During the week leading up to Dec. 28 and with Covid-19 strain JN. 1 having become dominant, the LA County Department of Public Health reported an average of 621 cases each day, marking a 25% increase from the previous week.
The Department of Public Health also said the figures are an “undercount” since most tests are done at home and not reported to medical staff. Meanwhile, for the first time this season, the county has entered the CDC’s “medium” category for Covid hospitalizations. Mask mandates have been reinstated in health care facilities.
“There have been notable, yet not unexpected, increases in COVID-19 reported cases, hospitalizations and deaths,” according to a news release from the LA County Department of Public health.
“While recent increases are significant, they remain considerably below last winter’s peak and common-sense protections are strongly recommended to help curb transmission and severe illness as the new year begins.”
Earlier this season, 23% of LA County residents participating in a text message survey said they had experienced a cough or shortness of breath within a week of Dec. 10, according to the Los Angeles Times.
More specifically, they reported that about 18% of specimens tested at Sentinel Surveillance Labs in LA County came back positive for the flu — marking a 4% increase from the previous week. And, in the week leading up to Dec. 16, more than 12% of specimens came back positive for RSV.
“Respiratory infections among children and adults are increasing this winter season. These infections are not limited to Flu and COVID-19,” read a message from LAUSD. “We are also seeing a rise in Respiratory Syncytial Virus, also known as RSV.”
Before going on winter break, between Dec. 6 and Dec. 12, LAUSD also reported 528 Covid cases, according to the district dashboard.
LAUSD and the LA County Department of Public Health suggest parents follow these guidelines for determining when a child should be home, come to school and how to stay healthy.
What should I do if my child tests positive for Covid?
Whether symptomatic or not, students with Covid should stay home for five days, following either testing positive or experiencing symptoms.
Those who are immunocompromised, however, may isolate for longer periods, according to the district.
If my child tests positive for Covid, when is it safe for them to return to the classroom? Do they need to provide a negative test result before coming back?
Students do not need to provide a negative antigen test to return to class between days six and 10. And following day five, if your child has been without a fever for 24 hours without taking fever-reducing medicines, and their symptoms are improving, they can return to the classroom.
If, however, the symptoms come back after the isolation period, the student should test again, according to the district.
What does it mean if my child is a “close contact?” What do I do then?
If your child is in the same indoor space for Covid for 15 minutes within 24 hours with someone positive, they are a “close contact.”
In that case, the district asks that your child’s health be monitored for 10 days following the exposure. They also recommend masking and testing between the third and fifth days.
What about other illnesses like the flu or RSV? Do the same rules apply?
If your child has a fever of 100.4 degrees or higher — or if they are vomiting or have diarrhea — they should stay home, according to the district.
What should I communicate to the school? How do I ensure my child’s absence is excused?
If your child has Covid, upload the result onto the Daily Pass.
And regardless of the sickness, absences due to illness are excused. To excuse an absence, provide the school with documentation within 10 days of your child’s return to class.
If the school does not receive documentation, the absence will count as uncleared or unexcused, meaning it can count toward truancy.
Where do I find free Covid tests, vaccinations and treatments to keep my child healthy?
LAUSD provides Covid-19 home test kits at each school site. Libraries and other community centers may also supply tests.
Additionally, as of Nov. 20, the federal government provides each household with four home tests for free, according to the LA County Department of Public Health.
How do we stay healthy?
The LA County Department of Public Health suggests testing, not only if you have been exposed or have symptoms, but also if you have attended larger gatherings or have visited individuals who are more susceptible to illness.
They also recommend washing hands frequently and masking in crowded indoor areas as well as in spaces that are poorly ventilated to prevent Covid, RSV and the flu.
Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor for North Alabama. She writes an important blog called Civil Discourse, where she usually explains court decisions and legal issues. Today she turns to education.
Today I’m recovering from the graduation tour, one in Boulder and one in Boston in the last two weeks, and getting back into the groove of writing as I continue to work on my book (which I hope you’ll preorder if you haven’t already). The graduations came at a good moment.
Watching my kids graduate, one from college and one with a master’s in science, was an emotional experience—the culmination of their years of hard work, sacrifice, and growth, all captured in a single walk across the stage. They, like their friends, my law students, and amazing students across the county, now enter society as adults. Even beyond the individual stories of hardships overcome and perseverance, witnessing these rites of passage makes me feel profoundly hopeful. The intelligence and commitment of the students—many of whom are already tackling big problems and imagining new, bold solutions—gives me a level of confidence about what comes next for our country. In a time when it’s easy to get discouraged, their commitment and idealism stands as a powerful reminder that they are ready to take on the mess we have left them.
The kids are alright, even though they shouldn’t have to be. Talking with them makes me think they will find a way, even if it’s unfair to ask it of them and despite the fact that their path will be more difficult than it should be. Courage is contagious, and they seem to have caught it. Their educations have prepared them for the future we all find ourselves in now.
As students across the country prepared to graduate this year, Trump released his so-called “skinny budget.” If that’s how they want to frame it, then education has been put on a starvation diet—at least the kind of education that develops independent thinkers who thrive in an environment where questions are asked and answered. Trump pitches the budget as “gut[ting] a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security.” Defense spending would increase by 13% under his proposal.
The plan for education is titled, “Streamline K-12 Education Funding and Promote Parental Choice.”Among its provisions, the announcement focuses on the following items:
“The Budget continues the process of shutting down the Department of Education.”
“The Budget also invests $500 million, a $60 million increase, to expand the number of high-quality charter schools, that have a proven track record of improving students’ academic achievement and giving parents more choice in the education of their children.”
As we discussed in March, none of this is a surprise. Trump is implementing the Project 2025 plan. In December of 2024, I wrote about how essential it is to dumb down the electorate if you’re someone like Donald Trump and you want to succeed. A rich discussion in our forums followed. At the time I wrote, “Voters who lack the backbone of a solid education in civics can be manipulated. That takes us to Trump’s plans for the Department of Education.” But it’s really true for the entirety of democracy.
Explaining the expanded funding for charter schools, a newly written section of the Department of Education website reads more like political propaganda than education information: “The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it has reigned [Ed: Note the word “”reigned” is misspelled] in the federal government’s influence over state Charter School Program (CSP) grant awards. The Department removed a requirement set by the Biden Administration that the U.S. Secretary of Education review information on how states approve select entities’ (e.g., private colleges and universities) authorization of charter schools in states where they are already lawful authorizers. This action returns educational authority to the states, reduces burdensome red tape, and expands school choice options for students and families.”
There are already 37 lawsuits related to Trump’s changes to education. Uncertainty is no way to educate America’s children. Cutting funding for research because you want to score political points about DEI or climate change is no way to ensure we nurture future scientists and other thinkers and doers…
I am reminded again of George Orwell’s words: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” The historians among us, and those who delve into history, will play a key role in getting us through this. Our love and understanding of history can help us stay grounded, understanding who we are, who we don’t want to become, and why the rule of law matters so damn much to all of it….
Thanks for being here with me and for supporting Civil Discourse by reading and subscribing. Your paid subscriptions make it possible for me to devote the time and resources necessary to do this work, and I am deeply grateful for them.
Voters likely facing a November election ballot crowded with education-related initiatives will now have one fewer issue to decide.
The author of a vaguely defined proposed constitutional amendment to require the state and school districts to “provide all public school students with high-quality public schools” has decided to postpone the campaign two years.
“We have also decided that we are best positioned to go forward with a ballot initiative in the 2026 election cycle. This will give us the greatest opportunity to develop the broad-based public support and the necessary financial capacity to ensure success,” wrote David Welch, a Bay Area entrepreneur and the founder and chair of the nonprofit group Students Matter, in an email to supporters last week.
Welch and Students Matter previously underwrote Vergara v. the State of California and the California Teachers Association, an unsuccessful lawsuit filed in 2012 that challenged layoffs by seniority and other teacher workplace protections as disproportionately infringing low-income students’ educational rights.
California would become the first state to add “high quality” as a requirement for creating and funding public schools, although advocates are raising this idea with legislatures in other states, too, according to supporters.
In 1849, the California Constitution established children’s right to attend “free” public schools for at least six months each year. But it didn’t provide guidance on what a good education means or the resources needed to attain it.
In intentionally broad language, the one-sentence amendment, in its latest version, would read, “The state and its school districts shall provide all public school students with high-quality public schools, defined as schools that equip them with the tools necessary to participate fully in our economy, our society, and our democracy.”
Fleshing that out, over time, would be in the hands of the courts and the Legislature. They would determine whether high quality should be determined by academic standards and equitable opportunities for all students to achieve them. They’d decide the measures of high quality: teacher-student ratios, dollars per student, staff retention, preparation for post-graduation success, or student well-being.
In 2016, after years of litigation, the California Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a lower court decision in Campaign for Quality Education v. the State of California that the constitution doesn’t guarantee any level of funding or level of quality. That, a Superior Court judge ruled, is for the Legislature to decide. In a sharp dissent from the Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision, Justice Goodwin Liu said it was regrettable that the court didn’t explore what is meant by a fundamental right to an education. California’s children deserve to know whether it is “a paper promise or a real guarantee,” he wrote.
Passage of the initiative would reignite that debate.
John Affeldt, managing director for Public Advocates, which represented plaintiffs in the lawsuit, maintains the court erred by not recognizing previous decisions that established education as a fundamental right “precisely because it meaningfully prepares students to succeed in college, career and as effective citizens.”
But Affeldt agreed that the initiative “essentially overrules the Court of Appeal’s decision that there is no guarantee of an education of any particular quality.”
“Our community partners would love to see (the appellate court’s decision) fall by the wayside,” he said. It could lead to a tangle of lawsuits initiated by individuals and organizations with the money to litigate. Some plaintiffs may want to relitigate the Vergara lawsuit or strengthen approval of charter schools with a proven track record. Others might cite the amendment to thwart funding cuts or to demand effective reading instruction strategies statewide.
Welch, in his email, said the amendment would empower parents and give legislators “a constitutional North Star” for creating better education policies.
Jan Resseger is a social justice warrior who fights for the underdog. She describes here how Trump’s budget enacts the fever dreams of evangelicals and billionaires. He would change federal aid from its historic purpose–equitable funding–and turn it into school choice, diverting funds from the poorest children to those with ample resources. Since 1965–for 70 years–federal education funding for public schools has enjoyed bipartisan support. Trump ends it.
She writes:
Earlier this week, Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman released a concise and readable analysis of the likely impact for public education of two pieces of federal funding legislation: the “Big, Beautiful” tax and reconciliation bill currently being debated in the U.S. Senate to shape public school funding beginning right now in FY 2025, and also President Trump’s proposed FY 2026 federal budget for public schooling in the fiscal year that begins October 1st.
Trump’s FY 2026 budget proposal saves Head Start.
Lieberman shares one important piece of positive news about Trump’s treatment of Head Start in next year’s federal budget: “Some programs survived the cut—including Head Start.” In early May, the Associated Press‘s Moriah Balingit reported: “The Trump administration apparently has backed away from a proposal to eliminate funding for Head Start… Backers of the six-decade-old program, which educates more than half a million children from low-income and homeless families, had been fretting after a leaked Trump administration proposal suggested defunding it… But the budget summary… did not mention Head Start. On a call with reporters, an administration official said there would be ‘no changes’ to it.”
Federal funding for U.S. public schools looks bleak.
Lieberman’s assessment of federal public education funding is not so encouraging. Overall, “The administration is aiming to eliminate roughly $7 billion in funding for K-12 schools in its budget for fiscal 2026, which starts Oct. 1. Several key programs will be maintained at today’s funding level, without an increase: “Flat funding amounts to a de-facto cut given inflation. The administration is proposing to maintain current funding levels for key programs like Title I-A for low-income students ($18.4 billion), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part B for special education ($14.2 billion) and Perkins grants for K-12 and postsecondary career and technical education ($1.4 billion).”
What has been historically a key purpose of federal public education funding—to compensate for vast inequity in the states’ capacity and the states’ willingness to fund public education—is being compromised. Lieberman explains that much of federal funding, “is currently geared toward supporting special student populations including English learners, migrants, students experiencing homelessness, Native students, and students in rural schools. Longstanding federal programs that support training for the educator workforce; preparing students for postsecondary education; reinforcing key instructional areas like literacy, civics, and the arts… would disappear. A new K-12 grant program would offer a smaller pool of funds to states and let them decide whether and how to invest in those areas. And for the first time, all federal funding for special education would flow to states through a single funding stream…. Experts view Trump’s budget as part of an effort to roll back a half-century of effort by the federal government to help make educational opportunities more consistent and equitable from state to state and district to district.”
The “Educational Choice for Children Act,” an alarming federal school voucher bill, is hidden inside the “Big Beautiful” bill.
Lieberman worries about the enormous tuition tax credit voucher plan embedded deep in the weeds of the “Big, Beautiful” tax and reconciliation bill now being considered in the U. S. Senate: “Separate from the federal budget process, Congress is currently advancing a massive package of tax changes, including a proposal for a new tax-credit scholarship program that fuels up to $10 billion a year in federal subsidies for private K-12 education. Annual spending on that program could approach the amount the Trump administration is proposing to cut from elsewhere in the education budget.” The voucher proposal is called the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).
In a separate analysis of the “Big, Beautiful” bill as the House passed it in late May, Lieberman describes this proposed ECCA tuition-tax-credit voucher program: “House lawmakers narrowly approved a sweeping legislative package with $5 billion in annual tax credits that fuel scholarships and related expenses at K-12 private schools. The federal subsidies would come in the form of dollar-for-dollar tax credits for individuals and corporations that donate to largely unregulated state-level organizations that give out scholarship funds for parents to spend on private educational options of their choosing. Any student—even in states that have resisted expanding private school choice—from a family earning less than 300 percent of the area median gross income would be eligible to benefit from a scholarship paid for with a federally refunded donation.”
Lieberman adds: “No other federal tax credit is as generous. The Internal Revenue Service doesn’t currently supply tax credits worth the full donation amount for any cause, as the private school choice scholarship credit would do. The federal government currently offers tax credits on donations for disaster relief, houses of worship, veterans’ assistance groups, and children’s hospitals at roughly 37 percent of the donated amount. A $10,000 donation to those causes would yield a tax credit of $3,700. By contrast, under the proposed legislation, if a taxpayer donates $10,000 to a scholarship (voucher)-granting organization, the IRS would give them a tax credit of $10,000.”
The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy’s Carl Davis explains that because these federal school vouchers are primarily a tax shelter, they might appeal to wealthy people who are not even supporters of school privatization: “The tax plan… includes a provision granting extraordinarily generous treatment to nonprofits that give out vouchers for free or reduced tuition at private K-12 schools. While the bill significantly cuts charitable giving incentives overall, nonprofits that commit to focusing solely on supporting private K-12 schools would be spared from those cuts and see their donors’ tax incentive almost triple relative to what they receive today. On top of that, the bill goes out of its way to provide school voucher donors who contribute corporate stock with an extra layer of tax subsidy that works as a lucrative tax shelter. Essentially, the bill allows wealthy individuals to avoid paying capital gains tax as a reward for funneling public funds to private schools.” “We estimate the bill would reduce federal tax revenue by $23.2 billion over the next 10 years as currently drafted, or by $67 billion over the next ten years if it is extended beyond its four-year expiration date… As currently drafted, the bill would facilitate $2.2 billion in federal and state capital gains tax avoidance over the next 10 years.”
The Brookings Brown Center on Education Policy’s Jon Valant warns that the vouchers are so deeply buried in the “Big, Beautiful” bill that lots of people would not be aware of the plan’s existence until after it is passed: “The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) continues to move, quietly, towards becoming one of America’s costliest, most significant federal education programs. Now part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, ECCA would create a federal tax-credit scholarship program that’s unprecedented in scope and scale. It has flown under the radar, though, and remains confusing to many observers… ECCA’s stealthiness is partly due to the confusing nature of tax-credit scholarship programs. These programs move money in circuitous ways to avoid the legal and political hurdles that confront vouchers.”
Valant explains how tax-credit vouchers work: “Tax-credit scholarship programs like ECCA aren’t quite private school voucher programs, but they’re first cousins. In a voucher program, a government gives money (a voucher) to a family, which the family can use to pay for private school tuition or other approved expenses. With a tax-credit scholarship, it’s not that simple. Governments offer tax credits to individual scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). These SGOs then distribute funds… to families.”
Valant creates a scenario that shows how this tax credit program could help the wealthy and leave out poorer families. A rich donor, Billy, donates $2 million in stock to an SGO: “Billy’s acquaintance, Fred, lives in the same town as Billy, which is one of the wealthiest areas in the United States. In fact, Fred set up the SGO, looking to capture ECCA funds within their shared community… Like Billy, Fred doesn’t particularly care about K-12 public education… It might seem that Fred’s SGO couldn’t distribute funds to families in their ultra-wealthy area, since ECCA has income restrictions for scholarship recipients. That’s not the case. ECCA restricts eligibility to households with an income not greater than 300% their area’s median income. In Fred and Billy’s town, with its soaring household incomes, even multimillionaire families with $500,000 in annual income are eligible… So, Fred is looking to give scholarship money to some wealthy families in his hometown.”
Valant summarizes the result if the “Big, Beautiful” bill is enacted: “This bill would introduce the most significant and costliest new federal education program in decades. It has virtually no quality-control measures, transparency provisions, protections against discrimination, or evidence to suggest that it is likely to improve educational outcomes. It’s very likely to redirect funds from poor (and rural) areas to wealthy areas.”
Gary Rayno is a veteran journalist who writes about politics and government in New Hampshire. He knows more about school finance than most members of the State Legislature.
If you watched the House session Thursday, you had to realize the message the Republican majority is sending on public education.
Republicans quickly passed expanding Education Freedom Accounts, or vouchers, that will cost the state’s taxpayers well over $110 million for the next biennium with most of the money going to higher-income parents who currently send their children to religious and private schools or homeschools.
The expansion to vouchers-for-all has been a goal of the Free State/Libertarian controlled GOP for some time and they are likely to reach this year by daring Gov. Kelly Ayotte to veto the budget package, something she is not likely to do although she wanted the students to actually attend public schools before they join the EFA program with few guardrails and little academic accountability.
Instead much of the debate was over two bills that would significantly change the educational environment in public schools.
Senate Bill 72, would establish a parental bill of rights in education, and Senate Bill 96 would require mandatory disclosure to parents. And for good measure they added Senate Bill 100 which could cost a teacher his or her teaching credentials if they violate the divisive concepts law and school districts could be fined $2,500 plus attorneys’ fees and court costs.
The second offense is a permanent ban from teaching and school districts would have to pay a $5,000 fine and the penalties for third-party education contractors are even more onerous.
The state is prohibited from enforcing the law because a US District Court judge found the law unconstitutionally vague and the changes in Senate Bill 100 do nothing to change that except encourage more litigation.
These are just the latest attempt to convince the state’s residents that public schools are filled with far left teachers who want to indoctrinate students, to shield LGBTQ+ students from their parents and to encourage deviant behavior.
Nine-nine percent of parents with children in the public schools would tell you that is not true and the other 1 percent are in the New Hampshire legislature or related to someone who is.
Public schools are not perfect but the Free State/Libertarian talking points about public education are not being created in New Hampshire. They are the work of far-right think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council, the same groups that generate the wording for these bills.
The legislature has not addressed the real problems facing public schools, but have instead been exacerbated by the GOP controlled legislature. The bills passed this session have created more work for educators and school boards and they divert time and money away from educators’ first responsibility: to educate students and prepare them to survive and compete in today’s world.
The elephant in the room is the lack of state funding for public education at the elementary, secondary and postsecondary levels where the state of New Hampshire, one of the wealthiest per capita in the country, is dead last behind such educational meccas as Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and West Virginia.
Public schools do not need to spend more money for their educational system that continually ranks near the top nationally, but the state needs to pay its share of the cost which nationally averages a little less than 50 percent.
In New Hampshire local property taxpayers pay 63 percent of the cost of public education, while the state contributes 28.8 percent, leaving a little over 8 percent for the federal government to contribute, the 45th lowest for states.
Property taxes pay about 70 percent of the cost of education when you add in the Statewide Education Property Tax which is included in the state’s share although it all comes out of property owners’ pockets.
This legislature did two things to address the funding issue this session, one would be to bring the Statewide Education Property Tax collection methods in line with a superior court judge’s ruling that requires the property wealthier communities to turn their excess revenue not needed to cover the cost of an adequate education for their students over to the state and to stop the Department of Revenue Administration from approving negative local education property tax rates allowing unincorporated places to avoid paying the statewide property tax.
That action does not require any more state money and in fact increases state revenue by about $30 million.
The Legislature increased spending on special education in the second year of the biennium, but the Senate budget reduced that figure by $27 million.
Just a few years ago, the Education Trust Fund, which pays for state adequacy grants to public and charter schools, special education, building aid and several other educational needs, had a surplus approaching $250 million, but since that time the EFA program has also drawn its money from the same source of funds totally $76 million through this school year.
The additional draw from the EFA program and declining state revenues have combined to substantially change the financial picture. At the end of this fiscal year at the end of the month, the surplus will be around $100 million.
At the end of the upcoming biennium the surplus in the Senate’s budget will be less than $20 million, with the fund in deficit under the House’s budget, and $14 million in the governor’s plan.
All three plans reduce the percentage of state revenues that go into the Education Trust Fund and increase the amount going to the state’s general fund.
Drying up the Education Trust Fund was a plan hatched long ago to have vouchers competing with public schools for state education money. When that happens, if you think your property taxes are too high now, just wait until the money goes to the voucher program first before adequacy grants to school districts.
The Free State/Libertarians have long sought to have public schools house only special education students and kids with disciplinary programs. The rest of the students and their parents will be on their own to find and pay for their education, meaning the rich will do just fine and everyone else will scramble to find an inferior education they can afford.
That is a pathway to retaining the oligarchy.
Another significant issue facing public education is the dearth of teachers as many school districts cannot find certified teachers to hire and instead have to rely on non-credentialed personnel or para educators to fill the gap.
See above and and you could reasonably ask, with these kinds of bills that put teachers between their students and their parents and make schools less than safe spaces for many kids, who in their right mind would want to be an educator.
At last week’s session, Rep. Stephen Woodcock, D-Center Conway, a retired teacher and school principal, said “Parental rights go hand in hand with parental responsibilities. It is not a teacher’s responsibility to do the parents’ job, which is talking with their children.”
And you could argue that public education ought to be more rigorous than it is now, but society has pressured schools to “make every child succeed,” and that translates into lower academic standards.
And that describes the new state education standards recently approved by the State Board of Education in the name of competency-based education.
If this group of legislators continue to control the agenda, it will not be long before public education will be in tatters, which will suit them fine.
But with about 90 percent of the state’s children in the public school system, it is hard to believe that is their parents’ or their desire.
Trump is determined to defund NPR and PBS. He claims they are radical, far-left media outlets. The federal funding these media receive is funneled through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In his effort to control CPB, Trump told three members of the board of CPB that they were fired. Trump intends to control every outlet of public information, either by threatening their funding or (if private) suing to intimidate them. This is fascism.
The CPB board sued and said that it was created by Congress to be independent of political direction.
A federal district judge in DC, appointed by Obama, issued a decision that caused both sides to claim victory. The decision said that the board members would not suffer irreparable harm if removed, but that CPB is an independent agency. The judge declined to block the firings but CPB treated the ruling as a victory for its independence.
Yesterday a federal judge declined to immediately intervene in Trump’s attempt to remove three Corporation for Public Broadcasting board members, “ruling the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a strong likelihood the firings were unlawful or that they would suffer irreparable harm,” The Hill’s Sarah Fortinskyreports.
“But CPB officials celebrated the ruling as a win, pointing to part of the ruling that acknowledges that ‘Congress intended to preclude the President (or any subordinate officials acting at his direction) from directing, supervising, or controlling the Corporation.’” The entity’s statement on the matter is titled “Court Recognizes CPB’s Independence.”
The bottom line: CPB is keeping its board members in place and continuing to fight.
Two San Francisco parents promote the city’s public schools at a city resource fair.
Credit: SF Department of Children, Youth and Families
If you live in San Francisco or have been here recently, you may have started seeing window signs or bumper stickers that say “I love my SF public school.” And if you’re not a San Francisco public school parent or student, you might be surprised to see these signs, given the prevailing narrative about the public schools in our fair city and in other urban areas. It turns out there are plenty of satisfied — even enthusiastic — public school parents and students in our big cities.
In California, and across the country, there is a pervasive narrative that urban public schools are “bad” and suburban schools are “good.” (Example: The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a small East Bay suburb has “better” schools than San Francisco like it’s an objective fact.) Describing a school, let alone an entire school system, as “good” or “bad” is lazy at best and coded racism at worst. Why? Because we typically rely on test scores and numerical ratings to identify a “good” school, and those ratings are highly correlated with race and income.
And there is so much more to a school than reading and math test scores.
Instead, we should talk about “fit” because a school that is a great fit for one kid may be a terrible fit for another. I am a graduate of the vaunted Palo Alto public school system. It was a good fit for me because I thrived (mostly) in a competitive academic environment; it was a terrible fit for one of my relatives, whose special needs were never adequately met in that system.
To determine a good fit, we parents and caregivers have to get really specific about what we’re looking for in a school and what each of our kids needs. Do we want rigorous academics? Arts education? A focus on social justice? Support for social-emotional development? A diverse student body?
Next, we need a reliable source of information. You can certainly learn something from looking at numerical data, like the School Accountability Report Cards. But if you really want to know whether a given school has what you’re looking for, the best source of information is current students, parents and caregivers.
If you ask urban public school parents what they think of their public schools, you will certainly hear both positives and negatives, as you would anywhere, including the suburbs. Since you can find a litany of complaints via a quick Google search, and in the spirit of the “I love my SF public school” campaign, I will focus on the positives. Here are the many things those of us displaying the signs in San Francisco — and sharing similar sentiments across the state — love about our kids’ schools:
The rich diversity of our cities is reflected in our schools. San Francisco middle school parent Jessica Franklin appreciates that her kids “are learning to engage with, interact with and learn from so many people who are so different from themselves.” Hanson Li says that, as a first-generation immigrant, he appreciates the district’s “continued commitment to immersive language programs.” His high schoolers are fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese after attending elementary and middle schools with language programs.
Our teachers are incredible. They are skilled and experienced: At her kid’s elementary school in San Francisco, Autumn Brown Garibay says five teachers have been at the school for more than 20 years, and many teachers sent their own kids to the school. They are dedicated: Sonia Gandiaga’s eighth grader in San Francisco has an “incredibly committed math teacher” who made her love math and feel confident in her math skills. They are committed to learning the latest, most effective teaching methods: At my son’s school, teachers learned how to teach a research-based phonics program and supported each other to implement the program.
Our schools have a strong sense of community that is intentionally cultivated by teachers, school leaders, and families. Oakland middle school parent Monica Purdy appreciates how effectively her son’s school is supporting his transition into sixth grade, with camping trips to build community, weekly mentoring and individual counseling. In Los Angeles, Sara Light appreciates that her kids’ school draws from the surrounding neighborhood, which helps facilitate the feeling of community.
Our children have access to enrichment programs and field trips that come with living in a world-class city. At the middle school Franklin’s kids attend, in just one year, students participated in collaborations with six different arts organizations, including the San Francisco Opera, Hip Hop for Change, and Alonzo King LINES Ballet.
No school or school district is perfect. As public school parents, we are the first to admit that our schools have areas that need improvement. Still, there are many things we love about our urban public schools.
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Jennie Herriot-Hatfield is a K-12 education consultant, former elementary school teacher, and public school parent in San Francisco. She serves on the board of directors for SF Parent Coalition, which advocates for a thriving, equitable school system.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Students walk near Laxson Auditorium on the Chico State campus.
Credit: Jason Halley/University Photographer/Chico State
California lawmakers introduced a series of bills Monday to prevent and address sexual discrimination and harassment in the state’s colleges and universities.
The 12-bill package led by Assemblymember Mike Fong, who chairs the Assembly Higher Education Committee, follows a report released in February that detailed significant deficiencies in how the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges handle Title IX. That federal law prohibits schools from sex-based discrimination.
“This package is a crucial step in creating a system of compliance and oversight that will increase transparency and accountability to address and prevent sex discrimination and harassment on college campuses,” said Fong, D-Monterey Park. “While there is still much work ahead, I am confident in the impact this legislative package will have for campus communities, especially students and staff. I look forward to continual collaboration between the Legislature and all California’s higher education institutions to address this issue of safety and equity on campus.”
The 12 bills include:
AB 810, from Assemblymember Laura Friedman, D-Burbank, would require all public colleges and universities to use UC Davis’ policy to conduct employment verification checks to determine if a job applicant for any athletic, academic or administrative position had any substantial misconduct allegations from their previous employer.
AB 1790, from Assemblymember Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, would require CSU to implement recommendations made in a Title IX report conducted last year by the California State Auditor by Jan. 1, 2026. That report found the 23-campus system lacked resources and failed to carry out its Title IX responsibilities.
AB 1905, from Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D-San Luis Obispo, would create parameters around employee retreat rights, letters of recommendations and settlements for administrators who have a substantiated sexual harassment complaint against them.
AB 2047, from Fong, would create an independent, statewide Title IX office to assist the community colleges, CSU and UC systems with Title IX monitoring and compliance, and create a statewide Title IX coordinator.
AB 2048, from Fong, would require each community college district and each CSU and UC campus to have an independent Title IX office.
AB 2326, from Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-Chula Vista, would create entities responsible for ensuring campus programs are free from discrimination and would require the community colleges, CSU and UC to annually present to the Legislature how their systems are actively preventing discrimination.
AB 2407, from Assemblymember Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara, would require the California State Auditor to audit the community colleges, CSU and UC systems every three years on their ability to address and prevent sexual harassment on the campuses.
AB 2492, from Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, would create additional positions on college campuses to assist students, faculty and staff during the adjudication of sexual harassment complaints.
AB 2608, from Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, D-Encino, would require campuses to offer drug-facilitated sexual assault prevention training.
AB 2987, from Assemblymember Liz Ortega, D-Hayward, would mandate that the community colleges and CSU provide timely updates on the outcomes of sexual discrimination and harassment cases to the people involved. The bill would request the same of UC.
Senate Bill 1166, from Sen. Bill Dodd, would establish annual reporting requirements for the community colleges and CSU to conduct a report on sexual harassment complaint outcomes, and a summary of how each campus worked to prevent sex discrimination. The bill would request the same of UC.
SB 1491, from Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Hayward, would create a notification process for students who attend private institutions to disclose discriminatory events to the U.S. Department of Education, even if their college or university is exempt from Title IX.
The slate of bills follows a series of news nationally and statewide about mishandled Title IX cases. Last year, the CSU system was found to have mishandled a variety of cases based on reports from an independent law firm and the state auditor. CSU is currently implementing the changes and reforms called for in both reports, and it has already changed its policy allowing administrators who have committed misconduct to “retreat” to faculty positions.
“Whether it’s sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination, or any other form of misconduct, no student should feel unsafe or unwelcome in their learning environment,” said Lisa Baker, a representative from the student senate for California Community Colleges. “Unfortunately, harassment remains prevalent on college campuses, potentially affecting students’ mental health and academic performance. We students, and future students, are relying on Title IX and this package of bills for our success.”
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.
Three high school Linked Learning pathway students don lab coats as they collaborate on a hands-on science experiment, bringing classroom learning to life through real-world application.
Courtesy: Linked Learning Alliance
California’s Golden State Pathways Program is a historic commitment to career-connected learning.
In January 2025, $470 million in grants began flowing to hundreds of school communities across the state. These are huge investments, based on a proven approach to education called Linked Learning, which carefully integrates rigorous, college-bound academics with hands-on career learning experiences and strong student supports — all connected by an industry theme that meets workforce needs within the local community.
For example: In Porterville Unified School district, which serves California’s rural central valley, nearly every high school student is enrolled in a Linked Learning college and career preparatory pathway related to thriving local occupations, including those in energy, aviation, agricultural technology, and other fields. The district has an impressive 99% graduation rate, 94% of its alumni enroll in postsecondary education, and 25% percent of students earn industry-recognized certificates while still in high school. Similarly, by offering Linked Learning pathways focused on health sciences, information technology, child development and other high-growth careers, the more urban Oakland Unified School District has boosted its rates of high school graduation and completion of college-preparatory credits, and reduced absenteeism and discipline issues.
Both the extraordinary new Golden State Pathways Program (GSPP) funding and the California Master Plan for Career Education, recently released to guide educators and labor market leaders across the state, empower school leaders to build such learning pathways for their students. We wholeheartedly affirm this work.
But truly effective Linked Learning practice — the kind that extensive third-party research links to excellence and equity — requires more than working through a checklist of courses and activities. It takes intentional integration of each aspect of student experience, thoughtful measurement and supportive policy.
To this end, we offer three key recommendations:
1. District leaders should push for true college and career integration. Rather than maintain the long-standing divide between college prep curricula and career-technical education, Golden State Pathways Program resources can be applied to make core academic subjects more engaging and useful by connecting them to themed pathways focused on the high-opportunity, high-wage careers that correspond to real workforce needs in each region. Classroom learning should sync with similarly themed sequential career-technical education courses and work-based learning, like internships and apprenticeships. Districts should engage students and families to ensure pathway options are well understood, aligned with student interests, and connected to workforce demands. As modeled in Porterville and Oakland, the right industry themes bring learning to life in very tangible ways, and they build skills and mindsets that translate to success in any field of future study or employment.
2. Researchers should inform and strengthen program implementation. Rather than wait for parents and legislators to ask, “did this pathways investment work?” participating regions should develop a robust and proactive research agenda in coordination with local communities to begin generating evidence that improves outcomes along the way. Understanding student experiences, opportunities and outcomes in pathways is essential for strengthening the program over time. Research on the conditions that return the strongest results can help spread best practices across rural, suburban and urban communities.
3. Policymakers should remove barriers to effective implementation. We cannot keep asking high schools to do everything they currently do and layer additional tasks on top of it all. State and local policies that enable waivers, flexibility, or alternatives to A–G requirements for UC/CSU admissions would increase time and space in students’ schedules to engage in work-based learning. Policymakers should also build in incentives for collaboration and coordination between K–12 and postsecondary institutions to enable purposeful dual-enrollment opportunities that accelerate all students toward a valuable credential. To further our recommendation in point two above, policymakers should also ensure data systems that tag students in pathways to lower the barriers and costs of high-quality research on program outcomes.
Washington DC and California are moving in dramatically different directions on education. Where the nation is pulling back, we are charging ahead. We must continue to see this progress through. By acting on these recommendations, we prove a point: that government can respond in good faith to the public it serves. And we do not fail to miss the point of it all: that our future depends on getting education right for young people.
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Ash Vasudevais president and CEO of ConnectED: The National Center for College and Career, an organization that partners with school, district, and community leaders to transform education through Linked Learning pathways.
Anne Stanton is president and CEO of the Linked Learning Alliance, an organization that leads the movement toward educational excellence and equity for every adolescent through high-quality college and career preparation.
Editors’ note: Anne Stanton is a member of the EdSource board of directors. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.
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.
