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  • Education concerns remain high at LA County juvenile hall

    Education concerns remain high at LA County juvenile hall


    Minors detained at Los Padrinos juvenile hall in Los Angeles County.

    Credit: Richard Ross

    Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles County remains open a year after the state’s corrections oversight board deemed it “unsuitable for the confinement of minors” and four months after it ordered the center to shut down due to ongoing noncompliance with the state’s minimum standards for juvenile facilities.

    The problems plaguing the facility, located in the southeast LA city of Downey, include insufficient probation officers, students arriving to class late, abysmal performance on standardized education testing, and the center’s heavy reliance on substitute teachers.

    A court hearing that had been scheduled for Friday was to decide the hall’s fate, but L.A. County Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza deferred the decision until April, to allow for the completion of a re-inspection by the Bureau of State and Community Corrections, known as BSCC, the state agency that deemed it unsuitable after multiple inspections.

    Advocates say they are concerned that the situation could impact the quality of education the youth are receiving.

    “When we are thinking about young folks who are in these camps and halls, we want to make sure they’re having access to academic rigor that is deeper than just a packet, that they’re actually being challenged, and that they have the opportunity that when they leave these sites, to either return to their school of origin and be ready for the next thing — for trades, for college, for these things that allow them to be productive members of our community and society,” said Yasmine-Imani McMorrin, director of education equity at Children’s Defense Fund California.

    While the issues found at Los Padrinos appear to be improving according to reports from an ongoing inspection, advocates are skeptical because such moments of compliance in the past were short-lived.

    “We have a history of these independent bodies identifying issues with the education being provided, and then it might improve for a little bit, but then, once eyes are off or the settlement ends, we see those issues persist and get even worse,” said Vivian Wong, an education attorney and interim director of the Youth Justice Education Clinic at the Loyola Law Cchool, whose recent clients have included Los Padrinos students.

    This chaotic history has led to the formation of groups like the Education Justice Coalition, which started in 2020 to advocate for the release of as many youth as possible at the height of the pandemic and high-quality education for detained youth.

    Advocates like Wong insist that while conditions must improve inside the juvenile facilities, the priority should be to release youth back into their communities.

    “Our policy recommendation, and something we’ve been consistently advocating for, is keeping people in the community as much as possible,” Wong said of the education coalition. “If you don’t have the staff, we should really question why young people are in here.”

    In less than two years since its reopening, Los Padrinos has been plagued with accusations and findings of violence, allegedly incited by probation staff, and about the inadequacy of its programs, including the residents’ access to education. This site was to provide relief after two other juvenile halls, Central Juvenile Hall in Sylmar and the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Boyle Heights, were shuttered and deemed unsuitable given their ongoing problems. Issues included insufficient staffing, lack of proper training on the use-of-force policy, as well as youth being confined to their rooms for too long.

    Los Padrinos itself was closed in 2019 amid allegations of abuse, with six officers charged with assault and child abuse the year of its closure, and a history of concerns about safety for both youth and probation officers. Then- California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the county, and the county office of education entered into settlements in 2021 after problems were revealed with access to education for the youth. A 2010 settlement in a class action lawsuit showed inadequate education programs for the youth in the county’s largest juvenile detention facility. Reforms focused on 13 major areas, including literacy, instruction, transition, special education, and after care.

    School at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall

    Over 230 youth are at Los Padrinos and, as of Jan. 6, 190 of them were attending the hall’s court school, which is operated by the county’s office of education. They are all pre-disposition youth who are awaiting court action or transfer to another facility.

    The student population consists of 167 male students across 21 living units in the hall and 23 female students across two units. Students’ ages can range from 13 to 22 years old in grade levels from sixth to 12th. Some youth remain at Los Padrinos for months, up to a couple of years, but the average stay is about 22 days.

    A typical day at Los Padrinos is supposed to go as follows: School is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m., and students remain for two class periods until 11:50 a.m. Then they return to their units for lunch for the next hour and a half, after which they return to class until 3 p.m. for their third and final period of the day. The only shortened day is Friday, which ends at 1 p.m. for teacher professional development.

    Probation staff are tasked both with taking students from their units to their classroom and remaining in the classroom while class is in session.

    But the BSCC’s inspection from December 2024 noted that inspections have found an “inability of facility staff to get youth to school on time due to lack of staff available for supervision within the classroom.”

    The issue seems to have subsided at least once in the last year and a half. During an annual inspection in June last year, both the county office of education and youth reported that students had not been late to class in months due to low staffing. That inspection was conducted by the county’s Probation Oversight Commission, a group created by the county Board of Supervisors in 2020 to monitor and advise the Probation Department and the Board of Supervisors as they implement justice system reforms.

    But that appears to be one of the few inspections since Los Padrinos reopened that found that students arrived at class on time. On-time arrival to class — of both students and teachers — has been listed as a problem during inspections more often than not.

    It is unclear how many instructional minutes students have missed due to low staffing, but the 2024 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress showed that not a single 11th grader at Los Padrinos met the state standard for math, and just over 2% met the English standard.

    Students enrolled in LA County’s juvenile court schools take additional assessments referred to as STAR Reading and Star Math, which measure achievement and growth in the two subject areas.

    Assessment results for the fall of 2023 showed that 0% of students tested proficient in reading and less than 5% tested proficient in math.

    In the most recent STAR assessments from winter 2024-25, “urgent intervention” was needed for nearly half of all students in reading and about 44% in math. Just about 10% of students met or surpassed the benchmark for reading; 11.5% in math. The remainder were either bordering on needing intervention, or they needed it already, in both subjects.

    While the numbers indicate progress, they remain low for the students’ grade levels.

    At Los Padrinos, there are currently no reading specialists on staff, according to Erin Simon, associate superintendent at the county’s office of education. Reading intervention is provided by students’ teachers.

    Many students arrive with “very low reading levels,” she said, and the county education office has implemented intervention programs such as Read180 to increase reading levels.

    “They’re adjusting to their environment; there’s mental health and trauma,” said Simon, who was hired nearly 11 months ago to provide oversight over the county’s juvenile facilities, with an emphasis on Los Padrinos.

    “The complexity of it is knowing that many of those students only stay with us for a very short period of time, so we are always pushing to have more intervention and more instruction, but we also know that there are certain things that happen when a student gets here.”

    She added that more counselors are available now to help Los Padrinos students address mental health concerns, first addressing social-emotional learning and mental health challenges and then moving into academic intervention programming.

    On a typical day, students might be taught by their assigned and credentialed teacher, but it is not uncommon for a substitute to lead the class instead.

    While Los Padrinos, the county’s largest juvenile hall, has 33 permanent, credentialed teachers — up from 26 in October 2023 — they rely on nine to 14 substitute teachers on a daily basis, according to Simon. There are also seven vacancies at this time.

    “It does require a teacher who is really not afraid to work in those camps and halls; a teacher who can really build relationships with many of our students, knowing they have trauma and also some mental health issues, and so it does become a very difficult position to fill, especially at Los Padrinos,” Simon said.

    On the day of last year’s inspection by the county’s probation oversight commission, there were seven full-time teachers on the job and 16 substitute teachers.

    “It’s a huge problem, especially for this population, where they have adults come in and out of their lives, and, frequently, there is already so much instability in their education. They’re coming and going in and out of schools, transferring school districts,” said Wong about the reliance on substitutes. “If the teacher is not there, then they have to build up that trust again with the new person.”

    It can be especially difficult for a student who requires accommodation in the classroom, as is the case with Wong’s clients. She said a client, currently at a county juvenile camp, was doing well in school after having developed a relationship with a teacher. But when the teacher was out for a month, the student could no longer access his curriculum in a similar fashion, “because every teacher implements accommodations differently.”

    As the debate continues over whether Los Padrinos will close or remain open, in part depending on the result of the latest BSCC inspection that began last week, advocates are pushing to maintain the focus on the youth inside the hall.

    “We’re dealing with fires and fire recovery, climate change, housing, homelessness, all these things that overlap with our young folks and their needs,” McMorrin said. “But it’s such a priority to get it right, because there is no do-over for these critical years of youth and to do what we can to prepare them for this world.”





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  • At community colleges, online classes remain popular years after pandemic

    At community colleges, online classes remain popular years after pandemic


    Ricardo Alcaraz is taking three of his five courses online this semester at Santa Ana College: an anthropology class, business calculus and business law. It’s a course schedule that reflects a new reality and shift toward distance learning across California’s community colleges, largely sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

    Taking classes online, though, isn’t ideal for Alcaraz, who is majoring in business administration and plans to transfer to Cal State Fullerton this fall. He enjoys in-person classes because he likes to arrive early and ask questions of his professors. His online classes, on the other hand, are asynchronous, meaning there’s no live instruction, and he has to direct his questions via email.

    But like hundreds of thousands of other students in California, Alcaraz opts to enroll in many online classes because they fit better into his schedule. While enrolled at Santa Ana, he has worked up to 20 hours a week at the college’s Undocu-Scholars Center, a resource center for the college’s undocumented students. He’s also the student trustee for the Rancho Santiago Community College District, requiring him to be at board meetings and many campus events.

    “It’s been hard to adapt to online classes. But due to how busy I’ve been and needing to be present in different areas, I feel like it’s been very helpful in a way,” he said.

    During the pandemic five years ago, a significant majority of California community classes shifted online. Despite some early confusion and bumps in adapting to online education, distance education has firmly taken hold in the years since.

    More than 40% of community college classes remain online statewide as of this year, about double what it was before the pandemic, and a much higher rate of remote education than exists at the state’s four-year universities. That includes hybrid classes, which mix online and some required in-person instruction. Some colleges also offer HyFlex courses, which give students the option of attending online or in person. The vast majority of the system’s online classes, however, are taught fully online and asynchronously. 

    Many campuses also have no choice but to cater to students to stabilize their enrollments and finances. Enrollment across the state plummeted during the pandemic — dropping 19% statewide — and is still below pre-pandemic levels. 

    College leaders and instructors say online education has proven an effective enough teaching and learning method, especially for general education classes, the lower-level coursework students take before diving into much of their major studies. Statewide, students pass both synchronous and asynchronous online courses at only a slightly lower rate than students pass in-person courses. 

    Still, officials acknowledge that many students benefit from face-to-face instruction and social interactions with their peers. Such interactions are less common now than they were pre-pandemic, with many campuses quieter and noticeably less crowded. Some colleges have begun to consider how they can entice students to return to campus. 

    “For a lot of students and a lot of instructors, the preference is to be in the classroom,” said John Hetts, executive vice chancellor for the statewide community college system. “That regular personal contact matters. I think a lot of students feel it, but the challenge we have as a system is that the vast majority of our students work.

    “So how do we balance that? I think that’s going to be the challenge for our institutions, to support students getting what they need to thrive, but also what they need to be able to work,” he added.

    Los Angeles City College

    Just prior to the pandemic, 21% of community college classes were online. That rate ballooned to nearly 70% of classes in 2020-21. 

    Some hands-on programs, like respiratory care and other health programs, were taught in person even during the pandemic because they met the state’s definition of essential education. Beyond those, most community colleges required other classes to be held online throughout the 2020-21 academic year. The next year, colleges began reopening in-person classes, with vaccine mandates in place.

    Taylor Squires, a second-year technical theater arts student at Saddleback College in Orange County, takes as many of her general education classes online as possible, and sometimes other courses too. This past fall, her entire course load was online.

    “It depends on the semester, but the reasoning is pretty much the same: it frees up time in my day to go do other things,” Squires said. 

    The state’s four-year university systems are also offering more classes online now than they did pre-pandemic. They offer them at a lower rate than the community colleges, but many of their students take at least one class online every semester or quarter. At the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses, 6.4% of course sections were fully online in 2023-24, up from 1.8% in the year leading up to the pandemic. That percentage does not include hybrid classes.

    Before the pandemic, online classes were a rarity at the 23-campus California State University. More than 90% of course sections were taught in person in each school year between 2016-17 and 2018-19. Then, the start of the pandemic supercharged what had been a gradual trend toward virtual learning.

    Cal State campuses have not fully reverted to the pre-pandemic norm now that their campuses are no longer subject to restrictions on in-person gatherings. In the 2023-24 school year, 73% of course sections were taught face-to-face, and 75% of students took at least one course online. The percentage of courses offered in a hybrid format has more than doubled between 2016-17 and 2023-24.

    At community colleges, some hands-on classes and programs need to be taught face-to-face because of the nature of the work, like science labs or trade programs such as welding or construction.

    Otherwise, most community colleges and their academic departments decide on instructional delivery methods based on what will bring the most enrollments. At the state’s largest district, the nine-college Los Angeles Community College District, between 40% and 50% of classes are now taught online each semester. Before the pandemic, between 10% and 15% of classes were taught online.

    “Based on our assumption of student demand, we may plan that 40% of our classes need to be online and 60% need to be in person. And if that 60% doesn’t materialize, we may shift some of that to online to give students more time to enroll,” said Nicole Albo-Lopez, the district’s deputy chancellor.

    At the communication and media studies department at Folsom Lake College, department chair Paula Cardwell said the “North Star” is to offer classes the way students want them. 

    Cardwell has been teaching online classes since 2007, much longer than most, and said she finds it can be done “really, really well.” She said students in her public speaking classes tend to give each other even better feedback in Zoom chats than they do in person because they are less worried about hurting one another’s feelings.

    Cardwell added, however, that there are challenges, especially with the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the likelihood of students using it to write their assignments. “So we are rethinking which classes we teach online or how we teach them because of that,” Cardwell said.

    Foothill College in Santa Clara County has also been rethinking its approach, hoping to ease isolation and improve student mental health. The college, where about half of the classes were remote even before the pandemic and 55% remain online, is actually seeing face-to-face enrollment increase at a faster rate than courses taught online. This quarter, enrollment is up about 19% for in-person classes, said Kristina Whalen, the college’s president.

    The college has opened new in-person facilities, including a wellness lounge where students can relax in massage chairs, meditate or talk to staff about getting connected to mental health services. 

    “Students are looking for that social interaction and the services that a campus affords,” Whalen said.

    But Foothill still relies heavily on distance education and is constantly trying to refine its online instruction, Whalen said. The college this year began requiring additional training to ensure faculty teaching online are still engaging with students, such as by providing prompt and personalized feedback on student coursework.

    “Up and down the state, I think colleges are asking and answering that question about how they are monitoring their online instruction to ensure that it’s of a quality that matches our on-ground instruction,” Whalen said. 

    Hetts, the executive vice chancellor for the community college system, noted that the chancellor’s office provides a rubric to ensure online classes are high quality. But he added that much of the training and review of those classes happens locally.

    At the Los Angeles district, faculty are required to be certified to teach online as part of their union contract. Most faculty opt in to additional training, such as one focused on using artificial intelligence in the classroom, said Albo-Lopez. Faculty are regularly looking to build new skills because they know distance education is their new normal, she added.

    “It’s here to stay because it’s created a new niche of flexibility both for our students, but also for our workforce,” she said. “And I think that that’s something that is going to be really difficult to change back.”

    EdSource staff writer Amy DiPierro contributed reporting to this article. Abby Offenhauser, a member of the EdSource California Student Journalism Corps, also contributed reporting.





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