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  • Gov. Newsom vigorously defends, praises California, his own contributions in State of State 

    Gov. Newsom vigorously defends, praises California, his own contributions in State of State 


    In his State of the State address, Newsom juxtaposed clips of his meetings with National Guard members charged with intercepting illegal drugs to contrast with Republican efforts to quash immigration reform.

    Credit: YouTube / Office of the Governor

    Gov. Gavin Newsom sharply contrasted California with red-state America during a pre-recorded State of the State address Tuesday, warning ominously that the state’s values and status as “a beacon of hope” are “under assault.”  

    “Forces are threatening the very foundation of California’s success — our pluralism, our innovative spirit, and our diversity,” he said. To underscore his claim, he liberally juxtaposed images during his 28-minute speech: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signing a ban on abortion with Newsom embracing an LGBTQ marcher at a Pride rally; headlines of congressional Republicans rejecting bipartisan immigration reform with National Guard members whom Newsom deployed to the border to intercept fentanyl. 

    The partisan, politically charged talk came two days before the first debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump and five months before a national election that Newsom called “another extraordinary moment in history.”  Newsom, who has assumed the informal role as an articulate surrogate for Biden, underscored the importance of the president’s re-election for Californians.

    “For generations, we’ve stood for progress: championing women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, protecting the environment, and expanding civil rights,” he said. “Conservatives and delusional California bashers want to roll back social progress, social justice, racial justice, economic justice, clean air, clean water and basic fundamental fairness.”

    Primarily, though, Newsom’s talk both defended and lauded the “California way” and his administration’s accomplishments — in enhancing innovation and job creation, stopping drugs at the border, lowering crime, expanding environmental protections and providing shelter for the homeless.

    He pointed to the elimination of 9,300 unsafe homeless encampments while turning former hotels and apartments into 15,300 units of housing and the progress with the Delta conveyance to protect water supplies, the “largest climate resilience project in the nation.”  California is driving the electric vehicle industry and new industries to combat climate change, he said.

    While critics portray California’s cities as lawless dystopias, the governor said the state’s violent crime rate has dropped to half of its peak in 1992; California has a lower homicide rate than 29 other states, including Florida and Texas, he said. He attributed California’s gun safety laws as a cause and asserted that 140,000 more Americans would be alive if the nation had California’s homicide rate.

    Newsom devoted little of the address to education but pointed to the expansion of after-school and summer programs for low-income schools and the creation of community schools — a $4 billion initiative he protected from possible cuts — as accomplishments. At community schools, he said, students will receive family support, free meals and tutoring.

    He also cited the state-funded hiring and training of literacy coaches in high-poverty schools, the creation of universal transitional kindergarten — a new grade for 4-year-olds — and, starting next year, the screening of all young students for possible learning challenges, including dyslexia, while introducing a new, state-funded multi-language screener.

    Together, he boasted, these K-12 initiatives comprise “some of the most transformative policies in our state’s history, and most significant in our nation.”

    In a vague reference to the state’s efforts to thwart censorship of social studies textbooks and novels from school libraries by conservative school boards, Newsom said California has acted “to protect a student’s right to learn, and a teacher’s right to teach.”

    Diversity in demographics and in thought is California’s strength, he said. “Weird, wild, free-spirited California. A place that can elect Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown — back to back,” he said.

    Through revolutions in farmworker rights, free speech, love, computing and biotechnology, “we are building a state that transforms the world over and over again,” Newsom said.

    In a news conference outside the Capitol an hour after the speech was released, Republican leaders laid out a vastly different counter-narrative.

    “We have crime out of control, inflation out of control,” said state Sen. Brian Dahle, R-Bieber. “$24 billion for homeless, and we’ve actually increased homelessness. For the first time in the state’s history, we’ve deployed CHP (California Highway Patrol) to Oakland, San Francisco and Bakersfield to combat crime.”

    “Republicans in California have not controlled a statewide office or the Legislature for decades, so (Gavin Newsom) needs to look in the mirror and understand that he’s running the state into the ground,” Dahle said.

    Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, called Newsom “unhinged” for diverting attention from his own performance by attacking Republicans in Congress.

    “Let me tell you what the state of the state is right now. It’s a husband and wife sitting around that kitchen table, head in hands, trying to figure out how to pay the bills,” Gallagher said. “It’s parents who are afraid to send their kids to the local park because they’re afraid they might be attacked because it’s human devastation on our streets in every city. People lost in homelessness.

    “And the problem has only gotten worse since Gavin Newsom has been governor,” he said.

    Newsom had planned to give the State of the State address in March but delayed it while awaiting the outcome of Proposition 1 on the March primary ballot, which he had championed. The initiative, which passed narrowly, channeled $6.4 billion to assist Californians facing chronic homelessness and mental health or drug abuse problems. 





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  • New Cal State Bakersfield president says campus should see Kern County’s education problems ‘as our own’

    New Cal State Bakersfield president says campus should see Kern County’s education problems ‘as our own’


    A portrait of Vernon B. Harper, Jr.

    Vernon B. Harper Jr.

    Courtesy of California State University, Bakersfield

    Vernon B. Harper Jr. is scratching the word “interim” from his nameplate at California State University, Bakersfield. 

    Harper, who has served as the university’s interim president since the end of 2023, was named CSUB’s permanent president on Wednesday, the second day of a Cal State board of trustees meeting dominated by discussions about the financial pressures facing the university system. The system is projecting a $400 million to $800 million budget gap in 2025-26 as state leaders signal their intention to reduce funding for CSU.  

    CSU Bakersfield has been able to prevent students from feeling the effects of a reduced budget, Harper said, buoyed by growing enrollment this school year. His focus is on making what he calls a “pivot towards the community” — expanding programs to boost the number of Kern County high school graduates and community college transfer students who enroll at CSUB. The Central Valley is growing rapidly but has lower college attainment than the rest of the state. 

    Harper envisions the university taking a more active role alongside local K-12 schools to increase the number of students who meet A-G requirements, the coursework that makes students eligible to start college at a Cal State or University of California campus. Only 36% of Kern County high school graduates completed such coursework in the 2022-23 school year, according to state education data, compared with 52% of high school graduates statewide. 

    “That’s the real transition that the institution is making. It is to accept those problems as our own,” Harper said. “We’re partnering with our K-12 providers and making sure that we’re doing absolutely everything we can to raise that statistic. We’re not just going to sit back passively and watch our community go in a direction that we don’t want it to go.”

    One example of the work Harper hopes to get done: CSUB’s teacher education program is forming a task force with the Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office and the Kern High School District in a bid to increase the number of students who are A-G qualified, he said.

    The campus is also experimenting with ways to get local students thinking about college even before they leave middle school. It recently started a pilot program with four middle schools and four high schools in which students as young as 12 will receive notices that they are guaranteed admission to CSUB so long as they meet A-G requirements. 

    “We’ve seen that with young people, especially in under-resourced populations, their vision is truncated by their circumstance,” Harper said. “Whatever we can do, we have a responsibility to do, to extend that vision as far as it can go.”

    The past decade has seen rising graduation rates at CSUB. Among first-time, full-time freshmen who entered Cal State Bakersfield in 2017, 49% graduated in six years, an almost 10 percentage-point increase from 2007. But the school has not caught up to some of its Cal State peers. Systemwide, the six-year graduation rate for the same group of students in the fall 2017 cohort was roughly 62%. 

    Harper said that the intervention that seems to have the most impact on improving graduation rates is pairing students with an academic adviser who works with them throughout their time at CSUB, guiding them through unforeseen challenges, like switching into a course that fits the student’s work schedule.

    “As much as we can invest in that activity, the more positive outcomes that we (see),” he said.

    The university is also experiencing some of the same longstanding graduation equity gaps that exist across California higher education. The six-year graduation rate among Black students who entered CSUB as freshmen in the fall 2017 cohort was 40%, lagging Asian, Latino and white students. 

    Harper has backed several CSUB initiatives to attract and retain Black students. Harper said that community college students at Bakersfield College who participate in the Umoja program, which includes courses on African American culture as well as mentorship and academic counseling, will find they can continue receiving similar support now that CSUB has its own Umoja program for transfers. The campus plans to open a Black Students Success Center in the spring and has already hired a group of faculty members whose work is focused on minoritized communities, Harper said.

    Harper’s tenure as CSUB’s permanent president begins at a moment when the California State University system is raising financial alarm bells.

    Cal State leaders are anticipating that a $164 million increase in revenue from tuition hikes will not be enough to alleviate other stresses on its budget. The system expects that state general fund revenue will drop nearly $400 million, according to a September budget presentation, and that $250 million in compact funding will be delayed. The university system also faces rising projected costs, including for basics it can’t avoid like increased health care premiums and utilities expenses.

    Speaking at a Sep. 24 meeting, trustee Diego Arambula said the university system has “almost been too effective at making these cuts year over year over year” without explaining to legislators the impact those budget reductions are already having on students.

    “We are doing everything we can to make them as far away from students, but a hiring freeze is a hiring freeze, and that does impact students if we’re not bringing someone into a role that we know is important,” Arambula said. “It’s impacting our staff, who are taking on more to try and still meet the needs of the students who are here.”

    CSUB officials last spring said they planned to cut the school’s 2024-25 net operating budget by about 7%, citing a decline in enrollment and increased salary and benefits costs. The school had less than a month of funding in its rainy day fund in 2022-23, slightly less than the net operating budget across the CSU system at that point.

    But Harper said enrollment this year is up between 4% and 5%, driving tuition growth that is alleviating some budget pressure. The campus also has made temporary cuts to areas that aren’t student-facing, he said, such as professional development. 

    “We’ve been able to really, really shield any negative effects on students,” Harper said.

    Harper succeeds Lynnette Zelezny as president. He was previously Cal State Bakersfield’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. He will receive a salary of $429,981 and a $50,000 housing allowance.

    Harper was first hired at CSUB in 2016. Prior to his arrival at Cal State Bakersfield, he worked at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Wilkes University of Pennsylvania and the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia.

    He holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s degree in rhetoric from West Chester University and a doctorate in human communication from Howard University. He served eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve.





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  • John Thompson: Oklahoma Has Its Own DOGE, Just as Destructive as Elon’s

    John Thompson: Oklahoma Has Its Own DOGE, Just as Destructive as Elon’s


    After Trump introduced Elon Musk and his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” several Republican-controlled states created their own DOGE operations. Like the one Musk launched, these were non-governmental, unelected, unaccountable cost-cutters, set loose to apply a chainsaw to state government.

    John Thompson reports on what happened in Oklahoma.

    CBS’s Sixty Minutes recently reported on the danger of H5N1 bird flu spinning out of control. It cited Dr. Kamran Khan who explained why “We are really at risk of this virus evolving into one that has pandemic potential.” Another expert agreed that “this flu could make Covid look like a walk in the park.”

    This frightening reporting comes as the DOGE–OK seeks to cut nearly $150 million for programs that provide immunization services, pathogens surveillance, and emerging infectious diseases prevention, and provide Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention of Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

    And this is only one reason for looking into the DOGE–OK process.

    Anyone paying attention to Elon Musk’s leadership of the Trump administration’s DOGE campaign to cut federal programs has reason the fear the DOGE campaigns launched in 26 states. After all, as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explains, when Governor Kevin Stitt opened Oklahoma’s DOGE-OK, he called for a reduction in our personal income and corporate tax rates, thus making the state’s tax code even more regressive.

    The EPI further explained that Stitt selected Marc Nuttle, “who was the ‘chief strategist’ behind Oklahoma’s 2001 so-called right-to-work referendum—a policy designed to disempower workers and lower wages (and contrary to proponents’ claims, it did not bolster job growth in the state).” The executive order empowered Nuttle to lead efforts of a newly formed agency to study the state budget.

    Moreover, the EPI explains:

    DOGE-OK is itself duplicative since the Office of the State Auditor and Inspector is constitutionally mandated to “examine the state and all county treasurers’ books, accounts, and cash on hand, stipulating that [the office] shall perform other duties as may be prescribed by law.” Similar to DOGE-OK, the auditor reviews staffing levels, assesses state spending, and issues public reports to promote transparency.

    The DOGE-OK report now explains:

    Once DOGE-OK ideas are received, they are analyzed and vetted with the appropriate group. If validated, ideas are added to the DOGE-OK website. 

    But, when I studied the report, I found no sign of hard evidence to back its claims. For instance, they didn’t explain their methodology, and offered no cost/benefit analyses. DOGE didn’t explain what “groups” it considered to be “appropriate,” and what data was used to analyze and vet, and validate their ideas.  

    Since the first DOGE headlines focused on $157 million in supposedly “wasteful health grants” by the federal government, I focused on Medicaid and Department of Health cuts.

    These proposed cuts are especially disturbing because, as Shiloh Kantz, the executive director of the nonpartisan Oklahoma Policy Institute, explained, “Oklahoma already ranks among the worst in health outcomes.”

    First, DOGE-OK claimed that $60 million per year would be saved if the state, not the federal government, performed eligibility checks on children. And, they cited two drugs that received accelerated approval without working, costing $42 million. But, they did not mention the number and the benefits of the other drugs, like the Covid vaccine, that received accelerated approval.

    Also, DOGE-OK inexplicably said that easing the prescription drug cost cap would improve prices. And they recommended repeal of staffing requirements for Long-Term Care facilities in order to save $76 million annually, without mentioning harm to elderly patients due to under-staffing.

    DOGE-OK also said that three Oklahoma State Department of Health programs should be cut by almost $150 million because their funding exceeded the amount necessary.  As already mentioned, in the wake of Covid pandemic, and as measles and bird flu spread, these programs provide immunization services, pathogens surveillance, and emerging infectious diseases prevention, etc. So, how did DOGE reach the conclusion that the full funding of those programs is no longer necessary?  

    Then, DOGE-OK said that 7 programs should have cuts because of “duplication,” with partners doing the same or similar work. They said $2.2 million would be saved by getting rid of the team efforts necessary to improve health.

    And Sex Education should be cut by $236,000 because of its low Return on Investment.

    Again, I saw no evidence behind their recommendations for $157,606,300 in overall health care reductions. Neither did they address financial costs of implementing their ideas. And, there is no evidence that DOGE seriously considered the costs in terms of the lives that would be damaged or lost.

    Given the history of the Trump/Musk DOGE, none of the DOGE–OK should be a surprise. When Gov. Stitt selected Nuttle, a true-believer in Milton Friedman, to run the project, Stitt said, “With his help, we’ll leave state government leaner than we found it.”

    Is that the proper way to launch a supposedly balanced and evidence-driven investigation of such complex and crucial policy approaches?

    Stitt’s news release previewed Nuttle’s methodology: “use his knowledge of the inner workings of government to comb through agency budgets, legislative appropriations, and contracts.”

    So, to paraphrase the DOGE-OK report’s description of its methodology, its proposals would be “analyzed and vetted” by what they see as the “appropriate group.”

    In other words, Oklahomans were never promised an open, balanced, evidence-based DOGE process for making our state better. But the same is also true for Musk’s federal DOGE chainsaw.



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  • UC faculty to consider its own high school ethnic studies mandate

    UC faculty to consider its own high school ethnic studies mandate


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    KEY TAKEAWAYS
    • The UC course criteria would promote the Liberated Ethnic Studies perspective.
    • It would likely become the default ethnic studies course in K-12 districts.
    • It would contradict the state’s own voluntary, open-ended model curriculum.

    School districts are looking to the May revision of the state budget to learn if Gov. Gavin Newsom will press ahead with a mandate to offer a high school ethnic studies course whose implementation is contingent on state funding. That will be unlikely.

    Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and a Newsom adviser, confirmed Tuesday that, given current revenue forecasts, Newsom will not be funding the mandate. He conveyed that message to a representative of the UC Academic Senate, he said.

    On Wednesday, however, representatives of the University of California faculty will decide whether to recommend that U.C. regents not wait for state funding and instead independently mandate a course. They’ll vote on a proposal (see pages 39 to 57) to require an ethnic studies course, incorporating criteria and content that Newsom and the State Board of Education have already rejected as politically extreme, for admissions to UC campuses. 

    Opponents said that adopting the proposal, which had been nearly five years in the making, would be unwise and probably illegal. 

    “Requiring such a course would entangle the university in the sorts of political and ideological disputes over ethnic studies course content that are currently roiling school districts across the state and the nation,” wrote Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA, and Matt Malkan, an astronomy professor at UCLA, in a letter to the UC Faculty Assembly of the Senate, the body that will take up the issue on Wednesday. An earlier version was signed by 440 members of the UC faculty.

    Sander and Malkan also said that the proposal “would effectively force hundreds of schools to invest large sums in creating the mandated curriculum and finding or hiring teachers to teach it”  – a step that “would probably ultimately be found to be illegal” if UC acted unilaterally.

    If the Assembly passes the proposal, it would be forwarded to UC President Michael Drake and then to the UC Regents this summer for final approval. 

    Ethnic studies faculty at UC campuses pushed for including ethnic studies among the 15 courses required for admissions, known as “A-G.” It would be satisfied through an English, history or an elective course taught through an ethnic studies lens, as UC defines it.  Ethnic studies would become “H”, a new area of concentration.  

    When adopting legislation in 2016 authorizing the creation of a voluntary, model ethnic studies curriculum, the Legislature was vague about what it intended for an ethnic studies course. It said the objective was to prepare pupils to be “global citizens with an appreciation for the contributions of multiple cultures”; school districts could “adapt courses to reflect the pupil demographics in their communities.”

    UC’s proposed criteria for high schools would take a more directive and controversial approach, reflecting the content of many college-level courses. 

    “Ethnic studies is aimed at producing critical knowledge about power, inequality, and inequity as well as the efforts of marginalized and oppressed racialized peoples to challenge systemic violence and the institutional structures that perpetuate racial injustice,” wrote the co-lead writers, UC Riverside teaching professor Wallace Cleaves and UC Santa Cruz critical race and ethnic studies and literature professor Christine Hong, in a preface explaining the intent of the criteria.

    Hong and Cleaves say it is appropriate to set rigorous course criteria for students entering UC because ethnic studies faculty created the foundational theories and instructional strategies for the academic discipline, and the State Board and local district teachers lack their expertise. 

    But the effect of adopting their course for entry into UC would be an end-run around the state board’s open-ended guidance. It would also deviate from many legislators’ vision of ethnic studies as the study of the cultures and achievements of minority groups, as well as their past and ongoing struggles with racism and discrimination. 

    The UC criteria would become the standard version that high schools would offer. In turn, UC and CSU  ethnic studies faculty would become the go-to private consultants for creating districts’ curricula and training teachers. 

    Emergence of Liberated Ethnic Studies

    UC and CSU ethnic studies faculty were primary writers of the first draft of the state’s model curriculum in 2019, but President Linda Darling-Hammond and other members of the State Board rejected it as biased, and the board hired new writers. The California Legislative Jewish Caucus objected to its characterization of Israel as an oppressive white colonial state and the call for a boycott of companies doing business with Israel.  

    “A model curriculum should be accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state and align with Governor Newsom’s vision of a California for all,” Darling-Hammond’s statement said. 

    The writers of the initial draft disavowed the final, revised model curriculum that the State Board passed in 2021. They then formed the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and have encouraged school districts to adopt the original draft as the true alternative. More than two dozen districts have. Both Hong and Cleaves are affiliated with the consortium.

    Having gone through five revisions, the final proposal before the Assembly (pages 10 to 18)  is a toned-down version, but its purpose and guidelines for developing skills are clear. For example, toward the goal of “Applying critical analysis,” it reads, “Study histories of imperialism, dehumanization, and genocide to expose their continuity to present-day laws, ideologies, knowledge systems, dominant cultures, institutions, and structures that perpetuate racial violence, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression.”

    Sander said,  “It’s still very clearly a liberated course by which I mean it’s very ideological. It has a particular point of view on various controversial issues.”

    Under Assembly Bill 1010, the 2021 state law, high schools would have to offer a one-semester ethnic studies course starting in fall 2025 and students would have to take it for a high school diploma starting in 2029-30. Legislators explicitly referenced the rejected first draft in the law. “It is the intent of the Legislature that (districts) not use the portions of the draft model curriculum that were not adopted … due to concerns related to bias, bigotry, and discrimination,” it reads.

    Since then, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Newsom administration have reminded school districts to follow the law’s requirements for “inclusivity, sensitivity, and accuracy.”

    “We have been advised, however, that some vendors are offering materials that may not meet the requirements of AB 101,” Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and an education adviser to Newsom, wrote in a memo to districts in 2023. 

    The “liberated” version has prompted several lawsuits (see here, here and here) by Jewish families and supportive law firms charging that its one-sided perspective fosters discrimination.  

    A “target” for President Trump?

    The vote Wednesday coincides with fraught relations with the Trump administration. The president has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from school districts and California universities that fail to curb antisemitism and teach undefined “woke” ideology on race, including critical race theory.

    “Passing the course criteria now would be like putting a target on our back,” Sander said in an interview, and undermine the university’s best defense against Trump’s effort to dictate who to hire and what ideas can be taught.

    “It is fundamentally wrong, and inconsistent with the very spirit of a university, to mandate courses that are framed by an ideology – whether that ideology comes from the left or from the right,” he said.





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