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  • Texas: Governor Abbott Hands Out Millions to Voucher Schools with No Oversight or Accountability

    Texas: Governor Abbott Hands Out Millions to Voucher Schools with No Oversight or Accountability


    ProPublica published an eye-popping review of the lack of financial accountability in Texas for private schools. When Abbott’s billion-dollar boondoggle is launched, hundreds and hundreds of religious schools will share in the bounty.

    Free cash!! Free cash!! Open the Church of Satan K-12 Academy and watch the dollars roll in. No one cares how many students are enrolled or even if the list of students is a fake. Governor Abbott trusts you!

    Governor Abbott knows that most of the vouchers will be claimed by students who are already enrolled in private schools. He doesn’t care. He knows that kids who leave public schools to attend a private school fall behind. He doesn’t care.

    He wants the state to pay the tuition of all children, regardless of whether they attend a snake-charming religious school or the most elite private school in Dallas or Houston.

    Governor Abbott wants YOU to step right up and claim your Free cash!!

    ProPublica wrote this:

    For about eight years, a Houston private school has followed a unique pattern when appointing members to its governing board: It has selected only married couples. 

    Over 200 miles away, two private schools in Dallas have awarded more than $7 million in combined contracts to their board members.

    And at least seven private schools across Texas have issued personal loans, often reaching $100,000 or more, to their school leaders under terms that are often hidden from public view.

    Such practices would typically violate laws governing public and charter schools. But private schools operate largely outside those rules because they haven’t historically received direct taxpayer dollars. Now, as the state moves to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years on private education, lawmakers have imposed almost none of the accountability measures required of the public school system.

    If held to the same standards, 27 private schools identified by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune through tax filings likely would have violated state law. The news organizations found, and three education law experts confirmed, more than 60 business transactions, board appointments and hiring decisions by those schools that would have run afoul of the state rules meant to prevent self-dealing and conflicts of interest if they were public.

    “It’s frankly astonishing to me that anyone would propose the massive sort of spending that we’re talking about in these school voucher programs with, at best, minimal accountability,” said Mark Weber, a public school finance lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University who opposes vouchers. “If I were a taxpayer in Texas, I’d be asking, who’s going to be looking out for me?” 

    Texas has long stood as a holdout in the national push for voucher programs, even as other conservative states embraced them. Gov. Greg Abbott gave school voucher proponents a major win this year, signing into law one of the largest and costliest programs in the country. In doing so, Abbott’s office has argued that the state has “strict financial requirements,” saying that “Texas taxpayers expect their money to be spent efficiently and effectively on their behalf, both in private and traditional public schools.”

    The law, however, imposes no restrictions to prevent the kinds of entanglements that the newsrooms found. 

    The contrast is sharp. Public or charter school officials who violate these rules could be subject to removal from office, fines or even state jail felony charges. 

    Private schools face none of those consequences.

    Supporters of the voucher program argue that oversight of private schools should come not from the state, but from their boards and the marketplace.

    “If you transform the private schools into public schools by applying the same rules and regulations and procedural requirements on them, then you take the private out of the private school,” said Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor at the University of Arkansas. Wolf, who supports vouchers, said that if parents are unhappy with the schools, they will hold them accountable by leaving and taking their tuition dollars with them.

    Typically, neither parents nor the state’s taxpayers have access to information that shows precisely how private schools spend money. Only those that are organized as nonprofits are required to file public tax forms that offer limited information. Of the state’s more than 1,000 accredited private schools, many are exempt from submitting such filings because they are religious or for-profit institutions, leaving their business conduct opaque. It is unclear if private schools that participate in Texas’ voucher-like program will have to detail publicly how they use taxpayer dollars.

    “The public system is not always perfect, but when it’s not perfect, we see it,” said Joy Baskin, associate executive director for policy and legal services at the Texas Association of School Boards, which represents public districts across the state. “That kind of transparency doesn’t exist in private schools.”

    The Chinese Baptist Church in Houston, where Trinity Classical School has a campus (Danielle Villasana for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune)

    “Just Isn’t Right”

    Conflicts of interest in education were on the minds of legislators this spring. At an education committee hearing in March, Texas state Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Republican from Rio Grande City, along the southern border with Mexico, introduced a bill that would bar businesses with close ties to board members from applying for school district contracts. Such deals were previously permitted as long as school leaders publicly disclosed conflicts and abstained from voting.

    But Guillen, who did not respond to requests for comment, argued those rules were abused, pointing to recent scandals in two districts that led to state investigationsand, in one case, resulted in federal charges.

    He described his bill as a “commonsense” proposal that would ensure “no one in a position of power can exploit the system for financial benefit.” The Legislature passed the bill, which was signed into law by Abbott.

    Notably, the measure excluded private schools. In public testimony, no one brought them up, and there was no debate about them even as lawmakers advanced a proposal that would direct state money to them.

    The newsrooms found at least six private schools that awarded contracts to companies with ties to their board members.

    Cristo Rey Dallas College Prep, a Catholic high school serving primarily low-income students of color, awarded more than $5 million to a construction firm owned by one of its board members for “interior finish” work between 2017 and 2021, tax filings show. The school did not respond to questions about the payments. Raul Estrada, who was on the school board when his firm received the payments, said he recused himself from any votes or decisions related to the contract. He added that the company’s work provided “substantial savings” to the school but did not provide specific figures.

    Just 30 miles north, board members at the Shelton School, which specializes in teaching students with learning differences such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments over the last decade. Tax records show one trustee was awarded over $465,000 for landscaping, and another collected more than $1.2 million for “printed education material.” The board members whose firms received the contracts did not respond to requests for comment. Suzanne Stell, the school’s executive director, said the board members who received contracts were not involved in the decisions. Stell also said that the contract for printed material included training for educators.

    Our investigation also found dozens of instances of nepotism or relatives serving on boards together at private schools, some of which were started and are led by families.

    Trinity Classical School in Houston, for example, has long maintained a family-led chain of governance on its school board exclusive to married couples, appointing a new pair each time one cycled off. The board deviated from that pattern only once, when it selected Neil Anderson, the school’s leader, according to tax filings. None of the current board members responded to interview requests, nor did Anderson or the school.

    Such arrangements have been prohibited since 2012 in charter schools, which are restricted from appointing more than one family member to serve as a trustee at the same time. Anderson’s appointment would also not be allowed in traditional public schools, where employees are barred from serving on their school’s governing board.

    At the elite Greenhill School in the Dallas area, where tuition can exceed $40,000 a year, the previous leader, Scott Griggs, hired his son to coach the boys’ volleyball team and teach middle school math. While allowed in private schools, state nepotism laws prevent public and charter schools from hiring close relatives of superintendents and trustees, with few exceptions. Griggs told the newsrooms that he’d already announced his retirement when he asked the board in 2017 to approve hiring his son, who did not respond to requests for comment.

    The following year, the college prep academy provided a personal loan of nearly $100,000 to its current head of school, Lee Hark, for a down payment on a home. The school did not disclose the terms of the agreement in its tax filings, including whether it charged interest or what would happen should Hark default. Hark declined to comment.

    Private schools are generally free to use money as they choose, but a 150-year-old provision of the Texas Constitution bars public schools from lending taxpayer dollars. The state does not require private schools to publicly disclose whether taxpayer money would be used for such arrangements under the voucher program.

    In a written statement, a Greenhill spokesperson said the school operates with “sound financial principles” that meet or exceed “all standards of accountability for independent schools.” She said the school charged interest on the loan and it has since been paid off, but did not provide records.

    Many of the private schools examined by the news organizations, including Greenhill, said that they are still deciding whether to participate in the voluntary voucher program.

    The lack of accountability for private schools has sparked concern from public school parents like Sarah Powell, a mother of two near Dallas. She was among thousands who urged lawmakers to reject voucher legislation earlier this year.

    “You’re either part of the system or you’re not,” Powell later told the newsrooms. “You can’t have the resources and not any of the regulations. It just isn’t right.”

    The Greenhill School, where tuition can surpass $40,000 per student, in Addison, just outside of Dallas (Shelby Tauber for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune)

    Repeating History

    State funds flowing to public and charter schools are monitored by the Texas Education Agency, which requires annual independent audits and assigns ratings that gauge each school’s fiscal health. Districts that repeatedly underperform risk sanctions, including forced closure.

    “Looking back on it today, I think it was necessary,” Bob Schulman, a longtime education attorney, said about many of the reforms.

    Even as oversight of charter schools has been strengthened, gaps remain. Earlier this year, a ProPublica and Tribune investigation found that a charter network with 1,000 students was paying its superintendent nearly $900,000 annually, making him among the highest-paid public school leaders in the nation. Yet the school did not disclose the superintendent’s full compensation to the state and later rebuffed calls to lower his salary from lawmakers and the advocacy group representing charters. The school board defended Cavazos’ salary, saying it was merited because of his duties and experience.

    The state, however, will not directly regulate private schools under the new voucher program, which will begin next year. Instead, supervision will largely fall to one of 20 private organizations, which schools must pay to obtain and maintain the accreditation required to receive public funds.

    A review by the newsrooms of these organizations’ standards found they are generally far less rigorous than the state’s. Most do not require annual financial audits, which some accreditation organizations say can be too costly and time-consuming, and many do not mandate policies to prevent nepotism and conflicts of interest.

    If a private school loses accreditation from one group, it can simply apply to another.

    That total, however, is likely an undercount even within the sample of schools the newsrooms reviewed. Reporters identified dozens more conflicts listed in tax forms, for example, but the schools provided sparse information about what they were. Because of that, there is no way to determine if the conduct would have violated state laws if it had occurred at a public or charter school. The newsrooms reached out to each school about the missing information, but none answered questions.ġ

    Texas lawmakers laid the groundwork for publicly funded schools with limited state oversight when they authorized charter schools in the 1990s as an alternative to traditional public education. At the time, they exempted charter schools from many regulations, betting that greater flexibility would lead to innovation and stronger academic performance.

    But over the past three decades, the state has steadily increased restrictions on charter schools in response to concerns about financial mismanagement and academic performance. Charter schools, for example, were initially exempt from the state’s nepotism and conflict-of-interest laws, but lawmakers gradually changed that after reports exposed leaders enriching themselves and their families. The state implemented another round of stricter rules after newspapers uncovered lavish spending on perks such as Spurs tickets and lucrative land deals.

    Schulman, who has represented Texas charter schools for decades, said that some leaders abused the limited state oversight for years, making it more concerning that lawmakers launched a voucher program with even fewer regulations.

    “I’m very disturbed,” Schulman said. “But I’m hopeful that it will be a quicker turnaround than it was for the charters.”

    How We Reported This Story

    For this story, reporters reviewed nonprofit tax filings for 90 of the 200 highest-enrollment private schools listed in the Texas Private Schools Accreditation Commission database. Those filings were not available for the other 110 schools, as for-profit schools or those tied to houses of worship are not typically required to make tax documents public. For the schools that filed these records, reporters reviewed available annual reports dating back to at least 2015.

    Reporters identified more than 60 instances involving conflicts of interest, nepotism and financial transactions with related parties at 27 schools. Three education lawyers confirmed our findings.



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  • Trump Administration is Extorting Hundreds of Millions from Universities

    Trump Administration is Extorting Hundreds of Millions from Universities


    Donald Trump hates higher education. He hates education. He loves “the poorly educated.” Of course. It is the poorly educated who believe his lies. They vote against their self-interest when they vote for him. The poorly educated vote for a tax break for billionaires. The poorly educated vote to eliminate their own health insurance.

    Trump’s vendetta against elite universities punishes them and extracts huge fines, which were asserted, never proven. He is swaggering about his ability to bring down universities that would never have admitted him.

    Where is the money going? The Boston Gkobe reports:

    With Harvard University’s negotiations with the Trump administration still underway, the White House’s recent deals with other elite institutions suggest the nation’s oldest university may have to pay a large sum of money to make its problems go away.

    Columbia University and Brown University in the last month both came to arrangements with the White House that involved paying millions of dollars and making a wide swath of changes in order to restore billions in lost research funding and end ongoing investigations and lawsuits. 

    The Trump administration proposed a $1 billion settlement with UCLA, several news outlets reported Friday, after freezing more than $500 million in federal funds to the school last week.

    Both deals with the Ivy League schools came as they faced complaints they had allowed antisemitism to proliferate on campus during protests against the war in Gaza, as well as allegations they had discriminated against students via diversity-related policies and programs. 

    Neither Brown nor Columbia in their agreements admitted any wrongdoing — something Harvard has indicated in court fights with the federal government it is also unwilling to do.

    The measures the schools adopted to get the government off their backs differ wildly.

    Both Columbia and Brown are paying millions to resolve their disputes

    Columbia agreed to pay about $200 million to the US Treasury Department over the next three years, as well as another $21 million to address alleged civil rights violations of its Jewish employees. 

    Congress will then have the power to appropriate those funds — though it’s unclear what they will be used for.

    In exchange, Columbia will receive many of the research grants the government had previously canceled as early as March, and resolve violations of the law alleged by the federal government. The administration had frozen “the majority” of the school’s $1.3 billion in federal funding, Columbia’s president said.

    Brown, meanwhile, pledged to give $50 million to state workforce development organizations in Rhode Island that are “operating in compliance with anti-discrimination laws” over the next 10 years, avoiding making a direct payment to the Trump administration. 

    In exchange, the federal government would restore Brown’s funding — the government had put about $510 million on hold — and close all pending investigations over Brown’s compliance with anti-discrimination laws.

    The schools agreed to other changes

    Columbia agreed to implement an outside monitor to oversee whether it was complying with the changes it had promised the government, such as to reform disciplinary measures for student protesters and remove diversity-related policies.

    Brown said it would not perform gender-affirming surgeries on minors — which Brown’s medical school has never done — or prescribe puberty blockers. It adopted the Trump administration’s definitions of “male” and “female,” sparking outrage among current and former students who say that change harms transgender and nonbinary students who are excluded from those definitions.

    The two schools also took different approaches to addressing antisemitism: Columbia’s measures included adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism and a review of its programs related to the Middle East. Brown, meanwhile, said it would commit resources to support programs related to Jewish students, as well as conduct a campus climate survey in 2025 that would include information about the climate for Jewish students on campus.

    Both schools also said they would share admissions data about applicants’ standardized test scores and grade point averages, as well as demographic data such as their race. On Thursday, the administration made that a requirement of all schools that receive federal aid.

    Neither agreement, however, appeared to place any restrictions on what or how the school teaches, avoiding infringement on academic freedom many critics of the Trump administration had feared.

    The schools negotiated under different circumstances

    Many critics of Trump’s war on higher education viewed Brown’s agreement to invest in local education as more aligned with its mission as a university, rather than simply paying a fine for the government to use as it sees fit. Some have also voiced concerns the implementation of an outside monitor at Columbia could allow the federal government to infringe on its independence, despite the deal they had reached.

    The arrangements reflect differences in the amount of pressure the administration had applied to each school, down to the number of pages in the deal — Columbia’s deal was 22 pages long, while Brown’s was nine.

    Columbia had seen among the most high-profile protests against the war in Gaza and was the first institution to face government sanctions, beginning in March with the cancellation of more than $400 million in funding. The federal government has since found it in violation of civil rights law for allegedly acting with “deliberate indifference” to harassment of Jewish students.

    The administration’s investigation into Brown’s alleged civil rights violations, however, was ongoing at the time the deal was struck.

    What the Trump deals could mean for Harvard

    The Trump administration has quickly touted each agreement as a victory. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called the Columbia settlement a “roadmap for elite universities” and President Trump declared on Truth Social “woke is officially DEAD at Brown” after announcing that deal.

    Still, some worry any agreement with the administration only opens the door to further coercion if the federal government finds something else it doesn’t like at any of the schools it is dealing with.

    Trump and his allies have long seen Harvard, the nation’s wealthiest university, as its best opportunity to influence higher education and have aimed to force an agreement by canceling more than $3 billion in funding, threatening international students’ statuses, and levying a number of civil rights complaints against the school. 

    In response, the school has put up the most forceful legal and public relations fight against the federal government, meaning any agreement it reaches could reverberate further than that of its peers.



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  • Millions of kids are still skipping school. Could the answer be recess — and a little cash?

    Millions of kids are still skipping school. Could the answer be recess — and a little cash?


    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.

    For earlier coverage, go to EdSource’s Getting Students Back to School.

    — Rose Ciotta, investigations and projects editor

    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.

    Many of the reasons kids missed school early in the pandemic are still firmly in place: financial hardship, transportation problems, mild illness and mental health struggles.

    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.





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  • Getting California’s millions of kids to access free money relies on community partnerships

    Getting California’s millions of kids to access free money relies on community partnerships


    Credit: Ekrulila/Pexels

    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. 

    Now, Martinez Anaya promotes CalKIDS as a coach for the California Student Opportunity and Access Program, or Cal-SOAP, assisting high schoolers with college and scholarship applications. 

    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. 

    Schaaf, former mayor of Oakland and co-founder of Oakland Promise, a nationally recognized cradle-to-career program, conducted the research while a fellow at The EdRedesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

    Who’s eligible?

    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.”

    As the mayor of Oakland from 2015 to 2023,Schaaf built Oakland Promise, a cradle-to-career and savings account program that features personalized financial coaching and other resources and is now a national model for its comprehensive system.  

    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.”





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  • Conflict of Interest? No Problem. Trump Family Will Collect Hundreds of Millions

    Conflict of Interest? No Problem. Trump Family Will Collect Hundreds of Millions


    David Yaffe-Bellany of The New York Times reported on a startling development in Dubai that will enrich the Trump family by hundreds of millions of dollars. Is it a conflict of interest? Of course. Will it matter to the Republican leaders in Congress? No. Has there ever been a President who used his office for financial gain so brazenly? No. Trump is #1.

    Gaffe-Bellamy writes:

    Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.

    That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s cryptofirm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.

    Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, revealed that a so-called stable coin developed by the firm, would be used to complete the transaction between the state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX and Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.

    Virtually every detail of Mr. Witkoff’s announcement, made during a conference panel with Mr. Trump’s second-eldest son, contained a conflict of interest.

    MGX’s use of the World Liberty stablecoin, USD1, brings a Trump family company into business with a venture firm backed by a foreign government. The deal creates a formal link between World Liberty and Binance — a company that has been under U.S. government oversight since 2023, when it admitted to violating federal money-laundering laws.

    And the splashy announcement served as an advertisement to crypto investors worldwide about the potential for forming a partnership with a company tied to President Trump, who is listed as World Liberty’s chief crypto advocate.

    “We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us,” said Mr. Witkoff, who is the son of the White House envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. “It’s only the beginning.”

    Mr. Witkoff and Eric Trump were speaking on a panel at Token2049, a major crypto conference in the United Arab Emirates, where more than 10,000 digital currency enthusiasts have gathered for a week of networking. It was the latest stop in an international tour by Mr. Witkoff, who visited Pakistan last month with his business partners to meet the prime minister and other government officials. Eric Trump, who runs the family business, has spent the week in Dubai, where he announced plans to back a Trump-branded hotel and tower.

    There is more.

    This is a gift article so you should be able to read it in full even without a subscription.



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

    California school districts spend millions on policing, with little scrutiny


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Consent items can be horrifically abused.”

    David Loy, legal counsel for the First Amendment Coalition

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

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

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

    The costs to schools surprised policing experts and public watchdogs.

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

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

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

    ‘An enhanced service’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘Double taxation’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Not all municipalities charge for providing resource officers.

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘In case of an armed intruder’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘We wanted to look at everything’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘Unaware’ of requirements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Consent votes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘Sloppy’ practices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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