Trump and the Republican Party have long advocated for changes in federal law to allow churches to engage in political activities. The Johnson Amendment, enacted in 1954, limited the ability of churches and other religious institutions from issuing endorsements from the pulpit. Trump’s base includes evangelical churches that wanted this ban lifted. Trump didn’t have to change the law. He just had to appoint the Director of the Internal Revenue Service.
The I.R.S. said on Monday that churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.
The agency made that statement in a court filing intended to settle a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters.
The plaintiffs that sued the Internal Revenue Service had previously asked a federal court in Texas to create an even broader exemption — to rule that all nonprofits, religious and secular, were free to endorse candidates to their members. That would have erased a bedrock idea of American nonprofit law: that tax-exempt groups cannot be used as tools of any campaign.
Instead, the I.R.S. agreed to a narrower carveout — one that experts in nonprofit law said might sharply increase politicking in churches, even though it mainly seemed to formalize what already seemed to be the agency’s unspoken policy.
The agency said that if a house of worship endorsed a candidate to its congregants, the I.R.S. would view that not as campaigning but as a private matter, like “a family discussion concerning candidates.”
“Thus, communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted,” the agency said, in a motion filed jointly with the plaintiffs.
The ban on campaigning by nonprofits is named after former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who introduced it as a senator in 1954. President Trump has repeatedly called for its repeal.
This is the third in a series of stories on the challenges impacting California’s efforts to offer high-quality instruction to all 4-year-olds by 2025.
This past school year, 4-year-old Yoshua would’ve been home, watching TV or playing on his tablet if he hadn’t been enrolled in Garden Grove Unified’s transitional kindergarten (TK) program, according to his mom, Briseida, who asked that her last name not be used.
“Learning the English language, learning how to start writing his name, learning colors and numbers, knowing that he goes to school with his classmates and can talk and play with them, knowing that his teacher will teach him new things,” Briseida said in Spanish in a district video about the importance of TK, an additional year of public education prior to kindergarten. “All of that has been very positive for us because if he had stayed at home, he would not have learned any of those things.”
The large, urban, nearly 40,000-student Garden Grove school community includes immigrants with many families who do not speak English at home. So, those TK students are exposed not only to academic content but also a full year of the English language, said Gabriela Mafi, superintendent of Garden Grove Unified School District, in which English is not the primary language of 63.6% of students.
Sending 4-year-olds to TK benefits students as well as their families. For example, enrollment for Noel allowed his mom, Celeste Monroy, time to seek employment and enroll in classes to learn English, she said in the school district video.
Many parents in the northern Orange County community cannot afford private preschool, which can cost thousands of dollars annually, nor can they accommodate a half-day program, such as many offered by the state’s public preschool programs.
TK has been gradually expanding to reach all the state’s 4-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year, and each school year, more 4-year-olds become eligible.
In 2023-24, children who turned 5 between Sept. 2 and April 2 were eligible. Districts had a choice to even enroll younger 4-year-olds ahead of the phased timeline, such as Noel — who has a birthday after April 2 and would turn 5 by June 30, the end of the school year.
Planning ahead, Garden Grove Unified staffed its classes to comply with the state requirement of 24 students per class size average and a 1:12 adult-child staffing ratio, getting that average to just under 21 students with one teacher and an aide.
Then, the state established new rules just months ahead of the 2023-24 school year.
Such “last-minute changes” at the state level complicate school district operations and impact students locally, superintendents say.
During the budget process in summer 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation creating a new category for kids participating in TK ahead of the state’s timeline, changing the birthday cutoff dates, lowering TK requirements for classes with those students and applying fiscal penalties for noncompliance.
The legislation added an “early enrollment” distinction for 4-year-olds with birthdays after June 2. Students with June 3-30 birthdays were to be considered early enrollment children, requiring stricter guidelines.
Prior to the legislative change, there were no special provisions for the enrollment of students who turned 5 before the school year ended on June 30.
For the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, any class with an early enrollment child must meet a 20-student class size maximum and a 1:10 adult-to-student ratio, or face penalties.
Districts were left with a difficult decision for a school year starting in less than two months: Retain the students they’d enrolled and try to comply with the stricter requirements; face penalties if and when they can’t adhere to the more restrictive regulations; or turn away families.
According to superintendents, the state’s last-minute changes illustrate the disconnect between state-level decisions and local implementation and exemplify the state’s lack of understanding of the needs of families, disproportionately impacting districts trying to meet those needs.
“We make commitments to our families and then now have to either undo them or incur something punitive because we tried to serve our communities the best we possibly can,” said John Garcia, superintendent of the 22,000-student Downey Unified, an urban/suburban school district in southeast Los Angeles County.
Why enroll younger students?
The need to offer early childhood education, generally believed to benefit disadvantaged children, was at the heart of Garden Grove and Downey Unified decisions to accept younger cohorts of children for TK sooner than the state’s timeline.
Families in both districts were unable to afford fee-based preschool or work due to a need for child care.
“If he wasn’t given this opportunity to go to TK, he would have either been in day care/preschool, or I would’ve had to quit work and not be able to financially provide for my family,” a Garden Grove Unified parent shared regarding their child for a district document about the impact of TK.
TK not only saves on child care costs that burdened families but, according to educators and experts, also builds a strong educational foundation and bridges the opportunity gap between low-income families and affluent ones — gaps more prevalent in high-poverty districts.
Enrolling younger students sooner meant a full year of instruction before kindergarten, Garcia said, adding that Downey Unified kindergarten teachers notice a difference in those who gain an extra year of schooling.
In high-poverty districts specifically, that additional year gives the kids “an opportunity to have a head start on kindergarten,” Mafi said. “And those are the kids who need it the most, which is why many high-poverty districts chose to accelerate TK faster.”
About 81% of students in Garden Grove and nearly 70% in Downey Unified are classified as low income, based on January data of unduplicated student counts. In contrast, high-wealth districts may not have had the need to offer TK sooner because their families can afford to pay for private preschool, Mafi said.
“This is the message I feel they’re telling us: ‘Poor kids — they don’t need to be helped, to have the same quality of a pre-kindergarten experience like their more affluent peers.’ And I don’t think that’s the message they should be sending.”
Even though low-income students could benefit more from early childhood education, such children have lower preschool enrollment, the Public Policy Institute of California found.
Research shows that high-quality preschool leads to students being prepared for school with improved behavior and learning skills and higher academic performance in math and reading once enrolled, all of which can help bridge the gap between students from high-poverty and high-wealth families.
“All we’re trying to do is address the opportunity gap,” Mafi said.
Trailer bill changed birthday cutoffs, requirements
In July 2021, legislation to expand TK passed, phasing in 4-year-old students until all are eligible by 2025-26.
Based on the 2021 legislation and continued guidance in 2023, districts could enroll TK students ahead of the state’s timeline as long as they turned 5 by the end of the school year, defined as June 30.
January-February 2023: For the 2023-24 school year, many school districts started TK registration, including for students who would turn 5 by June 30, 2024 — a choice aligned with legislation and state guidance available to districts at the time.
There were even younger 4-year-olds with July or August birthdays, who would not turn 5 during the school year and would not be eligible for TK until 2025-26, based on the 2021 legislation.
January 2023: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposed a way to fix that by allowing districts to use local dollars to enroll children with July and August birthdays, “a welcomed proposal” that remained in the May revisions, a Los Angeles Unified spokesperson told EdSource.
June-July 2023: Lawmakers reached a compromise to allow the younger 4-year-old students as long as classrooms adhere to stricter requirements.
July 2023: The governor signed SB 114, an education budget trailer bill, which created lower statutory requirements for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years for school districts serving newly-defined “early enrollment” children, 4-year-olds with summer birthdays during and after the school year (from June 3 to Sept. 1).
“We believe that this compromise was vastly preferable to the alternative of disenrolling families, who would have had to scramble for alternative education and care options for their 4-year-old children,” Newsom administration officials said.
San Diego Unified, which had been supportive of efforts to include all 4-year-olds, and Los Angeles Unified were not privy to the compromise between legislative leaders and the Newsom administration, but they were pleased that the result allowed schools to serve students they had already enrolled, spokespersons from the districts said. About 14% of LAUSD TK students have summer birthdays between June 3 and Sept. 1.
Other districts that were enrolling students ahead of the state’s timeline, but within the previous legislation language, had registered students with June 3-30 birthdays.
“It’s that June 3rd to June 30th — that is the date change … making them early enrollment kids,” Mafi said. “No one ever said that before in the last four years.”
The differences are significant
The state’s authorization for the youngest group of TK students came with stricter requirements. Specifically, the 2021 guidelines required a regular TK class to have an average of 24 or less, measured across the school, with an adult-to-student ratio of 1:12. The 2023 rules require a TK class with early enrollment kids to be measured individually and held to a 20-student maximum with a 1:10 ratio.
The stricter ratio for classes with early enrollment kids is more closely aligned with 1:8 staffing practices in early education at licensed child care centers, private preschools and state preschool programs and the 1:10 ratio at Head Start.
But combined with the 20-student max, the requirements exceed guidelines of other programs serving 3- and 4-year-olds, statewide organizations, county education offices and superintendents from LAUSD, Fresno, Oakland, Garden Grove, Downey, Westminster and La Habra City unified school districts said in a March letter.
The California state preschool programs allow class sizes of 24 with a 1:8 ratio, according to the letter, which urged legislators to eliminate penalties and give districts time to reduce ratios for the early enrollment students.
Photo courtesy of Garden Grove Unified School DistrictPhoto courtesy of Garden Grove Unified
Prior to the 2023 change, students born between April 3 and June 30 were considered regular TK students without different requirements. The trailer bill made those born June 3 to June 30 early enrollment kids.
Garden Grove didn’t disenroll the students, who’d already been promised a spot.
Serving 1,736 TK students, the district had classes with an average of 21 students, well below the 24-student average enrollment requirement for regular TK but above the stricter 20-student requirement for any class with an early enrollment student.
Garden Grove estimated their penalties at around $58,000 per class with an early enrollment child. The fines could total $3.1 million.
A penalty on kids that districts aren’t paid for: ‘double penalty’
Districts are also reeling from what they say will be a double penalty: The state pays them nothing for early enrollment kids, yet will fine them for not meeting the stricter guidelines.
School districts receive average daily attendance (ADA) funding for TK-12 students through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). The state determined at what point the 4-year-olds would generate the funds based on its timeline of students eligible to enroll.
Three categories of TK students — age-eligible, early admittance and the new early enrollment — exist. Age-eligible students in 2023-24 had birthdays prior to April 2, falling within the state’s timeline, and generated funds from the first day of school.
Those enrolled ahead of the timeline with birthdays until June 2, considered early admittance kids, generated funding when they turned 5.
The newest category of students — early enrollment kids with birthdays after June 2 — did not generate funding at all. Before the change, districts enrolling students with June 3-30 birthdays could generate state funding once they turned 5.
“We’re going to take a penalty for students that we’re not getting revenue for in the first place,” Garcia said about districts educating students without the funding. “It’s unjust.”
But what can be done now?
The summer 2023 legislative changes for the 2023-24 school year didn’t leave enough time for many districts to comply with the stricter requirements.
Still, some refused to turn away families, knowing they’d incur penalties. And unless further legislative action is taken this summer, those districts could be penalized millions of dollars for not meeting the tougher requirements.
Existing legislation does not allow districts that are caught out of compliance to avoid penalties; however, the penalty can be waived through the legislative process, relief that Garden Grove and Downey Unified have been seeking for the 2023-24 school year.
Assembly Bill 2548, proposed by Assemblymember Tri Ta of northwestern Orange County, would waive the 2023-24 penalties on districts offering early TK.
In a letter to legislators, the Association of California School Administrators, the California Association of Suburban School Districts, Small School Districts’ Association, county education offices and school districts supported the legislation because the 2023-24 school year was weeks away from starting when the July 2023 trailer bill implemented the early enrollment regulations. In all, nearly 50 school districts, not including multiple districts represented by county education offices, supported the proposed waiver.
The Early Care and Education Consortium, according to a bill analysis completed by the Legislature, argued against the bill because it “disregards the legislative intent” in enacting the 1:10 ratio and 20-student max for classes with early enrollment students, which ensure student safety.
Another option to address penalties for the 2023-24 year is through budget trailer bill language, which can make the penalties effective after a certain date or exempt districts from penalties imposed.
The existing draft of this year’s education trailer bill does not include changes for TK penalties.
Impacting students, now and in the future
Downey Unified had 70 early enrollment students spread across about 15 classes.
“We could have pulled these kids out of this classroom, moved them to other schools in our district, but we just didn’t feel that was right,” deputy superintendent Roger Brossmer said. “That was just not something we were willing to put our kids and our families through.”
The impact of maintaining enrollment: about $1 million in possible penalties.
Going Deeper
An audit of this school year can be conducted now that the school year has ended but any fiscal penalties won’t be accessed until after the state education department reviews the audit findings, something that may not occur until the spring semester of the 2024-25 school year.
The district would lose funding from the Local Control Funding Formula in the amount of its penalties —reducing services for students, Brossmer said.
Because the penalty is accessed up to a year later, Downey Unified officials questioned the intent of the penalty, which takes money away from students.
“What is the value of a penalty after the year has already commenced and been funded?” said Robert McEntire, assistant superintendent of business services. “We have served these children, so who benefits from this penalty? This doesn’t help anybody.”
Fiscal penalties for noncompliance are a common practice in education. Violations for LCFF unduplicated pupil counts, K–3 grade span adjustments, instructional time, the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program and TK can result in penalties following audit findings, according to the state education department.
The penalties ensure “effective accountability,” California Department of Education Communications Director Elizabeth Sanders said.
“Penalizing districts is never our goal,” she said. “The related penalties (for TK requirements) … are to ensure that there’s appropriate and effective support of students. The goal is never to collect a penalty; it’s to support and ensure compliance with what kids need.”
To Downey Unified leaders, the resulting penalties from the 2023 trailer bill legislation punish districts for trying to meet the needs of their families.
As a result, for the 2024-25 school year, Downey Unified will not enroll students with birthdays after June 2.
“There are another potential 70 students out there with birthdays between June 3 and June 30 that we are not going to have in our schools because we are reticent as a result of what’s happened,” Garcia said. “We don’t feel like we’re able to fully serve our community to the best we can because of the experience that we’ve gone through this year. And that’s disappointing.”
Hundreds of San Diego State students protest in support of Palestinians on April 30, 2024.
Credit: Jazlyn Dieguez / EdSource
California State University and the University of California are welcoming student activists back to campus this fall with revamped protest rules that signal a harder line on encampments, barriers and, under certain circumstances, the wearing of face masks.
Cal State, the nation’s largest public university system, was first to issue its policy Thursday, a bundle of restrictions that govern public assemblies on university campuses. UC President Michael Drake followed Monday with a letter outlining his expectations for campus chancellors to impose restrictions on how students could engage in protests this fall.
The two systems join a wave of colleges that have revisited rules about how and where people can demonstrate on their campuses in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests last spring. Critics say some strengthened restrictions could limit free speech rights.
The Cal State policy bars tent encampments and overnight demonstrations, a signature of the spring’s protest movements both within CSU and across higher education institutions. Erecting unauthorized barricades, fencing and furniture is also prohibited.
“Encampments are prohibited by the policy, and those who attempt to start an encampment may be disciplined or sanctioned,” CSU spokesperson Hazel Kelly said in a written statement to EdSource. “Campus presidents and their designated officials will enforce this prohibition and take appropriate steps to stop encampments, including giving clear notice to those in violation that they must discontinue their encampment activities immediately.”
Kelly said the encampments “are disruptive and can cause a hostile environment for some community members. We have an obligation to ensure that all community members can access University Property and University programs.”
UC campuses similarly will ban encampments or other “unauthorized structures,” Drake said in a letter to campus chancellors Monday morning directing them to enforce those rules. He also said they must prohibit anything that restricts movement on campus, which could include protests that block walkways and roadways or deny access by anyone on campus to UC facilities.
“I hope that the direction provided in this letter will help you achieve an inclusive and welcoming environment at our campuses that protects and enables free expression while ensuring the safety of all community members by providing greater clarity and consistency in our policies and policy application,” Drake added.
UC faces Oct. 1 deadline
As part of this year’s state budget agreement, lawmakers directed Drake’s office to create a “systemwide framework” for consistently enforcing protest rules across UC’s campuses. Lawmakers are withholding $25 million from UC until Drake submits a report to the Legislature by Oct. 1 detailing those plans.
A variety of higher education institutions have bolstered policies that constrain demonstrations and similar gatherings in reaction to protests over the Israel-Hamas war last school year.
The University of Pennsylvania’s “temporary guidelines” include a ban on bullhorns and speakers after 5 p.m. on school days as well as a two-week limit on the display of posters and banners, according to The Associated Press. Indiana University’s policy allows “expressive activities” like protests from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. only and requires prior approval to hang or place signs on university property. The University of South Florida rules stipulate that no protests are allowed in the final two weeks of a semester, AP reported, among other restrictions.
Tyler Valeska,an assistant professor of law at Loyola University Chicago, said that even if a university has not seemed keen to enforce protest rules strictly in the past, many are now telegraphing a more forceful approach in the future.
“For years, maybe even decades, it did seem to be the case that university officials had a policy on paper and then another policy in their actual approach to enforcement,” he said. “And we saw a major change from that status quo in the spring, where universities around the country started suddenly enforcing policies that had been on the books for years or decades, but had never really been enforced against relatively nondisruptive student speech.”
“It may be the case that the universities are hyping up their policies with no actual intent to enforce them stringently, but based on what we saw in the spring, that would surprise me,” he added.
Applies to all Cal State campuses
The interim policy at Cal State applies to all 23 of the system’s campuses, replacing rules at each school. University leaders still have discretion on specifics, such as determining which buildings and spaces on campus are considered to be public areas and which hours of the day those spaces can be accessed, which they will spell out in addition to the systemwide policy.
Drake’s letter to the campus chancellors is not a systemwide policy. Instead, his letter directs each campus to come up with its own policies. Those policies must meet certain requirements, including the banning of encampments.
Some campuses likely already have the necessary policies, Drake said in his letter. If they don’t, they should develop or amend existing policies as soon as possible, he added. In either case, each campus must provide a document or webpage that describes those policies.
Both of California’s four-year university systems have come under fire for how they responded to protests in solidarity with Palestine this spring. Some campus leaders approached student activists with a light touch, allowing students to camp overnight in quads peacefully and negotiating with representatives until they voluntarily disassembled encampments. But as conflicts between protesters, counterprotesters and administrators flared on some campuses, university leaders called in law enforcement agencies to break up encampments and arrest students who did not comply with orders to disperse.
Highlights for both systems
The new protest guidance suggests that Cal State and UC are now headed in roughly the same direction, taking a stronger stance against practices that featured frequently in spring protests.
Highlights of the policies include:
Camping: Cal State’s policy bans “encampments of any kind, overnight demonstrations … and overnight loitering.” It outlaws the use of camping paraphernalia, including recreational vehicles and tents. Bringing “copious amounts of personal belongings” to campus without permission is also a no-go, except as allowed in student housing and university work spaces. Drake’s letter instructs UC chancellors to clarify their policies to make clear that setting up a camp, tent or temporary housing structure is not allowed without prior approval.
Barricades and other structures: Drake requests campuses make sure their policies prohibit building unauthorized structures on campus. Cal State’s interim policy additionally lists a range of temporary and permanent structures — “tent, platform, booth, bench, building, building materials (such as bricks, pallets, etc.), wall, barrier, barricade, fencing, structure, sculpture, bicycle rack or furniture” — that aren’t allowed without permission.
Masking and refusing to self-identify: Cal State and Drake’s letter invoke the same policy on face coverings almost to the word. Both warn that masks and other attempts to conceal one’s identity are not allowed “with the intent of intimidating and harassing any person or group, or for the purpose of evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification in the commission of violations” of relevant laws or policies. Cal State’s language, additionally, notes that face masks are “permissible for all persons who are complying with University policies and applicable laws.” Similarly, both systems bar people from refusing to identify themselves to a university official acting in their official capacity on campus.
Restricting free movement: Drake’s letter emphasizes that campus policies should prohibit restricting another person’s movement by, for example, blocking walkways, windows or doors in a way that denies people access to the university’s facilities. The guidance comes days after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that barred UCLA from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students” on its campus. Cal State’s interim policy includes blanket advisories against actions that “impede or restrict the free movement of any person” and block streets, walkways, parking lots or other pedestrian and vehicle paths.
Kelly, the CSU spokesperson, said sections of the policy about encampments, the use of barricades and face coverings “are not new and are already in place for the most part at each university and at the Chancellor’s Office.”
In the spring, students built encampments at UC campuses including UCLA and UC San Diego as well as Cal State campuses including Sacramento State and San Francisco State. Bobby King, a spokesperson for San Francisco State, said the school granted students last spring an exception to the campus time, place and manner policy.
Pro-Palestinian student encampment in front of Royce Hall at UCLA on April 30, 2024.Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource
“The new CSU policy will create greater urgency in resolving a situation like the one we had last spring,” he said. “Obviously, with the new policy in place, campus leaders who engage with the students would need to convey that urgency.”
The interim policy at Cal State takes a comprehensive approach to defining what is and is not allowed during demonstrations, outlawing items like firearms, explosives and body armor as well as actions like shooting arrows, climbing light poles and public urination. The policy outlaws demonstrations in university housing, including the homes of employees living on university property when “no public events are taking place.”
Drake’s directive describes a tiered system for how campuses should police individuals if they violate any rules. They would first be informed of the violation and asked to stop. If they don’t, the next step would be to warn them of potential consequences.
After that, UC police or the local campus fire marshal could issue orders that could include an unlawful assembly announcement, an order to disperse or an order to identify oneself. If the conduct doesn’t change at that point, the individuals involved could be cited for violation of university policy and, if they are breaking a law, they could also be detained and arrested. Police could order them to stay away from campuses for repeat offenses or what they deem more severe violations.
That response system, however, “is not a rigid prescription that will capture all situations,” the guidance states.
Cal State’s interim policy is effective immediately for students and nonunion employees, Kelly said. Unionized employees will work under the previously-negotiated campus policies until a meet-and-confer process for the new policy is complete.
Each Cal State campus asked to elaborate
Cal State Dominguez Hills and Stanislaus State were the first two campuses to publish addenda for their schools as of press time.
The Dominguez Hills addendum, for example, lists areas where protests are permitted without pre-scheduling, including the north lawn in front of the Loker Student Union and a sculpture garden adjacent to the University Theater. But the document limits events in those places to the hoursbetween 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. and allows only “non-amplified speech and expression.”
The campus-specific policy will also describe any restrictions on signs, banners and chalking. The Dominguez Hills addendum prohibits the use of sticks or poles to support handheld signs, does not allow signs “to be taped to any campus buildings, directory signs, fences, railings, or exterior light poles” and by default limits signs to a two-week posting period. It also includes a list of “designated posting places” on the campus.
Margaret Russell, an associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said Cal State’s policy is clearly motivated by a desire to minimize disruptions from protests. Russell said that though many of the restrictions target students’ conduct rather than their speech, she is troubled by broad language seeming to require written permission for posters, signs, banners and chalking.
Russell said such language could create “a chilling effect” because it “is so potentially broad and far-reaching that people don’t know ahead of time what’s allowed and what’s not allowed.”
“The overall message is, ‘Be careful. Be careful where you express your opinion aloud.’” And so to me, it seems suppressive of freedom of speech, which is probably what they want,” she said.
Kelly, the Cal State spokesperson, said that the policy overall is meant to describe how the universities’ property can be used without inhibiting free expression.
“Generally, separate individual written permission is not required for signage unless the person is trying to post on a facility where it is not permitted,” she said. “This rule does not apply to signs and posters people carry or use personally.”
An Aug. 14 statement from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) did not name any universities but broadly criticized school administrations for policies it said “severely undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education.”
“Many of the latest expressive activity policies strictly limit the locations where demonstrations may take place, whether amplified sound can be used, and types of postings permitted,” the statement said. “With harsh sanctions for violations, the policies broadly chill students and faculty from engaging in protests and demonstrations.”
The AAUP statement said some institutions have gone so far as to require protest groups to register in advance. AAUP argued that such provisions effectively block spontaneous protests and may discourage protesters wishing to avoid surveillance.
The AAUP statement came a day after the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) released a “guide to preventing encampments and occupations on campus.” The guide encourages universities to ban encampments and to act decisively to punish students who violate those policies.
“Once an encampment has occupied the campus, the institution has very few options to avoid an ugly spectacle that at best will make the administration look ineffectual and even make the board appear derelict,” the guide says. “Negotiating and making concessions are invitations to more and increasing demands. They embolden others to employ similar coercive tactics in the future and further undermine the university’s mission.”
Cal State’s interim policy says the university embraces its obligation to support the free exchange of information and ideas, but that such freedom of expression “is allowed and supported as long as it does not violate other laws or University policies and procedures.”
Cal State spokesperson Kelly said the university system “places the highest value on fostering healthy discourse and exchange of ideas in a safe and peaceful manner, by sustaining a learning and working environment that supports the free and orderly exchange of ideas, values, and opinions, recognizing that individuals grow and learn when confronted with differing views, alternative ways of thinking, and conflicting values.”
A teach-in on Palestine at Cal State Long Beach on May 2, 2024.
Credit: Courtesy of Ben Huff
California State University, Long Beach is facing accusations that a policy limiting amplified sound on campus violates free speech rights and has been selectively enforced to single out faculty members who criticized the university.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California last Thursday sent a letter to campus leaders on behalf of two faculty members it said received notices warning that they violated the school’s sound amplification policies during a teach-in about Palestine last spring.
Cal State Long Beach regulations for devices like megaphones and microphones “are unconstitutional as written, and there is good reason to suspect that warnings … may have been issued because of disagreement with the professors’ political speech,” ACLU attorney Jonathan Markovitz wrote.
Cal State Long Beach spokesperson Jeff Cook said in a statement that the university respects “the perspectives expressed in the letter from the ACLU but (disagrees) with several of the characterizations made. As our review of the letter continues, we also reaffirm that campus policies related to ‘Time, Place and Manner’ are viewpoint-neutral.”
The confrontation at Cal State Long Beach highlights the potential for backlash as universities around the country place a new emphasis on rules around how, where and when people can assemble on their campuses this fall, a reaction to a wave of pro-Palestinian protests last spring. University officials frame revamped guardrails as promoting the peaceful exchange of ideas in continuation of past practices, but critics argue the restrictions will chill free speech.
The California State University Chancellor’s Office last month debuted a systemwide time, place and manner policy in response to legislation requiring schools in both the Cal State and University of California systems to notify students of free speech rules on their campuses at the start of the academic year.
Cal State Chancellor Mildred García additionally notified campus presidents in an Aug. 27 letter that activities like forming encampments and occupying buildings “are also prohibited by law and by systemwide directive.” García’s letter has sparked pushback from the California Faculty Association, which argues the university system is imposing new standards of employee conduct unilaterally, failing to give the faculty union an opportunity to bargain.
The ACLU letter was sent on behalf of professors Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, who in May co-wrote an article with four other Cal State Long Beach faculty members condemning the university’s ties to Boeing and other defense contractors.
“My understanding is that, while many faculty members used amplified sound while participating in the teach-in that provides the ostensible basis for the warning emails, the only faculty members who received these warnings (the Alimahomed-Wilsons, Araceli Esparza, Steven Osuna, Azza Basarudin) were the co-authors of the article,” Markovitz wrote. “I hope that this is mere coincidence, but the correlation is at least notable.”
The letter asks the university to stop enforcing its sound amplification restrictions and repeal them until they can be amended “to comport with constitutional requirements.”
The matter discussed in the ACLU letter stems from a May 2 teach-in held at the campus.
The student-organized demonstration started with a march from the school’s upper campus to its lower campus, where a group of hundreds gathered for a teach-in outside an administration building, the five professors named in the ACLU letter said in a group interview. They recalled that roughly eight to 12 speakers shared remarks using a megaphone or a microphone.
“The whole time, we had mic and megaphone problems,” Osuna said. “It wasn’t very loud. So that’s the part that’s really funny to me – we all kept on trying to tell people, ‘Can you hear us? Can you hear us?’”
Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson, Esparza and Basarudin shared remarks about why Palestine is a feminist issue, while Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Osuna gave a talk describing the university’s connections to Boeing. The latter presentation became the basis for an opinion piece the five professors and a colleague published on May 20 in the website Mondoweiss, which argued that the university’s close relationship with Boeing makes it complicit in the violence in Gaza.
The five professors said that on Aug. 19, the first day of the fall term, they each received emails notifying them that they had violated the time, place and manner policy and would risk formal written reprimand or other disciplinary action if they did not comply with it in the future.
“They waited all this time to send us this message on the first day of the semester,” Osuna said. “It’s kind of letting us know, ‘We have our eyes on you.’ That’s the feeling.”
Osuna said that a similar warning email sent to a sixth person was rescinded because there wasn’t evidence to show they had used a microphone.
A free speech argument
Markovitz argued in the letter addressed to Associate Vice President Patricia A. Pérez last week that Cal State Long Beach’s amplified sound policy is unconstitutional because regulations affecting speech must be narrowly tailored.
While some limits on amplified sound may be legitimate, he wrote, it is “clearly impermissible to require advance permission for any use of amplification anywhere on campus.” He argued that the campus’ volume limitations could be used to prohibit shouting or chanting without amplification, even if that is not the university’s intention. And he said the time limitations are “poorly written and unclear,” making it difficult to decipher when and where amplification is allowed.
“The policy’s lack of clarity is a serious problem in its own right, because it makes it impossible for members of the University community to know when they might be in violation of the policy, or when they will be denied permission for amplified sound,” Markovitz wrote. “The risk of arbitrary enforcement is especially pronounced because the policy provides no guidelines indicating when the required requests for advance permission will be granted or denied.”
Markovitz’s letter also expressed concerns that the university has not enforced its sound amplification consistently, but rather is using the policy to discriminate against faculty members based on their political views.
“The inference of viewpoint discrimination or retaliation is bolstered by my understanding that faculty have regularly used amplified sound at union rallies without obtaining advance permission, and without receiving warnings of (time, place and manner) violations later on,” Markovitz wrote. “Again, I hope that the apparent inconsistent application of the university’s amplification has been merely an honest mistake, but I am concerned that hope may not be justified.”
‘A fabric of our university’
Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson said she and other faculty who received the emails have used megaphones at previous teach-ins and protests, including an event following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
“Teach-ins have been a fabric of our university,” she said, “and have never been policed in these ways.”
“Our students see this, too,” Alimahomed-Wilson added. “So what does it mean when all our students are like, ‘Oh, those professors have gotten doxed over this. Now, those professors are getting criminalized over this. They’re getting charged.’”? I think the impact is really chilling.”
Alimahomed-Wilson and her colleagues said their support for student protesters is an extension of their duties as faculty members: research, teaching and service to students.
“We teach our students about justice, about the military-industrial complex, about settler-colonialism, and if we don’t speak out against what is happening right now, we’re not doing our job,” Basarudin said.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that to succeed in a science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) field, one needs a solid foundation in mathematics.
When my sons entered college, even though they had strong math skills, I encouraged all three to retake a transfer-level course they had completed in high school. This both solidified their mathematics foundation and started them off in college with at least one high grade toward their college GPA.
Unfortunately, a new law, Assembly Bill 1705, going into full effect in fall 2025, will prevent prospective STEM majors from acquiring or strengthening their foundational math skills at our community colleges.
An earlier law restricted colleges’ ability to place students into remedial courses that carry no college credit. The noble intent of AB 1705 is to increase equity and student success, in part by extending those placement restrictions on remedial courses to credit-bearing prerequisites to calculus for STEM majors. Well-intentioned special interest groups convinced our politicians that calculus prerequisites such as trigonometry, college algebra or precalculus somehow represent inequitable roadblocks, rather than what they actually are: the building blocks to STEM success.
This is despite emerging research showing that these kinds of policies only provide short-term benefits and are not actually helping the students in the long run.
Community colleges have long used multiple measures, including student grades and other assessments, to evaluate mathematics proficiency. STEM majors who need stronger mathematics skills are then placed into college-level foundational courses such as trigonometry, college algebra or precalculus. These STEM building blocks carry college credit. And all students have the option to enroll in these courses to strengthen their math skills if they so choose. The credits and grades earned count toward graduation and toward their college GPA. But under the new law, a community college will only be allowed to enroll a STEM major into a prerequisite to calculus if the college meets strict validation requirements demonstrating that:
The student is highly unlikely to succeed in the first STEM calculus course without the additional transfer-level preparation.
The enrollment will improve the student’s probability of completing the first STEM calculus course.
The enrollment will improve the student’s persistence to and completion of the second calculus course in the STEM program, if a second calculus course is required. (section 3 (f) AB 1705)
The new law is completely tone-deaf to the critical role broad mathematics skill plays regarding college and career success in STEM fields. Furthermore, these validation requirements have predictably (and perhaps intentionally) proven to be extremely difficult to meet. A statewide study by the RP Group, a nonprofit community college research organization, failed to validate any group of students as needing the prerequisite classes, including even those who had never completed Algebra 2 in high school.
The study concludes, “Based on high school GPA or high school math preparation, no group was highly unlikely to succeed in STEM Calculus 1 when directly enrolled and given two years.” Without the validation, the law prohibits colleges from requiring or even placing STEM majors into any calculus prerequisite. Instead, colleges must enroll them directly into calculus.
While the legislation forbids requiring prerequisites for calculus and STEM without the specified validation, it still allows students to drop the calculus class imposed on them and enroll instead in a calculus prerequisite. But based on the RP Group’s failure to confirm that any group of students meets the law’s absurdly strict validation requirements, the Community College Chancellor’s Office has inexplicably concluded no group would be helped by such prerequisites (see the February 2024 memo, page 5).
As a consequence of this horrific misinterpretation, their implementation plan will forbid local community colleges from offering STEM majors any calculus prerequisites and instead require them to offer extra support to students while they are in Calculus. (See the Chancellor’s Office FAQs, “STEM Calculus Placement Rules” top of page 15). This means no STEM major would be able to enroll in any building block course like trigonometry even if they want to. The plan clearly goes beyond the law and will accelerate the dismantling of foundational math offerings at the community colleges.
Having taught math in both the California Community College and State University systems for decades, I and all the math professors I know are convinced the end results of AB 1705 and this extreme implementation policy will be disastrous.
The elimination of prerequisite courses represents a new artificial barrier that will prevent any underprepared STEM major from achieving the strong mathematics foundation they need to succeed and flourish. This will disproportionately affect underrepresented minorities and eliminate the “second chance” for students who didn’t develop sufficient math skills in high school. And that’s a lot of students. Data from the RP Group report show that between fall 2012 and spring 2020, over 68% of STEM majors were enrolled into foundational prerequisites (25,584 students). These students will now be denied any foundational coursework opportunities and instead be forced directly into calculus.
We will flood our community college calculus classrooms with a large majority of students inadequately prepared. Grade inflation, increased student failure rates, discouraged faculty and the inadequate mathematics preparation of STEM majors transferring to the California State University and University of California campuses will be the sad but certain outcomes. You can say goodbye to the common sense of building strong mathematics foundations in our community college STEM majors. And cutting off this “second chance” will definitely discourage students from opting to major in a STEM field in the first place.
The chancellor’s implementation, scheduled to take full effect by fall 2025, must make mid-course corrections to avoid a STEM preparation meltdown.
The law itself needs major revisions to accomplish its noble equity ambitions. And all of us concerned with equity should be paying close attention to emerging research documenting the longer term outcomes of these experiments with restrictions on mathematics prerequisites.
•••
Richard Ford is professor emeritus and former mathematics and statistics department chair at California State University Chico. He served as chair of the Academic Preparation and Education Programs Committee (APEP) of the Academic Senate of the CSU in 2021-2022. A deeper analysis by the author of the AB 1705 implementation policy can be found here.
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.
Policing experts say that discipline is the responsibility of school administrators, not law enforcement.
Many California school districts’ contracts for policing services do not prohibit officers from involvement in routine student disciplinary matters, despite the federal government’s guidance that administrators are responsible for handling those issues, an EdSource investigation found.
EdSource obtained 118 contracts between 89 districts across the state and the cities and counties that provide them with school resources officers from local police, sheriff’s and probation departments. More than half either allow police to enforce school rules and code of conduct violations, such as using profanity or wearing inappropriate clothing, or don’t address disciplinary issues.
The U.S. Department of Justice advises that agreements for what are generally called school resource officers “clearly indicate” that officers will not be responsible for requests to resolve routine discipline problems involving students. That guidance aims to “prevent unnecessary law enforcement involvement in noncriminal student misbehavior.” (A spokesperson for the department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services did not respond to multiple requests to elaborate on the department’s recommendations.)
Jyoti Nanda, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, said that officers lack the training necessary to respond to behavioral issues that can result in student discipline.
“Well-trained educators can handle all of the disciplinary issues,” Nanda said. “When police enforce school rules as opposed to criminal law, they are overreaching their footprint” in ways that are “deeply damaging to children.”
Many policing contracts also put resource officers in vaguely defined roles.
They are to act as “informal counselors,” “mentors,” “role models” and exemplars of “good citizenship.” Some contracts are meant to “promote a positive image of law enforcement.” One agreement refers to them as “youth development officers.” Another says their duties include serving as “a visual deterrent to aberrant behavior.”
Some give police authority to enforce school rules and code-of-conduct violations, such as using profanity or public displays of affection, that could result in a student being disciplined.
Some contracts say that officers will teach classes, without specifying the courses or training requirements.
The Anderson Union High School District’s contract with the Shasta County Probation Department requires resource officers to “provide class instruction as identified by the district and approved by the county.” Superintendent Brian Parker did not respond to questions about that requirement.
The varying roles officers play can result in legal risks to students, according to University of North Carolina law professorBarbara Fedders, who has argued for removing school resource officers.
“Relationship forming and being nice and all of that is misleading. Because if you then need to question the kids, you’re going to be able to take advantage of that relationship and use it for law enforcement purposes,” Fedders said in an interview.
‘Situations that arise from student conduct’
Some contracts don’t differentiate between officers’ roles in investigating school rule violations and potential crimes.
The Fullerton Joint Union High School District, which straddles Los Angeles and Orange counties, has policing contracts totaling more than $800,000 with the cities of Fullerton, La Habra and Buena Park. Each requires resource officers to “investigate situations that arise from student conduct at school.” The agreements also authorize officers to search students if they believe, or have reasonable suspicion, that something illegal occurred, or are “directed to do so by a school administrator.”
Fullerton Union High School in Orange County.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Legal experts were critical of those terms.
The language in the contract “sends the wrong message not only to officers but to students and parents and teachers because it’s so vague,” said retired Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell, who also served as San Jose’s independent police auditor from 2015 to 2020.
“It’s pretty much at the discretion of an administrator, or even the officer, to just decide if there’s something suspicious, or they think may be illegal,” Cordell said. “We’re not talking here about probable cause. Who’s the reasonable person? The officer? The administrator? Who knows?”
District Superintendent Steven McLaughlin, Assistant Superintendent Ruben Hernandez, school board President Vickie Calhoun, and Dr. Chester Jeng, who was board president when the contracts were ratified on a consent agenda vote, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The city managers of Fullerton, La Habra, and Buena Park also did not reply to messages seeking comment.
Khadijah Silver, a supervising civil rights attorney for the Washington, D.C.-based Lawyers For Good Government, also criticized Fullerton’s contract language.
“It’s basically saying, anytime a kid acts up, you’re free to go violate their civil rights and interrogate them off of the school’s premises and all of that,” Silver said. “It’s unconstitutionally overbroad language that fails to define or delineate any bounds of appropriate police behavior whatsoever.”
‘What any reasonable adult would do’
Some legal experts say that by allowing officers to enforce school rules, districts create situations that are confusing and intimidating to students. Nanda said that officers’ involvement in discipline is often “ambiguous.” Students, she added, may not understand why an officer stops them in the hallway: Is it for an alleged crime or a violation of school rules?
“Are they just walking the child over to the principal’s office, or are they interviewing the child and taking police notes? How does that play out?” she said. The presence of resource officers can result in harsher discipline for students, “particularly for Black students, male students and students with disabilities,” according to a 2023 study by researchers at State University of New York, Albany, “even though officers are typically not trained to, and often do not intend to, become involved in minor disciplinary matters in the school.”
Although the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers recommends that districts prohibit officers from “becoming involved in formal school discipline situations,” its executive director, Mo Canady, said in an interview that he thinks officers should get involved in situations that could result in discipline.
When officers see a young person misbehaving and get involved, they’re doing “what any reasonable adult would do,” Canady said. “Adults should never walk by and ignore a situation like that. I don’t care if we’re at a shopping mall, whatever it is.”
Asked whether there is a difference between an adult and an armed police officer intervening when a juvenile misbehaves, Canady said: “That’s why one of the issues that we harp on constantly is the importance of good relationships that (officers) build with students.”
California’s Department of Education does not provide guidance on the use of school resource officers, Elizabeth Sanders, an agency spokesperson, said.
The California School Boards Association provides districts with what it calls a “sample policy” on policing contracts, which recommends that the duties of resource officers should “not include the handling of student code of conduct violations or routine disciplinary matters that should be addressed by school administrators or conduct that would be better addressed by mental health professionals.”
Troy Flint, spokesperson for the association, said district leaders are free to “interpret the sample policy in a way that captures their community’s desired approach to law enforcement on campus. We recognize there’s a diversity of opinion throughout the state about the role security personnel should play on campus or whether they should be there at all.”
‘Why are we policing our students?’
The Oxnard Union High School District has contracts with two law enforcement agencies that clearly prohibit resource officers’ involvement in disciplinary matters.
The district’s $2.33 million contract with the city of Oxnard states that police are to distinguish “between disciplinary misconduct to be handled by school officials from criminal offenses.” The contract also says that officers “are responsible for criminal public order offenses” and “should not get involved in school discipline issues.” A separate contract with the city of Camarillo contains similar language. Both contracts require officers to establish “clear probable cause” before searching a student.
Oxnard Union High District Superintendent Tom McCoy chats with school resource officers Alexus Santos,left, and Sgt. Hannah Estrada on the campus of Pacifica High School in Oxnard.Credit: J. Marie / EdSource
But the district’s contract with Ventura County for one resource officer does not address discipline. Superintendent Tom McCoy said in an interview that it is “well understood and discussed in meetings” that resource officers provided by the county do not enforce discipline. It’s never been an issue. They are very aware of our policies.”
The district has a policy that is not in its policing contracts and that allows students to request “a person of the same gender or gender identity or a staff member familiar to them to be present” if they are questioned by law enforcement.
McCoy added that the district requires students who “are questioned or interviewed by police on campus also must be referred for counseling and wellness services on the same day to address any specific needs identified through the interview process.”
Karen Sher, the school board member whom McCoy credited with helping create the district’s policy, said her experience teaching at a school with resource officers led her to ask herself, “‘Why are we policing our children?’”
Oxnard Union High School District board member Karen Sher.Credit: J. Marie / EdSource
Sher said she believes that officers have a role to play in school safety, but she also worries about how their presence might affect disadvantaged students. About 16% of district students lack stable housing, she said.
“How on earth does anyone believe those students have not had an interaction, both positive or negative, with police?” Sher asked. “We expect them to come to school, see police cars in front of their school, and expect them to feel good about that? That’s a very entitled perspective.”
Eric Wiatt, a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy who has worked at Adolfo Camarillo High School for the past three years, said adjusting to being a resource officer took time.
“The first year was a learning experience of communicating with (students) and developing a rapport. It wasn’t natural in me. You know, all the different social media platforms that are used and the different slang they use,” Wiatt said in an interview.
He says he spends a lot of time investigating bullying and threats made on social media.
School resource officer Eric Wiatt from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department patrols the campus of Adolfo Camarillo High School in Camarillo.Credit: J. Marie / EdSource
“We actually dig into them. We take every threat very seriously. We do a full investigation,” Wiatt said.
When he’s not investigating threats, Wiatt walks the campus wearing a bulletproof vest over his uniform and a pistol holstered to his hip. He often eats lunch with students.
Riley Young, a 16-year-old junior whom school officials selected to be interviewed by EdSource, described Wiatt as calm and helpful.
“I’d been getting in trouble,” she said. “He helped me realize that being good in school and in life was important.”
‘Providing clarity’
District leaders provided a range of reasons why their policing contracts don’t address whether resource officers can be involved in disciplinary matters.
The Madera Unified School District’s contract with the city of Madera for resource officers doesn’t address disciplinary issues. Superintendent Todd Lile said the idea that officers would enforce discipline “has never been present and, as a result, has never been explicitly called out in contractual language.” Police are “not thought of or expected to keep control of a campus,” he said.
The Lucia Mar Unified School District has two contracts for resource officers. Its agreement with the city of Arroyo Grande prohibits officers from enforcing discipline. But its contract with San Luis Obispo County does not address disciplinary matters.
Amy Jacobs, a district spokesperson, said Lucia Mar has a policy prohibiting law enforcement’s involvement in discipline, but Jacobs didn’t provide an answer when asked why that policy wasn’t written into the contract with the sheriff’s office.
The Galt Union High School District board in Sacramento County agreed to a three-year contract with the city of Galt for three resource officers in 2023. The agreement did not address police involvement in discipline. But shortly after Anna Trunnell became district superintendent in 2024, the contract was revised.
It now states that resource officers “will not be responsible for requests to resolve routine discipline problems involving students. They will not respond to incidents that do not pose any threat of safety or would not be considered crimes if they occurred outside of the school.”
Trunnell said the new language “assists in providing clarity when responding to student needs.”
The lack of clarity in many school policing contracts is “profoundly alarming,” said Nanda, the Southwestern law professor.
“It’s crucial,” she said, “for parents, educators and administrators to pay attention to the who, what and why of officers in our schools.”
STEM students at California community colleges will be able to enroll in calculus prerequisites like trigonometry if they didn’t take those classes in high school.
California math educators this fall have been locked in a vigorous debate: Will the implementation of a new law help more community college STEM students by skipping prerequisites and placing them directly into calculus, or will it set up the state’s least-prepared students for failure?
This week, critics scored something of a victory. In a move that already faces legal scrutiny, the chancellor’s office for the state’s community colleges issued a memo making clear that, when the law takes effect next fall, students in science, technology, engineering and math majors who haven’t passed courses like trigonometry in high school will still have the option to start college math with up to two semesters of courses that are considered preparation for calculus.
Previous guidance instructed colleges to enroll those students directly into calculus — sometimes with a simultaneous 1- or 2-unit support class — or place them in new semester-long preparatory classes offered on a trial basis.
The changes were made after some math faculty across the state criticized the original guidance, including during an EdSource roundtable on the topic hosted last month. They worried that students without a solid math foundation would struggle if forced to startright away in calculus and said the original guidance went beyond what is required by the law, Assembly Bill 1705.
Other math faculty joined advocacy groups in defending the initial rollout plan, citing research that students perform better when they can go straight into calculus regardless of their high school math preparation. Critics, though, say some of that research is flawed.
The chancellor’s office issued the memo after gathering feedback from faculty, administrators and students about whether the state’s least experienced math students, such as those who didn’t take a class higher than geometry in high school, would be ready for calculus without taking prerequisites, said Melissa Villarin, a spokesperson for the office.
“We’ve been listening to folks, examining the evidence that colleges are bringing to us, and we got to the point that we needed to make a decision,” added John Hetts, the college system’s executive vice chancellor for the Office of Innovation, Data, Evidence and Analytics. “If we didn’t make a decision now, it would not leave colleges enough time to prepare for fall 2025.”
Calculus is often a required course for many science, technology and engineering majors. In the past, research has shown that some students never get to calculus because they fail to complete necessary prerequisite courses like trigonometry or precalculus, effectively blocking those students from pursuing their degrees.
AB 1705, signed into law in 2022, requires the college system to evaluate the impact of enrolling students in prerequisites to calculus and, if they can’t prove students benefit from those classes, to stop requiring or even recommending them.
Some backers of the law interpret it as mandating a shift as much as possible to enrolling all STEM students directly into calculus. They cite a section that states students “shall be directly placed into” the transfer-level class that satisfies the requirement for their degree.
Chancellor’s office officials, however, maintain that the latest guidance is consistent with the law. “The guidance is fully within the parameters of AB 1705,” Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the system, said in an email.
Under the new guidance, students who didn’t pass Algebra II or its equivalent in high school will be allowed to take two semesters worth of calculus prerequisites, which could include some combination of college algebra, trigonometry or precalculus. Students who did pass that course but not trigonometry or precalculus will be allowed to enroll in a one-semester prerequisite course, typically precalculus.
The new guidance is a compromise, said Pamela Burdman, executive director of Just Equations, a nonprofit organization focused on the role of math in education equity.
“I think the chancellor’s office is trying to strike a balance here,” she added. “I do think there has been a tendency to place students in more prerequisites than they may need, but we don’t know enough from the research exactly what the optimal placement system is and how to identify which students need which levels of support.”
The guidance won’t be the final word on the issue. It could face a future legal challenge. Jetaun Stevens, an attorney with the civil rights law firm Public Advocates, said the chancellor’s new directive urges colleges“to violate the law.” Stevens said the firm is still “assessing what we can do” and did not rule out a lawsuit.
“This guidance gives colleges permission to completely ignore students’ rights to be placed in calculus. It creates exceptions in the law that don’t exist,” Stevens said. “This is illegal and beyond the chancellor’s office’s authority. They don’t get to pick what part of the law they want to enforce.”
Faculty, meanwhile, still plan to pursue legislation next year that would permanently clarify that colleges can offer “standalone foundational pre-transfer courses,” according to a memo being circulated by the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges, a faculty advocacy organization. Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, president of the association, said the draft is being “shared widely with system partners and legislators.”
In the meantime, starting next year, the chancellor’s office plans to collect data from each college and examine how students are accessing calculus. Colleges will have to prove that students are at least as likely to get to and complete calculus when they start in prerequisites as when they start right away in calculus. If the prerequisite path shows worse results, guidance says those prerequisites will need to be eliminated for STEM majorsby 2027.
The updated guidance is “simple and based in common sense,” said Tina Akers-Porter, a math professor at Modesto Junior College and one of the leading critics of the original guidance. “If you’ve taken the preparatory courses, then go into calculus. But if you haven’t, then still offer the preparatory courses. That’s what we wanted.”
Tammi Marshall, dean of math, science and engineering at Cuyamaca College, was disappointed in the chancellor’s office’s new direction. She said the chancellor’s office has previously “done a great job of holding the colleges accountable” to evidence suggesting students perform better when placed directly into calculus witha companion support course than in longer sequencesof preparatory courses. Her college has been highlighted as an early adopter of AB 1705 and has reported improved calculus completion rates across racial groups.
“I felt like they were pressured into making a decision that isn’t completely based on the data,” she said of the new guidance.
Some math faculty said the new guidance leaves departments little time to adapt and may sap energy from attempts to reimagine math courses ahead of next fall. Many departments have designed new classes to prepare students for calculus in anticipation of AB 1705, but it’s unclear whether colleges will choose to offer those courses next fall, as they initially planned, or fall back on older courses.
“We just don’t know where to focus our energy right now,” said Rena Weiss, a math professor at Moorpark College, adding that she’s glad the chancellor’s office listened to faculty members’ concerns and is grateful for the option to place STEM students into courses like trigonometry.
Other faculty are hoping for more information about exactly which students they can now place into precalculus courses.
Forecasts of what the guidance means for access to STEM education varied. Marshall predicted greater inequity at colleges that opt to continue calculus prerequisite sequences with high attrition rates, which she said have a “disproportionate impact on our Black and brown STEM students.”
On the other side, Southwestern College math professor Kimberly Eclar said this week’s guidance gives more options to students whose high schools do not offer higher math classes. James Sullivan, a math professor at Sierra College, said the updated rules will benefit students who transition into a STEM career later in life but haven’t yet learned the concepts they’ll need for calculus.
Hetts, the executive vice chancellor, said the current evidence is simply “not strong enough” to prohibit colleges from offering prerequisites next year. The chancellor’s office, in consultation with the RP Group, a nonprofit that conducts research on behalf of the college system, plans to conduct additional research starting in 2025 “to more thoroughly understand” how students access calculus.
The RP Group is also deciding whether to conduct a follow-up study that would compare the longer-term outcomes of students who enroll directly in calculus to those who do not, according to Alyssa T. Nguyen, the organization’s senior director of research and evaluation. Such a study could examine how often each group of students completes associate degrees or transfers. Nguyen wrote in an email that RP Group will continue to draw from student records in its analysis and may also survey, interview or conduct focus groups with students.
Louise Simpson, superintendent of Mark Twain Union Elementary School District in Angles Camp, near Yosemite, is frustrated by state rules restricting how small rural districts like hers can spend expanded learning funding.
That was such a well-intentioned and important program for so many districts. It’s known by the acronym ELOP, and it was designed to make additional learning and enrichment opportunities in the school day. But it brought some really burdensome requirements with it, including a 9-hour day and 30 extra days of school.
And while that sounds really great, what’s happened for our small rural districts, is the reality of creating a program just isn’t feasible. And I’ll tell you why:
First, my kids are on the bus for more than an hour each way. They already have a big long day, and adding academics after school for enrichment is not super feasible for two reasons: One is we have a very difficult time finding qualified staff to run it. And the second one is, with the bus-driver shortage, we just don’t have the transportation.
So, many kids that would benefit from this program really don’t have the opportunity, and they are being left behind.
Our budget situation is so, so dire with steep declining enrollment, and we need to use the money that we’re already allocated for super-effective programs.
I came out of retirement this year because this little system was struggling, and only one in 10 kids are proficient in math and only one in four can read — and that’s unconscionable.
And I can fix it, but I need some help using the money that’s already been given to me to use during the day. We have a really cool program that we built with the Sierra K-16 Collaborative Partnership involving peer tutors. It allowed me to get $320,000 to fund an intervention teacher and pay 20 high school kids to come in and tutor my kids. And it’s working, but those funds expire in a year.
I need that ELOP money to be made flexible so that I can teach our kids the core foundational skills they need to be successful. That includes being able to use it during the school day. So many folks can’t find a way to make this funding effective that they’re actually giving it back, and that’s not okay.
We need to come to some agreements where it can be working for everyone. Let me take and share with you what unrestricting these funds could really do for kids.
This is our peer tutoring program. It’s funded in conjunction with Sierra K16.
(short video of tutors working with students)
I hope you’ll join me in reaching out to all of our legislators and asking them to provide small rural districts flexibility in how we use those funds.
