaders of governmental groups, nonprofit organizations and school systems; an on-site community event; and parent focus groups.
Schaaf is also a 2026 candidate for state treasurer, whose office oversees the CalKIDS program. She announced her candidacy in January 2024, after being selected for the Harvard fellowship in 2023. Current State Treasurer Fiona Ma is running for lieutenant governor in 2026.
“One of the reasons I actually got excited about running for state treasurer is the fact that the Treasurer’s office runs this program,” she said. “I’m somebody who doesn’t want to take on a job without feeling like I am the most competent person to do it.”
Her research and recommendations, she said, educated her about the program and have empowered her to run for the position. But regardless of whether she wins the electon, she said “this work needs to happen.”
Advancing CalKIDS
Leverage community partnerships
Schaaf’s report stated that automatically establishing the accounts at birth and at first grade minimizes barriers. But that doesn’t prevent or eliminate problems, because families must claim the accounts by registering online.
CalKIDS’ letters, notifying eligible students about accessing their accounts, are mailed out after students finish first grade, and letters for newborns are mailed within a few months of their birth.
Schaaf recommended that notifications be more aligned, for example, sending the award letter with newborns’ birth certificates, like Pennsylvania does for its Keystone Scholars program.
Advocates told EdSource last year that many people in low-income communities ignore the mailers because they question its credibility, even if it has an official letterhead.
Schaaf’s research revealed two seemingly contradictory points: that families take action when encouraged by a government entity and that messages from community organizations are more effective in spurring action among families.
Parents said aspects of both concepts make programs trustworthy. For instance, they trusted the local, community-based Oakland Promise, which was set up by the city and involved the county.
“She (a parent) said, ‘These are the programs we trust, the ones where the government is involved,’” Schaaf said about realizing it’s not one way or the other.
Recommendation: CalKIDS ambassadors
In fact, Schaaf recommends creating a certification for community-based partners to be CalKIDS ambassadors.
“The fact that they (would be) certified by the state of California or by the treasurer’s office gives them the formality effect of government’s gravitas, but their community voice – their cultural competency – is the winning combination,” she said.
“That’s what really made me realize both of these bodies of research are true. Where we are most effective is when we combine them.”
Embodying that collaboration, recent partnerships with community organizations have spread the word about CalKIDS and provided other benefits to families, such as:
EverFi, which launched a financial literacy program in Los Angeles County
Golden 1 Credit Union, which held four educational community events in April in Northern California and the Central San Joaquin Valley for families to learn about the bank’s financial services and claim their CalKIDS accounts. In all, 125 accounts were claimed
Covered California, which has tied well-child exams and immunizations to the ability to earn up to $1,000 in the newborn accounts until March 2026.
Leveraging the community partnerships will remain imperative for the four-member CalKIDS team.
“Rather than trying to be everywhere all the time, all at once and feeling spread thin, we are being very intentional in how we do outreach,” the program’s new director, Cassandra DiBenedetto, said about a different approach to outreach.
According to the California Child Savings Account Coalition, as of February, there are 15 local child savings account programs, serving 180,000 youth with over $26 million.
California’s local child savings accounts
The 15 local programs are:
In places where there are local programs, claim rates were, at one time, much lower than the state percentage, perhaps because of a lack of clarity about CalKIDS. For example, in December 2023, 4.8% of eligible students in San Joaquin County and 7.3% in Los Angeles County had claimed their accounts.
However, partnerships between CalKIDS and local programs, joint promotion and branding of materials with both logos have nearly doubled the claim rates to 8.6% in San Joaquin County and 12.2% in Los Angeles County, as of March 31.
Hardest part about CalKIDS outreach: A number
To check student eligibility and claim the CalKIDS account, families must enter students’ Statewide Student Identifier (SSID), a 10-digit number that appears on student transcripts. EdSource found that many families are unsure where to find the ID numbers.
To alleviate this concern, the updated CalKIDS website instructs families to locate the ID number on a student’s transcript, school portal, or report card or to contact their child’s school directly.
Schaaf suggested that school districts provide the student identification information at back-to-school events.
Fresno Unified officials at a Golden 1-CalKIDS event provided the ID numbers to make account registration easy, said a parent who registered her children in April.
Oakland Unified has granted Oakland Promise permission to access students’ ID numbers for CalKIDS enrollment events, Schaaf said.
Once aware, families must understand and trust information
Within the last year, to address language and literacy barriers, CalKIDS has created materials in other languages and used more accessible words, moving from terms such as “savings accounts” to “scholarships” or “free money.”
But Schaaf and others warned that the term “free money” can cause fear and distrust among some cultures and communities. For example, Thanh-Truc “April” Hoang, a second-year UC Riverside student of Vietnamese background, who claimed her CalKIDS funds and helped her younger cousins claim theirs, said one of the greatest obstacles was skepticism about the “free money.” Her grandparents, aunts and uncles learned English as a second language, and she had to carefully explain what CalKIDS was before she could convince them.
“I said, ‘It was an aid. It wasn’t just free money for no reason; it’s there specifically to help them with college,” she said about how she eased their concerns about having to pay the money back or dealing with stipulations for use.
CalKIDS recipients advocating for and about the program
Tapping the actual experiences of students who’ve registered for the accounts and used the funds is the best tool for convincing families about the potential of CalKIDS, Martinez Anaya, the UC Riverside student, said, echoing a sentiment Schaaf shared with EdSource.
The CalKIDS program has even started collecting student testimonials, such as those of UC Davis student Chloe Cota, who said the money helped relieve some of the financial stress of school, “allowing me to focus more on my classes.”
Rossalee Mina used her scholarship funds to fill the financial gap of transferring from the four-year Cal State Fullerton to Mt. San Jacinto College.
Also a Cal-SOAP coach, Mina takes pride in helping high schoolers access their accounts.
“It’s just really rewarding — coming from having CalKIDS too — that I can also help show these students, who are stressing out about how to pay for everything, that they do have this amount of money to use that’s available for them,” Mina said. “I’m always saying, ‘Congrats, you can use this towards college.’ They’re like,’Oh wow, it’s a lot of money.’”
As of December, 81,232 students enrolled in college or career programs have received their share of over $43 million in CalKIDS funds.
“This money,” DiBenedetto said, “is making an impact in real time with every single semester that goes by.”
Not all screen time is created equal, and how kids spend it, whether creatively or passively, can make all the difference.
For instance, young children who watch a “Bluey” episode or play a memory game with their parents can build new cognitive and social-emotional skills early in their development. Also, teenagers can and have used their online networks to engage with social media-based mental health resources before they feel confident enough to reach out to a counselor or therapist.
But as children and adolescents have become increasingly isolated from their support systems at home and at school — exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic — they have become more vulnerable to threats such as cyberbullying and predatory behavior online. Kids’ first line of defense, ultimately, is an adult who has earned their trust and is able to guide them when necessary.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, in 2022, 21.6% of students who were bullied said the bullying had happened online, a nearly 6 percentage-point jump from those reporting being bullied online in 2019. A 2021 survey by the National Crime Prevention Council found that only about a third of victims blocked their bully online, and only about a tenth told their parents about the incident.
New risks like AI-generated imagery and financial sexual extortion also contribute to the 87% increase in online child sexual abuse reports since 2019, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As young children get online at earlier ages, preteens spend over half of their waking days on screens, and social media algorithms push harmful, addictive content to teen users, the threat of a dangerous interaction is often one unsolicited or derogatory message away.
Lawmakers and school administrators across the country are tackling online safety and well-being with policies such as banning cellphones in schools and restricting addictive algorithms on children and teenagers’ social media feeds. For Fareedah Shaheed, a children’s online safety expert, prevention and intervention start with the adults — parents, teachers and school counselors — interacting with kids on a daily basis.
Children’s online safety expert and consultant Fareedah Shaheed.
“I see the real change in those interpersonal relationships between (educators) and parents, people exchanging information they can use to start talking to (each other),” Shaheed told school administrators, counselors, teachers and advocates at a student wellness conference. “I believe the biggest impact is on the ground.”
EdSource interviewed Shaheed about her experiences and how adults can help keep young people safe online. Her remarks have been edited for length and clarity.
What can students learn about online safety from your early internet experiences?
When I was 13, I got my first smartphone. I started playing mobile games and talking to strangers online. I had a near miss with an online predator. I was (planning on) meeting someone at 16, when he was 40 years old. I was a very private teenager, and I kept my online life secret. So the only reason why I told my mom, ‘Hey, I’m just going to meet this guy that I met at an online game in the park,’ was because I was her only child, and I felt like it was the mature thing to tell her where I was going. But I wasn’t asking her for permission because she would’ve said no.
She knew that this was really serious if I was telling her this, because she knew I was a very private person. But she didn’t ask to look into my phone. And instead of her taking away my phone, getting upset with me, she just wanted to know, ‘Who’s this person? What’s his name? Why did you connect? Why do you like him? Why do you want to meet?’ And that changed my entire life because she came to me as an experienced friend, and I decided I did not want to go. That conversation saved me. From those experiences being groomed online and talking to strangers as a kid, I went into cybersecurity and threat intelligence, and I started doing workshops with organizations to raise awareness and then create some actionable impact on internet safety for kids.
What concerns about online safety do you hear from parents, educators and school counselors?
I hear a lot of stories about cyberbullying, kids talking to strangers online, being addicted to social media and making comparisons (online.) The hardest stories to hear are when parents lose their children. They lose their child through suicide, or they lose their child’s (trust) to someone targeting them. I heard from one parent that her son, who was groomed as a (child), was now grooming another child. The mental turmoil that she went through as a parent completely took her out. She came back from that, and told me her son is in therapy now (unpacking) his own history of abuse. She’s looking back at her life and retracing her steps as a parent, thinking, “What the hell did I do wrong?”
I advise parents to prioritize safe spaces, accountability, fun and empathy to protect kids online. We also have discussions over time about mental health resources and helping kids create a community around a shared problem, such as an after-school program for kids experiencing bullying. Many school counselors can also have a closer relationship with the student only because there is that degree of separation of, “You’re not my parent, and you’re not trying to control my life.” In certain circumstances, counselors have an easier time becoming the experienced friend role.
How have these threats, such as cyberbullying, grooming and sextortion, changed since you first used the internet?
We would always tell kids, “Don’t share pictures of yourself with other people, especially strangers,” right? Now you have AI (artificial intelligence). We’re at a point where it doesn’t matter if you don’t share (photos), someone can create something that looks real. I didn’t grow up with that. That’s a whole different ballgame. So I believe we have to act like everyone has been in this situation — anyone can experience extortion — and have mental health (resources) for those who are experiencing or experience this at some point.
New developments like AI can often feel inaccessible to parents and educators. How can adults protect kids if they don’t entirely understand the threat in the first place?
You don’t have to know more than your kids to protect them. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to protect them. You don’t have to know all the new slang to protect your kids, because what predators want are parents staying in the darkness. When you’re thinking about sextortion, AI, cyberbullying, predatory behavior, inappropriate content, screen time, all of these things rely on one domino effect. If you research the predatory handbook for targeting kids on Roblox or Minecraft, they’re not saying, “We want parents who don’t understand technology or the newest thing.” They’re saying, “We want parents who don’t know what their kids are going through emotionally.” They want parents who themselves struggle with mental illness, lack support or resources and feel isolated. That’s why the resources that will help protect kids are also support for parents — financial, self-care, mental health. That’s what matters more than parents knowing the latest thing.
Can school cellphone bans help protect kids online?
I believe there’s a better way to do it. Schools are trying to introduce something new to solve a huge problem, and I do believe that it’s necessary, but I don’t believe “ban” is the best term. I think “policy” is the best term. I believe schools have to have the students be part of the decision, otherwise it’s going to create a lot of friction. If the students are part of the decision, you understand how students are using the cellphone and how they can use it in a way that’s according to the policy and what’s best for them.
Many students don’t approach school counselors about their online problems, and many might not recognize that online interaction could be unsafe or outside the norm. In that case, how can schools better identify the issue and intervene?
Schools can help by giving them the tools to solve a problem that they don’t see, because the adults are not in control of what happens. Counselors can provide educational programs about mental health resources, talking through online scenarios and explaining the tools (students) can use to deal with a situation so that they can, one, identify it for themselves, and then two, know how to self-regulate. They can slowly work themselves out of the situation, whether it’s removing themselves from the relationship, blocking somebody, reporting somebody — no one has to know. Sometimes you can remove yourself from a situation and not have to talk to somebody about it. There should be resources for them when they need to talk about it and provide that support, but it’s also about making it normal to have those conversations in school, letting them hear different stories from other people, teaching them red flags and how to identify their own discomfort.
Can online threats present differently, especially for students in marginalized communities?
[A 2022 survey found that Black teens are about twice as likely as Hispanic or white teenagers to say they were targeted online for their race. Teenagers who identify as part of the LGBTQ community also face more harassment online related to their identities, including hateful language or sexual victimization, and have been found to be more susceptible to cyberbullying.]
Whether it was being a Black gamer girl online or posting on social media as a Black girl, I spent my entire childhood being bullied for being Black and for being the only Black girl in classes a lot of the time. It’s harder for kids from these backgrounds to have the tools and support systems to deal with the (bullying). So if there are other minority or underrepresented communities, they can also have that community at school. I’ve seen schools that have groups like Black Gamer Girl clubs — these five students that meet every Thursday after school, for example — that are really helpful for their mental health and for them to feel safe online. Schools can also have classes that serve them, in particular by giving them tools to deal with bullying, having conversations about what they see online if they’re creating content, how they make sense of someone saying something horrible about them, and then how to walk through that and emotionally regulate.
Teenagers also seek emotional support and information about their identities online. How can they identify the line between dangerous interactions and ones that might feel new and uncertain — and a little uncomfortable for parents — but might also help them feel more secure in themselves?
[For example, transgender and queer students often find acceptance in online communities known to reduce reports of depression and suicidal thoughts in LGBTQ youth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many reported being stuck at home with unsupportive parents, flocking to online communities for acceptance.]
It’s so much better for your child to be involved in communities that you may be uncomfortable with when you’re there to support them, even in your discomfort, than for your child to go behind your back and not tell you and get a burner phone. Most of the time, the community that your child is connecting with online is going to be OK, so long as they have your support and someone to talk to. It becomes dangerous when the parent or caretaker can’t be involved because the child thinks that they can’t share their experiences.
I loved anime. I loved cosplaying. I loved gaming. And the online world has a lot of communities that understand you, you feel safe and that you’re in a non-judgmental space. But then, when you go to school or are with your parents or friends who are outside that space, they might make you feel like you’re different or too much or too little or weird. The reason why I started talking to strangers wasn’t because I love talking to strangers, but because I didn’t feel accepted elsewhere. If you’re a teenager and you’re worried about your best friend speaking with older strangers online, for example, the best thing you can do is stay in their life in whatever capacity is safe for you. When something happens, you can be there for them in whatever capacity you have and help them out of that situation.
What advice do you have for educators and parents trying to introduce young children to the online world in a positive way?
When children are younger than 7 or 8, it’s all about play and their association with you and play, being there with them in the environment, eye contact and engaging with them. Sensical, from Common Sense, is a great organization that has screen time suggestions based on age that are fun and joyful. As children get older, (parents and educators) can start introducing more teaching concepts. For some digital literacy resources and activities, you have FBI Safe Online Surfing, Google’s Be Internet Awesome and Net Smartz Kids. Fun is one of the most underrated ways to protect kids online and help them with screen time too. It doesn’t matter if the online activity is the greatest activity in the world, if a teacher is stressed out, in what way can you find fun in the activity? For early educators like preschool teachers and kindergarten teachers, anytime I do a workshop with a school, I ask, “What do you need? What are you seeing? What is your capacity? What is the kids’ capacity? What are their ages, their background?” Then, we create something customized for them. But (educators) shouldn’t shy away from technology.
Nature is a kind of therapy at TimberNook ,where children play in the woods to heal behavorial issues.
credit: TimberNook
Jumping off rocks. Climbing trees. Hanging upside down. Spinning so fast it would make an adult dizzy.
Meet Angela Hanscom, an occupational therapist who has come to the conclusion that children need adventurous activities to develop a healthy sense of body and mind. Not only do children need way more movement than our sedentary society allows them, she suggests, but they need precisely the kinds of movements that make adults gasp, if they are going to thrive.
Angela Hanscom, an occupational therapist who founded TimberNook. credit: TimberNook
Often brought into classrooms to solve behavioral issues, Hanscom realized that children today do not get enough free play, exploration and exercise to allow them to focus properly in school. She began using movement as therapy, helping kids heal through spinning too fast on the merry-go-round and flying too high on the swings.
Hanscom, a mother of three, founded TimberNook in 2013. It began as an experimental therapy program in her own backyard before expanding to three woodland sites in Maine and spreading to franchises nationally.
She recently discussed her philosophy of child development, which is also the theme of her book, “Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children.”
How dangerous is it for children to be too sedentary?
The current research is that kids sit in chairs for about nine hours a day. Being driven to school, being driven home from school, sitting for hours. And then they go home and they have homework. They might have some sports, but a lot of times they’re still in an upright position.
What really needs to happen is kids need to spin in circles. They need to go upside down because inside the inner ear are these little hair cells, and when we move in rapid ways, the fluid in the ears moves back and forth, stimulating those hair cells and developing what we call the vestibular sense. If that’s underdeveloped because kids are not moving enough, then what happens is it can affect what we call sensory integration, which is basically organization of the brain so they can learn.
Why is it important for kids to climb trees and jump off rocks?
It helps you know where your body is in space so you can stay in your seat without falling out. That’s actually an issue. Kids are literally falling out of the chairs in school now. The way we treat that as occupational therapists is that we have kids spin in circles, and that helps them gain more body awareness so they can navigate their environments effectively.
Sometimes I’ll see a kid spinning in circles and I’ll hear an adult say, don’t spin. You’re going to get dizzy or get off that rock, you’re going to get hurt. But if we, as adults, keep them from moving in those ways, we have actually become the barrier to the neurological development that needs to happen so they can become safe in their environment.
credit: TimberNook
Some may call your style of outdoor therapy radical and progressive, others might see it as common sense. How do you describe it?
I think of it more like a restoration. I don’t think this is a progressive idea. As an occupational therapist, for me, the true occupation of a child is play. And outdoor play is a really meaningful one for most of us. Most of us have fond memories of it, but it’s also really at risk. … That’s why it’s so therapeutic. That’s why a lot of therapists will train in this, because they see how healing it is. It’s giving children what you had, what they were always meant to have.
It’s actually a very traditional approach, as opposed to something radical.
Yes, we’re just trying to protect a tradition. We’re saying you can’t touch this. For instance, when we go into schools, teachers aren’t allowed to go into playtime and do teachable moments. We save that for later. This is their time where they have to figure things out. The children need that time.
Have you sort of recreated your own childhood?
Growing up in Vermont, it was a bunch of kids, we’d have like five or six of us. But at TimberNook, it’s like 25 children out in the woods creating societies with natural materials. It’s a dream come true for kids. It’s outdoor play for hours. It challenges them to think creatively.
When did you start collaborating with schools?
We started going to schools with TimberNook in 2017. That was a fascinating process. We’re in 10 schools now, but one in particular, Laconia Christian Academy, is really doing it right. They started it five years ago, and they did it once a week for two hours, TimberNook time at school, and immediately saw benefits. So they increased it to four hours of woodland time.
It’s a very academic school. So when they saw the benefits, they took their half an hour of recess and went to an hour, on top of their four hours of TimberNook time.
Did increasing play time have an impact on academic performance?
During the pandemic they saw no change in academics. If anything, they saw an increase. The headmaster said, we’re seeing joy, we’re seeing kids more resilient, stronger, able to figure out their own problems. So that’s been really interesting. We’re researching that now with the University of New Hampshire on how it’s changing the culture of schools. That study is just starting, but it’s really going to be fascinating, because I think it’s time to rethink what we’re doing in schools.
What lured kids away from playing outside? Screens? Or parental fear of dangers outside?
One of the biggest factors is due to fear. Fear is something that we cannot see, but it is one of the major reasons why parents and schools aren’t providing enough outdoor play time. Fear that there isn’t enough time for play in school settings. The tendency to feel schools need to push more academics. Fear that children will miss out if not playing enough sports at a very really early age. This leads to overscheduling of children for sports. … Screen time is also another major factor. It is highly addictive and is replacing a lot of good old-fashioned playtime. The kind where children are digging in the dirt for hours, rolling down hills, developing the muscles and senses for healthy child development.
For a lot of families, the pandemic meant forcing your kid to stare at a screen for hours for remote learning, and now it’s hard to walk that back.
We’re in a bigger hole than we were before. I think the pandemic unveiled a lot of the issues and then just made it worse, unfortunately.
Are you optimistic that we can try to make that change as a society?
I really think people are waking up. I think the time is now, there’s so much interest, and everyone you talk to now knows that this is an issue.
Imagine that you are a career civil servant , having worked at the same agency for 30 years. Then one day a 25-year-old youngster arrives with instructions to make rapid, sweeping change. He fires you and everyone else who knows how the agency works. This is called reform. Who are these people? It turns out that they hold jobs in multiple federal agencies. Do they receive multiple salaries?
Ethics experts have questioned the practice but Trump has never listened to ethics experts.
Gavin Kliger, a U.S. DOGE Service software engineer in his mid-20s, arrived at Internal Revenue Service headquarters in February, telling senior agency officials he was there to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
Then, according to three people with direct knowledge of the events, he placed five government-issued laptops on a conference table and requested a sixth computer that would give him access at the IRS.
At the time, court records show, Kliger held two job titles at the Office of Personnel Management, as well as positions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He was also working on dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Earlier this month, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, Kliger showed up at the Federal Trade Commission, too.
Kliger is not alone. His expanding portfolio — which now includes jobs in as many as seven federal offices — is typical of at least a handful of DOGE staffers. The unorthodox practice affords trusted acolytes of billionaire Elon Musk authority across broad swaths of government, as well as access to an array of confidential information, including tax documents, federal workforce records and consumer data.
Because their jobs are embedded within agencies, the DOGE staffers have far more influence than those who might have worked collaboratively across government before — and their positions raise the possibility that even if Musk leaves government service at the end of May, as he has suggested, his allies will still have power, potentially for years to come.
“Your people are fantastic,” Trump told Musk in a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. “In fact, hopefully they’ll stay around for the long haul. We’d like to keep as many as we can. They’re great — smart, sharp, right? Finding things that nobody would have thought of.”
Government policy and ethics experts say the arrangement is unusual — and unprecedented — for the sweeping amount of access it grants to relatively low-level bureaucrats.Government officials have argued that DOGE and Musk do not have formal authority over decisions but rather advise officials at Cabinet departments on actions to take. But that makes the appointments DOGE liaisons are taking at multiple agencies even more influential.
In addition to Kliger, who worked for Twitter before Musk bought the platform in 2022 and later joined an AI-focused data software firm, numerous DOGE associates have been given extraordinary power to shape government policy at multiple agencies. Among them:
Software engineer Christopher Stanley, who worked on the White House WiFi system and was serving at the Office of Personnel Management, was appointed as a director on the board of the mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae. The appointment came with an annual salary ranging from at least $160,000, but Stanley quickly resigned. Stanley, who has worked for X and SpaceX, did not respond to a request for comment.
FormerTesla engineer Thomas Shedd, 28, is runningthe digital arm of the General Services Administration, known as the Technology Transformation Services division but also has served in the office of the chief information officer at the Department of Labor, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post.
Luke Farritor, a former SpaceX internin his 20s who won a prestigious prize for decoding a Roman scroll, is detailed to at least five agencies, according toa lawsuit challenging DOGE’s authority.
And in perhaps the most high-profile case of cross-posting, Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old software engineer who used the online moniker “Big Balls,” was appointed to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, in addition to his position at DOGE.
Even Amy Gleason, the official administrator of DOGE, is also an “expert/consultant” at the Department of Health and Human Services, a court filing shows. Gleason’s appointment to HHS was reported earlier by Politico.
White House spokesman Harrison Fields did not directly address multiple positions held by DOGE staffers, but he touted DOGE’s work in a statement to The Post.
“President Trump is committed to ending waste, fraud, and abuse, and his entire Cabinet, in coordination with DOGE, is working seamlessly to execute this mission efficiently and effectively,” he said.
In his business empire, Musk has frequently moved staffers and resources across companies, sometimes inviting scrutiny. But such arrangements are unusual in the federal government, where employees traditionally are assigned to one job and one agency at a time.
Staffers in DOGE’s predecessor agency — the U.S. Digital Service — worked collaboratively across government to improve technology, according to a former employee of the office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Though they might sometimes receive an additional government-issued laptop from an agency they were assigned to work with, they did not typically work with more than one organization at a time, the person said.
Earlier this month, after Politico reported that Trump had told his inner circle Musk would soon depart government service, Trump told reporters that Musk would leave after “a few months.” Before that, Musk said most of DOGE’s work to find $1 trillion in annual spending cuts would be complete by about the end of May, when his status as a special government employee requires him to leave his White House post.
Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which advocates forbetter government, said that cross-postings might fly at a tech company but that theypose a “huge problem when it’s a governmental entity keeping people safe and providing critical support to millions of Americans.”
“You’ve got people who have been deputized who have no business doing what they’re doing,” Stier said.
State Democracy Defenders Fund, a group that aims to safeguard elections and perceived threats to democracy, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of more than two dozen USAID workers challenging DOGE’s constitutional authority, claiming Musk exercised authority that would typically be unavailable to a person who lacked a presidential nomination and Senate confirmation.
The lawsuit argues that multiple simultaneous postings provide Musk and his allies with extraordinary authority over government functions, as well as backdoor access to agencies that DOGE aims to target for spending reductions.
The suit cites the case of Farritor, a software engineer who, according to court records, was detailed to five agencies at the same time.
“You have to ask yourself: When you have people who are appointed to as many as five agencies at times — a single person — and you have others who are obviously not qualified, are those legally valid appointments or are they sham appointments done with intent to evade the law?” Norm Eisen, executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund, said in an interview.
He added: “I have been working for or around the federal government for almost 35 years and I never heard of a detailee with that many different jobs.”
Verde Elementary School in West Contra Costa Unified School District
Top Takeaways
Raising attendance would improve student outcomes and help the district achieve a balanced budget.
The district will focus on boosting attendance of all students, not just those who are “chronically absent,” using a range of attendance-improvement strategies.
Improving attendance will require an investment of funds and offering incentives, experts say.
To boost student attendance, the West Contra Costa Unified School District has launched a comprehensive plan to increase attendance by 2 percentage points this school year.
The challenge is in part an educational one. If students aren’t in class, they’re far less likely to succeed. It is also a financial strategy that is crucial to the district’s attempts to fend off insolvency and a state takeover for the second time in 30 years.
That’s because the main source of state funding for schools in California is based not just on how many students are enrolled, but on how many students actually show up each day for class.
But bumping up attendance, even by a few percentage points, is not as easy as it might seem, regardless of the district.
So what happens in this 29,000-student district in the San Francisco Bay Area, which includes Richmond and several adjacent communities, also holds lessons for numerous other financially struggling districts in California and nationally.
According to interim Superintendent Kim Moses, the math is simple: For every 1 percentage point increase in attendance, the district can raise $2.75 million in additional state funding.
Raising attendance by nearly 3 percentage points would generate over $7 million — about the same amount the district is projecting it will have to reduce its budget during each of the coming two years to achieve a balanced budget.
“It’s the biggest lever that we have,” board President Leslie Reckler, who is fully behind the attendance strategy to avert even more cuts in programs and staff than the district has already made, said in an interview. “We get paid by who shows up.”
Moses told the school board at a recent meeting, “If we are successful in increasing our attendance, that is a way to increase revenue. Then we can rescind the reductions we are proposing.”
Until now, the district’s attendance improvement plan has focused on “chronically absent” students — those who miss 10% or more instructional days per year. That has yielded results, pushing overall attendance rates in the district to 92.3% last fall, just below the state average.
But over the last few months, attendance rates in the district have started to drift down again, to 89.5% in February, according to district figures.
Natalie Tovani-Walchuk, vice president of local impact for Go Public Schools, an advocacy organization working in several Bay Area school districts, including West Contra Costa, speculates that some of the decline could be related to illnesses — the flu, Covid, norovirus and RSV — that simultaneously struck the district in recent months. It could also be that some immigrant parents fear bringing their children to school because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
“All of this creates conditions which you can’t control,” said Tovani-Walchuck, a former school principal born and raised in Richmond.
Aiming to boost attendance of all students
After initially focusing on chronically absent students, the district is now aiming to boost the attendance of all students, and to focus on schoolwide attendance-improvement strategies, including:
Targeting schools with the lowest attendance and developing “individualized action plans” for those schools.
Expecting schools to implement activities that reinforce positive attendance habits, such as recognizing students whose attendance improves and working more closely with families “to build stronger connections between school and home.”
Helping schools use a toolkit developed by the district, including prepared scripts in communicating with parents, along with “action plans” for targeting lagging attendance to promote “Stronger Together: Show Up, Rise Up,” the theme of the attendance campaign.
Recruiting more parents, representatives of community-based organizations and community members to participate in the district’s Student Attendance Review Board, to which students who are repeatedly absent or truant can be referred.
But Michael Fine, CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, an agency set up by the state to help districts in difficult financial straits, said, “There is a limit to how much improvement in attendance can be made.”
A year ago, his agency issued a report concluding that, despite financial and other improvements, West Contra Costa faced a high risk of insolvency.
A realistic goal, Fine said, would be to increase attendance by 1 percentage point each year over the next three years. He pointed out that the district will probably have to spend money on extra staff time and incentives to generate interest among students, parents and schools.
“Programs like this cost money, so you have to spend to be successful,” Fine said.
Fine recalls that when he was a deputy superintendent at Riverside Unified, the district persuaded local businesses to award a used car to high school seniors who achieved perfect attendance across their entire K-12 careers, or other incentives like computers and bicycles for meeting less ambitious goals. His district spent about $250,000 a year on the program, but generated $1.2 million in increased attendance revenue.
Increasing attendance is especially challenging because there are many reasons why students don’t show up for school, all detailed in a presentation to be considered by the board at its monthly meeting this week. These include lack of transportation, illness, parent work schedules, child care constraints, and students feeling disengaged, unsupported and bored at school, plus, in some cases, severe mental health issues.
As a result, any initiative to reduce absenteeism demands a range of strategies to address its underlying causes.
Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit organization focusing on attendance, said West Contra Costa Unified appears to be on the right track by surveying parents and identifying why individual students don’t come to school. Another plus, she said, is the district’s creation of so-called community schools, which already work with social service organizations that can also help.
“It looks like the district has some things in place,” she said. But she also cautioned that schools with large numbers of low-income students, like many in West Contra Costa, will likely experience higher absenteeism rates and have to come up with multifaceted responses to overcome them.
Building positive relationships with parents
The district says one school that has made notable strides is Verde Elementary, a community school serving transitional kindergarten through eighth grade students in North Richmond, an unincorporated area of the district.
The efforts of Martha Nieto, Verde’s “school community outreach worker,” have been central to the school’s efforts to boost attendance.
Nieto, a mother of six who was born in Mexico, says that a key to getting kids to school is building positive relationships with parents. Each day, the school systematically records which students are absent. Attendance clerk Patricia Martines then calls parents’ homes, sometimes with the assistance of school secretary Patricia Farias, who attended the school and still lives in the neighborhood.
Each Friday, Nieto offers what she calls a “School Smarts” class for parents to learn how to get involved in the school. As for students, Nieto provides incentives to improve attendance with modest gifts like a soccer ball, or free ice cream or nachos, which she also hands out on Friday mornings. Students with perfect attendance are awarded medals at “Celebration of Learning” events held regularly in the school cafeteria.
The challenge, Go Public Schools’ Tovani-Walchuk says, is to extend efforts like these across the entire district.
“These are moments of real strength, and we’re seeing what is truly possible,” she said, referring to Verde Elementary. “But it has not been yet systematized where every school has their school community outreach worker doing this work. That’s really determined site by site, depending on its priorities.”
Verde Elementary school secretary Victoria Farías, who attended the school as a student, assists with keeping track of attendance.Credit: Louis Freedberg / EdSource
School board member Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy says that in addition to boosting the attendance of existing students, there needs to be more emphasis on attracting new ones to the district. That’s because the district’s financial plight is largely due to student enrollment that has declined by an average of 3.1 percentage points over the previous four years, according to the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team report.
“It has to be a two-pronged approach,” he said. “We need to get families moving into our community to come to our schools. We don’t want to be a place where we have to be closing schools.”
“If we want to continue to thrive as a district, we have no other option,” he said.
How do kids learn to read? Kids learn by explicit, systematic, and cumulative instruction. Structured literacy and the five pillars of literacy help provide students with the best instruction for learning how to read and comprehend.
Previously we taught kids to read by memorizing numerous sight words and using guessing to read leveled readers. I remember my beanie baby collection of “reading strategies” such as Eagle Eye, Stretchy the snake, and Lips the Fish. While we tried to provide some phonics instruction and word walls for memorization, research has proven these strategies have not effective in helping kids learn to read. Science of Reading research shows how students truly learn to read through a structured literacy approach.
New Research
Research over the past five decades have discovered the scientific proof on how students learn to read. Instruction needs to be explicit, systematic, and cumulative. National Reading Panel also identified five pillars of early reading which include, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Simple View of Reading and the Reading Rope came about to better help teachers understand the interconnected strands that effect reading.
Simple View of Reading
According to the Simple View of Reading graphic, reading has two basic components: word recognition (decoding) and language comprehension. If students are lacking in either of these areas they will not be successful readers. The Simple View of Reading formula was developed by Gough & Tunmer in 1986. This image and formula helps to clarify that phonics is not the only component of reading. Both components are important to become a fluent reader. Therefore, teachers need to provide explicit instruction to support both components.
The Simple View of Reading helps teachers and interventionist identify patterns in reading difficulties in both word recognition and language comprehension. Knowing our learners and their reading patterns helps us identify reading difficulties and where to focus our instruction. The continuum below from The Reading League (2021) depicts three patterns in which there is a weak area that will result in diminished reading comprehension. To identify student strengths and needs, universal screening and diagnostic assessment data must used to inform instruction and intervention.
Scarborough’s Reading Rope
We can turn to Hollis Scarborough’s Reading Rope as another way to explain Science of Reading and the components of a skilled reader. This rope is a great visual aid to show that each component of reading needs to be explicitly taught and practiced and eventually be woven together to be a fluent reader. Scarborough describes ‘skilled reading” as happening when students are able to read fluently while comprehending it. All components of the rope need to come together to produce a skilled reader. The Reading Rope has two main strands: word recognition and language comprehension. Language comprehension consider of background information, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. Word Recognition includes phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition.
How does this change our current teaching practices?
These models and SOR research might affect how you teach the components. In younger grades, it is important to teach many of these components of the two strands in isolation. For example, in primary grades teachers might spend some time teaching phonological awareness, some time teaching decoding (phonics) skills, and some time teaching background knowledge & vocabulary. In later elementary these strands are more woven together as students become more fluent readers. Some ELA programs have separate sections to teach the two different strands while others break the sections into different elements.
We should be explicating teaching all these components to students and not focusing on one or the other. Science of Reading is not just phonics instruction as many people believe. As the Simple View of Reading equation shows us, if our students are lacking decoding (phonics) skills, they cannot have reading comprehension. If students are amazing at decoding and phonics skills but struggle with language comprehension, background knowledge, vocabulary, etc, they will not be skilled readers either.
