Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has frozen $8.6 billion that Congress appropriated for students this summer. The Administration is supposed to spend the money that Congress authorized and appropriated, not withhold it.
The Network for Public Education urges you to take action!
Open the link and fill out the form to lodge your protest.
#RELEASEFUNDS4SCHOOLS
Just weeks before the school year begins, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is refusing to release $8.6 billion in federal funds that Congress approved for public schools.
This is more than a funding freeze—it’s a test run for permanent cuts. And unless we act now, our schools will pay the price. Send your letter to Linda McMahon.
3. Call the U.S. Department of Education: 1-800-647-8733. Press 5 to report a violation of law regarding the lack of disbursement of approved federal funds by the U.S. Department of Education. You can leave a message.
A UC Berkeley labor economist this week offered a California answer to the persistent question of whether more money matters for K-12 education.
Rucker Johnson, who researched the state’s decade-old school finance overhaul known as the Local Control Funding Formula, concluded it does matter, especially for the highest needs students targeted for help by the equity-based funding.
“The findings provide compelling evidence that school spending matters and providing additional resources to support high-need students pays dividends,” wrote Johnson, a professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.
The improvements were consistent across grades, subjects, and performance metrics, the research found. Johnson calculated that a $1,000 increase in per-student funding, sustained for three consecutive years in the highest-poverty districts, produced roughly a full grade-level increase in math and reading achievement for students in grades three through eight and 11, relative to what the average student achieved in the years preceding the formula’s passage in 2013.
It’s a big deal for students who started third grade a year behind in math to be at grade level by the end of fifth grade, he said.
Graphic note: Third graders’ test scores in math improved as they progressed through fifth grade while receiving increased funding from the Local Control Funding Formula. The vertical scale measures growth in math beyond a standard year of achievement (1.0 is a full extra year of additional growth, whether catching up to grade level or accelerating beyond it). The horizontal scale measures the percentage of high-needs students in a district, which determines how much bonus funding a district receives. The dotted line in the middle marks 55% of high-needs students, the point at which districts gradually begin receiving an extra dose of concentration funding. The blue line shows average academic growth for districts with 55% or fewer high-needs students. The red line shows the impact of districts’ concentration funding on academic growth. The dots signify groups of districts above and below average.
Johnson’s research focused from 2013-14, when the funding formula was introduced, through 2018-19, when the full funding targets were achieved. What mattered, he said, was not just the amount of the increase but the number of years in a row students benefited.
The Covid pandemic of 2020, with more than a year in remote learning for many districts, has wiped out most of the academic gains during this period, particularly among low-income Black and Hispanic students — despite record federal and state funding.
Did equity-based funding cause the improvement?
The Legislature included a number of major policy and accountability initiatives, along with providing more money, in the funding formula law. It required that districts and charter schools spell out how they planned to spend on high-needs students in a Local Control and Accountability Plan or LCAP and then measure the impact. The law defined high-needs students as English learners, homeless and foster youths, and low-income students — those qualifying for free or reduced school meals and other income-based government benefits.
The locally controlled funding formula introduced the color-coded California School Dashboard, which ranks districts’ performance on multiple measures in an effort to pressure districts to reduce suspensions and chronic absences and raise high-school graduation rates. In 2015, the State Board of Education ended the high school exit exam and switched to the Smarter Balanced tests to measure the newly adopted Common Core standards.
Johnson, however, wrote that new money, not new policies, caused the widespread gains in student performance “based on compelling evidence.” Another prominent researcher, however, said that the claim is overstated.
Johnson said he was able to isolate the impact of additional funding in two ways. The new funding formula’s distinct design, with concentrated funding for highest-needs districts, showed disproportionate gains in achievement. He could find no similar pattern of achievement in the decade preceding the new formula. Julien Lafortune, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, who also has studied the funding formula, agreed that is a fair conclusion.
Johnson also compared the achievement of districts funded by the Local Control Funding Formula with basic aid districts – the 100-some districts that received no funding under the Local Control Funding Formula because their funding from property taxes exceeded what they would have received from the state. Because there were no similar effects in student achievement among the basic aid districts that he found with Local Control Funding Formula districts during its rollout, Johnson concluded more funding must be the cause.
That comparison is problematic because the majority of basic aid districts are small, wealthy residential communities with few low-income families. They include Palo Alto, Saratoga, Santa Clara and San Mateo Union High School District in the Bay Area, and Santa Barbara, Newport Mesa, and San Dieguito Union High School District in Southern California. Graduation rates and test scores generally were already above average in those districts, and suspension rates were already lower than in high-poverty districts.
“The correlation of LCFF funding with poverty is at the extreme with the basic aid districts,” said Eric Hanushek, an economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who has written extensively on education financing. Johnson “makes an admirable attempt to parse the impact of LCFF funding, but this is an exceedingly difficult task. He cannot convincingly separate pure spending changes from the host of other changes in California schools at that time.”
The study did not cite the number of districts that received $1,000 per student in additional funding, sustained over three years, and, therefore, how many students should have gained approximately a year in academic growth. A graph showing yearly Local Control Funding Formula funding increases during this period indicated that many districts benefited by at least that amount. Some districts with the largest numbers of high-needs students received more than $2,000 more per student over the three years.
Funding for the Local Control Funding Formula increased annually after its adoption in 2013. Districts with more than 55% high-needs students received increased amounts of funding, called concentration grants.
But Johnson said the exact number of students whose math and reading scores grew the equivalent of a grade was not calculated because of the methodology and parameters he used. The research was more precise than looking at the unfiltered year-over-year results of all students. It eliminated students who transferred schools during the period and took into account parental socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity. Its specific parameters compared:
Students from the same school across cohorts evaluated at the same grade.
Students from the same school and same kindergarten cohort across successive grades.
Student achievement growth among students from the same cohort and same grade across districts.
Local Control Funding Formula reconsidered
Gov. Jerry Brown, who championed the funding overhaul, made it clear he wanted the funding formula to roll out without interference from the Legislature and would veto any modifications to the law as long as he was in office. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proven more receptive to changes out of recognition that the law has flaws and its implementation has been uneven. Districts receiving the same funding per student have shown wide variations in student performance. That’s because, Lafortune noted, the Legislature sets the rules on funding, but districts decide how to spend it.
Last year, Pivot Learning, a national nonprofit that works with school districts on improving classroom instruction, created aDistrict Readiness Index that measures conditions like family and community engagement, principal retention, and work environment, which can determine districts’ success with programs and investments. In 2019, the Learning Policy Institute, the Palo Alto-based research and education policy nonprofit that published Johnson’s research, producedCalifornia’s Positive Outliers: Districts Beating the Odds. It identified districts that excelled and why.
Advocacy nonprofits like Public Advocates argued for a decade that the Local Control Accountability Plan rules and Local Control Funding Formula law did not require districts to be transparent enough on how they spent money for high-needs students, who make up about 60% of California students. Newsom includedone important transparency change in the 2021 state budget, prohibiting districts from transferring unspent funding for high-needs students to the general fund.
Recognizing that Covid intensified the disparities facing high-poverty areas, Newsom increased funding for districts with the greatest concentrations of high-needs students from 50% of base funding to 66%. Acknowledging the Local Control Funding Formula’s district-centric approach has not narrowed the achievement gap, Newsom created an“equity multiplier” in this year’s budget. It includes an additional $300 million in ongoing money for the high-poverty schools and requires that districts create mini-Local Control Accountability Plans with goals and actions to improve the lowest-performing schools. Until now, the formula allocated funding only by districts.
Lafortune said that Johnson’s research is an important contribution to the effort to evaluate the formula.
“I don’t think school finance formula should exist in stone because the conditions that are affecting schools are changing,” he said. “But now that we have evidence that funding targeted in high-concentration districts on average seems to be making a difference, the question becomes how to equitably deploy the funding everywhere.”
How the funding formula works
Gov. Jerry Brown and Michael Kirst, his longtime education adviser and state board president, said the Local Control Funding Formula made equitable funding a priority. On top of base funding per student, the formula gives districts and charter schools an additional 20% for each high-needs student.
The Legislature then gave an added boost to those districts with high proportions of those students, called concentration grants, based on research that high-poverty neighborhoods compounded challenges that children experience.
The concentration funding kicked in gradually once high-needs students made up 55% of a district’s enrollment. The differential could be significant. While districts with 40% high-needs students received an additional 8% funding, those with 85% high-needs students, like Los Angeles Unified, received 32% funding above the base.
In the decade preceding the new formula, California consistently ranked in the bottom of the states in per-student funding, adjusted for regional costs, according to the report. In 2011, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, it ranked last. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed California’s socioeconomic achievement gaps were among the largest in the nation, the report said.
Faced with Brown’s threat to cut education funding severely without additional revenue, voters in 2012 passed a temporary sales tax and income tax on the top 1% of wage earners. Base funding per student rose from under $6,000 in 2013-14 to more than $8,000 in 2018-19, adjusted by grade span. Districts like Paramount Unified in Los Angeles County, with 95% high-needs students, received nearly $12,000 per student in local control funding.
Johnson found sizable improvement in other performance measures besides higher math and reading scores in high-concentration districts.
LCFF concentration funding increased the likelihood that students would graduate from high school by 8.2 percentage points for students exposed to a $1,000 increase in the average per-pupil spending experienced from grades nine to 12.
By a 9.8 percentage-point increase in math and 14.7 percentage-point increase in reading, students were more likely to meet college readiness standards, as measured by the 11th-grade Smarter Balanced tests.
By a 5 to 6 percentage-point reduction for boys and 3 percentage-point reduction for girls, Local Control Funding Formula-induced increases in school spending led to significant reductions in annual suspensions and expulsions across third to 10th grades. Suspensions for Black students in 10th grade were cut by 8 percentage points in schools benefiting from $1,000 in Local Control Funding Formula increases for three consecutive years.
Lafortune said Johnson’s research was consistent with his own findings comparing the academic growth of districts receiving the most local control funding — those with more than 80% high-needs students — with districts with fewer than 30% high-needs students. Another report will be published next month.
“I’m happy to see there’s actually some good research out using student-level data with evidence in answer to the top-level question, Is (the formula) moving the needle? Yes, for those high-concentration districts,” he said.
An EdSource examination of growth in Smarter Balanced scores for the years of Johnson’s study shows slow but steady progress for both low-income and non-low-income students. Both groups of students grew by an average of slightly more than 1 percentage point annually in math and slightly less than 2 percentage points in English language arts. After five years, the achievement gap remained nearly identical, about 30 percentage points apart.
“Yes, we do care about the gaps, but our idea of equity is not to bring the children that are performing really well to the levels that are not excellent,” said Johnson. The overall gains are evidence that more money matters for all students, he said, adding that the aggregate averages don’t reflect his research of districts receiving the biggest dose of funding.
Lafortune said that the overall averages also reflect that low-income students are spread throughout the state. A fifth — about 800,000 students — attend wealthy districts that get no concentration funding. More than 40% of non-low-income students attend districts that receive concentration funding, he said.
Protesters rally against school closures outside the Oakland Unified School District office in September 2019.
Andrew Reed/EdSource
It makes intuitive sense: Smaller districts with fewer kids need fewer schools. A district with 40,000 students operates many more school buildings than a district with 20,000, which in turn runs more than a district with 10,000. With widespread enrollment declines (for example, California’s school-age population is forecast to drop by 15% over the next decade), many districts are now grappling with whether to close one or more schools.
What’s the forcing factor for school closure decisions? Money, of course.
District revenues, for the most part, are tied to the number of students a district serves. Enrollment has fallen in many districts, but during the last three or four years, federal pandemic dollars more than made up for the reductions in funding associated with those declines. Many districts have had plenty of cash on hand to keep running a fleet of under-enrolled schools. But federal relief dollars will dry up this fall, and it’s increasingly unlikely that the state will fill the gaps. That’s prompting shrinking districts to grapple with whether they can still afford to operate all their schools.
Mostly what a district saves when closing a school is in staffing costs. Closing three schools can save the costs of three principals, three librarians, three nurses, and so on, and even some teaching positions where students can fill empty seats elsewhere in the district.
At Edunomics Lab, our rule of thumb is that when a district has under-enrolled schools, closing 1 of every 15 schoolssaves about 4% of a district’s budget, mostly in labor costs. There may also be nominal savings in facilities, but labor is far and away the largest portion (85-95%) of the budget, and savings there will be more consequential over the long term.
But not every closure brings layoffs. Where are the savings if the district isn’t issuing pink slips?
Typically, the savings come from downsizing the district’s overall staffing counts with attrition. Often, the district can move staff from the closing school to fill vacancies emerging in other schools as staff leave on their own (thus avoiding layoffs). When a principal retires in one school, the district may move a principal from the closing school over to fill that spot. The cost reduction comes from not rehiring to fill those vacancies. If the leaders choose instead to keep all schools open, then the district has little choice but to rehire to fill each departing principal, nurse, librarian and so on to keep the larger number of schools running.
Maintaining under-enrolled schools drains funds from all the district’s schools, not just the under-enrolled ones. Each district operates on a fixed revenue pool. Spending on principals, librarians and nurses in one or more half-empty schools means spending less on something else. It’s like having a fixed amount of frosting while trying to cover too many cupcakes. In the end, all the cupcakes end up with less frosting. For schools, that means they’ll start to see cutbacks to music, electives, AP courses, athletics and other supports as the district uses its limited funds to prop up the under-enrolled campuses.
Take the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, where the district spends an average of about $23,000 per elementary student at each of its higher-poverty schools. As the graph below shows, a few of its tiniest schools are drawing down over $34,000 per student from LAUSD’s fixed pool of funds. The higher price tag means less cash available for all the other schools in the district. (This information is available for all districts here.)
Of course, closure decisions shouldn’t focus on money alone. For instance, districts may consider whether there are other nearby schools for displaced students to attend. Also relevant is whether the school is effective in its core mission. In the graphic above, some of the higher-priced under-enrolled schools are below the average performance line for higher-poverty schools. Not only are these schools expensive, but it also matters if that money isn’t delivering value for students.
It’s also important to remember that not every small school has an outsize price tag.If a small school is able to operate cost-efficiently (meaning it has the same per-pupil costs as other similar schools), then closing it won’t likely save much at all. For a small school to be cost-efficient, it probably isn’t staffed in the same way as other schools. Maybe the principal also teaches a class, or the counselor is also the Spanish teacher. Or maybe the school uses some online options for electives or it operates as a multi-age Montessori model, or something else. And if it is demonstrating higher results for kids (meaning it is in that upper left quadrant on the graph), there’s even more of a case to leave it alone. What’s relevant here is that the small school isn’t draining funds from other schools, and is providing good value for the dollar.
School closure decisions are never easy for any community, regardless of what the numbers say. But it’s the leaders’ responsibility to be good stewards of funds and ensure all students are served well. Assessing which schools are most able to leverage their money to maximize student outcomes can help leaders bring transparency to that difficult process.
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Marguerite Roza is director of Edunomics Lab and research professor at Georgetown University. Aashish Dhammani is a research fellow at Edunomics Lab.
(For more on per-pupil spending and outcomes by school in California districts, explore Edunomics’ interactive data here.)
The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Despite the fanfare surrounding its launch in August 2022, the California Kids Investment and Development Savings program (CalKIDS), a state initiative to help children from low income families save money for college or a career, has been underutilized as eligible families lack awareness about its existence.
According to a March 6 announcement from CalKIDS, 300,000 students and families — a fraction of the 3.6 million eligible across the state — have accessed the state-funded account.
That translates to about 8.3% of eligible students statewide with similar low percentages locally, which Devon Gray, president of the advocacy organization End Poverty in California (EPIC), said illustrates the gap between a program run by the state and local implementation.
CalKIDS is meant to help families save for college or career training after high school by creating a savings account and depositing between $500 and $1,500 for eligible low-income students in the public school system. The program was created to help students, especially those from underserved communities, gain access to higher education.
While pleased with the state’s investment of nearly $2 billion for the program, Gray said successful implementation of CalKIDS is key.
Though supported by the governor, the program doesn’t have enough staff to consistently spread awareness across the large, diverse state, said Joe DeAnda, communications director with the California State Treasurer’s Office, which oversees the CalKIDS program and its outreach efforts. He cites a lack of resources, also an explanation for school districts that are having trouble informing families about the program.
Consequently, families across the state are confused, uninformed or unaware of CalKIDS and face challenges in even claiming the accounts once aware, EPIC leaders say.
The state’s low percentage of claimed accounts may seem indicative of poor program adoption, DeAnda said, but CalKIDS credits its ongoing outreach and collaboration to raise awareness of the program among schools, community-based organizations and government agencies as the reason for the “major milestone” of hundreds of thousands claiming their accounts so far.
Fresno Unified, one of the state’s largest school districts, hopes to reach a milestone of its own.
The school board voted on March 6 to create a districtwide campaign to raise awareness about the CalKIDS accounts that are available to most of its students — a move that districts statewide can emulate, advocates say.
In Fresno Unified, only 6.64% of eligible students have claimed their accounts — partly because the district has not publicized the program as it can and should, Andy Levine, a member of the district’s board of trustees, said during the board meeting.
Levine proposed a resolution requiring the district to make a systemwide commitment to increase student awareness and access to the accounts.
He cited studies indicating that having as little as $500 in a college savings account makes a student three times more likely to enroll in college and four times more likely to graduate than a student without savings.
“I believe (it) is critically important to our city overall, with tens of millions of dollars collectively waiting for our students to utilize,” Levine told EdSource.
Program gives $500 to eligible low-income students
In this file photo, Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at Ruby Bridges Elementary School in Alameda in March 2021. At the time, Newsom was still proposing the college savings accounts for all low-income students in California.Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource
Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022 invested about $1.9 billion in the accounts; Fresno Unified students are eligible for about $30 million.
According to program details, low-income public school students are awarded $500 in a CalKIDS account 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 will be in first grade in subsequent school years.
An additional $500 is deposited for students identified as foster youth and another $500 for students classified as homeless.
Children born in California after June 2023, regardless of their parents’ income, are granted $100. Those born in the state between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, were awarded $25 before the seed deposit increased to $100. Parents who link the CalKIDS account to a ScholarShare 529 college savings account are eligible for an additional $50 deposit for their newborns.
The California Department of Education determines eligibility based on students identified as low income under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, and the California Department of Public Health provides information on newborns.
State outreach does not address all the challenges
During the program’s initial rollout, Newsom described the initiative as California “telling our students that we believe they’re college material.”
“Not only do we believe it,” Newsom said at the time, “we’ll invest in them directly.”
Since then, Newsom and his office have regularly highlighted the program, spokesperson Izzy Gardon said. The governor’s backing garnered a lot of attention for the program in its first year, DeAnda said. Most Fresno County students who have claimed the accounts did so in the first year. Across the 33 school districts in Fresno County, 6,058 students claimed the account in the 2021-22 school year when the program launched; last school year, 404 registered the account, based on state data provided to EPIC.
Millions of dollars have been allocated to ensure families take advantage of the program.
According to the 2022-23 state budget, enacted in June 2022, the state increased its one-time general funding by $5 million for local program outreach and coordination with CalKIDS as well as another $5 million in ongoing funding for financial literacy outreach to educate families about the long-term benefits of a savings account with CalKIDS.
Besides outreach and collaboration with schools and organizations, the multimillion-dollar outreach efforts include marketing the program through partnerships, mailers, webinars, advertisements, social media and outdoor signage. With the state’s budget allocation, the program is also in the process of launching a $7.5 million media campaign to supplement current outreach.
Informing newborn parents looks slightly different
The mailers are one-time notification letters to inform students about the CalKIDS account and how to access it, according to the state treasurer’s office. Between November 2022 and June 2023, the program sent letters to over 3.3 million students. In January, the program sent notification letters for nearly 270,000 first graders who became eligible after last school year.
Every month, the program sends notification letters to newborn parents. Nearly 4% of more than 536,000 newborns eligible for CalKIDS had claimed the accounts, as of Dec. 31, according to CalKIDS data. As of March 1, the program had sent more than 634,000 letters to newborn parents since the program began, according to the treasurer’s office.
In addition to the mailers, the program has sent emails to over 316,000 parents to notify them of their newborn’s CalKIDS account. The California Department of Public Health, which provides information on newborns, sends the program email addresses of parents who provide the contact information during the birth registration process.
CalKIDS does not have access to student or parent email addresses from the education department.
Gray, the president of EPIC, said many in low income communities ignore the mailers because they don’t trust the communication or question its credibility, even if it has an official letterhead.
Advocates told EdSource that the success of other state outreach, such as webinars, depends on families being aware, and awareness — or a lack, thereof — is the No. 1 challenge related to CalKIDS account access. Other issues include the state’s large population as well as the workload of state officials who are tasked with promoting and offering various programs, not just CalKIDS.
DeAnda said it’s challenging for the small CalKIDS team, a group of about four people, to reach millions of families spread across the different rural and urban communities in California.
And even though CalKIDS has asked districts to promote the program as well, especially for students who will soon graduate, some districts also struggle with having enough resources to do their own outreach beyond what the state has done, Gray said. The program, according to the state treasurer’s office, offers an online toolkit for schools and districts to download and use fliers or posters, content for emails or social media and videos for CalKIDS outreach.
If families are not exposed to or participating in state or local outreach, they won’t know or learn about the program.
According to Gray, during EPIC’s listening tours across the state, he often asked families and community leaders about CalKIDS.
“And, usually, it’s blank stares,” he said.
Widespread confusion
In places such as San Francisco and Oakland, there is confusion about CalKIDS because the communities have local college savings account programs of their own.
Of over 33,000 eligible students in San Francisco County, just over 1,600 students, or 5%, have claimed the CalKIDS accounts. In Alameda County, where Oakland is located, more than 100,000 students are eligible, but just over 8,000, or 8%, have claimed their accounts.
Even when families are aware, claiming the account has proven difficult, said Jasmine Dellafosse, the director of organizing and community engagement with EPIC.
The seed deposits into the savings accounts are automatic, but families must claim the accounts by registering online — a step that less than 4,200 eligible Fresno Unified students had taken as of last school year.
To check student eligibility and register the account, families must enter students’ Statewide Student Identifier (SSID), a 10-digit number that appears on student transcripts, the CalKIDS website said.
Dellafosse said many Fresno Unified families don’t know where to find the ID numbers, and there’s often no straightforward answer on how to obtain them. The CalKIDS website instructs families to contact their child’s school or school district if they’re unsure of how to locate the number.
Board member Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas, at the March 6 board meeting, noted the difficulty she had in finding the SSID number for her child. She contacted the CalKIDS program, which referred her to the state mailer she said she never received.
For a board member who works in the district and has access to resources to struggle to identify the number, Dellafosse said, shows the barrier families have and will experience.
“We’re not just seeing that happening in Fresno,” she said, “we’re seeing that happening everywhere.”
With the school board’s resolution, Rosas said the district has an opportunity to help its families participate in the program and a chance to work with the state to make the process easier.
Fresno Unified leads state in effort to raise awareness
More than 60,000 of the district’s 70,000 plus students could qualify for $500, while more than 1,000 students experiencing homelessness or living in foster care qualify for up to $1,000 more, according to the board resolution proposed by Levine.
Going Deeper
EPIC leaders want other districts to make systemwide commitments for increased awareness of and access to the CalKIDS accounts.
“We can’t just stop at Fresno,” Dellafosse said.
As California is a large, diverse state, the outreach strategies that work in one region may not work in another. Still, advocates say there are ways to address the barriers impacting CalKIDS account access, such as:
Providing CalKIDS welcome kits with the SSID numbers.
Rewriting informational materials to a third-grade reading level so more families understand the content.
Having local leaders educate families.
Advocating for multilingual outreach at the state level.
And bolstering communication between districts and the state.
“You have to know the money is waiting for you,” he said.
According to the resolution, which includes the goal of increasing student account access from less than 7% to at least 25%, there is a “clear need for intentional district outreach, education and support.”
By June, Fresno Unified will create a CalKIDS engagement plan to outline strategies for account registration and data collection for all eligible students and set goals to ensure graduating students use their funds for post-secondary plans.
Levine said that the district’s plan can be a model for how school districts across the state can engage and educate families about the CalKIDS program.
Based on the resolution, the district’s commitment to making families aware of the program can increase access to funding, improve students’ chances of attending and graduating from college, and improve current statistics showing that less than 25% of Fresno County residents over 25 have a bachelor’s degree.
“As someone who comes from a very disadvantaged family, I know the difference that some dollars in a savings account can really make,” board member Veva Islas said.
“No matter what the amount is, as long as there is some thought about sending children to college and some planning, (there) seems to (be) a very high correlation with that being the end result.”
Over 3.6 million school-aged children across the state qualify for at least $500 in savings with the California Kids Investment and Development Savings program (CalKIDS), a state initiative to help children from low income families save money for college or career.
However,many families are unaware of CalKIDS or face challenges accessing the accounts oncethey learn of them. The money is automatically deposited into the savings account under a student’s name, but families must claim the accounts by registering online.
Here is information you should know about the state-funded accounts:
What is CalKIDS?
The CalKIDS program was created to help students, especially those from underserved communities, gain access to higher education. It helps families save for post high school training by opening a savings account and depositing between $500 and $1,500 for eligible low-income students in the public school system. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who launched the program in August 2022, invested about $1.9 billion in the accounts.
Who qualifies?
Low-income students and all newborns qualify.
According to program details, low-income public school students are 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
Will be in first grade in subsequent school years.
An additional $500 is deposited for students identified as foster youth and another $500 for students classified as homeless.
For newborns,
Children born in California after June 2023, regardless of their parents’ income, are granted $100.
Those born in the state between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, were awarded $25 before the seed deposit increased to $100.
Newborns get an additional $25 when they claim the account and an additional $50 if parents link the CalKIDS account to a new or existing ScholarShare 529 college savings account.
The California Department of Education determines eligibility based on students identified as low income under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula or English language learners. The California Department of Public Health provides information on newborns.
How can students use the money?
The money can be used at eligible higher education institutions across the country, including community colleges, universities, vocational or technical schools and professional schools, according to CalKIDS.
The funds can be used for: tuition and fees, books and supplies, on or off-campus room and board as well as computer or other required equipment, according to the CalKIDS program guide.
Click hereto search for schools that qualify as an eligible higher ed institution.
Does the CalKIDS account have restrictions similar to those for a 529 savings account?
CalKIDS accounts are a part of the ScholarShare 529 program — California’s official tax-advantaged college savings plan — and administered by the state’s ScholarShare Investment Board.
Transportation and travel costs are usually not considered qualified expenses for 529 savings accounts.
According to the guide for CalKIDS, if a student has no account balance with their higher education institution — which receives the CalKIDS distribution check — the institution can pay the funds directly to the student.
Does the money in the CalKIDS accounts earn interest?
The deposits grow over time because CalKIDS accounts are interest-bearing.
How aggressive that growth is depends on the age of the student, said Joe DeAnda, communications director with the California State Treasurer’s Office, which oversees the CalKIDS program.
“If it’s a newborn, (the seed deposits are) invested in a fairly aggressive portfolio that assumes 18 years of investing time,” DeAnda said. “If they are school-aged, they’re invested in a more conservative portfolio that assumes a shorter investing timeline and is a more secure portfolio.”
Even among students, the younger a child is, the more aggressive the savings portfolio will be. The investment provides “opportunity to grow savings while the child is younger and better safeguard savings against market fluctuations when the child nears college age,” according to the CalKIDS program guide.
Specifically, accounts for newborns, each new class of first graders and students in grades 1-5 during the 2021-22 school year are invested in a portfolio that corresponds to the year that they’re expected to enter a program after high school, or at age 18. The portfolio will become more conservative as the child gets older.
For students in grades 6-12 during the 2021-22 school year, the accounts are invested with a guaranteed, or fixed, rate of return on the investment.
Can I add to the account?
No, you cannot add money to the CalKIDS account. Parents or guardians can open a ScholarShare 529 account, which can be linked to the CalKIDS account so they can view the accounts in one place.
In fact, CalKIDS encourages families to open a ScholarShare 529 college savings account, which is a way for families to save even more money for their children, DeAnda said.
What if my student already graduated? What happens to unclaimed money?
The accounts remain active under a student’s name until the student turns 26 years old. Up until that age, students can claim the money.
If the account is not claimed by age 26, the account closes, and the money is reallocated to others in the CalKIDS program, DeAnda said.
What if I’m not sure if my child is considered low income?
CalKIDS has sent notification letters of program enrollment to over 3.3 million eligible students and nearly 270,000 students in last school year’s class of first graders.
Without the letters, to check student eligibility, families must enter students’ Statewide Student Identifier (SSID), a 10-digit number that appears on student transcripts or report cards, according to the CalKIDS website.
The California Department of Education provides CalKIDS with data on first graders in the late spring or early summer and asks parents to wait until then before checking for their child’s eligibility.
How do I access that SSID number to check eligibility or to register the account?
The SSID may be found on the parent’s or student’s school portal, transcript or report card.
The CalKIDS website instructs families to contact their child’s school or school district if they’re unsure of how or unable to locate the number.
How do I access or ‘claim’ the account?
The notification letter that CalKIDS sends families contains a unique CalKIDS Code that can be used to register the accounts. Even without the code, families can register the accounts.
Enter the county where the student was enrolled (for a student in grades 1-12 in the 2021-22 school year; for a first grader, where the student was enrolled in 2022-23 or subsequent years)
Enter student’s date of birth
Enter the SSID or CalKIDS Code from the notification letter
Click Register
Set up the account, either as the child or as the parent/guardian, with a username and password
To claim the newborn account, which should be available about 90 days after birth:
Visit the CalKIDS registration page to claim the account.
Enter the county where the child was born
Enter child’s date of birth
Enter the Local Registration Number on the child’s birth certificate or CalKIDS Code from the notification letter
Click Register
Set up the account, either as the child or as the parent/guardian, with a username and password
I still need help. How do I get additional support?
How does my high school graduate make a withdrawal to use the money?
According to the CalKIDS program guide, to request a distribution, log into the claimed CalKIDS account and request a distribution, which doesn’t have to be for the entire amount. The funds are tax-free for the qualified expenses of tuition, books, fees, computers and equipment.
The student must be at least 17 years old and enrolled at an eligible institution.
The CalKIDS money, which will be sent to the institution, is considered a scholarship from the state of California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom unveils his revised 2024-25 state budget during a news conference in Sacramento on May 10.
Credit: AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
The Newsom administration has settled a disagreement with K-12 education groups over multiyear funding that will provide nearly all of the money the groups had demanded, although deferring and delaying several billion dollars for at least a few years.
Pending legislative approval, the compromise that the California Department of Education negotiated with the California Teachers Association (CTA) would remove an obstacle to resolving the 2024-25 state budget by the June 15 deadline.
The deal would preserve Gov. Gavin Newsom’s promise to exempt TK-12 schools and community colleges from appreciable funding cuts that other areas of the state budget would face, including the California State University and the University of California.
The proposal also would meet the legal requirements of Proposition 98, the 4-decade-old formula that calculates the minimum portion of the general fund that must be spent on education. It was Newsom’s plan in his original January budget to spare schools and community colleges immediate cuts while scaling back Proposition 98 growth in future years that led CTA and the California School Boards Association to threaten to take Newsom to court with a lawsuit it had reasonable odds of winning.
“This is a good deal for public schools. In its simplest terms, this agreement will protect the state’s core TK-12 investments, like the Local Control Funding Formula and new whole child programs,” said Derick Lennox, senior director of governmental relations and legal affairs for the California County Superintendents Association, who was briefed on the negotiations Tuesday. “If approved by the Legislature, the governor will be able to honor his commitment to protect school funding amidst a challenging budget.”
Challenging is an understatement. Because the state will fall short of full funding for the current year, 2023-24, the Legislature would suspend Proposition 98 for the first time since the height of the Great Recession in 2010-11 by $5.5 billion. The money owed, an IOU called the “maintenance factor” under Proposition 98 terminology, would be repaid over multiple years, as determined by the growth in state revenue. The repayments would start with $1.3 billion in 2024-25.
The deal would reintroduce funding deferrals — another accounting maneuver from the Great Recession, though at a smaller magnitude. As opposed to a funding suspension, a deferral is a late payment, in which the Legislature shifts funding by days or months from one fiscal year to the next, and districts are on the hook for money they’ve already spent.
The settlement calls for three years of deferrals, ranging from $1.3 billion to $2.6 billion, from 2023-24 through 2025-26. The last deferral, for $2.4 billion, would make up about 2% of funding to community colleges and school districts. Together, the three deferrals should have no appreciable impact on school and community college budgets but will require $2.4 billion in future school funding to pay off. They will involve an accounting shift from June, the last month of one fiscal year, to July, the first month of the next.
“The agreement reached with the governor to protect public school funding is a critical step forward for California’s schools and communities,” said CTA President David Goldberg. “It ensures that students, educators, and families aren’t impacted by cuts to the classroom and includes protection against additional layoffs of educators.”
The revenue conundrum reflects a slow rebound from an unexpected drop in state revenue following the Covid pandemic. Because of winter storms in early 2023, the federal government and California pushed back the filing date for taxes by six months. Without accurate revenue estimates when they set the 2023-24 budget in June, Newsom and the Legislature appropriated $8.8 billion more than the Proposition 98 minimum.
Since TK-12 and community colleges had already budgeted and spent the money, Newsom promised to hold them harmless. But in his first budget draft in January and his May revision, Newsom proposed to treat the $8.8 billion as an off-the-books, one-time overpayment; CTA and school groups viewed it as an ongoing obligation, that, as spelled out by voters in approving Proposition 98, would become the base for the following year’s minimum level of the guarantee.
“They arrived at a solution that gives the Governor and Legislature near-term budget flexibility while abiding by the state’s constitutional provisions related to minimum funding for schools,” education consultant Kevin Gordon said. “A negotiated suspension of Prop 98 has been the obvious solution since the outset of the debate.”
Here’s how the negotiated deal resolves the dispute over the three-year period covered by the budget:
2022-23
Original Proposal: Newsom proposed an unorthodox move: holding the general fund, not Proposition 98, responsible for paying for the $8.8 billion shortfall over five years, starting in 2025-26, at $1.8 billion per year.
Compromise: Shift an unallocated $2.6 billion in one-time funding from 2022-23 into 2023-24. That would lower the ongoing Proposition 98 increase from $8.8 billion to $6.2 billion. The effect would be to cut general fund repayments by $500 million to $1.3 billion per year for five years. And it would lower the calculation for the following year’s Proposition 98 minimum.
2023-24
The state would drain $8.4 billion from the Proposition 98 reserve fund, built up during a half-decade of good revenue years, to pay off a continuing Proposition 98 shortfall, including the $2.6 billion deferral from 2022-23.
Compromise: The $6.2 billion rise in the Proposition 98 base in 2022-23 would raise the Proposition 98 minimum by $4.2 billion. Lacking the money to pay for it, the Legislature, by an anticipated two-thirds majority, would suspend the Proposition 98 base by $5.5 billion; this would include $1.3 billion, the first installment of the maintenance factor, due to be repaid in 2024-25. As a result of the $5.5 billion suspension, the Proposition 98 base would be lowered to $101.3 billion.
2024-25
The level of Proposition 98 is determined by several factors, called “tests,” that are tied to changing economic conditions, such as a rise in state spending or personal income, and the increase in the base from the year before. The 2024-25 Proposition 98 level, under Test 1, would be set at about 39% of the general fund: an estimated $110.6 billion. This would include a $1.3 billion maintenance factor repayment.
The Department of Finance says that “overall, the Agreement provides stability for schools both in the short and long-term.”
That’s true as long as the governor’s revenue projections for the next two years hold. But if they come up short, expect additional deferrals or cuts without a state rainy day fund to cushion the impact; many districts were already required to reduce their local rainy day funds this year. And heading into 2025-26, the state will still owe districts and community colleges a $4.5 billion maintenance factor, an IOU with no immediate deadline for repaying it.
“We’re encouraged that the administration has found a way to address the constitutional concerns, and this might be the best funding package that schools could hope for in this budget environment,” said Rob Manwaring, a senior adviser for the nonprofit Children Now. “At the same time, it is difficult to support suspending the constitutional funding guarantee when California schools are still in the bottom five states in terms of student-teacher ratios and other staffing supports.”
Third graders at Alpha Cornerstone Academy join their individual Ignite Reading tutors for their 15-minute daily session on phonics and other fundamental skills in reading,
John Fensterwald / EdSource
Top Takeaways
Up to 40 districts and charter schools can sign up to design their own high-impact tutoring.
Unless they’ve spent billions already, districts should have funding available.
Both online and in-person high-impact tutoring will work can show impressive results – if done right,
A recent visit to Alpha Cornerstone Academy, a TK-8 charter school in San Jose, offered a glimpse of high-impact tutoring. It was during the intervention period in third grade, a time when teacher specialists work in small groups.
In one corner, five students in their maroon Alpha school shirts sat around a horseshoe table, listening intently through earphones to their own tutor from Ignite Reading, a growing Oakland-based public benefit corporation operating in 20 states. Ignite specializes in tutoring foundational skills – phonics and phonemic awareness. Each lesson was different; some students were repeating words with similar letter sounds. One girl, Sophia, was reading paragraphs to her tutor.
At the start of the year, 103 students were reading from kindergarten and first grade levels, said Fallon Housman, the school’s principal; some were newcomers to the school; others were English learners, fluent in their home language but needing extra time, and others have been identified as having a learning disability.
Now, with the school year coming to a close, all but 20 are reading at third-grade level, Housman said. Sophia is now among them. “I feel like it’s earlier to read,” Sophia said quietly.
“We see a lot of our third graders actually do really well towards the end of third grade because of all of the interventions and supports. We’re excited to have Ignite because it’s an extra push, focusing on foundational skills,” Housman said.
What’s happening at Alpha Cornerstone Academy classroom could be in many California districts. Unlike districts in other states that are scrambling for money to continue tutoring funded with now-expired federal Covid aid, California districts potentially still have multi-billion-dollar state funding for accelerating learning over the next several years.
And having watched tutoring elsewhere from the sidelines for the past four years, the state can avoid other states’ missteps and build programs based on their successes – if California makes tutoring a priority.
“Tutoring isn’t just a tool for learning recovery,” said Jessica Sliwerski, co-founder and CEO of Ignite Reading. ”It’s serving as an essential classroom support that students need to build strong literacy skills.”
A second or “Western” wave of tutoring
“Lots of other states have helped push tutoring along more than California has. I’m really optimistic that in some ways, it [California] can be a leader, because we’ve learned so much that they could really do it more effectively immediately than we could right at the beginning,” said Susanna Loeb, a professor at the Graduate School of Education as well as the founder and executive director of the National Student Support Accelerator.
Loeb sees an opportunity for California to jumpstart the state’s laggard performance on state and national achievement assessments, especially in early literacy, by creating a second or “Western” wave of tutoring.
In four years, the National Student Support Accelerator has become the foremost source of information on and coordinator of research into online and in-person “intensive, relationship-based, individualized instruction” called by various names, high-dosage, high-impact, or high-intensity tutoring.
This week, three state agencies – the California Department of Education, the State Board, and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence – will make the first joint effort in promoting it. They will join the nonprofit Results for America, and Loeb’s organization in sponsoring a webinar explaining high-impact tutoring.
The May 13 event serves as an invitation for up to 40 school districts to design their own high-impact tutoring programs that could serve as a model for other district cohorts.
It isn’t clear what happens after the event, but tutoring providers are hoping the state will get more involved.
“This is the first time that the state has recognized high-impact tutoring as desirable. We know what the research has found; we know the formula for making tutoring work,” said Chris Norwood, founder of Bay Area Tutoring Association, which works with school districts on creating effective programs. “Now we have to get the word out through channels of information that districts use, like county offices of education.”
An exciting prospect, hard to do
Many parents, teachers, policy makers and student equity advocates looked at tutoring as a recovery strategy coming out of Covid.
“What was not so clear was whether they could actually pull it off at any kind of scale,” said Loeb who acknowledges it’s easier for smaller states with a less complex system of governance to say, “Here’s the guidance on how to do high-impact tutoring; here are some funds to do it, and here are professional support.”
The federal Institute of Education Services identified “high-quality” tutoring as one of several effective strategies for schools. An analysis of 96 rigorous studies comparing results of students who had high-impact tutoring with those who hadn’t found significant improvement in 87% of the programs, equivalent to a half-year growth in many cases. The strongest gains were in early grades in literacy and when it was given during, rather than after, school.
Based on research, the National Student Support Accelerator says that effective, high-impact tutoring programs have these elements in common:
A high-dosage delivery of three or more sessions per week of required tutoring, each 15 to 30 minutes.
An explicit focus on cultivating tutor-student relationships, with tutors assigned with the same students throughout. Consistency is critical to building a solid relationship, and the tutor should be “someone who is engaging and motivating,” Loeb said.
Alignment with the school curriculum.
Formalized tutor training and support.
The use of formative assessments to monitor student learning.
There are different models for districts: training paraprofessionals as full-time tutors, hiring outside tutoring organizations for in-person tutoring, or turning to online nonprofits; the latter lack the face-to-face connection but can better scale up to serve more students, she said.
But many California districts found that creating a system with all of the elements was hard to pull off, and outside of urban areas and university towns, many had difficulty finding organizations and trained tutors for in-person instruction. Districts lacked experience evaluating tutoring outfits’ promises and measuring results. Communication over student results could be erratic; arranging schedules could be a challenge.
Given other, more familiar options, many overstretched California districts and schools made tutoring a low priority; they invested instead in hiring teacher aides and counselors.
An examination by Edunomics Lab, a Georgetown University-based education research nonprofit, found that 70% of California’s public school districts, charter schools and county offices of education didn’t report spending any money on tutoring from the last and biggest outlay of federal learning loss funding for California – ESSER III. Of the 30% of districts that did, spending on tutoring totaled 1.5% – $190 million out of $13.5 billion. (Go here for an interactive graphic on California districts’ tutoring spending.)
Meanwhile, other states became directly involved in high-impact tutoring. According to the National Student Support Accelerator’s 2024-25 summary of states’ activities, two dozen states allocated specific funds for high-impact tutoring, while others provided technical help to set up programs. One state, Tennessee, is funding tutoring through its annual school funding formula.
Nine states have ongoing partnerships between higher education institutions and tutoring organizations.
Norwood is partnering with San Jose State to hire students on an education track to serve as tutors in the schools while earning federal work-study money. If all teacher preparation programs credited time tutoring toward fulfilling time required in the classroom, California could add thousands of tutors to the ranks.
Money to spend
California had the advantage of surging state revenues from a post-pandemic economic boom to set aside more than $10 billion in one-time and ongoing money for schools in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
The state lists tutoring as one of the evidence-based options that districts can choose for their unspent share of the $6 billion Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant; they have through 2027-28 to use it. It’s not clear how much remains; districts filed the first spending report in late 2024.
The advent of universal transitional kindergarten next fall and rollout of a new math framework are touchpoints for high-impact tutoring, Loeb said.
“If I had to think about where California could embed tutoring just as part of normal operations, it would be in early literacy,” she said. “It is a shame and a detriment to the state that so many students are not learning how to read before third grade. There’s lots of evidence that high-impact tutoring can help get us there.”
The selection of new materials aligned with the math framework will lead districts to rethink how math is taught.
“That’s a really good time to say, ‘OK, within this structure, how do we get students who aren’t making progress at the rate of the class or rate the state expects to get that individual attention so that they can accelerate their learning and excel in school?’ We’re not really doing that, so students are kind of falling off as we move quickly through the curriculum.”
El Camino Fundamental High School principal Evelyn Welborn explains how rainwater leaks through hallway windows, causing teachers to use trash cans to collect the water.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Renovating a high school that swelters in summer and gushes leaks in winter is a priority of a large Sacramento-areadistrict. Replacing an undersized gym with no air conditioning is a priority of a small high school district in Kern County.
The to-do list varies among the hundreds of school districts that have placed construction bonds before voters on Nov. 5, but urgency is what they share in common. In California, the list of school buildings needing attention is long and growing, compounded by climate change that is exposing more of the state to unprecedented levels of heat and unhealthy air.
In 2020, anxiety about an unknown virus, Covid-19, led voters to defeat half of the local bonds on the ballot that year and discouraged many districts from placing bonds before voters in 2022. The suppressed demand has resulted in a record 252 school districtsseeking $40 billion worth of renovation and new construction projects, including classrooms for the youngest students, transitional kindergartners, and space for “maker labs” and innovative career explorations for high schoolers.
Many of the districts are hoping to seek financial help from Proposition 2, a $10 billion state construction bond for TK-12 and community colleges, that the Legislature also has put on the Nov. 5 statewide ballot. Passage would begin to replenish state assistance, which has run dry from the $9 billion bond passed in 2016, and create a new list of projects eligible for state help in the future.
This report is the first day of a two-day look at a sampling of districts from different parts of the state that are asking their voters to pass local bonds. First, we visitSan Juan Unified and Wasco Union High School District. Tuesday, read about Modesto City Schools, Fresno Unified and neighboring Central Unified.
San Juan Unified School District
San Juan Unified
Sacramento County
49,840 students
61% low-income, foster and English learner students
$22,243 bonding capacity per student*
* Bonding capacity is the maximum amount of general obligation bonds a school district can issue at a given time. A district can never go over the ceiling. For unified districts, it is 2.5% of total assessed valuation; the median in California is $25,569 per student.
El Camino Fundamental High School in Sacramento was quiet Thursday as temperatures rose to 103 degrees. Few of the school’s 1,300 students lingered in the halls, where there is no air conditioning and open windows provide the only air circulation.
Even air conditioning in classrooms is not always reliable. Teachers and their students have had to double up with other classes at times when some systems fail.
The upcoming rainy season won’t offer much relief at the 70-year-old school. Water from leaks travels down walls and into lockers in the halls and drenches expensive machinery in the metal shop.
In one particularly bad spot, teachers have taken to tying a garbage can to one window with a rope, to collect the water before it floods the hallway floor.
School staff must regularly snake out a sewer access that has spewed sewage across walkways students must traverse to enter a classroom.
El Camino Fundamental High School band classroom storage room.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
El Camino Fundamental High School’s band classroom has limited storage for instruments.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
A drinking fountain at El Camino Fundamental High School was shut off due to water leakage.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
The quad at El Camino Fundamental High School. Many buildings have windows that do not open and areas where the concrete is decaying.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Windows throughout El Camino Fundamental High School are either cracked or do not open correctly.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
An out-of-order bathroom at El Camino Fundamental High School.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Renovating the school is one of the priorities of San Juan Unified School District if voters pass Measure P, a $950 million general obligation bond. The measure will update classrooms, repair leaky roofs, improve school security, provide safe drinking water, and remove asbestos and lead paint from the district’s aging schools.
The bond will cost homeowners $60 per $100,000 of their home’s value — $300 a year for a house worth $500,000.
The improvements will improve education and retain teachers, said Superintendent Melissa Bassanelli in a message on the district website.
“Quality classrooms and good teachers are essential to student learning,” Bassanelli wrote. “If passed by voters, Measure P funds will help the district upgrade career technical education classrooms, math and science labs and ensure that students have access to a well-rounded education including music, visual and performing arts.”
During a tour of El Camino Fundamental, principal Evelyn Welborn pointed out a crowded biology classroom where 36 students sat elbow to elbow with little space or updated equipment for lab work.
“We have fantastic programs going on,” Welborn said. “Unfortunately, our building was built in the 1950s, so we’re doing, trying to do 21st century learning in a 20th century building, which doesn’t always work.”
If the bond passes, El Camino Fundamental could have some buildings renovated and others razed and replaced, potentially with a two-story building, said Frank Camarda, chief operations officer for the district. The buildings that are renovated would be gutted and have new windows, ceilings, lighting, flooring, plumbing and electrical, he said.
The San Juan district needs $3.5 billion to complete all the work needed at its 64 schools, Camarda said, adding that district leaders expect to get $90 million in facilities funds from the state’s Proposition 2, a public education facilities bond, if it passes on Nov. 5.
If Measure P does not pass, the district — in a worst-case scenario — would have to focus on repairing and maintaining roofs, heating and air conditioning units, and electrical systems at its schools, Camarda said.
The district passed a $750 million bond measure eight years ago and used the funds to update schools like Dyer-Kelly Elementary School, located just three miles from the high school. The old elementary school was razed and replaced with a two-story school five years ago.
Dyer-Kelly Elementary teacher Hallie Lozano engages with a kindergarten student during outdoor playtime. Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Dyer-Kelly Elementary teacher Hallie Lozano remembers the leaky roofs, failing air conditioner, lack of storage and limited number of bathrooms in the 70-year-old school before it was torn down and replaced.
“That was a big deal, Lozano said. “It was really hard (for teachers) to just get into the bathroom before your next period.”
Now teachers and students at the K-5 school have access to numerous bathrooms, assemble in a modern amphitheater and take part in drama productions on a stage in the cafeteria.
Spacious classrooms now have whiteboards, television sets, bulletin boards and ample storage.
The school, with about 97% of its 800 students from low-income families and 60% English learners, has become the centerpiece of the community.
Principal Jamal Hicks says about 150 people show up outside the school each evening to visit and watch their children play on the school lawn and sidewalks. He says the school provides safe, well-lit space that isn’t readily available elsewhere in the community.
“The school is like a beacon for the entire community,” Hicks said.
Updating school facilities at San Juan Unified, a district of 40,000 students, has to be a comprehensive step-by-step long-term process, Camarda said.
“You can’t do it all at once,” he said. “You have to keep everything functioning, but you also have to start making some bold moves and replacing the oldest of your inventory. … So we’ve changed our philosophy, and it seems to be working really well.”
Wasco Union High School District
When it rains or gets hot in Wasco — and it’s often scorching — Wasco Union High School often has to resort to a backup plan for P.E. classes because of the state of its current gym.
WAsco Union High School District
Kern County
1,807 students
89% low-income, foster and English learner students
$31,672 bonding capacity per student*
* Bonding capacity per student is the maximum amount of general obligation bonds a school district can issue at a given time. A district can never go over the ceiling. For high school districts it is 1.25% of total assessed valuation; the median in California is $25,569.
“Anytime we cannot be outside, (the students) have to sit in the bleachers and do online assignments,” said Millie Alvarado, P.E. department head.
A new gym with air conditioning is a key project that Wasco Union High School District is promoting as a part of Measure D, a $35.4 million education bond measure on the ballot in this rural Kern County community this November. The bond will cost homeowners $30 per $100,000 of their home’s value – $94 a year for a house worth $314,000, the median value in Wasco, according to Zillow.
A warm, sunny climate has made Wasco a national leader in rose production, but temperatures that soar above 90 degrees for a third of the year also make it unsafe for students to do anything physically rigorous outside.
That wouldn’t be such a problem if Wasco Union High School had an air-conditioned gymnasium, like most high schools in Kern County.
Wasco’s lone comprehensive high school gym just has swamp coolers, with an evaporative cooling system that is no match for the triple digit heat that hits the region with increasing regularity.
The shower in the boys locker room at Wasco Union High. Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
The girls locker room at Wasco Union High. The showers are leaky and old, so they have been coverted into changing stalls.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
The boys locker room bathroom lacks urinals and instead has a trough along the wall.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
School administrators said the gymnasium is badly in need of new lockers and proper ventilation.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
The shop for Wasco Union High’s construction course is cramped and has no air conditioning. Using power tools makes the heat worse.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
Classrooms for career technical education are cramped, and the Wasco Union High School District hopes to expand them with Proposition 2.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
The west side of campus is completely open. There is no fence, which the superintendent said is a security problem.Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
“We’re trying to really help the community to understand the safety component of it,” said Superintendent Kevin Tallon. “It’s just not a safe campus when you look at the safety standards that other facilities have in most Kern County schools.”
This year, paramedics were called when a student passed out due to heat during P.E., Tallon added. Athletes who rely on the gym for games, after-school practice or summer conditioning feel the effects acutely.
“You feel like you’re suffocating,” said Rosalia Sanchez, a senior and varsity volleyball player.
Principal Rusvel Prado said the roof has been patched over many times but still leaks when it rains.
Even when the weather cooperates, the gym does a poor job accommodating the nearly 1,700 students who attend Wasco Union High. For school pep rallies, about half of the student body overflows outdoors. Locker rooms are cramped and unventilated, which Alvarado says is not ideal when 200 to 300 students are changing into and out of gym clothes each class period.
Measure D was developed with community feedback, Tallon said. The district was able to pass a bond measure in 2008 that modernized and upgraded heating and air conditioning systems for much of the campus, which was built in 1915. But two follow-up bond measures failed — one by a fraction of a percentage point in 2018, and one by 3.3 points in March 2020.
In the 2008 bond, classrooms took priority over the gymnasium, which dates back to the 1950s. Tallon said that if the new bond proposal passes, it would allow for 80% of the campus to be modernized over the next 20 years.
Campus security has become a bigger priority for schools in recent years. The bond measure will also go toward upgrading door locks, alarms, cameras, lighting and emergency communication systems. The west section of campus, where career technical and dual enrollment courses are held, is unfenced — a major safety concern in an era of mass shootings, Tallon said.
Pathways to college and career have received a renewed focus in California, bringing new facility needs. Wasco Union High’s construction program has a cramped shop without air conditioning. The building that will ultimately house dual enrollment students was set on fire by an arsonist who attacked local schools, according to local news reports. The district owns an off-campus farm that trains agricultural students, but there is no plumbing or safe drinking water — something the bond money aims to address.
The measure is asking for nearly the full amount of the $36 million bonding capacity of the community. Wasco Union High School District plans to apply for Proposition 2 funds, if it passes. The proposition will prioritize districts like Wasco, where its residents’ incomes are low — 88% of students qualify as socioeconomically disadvantaged. However, Tallon doesn’t believe that proposition or other state funding sources will be sufficient to help the district.
“We’re sensitive to the fact that it’s a tough economic time right now when it comes to inflation,” Tallon said. “But we also try to provide as much information as we can about the cost of the bond measure to the homeowner. For what you get in return for the quality of schools, we feel it’s money well spent.”
When Stephanie Martinez Anaya was a senior at Hamilton High in Anza in 2023, her college success coach told her about scholarship money for college or career training.
The money — between $500 and $1,500 automatically deposited and waiting in an interest-bearing savings account — is from the California Kids Investment and Development Savings program (CalKIDS), a state initiative for eligible low-income students and English learners enrolled in the public school system.
Launched in 2022, CalKIDS is intended to help families save for and lower the costs of college or career training.
“Even if expenses come up,” Martinez Anaya said, “I won’t have to worry about that.”
And unexpected expenses did arise once in college. She ended up using her $530, $30 of which was interest, to purchase homework access for her classes at the University of California Riverside.
The Cal-SOAP-CalKIDS partnership illustrates how the state can raise awareness about CalKIDS by using personal, relatable stories in local communities, said Libby Schaaf, co-author of Advancing CalKIDS, a research report on strategies to increase the college participation rate for low-income families.
Her research reinforces that CalKIDS must increase, incorporate and integrate community partnerships into each aspect of its outreach to expand access among eligible students.
Low-income public school students and English learners, identified by the California Department of Education, are automatically awarded $500 if they:
Were in grades 1-12 during the 2021-22 school year
Were enrolled in first grade during the 2022-23 school year, or
Are first graders in subsequent school years, meaning the number of eligible student accounts grows each year.
An additional $500 is deposited for students identified as foster youth and another $500 for students classified as homeless.
Children born in California, regardless of their parents’ income, are now granted $100 in an account. More than 1 million newborn accounts are currently eligible.
Over 3.9 million school-aged children now qualify for at least $500 in free money with CalKIDS.
As of March 31, only 12% of students had registered for their CalKIDS account, up by nearly 4 percentage points since last year but still far from reaching most of the state’s students.
Not quite 3 years old, “CalKIDS is still in its early development stage, so now is an impactful time to explore potential refinements and additions to its operational and programmatic approaches,” Schaaf said in her report.
Schaaf’s research recommends strategic actions to increase the number of claimed accounts.
“A lot of the challenges are going to require other people to step up,” she said. “Some might require counties or school districts to take more actions.”
The CalKIDS team has started implementing some of those strategies.
“My dad didn’t finish college, himself,” Schaaf said, reflecting on the personal experience that led to her work. “He was a traveling shoe salesman, and he made this big point of how important education was. He started investing and built up these little funds for me and my sister to go to college.”
Schaaf’s research, conducted over the past year, is based on her experience with Oakland Promise as well as a literature review; work with the CalKIDS Institute at UCLA; in-depth interviews with 14 CalKIDS partners and 15 college and career savings account experts and leaders of governmental groups, nonprofit organizations and school systems; an on-site community event; and parent focus groups.
Schaaf is also a 2026 candidate for state treasurer, whose office oversees the CalKIDS program. She announced her candidacy in January 2024, after being selected for the Harvard fellowship in 2023. Current State Treasurer Fiona Ma is running for lieutenant governor in 2026.
“One of the reasons I actually got excited about running for state treasurer is the fact that the Treasurer’s office runs this program,” she said. “I’m somebody who doesn’t want to take on a job without feeling like I am the most competent person to do it.”
Her research and recommendations, she said, educated her about the program and have empowered her to run for the position. But regardless of whether she wins the electon, she said “this work needs to happen.”
Advancing CalKIDS
Leverage community partnerships
Schaaf’s report stated that automatically establishing the accounts at birth and at first grade minimizes barriers. But that doesn’t prevent or eliminate problems, because families must claim the accounts by registering online.
CalKIDS’ letters, notifying eligible students about accessing their accounts, are mailed out after students finish first grade, and letters for newborns are mailed within a few months of their birth.
Schaaf recommended that notifications be more aligned, for example, sending the award letter with newborns’ birth certificates, like Pennsylvania does for its Keystone Scholars program.
Advocates told EdSource last year that many people in low-income communities ignore the mailers because they question its credibility, even if it has an official letterhead.
Schaaf’s research revealed two seemingly contradictory points: that families take action when encouraged by a government entity and that messages from community organizations are more effective in spurring action among families.
Parents said aspects of both concepts make programs trustworthy. For instance, they trusted the local, community-based Oakland Promise, which was set up by the city and involved the county.
“She (a parent) said, ‘These are the programs we trust, the ones where the government is involved,’” Schaaf said about realizing it’s not one way or the other.
Recommendation: CalKIDS ambassadors
In fact, Schaaf recommends creating a certification for community-based partners to be CalKIDS ambassadors.
“The fact that they (would be) certified by the state of California or by the treasurer’s office gives them the formality effect of government’s gravitas, but their community voice – their cultural competency – is the winning combination,” she said.
“That’s what really made me realize both of these bodies of research are true. Where we are most effective is when we combine them.”
Embodying that collaboration, recent partnerships with community organizations have spread the word about CalKIDS and provided other benefits to families, such as:
EverFi, which launched a financial literacy program in Los Angeles County
Golden 1 Credit Union, which held four educational community events in April in Northern California and the Central San Joaquin Valley for families to learn about the bank’s financial services and claim their CalKIDS accounts. In all, 125 accounts were claimed
Covered California, which has tied well-child exams and immunizations to the ability to earn up to $1,000 in the newborn accounts until March 2026.
Leveraging the community partnerships will remain imperative for the four-member CalKIDS team.
“Rather than trying to be everywhere all the time, all at once and feeling spread thin, we are being very intentional in how we do outreach,” the program’s new director, Cassandra DiBenedetto, said about a different approach to outreach.
According to the California Child Savings Account Coalition, as of February, there are 15 local child savings account programs, serving 180,000 youth with over $26 million.
California’s local child savings accounts
The 15 local programs are:
In places where there are local programs, claim rates were, at one time, much lower than the state percentage, perhaps because of a lack of clarity about CalKIDS. For example, in December 2023, 4.8% of eligible students in San Joaquin County and 7.3% in Los Angeles County had claimed their accounts.
However, partnerships between CalKIDS and local programs, joint promotion and branding of materials with both logos have nearly doubled the claim rates to 8.6% in San Joaquin County and 12.2% in Los Angeles County, as of March 31.
Hardest part about CalKIDS outreach: A number
To check student eligibility and claim the CalKIDS account, families must enter students’ Statewide Student Identifier (SSID), a 10-digit number that appears on student transcripts. EdSource found that many families are unsure where to find the ID numbers.
To alleviate this concern, the updated CalKIDS website instructs families to locate the ID number on a student’s transcript, school portal, or report card or to contact their child’s school directly.
Schaaf suggested that school districts provide the student identification information at back-to-school events.
Fresno Unified officials at a Golden 1-CalKIDS event provided the ID numbers to make account registration easy, said a parent who registered her children in April.
Oakland Unified has granted Oakland Promise permission to access students’ ID numbers for CalKIDS enrollment events, Schaaf said.
Once aware, families must understand and trust information
Within the last year, to address language and literacy barriers, CalKIDS has created materials in other languages and used more accessible words, moving from terms such as “savings accounts” to “scholarships” or “free money.”
But Schaaf and others warned that the term “free money” can cause fear and distrust among some cultures and communities. For example, Thanh-Truc “April” Hoang, a second-year UC Riverside student of Vietnamese background, who claimed her CalKIDS funds and helped her younger cousins claim theirs, said one of the greatest obstacles was skepticism about the “free money.” Her grandparents, aunts and uncles learned English as a second language, and she had to carefully explain what CalKIDS was before she could convince them.
“I said, ‘It was an aid. It wasn’t just free money for no reason; it’s there specifically to help them with college,” she said about how she eased their concerns about having to pay the money back or dealing with stipulations for use.
CalKIDS recipients advocating for and about the program
Tapping the actual experiences of students who’ve registered for the accounts and used the funds is the best tool for convincing families about the potential of CalKIDS, Martinez Anaya, the UC Riverside student, said, echoing a sentiment Schaaf shared with EdSource.
The CalKIDS program has even started collecting student testimonials, such as those of UC Davis student Chloe Cota, who said the money helped relieve some of the financial stress of school, “allowing me to focus more on my classes.”
Rossalee Mina used her scholarship funds to fill the financial gap of transferring from the four-year Cal State Fullerton to Mt. San Jacinto College.
Also a Cal-SOAP coach, Mina takes pride in helping high schoolers access their accounts.
“It’s just really rewarding — coming from having CalKIDS too — that I can also help show these students, who are stressing out about how to pay for everything, that they do have this amount of money to use that’s available for them,” Mina said. “I’m always saying, ‘Congrats, you can use this towards college.’ They’re like,’Oh wow, it’s a lot of money.’”
As of December, 81,232 students enrolled in college or career programs have received their share of over $43 million in CalKIDS funds.
“This money,” DiBenedetto said, “is making an impact in real time with every single semester that goes by.”
Baleria Contreras and Monica Cha, representatives with the state’s CalKIDS program, explained what the scholarship funds could be used for once students graduate from high school during a community event at Golden 1 Credit Union in Fresno on April 5, 2025.
Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
Top Takeaways
CalKIDS is a state program providing seed money for college or career to eligible public school students.
The number of students claiming their CalKIDS accounts is up by nearly 4 percentage points since last year, but it is still far from reaching most of the state’s students.
The increase is linked to more community engagement, targeted campaigns and multilingual materials.
The doors of the Golden 1 Credit Union remained ajar on April 5 as elementary-aged kids played games or had their faces painted outside while families inside circled the display tables featuring material from the bank and CalKIDS.
The event was to encourage families to open a youth education savings account as well as learn about and claim at least $500 in free scholarship money already sitting in a state-funded account.
Erica Wade-Lamas registered for the interest-bearing money for three of her four Fresno Unified students, an eighth grader and twin seventh graders. (Her twelfth grader was at a prom and would claim his own money later at home.)
“It’s going to be easier on me and my husband, knowing that there’s an extra cushion when they do graduate, to have the ability to use that money for a laptop or something additional that’s not going to have to come out of our pockets,” said Wade-Lamas. “That’s what I’m excited about.”
Even though the money is automatically deposited into the savings account under a student’s name, families must claim the accounts by registering online. Students can claim the money up until age 26.
To expand its reach and create more awareness, CalKIDS is drawing on lessons from the past, plus the perspective of a new director. The program has changed its approach to marketing and expanded its multilingual and community engagement.
Over 3.9 million school-aged children across the state now qualify for at least $500 with CalKIDS, the savings account launched by the state in 2022. It automatically awards at least $500 to low-income students and English learners with the goal of helping families save for college or career training.
The California Department of Education determines eligibility based on students identified as low income under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula or as English language learners.
Low-income public school students and English learners 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.
Are first graders in subsequent years, meaning the number of accounts grows annually.
An additional $500 is deposited for students identified as foster youth and another $500 for students classified as homeless.
Since last year, the number of students who have claimed their funds has gone up 4 percentage points, and 475,862 or 12% of all accounts statewide have been claimed, still far from reaching most of the state’s students.
And since hundreds of thousands of new accounts are automatically added each year, maintaining and increasing the percentage of claimed accounts will be an ever-elusive target, especially as the program starts tackling new challenges created by Assembly Bill 2508, which will expand program eligibility.
The struggle to reach more families
The program’s new director, Cassandra DiBenedetto, appointed in October 2024, has visited various communities to learn about the unique barriers and experiences of those who qualify for CalKIDS.
“What children in Modoc County are experiencing is very different than what children in LA County are experiencing,” she said. “So I’ve really tried to reach out to our partners in various communities and learn about their experiences so that we make well-informed decisions … based on the lived experience of the people we’re trying to reach.”
Awareness — or a lack thereof — has been the No. 1 challenge related to CalKIDS account access.
To improve that, DiBenedetto and her team have, in the past six months, focused on partnering with organizations across the state.
From its inception in summer 2022 through the end of 2023, CalKIDS partnered with about 550 organizations to promote the program, according to the state treasurer’s office. Now it works with more than 1,000 community-based organizations, school districts and financial institutions.
“More and more people are approaching us saying, ‘Hey, we know you’re doing this thing. We want to be involved,’” DiBenedetto said. “I don’t know that, in the first two years of the program, that was necessarily the case, so I think that has been a huge change for us.”
Partnerships, targeted outreach are key
Thanh-Truc “April” Hoang, a second-year student at the University of California Riverside, remembers attending an open house on campus as a high school senior in 2023 and seeing a display table with Riverside County Office of Education material about free money for college. Hoang learned about CalKIDS and what the $500 could be used for. She and her three younger siblings would go on to claim their accounts.
Attending UC Riverside the following semester due to its proximity to her home, Hoang commuted back and forth to campus, saving thousands of dollars in on-campus expenses but faced one unexpected cost: parking. She requested and received her CalKIDS funds to pay for the annual parking permit, lifting a burden off her shoulders — and her parents.
“I didn’t want to burden my parents with having to pay for my college parking,” she said. “I wanted them to feel like they didn’t have to constantly keep looking after me, because I have three younger siblings (two of whom are in high school). I wanted to make sure their burden could be alleviated.”
Since Hoang and her siblings claimed their accounts once she was aware of it, the CalKIDS funds will continue helping her family.
“I was just really glad that we were able to find out about this resource,” said Hoang, who helped her younger cousins claim their accounts.
In its back-to-school campaign from July to October 2024, CalKIDS used social media and mailers to inform high schoolers and high-school graduates about the money waiting to be claimed.
DiBenedetto said that more than 94,000 accounts were claimed in that one targeted marketing campaign; 73% of the new accounts belonged to high school graduates or college students, who could use their money right away.
She said a new partnership with the California Cradle-to-Career Data System will further help reach that population of students, as will partnerships with the California Student Aid Commission and the community college chancellor’s office, which can connect with college students who haven’t claimed their funds.
Addressing language, literacy barriers
Last year, advocates, such as those at End Poverty in California, suggested ways for local communities and the CalKIDS program to address the barriers limiting account access, including:
Rewriting informational materials to a third-grade reading level so more families understand the content.
Advocating for multilingual outreach at the state level.
The CalKIDS team has expanded its multilingual media campaigns, too, ensuring materials, such as event fliers, are available in at least the top 10 languages spoken in California — something that wasn’t available a year ago, DiBenedetto said.
“We are meeting people where they are in the language that they speak,” she said.
Subtle shifts in the way CalKIDS is framed and talked about are just as important as language and literacy, said many interviewed.
According to DiBenedetto, instead of using the term “savings account,” CalKIDS materials now say “scholarship,” “a baby’s first scholarship,” “the easiest scholarship your child will ever get” and simply “claim your money.”
“Sometimes it’s things like the word ‘account’ (that) can be scary in some populations,” she said. “These populations understand the word scholarship.”
Increased awareness, access
Awareness is growing as a result of increased partnerships, targeted outreach and changes in material to address language access and reading comprehension, DiBenedetto said.
“More kids are taking advantage of their CalKIDS scholarship accounts,” she said about the more than 475,000 student accounts claimed as of March 31.
But hundreds of thousands of accounts for first graders are added annually, making the percentage of claimed accounts a “moving target,” she said.
Newborn accounts
Those born in the state between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, were awarded $25 before the seed deposit increased to $100. The California Department of Public Health provides information on newborns. Parents who link the CalKIDS account to a ScholarShare 529 college savings account are eligible for an additional $50 deposit for their newborns. A partnership with Covered California has tied the completion of well-child visits and vaccinations to the ability to earn up to $1,000 in the newborn accounts until March 2026.
More than 400,000 accounts are added annually for newborns as well, and children born in California after June 2023, regardless of their parents’ income, are granted $100.
Nearly 96,000 of over 1 million eligible newborn accounts have been claimed as of March 31.
Altogether, the claimed student and newborn accounts total 571,631, representing an 82% increase from this time last year.
Challenges ahead
Due to September 2024 legislation, CalKIDS’ eligibility will expand to all foster youth in grades 1-12, starting next school year until 2029.
The CalKIDS team does not yet know the numbers for all eligible foster youth but reported that 3,093 claimed their accounts so far. Based on 2023-24 state data, nearly 30,000 students are foster youth, a number that will likely remain consistent next school year when the legislation takes effect.
Millions of dollars have been allocated to program outreach and collaboration.
But in the 2025 budget approved in June, $5 million was reverted back to the general fund, a maneuver often taken to share funds with other programs.
Because the program was still in its early stages, DiBenedetto said, it had a minimal impact on outreach efforts.
The expanded program eligibility and funding changes may present unforeseen obstacles, but the CalKIDS team plans to tackle those challenges by using them as learning opportunities.
“I think that we’ve learned a lot over the last couple years,” DiBenedetto said. “I’ve learned a lot over the last (six) months, and we are ready for whatever comes our way. Every challenge is really just opportunity.”
