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  • Florida: Ousted Staff at New College Say DeSantis’ Allies Raided Restricted Funds to Pay President’s Bloated Salary

    Florida: Ousted Staff at New College Say DeSantis’ Allies Raided Restricted Funds to Pay President’s Bloated Salary


    As part of his war on “woke,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis packed the board of New College with likeminded right wingers intent on purging the small college’s progressive character.

    Two financial officers who were ousted during the transition revealed that the DeSantis board dipped into restricted gifts to pay the bloated salary of DeSantis-selected President, Richard Corcoran, a politician with no academic credentials. In other words, one of DeSantis’s cronies.

    Suncoast Searchlight reported:

    Two former top finance officers at the New College Foundation say they were ousted in 2023 after pushing back against college administrators who sought to use donor-restricted funds to cover President Richard Corcoran’s salary and benefits — a move they said would violate the terms of the donations.

    Ron McDonough, the foundation’s former director of finance, and Declan Sheehy, former director of philanthropy, said they warned administrators not to misuse a major gift — the largest donation in the school’s history — which they said was not intended to fund administrative salaries.

    Both said their contracts were terminated after they raised concerns internally. 

    “The college was trying to find the money to pay the president,” McDonough said. “And I kept on going back, saying, ‘We don’t have this unrestricted money.’”

    The accounts of their final days on the job, shared publicly for the first time with Suncoast Searchlight, come as former foundation board members and alumni demand greater transparency and accountability from New College amid rising costs and sweeping institutional change.

    Since Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a new slate of trustees in early 2023, the small liberal arts college has undergone a dramatic transformation — eliminating its Gender Studies program, reshaping student life, and launching a costly new athletics department. Critics say the administration has also sidelined financial safeguards, raising questions about whether the college is honoring donor intent and maintaining public trust.

    Last month, a group of former foundation board members sent Corcoran and New College Foundation executive director Sydney Gruters a demand letter requesting an audit of how restricted donor funds were used and threatening legal action if they do not comply. The letter follows a string of high-profile board resignations and dismissals, including those who held key financial oversight roles.

    Their exits, and the college’s move last year to hand Corcoran the unilateral power to fire foundation board members, have deepened fears that independent checks on the foundation’s spending are being systematically dismantled.

    A “direct support organization” with close ties to New College, the foundation has never operated independently of the school. But in giving the college president the power to unilaterally remove board members last year, the Board of Trustees further eroded its autonomy. 

    “Good governance is not a side item,” said Hazel Bradford, a former foundation board member who sat on the organization’s investments committee and resigned in April, citing concerns about the college’s handling of the foundation. “It’s the beginning and end of any foundation handling other people’s money…”

    After the DeSantis-backed overhaul of the Board of Trustees, New College named Corcoran president in early 2023, approving a compensation package that made him the highest-paid president in the college’s history —earning more than $1 million a year in salary and perks.

    Because state law limits taxpayer funding for university administrator compensation to $200,000 — an amount that covered only the first four monthsof Corcoran’s salary — New College has turned to its foundation, which manages the school’s endowment and donor funds, to make up the difference.

    “Corcoran’s salary is not a one-time thing,” said McDonough. “It’s not sustainable…” 

    So the new leadership had to find money to pay Corcoran’s lavish salary, and they turned to the College’s foundation. Most of its funds were restricted by donors for purposes like scholarships. Donor intent is a crucial concept. If a donor give $1 million for scholarships, it should not be used to pay the College president’s salary. Future fundraising will be crippled by violation of that trust.

    The older alumni, graduates of the only progressive college in the state, are not likely to make new donations to New College. The new alumni do not yet exist. Maybe Betsy DeVos will bail out New College, which is no longer “new.”



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  • UC has enrolled more Californians, but lawmakers say it’s not enough

    UC has enrolled more Californians, but lawmakers say it’s not enough


    UC Davis

    Credit: Karin Higgins/UC Davis

    State lawmakers Wednesday demanded that the University of California system make more space for California residents — particularly at its most competitive campuses — even if it means charging higher tuition to those who come from out of state.

    The number of non-resident students has declined at most UC campuses, ticking down from 17.7% to 16.3% systemwide over the past two years. Increasing pressure from the Legislature led the state to create a plan in the Budget Act of 2021 to increase the enrollment of Californians in the UC system over five years. The system has enrolled more in-state residents — but not enough to meet targets set by the state.

    Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, noted that most UC campuses reject more than half of their applicants, including many highly qualified California residents.

    “This is frustrating for a lot of Californians,” Alvarez said during an Assembly budget hearing addressing college enrollment in the state.

    Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, shared a story from a constituent who said she graduated with a 4.67 GPA, took 12 AP courses and was a varsity captain. She told him she applied as a political science major at four competitive UC campuses and was rejected from all, only to enroll at an out-of-state school.

    “What would you tell this student about why she can’t attend the UC campus of her dreams?” Muratsuchi said.

    A report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) called it “frustrating” that during a time of “tremendous demand,” the UC system fell nearly 1,400 full-time equivalent students short of its target to enroll more in-state students this year, as set by the 2023-24 Budget Act.

    Assembly members said they also have concerns about nonresidents increasingly edging out California residents at a few CSU campuses. Nonresidents made up 17% of enrollment at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and 14.6% at San Diego State in 2022-23. 

    The LAO report notes that community college enrollment has begun to rebound after a precipitous decline during the pandemic. But its decline has created a domino effect by reducing the number of students transferring to CSU. Enrollment at the University of California has been growing, but it has not kept pace with student interest, as indicated by the rapidly rising number of applications. Unique applications to the UC system increased by 30% from 2013 to 2022.

    Looking to the future, the systems — especially the community colleges and CSU — face continuing challenges attracting enough students. The report also noted that the numbers of traditional college age students are expected to decline in the coming years, just as they have in California’s K-12 school system.

    Muratsuchi asked whether it might be time to rethink the way funds are allocated, not just between campuses but also between UC and CSU campuses. He pointed to the increased demand at UC campuses and declining interest at many CSU campuses.

    The UC system does plan to address demand from California residents in the long term by adding between 23,000 and 33,000 full-time equivalent students by 2030. UC Merced and UC Riverside would account for 30% to 35% of that growth, while UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego would account for half or more of that growth. The UC system contends that this plan would rely on state funding to pay for an increase in California residents.

    Seija Virtanen, associate director of state budget relations for the University of California Office of the President, said the UC system became more reliant on nonresident students to backfill massive budget cuts during the Great Recession of 2008. Each nonresident student pays nearly three times the tuition paid by resident students.

    For 2024-25, Californians will pay $14,436 for undergraduate tuition, while nonresidents will pay $48,636.

    “If we were to remove those funds, it would be catastrophic for our campuses,” Virtanen said.

    Currently, the state is providing the UC system with an additional $31 million each year to support more California residents attending UC campuses, supplanting the funds that nonresidents bring in. Over the last two years, UC has enrolled over 2,600 fewer nonresidents. It has also enrolled nearly 5,900 additional in-state residents, but that is nearly 1,400 students short of the state target.

    Alvarez proposed raising tuition for nonresidents to cover this $31 million in annual funds from the state. Using back-of-the-napkin math, Alvarez noted that passing along $31 million in tuition to 20,000 nonresident students would increase their tuition by about $1,500 each year. There are an estimated 36,630 nonresident students in the UC system. Alvarez suggested a follow-up hearing to discuss raising nonresident tuition.

    During public comment, UC alumni-regent Keith Ellis agreed that it would be “worthy” to give the plan to raise nonresident tuition serious consideration.

    CSU, where most campuses have seen enrollment drop, has room in its budget to add 24,000 full-time students, according to the LAO report. Only four of the 23 campuses — Fullerton, Long Beach, San Diego and San Luis Obispo — have increased their enrollment since fall 2019. 

    Seven campuses are enrolling at least 20% fewer students than four years ago, including campuses in Sonoma, the Channel Islands, the East Bay, Chico, Humboldt, Bakersfield and San Francisco.

    Nathan Evans, deputy vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at CSU, said there is a plan to reallocate resources from campuses that have seen a sustained drop in enrollment to those where there is more demand. He said this reallocation needs to be done over several years.

    “We’re not going to pull the rug out from any institution,” he said.

    Evans noted that demographic changes in rural areas in Northern California and the Bay Area mean enrollment is not likely to rebound. The number of families with college-age students has been declining in these areas. 

    Evans said the CSU system is also working on increasing enrollment through partnerships with K-12 districts, marketing and attempting to reengage students who may have stopped out.





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  • Amid faculty objections, UC considers limiting what faculty can say on university websites

    Amid faculty objections, UC considers limiting what faculty can say on university websites


    UCLA campus in Westwood on Nov. 18, 2023.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    This story was updated on Friday to include that the UC Academic Senate urged the regents to reject the policy.

    In a move faculty say infringes on their academic freedom, the University of California will soon consider a policy restricting them from using university websites to make opinionated statements. Such statements have come under scrutiny since last fall, when some faculty publicly criticized Israel over its war in Gaza.

    The proposed policy, which goes to the system’s board of regents for a vote next week, would prevent faculty and staff from sharing their “personal or collective opinions” via the “main landing page” or homepages of department websites, according to a new draft of the policy. Faculty would be free to share opinions elsewhere on the university’s websites, so long as there is a disclaimer that their viewpoint doesn’t represent the university or their department.

    The final version of the policy may not be complete until next week. Regents accepted feedback from the university’s Academic Senate through Friday. Following a systemwide review, the Senate’s Academic Council is asking the regents to reject the proposed policy.

    Whatever the final version says, the fact that regents are considering the issue at all is alarming to some UC faculty. They argue that issues of academic freedom are outside the purview of the regents and question how the university would enforce the policy. And although the policy doesn’t explicitly mention a specific issue, faculty see it as an attempt to prevent them from discussing Israel’s war in Gaza.

    “At a moment when across the country, academic freedom is being challenged, we’re worried that the regents have lost their way on this issue,” said James Vernon, a professor of history at UC Berkeley and chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association. “I think it’s out of their purview, and I think they’re doing it for very obvious reasons. It’s about Palestine and the political positions of some regents.” 

    UC officials have said action is needed to ensure that faculty opinions are not interpreted as representing the views of the university as a whole. The regents previously discussed a similar policy in January but delayed a vote until March. At the time, one regent said the board was considering the policy because “some people were making political statements related to Hamas and Palestinians,” seemingly referring to the statements made by some faculty last fall in support of Palestine. 

    By only disallowing statements on “main landing pages,” the latest version is less restrictive than the policy initially proposed in January, which would have banned statements made on any “official channel of communication.”

    To some faculty, the issue was already settled in 2022, when the Academic Senate determined that UC faculty departments have the right to “make statements on University-owned websites,” so long as the statements don’t take positions on elections.

    “The Academic Senate came out with very clear recommendations,” said Christine Hong, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz. “We have a group of regents who are running roughshod over what you would think would be the core commitments of the university to academic freedom and to the principle of shared governance.”

    Some faculty find the revised version of the policy to be an improvement, including Brian Soucek, professor of law at UC Davis and previous chair of the UC Academic Senate’s university committee on academic freedom. While he remains concerned with the regents “micromanaging” what faculty departments can say, Soucek said the revised policy “is not a major threat to academic freedom,” given that it only limits what can be said on the main landing pages of websites.

    UC officials declined to comment on this story, saying only that regents would consider the policy at next week’s meeting. 

    Traced to Oct. 7 attack

    The new push to limit faculty statements can be traced to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza. The Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, with about another 240 taken hostage. Since Israel launched its military response, more than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children.

    On Oct. 9, UC system leaders issued a statement condemning the Hamas attack as an act of terrorism resulting in violence that was “sickening and incomprehensible.” Several of UC’s campus chancellors also issued their own statements condemning the attack.

    In a letter the following week, the UC Ethnic Studies Council criticized UC’s statements, saying they lacked context by not acknowledging Israeli violence against Palestinians, including “75 years of settler colonialism and globally acknowledged apartheid.” The ethnic studies faculty also said UC’s statements “irresponsibly wield charges of terrorism” and called on UC to revoke those charges. UC later said it stood by those assertions.

    UC ethnic studies faculty then engaged in a back-and-forth with regent Jay Sures. Sures wrote a letter responding to the Ethnic Studies Council letter, saying it was “rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.” The ethnic studies faculty subsequently criticized Sures for not condemning Israeli violence and called on him to resign.

    Sures also wrote in his letter that he would do “everything in my power” to protect “everyone in our extended community from your inflammatory and out of touch rhetoric.” Now, Sures is the regent most fervently pushing the proposal to limit what faculty can say on UC websites.

    Since last fall, some faculty departments have displayed statements on their websites condemning Israel. The website for UC Santa Cruz’s critical race and ethnic studies department, for example, includes a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” 

    Involving faculty

    UC isn’t the only university to move to restrict faculty from making political statements on department websites. 

    At Barnard College, a private women’s liberal arts college in New York, the department of women’s, gender and sexuality studies published a statement last fall expressing solidarity with the people of Palestine. The college removed the statement and then rewrote its policy on political activity to prohibit faculty departments from posting political statements on college-owned websites. The quick response prompted an outcry from some free speech advocates who criticized the college for making the policy change without consulting faculty.

    The American Association of University Professors, an organization that advocates for academic freedom, doesn’t have guidance regarding whether departments should take political positions, a spokesperson said. However, if universities are to create such policies, they should “be formulated through shared governance channels, with substantial faculty input,” said the spokesperson, Kelly Benjamin.

    In that regard, UC officials have made progress since January, Soucek said. 

    Prior to the January meeting, Soucek co-authored a letter to the regents urging them to reject the policy being considered at that time. Among other criticisms, Soucek wrote that the development of the policy was “sudden, opaque, and seemingly devoid of any collaboration at all” with the staff and faculty it would impact.

    Following the January meeting, regents shared a revised version of the policy with Academic Senate leaders, requesting their thoughts and giving them until this Friday to share that feedback.

    In an interview, Soucek commended the regents for “taking a breath” and accepting feedback on the revised policy. “That’s a great thing, and that’s what they should have done from the beginning,” he said.

    Even with the changes to the policy, some faculty still see it as a major threat. Hong, the UC Santa Cruz professor, is concerned with the intention behind the policy, even if the latest version is less restrictive than the original.

    Hong pointed out that UC’s general counsel, Charles Robinson, said during the January meeting that the intent of the policy was to “make sure that landing pages wouldn’t be associated with types of speech that the university would feel uncomfortable with.”

    Hong called that a “really striking disclosure,” saying that it violates the principle of academic freedom. 

    “Whatever revisions they make, we have to address what the intention behind this policy is,” Hong said. “This is a joke of an exercise. Why are we being forced to go through this?”

    Faculty also say it’s unclear how UC would enforce the policy. The revised version doesn’t define what constitutes an opinionated statement and states that the “administrator responsible for maintaining the website” will be responsible for “assuring compliance with this policy.”

    To Soucek, that suggests that the policy will be managed by UC’s IT staff. 

    “That’s how it sounds,” he said. “Our IT staff has enormous expertise. For most of them, it doesn’t extend to issues of academic freedom.”

    Whoever is ultimately in charge of scanning the many departmental websites across UC’s 10 campuses will have a “gigantic task,” said Vernon, the UC Berkeley professor. 

    “And then the next question is, who’s going to enforce it once they’ve actually found someone who’s violated this policy? That is really important to have clarified,” he said.





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  • California, districts try to recruit and retain Black teachers; advocates say more should be done

    California, districts try to recruit and retain Black teachers; advocates say more should be done


    A middle school science teacher explains a lesson on climate change using a SMART board.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Recruiting and retaining Black teachers has taken on new urgency in recent years as California lawmakers try to ease the state’s teacher shortage. The state and individual school districts have launched initiatives to recruit teachers of color, but educators and advocates say more needs to be done.

    Hiring a diverse group of teachers helps all students, but the impact is particularly significant for students of color, who then score higher on tests and are more likely to graduate from college, according to the Learning Policy Institute. A recently released report also found that Black boys are less likely to be identified for special education when they have a Black teacher.

    BLACK TEACHERS: HOW TO RECRUIT THEM AND MAKE THEM STAY

    This is the third part of a special series on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California. The recruitment and hiring of Black educators has lagged, even as a teacher shortage has given the task new urgency.

    Our series looks at the obstacles that keep Black people from becoming teachers, and the bias and lack of support some face when they join the profession.

    In the last five years, state lawmakers have made earning a credential easier and more affordable, and have offered incentives for school staff to become teachers — all moves meant to ease the teacher shortage and help to diversify the educator workforce.

    Despite efforts by the state and school districts, the number of Black teachers doesn’t seem to be increasing. Black teachers say that to keep them in the classroom, teacher preparation must be more affordable, pay and benefits increased, and more done to ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

    “Black educators specifically said that they felt like they were being pushed out of the state of California,” said Jalisa Evans, chief executive director of the Black Educator Advocates Network of a recent survey of Black teachers. “When we look at the future of Black educators for the state, it can go either way, because what Black educators are feeling right now is that they’re not welcome.”

    Task force offers recommendations

    State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called diversifying the teacher workforce a priority and established the California Department of Education Educator Diversity Advisory Group in 2021. 

    The advisory group has made several recommendations, including beginning a public relations campaign and offering sustained funding to recruit and retain teachers of color, and providing guidance and accountability to school districts on the matter. The group also wants universities, community groups and school districts to enter into partnerships to build pathways for teachers of color.

    Since then, California has created a set of public service announcements and a video to help recruit teachers and has invested $10 million to help people of color to become school administrators, said Travis Bristol, chairman of the advisory group and an associate professor of education at UC Berkeley. Staff from county offices of education also have been meeting to share ideas on how they can support districts’ efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color, he said.

    The state also has invested more than $350 million over the past six years to fund teacher residency programs, and recently passed legislation to ensure residents are paid a minimum salary. Residents work alongside an experienced teacher-mentor for a year of clinical training while completing coursework in a university preparation program — a time commitment that often precludes them from taking a job.

    Legislators have also proposed a bill that would require that student teachers be paid. Completing the 600 hours of unpaid student teaching required by the state, while paying for tuition, books, supplies and living expenses, is a challenge for many Black teacher candidates.

    Black teacher candidates typically take on much more student debt than their white counterparts, in part, because of the large racial wealth gap in the United States. A 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that the median white family had $184,000 in family wealth (property and cash), while the median Latino family had $38,000 and the median Black family had $23,000.

    Lack of data makes it difficult to know what is working

    It’s difficult to know if state efforts are working. California hasn’t released any data on teacher demographics since the 2018-19 school year, although the data is submitted annually by school districts. The California Department of Education (CDE) did not provide updated data or interviews requested by EdSource for this story.

    The most recent data from CDE shows the number of Black teachers in California declined from 4.2% in 2009 to 3.9% during the 2018-19 school year. The National Center for Education Statistics data from the 2020-21 show that Black teachers made up 3.8% of the state educator workforce. 

    Having current data is a critical first step to understanding the problem and addressing it, said Mayra Lara, director of Southern California partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust-West, an education research and advocacy organization.

    “Let’s be clear: The California Department of Education needs to annually publish educator demographic and experience data,” Lara said. “It has failed to do so for the past four years. … Without this data, families, communities and decision-makers really are in the dark when it comes to the diversity of the educator workforce.” 

    LA Unified losing Black teachers despite efforts

    While most state programs focus on recruiting and retaining all teachers of color, some California school districts have initiatives focused solely on recruiting Black teachers.

    The state’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, passed the Black Student Excellence through Educator Diversity, Preparation and Retention resolution two years ago. It required district staff to develop a strategic plan to ensure schools have Black teachers, administrators and mental health workers, and to advocate for programs that offer pathways for Black people to become teachers. 

    When the resolution was passed, in February 2022, Los Angeles Unified had 1,889 Black teachers —  9% of its teacher workforce. The following school year, that number declined to 1,823 or 7.9% of district teachers. The number of Black teachers in the district has gone down each year since 2016. The district did not provide data for the current school year.

    Robert Whitman, director of the Educational Transformation Office at LA Unified, attributed the decrease, in part, to the difficulty attracting teachers to the district, primarily because of the area’s high cost of living.

    “Those who are coming out of colleges now, in some cases, we find that they can make more money doing other things,” Whitman said. “And so, they may not necessarily see education as the most viable option.”

    The underrepresentation of people of color prompted the district to create its own in-house credentialing program, approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Whitman said. The program allows classified staff, such as substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, administrative assistants and bus drivers, to become credentialed teachers while earning a salary and benefits at their original jobs.

    Grow-your-own programs such as this, and the state’s Classified School Employee Credentialing program, and a soon-to-be launched apprenticeship program, are meant to diversify the educator workforce because school staff recruited from the community more closely match the demographics of the student body than traditionally trained and recruited teachers, according to research.

    Los Angeles Unified has other initiatives to increase the number of Black educators in the district, Whitman said, including working with universities and colleges to bring Black teachers, counselors and psychiatric social workers to their campuses. The district also has programs that help school workers earn a credential for free, and channels employees completing a bachelor’s degree toward the district’s teacher preparation program where they can begin teaching while earning their credential.

    All new teachers at Los Angeles Unified are supported by mentors and affinity groups, which have been well received by Black teachers, who credit them with inspiring and helping them to see themselves as leaders in the district, Whitman said.

    Oakland has more Black teachers than students

    Recruiting and retaining Black teachers is an important part of the Oakland Unified three-year strategic plan, said Sarah Glasband, director of recruitment and retention for the district. To achieve its goals, the district has launched several partnerships that make an apprenticeship program, and a residency program that includes a housing subsidy, possible. A partnership with the Black Teacher Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization, offers affinity groups, workshops and seminars to support the district’s Black teachers.

    The district also has a Classified School Employee Program funded by the state and a new high school program to train future teachers. District pathway programs have an average attrition rate of less than 10%, Glasband said.

    This year, 21.3% of the district’s K-12 teachers are Black, compared with 20.3% of their student population, according to district data. Oakland Unified had a retention rate of about 85% for Black teachers between 2019 and 2023.

    Better pay, a path to leadership will help teachers stay

    Black teachers interviewed by EdSource and researchers say that to keep them in the classroom, more needs to be done to make teacher preparation affordable, improve pay and benefits, and ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

    The Black Educator Advocates Network  came up with five recommendations after surveying 128 former and current Black teachers in California about what it would take to keep them in the classroom:

    • Hire more Black educators and staff
    • Build an anti-racist, culturally responsive and inclusive school environment
    • Create safe spaces for Black educators and students to come together
    • Provide and require culturally responsive training for all staff
    • Recognize, provide leadership opportunities and include Black educators in decision making

    Teachers interviewed by EdSource said paying teachers more also would make it easier for them to stay.

    “I don’t want to say that it’s the pay that’s going to get more Black teachers,” Brooke Sims, a Stockton teacher, told EdSource. “But you get better pay, you get better health care.”

    The average teacher salary in the state is $88,508, with the average starting pay at $51,600, according to the 2023 National Education Association report, “State of Educator Pay in America.” California’s minimum living wage was $54,070 last year, according to the report.

    State efforts, such as an initiative that pays teachers $5,000 annually for five years after they earn National Board Certification, will help with pay parity across school districts, Bristol said. Teachers prove through assessments and a portfolio that they meet the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. To be eligible for the grant, teachers must work at least half of their time in a high-needs school. Teachers who qualify are also given $2,500 to cover the cost of certification.

    This incentive will help teachers continue their education and improve their practice, said Los Angeles teacher Petrina Miller. “It’s awesome,” she said.

    Teacher candidates must be actively recruited

    Many Black college students have not considered a teaching career because they have never had a Black teacher, said Preston Jackson, who teaches physical education at California Middle School in Sacramento. Those who consider a teaching career are often deterred by the cost of teacher preparation, taking required tests and unpaid student teaching.

    “In order to increase the number of Black teachers in schools, it has to become deliberate,” Jackson said. “You have to actively recruit and actively seek them out to bring them into the profession.”

    Since starting in 2005, Jackson has been one of only a handful of Black teachers at his school.

    “And for almost every single one of my kids, I’m the first Black teacher they’ve ever had,” said Jackson. “…  And for some of them, I’m the first one they’ve ever seen.” 

    Mentors are needed to help retain new teachers

    Mentor teachers are the key ingredient to helping new Black educators transition successfully into teaching, according to teachers interviewed by EdSource. Alicia Simba says she could have taken a job for $25,000 more annually in a Bay Area district with few Black teachers or students, but opted to take a lower salary to work in Oakland Unified.

    But like many young teachers, Simba knew she wanted mentors to help her navigate her first years in the classroom. She works alongside Black teachers in Oakland Unified who have more than 20 years of teaching experience. One of her mentor teachers shared her experience of teaching on the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Other teachers told her about teaching in the 1980s during the crack cocaine epidemic.

    “It really helps dispel some of the sort of narratives that I hear, which is that being a teacher is completely unsustainable,” Simba said. “Like, there’s no way that anyone could ever be a teacher long term, which are things that, you know, I’ve heard my friends say, and I’ve thought it myself.” 

    The most obvious way to retain Black teachers would be to make sure they are treated the same as non-Black teachers, said Brenda Walker, a Black teacher and president of the Associated Chino Teachers.

    “If you are a district administrator, site administrator, site or colleague, parent or student,  my bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and my special education credential are just as valuable and carry as much weight, and are as respected as any other educator,” she said.

    “However, it’s just as critical for all those groups to acknowledge and respect the unique cultural experience I bring to the table and acknowledge and respect that I’m a proud product of my ancestral history.”





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  • Politics, threats, agendas have permeated search for Fresno Unified superintendent, many say

    Politics, threats, agendas have permeated search for Fresno Unified superintendent, many say


    Fresno Unified School District board member Keshia Thomas speaks during a 2022 news conference.

    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    Among accusations of racism, intimidation and political play, ensuing from a March 20 decision by the Fresno Unified School District board to interview internal candidates first in the process to hire a superintendent, some district employees have faced harassment and threats, with some members of the Hmong community also citing attacks against them. 

    Sources, including district spokesperson Nikki Henry, told EdSource that board members and Deputy Superintendent Misty Her — a candidate for the open position and the presumptive interim superintendent — have been threatened. Her, specifically, has faced racial harassment, Henry said. 

    “It’s not fair to staff, and it’s not fair to the process,” school board member Keshia Thomas said.  

    During last week’s board meeting, Kao Xiong, CEO of the Hmong Business Incubator Center, a community-based organization serving the underrepresented Hmong community, said his group has been monitoring racial tensions related to the superintendent search.

    Community member John Thao spoke about the “painful” and “hurtful” words someone told him in the wake of the superintendent’s search: “‘Your kind will never be superintendent.’”

    On Jan. 22, when Superintendent Bob Nelson announced his plans to leave Fresno Unified, the district announced that if a permanent superintendent isn’t named by his final days, Her would be named interim superintendent. 

    Plans to name Her as interim superintendent put her at the center of the search as a favored candidate even though she’s not the only internal applicant. Her became the highest-ranking Hmong K-12 professional in 2021 when she was hired as deputy superintendent. 

    Stacy Williams, a community member who spoke at last week’s meeting, accused the board of favoring Her as the next superintendent for their own political gain. 

    “I know some of you have something to gain by using the Hmong community as your political pawn for when you want to run for something,” Williams said. A similar sentiment had been expressed in an opinion piece on news site GV Wire, which accused some board members of “pandering to the Hmong community for votes” in their November re-election bids.

    Process is compromised

    After the March 20 closed meeting of the school board, during which the board decided to interview internal candidates before deciding on how to proceed with the hiring process, details of the 4-3 decision and how each board member voted were leaked to the media, instigating community anger that propelled the board to reverse course in a 5-2 vote last Wednesday and postpone the scheduled internal interviews. 

    Beyond the threats, the search for the top leader of the state’s third-largest school system is engulfed in community angst about an alleged lack of  transparency as well as accusations that the process has been tainted by politics. 

    Simply put, some say the search process has become “compromised.” But the reason for that conclusion varies, depending on whom you ask.

    Trustee Thomas said the process is compromised because board members and staff are afraid but helpless to protect themselves and their families from threats and harassment, incited by the turmoil that the leaked information has caused. 

    “I don’t know what the next steps are going to be because everybody is uncertain, scared and wants to protect their families and protect employees from the nonsense,” Thomas told EdSource before the board voted to cancel the interviews of in-house candidates. “So now, we may have to pivot and try to figure out: how do we stop the unnecessary nonsense?” 

    Manuel Bonilla, president of the Fresno Teachers Association, on the other hand, said the process was compromised from the moment the board decided to prioritize district employees rather than conducting an “extensive search to find the best candidate … creating the appearance that politics matter more than students.” 

    Fifteen community members who spoke at last Wednesday’s board meeting agreed that politics has permeated the process one way or another. 

    “Is this politics as usual?” asked Terri Kimber-Edwards, who attended Fresno Unified schools, is a parent to former students, and was a teacher and school and district administrator. “Is there some agenda? Are there backroom deals?” 

    Accusations of a personal or political agenda

    A recently launched political action committee, Moving the Central Valley Forward, sent mailers to Fresno residents, asking them to run for a seat in the Roosevelt and Hoover High areas, represented by Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas and Claudia Cazares, who are up for re-election in November. Both trustees’ names were leaked as part of the board majority that voted to start the superintendent search with internal candidates. 

    Jonasson Rosas did not confirm or deny her part in the March 20 decision because it happened in a closed-door session, and Cazares could not be reached for comment. Both have since voted to cancel the internal candidate interviews. In fact, Cazares led the charge to change the scope of the search at last Wednesday’s meeting. 

    Board member Andy Levine, who represents the Fresno High area, is also up for re-election but was not included in the mailer, although the area is listed on the political action committee’s website. Last week, Levine stated on Facebook and told EdSource that he supported opening the search to both internal and external candidates from the start. 

    Board members are not the only ones being accused of having a political agenda in the superintendent search.  

    Thomas, who says she stands by her decision to interview internal candidates first, questioned the teachers union’s involvement in the April 2 news conference called by board President Susan Wittrup to challenge the board’s decision. 

    At that news conference, community leaders, including members of the teachers union, urged Fresno Unified board members to conduct the search the “right way,” with a scope that includes at least statewide candidates, and in an open and transparent way, led by and with community involvement.

    Thomas said the labor union’s top leaders want to apply for the superintendency, which they couldn’t have done under the board’s original plan to interview internal candidates first. 

    District leaders, principals, teachers and other staff would be considered internal candidates who could apply. 

    Union presidents are district employees and could have applied; however, other union leaders and representatives would not have been able to unless the search was expanded to include external candidates. 

    Fresno Teachers Association leaders Louis Jamerson, pictured in the center, and Manuel Bonilla sign a tentative labor agreement between the teachers union and Fresno Unified School District last October.
    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    The teachers union’s executive director, Louis Jamerson, said he’ll apply to be Fresno Unified’s superintendent if the process is opened to external candidates, but added that questions about the union’s involvement in the search process are “ridiculous.” 

    The union’s executive board endorses Jamerson’s plan to become superintendent and Bonilla, FTA president, as deputy superintendent. 

    “We have some support from our executive board and from our teachers to pursue this,” Jamerson said, referring to his public announcement in February to 200 educators who gave him a standing ovation.

    “But that assumes that that’s possible. I don’t know, ultimately, how the board is going to decide on this process,” Jamerson said. “There could be another hurdle that prevents me from being able to apply. But if there are no hurdles, in terms of the ability for me to apply to become the superintendent, I will apply.” 

    FTA involvement isn’t unique to this search

    The teachers union has been involved in the superintendent search process dating back to 2005, when Mike Hanson was hired, and 2017, when Nelson was selected.

    Jamerson said that ensuring that the right superintendent is selected isn’t the only action the union takes to improve the education of students in Fresno Unified, where most students are still not meeting state standards. 

    “In my almost 10-year tenure at FTA, we have been involved in trying to do our best, from where we are, to try to … move this rock up a hill in terms of our students: our student safety, our student academic outcomes, our students’ ability to learn, read, do math — all of that,” Jamerson said about work the union engages in.  

    In  April 2022, the teachers union proposed classroom-centered ideas for academic and social-emotional student support. Contract negotiations — as well as a strike threat — in 2023 led to multimillion dollar investments in students’ social-emotional support.  

    What does this mean moving forward? 

    Trustee Jonasson Rosas said the situation is causing uneasiness at the district’s many schools, where students are now preparing for testing and other end-of-year obligations, such as college applications. Students who spoke during the April 3 meeting confirmed their worry. 

    “It’s unsettling for our school sites,” Jonasson Rosas said, “and I’m concerned about the effects that our schools are having because of this.” 

    Edison High senior Yunah Vang was one of seven students who stood at the podium during last Wednesday’s meeting, though not all spoke. 

    ”Instead of preparing for my graduation or getting ready for my prom, my classmates and I are here addressing issues that we are supposed to trust adults with,” Vang said. 

    But regardless of how the search unfolds, the next superintendent must address the district’s struggles with student performance, including children’s ability to read and teens’ college readiness. 

    Based on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, most Fresno Unified students failed to meet the state’s standards in 2023: 66.8% failed to meet English language arts standards, and 76.7% failed to meet math standards. 

    For third grade — the school year believed to be pivotal in determining reading proficiency and predicting future success — less than 1 in 3 third-graders are at grade level, a GO Public Schools 2023 student outcome report on Fresno Unified showed. 

    Of high school seniors in Fresno Unified, according to the report, under 20% are ready for college courses in English while less than 5% are ready for college math courses. College readiness is defined by a student exceeding standards on the 11th grade standardized tests.

    It’s still unclear how the superintendent selection process will proceed. It’s possible that the board will update the community about the next phase of the process at its meeting on April 10. 

    Many are wondering whether qualified candidates will risk applying and being part of a process that has questionable community support or to work under a fractured school board. EdSource found that less experienced superintendents are becoming common across the state as there is a rise in superintendents leaving the job; many who are leaving cite threats, stress and politics. 

    “Interested candidates are going to be looking at the process thus far,” said Henry, the district’s spokesperson. “They’re going to be looking at how the board operates, how district leadership operates, how our schools operate. They’re going to take a deep dive and decide if this is the right fit for them, so I think it’s yet to be seen if this has a positive or negative impact on a wider search.”





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  • Thomas Edsall: What Scholars Say About Trump’s Reign of Error and Chaos

    Thomas Edsall: What Scholars Say About Trump’s Reign of Error and Chaos


    Thomas Edsall writes a regular feature for The New York Times. In this stunning article, he recounts the views of numerous scholars about what Trump has done since his Inauguration.

    This is a gift article, meaning you can open the link and finish reading the article, which is usually behind a paywall.

    Edsall writes:

    One thing stands out amid all the chaos, corruption and disorder: the wanton destructiveness of the Trump presidency.

    The targets of President Trump’s assaults include the law, higher education, medical research, ethical standards, America’s foreign alliances, free speech, the civil service, religion, the media and much more.

    J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush, succinctly described his own view of the Trump presidency, writing by email that there had never

    been a U.S. president who I consider even to have been destructive, let alone a president who has intentionally and deliberately set out to destroy literally every institution in America, up to and including American democracy and the rule of law. I even believe he is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate.

    Some of the damage Trump has inflicted can be repaired by future administrations, but repairing relations with American allies, the restoration of lost government expertise and a return to productive research may take years, even with a new and determined president and Congress.

    Let’s look at just one target of the administration’s vendetta, medical research. Trump’s attacks include cancellation of thousands of grants, cuts in the share of grants going to universities and hospitals and proposed cuts of 40 percent or more in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Science Foundation.

    “This is going to completely kneecap biomedical research in this country,” Jennifer Zeitzer, the deputy executive director at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, told Science magazine. Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, warned that cuts will “totally destroy the nation’s public health infrastructure.”

    I asked scholars of the presidency to evaluate the scope of Trump’s wreckage. “The gutting of expertise and experience going on right now under the blatantly false pretext of eliminating fraud and waste,” Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, wrote by email, “is catastrophic and may never be completely repaired.”

    I asked Wilentz whether Trump was unique in terms of his destructiveness or if there were presidential precedents. Wilentz replied:

    There is no precedent, not even close, unless you consider Jefferson Davis an American president. Even to raise the question, with all due respect, is to minimize the crisis we’re in and the scope of Trump et al.’s. intentions.

    Another question: Was Trump re-elected to promote an agenda of wreaking havoc, or is he pursuing an elitist right-wing program created by conservative ideologues who saw in Trump’s election the opportunity to pursue their goals?

    Wilentz’s reply:

    Trump’s closest allies intended chaos wrought by destruction which helps advance the elite reactionary programs. Chaos allows Trump to expand his governing by emergency powers, which could well include the imposition of martial law, if he so chose.

    I asked Andrew Rudalevige, a political scientist at Bowdoin, how permanent the mayhem Trump has inflicted may prove to be. “Not to be flip,” Rudalevige replied by email, “but for children abroad denied food or lifesaving medicine because of arbitrary aid cuts, the answer is already distressingly permanent.”

    From a broader perspective, Rudalevige wrote:

    The damage caused to governmental expertise and simple competence could be long lasting. Firing probationary workers en masse may reduce the government employment head count, slightly, but it also purged those most likely to bring the freshest view and most up-to-date skills to government service, while souring them on that service. And norms of nonpoliticization in government service have taken a huge hit.

    I sent the question I posed to Wilentz to other scholars of the presidency. It produced a wide variety of answers. Here is Rudalevige’s:

    The comp that comes to mind is Andrew Johnson. It’s hardly guaranteed that Reconstruction after the Civil War would have succeeded even under Lincoln’s leadership. But Johnson took action after action designed to prevent racial reconciliation and economic opportunity, from vetoing key legislation to refusing to prevent mob violence against Blacks to pardoning former members of the Confederacy hierarchy. He affirmatively made government work worse and to prevent it from treating its citizens equally.

    Another question: How much is Trump’s second-term agenda the invention of conservative elites, and how much is it a response to the demands of Trump’s MAGA supporters?

    “Trump is not at all an unwitting victim,” Rudalevige wrote, “but those around him with wider and more systemic goals have more authority and are better organized in pursuit of those goals than they were in the first term.”

    In this context, Rudalevige continued, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025

    was not just a campaign manifesto but a bulwark against the inconsistency and individualism its authors thought had undermined the effectiveness of Trump’s first term. It was an insurance policy to secure the administrative state for conservative thought and yoke it to a cause beyond Trump or even Trumpism.

    The alliance with Trump was a marriage of convenience — and the Trump legacy when it comes to staffing the White House and executive branch is a somewhat ironic one, as an unwitting vehicle for an agenda that goes far beyond the personalization of the presidency.

    In the past, when presidential power has expanded, Rudalevige argued,

    it has been in response to crisis: the Civil War, World War I, the Depression and World War II, 9/11. But no similar objective crisis faced us. So one had to be declared — via proclamations of “invasion” and the like — or even created. In the ensuing crisis more power may be delegated by Congress. But the analogue is something like an arsonist who rushes to put out the fire he started.

    One widely shared view among those I queried is that Trump has severely damaged America’s relations with traditional allies everywhere.

    Mara Rudman, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, wrote in an email:

    The most lasting impact of this term will be felt in the damage done to the reputation of the United States as a safe harbor where the rule of law is king and where the Constitution is as sacred a national document as any country has developed.

    Through his utter disregard for the law, Trump has shown both how precious and how fragile are the rules that undergird our institutions, our economic and national security and the foundation for our democracy.

    To finish this excellent article, please open the link.



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  • TK staffing ratios are often unmet, teachers say; why some districts escape fines

    TK staffing ratios are often unmet, teachers say; why some districts escape fines


    A preschool student shows his classmate a spider he made from pipe cleaners and a paper cup.

    Credit: Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages

    This is the second in a series of stories on how inadequate staffing may be impeding California’s efforts to offer high-quality instruction to all 4-year-olds by 2025.

    Four-year-olds, many of whom have never attended school or day care, are entering California classrooms in droves following the state’s rapid expansion of transitional kindergarten, a grade preceding kindergarten. 

    In this grade known as TK, young students are exposed to academics and become familiar with letters, sounds and numbers. They also acquire social, emotional and intellectual skills through play and exploration. For example, from having to share toys with their peers in a structured environment, they learn to communicate with each other and handle conflict. 

    Once designed to serve only children who missed the kindergarten age cutoff, TK has evolved and is now projected to reach all the state’s 4-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year. TK is the first year of a two-year kindergarten program that uses a curriculum modified for the age and developmental level of the participating children. When fully implemented, California will have the largest universal preschool program in the nation, serving nearly 400,000 children.

    Expanding TK: The age cutoff

    According to the California Department of Education, California children who turned 5 between Sept. 2, 2022 and April 2, 2023 were eligible for TK this school year. For the 2024–25 school year, children who turn 5 between Sept. 2 and June 2 will be eligible. Students who turn 4 by Sept. 1 will be eligible during the 2024-25 school year. 

    Some of the state’s largest school districts, including Los Angeles Unified and Fresno Unified, are  ahead of the state’s timeline in offering that access. 

    Fresno Unified operates 116 transitional kindergarten classes. Los Angeles Unified has not released the number of TK classes it offers, but according to district data, they serve nearly 11,000 students. 

    Though imperative for students, the expansion has created a problem: Some districts are not staffing TK classrooms with enough adults to maintain the required 1:12 staff-student ratio, a problem that educators say puts the 4-year-old pupils at risk, hampers learning and violates state legislation. 

    Twenty schools in LAUSD have been cited by the state for understaffing classes and violating the ratio. 

    Teachers told EdSource that 4-year-olds can’t learn if they aren’t safe and properly supervised by adults, and that not having enough adults in the classroom jeopardizes children’s safety. 

    “If you’re one adult and you’re managing so many children that have never been to school before, there isn’t any teaching going on,” said David Hunter, a teacher in Fresno Unified who has taught TK for the last six years of a 17-year career. “You’re just keeping them safe as best as you can, but you’re not actually able to teach.” 

    School districts jeopardize state funding if they fail to meet the state-set TK requirements of the 1:12 staff-student ratio and the average class size of 24 kids.

    Out of the 1,815 audit reports that the California Department of Education reviewed, just seven school districts and 16 charter schools have been fined and will lose thousands of dollars in funding from their Local Control Funding Formula for failing to meet the staffing ratios during the 2022-23 school year.  Teachers and others in the classroom say that many more districts and charters are not meeting the requirements but are managing to avoid punishment.

    Los Angeles Unified, which is facing multimillion dollar fines, considers being fined because the classes do not have one additional adult unfair, district leaders said at a board meeting earlier this year. Many other penalized districts blamed the national shortage of teachers and paraprofessionals while some districts were critical of the California Department of Education for not clearly outlining the requirements. 

    Some teachers, on the other hand, say that what is unfair is that TK classes are not being staffed as outlined by the legislation and to support the young students. 

    According to the Fresno Teachers Association, more than a dozen TK classes were not meeting staffing ratios during the 2022-23 school year, yet Fresno Unified was not fined. Fresno educators told EdSource that school districts that were not in compliance last year, such as Fresno Unified, escaped detection and fines because fiscal penalties are based on sample auditing that did not check every school.

    “This is a systems issue,” Hunter said, “and I want to see the system be better for everyone.” 

    Why do TK classes need extra staffing?

    The California Department of Education (CDE) has outlined numerous benefits to having a lower adult-to-student ratio in TK classes, including opportunities for individualized instruction, additional adult support and attention as well as supervision at all times. 

    Legislation requires district staff such as paraprofessionals to work alongside teachers to meet the ratio requirement and share responsibilities of serving the students. 

    On any given day, a TK student may need to use the restroom or have a potty accident; another may get sick and others will require different types of attention.

    “How do you manage that when there’s one of you and 21 four-year-olds?” Hunter said. “You need another adult to help deal with those situations.”  

    Hunter said he taught a class of 21 TK students without an aide from August to December 2022 during the 2022-23 school year, the first school year after the state added fiscal penalties related to TK requirements. 

    He said a teacher and an aide can split a large class into small groups to foster individualized learning, improve student assessment and evaluation and, ultimately, educate the young students — things that won’t happen in one large group of up to 24 four-year-olds. 

    Verifying compliance is difficult

    Going Deeper

    Compliance with the TK staffing ratio requirement is based on adult counts taken on the last teaching day of each school month prior to April 15, typically from August to March. In evaluating ratio compliance, auditors must consider an aide’s daily or weekly schedule, class rosters and other documentation for each class, according to the audit guide. 

    State compliance with TK requirements is verified in a district’s annual audit at the end of the school year and is based on a representative sample of a district’s schools. 

    Schools that are out of compliance may go unchecked if the sampled schools in the district are compliant. Because the sampled schools meet compliance, even though other schools do not, some districts and charters avoid penalties. 

    Fresno Unified, Hunter’s district, was not one of the school systems fined. District spokesperson AJ Kato told EdSource that Fresno Unified has not had problems with meeting the requirements that other districts may be experiencing. 

    But that’s not what teachers say. 

    At least 13 classes, according to Fresno Teachers Association President Manuel Bonilla, only had one adult for more than 12 students. 

    “The district could have done a better job at hiring additional folks … or in an emergency term, having their administrative staff provide additional support, but that seemingly didn’t happen,” Bonilla said.

    A Fresno Unified TK teacher and union leader surveyed his colleagues. 

    “They were out of compliance with the state, and ultimately the problem is that the students aren’t getting the additional support that’s necessary,” Bonilla added. 

    Hunter said this is the second consecutive school year he’s been teaching out of ratio. 

    This school year, Hunter has a part-time aide but is still out of ratio because he is the only adult for 16 students on days the aide isn’t scheduled to work. 

    Having a full-time aide, or the equivalent, he said, should be baseline and is mandated by law. 

    According to the state Education Department, to be counted in the staffing ratio, the “assigned” adult must be a district employee who is dedicated and available to all TK students the entire school day. Student teachers and volunteers do not count toward it, nor do staff such as a special education aide or speech therapist who are assigned to work with specific students. 

    Part-time aides can satisfy the classroom staffing ratio, but only if the working time equals 100% of the time of a full-time aide, according to the CDE. Because Hunter’s class has 16 students, he needs more than one part-time aide working enough hours to equal the hours of a full-time aide. He has only had one part-time aide this school year. 

    Laton Joint Unified was penalized $30,943 for having a 1:16 ratio last school year. The school had a paraprofessional scheduled for one hour, 45 minutes each day, and that person was not available for all students the entire school day, the audit report detailed. 

    There are also instances of aides being pulled for recess or cafeteria duty or other teaching responsibilities, removing that aide from the instructional minutes with students, teachers told EdSource.

    “Rina,” a former TK teacher who asked to be identified only by her nickname, said that when she took a job at Ballington Academy in San Bernardino City Unified in the 2023-24 school year, the school’s one TK classroom had 18 students. Rina and her aide would align with state compliance for the 18 students. About a week before school started, Rina said the school informed her that the aide, though assigned to her TK students, would be pulled to other elementary classrooms whenever a teacher was absent.

    “It was wrong,” she said. She only stayed in the position for about a week after school started. 

    Some schools and districts, such as Scholarship Prep Charter School in Oceanside, Pomona Unified in eastern Los Angeles County and Culver City Unified in Los Angeles County, said in their audit reports that staffing shortages resulted in their inability to comply with state guidelines. 

    But that’s no excuse, teachers say, because it’s up to district administration to recruit, hire and retain paraprofessionals, instead of making it the teacher’s problem, Rina said.

    Some suggest that the problem with hiring and retaining paraprofessionals is the low compensation.

    A preschool teacher’s aide at Ericson Elementary in Fresno Unified is not in the TK classroom but works with students who are the same age as those entering transitional kindergarten. Speaking with EdSource on condition of anonymity, she said aides, whether in the TK or preschool class, are dealing with the same challenge: subpar pay. 

    Throughout the day, especially when working in groups, she helps the preschoolers with writing their names and learning letters and numbers. At other times during the day, such as during reading time, the aide ensures students keep their hands to themselves and listen to the teacher. As an aide, she sees the impact and importance of her role.

    “We’re like their (teacher’s)  spine,” she said about paraprofessionals. “We’re there to support and help. We do so much for these kids.” 

    She is paid $15.90 an hour and has, over the last two years, questioned whether she should remain in the role.  

    “That’s not helping me,” she said. She’s had to take on side jobs in the district, such as at sporting events, or resorted to borrowing money from friends and family. “I have to buy food, pay bills and then, I have four kids.

    “If they’re still going keep that low (salary), people are not going … to apply for a position as an aide.” 

    Can teachers do anything?

    As a teacher who’s been working out of ratio, Hunter wants districts to be held accountable. 

    “There’s a mechanism there, and I’d like to see that enforced,” Hunter said about the fiscal penalties outlined in legislation.

    While the only way to address the compliance is with fines — which Hunter called “reactive” — he said a tool to report violations throughout the year could push districts to comply sooner and stop teachers from working out of compliance. 

    Currently, there is no such system or tool. 

    And if teachers are providing instruction in classrooms that are out of compliance, they would not report the violation to the state, CDE spokesperson Scott Roark said via email. 

    “Complaints against a district, school, principal, teacher or school personnel are not within the jurisdiction of the CDE unless the complaint falls within the scope of the Uniform Complaint Procedures,” Roark said, explaining that the TK requirements are under local control, with each district’s school board having authority over the complaint process.

    The same reasoning applies to a teachers union hoping to report compliance concerns or violations.  

    But the struggles teachers are experiencing shouldn’t detract from the importance of TK. 

    TK expansion is necessary; schools just need support 

    Patricia Lozano, executive director of the advocacy group Early Edge California and a champion for expanding transitional kindergarten, told EdSource last year about the importance of the program, including how it provides children who were infants during the pandemic with social and intellectual engagement as well as age- and developmentally-appropriate structure and routine to help them thrive. 

    Simply put, TK is imperative for students, said many teachers interviewed by EdSource. 

    Hunter, who has a background in early childhood education, said TK is vital for introducing students to what school is, for teaching socialization and exposing them to academics.

    “Any child who’s been through TK is that much more ready to hit the ground running in kindergarten,” he said. “I just want to see the appropriate support that not only the state promised, but I want to see the districts live up to that support so we can show these learners the best we can.” 





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  • LAUSD safety concerns are growing. Here’s what the board members have to say.

    LAUSD safety concerns are growing. Here’s what the board members have to say.


    Credit: Julie Leopo/EdSource

    Members of the Los Angeles Unified School District school board continued to discuss student safety Tuesday — and are still a ways away from determining whether to revamp its police presence on individual campuses.

    A safety task force — which previously recommended each campus choose whether to have police stationed at its site — made a presentation about LAUSD’s approach to student safety, including community-based safety methods such as restorative justice. They will continue to meet in the coming school year.

    Discussions about reintroducing police to individual LAUSD campuses are taking place for the first time since George Floyd’s murder amid a 45% increase in incidents between 2017-18 and 2022-23, including suicide risk, fighting/physical aggression, threats, illegal/controlled substances and weapons. 

    Here’s what the board members said at Tuesday’s meeting. Their remarks have been edited for length and clarity. 

    School board President Jackie Goldberg: ‘Not really desirous of having armed police on campus’

    I spent 17 years teaching in Compton. … We had two sets of gangs. … We then hired school police to come onto campus. The problem was that there were two (officers). The problem was that when the gangs came over the fences, they came over in 10s and 20s. … How did they have guns? They came over in sufficient numbers to disarm the police. So, I’m not really desirous of having armed police on campus. …

    LAUSD Board Member Jackie Goldberg

    What do I think school police can do? I think school police can be in neighborhoods where most of the problems happen. … What we mostly had to do was to have them in the community around the school and for us to be able to find out from trusted — usually — graduates of ours when trouble was about to happen. And so, (police) could be not in twos, but they could be sent in fours and fives to neighborhoods where things were about to come down. 

    … If you want to stop drug abuse, are you going to have a police officer sitting in the bathrooms because that’s where the exchanges take place?  No, we’re not. We’re not going to put a police officer to sit in classrooms. Do we want school police on campus when there’s a fight? Yeah, that may be useful. 

    … Most of the fights are not bad. And I think as we keep statistics, I would like us to have a notion of what the types of fights were. Was this two or three kids who … called your mother something and they’re fighting and it gets stopped? I think they should be counted, but I think they aren’t the problem. The problem is the massive fights, and those do need to be treated differently. 

    Secondly, we do not have restorative justice in this district. Period. I visited all 151 of the schools I represent, several of them several times, and in only a handful of them did I see anything that resembled restorative justice. 

    School board Vice President Scott Schmerelson: ‘I also believe in school police’ 

    Let me just tell you what really bothers me: when people think that school police are supposed to do discipline at school. They’re not supposed to be doing discipline at school. That’s the teacher’s job. That’s my job as the principal, or the assistant principal, or the dean. … 

    LAUSD Board Member Scott Schemerelson
    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    I do believe that we need climate advocates at school. Absolutely — all the help that we can get at making peace at school. Very, very important. … Yes, I do believe in restorative justice. I do. Our kids need to see what they’ve done wrong and how to make amends for what they have done. Very, very important. I also believe in school police. 

    We are responsible from the minute the kids leave home to the minute they get to school. And, we’re responsible from the minute they leave school to the minute they go home. … That’s why safe passage is really so important too. Kids need to have check-in points along the way home to and from school. Extremely important. Everybody has a job at school, and we should not be pushing people under the bus whether you’re a school police officer, or a climate control officer.

    Board Member Rocio Rivas: ‘We do have the data on what we need to do’

    We’re not the same since the pandemic. Things have changed. Our students are suffering. They have high anxiety. There’s increase of suicidal ideation. 

    LAUSD Board Member Rocio Rivas

    … We have (positive behavior intervention and support) and restorative justice, but they’re not strengthened. They’re not bolstered. So, the district does have that system in place where we can create safe, loving, culturally responsive schools, but we’re not giving the investments or the support that our schools need.

    … The area that needs that support are middle schools. … That is where we start seeing the suicide ideation, when we start seeing the fights, when we start seeing our students needing to medicate themselves. 

    … We love our kids, and at early ed centers, we love them; we want to protect them. But once they leave those early ed centers, it’s almost as if they lost that system of love and compassion and care. And we put in other systems, and we look at them (as though) all these kids are deviants. No, they are children. They are children until even after they’re 18 … because their brains are still developing. 

    … We know exactly what we need to do, but we’re not putting the money or the strength or the emphasis. … We’re talking about test scores, but you know what? You are not going to see increases … in student achievement unless that child feels that they’re being heard, that that school cares about them, that they have somebody in there. 

    … We do have the data on what we need to do. We have the funds. We just don’t have the buy-in from this district, from this building, because it’s so disconnected from our schools and from our communities.

    Board Member Tanya Ortiz Franklin: ‘We’ll keep the conversations going’

    LAUSD Board Member Tanya Ortiz Franklin

    I’ll just bring our attention back to the Community Based Safety Resolution. The last resolve does ask us … to strengthen community-based safety approaches … and resources as a primary means of cultivating and maintaining positive school climates and keeping school communities safe even in emergency situations. 

    … We need the (restorative) training throughout for all of the staff members — as many folks can come back before the school year starts. We’ve got $350 million invested in people who are focused exclusively on safety. If we can focus on this community, restorative approach as the primary means — really shifting away from that punitive, traditional, policing model —  I think we’ll get even closer to the vision of this resolution that we all passed. I think we’ll keep the conversations going next year in the school safety committee. 

    Board Member Kelly Gonez: ‘It’s about creating a true infrastructure around community-based safety’

    I was looking just at the (Local Control and Accountability Plan) information for our meeting later, and it highlights different demographic groups of students and the percent of students reporting that they feel safe in the school experience survey, and there are significant gaps — like for our Black students, who are rating the lowest in terms of whether or not they feel safe, which obviously is very concerning, as well as the number of students who feel like they are part of their school. 

    LAUSD Board Member Kelly Gonez
    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    Those numbers, it looks like, took a significant dip in the wake of the pandemic and have not really fully recovered, and I would just surmise that there’s a connection between feeling disconnected or not seen at your school site and whether or not there is true safety and belonging for students. 

    … It’s not just about restorative justice and the practices, but it’s about creating a true infrastructure around community-based safety. And, I think that’s inclusive of a number of staffing positions as well — beyond, just for example, your restorative justice teachers and beyond the partnerships with community based organizations, which are also integral. It’s about, for example, our classified staffing positions. We know that a number of our incidents happen during lunch, during dismissal. 

    … I would just ask that in any plan … that we’re providing for the necessary staffing and supervision that our schools and our students really deserve — and especially looking at our secondary schools, because we know that’s where the majority of these incidents are happening. 

    Board Member Nick Melvoin: ‘The glaring omission (is) … the data on the fights.’ 

    LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin
    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSourc

    Regardless of our views of what’s happening outside of the school, our responsibility is for school safety on the school campus, and we have different ideas. … But I do think really the glaring omission (is) … the data on the fights. 

    … I’m trying to understand where we can trace that based on grade levels, and Covid, and the effects of the pandemic and the success or lack thereof of our positive behavioral intervention supports and restorative justice. … (and) on school campuses with the current deployment model, which is not having police there, except for rare emergencies.

    … We have different ideas … and I just hope that we can engage, starting from the premise that we all want kids to be safe and talk to each other and not just about or past each other. 

    And then the last thing, too. … I just want to make sure that the city and the county aren’t off the hook for this — and that as we’re talking amongst each other, we’re also bringing them in. 

    Board Member George McKenna: ‘We still haven’t come to grips with the reality of what makes the schools safe’ 

    I’ve been in this for 62 years — I’ve never seen police criminalize the children. I’ve seen them respond.

    … Do you know that there is no guideline in a teacher’s contract — or even an administrator’s contract — that says you must go break up a fight? The only one that has to do that is someone who’s trained to do that. And that will be a school police officer. 

    Board Member Dr. George J. McKenna III
    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    … I have no problem with the climate coaches or whatever they’re called, in addition to the people that have been there in uniform with the licensure and the legal responsibility for student safety … And the only people that have voted for the safety of school police being on campus are people who have been on the campus as administrators, including principals. … The most important people in the school district are the people who run the school, that’s the principal.

    … The most police officers we’ve ever had on the campus … is two, and I think it’s understaffed if you only put one on it because they have no backup. They need to be visible in order to assist the students and the prevention of incidents that occur because … the students will confide in them. 

    ….We’re not OK the way we are. And we still haven’t come to grips with the reality of what makes the schools safe and whether or not our school safety officers are a benefit to us. When you start with the premise and use the word the “punitive school police” and that’s the way you introduce it, you are already biased because that means you don’t understand what they do. And you can fill up the room with your accolades and your people that you’ve encouraged to be here, but we have to go to the schools on a regular basis. It makes a school safe.





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  • If undocumented parents lose Medi-Cal, California kids could suffer, advocates say

    If undocumented parents lose Medi-Cal, California kids could suffer, advocates say


    A family gets information at Fort Miller Middle School’s Health and Wellness Fair in Fresno.

    Photo courtesy of Eric Calderon-Phangrath

    Children’s health advocates are sounding alarm bells about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to freeze public health insurance enrollment for undocumented adults. 

    They say the move will put those adults’ children at risk of poor health care and well-being.

    California has gradually expanded Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance for low-income people, to undocumented immigrants, including those with temporary status such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. First, undocumented children were included in 2016, then young adults 19-25 in 2019, then seniors 50 and older in 2022, and finally those ages 26-49 in January 2024.

    Before the expansion, undocumented immigrants only qualified for Medi-Cal in emergencies, during pregnancy, and for long-term care. California is paying for the expansion on its own, without federal dollars.

    Now, faced with a deficit, Newsom is proposing to freeze new enrollment in Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrant adults and charge current undocumented enrollees a $100 monthly premium starting in 2027.

    The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have been pressuring states like California to stop providing benefits to undocumented immigrants, saying tax dollars should not be used for people who are in the country without permission.

    In announcing the proposed cuts, though, Newsom said they were to balance the budget. He said his beliefs have not changed. He touted his promises to expand health care to all, regardless of immigration status, both as mayor of San Francisco and governor of California.

    “It’s my value. It’s what I believe, I hold dear. I believe it’s a universal right. And I have for six years championed that,” Newsom said. “This is a tough budget in that respect.”

    He said there are now 1.6 million undocumented adults enrolled in Medi-Cal, about 5.3% of total enrollment.

    “Our approach was not to kick people off and not to roll back the expansion, but to level set on what we can do and what we can’t do,” Newsom said.

    Though undocumented children would not be affected directly by the changes, advocates say that restricting health insurance for undocumented adults will affect their children, the vast majority of whom are U.S. citizens. An estimated 1 in 10 California children have at least one parent who is “undocumented” or has temporary protections from deportation, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.

    “We are disheartened,” wrote Avo Makdessian, executive director of the First 5 Association of California, an organization that represents the state’s county commissions supporting children in the first five years of life, in a statement released after Newsom’s announcement of his revised budget. “When Medi-Cal coverage is scaled back for adults without legal status, children in those families suffer. Decades of research are clear: Healthy parents lead to healthy kids.”

    Ted Lempert, president of the nonprofit organization Children Now, said, “Children Now is deeply concerned with the proposed cuts to Medi-Cal.”

    “We urge the governor and Legislature to consider that when parents lose coverage, kids are less likely to get the health care they need, so the proposal to hurt parents hurts kids as well,” Lempert said.

    Mayra Alvarez, president of The Children’s Partnership, an organization that advocates for children’s health equity, said studies show that when parents become eligible for Medi-Cal, they are more likely to learn about health insurance options available to their children and enroll them.

    “This ‘welcome mat’ effect can lead to a noticeable increase in the number of children covered by Medi-Cal or similar programs, even without changes in their individual eligibility,” Alvarez said. “Conversely, when a parent or family member is sick and unable to work or provide care, kids suffer as a result.”

    Dolores, 65, is a grandmother who enrolled in Medi-Cal under the expansion for undocumented immigrants. She said losing it would affect not only her but also her children and grandchildren. She did not share her last name because of fear of immigration enforcement.

    Months after enrolling three years ago, Dolores suffered a stroke. 

    “If I hadn’t had Medi-Cal, I don’t know how I would have gotten health care,” she said in Spanish. “It helped me then, and it is still helping me so much.”

    Her enrollment in Medi-Cal has also helped her family, including her grandchildren, who live with her, she said. At a health center in Victorville, she has been able to take nutrition classes and Zumba, and she has learned about healthy foods to cook for her family. She said her 4-year-old granddaughter follows her every move, exercises with her, and has benefited from her grandma’s improved health.

    “You know children are like sponges — everything they see, they absorb,” she said. 

    Dolores said she could not afford to pay $100 a month for Medi-Cal, as proposed by Newsom. She has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, but after the stroke, she has not been able to return to work.

    Alvarez added that when state residents are uninsured, that creates other costs in emergency health care.

    “Cynically discriminating against our state’s immigrant communities by rolling back Medi-Cal eligibility is not only unconscionable, but doing so will only result in costs being shifted elsewhere,” she said.

    Alvarez recommended that the governor and Legislature balance the budget in other ways, such as “closing corporate tax loopholes and making the wealthy pay their fair share, drawing down reserves that exist for times like this, and scaling back spending in more appropriate places, such as the state’s bloated prison budget.”





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  • Newsom signs bill to end parental notification policies at schools; opponents say fight is not over

    Newsom signs bill to end parental notification policies at schools; opponents say fight is not over


    A big crowd was on hand when the Murrieta Valley Unified School District board voted last August to mandate that parents be told if their child shows any indication at school of being transgender.

    Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource

    A trailblazing state law prohibiting California school boards from passing resolutions that require teachers and school staff to notify parents if they believe a child is transgender isn’t likely to put an end to this polarizing issue. 

    The Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth, or SAFETY Act, was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday. It will prohibit school districts from requiring staff to disclose to parents information related to a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and will protect school staff from retaliation if they refuse to notify parents of a child’s gender preference. The legislation, which will go into effect Jan. 1, also provides additional resources and support for LGBTQ+ students at junior high and high schools.

    “California is the first state to pass a law explicitly prohibiting school districts from enacting forced outing policies in the nation,” said Mike Blount, spokesperson for the author of the bill, Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego.

    The legislation was passed in response to the more than a dozen California school boards that proposed or passed parental notification policies in just over a year. The policies require school staff to inform parents if a child asks to use a name or pronoun different from the one assigned at birth, or if they engage in activities and use facilities designed for the opposite sex. At least seven California school districts passed the controversial policies, often after heated public debate.

    First lawsuit filed

    By Tuesday evening, the conservative nonprofit Liberty Justice Center said it had filed a lawsuit challenging the new law on behalf of Chino Valley Unified, which passed a parental notification policy last year.

    “School officials do not have the right to keep secrets from parents, but parents do have a constitutional right to know what their minor children are doing at school,” said Emily Rae, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center in a press release. “Parents are the legal guardians of their children, not Governor Newsom, Attorney General (Rob) Bonta, or Superintendent (Tony) Thurmond. We will continue to defend parents’ rights and children’s well-being by challenging invasive laws like AB 1955 in court, at no cost to taxpayers.”

    Other opponents, including Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, indicated that the issue will be settled in court. He is “committed to challenging the bill in court, and he’s confident he’s on the right side constitutionally,” said Shawn Lewis, Essayli’s chief of staff. Essayli plans to work with a coalition of advocates to challenge the bill, Lewis said.

    Election issue

    Parental rights is the overarching issue for the Republican Party, but right now it is focused on the parental notification issue, Essayli said in an August interview with EdSource. “This is an issue we want to run on in 2024,” he said.

    The newly passed legislation also resulted in a flurry of press releases and social media comments from opponents and supporters. Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk weighed in, calling the new law the “final straw” in his decision to move the headquarters for X, formerly known as Twitter, to Texas.

    “I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children,” Musk wrote on X.

    Proponents of the parental notification policies have said that parents have the right to know what is going on with their children at school and that minors do not have a right to privacy. Opponents say these policies could endanger already vulnerable students who should be able to decide when they want to come out to their parents.

    Chino Valley Unified in San Bernardino County, Murrieta Valley Unified and Temecula Valley Unified in Riverside County, Orange Unified in Orange County, Anderson Union High School District in Shasta County, and Rocklin Unified and Dry Creek Joint Elementary School District in Placer County are among the districts that have passed parental notification policies.

    California’s parental notification board policies have their origin in Assembly Bill 1314, proposed by Essayli, which was denied a committee hearing at the state Capitol last year. After that, Essayli, parents’ rights groups and attorneys wrote a model board policy for school boards.

    On Monday, Essayli released a statement about the new law: “Today, Governor Gavin Newsom defied parents’ constitutional and God-given right to raise their children by signing AB 1955 which codifies the government’s authority to keep secrets from parents,” he said. “AB 1955 endangers children by excluding parents from important matters impacting their child’s health and welfare at school. Governor Newsom signing AB 1955 is both immoral and unconstitutional, and we will challenge it in court to stop the government from keeping secrets from parents.”

    Eight states have passed laws requiring school districts to inform parents if their children ask to use names or pronouns associated with another gender, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

    LGBTQ+ rights threatened

    School parental notification policies have impacted the mental health of LGBTQ+ students and can lead to bullying, harassment and discrimination, according to a press release from Ward’s office.

    “Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety, and dignity of transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California,” said Ward, who introduced the legislation along with the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus.

    “While some school districts have adopted policies to forcibly out students, the SAFETY Act ensures that discussions about gender identity remain a private matter within the family,” he said. “As a parent, I urge all parents to talk to their children, listen to them, and love them unconditionally for who they are.”

    The California Teachers Association and its members have been major opponents of parental notification policies, saying that they drive a wedge between educators and students, and endanger already vulnerable students. Teachers working in districts with parental notification policies have worried they could lose their jobs if they do not comply with the district requirement or end up in court if they disobey federal and state laws and policies.

    “This historic legislation will strengthen existing protections against forced outing and allow educators to continue to create a safe learning environment where all students feel accepted, nurtured, and encouraged to pursue their dreams,” said California Teachers Association President David Goldberg.

    “As educators, we are charged with providing a high-quality education to every student. No educator should experience retaliation or have their livelihood jeopardized for following the law and providing safe and supportive learning environments for our students.”

    Policies spawn lawsuits

    Attorney General Rob Bonta has said parental notification policies break California state law and violate students’ civil rights and their right to privacy. He issued warnings to districts and filed a lawsuit against Chino Valley Unified in San Bernardino County last year.

    A lawsuit was also filed against Temecula Valley Unified by a coalition of students, teachers and parents who oppose the district’s parental notification policy, along with a policy that bans “critical race theory.”

    California courts have had differing opinions. In San Diego, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez last year ruled that Escondido Union School District violated parents’ rights when it followed California state policy and allowed students to decide whether to tell their parents they identify as transgender.

    In Sacramento earlier that year, U.S. District Judge John Mendez dismissed a lawsuit against Chico Unified. The suit claimed that district policies allowed school staff “to socially transition” students and prohibited staff from informing parents of the change. Mendez said students have a right to tell their parents about their gender and sexuality on their own terms.

    The new law will also require districts to provide support or affinity groups and safe spaces for LGBTQ+ students; anti-bullying and harassment policies and complaint procedures; counseling services; anti-bias or other training to support LGBTQ+ students and their families; suicide prevention policies and procedures; and access to community-based organizations to support LGBTQ+ students as well as local physical and mental health providers with experience in treating and supporting families of LGBTQ+ youth.

    California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus Chair Susan Eggman said the legislation reaffirms California’s position as a leader and safe haven for LGBTQ+ youth.

    “I am also deeply grateful for all the parents, teachers, youth, LGBTQ+ leaders, and so many other groups who came together to support this bill,” Eggman said. “Their support reaffirmed what this caucus already knew: Safe and supportive schools for all our children should be our top priority. And at the end of the day, that’s what this bill does, ensures our K-12 campuses remain safe and affirming places for our youth no matter how they identify.”





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