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  • Anatomy of a divided California school board’s vote on ethnic studies

    Anatomy of a divided California school board’s vote on ethnic studies


    Ariane Tuomy, a social studies teacher at Palo Alto Unified’s Gunn High School, responds to school board members’ questions at a special board meeting on Jan. 23.

    Credit: Palo Alto Unified / YouTube

    In hour two of a meeting that stretched to nearly five, Josh Salcman, barely two months on the Palo Alto Unified School Board, said aloud what other school board members no doubt realize at some point in their first term: “I’m acutely aware that no matter how I vote, I’m going to deeply disappoint a large part of our community, including people whose friendship is important to me and whose opinions I hold in the highest regard.”

    He was undoubtedly right. Whether to require ninth graders to take an ethnic studies course starting next fall was and likely will remain contentious this year, not only in Palo Alto but throughout California. 

    Palo Alto had become the latest skirmish in California’s ethnic studies war. Salcman, who founded two education-related tech startups, was in the middle, ultimately facing the awkward decision of choosing between the views of enthusiastic students and teachers and apprehensive parents. 

    Two decisions in 2021 all but guaranteed that. First, a battle-weary State Board of Education, after multiple rewrites, approved an ambiguously worded curriculum framework that challenged districts to determine what should be included in an ethnic studies course. Then, the Legislature mandated that schools offer an ethnic studies course in high school starting in 2025-26. 

    Or maybe not. This month, Gov. Gavin Newsom decided not to fund the implementation of ethnic studies in next year’s state budget without explaining why. This not only calls the mandate into question, at least for next year, but also gives an out to districts that are dreading arguing over the course. 

    But not Palo Alto. Last week, board President Shana Segal, a Palo Alto native and former high school teacher, called for a special board meeting to approve the course that Palo Alto high school teachers had developed. The district would offer it in the fall and mandate it for graduation, starting in 2028-29. Regardless of state funding, that would be one year ahead of the state mandate. She set the hearing for later in the week, Jan. 23. 

    To pause or not to pause?

    For two years, at the board’s direction, a half-dozen veteran Palo Alto teachers persevered to create a first-year ethnic studies course. Last fall, they offered a pilot version to 20 students in each of the district’s two high schools in Palo Alto. The students’ survey results, all positive, were in.

    But at the same time, members of the Palo Alto Parent Alliance have been watching conflicts and lawsuits over ethnic studies and complaints of antisemitism since the slaughter of Israelis by Hamas in October 2023 followed by Israel’s mass destruction in Gaza. 

    At the center of the conflict is Liberated Ethnic Studies, a strain of ethnic studies that made the liberation of Palestine a prominent element of instruction. Critics characterize it as a left-wing ideology focused on the ongoing domination and oppression of white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism.

    Ethnic studies faculty at California State University and University of California and activists created Liberated Ethnic Studies after the state board rejected the first draft of the curriculum that they had primarily authored in 2019. They have made spreading Liberated Ethnic Studies a lucrative side hustle and have contracted with at least several dozen districts to train teachers and guide instruction. 

    In a May 2024 FAQ it published, the Palo Alto parent group cited language tying Liberated Ethnic Studies to the proposed course.

    Superintendent Don Austin has reiterated that Palo Alto’s course is not Liberated Ethnic Studies and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict won’t be part of a course on California racial and ethnic groups. 

    But in October, Linor Levav, an attorney and co-founder of the parent group, filed a Public Records Act request for curriculum materials that the district had largely ignored. Eventually, the district provided a PDF that contained links that couldn’t be opened.

    The rejection has fueled suspicions. “And so the question is, why are they teaching materials that they’re not willing to even tell us about?” she told EdSource. 

    The parent group called for a “pause” from proceeding with a mandated course.  

    While running campaigns for their first term on the five-member board, Salcman, Rowena Chiu and Alison Kamhi supported a delay. Now, the new majority’s campaign position would be put to a test.

    The audience in the boardroom was not particularly friendly to the three dissenters. The room seated about 80, with some standing room. By board rules, students get to speak first, and they filled most of the room. The adults lined up outside to address the board for one minute via Zoom or enter to do so individually. Forty-five were set aside for one-minute comments. Students, all supporting ethnic studies now, clapped enthusiastically at comments they liked.

    During the hearing, the three board skeptics said they shared some of the public’s concerns about the course’s content. They questioned its timing and sharply criticized the district for not being forthright about what would be taught in the course.

    “I believe we have to be very transparent about what we are teaching, provide an opportunity for meaningful feedback, and not push through classes that make people and communities, including communities of color, feel unsafe, targeted, or disrespected,” said Kamhi, who is the legal program director for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HwyKHvVA9E

    Watch Palo Alto Unified board member Josh Salcman discuss his concerns regarding ethnic studies.

    Two hours into the hearing, when he was still advocating a delay, Salcman explained his dilemma, mixing high praise for the teachers’ work with well articulated reservations about some of the content.

    He congratulated the teachers who developed the pilot course and the initial students who took it. Their presentation “underscored what I’ve heard from many community members who have emphatically urged me to vote yes.”

    “I find myself agreeing with most of what they say,” he said. “About how one-sided our current history classes are, about how little our students are currently learning about the experiences of historically underrepresented communities. How our students from those communities can feel so marginalized as they question why their family histories are nowhere to be found in our classrooms.”

    And “how they wish we could have more challenging conversations about topics like power and privilege and structural inequity.” 

    Then he switched and laid out his concerns and those he had heard in the community: 

    • “insufficient communication, which I share”
    • “ideologies that could increase a sense of division among students, which could lead to fixed mindsets or scapegoating”
    • “a lack of guardrails”
    • “widespread confusion about why, if there’s nothing to worry about, almost no details were shared about the course until yesterday.”

    One thing he knows for certain, he said, is: “We do not have a shared understanding of what the phrase ‘ethnic studies course’ means.”

    “Is an ethnic studies course primarily about the histories, cultures, and contributions” of the main ethnic and racial groups in California?” he asked, or “Is it primarily about concepts like ethnicity, identity, intersectionality, power, privilege, oppression and resistance? Is it a mix of both?”

    Striking a balance 

    At least on paper and in student testimonies, Palo Alto’s course would appear to strike a balance. The teachers’ eight-page course description — the form that board members have used to approve all previous courses — states that the course “examines social systems, social movements, and civic participation and responsibility through a local lens. …  By fostering empathy and belonging, the course prepares students to engage meaningfully in our communities.” 

    The four units in the course would be Identity; Power, Privilege and Systems of Oppression; Resilience and Resistance; and Action and Civic Engagement, in which students would create their own projects aligned to the course. 

    Each of the four units in the course would contain sample essential questions, learning objectives, and examples of assignments and assessments. Students would keep a journal of reflection throughout. Each unit calls for reading, analyzing and evaluating multiple and diverse sources.

    Palo Alto High history teacher Ben Bolanos acknowledged that privilege and systems of oppression “are triggering for certain people” but said it “is important to look at the shadow side of the human experience in order to understand what needs to be changed and how to look at and change the world for a better place.”

    The word “oppression” appeared more than 100 times in the state framework, observed Ander Lucia, a Teacher on Special Assignment. 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtRsvAM-vFc

    Watch student testimonies regarding ethnic studies at Palo Alto Unified.

    All the student evaluations of the course — 27 of the 40 who completed one — were positive. A half-dozen ninth graders elaborated at the hearing.

    “I’ll admit I had some reservations going into this course,” said Gunn High student Quinn Boughton. “I wasn’t sure how much it would apply to me as a white student or whether the topics might make people feel divided or uncomfortable, but those fears turned out to be completely unfounded. This course didn’t just teach history; it built empathy.”

    Gunn student Gabriel Lopez’s takeaway from the course was: “When one group of people takes power from another, I think it is the responsibility of school to teach us about the injustices people face. So, in the future and in our lives, we can strive for more equality.”

    For his final project, Palo Alto High student Amaan Ali organized Palo Alto students to volunteer at tutoring programs for less well-off students in East Palo Alto. “These projects go beyond academic exercises. They empower us to turn knowledge into action,” he said.

    Boughton examined homelessness in the Bay Area “in a new light” to dissect the problem and “discuss the causes and impacts of the unhoused with my peers.”

    The presentation impressed board President Segal, a Palo Alto native who taught high school for more than a decade. “So teachers, I just, I want to say these words,” she said. “You did it right. I just want to make sure you know it. You did it right.”

    Transparency questioned

    Chiu and Kamhi repeatedly stressed that they strongly support ethnic studies. 

    “Ethnic studies is critical to me personally, but it is also something that I very much believe we need as a society,” said new board member Chiu, a consultant to the World Bank and an ethnic studies instructor who, she said, is scheduled to lecture on “Asian American Women and Difficult Conversations” at UC Berkeley.

    But they remained unpersuaded, not because of what the teachers presented, but because of what the district had not provided. The district waited until two days before the meeting to send out an agenda with information, and it didn’t contain detailed information about the curriculum and the materials that teachers had used in the pilot.

    “I also have very specific questions about the curriculum that was sent to us,” said Chiu. “I’m sorry to say, while I’m sure you have an excellent course and the students all say so, I did find your materials difficult to navigate around. I couldn’t open some of the links.”

    As it turned out, Austin had included an outdated, detailed curriculum outline called a “scope and sequence” that included the broken links and sites requiring permission to open. Austin blamed the Public Records Act request that required providing outdated material. But Chiu found that explanation wanting. She had spent 48 hours poring over a document under the assumption it would be taught in the pilot. That, she said, “causes more confusion and more calls for lack of transparency.”

    Neither Austen nor other district officials explained why the document did not include more information than the presentation.

    “I will say it’s quite possible that your course is not going to incite any of these incidents that we’ve seen in other school districts,” Chiu said. “However, it’s connected to the issue of transparency. So if the community has not had, in their view, sufficiently transparent instructional materials, that fear is only going to grow.”

    Kamhi put it differently. “What I feel really uncomfortable doing is saying every single student should take a course that we know is controversial, that based on the materials we’ve seen, some of which are problematic. Maybe they’re being taught in the classroom; maybe they’re not — without more information about what the course actually is.”

    Dissenters’ dilemma

    The three board members found themselves in a Catch-22. Pressed to say what in the course needed to be changed, they couldn’t provide answers without more information.

    After hours debating unsuccessful amendments to Segal’s motion, and amendments to those amendments, the original motion was back on the table.

    To the teachers, Segal and the fifth member, Shounap Dharap, the issue came down to trust. The founding teachers had held listening sessions for the public when the course was being developed, and had made changes in response. 

    “I want to reiterate my thanks, gratitude and trust in our teachers. These teachers are choosing to do extra work in addition to their daily teaching, lesson planning and grading. I know from firsthand experience the amount of time and dedication it takes to create curriculum,” Segal said.

    “When we are sitting here hearing that there are concerns about the course and the way the course is being presented to students, I, we can’t help but take that personally, right?” said Jeff Patrick, social science instructional leader at Gunn, “because that, that is our job and that’s the job we thought we had the trust of the board to do, right? We think we’ve done our job, and we don’t know what a pause is going to do.”

    Dharap, a personal injury attorney and law professor, encouraged board members to base their decision on what they heard from teachers and students, not the unsubstantiated fears of the public. “We really need to sit down and consider whether a decision that we’re going to make now is valuing adult inputs over student outcomes.”

    The final vote

    Salcman sought a solution in the minutes before the vote. He pointed to San Dieguito Union High School District as a model for involving the public. It posted each ethnic studies unit on a website as it was developed with a form inviting comments.  

    “I’m not saying now that we need to go back and do that. We are where we are” but is there a way to move the course forward and involve people in the process? he asked.

    Dharap said the board already has liaisons with schools to convey concerns and frustrations and serve as a “conduit” for community feedback. He said the board can set course goals, measurements and expectations for public input.

    “How do I  know that I have a commitment from folks in this room to try to address the concerns that I raised?” were Salcman’s last words before the vote.

    Segal and Dharap said yes quickly. Chiu and Kamhi hesitated before voting no.

    The silence surrounding Salcman was unsettling. Twice during that time, Segal said, “There’s time; we can all take a breath.  We have time.”

    Three and a half minutes seemed like hours passed before Salcman said his next word, “Yes.”

    Segal immediately announced the motion passed 3-to-2 and ended the meeting and the webcast.

    One can only speculate what went through his mind during the long pause that followed — wondering perhaps which friend or close adviser he would please or disappoint or whether he made the right vote? Salcman didn’t respond to EdSource’s repeated invitations to share his thinking.





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  • Bye Bye, Tennessee Non-Achievement School District

    Bye Bye, Tennessee Non-Achievement School District


    If your memory is good, you may recall Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top, which had $5 billion of unrestricted funds with which to spur education reform. Duncan had a contest in which states competed for a piece of that big pie. To be eligible to compete, states had to pass a law authorizing charter schools, and almost every state did. They had to agree to adopt national standards, which meant the unfinished, untried Common Core State Standards, as well as the tests based on the standards. They had to agree to evaluate individual teachers based on the rise or fall of the test scores of their students.

    Eighteen states “won.”

    The biggest winner was Tennessee, which won $500 million. Tennessee’s biggest new program was the creation of its so-called Achievement School District. The ASD would gather the lowest performing schools in the state into a non-contiguous district and turn them into charter schoools.

    The ASD hired Chris Barbic, leader of Houston’s YES Prep charter chain, to run the ASD. Barbic pledged that he would raise the state’s lowest-performing schools into top-performing schools in five years.

    He failed. The state’s lowest performing schools continued to have low scores. In 2015, he resigned, saying he needed to focus on his health and family.

    The ASD limped along for another decade, without success. Nonetheless, some other states–including Nevada and North Carolina–copied the model, creating their own all-charter districts. They also failed.

    The Tennessee Legislature voted this week to shut down the ASD.

    The ASD removed low-performing schools from local control and placed them under a state-run district, with the goal to push Tennessee’s bottom 5% of schools to the top 25%. Many of the schools were turned over to charter operators to run under 10-year contracts.

    Research showed the ASD led to high teacher turnover, and did not generate long-term improvements for students. The district also faced community backlash for taking over schools in districts that served mostly low-income communities and predominantly Black student populations. The ASD cost taxpayers over $1 billion. Only three schools remain in the ASD.

    Every other part of Race to the Top failed. Evaluating teachers by test scores was a disaster: it rewarded teachers in affluent districts and schools while penalizing those who taught the neediest students. Charter schools did not have higher scores than public schools unless they chose their students carefully, excluding the neediest. The Common Core standards, with which tests, textbooks and teacher education were aligned, had no impact on test scores. The U.S. Department of Education evaluated Race to the Top and declared it a failure., in a report quietly released on the last day of the Obama administration.

    On to vouchers! Since voucher students don’t take state tests, no one will know that this is a boondoggle that benefits those already in private and religious schools.

    The search for miracles and panaceas goes on.

    Trump’s answer. Parents know best.

    Next time you get surgery, make sure the surgeon is not licensed. Next time you take a flight, be sure to fly with an unlicensed pilot.



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  • Why the state should bend spending rules for small rural school districts

    Why the state should bend spending rules for small rural school districts


    TRANSCRIPT

    Louise Simpson, superintendent of Mark Twain Union Elementary School District in Angles Camp, near Yosemite, is frustrated by state rules restricting how small rural districts like hers can spend expanded learning funding.

    Here’s why.

    What I’m hoping to do today is to light the fire so that we can explore unrestricting the expanded learning opportunity program funds.

    That was such a well-intentioned and important program for so many districts. It’s known by the acronym ELOP, and it was designed to make additional learning and enrichment opportunities in the school day. But it brought some really burdensome requirements with it, including a 9-hour day and 30 extra days of school.

    And while that sounds really great, what’s happened for our small rural districts, is the reality of creating a program just isn’t feasible. And I’ll tell you why:

    First, my kids are on the bus for more than an hour each way. They already have a big long day, and adding academics after school for enrichment is not super feasible for two reasons: One is we have a very difficult time finding qualified staff to run it. And the second one is, with the bus-driver shortage, we just don’t have the transportation.

    So, many kids that would benefit from this program really don’t have the opportunity, and they are being left behind.

    Our budget situation is so, so dire with steep declining enrollment, and we need to use the money that we’re already allocated for super-effective programs.

    I came out of retirement this year because this little system was struggling, and only one in 10 kids are proficient in math and only one in four can read — and that’s unconscionable.

    And I can fix it, but I need some help using the money that’s already been given to me to use during the day. We have a really cool program that we built with the Sierra K-16 Collaborative Partnership involving peer tutors. It allowed me to get $320,000 to fund an intervention teacher and pay 20 high school kids to come in and tutor my kids. And it’s working, but those funds expire in a year.

    I need that ELOP money to be made flexible so that I can teach our kids the core foundational skills they need to be successful. That includes being able to use it during the school day. So many folks can’t find a way to make this funding effective that they’re actually giving it back, and that’s not okay.

    We need to come to some agreements where it can be working for everyone. Let me take and share with you what unrestricting these funds could really do for kids.

    This is our peer tutoring program. It’s funded in conjunction with Sierra K16.

    (short video of tutors working with students)

    I hope you’ll join me in reaching out to all of our legislators and asking them to provide small rural districts flexibility in how we use those funds.





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  • A lifeline for ill students, LAUSD’s home hospital school suffers from instability

    A lifeline for ill students, LAUSD’s home hospital school suffers from instability


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    Nothing about being a home-hospital teacher is normal. 

    A Los Angeles Unified educator drives nearly 22 miles from one student’s home in Venice Beach to another’s in East Los Angeles — and another 20 miles to Maravista, lugging tote bags with school supplies, books, plants and paintbrushes. 

    Each bag is dedicated to one of her students — from transitional kindergartners to high school seniors gearing up for graduation and new beginnings. 

    What her students have in common is illness, ranging from leukemia to eating disorders. And she is one of many teachers tending to their education at the one-of-a-kind Berenece Carlson Home Hospital School.  

    “In a student’s very, very trying times,” said the teacher who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), “no matter what kind of condition the student is in or has been diagnosed with, we become part of the students’ weekly or daily” life. 

    The school, established in 1970, is intended to provide an education for LAUSD students who are ill or receiving medical treatment and unable to stay in school, sometimes for several years. 

    It also enables students to receive a more individualized education; teachers can meet students at home or in the hospital for roughly five hours each week. 

    Classes usually focus on math and English, but sometimes they extend to other subjects or topics that students are interested in. 

    “She really went above and beyond for both of us,” said Karina Rodriguez, the mother of one of the anonymous teacher’s students. “What she did for my daughter, she did for me. She’s my child.” 

    But the school has been engulfed in conflict between some teachers who teach in person and those who taught through an online option called the Carlson Home Online Academy, or CHOA, which, according to a district policy bulletin, was established in 2018 to give “homebound students synchronous home instruction in a web-based classroom setting.” 

    Conflict surrounding the online academy  

    Despite the work of dedicated instructors, both the in-person and online programs at the Berenece Carlson Home Hospital School have struggled for years with waves of instability, including the recent closure of the online program (CHOA), which has deprived some students who are ill of the individualized education they need.   

    In 1999, when the California Department of Education began tracking campuses by school type, Carlson was classified as a special education school, according to a spokesperson for the agency. A decade later, the Department of Education added a designation for home-hospital schools, but LAUSD did not reclassify Carlson as a “Home and Hospital” program until last July. 

    That reclassification came amid pressure from a group of teachers teaching in-person, who began sounding alarms, claiming during the fall of 2023 that Carlson’s online program violated the state’s education code requiring home-hospital schools to operate in person. 

    The teachers also claimed in emails to district officials that many students in need of in-person instruction were automatically funneled into the online program — and that more than 80 students went without adequate instruction for about two months. EdSource reviewed the emails. 

    “They tell families there are no teachers available,” said Lisa Robertson, who, since 2009, has taught in the homes of students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

    “The families are dealing with the crisis of having a sick child,” she said. “And then, they’re lost in the system.” 

    Conflict between some home-hospital teachers and those who supported the online program mounted. Another criticism of the online program is that several of its teachers rely on lessons from Edgenuity, an online learning platform, which some hospital-home teachers say places excessive demands on some students with severe illnesses.   

    Online instructors maintained that their program enabled students to take classes in more subject areas than the in-person program, providing them with a better track to graduate — all while giving them additional flexibility beyond what is provided through LAUSD’s other virtual academies. 

    “I’ve had cancer,” Robertson said. “There is no way I could have gotten up at 8 in the morning and sat through six hours clicking away at a computer.” 

    But Kevin Byrd, who taught in the online program, said the program allowed educators to support several students taking different subjects — say, biology, chemistry and health — simultaneously, adding that even though students worked remotely, the online program helped students build camaraderie among their peers. 

    “There was an understanding about the students, even in middle school, that we’re all kind of supporting each other,” Byrd said. “And just because we have this condition doesn’t really affect our ability to learn.” 

    The aftermath of CHOA’s closure 

    Amid the claim that the online program violated California’s education code, the Los Angeles Unified School District closed the online program altogether in July. The closure, however, left about 170 sick students and several educators unsure of where to go next. 

    “Programming previously offered through the Carlson Home Online Academy was discontinued for the 2024-25 school year as CDE (California Department of Education) clarified that virtual instruction is not part of a home hospital program,” an LAUSD spokesperson wrote in a statement to EdSource. “Home hospital instruction is to be provided on an individual basis aligned with the hours set forth by law.” 

    Online teachers caught a whiff of their program’s impending closure in late March and immediately started a petition to keep it open; that petition received more than 600 signatures. 

    “It’s good to have several options, especially for these students who need to be accommodated and have special circumstances,” said Byrd, who started the petition. 

    “The fact that the second-largest district in the country and the largest in the state is limiting an option for these types of students is really discouraging.” 

    Since the online program’s closure, most of its former teachers like Rene Rances have become home-hospital teachers — but others have opted to leave Carlson altogether and teach elsewhere. Rances said he is considering leaving the district, too. 

    “It’s very, very demoralizing,” he said.

    A spokesperson for LAUSD maintained, however, that the district’s changes are in keeping with California’s laws; they also said in a statement to EdSource that families whose children were in the online program were informed of their options “through letters, emails, phone calls, and several community meetings.”   

    Those options included Carlson’s home-hospital programs or enrolling at one of the district’s virtual academy schools, which don’t always provide the same level of flexibility to take varying course loads, said Tammy Koch, Carlson’s counselor. 

    Koch confirmed that some students left the online program — only to be referred back to the in-person home-hospital program.  

    “We had students that sometimes can’t handle a full course load. … Sometimes, I had students taking three classes. Sometimes, they took four,” Koch said, referring to her students who used to be enrolled in the online program.  “But you don’t have that flexibility at a virtual academy,” she said, because students have to take a full course load there. “It’s just not the same.”





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  • Give fire victim families emergency school choice

    Give fire victim families emergency school choice


    A burned sign at Oak Knoll Montessori School (Loma Alta School) from the Eaton fire on Jan. 9 in the Altadena neighborhood of Pasadena.

    Credit: Kirby Lee via AP

    As Gov. Gavin Newsom stood near a burned-down school, Pacific Palisades mom Rachel Darvish pleaded with Newsom: “That was my daughter’s school, what are you going to do?” Newsom offered no real answer for the distraught parent at the time. 

    Well, here’s the answer he should have given: All families affected by the Los Angeles fires should be eligible for emergency education savings accounts that parents can use to pay for education alternatives for their children.

    The Los Angeles fires have not only destroyed people’s homes and businesses, they have also razed neighborhood schools. Initial reports indicate at least a dozen schools in the Los Angeles area have burned, affecting more than 5,700 students. 

    In the Altadena area, which was devastated by the Eaton fire, nearly 2,000 students are school-less.

    “I’m just really sad,” one 7-year-old Altadena girl told a CBS-TV reporter, “because I love that school.”

    Describing the impact of losing her children’s neighborhood school, an Altadena mom said: “School is a big part of it because it’s the foundation of a family’s daily life. Now we don’t have that anymore.”

    The sad reality for affected families is that rebuilding schools, like rebuilding homes, will take a lot of time and money, and only $1 million of Newsom’s $2.5 billion wildfire relief bill was designated for rebuilding schools.

    Even in normal times, it takes two years or more to build a school, and school construction costs range from $70 million to $100 million per school. 

    What are families to do in the meantime?

    Many affected families have been dispersed to various parts of Southern California and beyond. Since their homes will not be rebuilt soon, government leaders can address the individual needs of children in this diaspora by giving every child affected by the fires a publicly funded education savings account.

    According to the school-choice organization EdChoice, education savings accounts “establish for parents publicly funded government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple uses for educational purposes,” to be used in-state.

    Parents can use these funds to cover “school tuition, tutoring, online education programs, therapies for students with special needs, textbooks or other instructional materials, and sometimes save for college,” whatever policymakers determine. Some programs cover home school costs. 

    California leaders can model on Arizona, where education savings accounts are funded at 90% of the state’s per-pupil funding, with special needs students receiving higher amounts. 

    In Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget, $83 billion from the state’s general fund would go to K-12 education. Using Arizona as a guide, $12,800 could be made available for these accounts for each affected child.

    With thousands of affected students, the total cost for an emergency education savings account program would be around $73 million — a drop in the bucket compared with the billions of dollars in aid being discussed for other aspects of the affected areas.

    Education savings accounts are popular with parents. In Arizona, a large majority of parents support such accounts.

    For example, after talking with Arizona State Board of Education member Jenny Clark about the state’s education savings account program, one family said, “We continue to utilize the … program to tailor our son’s education to meet both his great strengths and real challenges.”

    Today, 18 states from Wyoming to West Virginia have similar programs.  

    Public schools could be held financially harmless during the existence of these accounts. As EdChoice noted, in states with school choice programs, “many have funding protection policies.” In California’s case, districts could continue to receive their current average daily attendance funding.

    Education savings accounts could be funded through the billions of dollars in aid the state will surely receive from the federal government. President Donald Trump would likely look favorably on this program since he proposed a similar program at the federal level in his first administration.

    The education savings account program should be reevaluated after a few years to ensure it’s working as designed and improved as needed.

    While the catastrophe of the Los Angeles fires has created great uncertainty, one thing is certain: Parents affected by the fires will need the flexibility to pivot and choose educational alternatives that best suit the individual needs of their children.

    Parents cannot wait for bureaucratic processes to rebuild the schools that had been. These families need tools right now to pay for and provide for educational services to meet their immediate needs. 

    “We are so thankful for the educational freedom,” said another Arizona family that used their account funds for a home school hybrid program. 

    With National School Choice Week upon us, it is a perfect time to give fire-affected Los Angeles parents the freedom and flexibility they so desperately need.

    •••

    Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute, a Pasadena-based think tank advocating for free-market policy solutions, and author of  “The Great Classroom Collapse.”

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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

    UC faculty to consider its own high school ethnic studies mandate


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Emergence of Liberated Ethnic Studies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A “target” for President Trump?

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

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

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





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  • West Contra Costa school board slashes staffing to avoid deficit

    West Contra Costa school board slashes staffing to avoid deficit


    A special education class at West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    West Contra Costa Unified School District’s school board approved a plan Wednesday night that will cut educator and administrative positions, and reduce funds for programs and supplies in order to stay fiscally solvent and avoid a state takeover. 

    District officials have been grappling with how to cut $32.7 million in costs between 2024 and 2027; cuts for the current school year total $19.7 million.

    Cuts for the rest of the deficit, $13 million, will be spread out over the next two school years: $7 million in 2025-26 and $6 million in 2026-27. District officials warned it’s likely more reductions will occur after 2027.

    Board members Leslie Reckler, Cinthia Hernandez and Guadalupe Enllana voted for the plan. Reckler, board president, said she voted for the solvency plan to “literally save the district.”

    “No one wants to do this; no one runs for office to do this; no one works here to do this,” Reckler said. “This is an absolute necessity. We are staring down a dire fiscal situation.”

    Trustee Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy was absent while trustee Jamela Smith-Folds abstained from voting. 

    “I want us to start coming together, and I think the way to say that is to abstain,” Smith-Folds said. “This is part of the board’s job that is the hardest because these numbers (budget cuts) are attached to people.”

    According to district officials, declining enrollment, expiration of Covid-19 relief funds, increased costs for special education programs, and underfunded mandates from state and federal governments are reasons West Contra Costa is strapped for cash. Districts across the state have been dealing with the same issues, including San Francisco and Oakland.

    It’s not the first time West Contra Costa has faced challenging budget deficits. In 1991, the district became the first in the state to go insolvent and received a $29 million bailout loan, which took 21 years to pay off. 

    District officials presented a detailed list of staffing cuts — including teachers, social workers, speech therapists, assistant principals, and administrators — spanning from the 2025 school year through 2027.  Over the next two school years, about 1.6% of staff in the teachers’ union will be let go for a total savings of about $3.7 million. 

    Cuts to educator positions are also coming during a time when West Contra Costa schools are struggling to fill vacant positions. Dozens of educators have, at various board meetings, expressed the hardships of not having fully staffed schools. Francisco Ortiz, president of United Teachers of Richmond, said last month that most schools have to use substitutes on a daily basis.

    The majority of school budgets are used to pay staff salaries and benefits, district officials said. In West Contra Costa, that amounts to nearly 84%. This is the reason it wasn’t possible to avoid cutting staffing positions, district officials say. 

    Recent salary increases have also affected spending, district officials said. Salaries have increased 19.5% over the past five years, and benefits have increased by about 26%.

    For the next school year, about $100,000 will be cut from the International Baccalaureate (IB) program; the high school theater budget will be reduced by $20,000, and art supplies by $14,000.

    District officials said they are exploring other ways to save money that don’t impact the classroom, including increasing annual daily attendance, which is how the district receives revenue. For every 1% increase in attendance, the district would generate $2.75 million in additional state funding.





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  • California school districts are weighed down by new costs of old sexual assaults

    California school districts are weighed down by new costs of old sexual assaults


    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    School districts’ costs for compensating students victimized by sexual assault are escalating by billions of dollars. Many cases date back decades and were revived by a 2019 state law that widely expanded liability exposure to schools and other public agencies for past child sexual assaults. 

    An independent analysis of that law indicates a severe impact. Litigation will siphon tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars from general funds. Adverse jury verdicts and settlements could cost districts millions, potentially forcing layoffs and program reductions. Most districts will face record assessments to sustain shared insurance risk pools they contribute to. 

    In the worst case, districts will seek costly emergency state loans or bankruptcy protection — unless, the study said, the overall liability burden is spread “to protect the stability” of school districts.

    California’s elementary and secondary school system “will survive the challenge presented by the claims of childhood sexual assault. But individual school districts, charter schools and other agencies may not,” concluded the sober assessment of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), a state agency charged with preventing districts’ financial meltdowns.

    Troy Flint, chief of communications for the California School Boards Association, said FCMAT’s report should prompt action. “We have called upon the state to develop a safety net to defray costs that threaten school districts with insolvency. The report is another opportunity to reiterate this request,” he said.

    The report doesn’t name districts or describe how they’re coping. But one district that might not survive is Carpinteria Unified, a 1,900-student district south of Santa Barbara with a $42 million budget. 

    Next year, it’s scheduled for trial for four claims of sexual assault from the 1970s. The district lacks historical records, and the insurance company at the time went out of business, leaving the district on the hook, said Superintendent Diana Rigby. The abuser, a principal convicted of sexual assaults, has died, as have potential witnesses and the then superintendent, she said. Legal costs over several years will force budget cuts, she said. 

    “We all believe that victims deserve their due justice and compensation. Of course we do,” said Rigby. But “an unfavorable verdict would be catastrophic.”

    Among its 22 recommendations, FCMAT proposes the state create a voluntary victims’ compensation fund like the one for victims of the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Victims would generally be compensated in a nonjudicial setting based on the crime’s severity and victims’ experiences. Legislators would decide if the state would share the funding burden.

    The Legislature unanimously passed Assembly Bill 218, which precipitated the surge in lawsuits, in October 2019. The law:

    • Extended the statute of limitations to file a child sexual assault lawsuit from age 26 (eight years after turning 18) to age 40.  
    • Extended the statute of limitations for those over 40 to within five years of when victims reasonably should have discovered repressed memories of a sexual assault.
    • Enabled victims of assaults whose statutes of limitations had expired to file lawsuits by Dec. 31, 2022.

    In 2023, the Legislature took the next step and passed Assembly Bill 452, which eliminated any statute of limitation for new lawsuits for sexual assaults filed after Jan. 1, 2024.

    AB 218’s just intentions, unknown costs

    The Legislature acted after a decade of shocking revelations and massive settlements, including by the Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Church, as well as the $169 million that Los Angeles Unified paid on 150 claims of sexual abuse by one teacher at Miramonte Elementary. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has acknowledged paying more than $1.5 billion from various settlements. 

    The Legislature signaled in AB 218 that schools, county offices of education, cities and public bodies with programs for children should be accountable for lifelong harm caused by sexual assaults under their watch.  The author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzales, D-San Diego, said it would “confront the pervasive problem of cover-ups in institutions, from schools to sports leagues.”

    The Legislature’s fiscal analysis cited “unknown costs” but projected higher insurance premiums.

    Dave George, CEO of the Schools Excess Liability Fund (SELF), a public agency that provides school districts with catastrophic insurance coverage, added that districts had difficulty convincing legislators there would be “real money out of the pockets of districts” from rising costs of insurance and settlements. “The general response was, ‘Don’t worry about it — it’s just insurance,’” George said. 

    Hard information on claims is unavailable because there is no database on sexual assault outcomes. Creating a central repository is FCMAT’s first recommendation. The most recent data is from 2023.

    FCMAT’s best estimate of the dollar value of claims filed because of the law was $2 billion to $3 billion for school districts, including about $500 million facing Los Angeles Unified. Other public agencies’ costs will significantly exceed that value, the report said. 

    But with many claims still in the courts, the final damages are unknown. Mike Fine, FCMAT’s CEO and coauthor of the report, acknowledged they might be higher than estimated. The average claim is about $2.5 million per victim, Fine said.

    The estimate doesn’t include the cost of insurance, which has risen an estimated 700% — to about $255,000 for a 10,000-student district since the passage of AB 218, the report said, plus coverage now required of nonprofits and day care providers working in districts. It also doesn’t include new lawsuits being filed daily, said Fine. 

    George said SELF had two sexual assault claims open in 2020 and has received 400 claims for 600 plaintiffs since. SELF provides catastrophic insurance for claims up to $55 million for about 500 school districts. It notified them to expect $300 million to $400 million in supplementary assessments for ongoing and new AB 218 claims.

    George said that districts settled all but two recent lawsuits before going to trial. One that didn’t — and paid a stiff price — was Moreno Valley in Riverside County, the state’s 23rd largest district. A jury found it responsible for failing to protect two middle school students from a teacher’s sexual abuse in the 1990s. The jury levied $135 million in damages.

    Moreno Valley negotiated the price down to $45 million in order to pay a lump sum. SELF covered $15 million; Moreno Valley paid $30 million from its budget reserves.

    But the district isn’t out of the woods. The teacher remained on the payroll for two decades, and the district still faces four more potentially expensive lawsuits. The district declined to comment for this story.

    Adding to small districts’ financial vulnerability, said Fine, is that “a jury doesn’t distinguish between the size of the district and its ability to pay. Jurors can’t be told that information.” 

    Rising costs of ‘social inflation’

    The report said that the $100-plus million settlements contribute to “social inflation” — rising costs because of more lawsuits, plaintiff-friendly verdicts and larger jury awards.

    These factors also have created a “perilously unstable” commercial insurance market, which public agencies like SELF rely on for additional coverage, the report said.

    Fine said that districts are already issuing “judgment obligation bonds” to make restitution. No district has sought an emergency state bailout as a last resort, but Fine said that will happen.

    “Generally speaking, the smaller the district, the higher that risk,” Fine said. 

    The report suggests that the Legislature revise statutes to lengthen payoffs and settlement deadlines. It urges lawmakers to immediately study a victim compensation fund. But the focus is on creating “zero tolerance” of sexual assaults by mandating student training to promote awareness, expanding work history verification and increasing staff training.

    Fine will present the report at legislative hearings. Leilani Aguinaldo, senior director of government relations for School Services of California, which advises districts, welcomes that opportunity. “It’s an excellent report. Schools have no resources for claims from decades ago,” she said. 

    Flint added, “The fears of schools are real.”





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  • California takes a big step in how it measures school performance, but there’s still more to do

    California takes a big step in how it measures school performance, but there’s still more to do


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    Accountability has been a central plank in California’s — and our nation’s — school reform efforts for over two decades. Over nearly that entire period, California has been criticized (including by me) for being one of the few states that does not include a measure of student achievement growth in our accountability system. The current approach, exemplified in the California School Dashboard, rates schools on their average performance levels on the state’s standardized tests, and on the difference between the school’s average performance this year and last year.

    But the state doesn’t have, and has never had, a student-level growth model for test scores. Student-level growth models are important because they do a much better job than the state’s existing measures of capturing school effectiveness at improving student achievement. This is because growth models directly compare students to themselves over time, asking how much individual children are learning each year and how this compares across schools and to established benchmarks for annual learning. The crude difference models the state currently displays in the dashboard could give the wrong idea about school performance, for instance, if there are enrollment changes over time in schools (as there have been since the pandemic).

    Growth models can help more fairly identify schools that are often overlooked because they are getting outsize results with underserved student groups. In other words, they send better, more accurate signals to report card users and to the state Department of Education about which schools need support and for which students. Along with Kansas, California has been the last holdout state in adopting a report card that highlights a growth model.

    Though the state’s task force on accountability and continuous improvement, on which I served, wrapped up its work and recommended a growth model almost nine years ago, the process of adopting and implementing a growth model has been — to say the least — laborious and drawn-out. Still, I was delighted to see that the California Department of Education (CDE) has finally started providing growth model results in the California School Dashboard! This is a great step forward for the state.

    Beyond simply including the results in the dashboard, there are some good things about how the state is reporting these growth model results. The growth model figures present results in a way I think many users will understand (points above typical growth), and results for different student groups can be easily viewed and compared.

    There is a clear link to resources to help understand the growth model, too. The state should be commended for its efforts to make the results clear and usable in this way.

    It doesn’t take a detailed look at the dashboard to see, however, that there are some important fixes that the State Board of Education should require — and CDE should adopt — as soon as possible. Broadly, I think these fixes fall into two categories: technical fixes about presentation and data availability, and more meaningful fixes about how the growth model results are used.

    First, the data are currently buried too deeply for the average user to even find them. As far as I can tell, the growth model results do not appear on the landing page for an individual school. You have to click through using the “view more details” button on some other indicator, and only then can you see the growth model results. The growth model results should, at minimum, be promoted to the front page, even if they are put alongside the other “informational purposes indicator” for science achievement. A downloadable statewide version of the growth model results should also be made available, so that researchers and other interested analysts can examine trends. Especially in light of the long shadow of Covid on California’s students, we need to know which schools could benefit from more support to recover.

    Second, the state should prioritize the growth model results in actually creating schools’ dashboard ratings. Right now, the color-coded dashboard rating is based on schools’ status (their average scale score) and change (the difference between this year’s average score and last year’s). It would be much more appropriate to replace the change score with these growth model results.

    There are many reasons why a growth model is superior, but the easiest to understand is that the “change” metrics the state currently uses can be affected by compositional changes in the student body (such as which kinds of students are moving into and out of the school). Researchers are unanimous that student-level growth models are superior to these change scores at accurately representing school effectiveness. Even for California’s highly mobile student population, growth models can accommodate student mobility and give “credit” to the schools most responsible for each child’s learning during that academic year.

    To be sure, I think there are other ways the dashboard can likely be improved to make it more useful to parents and other interested users. These suggestions have been detailed extensively over the years, including in a recent report that dinged the state for making it difficult to see how children are recovering post-Covid.

    The adoption of a growth model is a great sign that the state wishes to improve data transparency and utility for California families. I hope it is just the first in a series of improvements in California’s school accountability systems.

    •••

    Morgan Polikoff is a professor at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • California school vaccinations database



    Find out how many students are vaccinated at your school



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