North Dakota became the 47th state to authorize charter schools. There are three states that do not have a charter sschool law. Nebraska, South Dakota, and Vermont. Kentucky has a law but its courts declared them unconstitutional.
When charter schools first began in 1991, they were sold to the public as a miracle cure. Their promoters said they would operate with greater accountability, no bureaucracy, and the freedom to hire and fire at will. Because of this flexibility, charters would produce higher test scores, would cost less, would “save” the failing students, would close if they didn’t get the promised results, and would produce innovations that would help public schools.
None of these promises came true. The charters are no better than public schools, and many are far worse. The ones that produce higher scores choose their students carefully and avoid the neediest, most difficult students. Charters have produced no innovations. They have a well-funded lobby that fights accountability and seeks more funding. They close at a startling rate: more than one of every four are gone within five years of opening.
Charters have also been notorious for waste, fraud, and abuse. Scores of charters have been rife with fraud and outright theft. One online charter operator in Ohio collected $1 billion over twenty years, donated generously to elected officials, and when confronted by an audit and demand for repayment, declared bankruptcy. An online charter operator in California stole nearly $100 million. Some operators of brick-and-mortar charter schools have gone to jail for financial fraud.
The Network for Public Education keeps track of charter frauds. All this information is freely available. Yet North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong recited the same broken promises in signing charter legislation. The charters will not produce higher student scores, will push out students they don’t want, and will not produce innovation. In coming sessions of the legislature, their lobbyists will weaken or eliminate the provisions they don’t like. If North Dakota is fortunate, the big charter chains will ignore them because the market is small.
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed Senate Bill 2241 Monday, allowing public charter schools to operate in the state.
The legislation takes effect Aug. 1.
Charter schools are state-funded public schools that have greater flexibility in hiring, curriculum, management and other aspects of their operations. Unlike traditional public schools that are run by school districts with an elected school board and a board-appointed superintendent, most charter schools are run by organizations with self-appointed boards.
Senate Bill 2241 requires charter schools to operate under a performance agreement with the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, according to a media release from the governor’s office. The schools must meet or exceed state academic and graduation requirements and be open to all North Dakota students.
“The public charter schools authorized by this bill can drive innovation, improve student outcomes and increase parent satisfaction,” Armstrong said in a statement.
Denny Sicairos, 5, at a Bakersfield protest against an extensive Border Patrol operation held last week.
Emma Gallegos/EdSource
Advocates have called upon school leaders to take action to protect immigrants in the wake of an extensive operation by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Kern County last week.
Immigrant families have been afraid to send their students to school in the wake of the extensive operation, some opting to keep them home.
“Students are scared,” said Belen Carrasco, a middle school teacher at Bakersfield City School District, who reported an increase in student absences in her classroom over the last week. Students have told her that Border Patrol agents knocked on their doors, and in one case, detained a parent. Students are asking Carrasco for information on what they should do if agents approach them.
One resident, Samantha Gil, said that her daughter’s immigrant friends at West High School in Bakersfield are “hidden in their houses. She is very sad for them.”
The fear is so great that community members have been afraid to show up to school sites in rural communities where food is being distributed, according to Ashley De La Rosa, education policy director for the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a Bakersfield-based community advocacy organization.
Advocates are encouraging immigrants to know their legal rights under the U.S. Constitution and to document any encounters with immigration officials. They are encouraging school leaders to get in touch with community groups that can provide this education or pass out cards with information about people’s constitutional rights, as Delano Union School District does. Above all, families are looking for assurance that schools are safe places that will not alert immigration authorities to their immigration status or address.
“The parents are really looking to school districts to take action,” De La Rosa said.
‘There was a lot of terror’
Firsthand accounts show that border patrol agents are broadly targeting immigrant communities, according to Rosa Lopez, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kern County. She works with the Rapid Response Network of Kern County — a group that offers a hotline for those who are a target of immigration enforcement or who may witness agents in the community.
“What [agents] have done is terrorize communities and profile people who look brown, who look undocumented and who look like farmworkers,” Lopez said.
The Rapid Response Network has also confirmed the presence of Customs and Border Patrol agents at gas stations and restaurants frequented by farmworkers and immigrants, pulling over farmworkers traveling to work, and even a Home Depot parking lot where day laborers look for work, Lopez said.
A video,shared by local NBC affiliate KGET showed a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent detaining a U.S. citizen and threatening to break the windows of his gardening truck, after slashing its tires. He was later released, KGET reported.
Gregory Bovino, chief patrol agent of the El Centro sector in Imperial County on the Mexican border of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol called this week’s raids Operation Return to Sender. He posted photos on social media, stating that the operation was aimed at protecting communities “from bad people and bad things.” His posts about the operation included hashtags for Bakersfield, as well as Fresno and Sacramento. The agency did not respond to questions from EdSource.
Bakersfield City Councilmember Andrae Gonzales said families he represents in Bakersfield were being “harassed,” “intimidated” and “terrorized” by Border Patrol agents.
“All of last week, I’ve gotten countless calls from people who wondered what to do, what their plan should be; employers who saw their employees staying home; principals and teachers upset and concerned for their students because they all were hiding,” Gonzales said.
There was a lot of chaos, particularly on social media, about where the Border Patrol was operating and whom they were targeting. De La Rosa said there were sightings of agents near schools.
“There was a lot of terror — or just fear — that trickled into kids not going to school,” Lopez said.
News reports, videos and posts on social media about immigration enforcement have caused many local immigrants to question whether it’s safe to send their students to school or even leave their homes at all.
Residents from across Kern County showed up in Bakersfield on Friday to protest the agents’ presence, saying they were there on behalf of terrified families and friends in their community — the undocumented, those in the midst of applying for asylum, green cards or citizenship — who are concerned about federal immigration enforcement.
Vanessa Acevedo, one of those protesters, said her sister-in-law, who is undocumented, is afraid to go to work or leave her house for any reason and has been relying on others to take her children to school.
Many of the areas targeted by Border Patrol agents are frequented by Latin American immigrants, but the video of a citizen being detained sent shock waves into the local Sikh community as well, according to Raji Brar, co-founder of the Bakersfield Sikh Women’s Association.
Many immigrants in the Sikh community have green cards or are going through the asylum process, she said. Seeing an American citizen being detained was “jarring” to them and a shocking “abuse of power,” Brar said.
She said the local gurdwaras, or places of worship, were empty over the weekend. Some parents have told her that they’re not going to work and that they’re keeping their children home out of an abundance of caution.
“It was a wake-up call for all of us who happen to look a little different,” Brar said.
Preparing for the second term of Donald Trump
As state and local school officials prepare for the second term of Donald Trump, who promised unprecedented mass deportations of immigrants, California Attorney General Rob Bonta recently released updated guidance for how K-12 schools and colleges should respond to immigration enforcement agents. Some school districts have reiterated they are “sanctuary schools” — a stance many developed during Trump’s first term — and that they wouldstrictly limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
But the operation conducted by the Border Patrol in Kern County seemed to come ahead of the expected schedule — Trump won’t become president until Jan. 20.
“It’s really challenging, because I think we knew this was a possibility with this new administration,” De La Rosa said. “But (last week’s operation) caught everyone off guard.”
Last week, Bakersfield City School District sent a message to its staff reminding them of guidance from the state attorney general and also a policy its board passed in 2017 called the Safe Haven Resolution, which designates schools as “protected areas” where immigration enforcement should not occur. District spokesperson Tabatha Mills clarified that no agents have visited the district’s schools.
De La Rosa said that Bakersfield City School District is also planning to reach out to parents concerned about immigration enforcement through the district’s community engagement liaisons.
This week, Delano Union School District plans to pass out cards to families, referred to as red cards, that have information about the rights everyone has under the U.S. Constitution, according to Assistant Superintendent April Gregerson.
An estimated 1 in 10, or 1 million, children in California have at least one undocumented parent, and approximately 133,000 children in the state’s public schools are undocumented themselves, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
A 2018 publication by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research reported that zealous application of immigration laws causes school enrollment to drop and can set back the education of young people, including many U.S. citizens. The study found that Latino enrollment dropped nearly 10% in communities where local law enforcement collaborated with ICE.
State leadership
The Border Patrol’s actions in Kern County have drawn condemnation from state leaders. The California Latino Legislative Caucus released a statement saying the unannounced raids are “sowing chaos and discord.” The group urged the Border Patrol to announce their raids and to avoid sensitive areas, including schools.
“It is seemingly a rogue group of Border Patrol officers that just decided to take it upon themselves to hang out at where farmworkers hang out, hang out where day laborers hang out and decide to essentially round them up and do exactly what the Trump administration threatened that they were going to do,” said state Sen. Lena Gonzalez D-Long Beach.
Gonzalez and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond have introduced a bill that aims to establish a 1-mile “safe zone” around schools and prohibit schools from allowing immigration authorities to enter a campus or share information without a judicial warrant.
Gonzalez, along with Thurmond, plan to reach out to educators for feedback on how best to craft and ultimately implement this bill so that families feel safe sending their children to school.
Students who encounter any violation of their rights at their school — such as through harassment or bullying — can file a complaint through the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights or the Uniform Complaint Procedure through their local district, De La Rosa said.
She also encouraged parents who are concerned about detention or deportation to file affidavits to instruct school or health officials about who may make decisions about a student. This can be especially crucial for disabled students who have an individualized education program.
“Families really need reassurance from their district leaders and their elected leaders,” said De La Rosa. “If that doesn’t happen, they have a right to file a complaint and hold folks accountable.”
A San Jose Unified teacher attends a rally Oct. 9 to promote candidates and a school bond measure that includes funding for staff housing.
Credit: Photo courtesy of California Teachers Union
This past November, hundreds of California school districts pursued local bond dollars to fix or update campuses across their communities.
Voters passed 205 of 267 proposed local construction bonds on the Nov. 5 ballot, including 14 of 15 for community colleges. Along with the largest number of bonds, the 77% passage rate was just shy of the historic approval rate of 79% since 2000, said Michael Coleman, founder of CaliforniaCityFinance.com, who compiled the voting results.
Voters in major urban areas were the most receptive to bond proposals, including Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD), whose $9 billion bond was by far the biggest on the ballot; $1.15 billion in San Jose Unified, which included money to underwrite staff housing; and $790 million in San Francisco Unified. San Diego Community College District’s $3.5 billion bond proposal was the largest community college measure.
The bond in Earlimart Elementary in Tulare County passed with the state’s highest approval of 81.6%. But in the if-only-we-had-knocked-on-more-doors category, bonds in Kingsburg Union High School District, spanning three Central Valley counties, and Elverta Joint Elementary District in Sacramento County, lost by only three votes, and in Weed Union School District, in Siskiyou County, by four votes.
Across the Central San Joaquin Valley, stretching from San Joaquin and Calaveras counties to Kern County, more than 40 measures were approved.
Enrollment is growing in some parts of the region, so voters decided on multimillion dollar measures to meet the demand, such as Clovis Unified’s $400 million bond and Sanger Unified’s $175 million measure. In both districts, 57.6% of voters said yes to meet the needs of their growing communities.
“We have emphasized that this bond measure is critical to keeping our schools in the great shape they are in today and to finishing the much-needed Clovis South High School,” Clovis Unified Superintendent Corrine Folmer said when voting results showed that the district’s bond measure had secured a win.
Clovis and Sanger Unified listed finishing construction at their high schools as priorities. Estimating its student population doubling in the next 10 to 20 years, Sanger Unified is also looking to build a new elementary school to alleviate overcrowding.
Other school communities in the Central Valley and up and down the state approved bond money to address the deteriorating condition of aging facilities. For instance, in Fresno Unified, 64.5% of voters said yes to a $500 million bond — the largest in district history.
In the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, all districts but one, Vacaville Unified, passed bond measures. In Los Angeles County, only Saugus Union School District’s bond failed. In Orange County, all transitional kindergarten to grade 12 school district bond measures passed, but voters nixed Rancho Santiago Community College District’s bond.
However, voters in many predominantly rural and low-property-wealth districts, from Humboldt County in the north to Imperial County in the south, voted down bonds that would have raised taxes. This included eight small districts in San Diego County and Del Norte Unified in Del Norte County. In October, EdSource highlighted Del Norte’s struggle with mold-infested, leaky portables and hazardous playgrounds in a roundtable on Proposition 2, a statewide school construction bond that voters passed.
“Our one-district county is strained by a lack of economy, and the community is struggling with high tax rates. This wasn’t a lack of desire for our youth, but one based on meeting basic needs for household necessities,” said Brie Fraley, a parent of four boys and active bond supporter. “The structure of bonds in California doesn’t help the neediest communities.”
Nearly all parcel taxes pass
Along with construction bonds, 26 school districts placed annual parcel taxes on the ballot, and 24 passed. Parcel taxes are also property taxes, but they must be a uniform amount per property in a district — whether it’s assessed for a run-down home or a five-star hotel. Although it requires a two-thirds majority vote for approval, 92% of the parcel taxes passed in November; 17 of those renewed existing taxes.
Particularly popular in the Bay Area and coastal Los Angeles County, they ranged from $647 per parcel in Lakeside Union School District, a small rural district lying in both Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, and $369 per parcel in Woodside Elementary, near Palo Alto, to $59 per parcel in both Sunnyvale School District and Ventura Unified.
Fremont High School students in Oakland Unified use restorative justice circles to welcome newcomers, get to know each other and build bridges between different cliques and ethnic groups.
Credit: Tatiana Chaterji / Oakland Unified
Top Takeaways
Trump executive order challenges the concept that race-neutral policies can be discriminatory.
Administration said focus on equity in discipline has harmed student safety, while advocates say it’s an excuse to roll back civil rights protections.
Experts say executive order threatening to withhold funding from schools doesn’t have much bearing on California schools — for now.
The Trump administration has taken aim at a key assumption of federal civil rights enforcers and California’s school discipline strategy: that large racial disparities are a red flag for discrimination.
Trump’s executive order, released Wednesday, attacks the concept of disparate impact — the idea that a policy that may seem neutral actually harms a racial or ethnic group. The order calls this approach to discipline, championed by both the Biden and Obama administrations, a “risk to children’s safety and well-being in the classroom.”
“Their policies placed racial equity quotas over student safety — encouraging schools to turn a blind eye to poor or violent behavior in the name of inclusion,” U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.
The previous Trump administration rescinded Obama-era guidance from the Department of Education, which warned it would initiate investigations based on reports of racial disparities in discipline.
The executive order takes this a step further by threatening state agencies and districts that fail to comply with the Trump administration’s “colorblind” interpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which protects against racial discrimination.
The introduction of the California School Dashboard, the state’s school accountability website, raised public awareness of suspension rates and other indicators of school performance. The dashboard designates the performance of every district and every school as well as their student groups — including racial groups — in one of five colors. No statewide student group’s suspension rate was red, designating the worst performance, but 674 schools — 7% of 9,671 schools — had that designation. They may have been designated for state assistance to determine the cause of high suspension rates. They would also have to commit to lowering suspensions as part of their district’s annual accountability plan.
Suspensions in California have dropped dramatically over the last decade, but disparities remain: 8.6% of Black students were suspended in 2023-24, compared with 2.7% of white students.
California has also taken action and banned schools from suspending students solely for “defiance.” Many advocates claimed it was a “catch-all” justification to punish students, particularly students of color, for smaller infractions, like refusing to take their hat off. The state banned the practice for K-3 students in 2013, expanded it to K-8 in 2019 and, this school year, expanded it to high school students.
Los Angeles Unified School District pioneered this policy to reduce suspensions. In 2013, its school board passed the School Climate Bill of Rights. A district spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource that the district follows state law and district policy regarding student discipline.
“Race is not a consideration in the application of student discipline policies at the district,” the statement said.
Carolyn Gorman, an analyst with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, says California is at risk of losing funding for schools with its policies on willful defiance that reference disparate impact.
But other experts disagree.
Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said the executive order is no surprise. “I expected them to write about it, but it’s so vague, it’s important to wait for the guidance to see, really, what they are trying to say.”
“It’s one of those threats that I would advise districts to ignore,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney at Public Advocates.
Affeldt points to recent court rulings that blocked Trump from enforcing an executive order he signed in January that promised to withhold funds from schools that have diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
It is not illegal to simply have a racial disparity in discipline statistics, Affeldt notes. Instead, disparities serve as a red flag that triggers an investigation to examine whether certain policies or practices are discriminatory and violate civil rights.
Daniel Losen, a civil rights attorney, education researcher and former director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, called the executive order “fear-mongering — making up unproven harms to discourage folks from considering the possibility that maybe their school policies are inequitable.”
“They are hoping that people think that looking at racial differences is unlawful, even though the law requires that we address disparate impacts” of education policies, he said. “And those regulations, which have been in effect since the ’60s, have not been rescinded.”
Those sharp disparities, he wrote, “also raise the question of how we can close the achievement gap if we do not close the discipline gap.”
Sixth grade teacher Thomas Courtney said he is concerned about the message that an order from the country’s highest office sends to teachers about addressing racism. He worries that it may reinforce a perception among a largely white workforce of teachers that students of color are to blame for the rise of misbehavior in classrooms.
“The scapegoat is brown and Black children and the fact that they’ve been getting away with murder in your classroom — that’s how this is going to be interpreted,” said Courtney, who teaches humanities and English at Millennial Tech Middle School in San Diego.
He worries some teachers will read the order and say, “I can finally write suspensions on all those Black kids causing all these problems in my class.”
Looking at discipline through the lens of disparate impact tends to highlight one glaring fact: Black students — boys in particular — are far more likely to be disciplined.
“It’s historically egregious that it is Black males in particular who get referred much more often, suspended much more often, expelled much more often,” Affeldt said.
Order is an ‘opening salvo’
This executive order may have little immediate legal effect, but experts expect to see much more from the administration on the topic of discipline.
“If they say, do not treat kids differently based on race, that should be fine. But they could go further to say that the Office of Civil Rights can investigate only individual circumstances, and cannot assume a disparate impact based on suspension data,” said Petrilli, of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
“They could go looking for principals who would say they did not discipline students because of mandates to reduce the number of suspensions,” he said.
Or they could find teachers who say that restorative justice in lieu of suspensions, without staff training and administrative support, doesn’t work. As Brian Foster, a retired California teacher, wrote in a comment to EdSource, “When there are no real consequences to bad behavior, it spreads. Behavior is excused and pushed right back into the classroom unresolved, degrading the real learning of all other students.”
Courtney, who wrote a commentary for EdSource on the topic, worries that this executive order could represent an “opening salvo” in an effort to turn the practice of restorative justice into a politically toxic concept, as critical race theory was. Restorative justice focuses less on punishment and more on strengthening a school’s culture through righting wrongs, solving disputes and building relationships.
Affeldt also expects to see more from the administration on the topic of disparate impact — both inside and outside of schools. He says conservatives have been pushing for a case that would outlaw disparate impact theory. He calls it a “moonshot” for the movement to get a case that would invalidate California’s take on racial discrimination.
“That’s a real stretch,” Affeldt said, “but that’s their game plan, and they’re trying to tee it up.”
EdSource reporter Mallika Seshadri contributed to this story.
California state officials and leaders of county offices of education and school districts quickly rebuked the Trump administration’s new guidance allowing immigration enforcement near or in schools.
“Schools must be safe spaces, not sites of fear,” said Alex Traverso, director of communications of the State Board of Education. “Every child deserves to learn without intimidation, and California will do all we can to protect our students.”
The directive issued Tuesday by Department of Homeland Security acting Secretary Benjamine Huffman reverses guidance that dates back to 2011, restricting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agencies from detaining immigrants near locations like schools, child care centers, playgrounds, hospitals and churches.
“This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens — including murderers and rapists — who have illegally come into our country. Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Tuesday.
Under California law, school officials are not required to allow immigration agents to enter schools without a judicial warrant, according to recent guidance issued by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“It is disappointing, but unfortunately unsurprising that President Trump, in his first days in office, is focusing his time and energy on making his inhumane and irresponsible mass deportation agenda a reality. My team is actively reviewing his executive orders, and we stand ready to defend the rights of Californians if we find that the President has in any way violated the law — starting with our lawsuit, filed today, challenging the President’s unconstitutional executive order on birthright citizenship,” Bonta said.
The Association of California School Administrators issued a statement saying they are “troubled and deeply disappointed” in the Trump administration’s order allowing immigration enforcement near schools.
“This is an abuse of power and goes against the constitutional right of every child to have a public education,” the statement reads. “Schools are meant to be safe spaces where children can learn and grow without fear. … We know from past experience that this decision will result in some students not attending school, families disengaging, academics being disrupted, and severe impacts on social-emotional well-being.”
In response to requests for support from school districts and county offices of education, the California Department of Education sent a letter Tuesday to all county and school district superintendents and charter school administrators with resources for immigrant students and families and reminders about their rights.
“Our schools must be a safe place for children to learn and educators to teach. In line with federal and state law, California’s schools can take actions to ensure that all students have access to school campuses and educational opportunities without fear of deportation,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said.
“In light of the new administration’s action today to overturn the sensitive locations policy, I want to reassure our education community that the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) remains steadfastly committed to ensuring that every student, regardless of their immigration status, has access to a safe, secure and nurturing learning environment,” said Debra Duardo, superintendent of schools for Los Angeles County, in a statement.
“The change to the policy does not overrule the student’s constitutional right to an education. It also does not overrule state constitutional protections,” Duardo continued. “It is important to reinforce that all students possess the right to a public education, independent of their immigration status. Our schools are mandated to ensure that no student is denied enrollment or faced with barriers to their educational opportunities based on their or their family’s immigration status.”
Many school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified, San Diego Unified and San Francisco Unified have reaffirmed “sanctuary resolutions” or sent letters to families in recent weeks, explaining their rights and sharing legal resources. Seventeen Santa Clara County superintendents and school board members signed a letter earlier this month, saying schools will continue to support immigrant students and families and reminding the public of a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, which found that all children present in the United States have a right to a public education, regardless of their immigration status or their parents’ immigration status.
A spokesperson for Los Angeles Unified School District said the district has begun training all staff in how to respond if federal immigration officers show up at schools and will be distributing cards to students explaining their rights if approached by immigration agents.
“Los Angeles Unified School District is compelled by legal, professional, and moral obligations to protect rights of its students and employees, including privacy rights under FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), and state and federal constitutional rights, which include rights of all students to a free and public education,” a district spokesperson wrote in an email. “School officials do not collect or share information about the immigration status of students and their families. Since 2017, LAUSD has had a policy to not voluntarily cooperate with immigration enforcement actions by federal agencies.”
Fresno Unified School District is holding a series of workshops for families about immigrant rights. District spokesperson Diana Diaz wrote, “We want to urge our families who are concerned about possible detainment or deportation to please make a family preparedness plan NOW. This includes updating your child’s emergency card with their school so they can be released to another trusted adult if parents are unable.”
Teachers’ unions also rejected the Trump administration’s change.
“As educators and union members, we are committed to protecting our students — every single student, regardless of their immigration status,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, which represents 310,000 teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, librarians and other education staff across the state. “We have a professional and moral responsibility to keep our students safe if ICE comes to our communities. We will always come together in our union to ensure every public school is a safe space and to uphold the constitutionally protected right of all students to access a public education.”
Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers, the state’s second-largest teachers union, said in a statement, “Trump’s first day in office showed us that he is exactly who he told us he would be. His first actions as president direct hate and aim to stoke fear in the hearts of immigrant families and our LGBTQIA+ community. We can’t expect students to learn when they fear being separated from their parents, being bullied for being LGBTQIA+, or being treated differently based on the language they speak or the color of their skin.
“While we still hope to see Congress and our courts block these blatantly unconstitutional actions,” Freitas continued, “we won’t wait for them to act. Educators and school staff stand ready to fight back against every single action that stands to harm our members, our students, and our communities.”
EdSource reporter Diana Lambert contributed to this article.
Paradise Elementary in Butte County was one of nearly 19,000 structures destroyed in the November 2018 Camp fire.
Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource
Diann Kitamura was superintendent of Santa Rosa City Schools in 2017 when the Tubbs fire became the most destructive fire in state history, burning through nearly 37,000 acres and destroying two school structures, plus the homes of about 800 students and 100 staff.
That record was broken the following year, when the Camp fire tore through Butte County, including the town of Paradise, where eight of nine school structures were damaged or destroyed; more than 50,000 people were displaced, and 85 people were killed. Meagan Meloy heads the homeless and foster youth services department at the Butte County Office of Education, which stepped in to support the thousands of students who were suddenly homeless from one day to the next.
Now, more than seven years for Kitamura and six years for Meloy after leading their Northern California school districts through the fire recovery efforts, they discuss lessons they learned and offer tips to the districts dealing with the aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County on how they could ease the suffering of their communities.
At the time of the Tubbs fire, there had been no recent fires impacting schools on that scale, and Kitamura had no model to guide her and her team. She now extends support to other districts going through their own recovery process.
Both Kitamura and Meloy say they believe their experiences can help school leaders across Los Angeles County as they deal with the widespread devastation of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
Former State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, center, and former Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura, right, at the Hidden Valley Satellite school, Santa Rosa, after the school was destroyed in the Tubbs fire in 2017.Credit: Diann Kitamura
Kitamura said it’s important to understand that the impact of fires goes beyond the people whose homes burned down: “Even if their school didn’t burn, their home might have burned; even if their home might not have burned, their school had burned.”
She added that despite the complex tasks involved, leaders should stay focused on what most matters. “It was really my own common sense and my deep, deep, deep care and love for my students, my staff and my families that guided the decisions every step of the way of how I was going to operate,” Kitamura said.
To ensure the physical and emotional well-being of their school communities, Kitamura said, leaders must think of a wide range of tasks, including making sure the business department is creating budget codes specific to disaster-related expenses, determining what instructional materials were destroyed and need replacing, identifying what resources the Federal Emergency Management Agency can offer, beefing up air quality monitoring across the areas that burned, figuring out if the insurance policies are adequate, and more.
“It’s going to be a long process, and it’ll come in waves,” said Meloy of fire recovery efforts in Butte County.
‘Create some kind of normality for students as soon as possible’
Meloy said the immediate need after a fire is to ensure the safety of all students and staff, and she highlighted the importance of finding a place and time for the greater school community to gather, given the impact of such a crisis.
“It maybe can’t happen immediately, but as soon as possible, when it’s safe and feasible, provide opportunities for the school community to just come together, support one another socially, emotionally,” she said. “Create some kind of normality for students as soon as possible.”
Meagan Meloy working at the Local Assistance Center after the Park fire in Butte County during the summer of 2024.Credit: Meagan Meloy
Use systems that are already in place to help as many families as possible. For instance, students whose families lose their homes to fires are likely to qualify for resources available to students experiencing homelessness. That’s because homelessness among children and youth is defined broadly under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which mandates that every school district, county office of education and charter school hire a local liaison to ensure that homeless youth are identified and education services are coordinated to increase these students’ chances of succeeding academically.
This federal law defines homeless students, in part, as “children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; or are abandoned in hospitals.”
Districts typically already have systems in place for this student group to ensure students have stability across three basic needs: shelter, food, and gas — the same needs that Kitamura noted are most urgent for students displaced by fires.
But Meloy, who has worked with the county education office for 21 years, offers a warning about the language used when communicating with families about their children’s education rights while they search for stable, permanent housing.
“A lot of the families that lost their homes in the Camp fire had never experienced homelessness before and weren’t comfortable with self-identifying. (Consider) using terms like ‘displaced,’ ‘temporary,’ ‘not stable’ rather than that label of homeless or homelessness that can be kind of off-putting to people. They may not want to even think of themselves as fitting under that category,” Meloy said.
While students displaced by fires may be eligible for student homelessness resources, schools and districts are often limited in the amount of funding available for this student group and in how funding can be used.
For example, homeless liaisons cannot typically purchase gas gift cards to hand out to families who need help transporting their children to school.
To meet some of the needs that education funding typically cannot be applied to, Meloy and her team relied on funding from a local foundation, North Valley Community Foundation, which received donations from a wide range of sources.
“Without that, I don’t know how we would have met the need for transportation,” she said.
Schools in Los Angeles County can also tap into the network of partners that liaisons and other school staff often work with. Both Meloy and Kitamura noted that their schools faced difficulties managing an influx of physical donations after fires.
Meloy said while some donations such as school supplies were helpful for her team of liaisons, they were not “really best equipped to” sort through donations like food and clothing.
It’s best for liaisons to work with “partner agencies who already have storage and systems for disbursing other items” so that they and other school staff can “stay focused on the school stuff,” she said.
It can also be helpful to communicate to the public that cash donations are most helpful in recovery efforts.
“I know that sounds maybe not appropriate … but in Santa Rosa City Schools, I had to haul out nine truck and trailer loads of stuff, and people who are displaced, they have no place to hold stuff,” said Kitamura, who is now the deputy superintendent of equitable education services with the Sonoma County Office of Education. “What they need is food, shelter and gasoline in most cases right now.”
Meloy also underscored what she called “secondary homelessness.”
For example, a family with sufficient home insurance might be able to purchase another home that had previously been a rental, which might then cause a group of renters to go on the search for housing.
“It’s families who maybe were not directly impacted in the sense that they lost their home in the fire, but it ripples out into the housing market and pushes people out,” Meloy said.
Addressing both physical and emotional needs
With the majority of Paradise Unified schools destroyed, enrolling students at neighboring schools became a primary task for Meloy and her staff.
To streamline the process, Meloy’s department asked every school district to identify an enrollment point of contact for families displaced by the Camp fire. Families were asked to text or call 211, the state’s local community services number, to be connected with a district point of contact, who worked with each family to help them decide where to enroll their children.
As student enrollment was handled in Butte County, Meloy noticed that the trauma that students had experienced became clearer and that the wide range of support, from mental health counseling to transportation to tutoring, might become difficult to track over time.
Meloy’s recommendation to L.A. County education staff is to create a filter in the district’s student information system that can be applied to students who were affected by fires. With this filter, school staff can have “some kind of a system where those students can then be flagged for extra support” over several years.
That filter can become particularly helpful when students’ trauma around fires is triggered by conditions similar to those that can spark fires. For example, Kitamura’s students dealt with power shut-offs during strong winds, poor air quality, and smoke traveling from other regional fires for years following the Tubbs fire. “The trauma from the fires is exacerbated” each time, said Kitamura.
Meloy said staff should be “prepared to see behaviors that would be consistent with someone who has experienced trauma.” In her case, she saw some students begin acting out in class by fighting or throwing things, while some other students became more shut down, dissociating while in class, and being extra quiet.
“Understand that it’s a trauma response,” said Meloy. “If it’s a windy day, it’s probably going to be, years from now, a tough day at school.”
To support Los Angeles County schools with mental health counseling, Kitamura is currently recruiting a group of counselors from across several Northern California schools who are prepared to offer counseling for students.
“I only learned after experience with the fire to do these kinds of things for other districts,” said Kitamura, who is in contact with the LA County Office of Education regarding this effort.
Meloy offered a reminder to not underestimate the trauma that staff membrs have also experienced: “In a classroom with students who have experienced this trauma, when you’ve experienced it yourself, it can be really overwhelming, so don’t forget about the staff and the support they need.”
Kitamura also recommended that the LA education office “beef up” on air quality monitoring; “make sure they are ready to go; make sure they are accurate, and make sure that the places you’re measuring are close to the places where the most burn happens.”
Lessons in preparation
Kitamura and Meloy also noted that once the emergency was over, they moved to planning for future fires.
Kitamura’s district, for example, established a redundant server in a separate location so officials could still communicate with their school community in the event that their primary servers went down or were burned.
Meloy noted the lack of dedicated, ongoing funding for the work that homeless liaisons do — and how it undermines all planning. Both Kitamura and Meloy called on legislators to provide funding support for students displaced by fires, given that the issue now surges regularly across the state.
“It is no longer, sadly, an isolated, once-in-a-decade event. It is continuing to happen. I had been thinking about, from the homeless liaison perspective, wildfires being a rural issue,” Meloy said. “But it’s really everywhere. I would love to see some dedicated funding for that.”
As Kitamura put it: “There will be more wildfires. There will be more crises. So … we better plan accordingly.”
Riverside County teachers collaboratively learn with the Riverside County Office of Education math team around increasing student thinking.
Credit: Riverside County Office of Education
When I became president of the California State Board of Education in 1975 for the first of two stints in this role (1975–82), three different offices created state curriculum frameworks, instructional materials and assessments, without much coordination or integration. In the five decades since, I’ve seen the state make significant progress in aligning K–12 policies — including those that govern finance, English learners, career/technical education, teacher preparation, accountability, postsecondary preparation, and more — to form a system where the various parts do work together.
But alignment alone is not enough for successful student learning and measurable academic growth. For example, Common Core math adopted by the State Board of Education in 2013 failed at the essential last mile of implementation by not providing the capacity for teachers and principals to teach the new math framework. As I reflected on my eight-year presidency of the board ending in 2019, I concluded we ended up with some islands of deeply rooted and changed math teaching, but mostly deserts where math teaching never changed significantly.
In 2014, the board approved the English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework and in 2023 a new math framework. Now, state educators must focus on the next step. To successfully implement both academic frameworks, we will need effective, aligned, sustained professional development that can reach and strengthen the entire teacher workforce.
Scaling up means ensuring that every teacher in California has, on an ongoing basis:
Adequate time to prepare lessons
Opportunities to continually learn in math topic areas as well as best practices in teaching
Opportunities to collaborate with other teachers while on the job
Access to models of effective teaching
Access to coaching and expert support
Time for reflection, feedback and revision
This kind of professional development has been implemented on a large scale in Ontario, Canada; Singapore; South Korea; and Japan.
To better serve our students and realize the goals of our math and English language arts standards requires substantial shifts on the part of teachers and instructional leaders. The state must make a sustained investment to make this happen. The new 2023 math framework, for example, calls for students to explain and justify their reasoning, grasp concepts, and make connections between different solutions in a much deeper manner than was the case in the No Child Left Behind era. Teachers’ instruction will likely improve only if they have developed relatively sophisticated visions of high-quality mathematics teaching. Teachers need rapid feedback mechanisms and the ability to continually measure how well each student is learning.
These are no small tasks to reach 9,700 principals and 319, 000 teachers in California. The local district is the first entity one would typically look toward in coordinating efforts to build teachers’ capacity to implement standards-aligned instruction. But most districts in California are quite small. Larger districts lack the necessary staff development capacity in-house, especially since staff support must be thorough and sustained.
Each state needs to devise its own strategies for how to best build and sustain the infrastructure for a dramatic upgrade in local instructional capacity. California has set policies and oversees the preparation of new teachers primarily through the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC). The state needs to expand the scope of the CTC, Department of Education, and California Collaborative for Educational Excellence to include current teachers starting with early career teachers, and scaling up to more experienced teachers. We can also learn from successful approaches that have taken hold in other states.
The Newsom administration has invested in service scholarships and residencies to recruit and retain better-prepared teachers and, while these show considerable promise, they were funded with one-time money and have thus far not increased in scale to provide a large enough supply of new teachers. Districts and county offices also need support to train and coach in-service teachers. The state has recently directed funds to a county office and the state Mathematics Project to train coaches for districts so that they can establish ongoing embedded professional learning for their teachers. This, too, is a promising start, but unlikely to be sufficient to meet the enormous statewide demand for assistance.
Because human and organizational capacity building at the local level is expensive and difficult to carry out, technology and digital platforms must be designed to lower the costs. For example, students could be taught using individualized technology packages during a part of a school day, while teachers are released to attend a few hours of professional development that would otherwise necessitate the hiring of substitute teachers. Online video coaching for math teaching has already proved effective in districts such as Lost Hills in Kern County, which has shown double-digit gains in math proficiency levels for their students following such coaching,
Some critics call for more state control of what happens after teachers close the classroom door. But there is no obvious path or mechanism to exert enough state control in hundreds of thousands of classrooms for top-down implementation of the series of complex instructional shifts called for by the curriculum frameworks. Advocating for the state to take an expanded interest in ensuring and coordinating local teacher training is not equivalent to explicit state control over how a teacher goes about delivering that instruction. The latter would likely achieve minimal local buy-in and could undermine the flexibility teachers need to meet the needs of different students with distinctive strategies. Instead, schools and teachers must internalize the new standards as their own and not perceive them as an intrusion. History and current research clearly demonstrate that standards-based implementation is unlikely to be advanced by additional regulations, mandates and sanctions from the top down. Teacher support for complex instruction instead must be constructed from the bottom up. California can achieve new policies that drive classroom improvement by supporting internal and revamped external school accountability, encouraging collaborative teamwork and funding sustained, ongoing professional learning.
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.
Vicky Martinez feels cheated that her children haven’t had much exposure to the arts at their Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) schools despite state funding through Proposition 28, the state’s landmark arts education mandate. She believes access to the arts could help them cope with their anxiety and ADHD, conditions that have spiked post-pandemic.
“I had more arts than my kids do,” said Martinez, mother of three LAUSD students in the Highland Park area. “That’s not right. It makes me angry that our kids are being denied the arts when there’s been so much research about how it keeps kids engaged in school. We should be making progress, and instead we are lagging behind.”
Many parents share her outrage. The families of eight students, including Martinez’s three sons, 12, 15 and 17, and the author of the arts proposition have joined forces to file a lawsuit against Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school district, and its superintendent, Alberto Carvalho. The lawsuit, filed Monday afternoon in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges misuse of funds as well as misleading the public in its rollout of Proposition 28 that sets aside roughly $1 billion a year statewide for arts education.
“LAUSD has willfully and knowingly violated the law,” said former LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, who authored the proposition, “and as a consequence, is harming hundreds of thousands of students by depriving them of the arts education that they are entitled to under law.”
The suit also claims that LAUSD’s mismanagement of Proposition 28 funds, particularly at low-income schools , has disproportionately impacted Black and Latino students, deepening inequity. The thrust of the law, says Beutner, is that all students, not just privileged ones, deserve access to the arts.
“We have not received notice, nor have we been served with any lawsuit regarding Prop 28,” an LAUSD spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource. “That said, we have sought to clarify any misunderstandings regarding Prop 28, and we continue to follow implementation guidance as provided by the state of California to ensure that we are fully complying with the requirements of Prop 28.”
The suit is the latest push for accountability on arts education funding. Beutner and a group of major unions, including UTLA, the local teachers union, SEIU Local 99 and Teamsters 572, wrote a letter to education officials last year demanding the state hold districts responsible for their spending. LAUSD was allotted roughly $77 million for arts education in the 2023-24 school year.
The unions are helping pay for the lawsuit, which comes at a time when the district is already facing mounting scrutiny over its handling of three large cyberattacks exposing sensitive student information and the appropriateness of its response to recent catastrophic fires.
“LAUSD has done exactly what the law prohibits,” the suit argues; “it has eliminated existing funding sources for existing art teachers, and replaced those funds with Proposition 28 funds, thereby violating the requirement that the funds supplement rather than supplant existing sources. Moreover, LAUSD has made no meaningful effort to recruit or hire new art teachers as required by the law.”
Given extensive research that arts education has key academic and social benefits, the law was designed to hire new arts teachers, and most schools are required to spend at least 80% of funds on staff. The plaintiffs allege that the district has been willfully misinterpreting the law and misleading families and teachers.
“Bottom line, there’s been rampant misuse of the funds,” Beutner said, “and the guidance and oversight has been insufficient.”
In an Aug. 15, 2024, memo to the board, Carvalho acknowledged spending new Proposition 28 money to pay for existing staff, which is not allowed.
“Given historic staffing challenges in filling Arts educator roles and because 80% of Prop 28 must be spent on labor, the District prioritized the use of Prop 28 funds to cover existing staff as well as hire new staff.”
The district argues that the law only requires an increase in arts funding for the district as a whole.
“The law requires that non-Prop. 28 arts expenditures at the district level are higher than previous years and does not factor in differences in spending at a school site level,” according to an LAUSD fact sheet.
Beutner has long objected to this interpretation. The law requires that every school to increase its arts offerings, he maintains, so that all students have access.
Cecily Myart-Cruz, the president of UTLA, the union representing about 35,000 LAUSD educators, claims the district has not been honest about its use of Prop 28 funds.
“The superintendent pulling out a bulletin saying, ‘Oops, my bad,’ doesn’t work,” Myart-Cruz said. “If you have arts in school, you will change lives. … And so, I’m exasperated by the district’s lack of response and responsibility to providing arts educators for our babies and the communities in which we serve.”
To be sure, similar issues have arisen across the state. Facing budget woes, some schools have used creative bookkeeping maneuvers to pay existing staff with the new funds, instead of actually adding arts teachers, experts warn.
“The temptation to redirect these funds can arise when schools face financial pressures in other areas,” said Allison Gamlen, visual and performing arts coordinator for the San Mateo County Office of Education. “This is a clear violation of the intent of the proposition and, unfortunately, not an isolated incident.”
However, many other districts across the state, from Pacifica to Long Beach, have successfully used the proposition funds to build robust new arts ed programs, experts note.
That disparity explains why many parents and teachers have been calling for greater transparency in how schools use the arts money, which landed in schools in February 2024.
“We want real support for the hiring of folks who can provide arts instruction, and I think that this is the righteous thing. This is the legal thing,” said Nicolle Fefferman, a veteran LAUSD teacher, who also co-founded the Parents Supporting Teachers advocacy group. “Who does this money serve sitting in a district bank account?”
Families want a seat at the table.
“At many schools, there was no conversation about Prop. 28,” said Martinez. “Parents had no input.”
Make no mistake, the impact of any misspent funds on families can be severe. Martinez said that her 15-year-old son, going by the alias Julian in the suit, suffers from severe anxiety and feelings of despair, conditions she believes could be alleviated by the therapeutic influence of the arts. When her oldest son got his hands on a guitar, she says, he started to thrive.
“Arts improves learning, especially for low-income students,” said Martinez. “We are hurting them by not providing it.”
Another plaintiff’s mother, going by the alias April T., says her son, going by Lucas, 9, only gets one hour a week of art class, the same as before Proposition 28. She says she pays for private music classes because none are available through LAUSD.
Accountability is among the most critical issues facing the Proposition 28 rollout, according to a recent report by Arts for LA, a key arts advocacy organization.
“Teachers, parents and students should know whether, how, and when Prop 28 decisions are being made,” said Lindsey Kunisaki, who wrote the report. “They’ll be the ones to directly experience the impact of those Prop 28 decisions in practice, and moreover, they’re the experts in the realities of their own classrooms and communities.”
Carvalho’s August memo also acknowledges that the district did not “consult with school communities specifically about Prop 28 Arts funding,” but will encourage principals to solicit feedback going forward.
Many experts recommend an independent oversight committee of administrators, teachers, families and community partnersto make sure that arts education funds are properly spent. Some may assume that county offices of education provide oversight, but that is not within their purview, experts say.
Arts education advocates have long urged the California Department of Education (CDE), which is administering the new funding, to step up enforcement of the rules. Many have complained that the department has not provided enough guidance to schools already struggling with myriad post-pandemic issues.
“The structure of the proposition did not include any provision to ensure adequate CDE staffing to address questions and the overall confusion that has been a common thread,” said Allison Cagley, executive director of Friends of Sacramento Arts, an advocacy group. “There was no one or two people at CDE that could adequately address the questions.”
CDE officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Amid the controversy, many parents are anxious to see Proposition 28 funds put to good use to spark engagement at a time of chronic absenteeism and widespread disaffection at schools.
“This is an investment in our kids,” Martinez said. “Our kids deserve this. We all agreed on this. The state of California voted for this. So why aren’t we doing it?”
Tough decisions lie ahead for schools across California as the federal government cracks down on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The latest measure came in the form of a letter issued Friday by the U.S. Department of Education, giving K-12 schools across the country two options: to eliminate programs focused on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within two weeks, or face unspecified cuts in federal funding.
“I fully anticipate that it will have a chilling effect on school districts, but also colleges and universities,” said Royel Johnson, who leads the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center’s National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates.
The Department of Education’s letter isn’t law — nor is it legal, Johnson said.
However, many advocates and community members say they are concerned that more and more districts will gut their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives out of fear and deprive students from marginalized backgrounds of the support they need to succeed in the classroom and beyond.
“We often think about California as being protected from this larger right wing movement,” Johnson said. “But as we saw with changing patterns and demographic votes in the presidential election, I think there are many people in California who are wrestling with this conservative movement and who are afraid of it — and who are proactively or preemptively making decisions.”
‘An underlying disconnect’: The letter
The Department of Education’s letter opens with the words “Dear Colleague,” but the ensuing message takes on a different tone.
“Rather than engaging in that work of acknowledging and affirming educators, what the Trump administration has done thus far is to express hostility and disdain,” said John Rogers, a professor at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies and associate dean for research/public scholarship.
The letter specifically claims that white and Asian American students, including those from lower income backgrounds, have been discriminated against and that “educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism.’”
Increasing schools’ scores on the Nation’s Report Card has been a justification for some of the administration’s changes, according to Rogers.
But instead of boosting student performance, Rogers maintains that the directive could “throw K-12 schools into further tumult” due to the high fiscal costs of culture wars. Just last year, conflicts surrounding race and LGBTQ+ issues cost schools more than $3 billion nationwide.
“They’re pushing superintendents and those underneath the level of the superintendency to spend time seeking out legal counsel, talking with other educational leaders, trying to figure out, ‘What do we do? What are we doing now that might be considered problematic? Do we need to take action, etc?’” Rogers said.
“All of that time and energy, and to the extent that they’re seeking out costly legal counsel, that has real costs associated with it. It’s pushing people away from the important work of improving student learning and supporting student well-being.”
While Rogers maintained that the letter was hostile in tone, he also described it as vague and confusing — a sentiment shared by many.
Rogers said: “If I was a superintendent, I would want to know: ‘Can my principals bring together a group of Asian American students to talk about whether they’ve experienced anti-Asian hate? Could my district invite African American parents to share their oral histories about growing up in my community as part of African American History Month, or, for that matter, can we even celebrate African American History Month?”
Superintendents, he said, “don’t have enough information — yet they’re being given two weeks to either take dramatic action or not, of which they have really no sense of what that would mean.”
‘Uncharted territory’ for California districts
With new, unclear circumstances on the horizon, more questions than answers are percolating through school districts across California.
Nikki Henry, spokesperson for Fresno Unified School District, said Tuesday that the district and its attorneys are reviewing the letter to understand its impact.
That mindset and approach may put Fresno Unified, which received around $238 million in federal funds this school year, in jeopardy of losing such funding under the new administration.
With nearly 93% of its students identifying as members of minority communities, the district has implemented “strong” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, Henry said. Their DEI policy ensures that students have equitable access to the district’s programs and services, that the curriculum reflects and celebrates diversity and that there are sufficient academic, social-emotional and behavioral supports.
Further south, administrators in Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest district, have also expressed support for students of all backgrounds — a move that is lauded by Evelyn Aleman, the organizer of Our Voice/Nuestra Voz, a bilingual Facebook group largely made up of parents and advocates.
“In terms of advocating for and supporting the difference between populations that it serves, (LAUSD])really does try to do that, so … I think we’re going to be OK. I think we have a district that gets us.”
In a statement to EdSource, a Los Angeles Unified spokesperson said the district “adheres to all federal and state law and guidance” — and that if there are discrepancies between the two, they would be resolved through the state.
However, last July, Parents Defending Education, a Virginia-based conservative group, filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights against the Los Angeles Unified School District for its Black Student Achievement Plan.
And some members of LAUSD’s larger community, including United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz, said they fear that this decision could signal how the district might respond to directives from the federal government.
“If I only had to go on that (decision regarding the Black Student Achievement Plan), then I would say I’m concerned,” Myart-Cruz said. “I believe in our students. … I know that UTLA, we’re going to stand right alongside our students and our community. … If we put resources in for our students, then it helps everyone.”
Other districts like Clovis Unified, however, maintain that they will not be impacted, according to spokesperson Kelly Avants.
Based on the way Clovis Unified is interpreting the Education Department’s letter, Avants said affected districts are likely those with hiring practices or scholarships with DEI guidelines or selection criteria based solely on race or gender.
Avants added that all Clovis Unified activities to celebrate different cultures are open to the entire student population.
“We’ve not gone one direction or the other,” Avants said. “We really have tried to be sensitive to our programs being holistic versus centrally focused.”
What’s at stake
Experts and teachers have continually emphasized that diversity, equity and inclusion programs enrich students’ learning and that they also play a critical role in students feeling like they belong.
“DEI provides mechanisms for addressing issues of safety and security for students who sometimes experience physical harm, psychological harm,” Johnson said. “But, if we start removing the very mechanisms that are designed to address these issues, we’re going to see higher reports and students having concerns around their safety at school.”
He added, “If students feel a sense of connectedness and belonging to the school environment, they’re more likely to be retained, they’re more likely to come to school on time and persist toward their goals.”
Several indicators of student success, from student attendance rates to engagement, rise when DEI programs are implemented, he said.
And in the classroom, Aleman from Our Voice/Nuestra Voz, emphasized the importance of learning about the contributions of immigrants from various backgrounds.
“We’re at a stage of global interaction that requires that we understand … the rich history and contributions of immigrants and different populations,” Aleman said. “We are a heterogeneous culture. … and we don’t understand why the administration doesn’t understand that.”
Pushing back
While the Department of Education’s letter focuses on race, civil rights protections — including through diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — support students from various identities based on other factors, including gender, disability and age, according to Amir Whitaker, senior policy counsel of the ACLU of Southern California.
And Johnson said marginalized groups, including those who are LGBTQ+ and first generation, could also be impacted by potential cuts to DEI.
“I hope that school district leaders and leaders of college and universities will not back down from this moment — and lean into the institutional values that have animated their work for years prior to this erroneous sort of guidance that is designed to threat and intimidate,” Johnson said. “If we all roll back and back down at this moment, then our students will suffer.”
Whitaker added that the very policies that the letter cites — like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — were victories that “people fought and died for.”
The Trump administration’s action, he said, is a “a step backwards in this nation’s journey towards equality and justice.”
“If California backs down,” Johnson said, “I wonder also what message that sends to the rest of the country, that this ultra-progressive place is already making concessions and their sort of commitments to do DEI, what that might mean for less progressive places who are figuring out where they fit within this conversation.”
The U.S. Department of Education alarmed school leaders last week by threatening to withhold federal funding from schools and colleges that do not abandon “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs. President Donald Trump has also threatened to withhold federal funding from states or schools that allow transgender students to play sports on teams that align with their gender identity.
It is unclear exactly which federal funding could be targeted to be cut from schools. There are several different educational programs funded by the federal government. Many of these programs have been approved in federal legislation since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and have continued in the current Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
California K-12 schools received about $8 billion in federal funding in 2024-25, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office — about 6% of total K-12 funding. Federal funding may represent a much larger percentage of the budget in some districts, particularly those in rural areas.
Elizabeth Sanders, a spokesperson for the California Department of Education, emphasized that federal education funds “are appropriations made by Congress and would need to be changed by Congress, not by an executive order.”
Below are some of the largest K-12 programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education. All numbers were provided by the California Department of Education for the fiscal year 2024-25, unless otherwise specified.
Students from low-income families (ESSA, Title I, Part A) — $2.4 billion
California school districts and charter schools with large numbers of students from low-income families receive funding from Title I, intended to make sure children from low-income families have the same opportunities as other students to receive a high-quality education. Schools where at least 40% of students are from low-income families can use these funds to improve education for the entire school. Otherwise, schools are expected to use the funds to serve low-income students achieving the lowest scores on state assessments.
Students with disabilities (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) — $1.5 billion
This funding is specifically to help school districts provide special education and services to children with disabilities. Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, children with disabilities are entitled to a free public education in the “least restrictive environment” — meaning as close as possible to the education offered to peers who do not have disabilities.
The state also receives funding for serving infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families and preschoolers with disabilities.
Training, recruiting and retaining teachers and principals (ESSA, Title II) — $232 million
These grants, called Supporting Effective Instruction, can be used for reforming teacher and principal certification programs, supporting new teachers, providing additional training for existing teachers and principals, and reducing class size by hiring more teachers. The goal is to make sure that all students have high-quality principals and teachers in their schools.
English learners and immigrant students (ESSA, Title III, Part A) — $157 million
California schools use this funding to help recent immigrant students and students who speak languages other than English at home to learn to speak, read and write English fluently, to learn other subjects such as math and science, and to meet graduation requirements.
Student support and academic enrichment (ESSA, Title IV) — $152 million
These grants are intended to make sure all students have access to a well-rounded education. Programs can include college and career guidance, music and arts education, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, foreign language, and U.S. history, among other topics. In addition, funding can be used for wellness programs, including prevention of suicide, violence, bullying, drug abuse and child sexual abuse. Finally, funds can be used for improving the use of technology in the classroom, particularly for providing students in rural, remote and underserved areas expanded access to technology.
Before- and after-school programs (ESSA, Title IV, Part B) — $146 million
The 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants are for expanding or starting before- and after-school programs that provide tutoring or academic help in math, science, English language arts and other subjects. These grants are intended particularly to help students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools.
Migratory students (ESSA, Title I, Part C) — $120 million
These funds are used for programs to help students whose parent or guardian is a migratory worker in the agricultural, dairy, lumber, or fishing industries and whose family has moved during the past three years.
Impact Aid (ESSA, Title VII) — $82.2 million, according to the Education Law Center
These programs help fund school districts that have lost property tax revenue because of property owned by the federal government, including Native American lands, and that have large numbers of children living on Native American land, military bases, or federal low-rent housing. The money can be used for school construction and maintenance, in addition to teacher salaries, advanced placement classes, tutoring, and supplies such as computers and textbooks.
Career and technical education (Perkins V) — $77 million
This funding is aimed at programs that help prepare students for careers and vocations, including “pathway programs” in high schools.
State assessments (ESSA, Title I, Part B) — $27 million
This funding is used to develop and administer state assessments, such as the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress and the English Language Proficiency Assessments of California.
Children in juvenile justice system and foster care (ESSA, Title I, Part D) — $17 million
This funding is labeled for “prevention and intervention programs for children and youth who are neglected, delinquent, or at-risk.” It is intended to improve education for children in juvenile detention facilities and other facilities run by the state.
Homeless children (McKinney-Vento Act) — $15 million
This federal funding is specifically to serve children who are experiencing homelessness, as defined by the McKinney-Vento Act, which includes children whose families are sharing housing with others because they lost housing or because of economic hardship. The funds can be spent on a variety of different things, including identifying homeless students, tutoring and instruction, training teachers and staff to understand homeless students’ needs and rights, referring students to health services, and transportation to help students get to school.
Small rural schools (ESSA, Title V, Part B, 1) — $7.9 million, according to the Education Law Center
These federal funds are available to rural school districts that enroll fewer than 600 students or are located in counties with fewer than 10 people per square mile.
School breakfast and lunch (child nutrition programs) — $5.7 million
This funding from the U.S. Department of Education supplements a much bigger amount of funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture ($2.6 billion in 2023, according to the Public Policy Institute of California), to help provide free breakfast and lunch to low-income students during the school year, meals and snacks during after-school programs, and meals for low-income children during the summer.
Low-income rural schools (ESSA, Title V, Part B, 2) — $5 million
These federal funds are available to rural school districts where at least 20% of students are from families with incomes below the poverty line.
Native American students (ESSA, Title VI) — $4.6 million, according to the Education Law Center
This funding goes to districts for programs to help Native American students, for example, tutoring in reading, math or science, after-school programs, Native language classes, programs that increase awareness about going to college or career preparation, or programs to improve attendance and graduation rates.
Competitive grants for teacher training, community schools, desegregation and more
The U.S. Department of Education also has grants for which school districts can apply directly, rather than going through the state Department of Education. These are harder to track, but many school districts in California have received funding from these grants.
For example, in 2023, the department sent out $14 million in grants to help districts desegregate schools, some of which went to Oakland Unified. In 2024, Congress put aside $150 million for grants to help school districts set up full-service community schools, offering wraparound services to students and families.
Other grants have focused on teacher preparation, career pathways and other issues. The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it had already canceled $600 million in grants for teacher training.
California Department of Education staff
According to the California Department of Education, the department receives federal funding for 875 positions, about half of which are fully funded by the federal government.
