اینترنت

برچسب: offer

  • Research: Immigration enforcement hinders schoolwork; schools offer support 

    Research: Immigration enforcement hinders schoolwork; schools offer support 


    March for immigrant rights in Los Angeles in September 2017.

    Credit: Molly Adams / Flickr

    Immigrant students’ schoolwork and experience in the classroom often suffer in the presence of immigration enforcement — with 60% percent of teachers and school staff reporting poorer academic performance, and nearly half noting increased rates of bullying against these students, UCLA-based researchers found.

    “Instead of focusing on their education, these students struggle with this uncertainty and, as a result, are often absent from school or inattentive. Their teachers also struggle to motivate them and sometimes to protect them,” reads a recent policy brief by UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools, Latino Policy and Politics Institute, and Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles.

    “The broken immigration system hurts schools and creates victims across the spectrum of race and ethnicity in the United States, but it is especially acute for these students.”

    According to UCLA’s policy brief, children of “unauthorized immigrants” between the ages of 6 and 16 are 14% more likely to repeat a grade, while those aged 14 to 17 are 18% more likely to drop out of school altogether. 

    One of the most common reasons for students to miss class or drop out is the pressure to work full time to support family members financially, said Yesenia Arroyo, the principal of LAUSD’s RFK School for the Visual Arts and Humanities, where roughly 80% of students are immigrants. 

    She added that she works closely with her school’s counseling staff to connect regularly with students about their academic progress. They also try to find Linked Learning opportunities, where students develop real-world experience, and paid internships — which can help students earn while remaining in school or pursuing their interests.

    “A part of it is really understanding the community that we serve,” Arroyo said, “understanding the students that we serve, understanding what are the challenges and ensuring that we are matching resources, that we’re listening first — that we’re really listening.” 

    Schools and community organizations throughout Los Angeles have taken various approaches to support students who are undocumented or have family members who are — including running a one-of-a-kind high school in Korea Town with an onsite immigration clinic and engaging the services of community organizers to help connect families with resources. 

    “What’s happening in one school, unfortunately, is not something that’s always happening in other schools. And I’m sure that there’s other great leaders that are doing great things. It would be nice to learn from what others are doing,” Arroyo said. 

    “There’s so many different tasks, so much work that we need to do. I wish we had more time to collaborate with other leaders to ensure that we are sharing resources and ideas, so that we are not working in isolation.”

    ‘Wraparound’ support 

    While it is impossible for teachers, administrators and the district as a whole to always know which students are undocumented and in need of support, schools and community organizations have taken various approaches to provide basic assistance. 

    A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Unified School District said that while the district follows the law and does not “collect information or inquire about immigration status,” it supports all students, irrespective of their immigration status. 

    “Schools assist families with affidavits, for example, to ensure students are enrolled, and families are connected to appropriate services and support, even if enrollment documents aren’t available,” the spokesperson said. 

    Meanwhile, 34 of LAUSD’s schools are also community schools, which provide “wraparound” services — from meals to medical assistance — that advocates say are critical for students who are undocumented. 

    Rosie Arroyo (not related to Yesenia), a senior program officer of immigration at the California Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that aims to address systemic challenges facing various communities throughout the region, said housing and mental health resources are in especially high demand for these students and their families.

    “It’s about survival,” Arroyo said. “And right now, there’s a lot of multilayered challenges communities are facing, from being able to make it on a day-by-day basis and having access to resources around just food.”

    As a community school, the School for the Visual Arts and Humanities holds workshops for families every Wednesday, covering a range of topics, from housing to special education and how to access community resources.

    At least a fifth of the school’s parents attend, which principal Arroyo said is particularly difficult to achieve with parents who often work multiple jobs, and because parental involvement usually decreases as students get older.

    Mental health support has also been a big concern at the school — especially as a lot of the students are grappling with serious trauma and lack confidence. Roughly 65% of the behavioral incidents reported to the district by the schools are related to students’ struggles with mental health issues, the principal said, adding that the Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated those challenges. 

    The school now has a QR system posted throughout campus that students can scan to schedule a visit with the school counselor. About a fifth of the students request to see a counselor on a weekly basis, Arroyo added. 

    “A lot of them have been through a lot of trauma on their way into the country. They’ve been abused; they’ve seen death,” she said. “It would be great if we had a system in place to address all these issues that our students come with and provide them with resources.”

    Legal backing 

    Beyond receiving assistance with basic needs, access to legal services and some understanding of individual rights is critical for students, advocates say. 

    In addition to the support it provides its students as a community school, the School for the Visual Arts and Humanities partnered with UCLA in 2019 to launch a permanent one-of-a-kind legal clinic. The clinic space is specifically designed to support students whose families need legal guidance or backing. 

    The RFK Immigrant Family Legal Clinic “is a blessing for our families and for our students, because they have resources that they, perhaps, would not go out on their own to get,” Arroyo said, adding that more than 80% of the students at her school were not born in the U.S., and about 20% immigrated within the past two years. 

    Most of the recent arrivals are from southern Mexico, Central America and South America, though there are students from other parts of the world, including Korea, Russia and Bangladesh. 

    The legal clinic’s team — comprised of a director, manager, two staff attorneys and up to a dozen law students — provides students and families with one-time consultations and, in some cases, legal representation. They are also present in classrooms, during “coffee with the principal” events and during weekly workshops for families — allowing the clinic to become “a trusting face” which Arroyo said is “key to ensuring that our families are actually taking advantage of those resources.” 

    “The clinic has allowed us to relieve stress and anxiety, but there’s just so many kids who don’t have that,” said Nina Rabin, the clinic’s director who also teaches at UCLA. 

    “I just love the school. It’s such a special place.” 

    As more students arrive from around the world and the clinic earns more trust from the communities it serves, the demand grows. The clinic recently expanded to a second location on the same campus.

    Currently, the team has more than 120 cases on its docket, many of them already prepared and sitting in a long, backlogged process that can take years, Rabin said. 

    In any given week, the clinic has roughly a dozen “really active cases” — and they prioritize families that are seeking asylum and students who are eligible for certain visas that only people under the age of 21 can apply for. 

    While “there’s definitely a need beyond what we can currently fill,” Rabin said, the clinic also tries to give more immediate attention to high-need families, unaccompanied minors and those with imminent hearings. 

    “The kids are just kind of incredible — what they take on and how much they’re just survivors and resilient,” Rabin said. 

    “They have so much potential and … there’s so much that’s so, so difficult and unfair about their situation in this country. And so, being able to intervene with this possibility of getting full status at this really prime time in their life, I think is really rewarding when it works, and it has been working. We’ve been getting a lot of kids on that pathway.”

    Through her Facebook group Our Voice/Nuestra Voz, Evelyn Aleman organizes live-streams and virtual workshops every Friday. Most of the group’s LAUSD parents, she said, are either in fully undocumented or mixed-status families and are looking to find ways to support and advocate for their children in school. 

    Usually, she said, 20 to 30 parents attend the Zoom sessions, while up to 400 might opt to stream them later. 

    “We continuously ask our parents ‘OK, what information would you like us to bring to Our Voice?’” Aleman said. “Consistently, they’ll say, in addition to education, but primarily, they’ll say, immigrant rights.” 

    This year, Aleman is partnering with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles to host a 10-workshop series — each week discussing a different topic. 

    The topics related to immigration status will include: “know your rights,” “public charge,” “DACA,” “resources for undocumented students,” “citizenship” and “notario fraud prevention + referrals for non-profit immigration legal services.” 

    Building trust with undocumented and mixed-status families is critical, she said, because many remain wary of fraudulent attorneys and notaries because of their prior experiences or the experiences of people they know. 

    “They take their money, and they run,” Aleman said. “The families lose hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars investing with the hope … that they’ll help them.” 

    Moving forward 

    To support students who are undocumented or from mixed-status families, the UCLA brief emphasizes the importance of investing in community schools, participating in partnerships with community-based organizations and providing “Know Your Rights” guidance from the California Department of Education. 

    The brief also urges school districts to hire more counselors and school support staff, improve diversity in the ranks of teachers and offer more professional development opportunities. 

    Lucrecia Santibañez, the faculty co-director of the Center for the Transformation of Schools, co-author of the brief, said expanding support for teachers is key because some may not know how to handle a situation where an undocumented student comes forward. 

    “Teachers themselves have to be really careful about having these conversations. They obviously want to support the kids, they want to support their families,” Santibañez said. These situations add to teachers’ stress and create more work for them. Being better prepared to handle them would be a big help, she said.

    Santibañez also emphasized the negative psychological impacts of anti-immigrant rhetoric — not only for students who might be undocumented or come from mixed-status families, but for all students. 

    “If I’m here legally, I may get comfortable in saying, ‘Well, that’s somebody else’s problem, right? I’m not going to get deported. My kids aren’t going to come home and not see me because I got sent back,’” Santibañez said. 

    “It is actually our problem. It is everybody’s problem because kids in schools, even when they themselves are not undocumented, they’re feeling the fear, they’re feeling the uncertainty.”





    Source link

  • Can Virginia colleges offer a model to California on getting community college students to earn university degrees?

    Can Virginia colleges offer a model to California on getting community college students to earn university degrees?


    Steve Perez chats with a representative at the Northern Virginia Community College Office of Wellness and Mental Health resource table during the ADVANCE program welcome event at George Mason University on Jan. 31.

    Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource

    Steve Perez faced a daunting challenge as he considered where to attend college. 

    The first in his family to pursue a higher education, Perez was “basically all on my own.” Rejected from his top choice, Virginia Tech, he was considering community college near his hometown of Falls Church, Virginia. But he worried whether he would be able to successfully transfer to a four-year university, knowing it would be up to him to take the right courses and successfully apply for admission. 

    “No one in my family really knows anything about college,” he said. “That was really tough.”

    All of that changed when his high school counselor told him about ADVANCE, a partnership between Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University that is anchored by dual admission to both schools.

    Students start at the community college but are immediately accepted to George Mason before even taking their first community college class. The colleges also provide students up front with the full list of courses they need to earn their bachelor’s degree, a task that in other states is often left to students. 

    Northern Virginia Community College serves about 70,000 students across its six campuses in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., more than any other community college in the state. Likewise, George Mason is the largest public research university in Virginia with about 40,000 students, most of them commuters. Their main campuses separated by just 5 miles, Northern Virginia historically has sent more students to George Mason than any other community college.

    A statue of George Mason on the George Mason University campus in Fairfax.
    Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource

    Officials say the ADVANCE program perfected that transfer partnership. Since launching in 2018, just over 1,500 students in the program have successfully transferred to Mason, including 415 this past fall. More than 90% of students in the program graduate within two years of transferring to Mason.

    The program stands out nationally, even earning kudos from the federal Department of Education for solving a widespread problem of a cumbersome transfer process that stymies students in community college.

    In California, most community college students who want to get a bachelor’s degree never transfer. Without adequate support, they often struggle to keep track of courses, ending up with too many credits but lacking required classes. One study found that as few as 2.5% of students intending to transfer do so within two years, and only 23% do so within four years.

    The Virginia program could serve as a model for California colleges. The state is in the early stages of adopting its own dual admission programs at both of its public university systems, the University of California and California State University. CSU’s program, open to far more students than UC’s, is especially exciting to college access advocates.

    Both programs launched this past fall, and officials are hopeful it will make transferring easier for students.

    Taking away the guesswork

    In Virginia, the idea of ADVANCE is to “take away the guesswork for students,” said Jen Nelson, the community college’s director of university transfer and initiatives. 

    Upon enrolling, students receive a link to a portal where they select one of 85 academic pathways, such as business, computer science or psychology. Based on their pathway, the portal then shows them all the classes they need to take to transfer and eventually earn a bachelor’s degree.

    “It provides that guarantee that if students take these classes, they’re going to transfer,” Nelson said. “It takes away that concern of, am I taking the right thing? Am I spending my time and money in the right way?”

    As long as they maintain at least a minimum grade point average — usually a 2.5 — students are automatically admitted to Mason. They don’t even need to fill out an application. 

    Along the way, students can meet with counselors who are hired specifically for the ADVANCE program. They also have full access to all the resources offered at Mason, including clubs, libraries and even health care.

    In Perez’s case, he chose a computer science pathway and this semester started his lower-division classes, which include general education, math and introductory computer science classes. He’s on track to transfer to George Mason within two years.

    At a recent resource fair for new students hosted on the Mason campus, Perez walked from table to table, learning about the resources offered by Mason, including club sports, mental health services and tutoring. He can participate in all of it now that he’s in the program.

    Steve Perez grabs a informational card at the Northern Virginia Community College Office of Wellness and Mental Health resource table during the ADVANCE program welcome event at George Mason University on Jan. 31.
    Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource

    “I’m really happy I chose this pathway because it gives me a great opportunity,” he said. “And it takes away the stress.”

    Not long before ADVANCE launched in 2018, Janette Muir remembers sitting in on an advising session at Northern Virginia for her son, who had recently graduated from high school.

    Muir, a professor and George Mason’s associate provost for academic initiatives at the time, was shocked to learn how confusing the transfer process was.

    Students received little guidance, and many were taking unnecessary courses. 

    “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so confusing for even a student who has professors as his parents,’” she said.

    Her son and other students, Muir said, needed more help. Muir started working with the presidents of both institutions to develop ADVANCE. 

    Janette Muir addresses ADVANCE students and their friends and family during the welcome event at George Mason University in January.
    Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource

    That year, the two colleges launched the program with 21 pathways. It has since grown to 85 pathways, and more than 4,500 students have enrolled since the program’s inception. 

    Any student can enroll so long as they have not completed more than 30 college credits, and students who do enroll tend to stick around. Among the students in the cohort that entered in fall 2021, 87% returned the following year, far better than the national average retention rate of 61%. 

    When they transfer to Mason, ADVANCE students on average graduate two semesters faster than non-ADVANCE transfer students. In fact, 92% of them graduate within two years of transferring. Students also finish an associate degree upon transferring, which officials say is important to ensure they have the necessary preparation in their major. 

    Muir, who now oversees ADVANCE in her role as Mason’s vice provost for academic affairs, said officials have started to expect students to finish the entire program in four years rather than six. 

    “When you come into this program and you follow the pathways, you do better and you finish sooner,” Muir told new students gathered at a welcome event in January. 

    For Jaden Todd, a second-year community college student in the program, having access to the pathways portal has been especially helpful. 

    When Todd first started college, learning certain classes would transfer to some universities but not others was a “big shocker.” He took a Western history class only to learn that it wouldn’t be accepted at another college he was considering, Virginia Commonwealth University, which required a world history course. 

    “There’s stuff like that where I spent several hundred dollars on a class just to be informed that I would have to retake a class in a similar area,” he said.

    When it comes to the courses he needs to transfer to and ultimately graduate from Mason, however, there are no surprises. 

    If students do have questions, they have access to counselors who have been hired specifically for the ADVANCE program. 

    Emma Howard, a sophomore who will transfer to Mason this fall, consulted her adviser after learning that one of her courses, which she thought qualified as an elective, wasn’t going to be transferable.

    The adviser called the transfer center at Mason and successfully convinced them to count the course, an acting for the camera class.

    “They really try to make your time here easier,” Howard said. “They bring a lot of ease and just faith in the matriculation process.”

    Eliminating the ‘transfer shock’

    When Maria Fruchterman transferred this past fall to Mason, she already had a close circle of friends. That’s because, while she was taking her lower-division community college classes, she was also playing club field hockey at Mason. It was a perk afforded to her because she was in the ADVANCE program.

    “It’s been really good for my transition,” Fruchterman said. “I just felt at ease and very comfortable.”

    Maria Fruchterman answers questions about the ADVANCE program during a welcome event at George Mason University in Virginia.
    Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource

    The motivation to give Northern Virginia students access to the Mason campus was two-fold, Nelson said. For one, as a community college, Northern Virginia doesn’t offer all the same benefits and resources available at Mason and other four-year institutions, like health insurance and mental health counseling.

    Officials also wanted to eliminate the “transfer shock” that transfer students often deal with upon arriving at the four-year university, Nelson said. “They’re going to a new environment. Everything is different,” she added.

    By giving students access to those resources up front, it allows them to “hit the ground running,” Nelson said.

    That’s what Perez is planning for himself. While visiting Mason’s main Fairfax campus for the welcome event, he felt a different buzz than what he was accustomed to at Northern Virginia’s main campus in nearby Annandale. 

    “I noticed that there’s so many more people around,” he said. “Especially in Annandale, it seems like everyone leaves campus by 3 p.m.”

    As he learned about the different clubs offered at Mason, Perez said he planned to join several: a computer science club, a chess club, maybe even an intramural badminton team. 

    Can California replicate?

    Whether California’s dual admission programs will significantly improve transfer won’t be known for some time. Both programs are in their infancy, just launched last fall.

    Between the two, CSU may have a better chance at success, with a far more robust program than what UC offers. About 2,000 students enrolled in CSU’s first cohort, compared to just 182 for UC. 

    CSU’s program is open to essentially any first-time college freshman entering a California community college. Students can enroll by creating an account on the CSU Transfer Planner portal and selecting from one of the degree programs across CSU’s 23 campuses. Eligible students are guaranteed admission. 

    UC’s program is limited only to students who applied to UC but weren’t eligible because they didn’t complete their A-G course requirements in high school. That was the minimum required by a state law passed in 2021 creating the dual admission programs. 

    The law, designed to give students a second chance at attending UC or CSU, asks UC and requires CSU to offer dual admission to students who didn’t “meet freshman admissions eligibility criteria due to limitations in the high school curriculum offered or personal or financial hardship.” CSU’s program goes beyond what’s required by law by offering dual admission to just about any student who was rejected or simply chose not to attend CSU.

    UC may be less incentivized to admit students because several campuses have capacity issues and turn away many qualified applicants each year. UC’s program is limited to only six of its nine undergraduate campuses, with its three most exclusive campuses — Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego — not included. 

    CSU’s dual admission program is available at every campus, though select programs with capacity issues are excluded, such as some engineering programs at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. 

    CSU officials hope the dual admission program will eliminate a problem with the current system: local campuses and their staff aren’t familiar with prospective transfer students until they apply. 

    “We want this to be an opportunity for us to connect with them way earlier in the process and support them,” said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor of enrollment management. 

    Similar to the Virginia program, students on CSU’s dual admission pathway get access to an online transfer planner showing them all the classes they need upfront.

    Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s higher education center, is hopeful it will make a meaningful difference. In an August 2023 PPIC report, Johnson and other researchers identified dual admission as a “promising approach” to help solve California’s transfer dilemma. 

    “A lot of the challenge for community college students when they start is knowing what is required to get into UC and CSU,” he said. “By front loading all of that information, we think students would face fewer obstacles and be more efficient.”

    In addition, CSU’s dual admission program gives community college students access to programs and services available at the campus closest to their residence, like the ADVANCE program does. One CSU campus, Long Beach, for years has already been offering something similar. As part of the “Long Beach Promise 2.0,” launched in 2018, students at nearby Long Beach City College have the option to receive a “future student” ID card for CSU Long Beach and can access the campus library, athletic events, clubs and more.

    “A lot of research in higher education focused on why students complete or why they don’t complete has included this notion of belonging, feeling a part of the campus,” Johnson said. “And I think the more that you can do for community college students can only help that sense of belonging so that when you eventually do transfer, you feel like it’s your school.”

    In Virginia, staff at George Mason and the community college are often asked how other colleges can replicate their success.

    Jennifer Nelson addresses ADVANCE students and their friends and family during the welcome event at George Mason University.
    Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource

    Officials at those colleges point out that the two institutions have several factors working in their favor. The partnership is natural given the geographic proximity and historical relationship between the colleges. There are a number of faculty who have taught at both colleges. The colleges’ presidents work closely and actually spend time with each other, like meeting up for an occasional breakfast. 

    “How do you do this work? I can tell you it’s not easy. If it was easy, lots of people would be doing it,” Muir said. “It takes a lot of relationship-building, a lot of connection and recognizing the value of a community college education.”





    Source link

  • Public school choice exists in California, but few districts offer it

    Public school choice exists in California, but few districts offer it


    A Walnut Valley Unified kindergarten teacher shows her students a book during class.

    Credit: Walnut Valley Unified / Facebook

    An underused, little-known public school choice program allowing students to enroll in other districts that open their borders has been reauthorized six times in the past 30 years. Under a bill winding its way through the Legislature, it would become permanent, with revised rules.

    Under the District of Choice program, districts announce how many seats they make available to nonresident students by the fall of the preceding year, and parents must apply by Jan. 1. By statute, enrollment is open to any family that applies, without restrictions — and with a lottery if applications are oversubscribed. The program bans considering academic or athletic ability or, if an applicant is a student with special needs, the cost of educating a student. 

    “This bill is a crucial step towards creating a more inclusive and equitable public education system — one where all students have the opportunity to grow and thrive,” said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, the author of Senate Bill 897.

    With enrollments dropping statewide — and projected to continue — districts could view District of Choice as a strategy to stem the decline and bolster revenue that new students would bring. But few districts have seized the option. At most, 50 districts out of nearly 1,000, mostly rural or suburban and small, have signed on.

    That number, in turn, has restricted the openings for families; fewer than 10,000 students annually have transferred through the program — about 0.2% of California’s students, according to an evaluation of the program by the Legislative Analyst’s Office in 2021.

    The list of districts for 2024-25 will be 44, the same as this year. That is down from 47 districts in 2021-22, when a total of 8,398 students transferred, according to the latest data available from the California Department of Education.

    Of those, 2,574 students — 31% of the total — transferred to a single district, Walnut Valley Unified, a 14,000-student district in the San Gabriel Valley. The district includes the cities of Walnut and Diamond Bar and abuts Pomona Unified. Newman, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, represents Walnut Valley; his predecessor, Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, also championed District of Choice and shepherded a previous five-year reauthorization.

    Together with five other districts receiving the most students — Oak Park Unified, Glendora Unified, West Covina Unified, Valley Lindo Elementary School District and Riverside Unified — the five received 82% of the students in the program statewide. Riverside, with 1,100 of its 42,000 students enrolled through District of Choice, is the only large district using the program.  

    Robert Taylor, Walnut Valley Unified’s superintendent, said the district had participated in the program for decades, in the belief that the district “should provide any child an opportunity regardless of special needs, socioeconomic status or street address. And that’s still today. We take every kid who wants to come.”

    Taylor cited the “diversity of well-rounded opportunities” that draw outsiders: Arts offerings in elementary schools, starting in kindergarten, include dance, theater and music and are taught by professionals in the arts, he said. There is a counselor in every elementary school, and counselors stay with the same students throughout high school and meet one-on-one with them during the summer. The graduation rate is 100%, he said.

    Responding to an allegation he hears, Taylor said, “No, we don’t cherry-pick students. We don’t want to, and it’s been against the law to.”  The 2017 reauthorization of the law requires that districts give low-income students priority for transfers, and SB 897 would add homeless and foster children as well. The 23% of low-income students from other districts enrolled at Walnut Unified are slightly less than the 25% overall in the district.

    Students from 30 districts have enrolled through District of Choice, Taylor said, and some parents drive from more than an hour away. One district that has not been sending additional students is its larger, less affluent neighbor, Pomona Unified, where 85% of its 22,000 students are from low-income families.

    Under an arcane rule, a district can cap the number of students it permits to leave for districts of choice at a cumulative 10% of its average daily attendance since it first joined the program — even if many students have long since graduated from high school. Pomona reached that limit a half-dozen years ago, after going to court to prove that Walnut Valley had already exceeded the target, said Superintendent Darren Knowles.  

    SB 897 would delete that clause and replace it with a new annual cap: 10% of a district’s current average daily attendance for districts with fewer than 50,000 students and 1% for districts with more than 50,000 students. Sending districts would also be exempt if county offices of education verified that a loss of students to the program would jeopardize their financial stability.

    Pomona Unified was the only opponent listed at a hearing last month in the Senate Education Committee, where the bill passed unanimously. Rowland Unified, a 13,000-student district to the west of Walnut Valley, has also complained about the financial impact of the transfer program. 

    Knowles said he doesn’t oppose the concept of school choice, if the distribution is equitable. But before reaching the cap, Walnut Valley drew disproportionately high numbers of white and Asian families from the wealthier neighborhoods in Diamond Bar that lie within Pomona Unified. The latter may be attracted to the two dual Chinese language immersion programs in Walnut Valley.

    Wealthier families are able to drive their kids to Walnut Valley; low-income Latino families with both parents working more than likely can’t, said Knowles.

    “The District of Choice does not create a good distribution for Pomona Unified,” Knowles said. “We need kids excelling as well as those struggling. Taking out the smartest kids in any district is not a good situation.”

    Pomona Unified already has closed six elementary schools due to declining enrollment, Knowles said. The new cap could “decimate us within five years,” Knowles said. “Give us time to recover, a reprieve.”

    Newman said that he is open to further accommodations for an adverse financial impact. “We don’t want well-intended legislation to have unintended consequences,” he told EdSource. 

    Who chooses?

    In its 2021 evaluation, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that District of Choice “allows students to access educational options that are not offered in their home districts,” including college prep courses, arts and music and foreign languages. Nearly all the students transferred to districts with higher test scores.

    Newly required oversight measures found no districts discriminating against interested students, and that the program appeared to increase racial balance for some districts and reduce it for others, the LAO said, “although the changes for most districts are small.” It found that statewide, fewer low-income students used the program, compared with other students in their home districts; however, the proportion of those students had risen over four years from 27% to 32%. Participation of Latino students, though also on the rise, was smaller than the Latino enrollment in their home districts — similar to Pomona and Walnut Valley.

    Among the last children to transfer from Pomona to Walnut Valley six years ago, right before the limit was reached, is Ethan Fermin. Then entering kindergarten, he is now in sixth grade at Suzanne Middle School. His sister, now in second grade, was admitted through an interdistrict transfer, a more restrictive permit process that requires both districts to approve the move. A family must make the case for the transfer or cite a hardship — in this case, the transportation challenges of having kids in two different districts.  Parents whose children are denied a transfer can appeal to the county board of education, which often reverses a decision.

    Ethan’s father, Billy, graduated from Pomona Unified schools; he was high school class president and active in many school activities, Fermin said. From his home, he can see the elementary school his kids would have attended — a two-minute walk from their house. Friends from high school are Pomona teachers. His kids would have attended his high school, Diamond Ranch High.

    Leaving the district wasn’t easy, he said, adding, “But it’s a different world from when I went to school.”  What caught his eye in Walnut Valley, he said, was a program in two elementary schools that leads to the International Baccalaureate, a rigorous high school program that stresses inquiry-based learning. He liked the early years’ focus on developing well-rounded, creative and open-minded learners and risk-takers. “Given the choice, it was night and day,” he said.

    Taylor said Walnut Valley doesn’t market its programs as District of Choice, and he doesn’t speak negatively about other districts. Fermin said the district is smart to use social media heavily to show off what’s happening in its schools, and banners go up at the start of the sign-up period.

    Possible reasons for so little participation

    Charter schools are by far the largest public school choice program in California. The more than 1,200 charter schools served 685,553 students in 2022-23 — 11.7% of statewide enrollment, compared with about 2% through interdistrict transfers and 0.02% through District of Choice.  

    The Legislature passed laws permitting charter schools in 1992 and the District of Choice a year later. Both were viewed as strategies to counter a school voucher initiative that would have provided public funding for private school tuition, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s analysis. Voters trounced the voucher initiative, which drew only 30% support in the 1993 vote.

    Why so few districts have participated in the program is a matter of conjecture. The five-year reauthorization periods raised the risk for districts and parents that their participation might be cut short. Ken Kapphahn, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office who did the evaluation, said some districts are able to receive as many interested transfer students as they want through the interdistrict permit process, under which they can set academic and behavior conditions.  

    Some districts would involve long drives to get to, while others assume they don’t have special offerings to lure lots of students, he said. And it’s his impression, he said, that many districts still don’t know the program exists; the California Department of Education does not promote it.  

    Newman said there is an entrepreneurial potential of the program that many superintendents haven’t recognized. The ability to draw students from nearby districts could inspire “a high level of innovation” that best serves students’ interests, he said. 

    Former President of the State Board of Education Mike Kirst, who said he supports making the program permanent, suggested another reason: It could be that district superintendents consider District of Choice a violation of an unwritten education commandment, Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s enrollment.

    “It’s a professional norm that you don’t try to ‘poach’ students from other districts,” he said.





    Source link

  • Charter schools should be encouraged to offer flexibility for diverse student needs

    Charter schools should be encouraged to offer flexibility for diverse student needs


    Courtesy: Connecting Waters Charter Schools

    When education policy and funding decisions are enacted into law, it is critical that they be made through the lens of what is best for students. California leads the nation in supporting a wide range of innovative education options that have the potential to accommodate the needs and challenges of a very diverse student population.

    Among the most innovative education models are flex-based, personalized-learning public charter schools, which are mistakenly referred to as nonclassroom-based schools. These 300-plus public charter schools have become recognized as leaders in providing flexible and tailored education for hundreds of thousands of students in California for whom a traditional classroom-only model is not a good match. The term “nonclassroom” is a misnomer as the majority of these schools have classroom facilities where students can learn in-person several days a week.

    There are many reasons why some students do better in a nontraditional education model. Students who were bullied at their previous school, have physical or mental health challenges or have learning disabilities often thrive in a flexible learning environment. Some are foster youth, unhoused, teen parents, or at risk of dropping out of school. Others have simply fallen behind in meeting grade-level standards because they needed a model that better accommodates their individual needs. Others thrive working independently and want to participate in the real-world learning and internships that the schools offer. 

    APLUS+ member schools, comprising about one-third of the flex-based schools in California, serve a diverse student population: 57% of students enrolled are economically disadvantaged and nearly 15% are students with special needs. Many of these students enroll with APLUS+ member schools for academic recovery to get back on track or simply because their life circumstances and challenges are better served through a more flexible and personalized approach to learning. For example, most students who enroll in Learn4Life, an APLUS+ member school, are 17 or older, lack more than 50 credits, and are reading at a fifth grade level. These students graduate from high school, and 41% pursue post-secondary education within two years.

    Flex-based public schools are tuition-free and are open to any student in the state who wants to have an individualized education plan that is tailored for their needs and goals. These schools employ credentialed teachers, abide by student teacher ratios and administer the state’s standardized CAASPP/Smarter Balanced tests. They also administer internal assessments, which showed that in the 2023-24 school year, a high percentage of students who newly enrolled in APLUS+ member schools were significantly below grade level standards in their previous schools.

    Hundreds of thousands of students across the state are thriving at their flex-based schools. Unfortunately, two bad actor organizations operating within this sector have cast a shadow on the charter school sector. As a result of these two bad actor organizations, the California State Legislature recently commissioned the Legislative Analyst Office and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team to issue a report with recommendations to improve and streamline the process in which nonclassroom-based charter schools are funded and held accountable.

    The report rightfully acknowledged that the term “nonclassroom-based instruction” is a misnomer, given the diversity of innovative models within the sector and that a significant percentage of these schools operate one or more facilities used for in-person instruction.  

    One of the report’s recommendations was to change the definition of “nonclassroom-based instruction” so that more schools within this segment would qualify for facility subsidies and funding for after-school and expanded learning programs that are currently unavailable to them. While on the surface, reclassification may appear beneficial to students, the opposite is true as it would eliminate the flexibility that accommodates students for whom a classroom-only model is not a good match.

    State education policies should be changed to allow public charter schools with flex-based hybrid programs that operate facilities for instruction to qualify for funding for facilities and after-school programs. Policies should also be changed to allow more students at traditional schools to take part in flexible independent study programs so that they too can benefit from a more tailored and adaptable education program. This change in thinking — and state policy — would allow more students, such as those who have health issues, special needs, or are accelerated learners, to participate in independent study programs.

    Technology and the pandemic have impacted traditional views of teaching and revealed that the future of education must be rooted in flexibility. As the Legislature considers potential reforms in the future, they should prioritize the needs of our diverse student population and allow high-quality schools to offer flexible education models.

    •••

    Jeff Rice is founder/director of the Association of Personalized Learning Schools and Services (APLUS+), a membership association supporting schools that provide a flex-based education.

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





    Source link

  • Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance tickets offer radically different visions of public education

    Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance tickets offer radically different visions of public education


    Kamala Harris introduces Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as running mate in Philadelphia on Aug. 6, 2024. Credit: Phil McAuliffe/Polaris

    Rarely if ever have visions of education offered by the two major party tickets in a presidential campaign been so radically different. 

    Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate this week affirmed her total support of public education — along with her acknowledgment of the crucial contributions of teachers, not only to her personal success but to the well-being of the nation as a whole. In his first appearance with Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Walz spoke favorably of her view of education as a “ticket to the middle class.”

    By contrast, Trump and Vance take a conspiratorial view of education in which public schools are viewed as vehicles to indoctrinate children into left-wing ideologies. Rather than strengthening public education, a major goal of the Trump campaign, as in his previous ones, would be to provide parents with alternatives to what he, and many others on the right, disparagingly refer to as “government schools.”

    “Our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs,” Trump declared in a video outlining his position earlier this year. To undercut the far-left influence he is alleging, he is promising to “cut funding for any school program that promotes critical race theory, gender ideologies, or any other racial, sexual or political content.”

    Harris has yet to issue a campaign platform on education (or any other issue for that matter). But when she ran for president in 2019, support for public education was a key element, including backing universal preschool and debt-free college. Not surprisingly, the American Federation of Teachers was the first major union to endorse her presidential bid this year, soon followed by the National Education Association. And as vice president, she has been a prominent advocate on behalf of President Joe Biden’s many education initiatives, including his big push to provide student loan relief.

    In Philadelphia, Walz acknowledged he is almost certainly the first vice presidential nominee whose principal occupation before entering politics was as a public school teacher. 

    For a decade, Walz taught social studies and coached football at Mankato West High School in a politically mixed community 80 miles from Minneapolis. Before moving to there, he and wife Gwen were teachers in Nebraska for nearly 10 years.

    As governor, one of his catchphrases has been to “fully fund” public schools. To that end, last year, he pushed for a $7 billion increase in school funding — and was eventually able to convince the Legislature, in the face of Republican opposition, to approve a $2.2 billion increase, still a significant amount in his state. He also signed a bill allowing schools to offer free meals for all students regardless of income.   

    Vance, by contrast, has echoed much of Trump’s rhetoric on education. On the website for his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign, for example, he lashed out at “the continued CRT indoctrination in our kids’ schools.” He also took aim at what he called the “radical left’s culture war waged during Covid-19” in closing public schools during the pandemic.  

    In Congress, Vance has focused most of his attention on higher education, and what he has called “left-wing domination” of colleges and universities. In the Senate, for example, he has sponsored legislation making it more difficult for colleges to accept donations from “foreign entities” – which he said would prevent the Chinese Communist Party from “exerting influence over American educational institutions.” 

    By contrast, Walz, as governor, has made greater access to public universities in his state a major priority. That includes backing the North Star Scholarship Program which underwrites tuition to any public college in Minnesota, along with big increases in funding to higher education in general. 

    Nowhere are the differences between the two tickets in their visions for education starker than in their views on teachers. 

    Harris has repeatedly paid tribute to Frances Wilson, her first-grade teacher at Thousand Oaks Elementary School in Berkeley. In recognition of the challenges teachers face, a major pledge in her 2019 campaign for president was a hugely ambitious initiative to raise the average salaries of teachers by $13,500 through a massive 10-year, $315 billion federal program.  

    In Philadelphia, Walz shared that not only was his father a teacher, but that he and his three siblings “followed in his footsteps.” He, like two of his three siblings, married a teacher. His wife, Gwen, has been a “public educator” for 29 years. “Don’t ever underestimate teachers,” Walz told the crowd amid cheers. 

    Trump, by contrast, continues to berate teachers for supposedly indoctrinating children with anti-American ideologies. In his campaign video, he railed against “Marxism being taught in schools” that “is aggressively hostile to Judeo-Christian teaching.” 

    “As the saying goes, personnel is policy, and at the end of the day, if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids, we have a major problem,” Trump said. 

    He is also promising to create a “new credentialing body” to certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them.” He also wants to abolish teacher tenure, and to give preference in federal funding to states and school districts that support his efforts to do so. 

    Walz has been unafraid to take on some of the more difficult issues around gender identity in schools. While at Mankato West High, he agreed to be the first faculty sponsor of the gay-straight alliance on the campus. “It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married” in the position, he explained. 

    Within minutes of Harris announcing her vice presidential pick, commentators on Fox News were going after Walz for supporting legislation requiring tampons in boys’ bathrooms (actually all bathrooms), along with the more customary GOP critique that both of them will be controlled by teachers’ unions.

    It is impossible to predict just how large a role issues like these will play in the remaining 90 days of this accelerated campaign. But what is clear is that any battles around education will be waged on ideological grounds, rather than on the best policies to improve public education, and, most importantly, what is needed to ensure that all students succeed. 





    Source link

  • To expand appeal, California apprenticeships in construction trades offer child care support

    To expand appeal, California apprenticeships in construction trades offer child care support


    Cindy Crisanto, an ironworker apprentice, says the child care benefit is “a lifesaver” that allows her to pursue a career in construction. She is one of the few women ironworkers on the construction site at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.

    Credit: Courtesy of Cindy Crisanto

    After bouncing around in several job paths, including retail sales, office receptionist and warehouse worker, Cindy Crisanto has begun a potentially lucrative career as a welder and ironworker — a field with very few women.

    She made that switch with the aid of a new state apprenticeship program that provides child care funds during her on-the-job training, helping her to overcome an obstacle many women face in trying to enter the construction trades while also raising a family.

    Crisanto — a single mother of two elementary school-aged boys — is receiving about $800 a month in state subsidies for child care expenses, a part of a push to bolster the ranks of women and other underrepresented people into such male-dominated jobs as plumbers, electricians, carpenters and welders. She is now in her first year of an apprenticeship program run by an ironworkers union local in connection with Cerritos College, a community college near Los Angeles.

    “It makes a huge difference. It’s a lifesaver,” Crisanto, 36, of Los Angeles, said of the subsidy. The money is particularly helpful because the very early work hours at construction sites make it hard to find and otherwise afford child care at schools and regular centers, she and others explain. Under the apprenticeship with Ironworkers Local 433, she begins working at 6:30 a.m. installing window and elevator structures at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art under construction south of downtown Los Angeles.

    The child care subsidy is part of a wider campaign spearheaded by Gov. Gavin Newsom to expand apprenticeship opportunities in many different fields for Californians usually not pursuing college degrees.

    The goal is to enroll a half-million Californians in state-supported apprenticeship programs by 2029 — a huge increase from the approximately 84,000 in 2018 when Newsom announced the effort.

    The related child care funding comes from the Equal Representation in Construction Apprenticeship Grant (ERICA), for which the state has appropriated a total of $15.6 million over two years. A participant in pre-apprenticeships — readiness programs that often get them up to speed in math and general work skills — can receive up to $5,000 a year for child care. Those, like Cristano, in the next step, the actual paid on-the-job apprenticeships, can get up to $10,0000 annually.

    Officials and labor experts say the child care money represents a new strategy after past efforts to diversify the trades by gender showed little progress. The program is supposed to help “women, non-binary and underserved communities interested in a rewarding career in the building and construction industry,” according to the state Division of Apprenticeship Standards. (Men are eligible as well, but they are not the prime target.) The child care grants became available last year from the state budget and are distributed via labor unions, nonprofit organizations and colleges chosen in a competition.

    Another nearly $9 million is earmarked for campaigns to recruit more women, to run career fairs and to offer workplace training.

    The goal is to turn those women, many of whom barely made ends meet in the past, into skilled construction professionals earning close to $100,000 a year.

    Although the aid seems to be encouraging more women to enroll as apprentices, officials say it is too early to determine whether the program will significantly boost the number who persist through the four years or so the paid trainings can require.

    Some 37 women are among the nearly 1,200 apprentices in Cerritos College’s ironworkers program run with the union, according to Graciela Vasquez, the school’s dean of continuing education. But that is about 40% higher than before the child care money and the accompanying push to attract more women into the trades, she said.

    In the past, female participation in state-authorized apprenticeships across California could hardly have been smaller.

    Women comprise only about 10% of the nearly 95,100 current job training apprenticeships that are formally recognized by the state and receive some state money across many industries, according to the Division of Apprenticeship Standards. Even worse, just 3% or 4% of apprentices in building trades such as carpentry, plumbing, ironworking and electrical are women. However, women are strongly represented in a few apprenticeships, mainly in health care, child care and culinary services.

    With the child care grants and other funds for recruitment and training, enrollment of women apprentices in construction appears to be moving “in the right direction,” said Adele Burnes, deputy chief of the state apprenticeship standards agency. “We hope to start to see higher percentages in one, two or three years from now.”

    Finding and affording child care can be more difficult because of construction fields’ early work shifts and the need sometimes to work far from home. So the grant had to be “a bit more flexible if we really want to help people in the trades,” said Burnes. The subsidies can be used for private babysitters, even friends and family members, with proper proof of the work hours, as well as for day care centers and after-school care.

    Crisanto first earned a certificate in welding at a local adult school and was connected to the career apprenticeship, which includes some classes run by Cerritos College. She uses the child care grant to pay a relative who gets her children ready and takes them to school in the morning. That allows her to pursue a career path that is much more fulfilling and well paid than her past jobs. 

    She and other women say they sometimes face doubts and harassment in a male-dominated industry. But she added, “I love what I do. That’s what keeps me going, seeing I can keep up with the guys and keep learning. I am making something of myself. And this is my reward: my career.”

    The subsidies may make a difference, said Felicia Hall, a workforce development manager for Tradeswomen, an organization that recruits women into construction careers and runs apprenticeship readiness programs across California. “That is one thing we hear from all our mentees, even men. Child care is the No. 1 thing that hinders them from completing the program,” she said.

    Among the substantial awards from the program, the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California is distributing $2 million for child care and has received another $1 million to recruit women; Cerritos College got $600,000 for child care and $300,000 for outreach and community building; the Fresno Area Workforce Investment Corp. got $1.4 million and $400,000.

    (The apprenticeships are usually run by councils of labor unions and industries, with the state looking over their shoulders.)

    In some locations, the overwhelming number of men in a trade has caused more men than women to receive the child care subsidy, officials report. Nevertheless, Jeremy Smith, of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, said the funds are especially helpful to keep women on the job and make “their work-life balance much easier.”

    Still, with state revenues in decline, it is not certain whether the money will continue to be available after 2025.  Women apprentices hope the program survives.

    Rocio Campos, an apprentice ironworker, on a recent construction job at the Los Angeles Zoo. Child care subsidies are important for her.
    Cerritos College

    Rocio Campos came to the U.S. from El Salvador at age 10 and now lives in Littlerock in northern Los Angeles County. Since she was a teenager, she held various jobs, including office work, sales, cashier, drafting and design. Sometimes, she took a second job on weekends to help pay bills. Tired of instability and low pay, she tried to enter a nursing program at a community college but wound up on a waiting list because it was overcrowded. Instead, she took a welding class and enjoyed that. That led to an apprenticeship with Ironworkers Local 433 and jobs assembling solar energy panels and windmills. 

    A divorced mother, she was able to get between $800 and $1,200 monthly in ERICA child care funds that she uses to pay her mother to take care of her two sons, ages 11 and 17, while she is on the job, sometimes out of state. Previously, she paid her mother out of her own wages. The grant “really helped me out a lot,” Campos, 36, said. And she finds on-the-job satisfaction from “assembling things from bottom to top.”

    An ironwork apprentice, for example, usually starts earning about $24 an hour, and that goes up to $47 or so over four years by the time they graduate and become a journey person. Some work can be seasonal with unpaid breaks between projects, but overtime pay can be substantial as well.

    Dulce Martinez, 34, of San Jose, emigrated from Mexico at age 11 and, after high school, attended community college on and off. She held a series of jobs — from a house cleaner to a school health clerk — and became the mother of two boys, now 10 and 12. But several years ago, her husband, a construction worker and house painter, suffered an on-the-job injury that makes it difficult for him to work steadily.

    With the family’s income strained, she began looking around for a better-paid career. Martinez’s father and other relatives are ironworkers, but she never before thought of following in their footsteps. She then saw a Facebook page from the Silicon Valley-based social justice and training organization Working Partnerships USA, recruiting women into construction and technical jobs. She entered a pre-apprenticeship readiness program and used the ERICA funds for several months to pay a relative to watch her boys since her husband was not always available or well enough.

    Then in July, she landed her current apprenticeship as an instrumentation and controls technician at the Santa Clara Water District. She is learning to install and fix the water system’s many meters and controls for pressure, chlorine and other factors. She is earning about $85,000 a year, compared with $35,000 at her old school job, and will be getting raises as the four-year apprenticeship proceeds.

    Another attraction is that work is less physically taxing than the electrical or plumbing jobs she first considered. “It was something I couldn’t pass up. Physically, I’m going to be OK, and monetarily it’s going to be good for me and my family,” she said.





    Source link

  • Districts offer early retirement. Are students collateral damage?

    Districts offer early retirement. Are students collateral damage?


    San Francisco Unified School District office building.

    Credit: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

    California school districts that are at risk of falling off the fiscal cliff are increasingly turning to early retirement incentives as a humane way to balance their budgets, but students could be the ones who lose.

    Many California school districts are facing large budget deficits brought on by continuing declining student enrollment and lower cost-of-living increases in state funding, said Michael Fine, chief executive officer of the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. Districts also have expanded their staffing in recent years, using federal Covid-19 funding that has since gone away.

    The state’s schools spend about 80% of their funding on staff salaries and benefits, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. This leaves districts to choose between unpopular options such as layoffs, school closures and early retirement incentives if budget cuts are needed.

    Early retirements often leave school districts with more inexperienced and under-prepared teachers, which research has shown can have a negative impact on student performance, particularly in high-needs schools.

    This school year, two of the state’s largest districts, San Diego Unified and San Francisco Unified, are offering to pay older, veteran teachers and staff to retire early. Santa Ana Unified and Paso Robles Joint Unified offered an early retirement incentive to their staff earlier this school year. 

    “Part of the cost savings that come with a SERP (supplemental early retirement plan) is, because school districts have a step and column salary schedule, that you realize savings by having teachers that are higher on the salary schedule retire,” said Amy Baer, associate superintendent of human resources for San Francisco Unified School District. 

    “They’re replaced with teachers who are lower on the salary schedule, so it would bring down the number of experienced teachers that you are going to have,” she said.

    In hard-to-fill areas, such as special education, math, science and bilingual education, districts sometimes have to hire under-prepared teachers who have not completed teacher training to fill vacant jobs.

    “We are concerned that the early retirement incentive could exacerbate the existing vacancies for special education we have continued to experience for the last five school years,” said San Diego Education Association President Kyle Weinberg.

    The districts are not excluding teachers in hard-to-fill jobs from retirement incentives. 

    “I think it would be difficult, if challenged legally, that you won’t honor a math credential, but you will honor an English credential (for the incentive),” Fine said.

    Deficits mean staff cuts

    San Francisco Unified leaders, with the help of state-appointed advisers, are trying to reduce the district’s deficit by $113 million. District officials estimate it will have to cut 535 positions, with about 300 coming from early retirements, according to district officials.

    To help meet that goal, San Francisco Unified is offering an early retirement incentive to all staff aged 55 or older, who have more than five years of consecutive service. In return, the district will pay them the equivalent of 60% of their current salary, according to documents from Keenan & Associates, the company administering the plan. The deadline to apply for the supplemental early retirement plan is Feb. 21. 

    San Francisco Unified officials have indicated layoffs will still be needed to bridge the district’s budget deficit.

    San Diego Unified offered an early retirement incentive earlier this school year as part of an effort to eliminate a $112 million projected deficit. The district had 965 employees, including 478 teachers, apply for the incentive — 27% more than expected by the Jan. 15 deadline. The district hasn’t announced how much they expect the retirements will save.

    The supplemental early retirement plan was open to employees eligible to retire under the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), or CalPERS, a public pension service for state workers, by June 30. The district is offering staff 70% of their pay, capped at $124,000 — the top step in the teacher salary schedule. The money will be put in an annuity and paid out over five years.

    District officials at San Diego Unified also have not ruled out layoffs, but expect them to be minimal. 

    “The higher number of people taking early retirement is another positive step toward our goal of delivering a balanced budget in June,” said Fabi Bagula, San Diego Unified School District interim superintendent, in a statement. “The increased number of retirees provides us an opportunity to work with site administrators to assess the way we have been doing things and reimagine our staffing approach to better serve our students and families.”

    Santa Ana Unified offered teachers and other certificated members of the teachers union an early retirement incentive in October, in an effort to reduce a $180 million structural deficit. Although 160 teachers accepted the deal, the district still expects to lay off at least 100 more certificated employees before the end of the year, said Ron Hacker, associate superintendent and chief business official.

    The school board recently voted to reopen the window for early retirement applications and to extend it until May, according to LAist.

    More under-prepared teachers

    Schools in San Francisco and San Diego counties made some of the most requests for emergency-style teaching permits and waivers during the 2022-23 school year, according to California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) data. 

    Districts request emergency-style permits to allow teachers who have not completed testing, coursework and student teaching, to work on provisional intern permits, intern credentials and short-term staff permits when they can’t find enough credentialed teachers. Waivers and limited-assignment permits allow credentialed teachers to teach classes on subjects outside their credential.

    San Diego County is among the top 10 counties to request intern credentials, short-term staff permits and limited assignment teaching permits in 2022-23, according to the CTC. San Diego Unified serves 114,000 students — just under a quarter of the students in San Diego County.

    That year, San Diego Unified had 55 teachers working on intern credentials, 68 on short-term staffing permits, two on provisional intern permits, 98 on limited assignment permits and three on waivers, according to state data.

     The district, the second largest in the state, had 5,051 teachers in 2022-23, the most recent year state data is available.

    San Francisco Unified, which serves 55,452 students, currently has 59 intern teachers and about 230 teachers on various other emergency-style permits, according to the district. 

    The district, which serves all but about 1,000 students in San Francisco County, has 3,364 TK-12 teachers and 128 early childhood educators. The county was listed among the top 10 counties to request district intern credentials and waivers during the 2022-23 school year, according to commission data. 

    Teacher shortage persists

    At a Dec. 10 San Francisco Unified school board meeting, parents and community members complained about long-term substitute teachers teaching in classrooms where there is no credentialed teacher.

    Parent Cheryl Thornton urged the board not to eliminate 500 positions, saying the district already is struggling with empty positions. “We should prioritize central office positions and look for extra funding,” she said.

    Another parent complained that her autistic son, who attends James Lick Middle School, has substitutes instead of a regular teacher. “We need a teacher as soon as possible,” she said.

    San Francisco Unified, like most districts, has a shortage of teachers in special education and other high-needs areas. District leaders say they don’t know yet whether losing veteran teachers in these subjects could result in more under-prepared teachers working on emergency-style permits.

    “It’s really too soon to say what the impact would be next year, but we are committed to making sure that our students do continue to get rigorous and enriching programs in our schools,” said Laura Dudnick, spokeswoman for the district.

    The San Diego solution

    In San Diego Unified, 57 special education teachers are taking the early retirement incentive, San Diego Education Association President Weinberg said. That means more classrooms being taught by long-term substitutes, he said.

    Concern from the teachers union resulted in a program that will retrain district teachers to be special education teachers while they work in those positions next school year. In a deal bargained with the union, the district will pay all the costs associated with earning a special education credential, he said. 

    The union will propose making this program a permanent part of its contract, and is working with unions in other large districts throughout the state to make similar agreements, Weinberg said.

    “We are optimistic that this will become the template for how we address the staffing crisis around special education moving forward, and provide a path for educators within our unit who are in more precarious contracts like temporary contracts or who would be potentially laid off or who are visiting (long-term substitute) teachers to be able to get a special education credential and make the commitment to teach in one of these vital special education roles,” Weinberg said.

    San Francisco is contracting with Keenan & Associates and San Diego with Pacific Life Insurance company to administer their early retirement programs. 

    “I have never seen an early retirement that actually saves the money that the vendor tells you it’s going to save,” Fine said. 

    Despite that, Fine supports the use of early retirement incentives.

    “I think we have to treat people with absolute dignity, and layoffs just destroy morale,” Fine said. “And when morale is destroyed, instruction is destroyed. So, when the morale of our teachers in the classroom is low, instruction is not as good as it should be. And you can’t harm kids that way. So I guess it’s a fine balance.”





    Source link