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  • LAUSD considering a policy to limit charter co-locations, prioritize vulnerable students

    LAUSD considering a policy to limit charter co-locations, prioritize vulnerable students


    Credit: Julie Leopo/EdSource

    The Los Angeles Unified School District school board is considering a resolution that would exclude 346 schools serving its most vulnerable student populations from co-location arrangements with charter schools. Doing so could potentially undermine the integrity of Proposition 39, a statewide initiative that mandates public schools to share spaces with charter schools.

    The resolution, authored by President Jackie Goldberg and member Rocio Rivas and discussed at a meeting Tuesday, would require the district to avoid co-location offers on LAUSD’s 100 Priority Schools, Black Student Achievement Plan campuses and community schools.

    According to the proposal, LAUSD would also avoid charter co-location offers that “compromise district schools’ capacity to serve neighborhood children” or “grade span arrangements that negatively impact student safety and build charter school pipelines that actively deter students from attending district schools, so that the district can focus on supporting its most fragile students and schools, key programs, and student safety.”

    The proposed criteria would guide the placement of new charter schools as well as those opting to change location and increase oversight of charter school co-locations, including site visits before location offers are made, frequent assessments of the average daily attendance of charter schools as well as regular reporting of their facilities payments.

    Goldberg said that her goal was not to “undo” anything but rather to prioritize the needs of vulnerable students by making the co-location process more rational.

    “We should have just some accountability practices, a common sense policy,” said Gloria Martinez, treasurer of United Teachers Los Angeles, the teacher’s union. “I don’t necessarily see this as an erosion of charter schools to exist. This is not an attack on charter schools or communities or parents or students. This is simply saying ‘Our district schools are drowning, and what’s our life vest?”

    Eric Premack, the president and founder of the Charter Schools Development Center, disagrees, saying, “That display at the board meeting today was really stunning, that they were essentially offering an extended middle finger to the voters of California, to the taxpayers and to students and parents and families who have opted to go to charter schools.”

    Board members will vote on the resolution at Tuesday’s meeting. It would give Superintendent Alberto Carvalho 45 days to report back to the board with an updated co-location policy reflecting the resolution.

    Charter school co-locations have long polarized the Los Angeles community with proponents of the proposed policy maintaining that sharing campus spaces has led to hostile environments for the children and greater challenges with securing necessary resources.

    Charter proponents, on the other hand, say the resolution would cause even more of their campuses to be split up and prolong commutes for students who are already disadvantaged.

    Still, the resolution comes amid years of declining enrollment across LAUSD, which some say might be the real reason behind the efforts to curtail co-location.

    Charters in LAUSD: The Basics

    For the 2023-24 academic year, Los Angeles Unified authorized 272 charters — 51 affiliated with the district and 221 independent, according to a presentation by José Cole-Gutiérrez, the director of LAUSD’s charter schools division, which coordinates the district’s Proposition 39 program.

    By the first day of November each year, charter schools must file a facilities request to LAUSD as part of a process outlined by the proposition. Those requests must include the charters’ must include their average daily attendance, which is used to determine how much space they would be allocated.

    For its part, LAUSD must extend a final location offer to the charters by April 1, and the charters have a month to respond.

    For years, the district has had charters share campuses with its regular public schools. This academic year, there are 52 co-locations at 50 campuses, representing 6.7% of district sites.

    Los Angeles Unified has seen fewer facilities requests from charter schools in the past few years. In the 2015-2016 academic year, for example, the district received 101 facilities requests. That number shrank to 51 this year.

    ‘More to do with less’: Fighting for increased enrollment

    The resolution comes as Los Angeles Unified — and schools throughout the state — have been reckoning with decreased enrollment despite the expansion of transitional kindergarten. Districts are working harder to retain and increase their current student populations.

    “Parents have some choices, and they’re not shy about exercising them,” said Premack, the president and founder of the Charter Schools Development Center. “A lot of them have voted with their feet and gone to the charter sector for instruction to enroll their kids, and … the district sees that is costing them a lot of money.”

    Decreased enrollment has led to fewer charters making facility requests, leading to more physical space open for student learning, said Myrna Castrejón, president of the California Charter Schools Association, which opposes the proposed resolution and staged a rally outside LAUSD’s headquarters during the recent meeting.

    With enrollment at 538,295 in 2022-23, LAUSD suffered the second-largest percentage enrollment decline in the state — a nearly 16% drop from 639,337 in 2015-16.

    “The cream of the crop left the district and went to charter schools, so did the money, and so did the funds, now we have to do with less,” Rivas, who co-authored the resolution, said during Wednesday’s board meeting.

    She also said that charter management organizations have continually profited while eroding the money the district needs to support more vulnerable student populations.

    A study conducted by the University of Arkansas, however, found that regular public schools in LAUSD made $5,225 more per student than charters in the district, as of 2019-20.

    “We’re pitted against each other to fight for the very few crumbs we’re given,” Rivas said.

     Challenges with co-location 

    Parents and community organizations have long pointed to challenges with co-locating charters on regular LAUSD campuses, citing competition over spaces and contentious relationships between school communities.

    “Co-locating charters are a burden placed on the shoulders of school communities. Campuses become divided spaces with drastically diminished resources, often at the expense of our most vulnerable students and families. As a result of co-locations, we have witnessed appalling and unacceptable uses of space,” reads a news release issued by the Facebook group Parents Supporting Teachers.

    The group says some schools have had to hold speech therapy sessions in closets and auditoriums have been converted into administrative offices.

    During Tuesday’s public comment segment, speakers and board members in favor of the proposed changes also cited challenges with district schools being able to access music and dance spaces — along with PE areas and rooms needed for individual education plan meetings.

    Supporters of Los Angeles charter schools, however, emphasized that sharing spaces is not always associated with problems.

    “Nobody likes to share,” said Castrejón, the president of the California Charter Schools Association. “But there are actually really good examples of … really good synergistic co-locations that actually amplify and serve both schools.”

    Supporting campuses with higher needs  

    The new resolution would prevent Priority, Black Student Achievement Plan and community schools from sharing their campuses with a charter school. Board President Goldberg said during the meeting that the changes would offset “some of the worst impacts” of Proposition 39 on more vulnerable LAUSD schools and communities.

    This academic year, LAUSD approved 13 co-locations on the district’s 100 Priority Schools, 19 co-locations on Black Student Achievement Plan campuses and seven on community schools campuses.

    “We’re saying: Those schools where we are doubling our investment — and I don’t mean as far as dollars — but where we are doubling our efforts really to help those schools – we cannot subject them to being co-located and then having themselves … in a fight to be able to carry out that vision to be able to … hold on to rooms where we can actually carry out the needs of the community,” said Martinez, the treasurer of United Teachers Los Angeles.

    The resolution’s opponents, however, have noted that many charters located on LAUSD campuses are community schools.

    More than 70 of LAUSD’s independent charters have received State Community Schools Grants, according to Ana Tintocalis, California Charter Schools Association spokesperson.

    “Based on CCSA’s analysis of the district data, there are more independent charter schools in LAUSD that have received State Community Schools Grants than district schools,” Tintocalis said in an email to EdSource.

    Potential effects for charters 

    This academic year, 19 charter schools have been split over either two or three LAUSD campuses, and the proposed resolution is projected to increase that number.

    “In attempting to avoid sites with special designations, it is likely that there will be more multi-site offers, leading to a larger overall number of co-locations Districtwide,” reads the interoffice correspondence from the office of the chief strategy officer on “Operational, Policy & Student Impact Statements” for the resolution.

    “This may also lead to increased costs associated with renovation work to make sites ready for co-location, and would likely make it more challenging for the district when making ‘reasonable efforts’ to locate the charter school ‘near’ where it wishes to locate.”

    Splitting a charter school across multiple sites can negatively impact students’ morale and can lead to unsustainable commutes for parents, said David Garner, the principal of Magnolia Science Academy-2.

    “They were going to also offer us another school, which is Sepulveda Middle School, which is 6.9 miles away,” Garner said. “And 6.9 miles away is not a big deal if you have people that have cars. However, 88% of our students’ parents come from free-and-reduced lunch backgrounds.”

    Eighty percent of the 4,000 students enrolled in his schools come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.

    Garner calculated that the commute from Sepulveda Middle School to Magnolia Science Academy-2 is 55 minutes each way by bus — which can add up, particularly in cases where parents have children at various locations, spread out across grade levels, with different bell schedules.

    “Let’s just say one of the kids is in, you know, one of our sites on (Birmingham Community High School’s)  complex, and then she has another two kids at the Sepulveda Middle School site,” said Garner.

    “That parent would have to take the bus to Sepulveda from our school (at Birmingham) for one hour just to drop her other kids, and then take a bus back one hour to pick up the kid from our school, and then the bus back one more hour to pick up her second kid, and then the bus home.”

    Ultimately, he said, schools — public, charter or private — should all be held to the same standards in supporting their students.

    “We all take to this industry because we care about the kids,” Garner added. “We care about their futures. We believe that education can be used as a means to social mobility, as a means to get out of some challenging circumstances and (give) them all the tools to be successful.”





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  • UC approves policy to limit faculty speech on websites

    UC approves policy to limit faculty speech on websites


    Public speakers address UC leaders during a March UC regents meeting at UCLA.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    This story was updated to reflect the full UC board of regents vote on the policy.

    University of California faculty will face some new limits on how they can use university websites to share political opinions, such as criticism of Israel, under a policy approved by the system’s board of regents. The policy is less restrictive than previous proposed versions after regents made some concessions to faculty.

    The policy would prevent faculty departments and other academic units from sharing opinionated statements on the homepages of department websites. Those statements will be permitted elsewhere on the websites, however, so long as they include a disclaimer that the opinions don’t represent the entire campus or UC. 

    The approval of the policy followed months of negotiations with Academic Senate leaders. The latest version specifies that statements related to faculty’s “scholarly endeavors” are allowed, a reassuring clarification to Senate leaders. It will also allow for homepages to include links to political statements. Some UC faculty, however, remain unsatisfied with the policy and argue that it infringes on their academic freedom.

    “What we’re protecting is for the public or for the university community to think that statements being made on individual websites are reflective of the University of California when they’re not,” said regent Jay Sures, who introduced the policy. 

    The policy was cleared Wednesday during a joint meeting of the board’s academic affairs committee and the compliance and audit committee. The academic affairs committee voted 9-1, with one abstention. The compliance and audit committee voted 6-1, with one abstention.

    The full board then voted 13-1 to approve the policy Thursday. The lone regent to vote against it was Josiah Beharry, the student regent on the board. Beharry, who sits on the academic affairs and compliance and audit committees, was also the only vote against the policy in both committees.

    Last fall, some faculty departments published opinionated statements on their websites criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza, setting off the current debate. The ethnic studies department at UC Santa Cruz, for example, posted a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.”

    The first version of the proposal to limit what faculty can say was brought to the regents in January. A vote on the policy was tabled at the time, and delayed twice more at regents meetings in March and May, before Wednesday’s vote. 

    Some faculty have criticized the regents for taking up the issue at all, saying it is outside their purview and that it infringes on academic freedom.

    But in the months since the original version of the policy, regents worked with Academic Senate leaders to refine the proposal. The Senate considers the latest policy “a marked improvement over previous drafts and generally consonant with free expression and academic freedom,” said James Steintrager, the 2023-24 chair of the Senate, during remarks prior to Wednesday’s vote.

    Steintrager called it a “welcome addition” that the latest version clarifies that statements related to scholarly endeavors won’t be banned from homepages. Commentary by public health faculty on the importance of vaccines, for example, would be permitted. 

    Steintrager added that the policy “is not a ban on discretionary or political statements.” Instead, he noted, it “imposes certain requirements and guardrails” on those statements, including ensuring that the statements don’t impose on faculty who might hold different views.

    Another concession to the faculty is that links to political statements will be permitted on the homepages of department websites. Only the statements themselves cannot appear on the homepages. 

    Despite the changes, some faculty remain concerned that the policy violates their free speech rights. Jennifer Mogannam, an assistant professor in UC Santa Cruz’s ethnic studies department, said she views the policy as targeting ethnic studies faculty and pro-Palestinian speech.

    Mogannam is one of multiple Palestinian studies scholars in the Santa Cruz department and said statements about Israel’s war in Gaza should be considered part of their scholarly endeavors. But she’s worried it won’t be seen that way.

    “I’m sure we’re going to be seeing double standards in terms of what’s allowed and what’s not when this policy is being implemented,” Mogannam said.

    Ultimately, the implementation and enforcement of the policy will be left to each individual campus, with campus chancellors having the final say. Each academic department that plans to share political statements will be required to “develop and publish procedures” detailing how they plan to comply with the new policy. 

    UC President Michael Drake credited regents and Senate leaders for their collaboration on the policy, saying it had been “developed and refined in a way that makes it much more easily supportable.” 

    “I think it will have good ramifications and actually will reverberate back to the units and help guide them in the way that they’re communicating their positions,” he added.





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  • How parents can limit children’s harmful cellphone use at home

    How parents can limit children’s harmful cellphone use at home


    The use of personal devices has increased since the Covid pandemic closed school campuses in 2020.

    Credit: Brett Sayles / Pexels

    Children who use cellphones, smartwatches and other personal devices excessively are more likely to have shorter attention spans, be more anxious, have trouble thinking critically, be less physically fit and have problems interacting socially, according to research.

    The debate about how much screen time is too much has been ongoing for more than two decades, but it has gained urgency in recent years as young people have become more reliant on cellphones and other devices. 

    The use of personal devices increased during pandemic school closures, with 12- to 13-year-olds more than doubling their recreational screen time to 7.7 hours a day in 2020, according to research led by the University of California San Francisco.

    Adolescents have since decreased the number of hours they are on the phone, but cellphone use is still well above pre-pandemic levels, said Dr. Jason Nagata, an associate professor of pediatrics at UC SanFrancisco. 

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom brought the issue to the forefront earlier this month when he urged school district leaders to take immediate action to restrict cellphone use on campuses this school year. Newsom said excessive cellphone use by young people is linked to anxiety, depression and other mental health issues.

    Cellphones, smartwatches and other personal devices aren’t inherently good or bad, Nagata said. They can be a useful tool for communication, education and socialization, but they also have their dangers, he said.

    “The goal of parents and for teens is really to try to optimize all of the benefits, while really minimizing the risks,” Nagata said. “And, I do think that one of the risks associated with constant connection on phone use is that some teenagers and adults really can develop signs and symptoms of an addiction.”

    Up to 95% of young people ages 13-17 nationwide report using social media platforms. A third say they use it “almost constantly,” according to the Office of the Surgeon General.

    “If kids are on their phones 24/7, it doesn’t help them develop a sense that they can create, understand and generate thoughts and ideas,” said Dr. John Piancentini, a psychologist and professor at UCLA Health on its website. 

    Too much screen time can be bad for kids

    Excessive cellphone use can impact a child’s mental health, resulting in anxiety and sometimes disruptive behavior disorders, according to research. Teens who use social media too much can develop body image issues and eating disorders, Nagata said. Others may feel less connected to friends and family.

    Excessive phone use also has potential health consequences. One of the primary ways that phone use can adversely affect a young person’s health is by displacing sleep, which is essential to health and development, Nagata said. The blue light emitted by cellphones and other devices can suppress melatonin, a hormone that helps a person to sleep.

    Cellphone sounds, such as notifications and rings, can also disturb rest. Sleep is important for teenagers in particular. Research shows that one-third of teens already get fewer hours of quality sleep than is required for optimal growth, development and academic achievement, Nagata said.

    Young people who excessively use cellphones are also more likely to have sedentary lifestyles and to focus on the screen instead of what and how much they are eating, he said.

    Increasingly, school districts are banning cellphones and other personal devices to keep students focused on school work and to encourage them to interact more with their teachers and peers. But what can parents do to ensure their children have a healthy relationship with their cellphones and other devices?

    Warning signs of addiction

    There is no consensus among researchers or physicians about exactly what constitutes phone addiction or problematic phone use, Nagata said. Despite that, the issue has become dire enough for the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to issue an advisory in May, calling on policymakers, technology companies, researchers and families to minimize the harm of social media and to create safer, healthier online environments to protect children online. 

    “I think, in general, parents and kids have a sense that maybe their use is too much, maybe it’s leading to problems at home, maybe it’s leading to problems at school,” Nagata said. “And so those might be indications that someone has problematic phone use or a phone addiction.”

    Nagata said there are a few indications that your child may not have a healthy relationship with their phone: 

    • If they are upset at the thought of being without their phone.
    • If they stop whatever they are doing to answer calls, texts or messages.
    • If they argue with others over the amount of time they are on the phone.
    • If they can’t reduce the amount of time they are on their device.
    • If time on the device interferes with schoolwork, chores or in-person socializing with family or friends.

    Parents can limit phone use

    Decreasing the use of cellphones and other devices before adulthood can be particularly important because research shows that screen-use patterns in young adulthood persist through adulthood.

    Tips to decrease screen time:

    • The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends having a family media use plan that outlines when phones can be used and when they can’t. 
    • Initiate screen-free times before bedtime so that children get enough sleep. Parents could consider prohibiting screens in the bedroom and turning off devices and notifications at night.
    • Establish that dinner and social times are screen-free times to better promote conversation and socialization.
    • Parents should have regular conversations with their children about screen use and find opportunities for children to put away their phones and do nonscreen activities with friends.
    • Parents should try to work with the parents of their children’s friends to institute similar rules on social media and screen use to make implementation easier.
    • Parents should adhere to the family media plan and model good cellphone practices.

    “The biggest predictors of children’s screen use are their parent’s screen use,” Nagata said. “It’s really important to practice what you preach.”

    Parental monitoring and limiting of adolescent screen use were both linked to lower adolescent screen time, according to UCSF research. Punishing adolescents by taking away their devices or rewarding them with more screen time was not effective, Nagata said.

    “There is not a one-size-fits-all solution for screen rules, so parents should consider their children’s ages, what electronic devices are in the household, and the family’s needs for communication and school work on electronic devices when constructing a family media use plan,” Nagata said.





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  • California passes bill to limit student cellphone use on K-12 campuses

    California passes bill to limit student cellphone use on K-12 campuses


    Credit: Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

    California state legislators passed a bill Wednesday requiring school districts to ban or restrict student smartphone use on campuses during school hours.

    Assembly Bill 3216, renamed the Phone-Free School Act, requires that every school district, charter school and county office of education develop a policy limiting the use of smartphones by July 1, 2026.

    “Extended studies have demonstrated that the use of smartphones in classrooms can detract from students’ academic performances while contributing to higher rates of academic dishonesty and cyberbullying,” said the authors’ statement. “In consideration of California’s deficiency when it comes to academic performance, as compared to other states, it is imperative for the legislature to take action to resolve this issue.” 

    The Phone-Free School Act was authored by a bipartisan group of Assembly members that includes Republican Josh Hoover and Democrats Josh Lowenthal and Al Muratsuchi.

    The legislation comes as states, school districts and individual schools are increasingly banning cellphones, smartwatches and other personal devices on campuses in an effort to curb classroom distractions, bullying and addiction to the devices. 

    At least five other states, including Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, South Carolina and Ohio have similar laws in place.

    It is likely that Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign the legislation into law. He sent a letter to school district leaders earlier this month urging them to take immediate action to restrict cellphone use this school year. Excessive smartphone use increases anxiety, depression and other mental health issues in children, he said.

    The use of personal devices increased during pandemic school closures, resulting in some students doubling their recreational screen time, according to research. This has led to concerns about addiction to the devices.

    This legislation builds on a previous law passed in 2019 that gave school districts the authority, but did not require them, to regulate smartphones during school hours. 

    Assembly Bill 3216 allows school districts to enforce their cellphone policies by limiting student access to their smartphones. Currently, some schools enforce phone bans by requiring students to check them into “cellphone hotels” or stow them in locked pouches that can only be unlocked by school staff with a special magnet. 

    Many schools with cellphone prohibitions confiscate phones until the end of the school day if students flout the rules.

    The legislation allows for some exemptions. Students will not be prohibited from using their phones if there is an emergency, when they are given permission by school staff, when a doctor says that the student needs the phone for medical reasons or when a smartphone is required in a special education student’s individualized education program.

    The legislation also prohibits school officials and staff from accessing or monitoring a student’s online activities.

    School districts are required to have “significant stakeholder participation” in developing their cellphone policy to ensure it is responsive to the needs of students, teachers and parents, according to the legislation. The policies must be updated every five years.

    Adopting cellphone policies could collectively cost school districts hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a state analysis of the legislation. Because it is a state mandate, the costs could be reimbursed by the state.





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