Josh Cowen of Michigan State University read the latest GOP tax bill closely. He explains what it contains for schools. It’s a plan to set up tax havens in every state for the wealthiest Americans. It forces vouchers for religious and private schools into every state, even states that don’t want them. It allows every voucher school to determine its own admissions policy.
It enables discrimination. It enriches those who are already rich.
It is a spike in the heart of public schools, which admit everyone and bring people from different backgrounds together.
Cowen is the author of the recently published book about vouchers, called THE PRIVATEERS: HOW BILLIONAIRES CREATED A CULTURE WAR AND SOLD SCHOOL VOUCHERS.
Plumas Unified in northeast California, with an enrollment of about 2,000 students, will be the first district in over a dozen years to seek a state bailout.
California’s system of financial oversight of school districts has mostly worked, having kept all but nine of them from seeking a state bailout loan to avert insolvency.
The key to keeping school districts from financial disaster has been close oversight by county offices of education and monitoring by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team.
Plumas Unified, a small school district in the Sierra Nevada in far northeast California, is on track to become the first district in over a dozen years to join nine others that have had to get a bailout loan from the state to avert bankruptcy.
In the last week of April, its school board voted to request an emergency state loan of up to $20 million, explaining that it has “exhausted all of its sources of alternative liquidity and any external sources of short-term cash.”
The district joins a select group of districts that no one wants to belong to.
A state bailout is accompanied by rigorous state and county oversight, loss of local control, extra expenses in paying off the loan, and other conditions that last for years.
“Manage your finances because you don’t want this,” said James Morris, the administrator appointed to oversee Inglewood Unified in Los Angeles County, which has been in state receivership for 13 years.
Carl Cohn, a leading educator who was superintendent in Long Beach Unified and San Diego Unified, and a former member of the State Board of Education, says getting a state bailout is a fate to be avoided at all costs.
“It’s really important to maintain that sense of an empowered community through locally elected officials,” he said.
From the state’s perspective, “There’s no way the state is itching to get its hands on these districts either,” said Richard Whitmore, the first state-appointed administrator at Compton Unified after it got an emergency bailout loan in 1993.
“It’s bad for public education to have these districts fall into what is essentially bankruptcy,” said Whitmore. “It costs the state a ton of money to intervene and do all this work, which they are not well-prepared to execute, so they have to go into crisis mode when it happens.”
On the face of it, however, it is remarkable that fewer than 10 school districts, out of close to a thousand in California, have had to submit to state receivership in return for getting a bailout.
It suggests that the state’s system of oversight is mostly working as planned.
Districts Placed Under State Receivership
West Contra Costa Unified, 1990* Loan amount: $28.5 million. Low-income students: 63%**
**Low-income refers to the percentage of students qualifying for free and reduced price meals.
***District merged with Washington Unified; low-income figure is for Washington Unified.
That system came into existence in response to West Contra Costa Unified’s insolvency in 1990, when it became the first district to get a bailout from the state.
Assembly Bill 1200 in 1991 decreed that, as a condition of receiving a loan, the state superintendent of public instruction must appoint an administrator to oversee the district. Under 2018 legislation (AB 1840), it is now the county superintendent of schools who appoints the administrator.
The 1991 legislation also established an independent fiscal oversight agency, the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, or FCMAT (universally pronounced “Fickmat” in education circles).
One reason only a small number of districts have had to turn to the state for a bailout has been the effectiveness of FCMAT, and the stability of its leadership. Since its founding, it has had only two CEOs, Joel Montero and Michael Fine, its current leader. Both are highly regarded in education circles.
Another factor is that school districts must submit their budgets to county superintendents for review at least three times during the year, known as the first and second interim budgets, and the final budget, which must be approved by July 1.
“They’re the early warning system,” said Karen Stapf Walters, executive director of California County Superintendents, referring to the school superintendents in all 58 counties. “When they see a district going south, they jump in with body and soul and give a district whatever it needs to get back on track.”
Fine said FCMAT’s role is to steer school boards to the point that they ultimately sit down and do what they need to do when they need to do it.”
But getting out of receivership is an arduous process. Districts have to meet over 150 standards set by FCMAT, in areas such as financial management, pupil achievement, personnel and facilities management, governance and community relations.
Even after it meets those standards, and the administrator leaves, the district is likely to be paying off its loan still. The county superintendent then appoints a trustee with fewer powers than the administrator, but who can still veto financial decisions made by the elected school board until the last loan payment is made.
Many school leaders say the funds and years that districts spent paying off a loan could have supported current education programs. “The children sitting in classrooms in Inglewood today are paying for mistakes made, many of them before they were even born, by folks who are not here any longer,” said Inglewood’s Morris.
In West Contra Costa’s case, it took 21 years to pay off its bailout loan of $28.5 million, plus $19 million in interest and fees.
When the district paid its final installment in 2012, then-board member Madeline Kronenberg called it “Independence Day” for the district. But she regretted that years of loan payments meant “thousands and thousands of children were unable to get what other districts provide.”
And yet, enduring years of state receivership doesn’t necessarily translate into a district’s long-term financial health.
Just the opposite. Of the nine school districts that have been through state receivership — all serving mostly low-income students — at least five are still experiencing severe financial difficulties.
Coachella Valley Unified, which got a bailout loan in 1992, is cutting hundreds of jobs as it tries to close a $6 million shortfall. Inglewood Unified is about to close five schools, including its storied Morningside High School.
In what should be cause for celebration in Vallejo and Oakland, both will pay off their state loans next month and regain full control of their districts for the first time in 20 years.
But both districts still face major financial challenges. Vallejo City Unified, dealing with a budget shortfall of $36 million, is on the verge of closing two schools. Oakland is similarly struggling, with considerations of another insolvency not yet off the table.
West Contra Costa, whose budget just received a “positive certification” from the county office of education, is still operating with a structural deficit and will rely on reserves to get through the next two years.
At times, the underlying conditions that got districts into trouble persist, such as declining enrollments and the absence of strong fiscal leadership by subsequent school boards or superintendents. Too often, the lessons learned from earlier financial meltdowns are forgotten or ignored.
One district that has turned around is Compton Unified, which, under the leadership of Superintendent Darin Brawley, has made significant improvements not only on the academic front but also in achieving financial stability.
Brawley said he only calculates his budgets based on funds actually in district coffers, not on funds it is slated to receive. In addition, he made cuts gradually over the years as conditions warranted, and did not wait until the district was in crisis.
He says district officials are too often “conflict-averse,” and “rather than make the tough choices, and what may be the right decisions to remain fiscally stable, they will oftentimes not make decisions, and then the problem balloons into a much bigger issue.”
Now it’s Plumas Unified’s turn to cede control to the state. In late April, facing an $8 million deficit on its $42 million budget, Plumas Unified’s board called a special meeting to request a state bailout loan.
The district covers 2,600 square miles, a vast area in the Sierra Nevada, providing schooling for about 2,000 students with few other options.
How did it escape the oversight system that has, over the past dozen years, kept every other district but nine from having to turn to the state to bail them out?
“Plumas unfortunately came up on the radar too late for us to help them,” said FCMAT’s Fine. One reason, he said, is because “I don’t think they were being 100% honest about their numbers.”
For example, the district awarded staff a 14% pay increase, without having a viable way to calculate its costs, he said. “Without reliable numbers, it is difficult to know the condition of a district and thus to get in early enough to assist.”
Editor’s note:Richard Whitmore is a member of the EdSource board of directors.
Next Week: Inglewood Unified’s unfinished journey to get out of state receivership
Hundreds of San Diego State students protest in support of Palestinians on April 30, 2024.
Credit: Jazlyn Dieguez / EdSource
California State University and the University of California are welcoming student activists back to campus this fall with revamped protest rules that signal a harder line on encampments, barriers and, under certain circumstances, the wearing of face masks.
Cal State, the nation’s largest public university system, was first to issue its policy Thursday, a bundle of restrictions that govern public assemblies on university campuses. UC President Michael Drake followed Monday with a letter outlining his expectations for campus chancellors to impose restrictions on how students could engage in protests this fall.
The two systems join a wave of colleges that have revisited rules about how and where people can demonstrate on their campuses in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests last spring. Critics say some strengthened restrictions could limit free speech rights.
The Cal State policy bars tent encampments and overnight demonstrations, a signature of the spring’s protest movements both within CSU and across higher education institutions. Erecting unauthorized barricades, fencing and furniture is also prohibited.
“Encampments are prohibited by the policy, and those who attempt to start an encampment may be disciplined or sanctioned,” CSU spokesperson Hazel Kelly said in a written statement to EdSource. “Campus presidents and their designated officials will enforce this prohibition and take appropriate steps to stop encampments, including giving clear notice to those in violation that they must discontinue their encampment activities immediately.”
Kelly said the encampments “are disruptive and can cause a hostile environment for some community members. We have an obligation to ensure that all community members can access University Property and University programs.”
UC campuses similarly will ban encampments or other “unauthorized structures,” Drake said in a letter to campus chancellors Monday morning directing them to enforce those rules. He also said they must prohibit anything that restricts movement on campus, which could include protests that block walkways and roadways or deny access by anyone on campus to UC facilities.
“I hope that the direction provided in this letter will help you achieve an inclusive and welcoming environment at our campuses that protects and enables free expression while ensuring the safety of all community members by providing greater clarity and consistency in our policies and policy application,” Drake added.
UC faces Oct. 1 deadline
As part of this year’s state budget agreement, lawmakers directed Drake’s office to create a “systemwide framework” for consistently enforcing protest rules across UC’s campuses. Lawmakers are withholding $25 million from UC until Drake submits a report to the Legislature by Oct. 1 detailing those plans.
A variety of higher education institutions have bolstered policies that constrain demonstrations and similar gatherings in reaction to protests over the Israel-Hamas war last school year.
The University of Pennsylvania’s “temporary guidelines” include a ban on bullhorns and speakers after 5 p.m. on school days as well as a two-week limit on the display of posters and banners, according to The Associated Press. Indiana University’s policy allows “expressive activities” like protests from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. only and requires prior approval to hang or place signs on university property. The University of South Florida rules stipulate that no protests are allowed in the final two weeks of a semester, AP reported, among other restrictions.
Tyler Valeska,an assistant professor of law at Loyola University Chicago, said that even if a university has not seemed keen to enforce protest rules strictly in the past, many are now telegraphing a more forceful approach in the future.
“For years, maybe even decades, it did seem to be the case that university officials had a policy on paper and then another policy in their actual approach to enforcement,” he said. “And we saw a major change from that status quo in the spring, where universities around the country started suddenly enforcing policies that had been on the books for years or decades, but had never really been enforced against relatively nondisruptive student speech.”
“It may be the case that the universities are hyping up their policies with no actual intent to enforce them stringently, but based on what we saw in the spring, that would surprise me,” he added.
Applies to all Cal State campuses
The interim policy at Cal State applies to all 23 of the system’s campuses, replacing rules at each school. University leaders still have discretion on specifics, such as determining which buildings and spaces on campus are considered to be public areas and which hours of the day those spaces can be accessed, which they will spell out in addition to the systemwide policy.
Drake’s letter to the campus chancellors is not a systemwide policy. Instead, his letter directs each campus to come up with its own policies. Those policies must meet certain requirements, including the banning of encampments.
Some campuses likely already have the necessary policies, Drake said in his letter. If they don’t, they should develop or amend existing policies as soon as possible, he added. In either case, each campus must provide a document or webpage that describes those policies.
Both of California’s four-year university systems have come under fire for how they responded to protests in solidarity with Palestine this spring. Some campus leaders approached student activists with a light touch, allowing students to camp overnight in quads peacefully and negotiating with representatives until they voluntarily disassembled encampments. But as conflicts between protesters, counterprotesters and administrators flared on some campuses, university leaders called in law enforcement agencies to break up encampments and arrest students who did not comply with orders to disperse.
Highlights for both systems
The new protest guidance suggests that Cal State and UC are now headed in roughly the same direction, taking a stronger stance against practices that featured frequently in spring protests.
Highlights of the policies include:
Camping: Cal State’s policy bans “encampments of any kind, overnight demonstrations … and overnight loitering.” It outlaws the use of camping paraphernalia, including recreational vehicles and tents. Bringing “copious amounts of personal belongings” to campus without permission is also a no-go, except as allowed in student housing and university work spaces. Drake’s letter instructs UC chancellors to clarify their policies to make clear that setting up a camp, tent or temporary housing structure is not allowed without prior approval.
Barricades and other structures: Drake requests campuses make sure their policies prohibit building unauthorized structures on campus. Cal State’s interim policy additionally lists a range of temporary and permanent structures — “tent, platform, booth, bench, building, building materials (such as bricks, pallets, etc.), wall, barrier, barricade, fencing, structure, sculpture, bicycle rack or furniture” — that aren’t allowed without permission.
Masking and refusing to self-identify: Cal State and Drake’s letter invoke the same policy on face coverings almost to the word. Both warn that masks and other attempts to conceal one’s identity are not allowed “with the intent of intimidating and harassing any person or group, or for the purpose of evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification in the commission of violations” of relevant laws or policies. Cal State’s language, additionally, notes that face masks are “permissible for all persons who are complying with University policies and applicable laws.” Similarly, both systems bar people from refusing to identify themselves to a university official acting in their official capacity on campus.
Restricting free movement: Drake’s letter emphasizes that campus policies should prohibit restricting another person’s movement by, for example, blocking walkways, windows or doors in a way that denies people access to the university’s facilities. The guidance comes days after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that barred UCLA from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students” on its campus. Cal State’s interim policy includes blanket advisories against actions that “impede or restrict the free movement of any person” and block streets, walkways, parking lots or other pedestrian and vehicle paths.
Kelly, the CSU spokesperson, said sections of the policy about encampments, the use of barricades and face coverings “are not new and are already in place for the most part at each university and at the Chancellor’s Office.”
In the spring, students built encampments at UC campuses including UCLA and UC San Diego as well as Cal State campuses including Sacramento State and San Francisco State. Bobby King, a spokesperson for San Francisco State, said the school granted students last spring an exception to the campus time, place and manner policy.
Pro-Palestinian student encampment in front of Royce Hall at UCLA on April 30, 2024.Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource
“The new CSU policy will create greater urgency in resolving a situation like the one we had last spring,” he said. “Obviously, with the new policy in place, campus leaders who engage with the students would need to convey that urgency.”
The interim policy at Cal State takes a comprehensive approach to defining what is and is not allowed during demonstrations, outlawing items like firearms, explosives and body armor as well as actions like shooting arrows, climbing light poles and public urination. The policy outlaws demonstrations in university housing, including the homes of employees living on university property when “no public events are taking place.”
Drake’s directive describes a tiered system for how campuses should police individuals if they violate any rules. They would first be informed of the violation and asked to stop. If they don’t, the next step would be to warn them of potential consequences.
After that, UC police or the local campus fire marshal could issue orders that could include an unlawful assembly announcement, an order to disperse or an order to identify oneself. If the conduct doesn’t change at that point, the individuals involved could be cited for violation of university policy and, if they are breaking a law, they could also be detained and arrested. Police could order them to stay away from campuses for repeat offenses or what they deem more severe violations.
That response system, however, “is not a rigid prescription that will capture all situations,” the guidance states.
Cal State’s interim policy is effective immediately for students and nonunion employees, Kelly said. Unionized employees will work under the previously-negotiated campus policies until a meet-and-confer process for the new policy is complete.
Each Cal State campus asked to elaborate
Cal State Dominguez Hills and Stanislaus State were the first two campuses to publish addenda for their schools as of press time.
The Dominguez Hills addendum, for example, lists areas where protests are permitted without pre-scheduling, including the north lawn in front of the Loker Student Union and a sculpture garden adjacent to the University Theater. But the document limits events in those places to the hoursbetween 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. and allows only “non-amplified speech and expression.”
The campus-specific policy will also describe any restrictions on signs, banners and chalking. The Dominguez Hills addendum prohibits the use of sticks or poles to support handheld signs, does not allow signs “to be taped to any campus buildings, directory signs, fences, railings, or exterior light poles” and by default limits signs to a two-week posting period. It also includes a list of “designated posting places” on the campus.
Margaret Russell, an associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said Cal State’s policy is clearly motivated by a desire to minimize disruptions from protests. Russell said that though many of the restrictions target students’ conduct rather than their speech, she is troubled by broad language seeming to require written permission for posters, signs, banners and chalking.
Russell said such language could create “a chilling effect” because it “is so potentially broad and far-reaching that people don’t know ahead of time what’s allowed and what’s not allowed.”
“The overall message is, ‘Be careful. Be careful where you express your opinion aloud.’” And so to me, it seems suppressive of freedom of speech, which is probably what they want,” she said.
Kelly, the Cal State spokesperson, said that the policy overall is meant to describe how the universities’ property can be used without inhibiting free expression.
“Generally, separate individual written permission is not required for signage unless the person is trying to post on a facility where it is not permitted,” she said. “This rule does not apply to signs and posters people carry or use personally.”
An Aug. 14 statement from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) did not name any universities but broadly criticized school administrations for policies it said “severely undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education.”
“Many of the latest expressive activity policies strictly limit the locations where demonstrations may take place, whether amplified sound can be used, and types of postings permitted,” the statement said. “With harsh sanctions for violations, the policies broadly chill students and faculty from engaging in protests and demonstrations.”
The AAUP statement said some institutions have gone so far as to require protest groups to register in advance. AAUP argued that such provisions effectively block spontaneous protests and may discourage protesters wishing to avoid surveillance.
The AAUP statement came a day after the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) released a “guide to preventing encampments and occupations on campus.” The guide encourages universities to ban encampments and to act decisively to punish students who violate those policies.
“Once an encampment has occupied the campus, the institution has very few options to avoid an ugly spectacle that at best will make the administration look ineffectual and even make the board appear derelict,” the guide says. “Negotiating and making concessions are invitations to more and increasing demands. They embolden others to employ similar coercive tactics in the future and further undermine the university’s mission.”
Cal State’s interim policy says the university embraces its obligation to support the free exchange of information and ideas, but that such freedom of expression “is allowed and supported as long as it does not violate other laws or University policies and procedures.”
Cal State spokesperson Kelly said the university system “places the highest value on fostering healthy discourse and exchange of ideas in a safe and peaceful manner, by sustaining a learning and working environment that supports the free and orderly exchange of ideas, values, and opinions, recognizing that individuals grow and learn when confronted with differing views, alternative ways of thinking, and conflicting values.”
David McCuan is no stranger to strong disagreements in his political science classes.
“Everything is framed as a life or death struggle and decision, in a very serious way,” said McCuan, a professor at Sonoma State University. “So what I do tell students at the beginning of the class is, ‘We’re going to work hard. We’re going to disagree. And everything is going to be OK, because politics is a game for adults.’”
McCuan should know. Over the past two decades, he’s guided easily 400 budding politicos through an election-year course that teaches them not only how to unearth the money and power structures behind state ballot measures but also asks them to register voters, educate fellow citizens on the election and, quite frequently, work with a student from the opposite end of the political spectrum.
Sonoma State political science professor David McCuanCredit: Courtesy of David McCuan
This fall’s course comes ahead of what McCuan’s syllabus calls “the most important election since 1860” — the election that preceded the Civil War.
In the 2024 election, roughly 8 million youth nationwide will age into the electorate in a divisive election year that has highlighted deep fissures on issues like immigration and the war in Gaza.
It’s also a moment of generational transition. Sonoma students returned to the Rohnert Park campus the same week as the Democratic National Convention, where Vice President Kamala Harris’ brisk rise to the top of the ticket signaled the passing of power to a younger group of Democratic Party politicians.
All of that means fall 2024 could be a volatile time to teach politics, a reason why McCuan wants students to work with peers with whom they don’t see eye to eye. Students entering his classroom even fill out a questionnaire to gauge their political views, information McCuan uses to pair students with their ideological foil on class projects.
“I try to take two opposite individuals and put them together to work on a team to understand what’s going on,” he said, “because I’ve found over the years that actually lends itself to a lot of help for each other.”
The idea behind the class dates to the late 1990s, when as a young academic, McCuan began to contemplate the disconnect between the political science literature — where whether political campaigns even matter is an ongoing subject of debate — and the world of politics as it’s practiced on the ground.
McCuan’s students work with the League of Women Voters to research state ballot measures. The league compiles arguments in favor and against each measure, while students piece together the story of who is funding the ballot issue, how much money they’re spending, which consultants they’ve hired and how those strategies could swing the campaign.
The course also has a service learning component. Students lead a public forum in which they present their ballot measure research to the rest of the campus and receive training on how to register voters. Many interactions with the government can feel punitive, McCuan said, like serving on a jury or paying taxes, so the hope is that more positive experiences of democracy will inspire students to stay civically engaged for the rest of their lives.
“We know that voting is a habit, so if you get people civically minded and engaged to register people to vote or to analyze what’s on the ballot, it has an educative effect,” McCuan said. “The idea is to create something that’s positive about what it means to be civically minded.”
Sonoma State also does not shy away from political science programming that can provoke strong emotions, McCuan said. The university has hosted a lecture series on the Holocaust and genocide, he noted, and McCuan himself teaches a course that examines terrorism and political violence.
McCuan said high-profile events have galvanized youth interest in politics in recent years. The 2016 election of Donald Trump, the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision holding that abortion is not a constitutional right each emerged as lightning rods for youth political engagement.
Efforts to harness students’ political energy on McCuan’s campus have paid off in the past: 88.3% of registered voters at Sonoma State cast a ballot in 2020, besting the 66% average turnout rate across more than 1,000 colleges and universities in a national study of college voters that year.
It’s not just young people at Sonoma State who are eager to cast a ballot. CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, found that turnout for voters age 18 to 29 rose from 39% in 2016 to 50% in 2020.
Will younger voters turn out this year? More than half of voters 18 to 34 told pollsters they were “extremely likely to vote.”
What those numbers don’t show is the long-standing voting gap between college goers and people without a bachelor’s degree. In 2020, 75% of 18- to 29-year-olds with a college degree voted compared to just 39% with a high school education, a CIRCLE analysis of census data found.
McCuan recently discussed why he thinks universities should invest more in civics education and how he prepares students to discuss difficult issues in the classroom.
The following Q&A was edited, condensed and re-ordered for length and clarity.
What should K-12 schools be doing to teach students about civics and politics?
We’re integrating civics rather than holding it separate. We’re trying to integrate things across the curriculum because we have so many things that we want people to learn or that we demand that they know. And I think that’s losing depth of understanding in the guise of trying to provide breadth of coverage.
(In political science), we pay very close attention to the relationship between economic, social and political variables, (also known as) ESP. They (students) might be able to name off ESP components of American history and American politics. It’s the what they’re really good at. It’s the why that is always the struggle.
They might be able to note certain things on the history timeline, but how those were moments of change or inflection points — or why they matter, or how they’re consequential — that’s the part that’s often still the same as it was before. All the stuff they’re covering from K through 12 is ticking off boxes that aren’t necessarily providing greater understanding.
Is there anything that would better prepare students before they reach your classroom?
Invest in civics. I struggle, because I was a department chair for a long time and, as you know, in higher education, it’s faced a lot of pressure and a lot of financial pressure.
I have a great passion about learning. I’m a first generation college student. I’m the son of a cop. I’m not supposed to even be here. The neighborhood I grew up in is the ‘hood, man, and if I can do it, others can do it. It takes a great deal of courage to call things out, and I don’t see that with a lot of higher education leaders, so I need an investment in civics that’s greater.–
And as we’re cutting budgets and we’re cutting requirements, we’re taking things out– like how to write and how to think — because we’re trying to cram other things in there, or graduate people faster, or push things through.
Do you ever have to step in as a conciliator between students in your classroom?
I haven’t generally had to weigh in on severe disagreements. I think your question, though, is appropriate for this fall, where everyone’s made up their mind about how they’re going to vote, except for 5% of people. So I’m going to have people in this class who are on far sides of the political spectrum trying to work together. Can that be combustible? Yeah, sure, maybe.
I just feel like a professor who hadn’t been teaching this course for as long as you have would run in the opposite direction from starting now.
I want a lively, engaged classroom, man!
And also, remember, while we’re looking at the election, paying attention to candidates, we’re also concentrating a lot on non-candidate on ballot measures. Now, those are our proxy for blue and red, for left and right, sure — but we are concentrating on ballot measures, non-candidate elections, so it does remove some of that heavy partisanship.
Do you hear this sentiment among colleagues, a reluctance to talk about political views with students?
What I do hear from colleagues, especially younger colleagues or newer colleagues, is a frustration with trying to delve into issues that are hard. They often avoid those because they’re worried that they won’t have a chair or an administration that will back them up if things get heated.
Sometimes I have newer, younger colleagues who try to steer around issues if it makes students uncomfortable or will lead to aggression in the classroom. I’m not afraid of that.
What makes you not afraid of that?
I trust that we can get to a place of respect, if not understanding. I want a classroom that’s lively, engaged. I think the best thing in a student in my class is intellectual curiosity. That’s what I want. I’m not interested in the politics — and what I mean by that is, I’m not interested that they feel strongly this way or that way. I need them to be intellectually curious, because I can work with that. We can work together on that. And intellectual curiosity is something we see less and less of, so it’s harder.
You don’t strike me as somebody who’s disillusioned with political processes — or are you?
I think to be in this profession, to do this job, you have to have an optimistic view of the human condition. Because you don’t do it for the pay. You don’t do it for the benefits. You do it because you have a passion and a mission that the next generation can do it better.
When you see that ‘aha’ moment with students, it’s not because they’re mimicking your view. It’s not that at all, and I don’t do this in the classroom. It’s that they are understanding and making connections that I never saw. Or that they are finding and understanding in depth and making those connections that are analytical, not political. And that’s really helpful, because that’s a skill.
Is there some way that the students you’re teaching have changed since you started this course in 2003?
They use social media tools to get an idea of what’s going on. So in other words, as the digital space has grown in campaigns, they’re in that space.
I don’t know what the hell a “Swiftie” is. I didn’t know the BeyHive is Beyoncé, and I would have spelled it like a beehive. But they know, so they’re operating in the space where the BeyHive and the Swifties are operating.
They’re understanding that space, and therefore, they are understanding the colors that are used by Kamala and her team, that lime green color. They know what that means, right?
Their understanding of social media, their clarity about what messages are being communicated, would fly over the head of most pointy-headed academics. So I need them.
A Cease Fire Now sign hangs on a tent on the grass as tents are set up in The Quad during a Students for Gaza rally at San Francisco State University on April 29, 2024.
Credit: Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
San Francisco State has pulled investments from three companies it says don’t meet its human rights standards following pressure from pro-Palestinian student activists.
The moves resulted in changes to the university’s $163 million investment portfolio.
SF State Foundation confirmed Wednesday that it has sold its Lockheed Martin corporate bond position and stock positions in Leonardo, an Italian multinational defense company, and Palantir Technologies, a U.S.-based data analysis firm that has worked with the Israeli Defense Ministry.
The foundation also screened out a fourth company, the construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, based on a pre-existing policy that steers the foundation away from investments in fossil fuels. The company has become a target of groups advocating divestment from Israel. They claim Caterpillar’s heavy equipment has been turned into weapons by Israel in the Palestinian territory.
College students around the country have pushed universities to remove companies aligned with Israel from investment portfolios. Student activists have met resistance from California State University system officials, who have said they won’t tinker with investment policies in reaction to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Instead,students on some campuses have focused their energy on school-level foundation endowments, but say their goal remains to influence the entire system’s investment policies.
San Francisco State students made headway by training their attention on the university foundation’s investment screens, standards used to make sure investments are consistent with the school’s values, like racial justice, social justice and climate change. The SF State Foundation shed investments in the four companies as the result of implementing those screens and not because it agreed to sell specific companies.
The changes come following a summer of Zoom meetings held by a work group composed of representatives from Students for Gaza, SF State Foundation investment committee, faculty and administrators.
The work group proposed a revised investment policy that says the foundation will not invest in arms makers and will “strive not to invest in companies that consistently, knowingly and directly facilitate or enable severe violations of international law and human rights.” The draft does not name any specific country or conflict.
The proposed policy is slated for a final vote in December. The foundation’s investment committee decided to act on the suggested revisions in the meantime, identifying the investments in Lockheed Martin, Leonardo and Palantir under the human rights screens.
The foundation also will unveil a new website disclosing more information about its endowment by the end of September.
“Through the work of the many students involved in GUPS (General Union of Palestine Students) at SFSU and SFG (Students for Gaza), we have been able to successfully ensure our money is not funding GENOCIDE ‼️” an Aug. 27 announcement on Instagram by the group Students for Gaza at San Francisco State said.
Sheldon Gen, a faculty representative to the SF State Foundation, said the work group landed on draft policy language that aligns the university’s investment policies with its values, without singling out a specific conflict, country or geographic area.
“What we did at San Francisco State isn’t going to end the conflict in Gaza, but we did find some space where students can have agency and be heard ― and not only that, but really, honestly improve our university,” he said.
Jeff Jackanicz, the president of the SF State Foundation, thanked students who participated in the work group in an Aug. 22 email to the campus outlining proposed changes to the foundation’s environmental, social and governance, or ESG, strategies.
“We have been lauded for being a leader in ESG investment before, and with credit to Students for Gaza, our revised policy affirms our leading role in values-driven advising,” Jackanicz wrote.
Students for Gaza scheduled a rally and news conference Thursday at 12:15 p.m. in San Francisco State’s Malcolm X Plaza to announce the investment changes.
A ‘tangible’ bid for divestment
The decision to tighten investment screens at San Francisco State follows a wave of campus protests calling on Israel to end an assault on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people, according to the local health ministry. The current fighting started on Oct. 7 when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel, killing more than 1,000 people and abducting hundreds more.
Rama Ali Kased, an associate professor of race and resistance studies and an adviser to students in the work group, said some on her campus were surprised to learn the university had any investments in arms makers. Asking the university to cut ties with those firms was “tangible and understandable,” she said — which made the case to drop those investments easier.
The SF State Foundation is the auxiliary organization responsible for raising private funding for the university and managing the university’s endowment, money the university funnels into facilities, scholarships and other university programs.
The foundation’s endowment spent $8.9 million of its income across the university in the 2022-23 fiscal year, according to Cal State records, and ranked as the seventh-largest in the Cal State system by market value.
This is not the first time that SF State has revised its foundation investment criteria following feedback from student activists. In 2013, the foundation limited direct investments in coal and tar sands, a step Cal State says was a first among U.S. public universities.
Each of the 23 campuses in the California State University system, as well as the Chancellor’s Office, has a separate endowment managed by an auxiliary organization. Together, the CSU endowments had a market value of $2.5 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year, growing roughly 8.7% year-over-year.
The Chancellor’s Office on April 30 released a statement saying that Cal State “does not intend to alter existing investment policies related to Israel or the Israel-Hamas conflict” because such divestment “impinges on the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas on our campuses.”
Campus leaders nonetheless have some flexibility to manage their own endowments.
Sacramento State on May 8 announced new investment policy language as a concession to pro-Palestinian student groups. That language does not mention Israel specifically but instead directs the school’s foundation “to investigate socially responsible investment strategies which include not having direct investments in corporations and funds that profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights.”
Less than a week after the Sacramento State announcement, SF State agreed to revise its investment policies in consultation with student encampment representatives, setting in motion this summer’s work group.
But an incident at another Cal State campus suggests there are limits to how much leeway campus leaders have to negotiate with student protesters.
Mike Lee, then-president of Sonoma State University, announced on May 14 that he had reached an accord with protesters to review the school foundation’s investments and form an advisory council that would include a local chapter of the group Students for Justice in Palestine.
To Lynn Mahoney, the president of San Francisco State University, the student encampment pitched on her campus for roughly two weeks this spring had roots in a range of student concerns, from dizzying Bay Area housing costs to the climate change crisis.
“If these young people aren’t angry, they’re not paying attention,” Mahoney said.
That perspective shaped the way Mahoney responded when students organized protests in April. Mahoney agreed to participate in an open bargaining session held in the school’s Malcolm X Plaza, fielding questions from students and sharing information about the university’s investment practices.
“I just strongly urge presidents: Approach the students with respect, even if they’re out there hollering horrible things about you,” she said. “Approach them with respect. They’re your students.”
Kased said that by meeting with students at the encampment this spring, Mahoney and student protest leaders set a tone that allowed for the work group to continue over the summer.
“That move provided a space for students to feel empowered, but to say, ‘Look, we may not agree with President Mahoney on everything, but we’re going to sit down,’” Kased said.
The summer’s work group also benefited from a governance structure students developed during the spring encampment, Kased said, when students elected leaders to represent them and similarly identified faculty to act as spokespeople and liaisons in negotiations with the administration.
People who attended the meetings said they tended to be collegial rather than confrontational, and that rare moments of tension between students and campus officials were quickly quelled.
“These were tough discussions,” Gen said. “It’s the kind of discussion that professors aspire to have with their students in classes, quite honestly — challenging ones, where they raise tough questions, explore implications of perspectives and, most importantly, find some route for agency.”
Gen said the discussions with students this summer echoed previous debates within the foundation’s investment committee regarding whether to divest from specific countries due to their records on human rights. The committee has avoided naming specific countries in its policies, he said, instead articulating values its investments should reflect.
“We have a diversity of students who are on all sides of this specific issue here, too, and we weren’t going to alienate one student group for another,” he said. “They’re all our students.”
‘Not about money’
Some foundation investments are easier to screen than others.
Noam Perry, who works with activists leading divestment campaigns as part of his role at the American Friends Service Committee, acted as a de facto translator between San Francisco State students and university officials this summer.
He said one place where the work group made progress was by identifying specific investments held in separately managed accounts, an investment vehicle tailored to the university.
A foundation document dated Aug. 14 says the foundation will screen out “any company deriving more [than] 5% of revenue from weapons manufacturing, involved in the private prison industry, or engaging in detention at borders” from separately managed accounts.
But it can be harder to get a clear picture of other investment vehicles. Perry said that the foundation works with some asset managers that apply quantitative investment strategies. That means the manager buys and sells stocks dynamically — and the stock holdings change every day.
“That’s where conversations became really tense,” said Perry. “Because from the students’ perspective … this is unacceptable, because there’s no way that this vendor could ever be aligned with the responsible investment policy that the university is seeking. And from the university’s perspective, that’s where there’s revenue to be lost. They never said they had zero tolerance for having these companies. It’s always about minimizing exposure and reducing the risk that they’re invested in these (companies).”
Perry said how the foundation should handle such investments in the future remains an open question.
Jackanicz’s Aug. 22 email to the campus said the university’s “commingled investment strategies already align strongly with core environmental, social and governance (ESG) values.” He said the foundation believes “we can engage with fund managers over time to discuss changes that could have further positive impacts.”
Every year, by May 15, the governor has to revise his proposed budget, and this is when the budget season really kicks off.
So, just as individuals are concerned about personal finances, retirements, the impacts of inflation, and uncertainty about government services, the state is facing those same sorts of uncertainties. And in this case, uncertainty really rolls downhill. There’s national uncertainty, which is causing state revenue uncertainty and budget uncertainty, which then impacts the state’s education budget decisions, that will then impact what school districts are facing as they head into adopting their budgets by the end of June.
So, we know that the revenue outlook for the current year that ends June 30 looks pretty good, so will that protect us?
I’d sort of hoped that they would, but the short answer is no, and that’s because of some nuances in how Prop 98 works. A lot of those extra revenues that have come in are actually going to count against last year, the 2023–24 fiscal year. And in that year, the Legislature actually suspended the constitutional guarantee for a year. So even though there are extra revenues, none of those revenues will go to schools.
As we look to the future, to the 2025–26 school year, the forecasts are looking much more pessimistic. The Legislative Analyst’s Office just came out with a projection of revenues for next year being down around $8 billion. That would trickle down to schools getting about $3.5 billion less compared to what their current programs receive.
I would expect schools to get the program that’s in place for the current year, plus a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which is currently expected to be about 2.3%. That probably seems pretty low to most folks, especially given some of the costs districts might face—salary increases that have already happened due to inflation, the rising costs teachers are facing, plus pensions and other obligations. So, the costs districts are facing may be going up more than the 2.3% COLA they’re getting.
Your tax dollars could soon lift a rainbow of religious educators — from Christian academies to pro-Palestinian classrooms — as the U.S. Supreme Court teeters on forcing states to aid sectarian schools.
In oral arguments last month, the high court’s conservatives voiced eagerness to reverse an Oklahoma ruling that blocked public funding for a virtual charter school infused with Catholic teachings, an online scheme designed by the Tulsa diocese.
Oklahoma’s far-from-woke Supreme Court agreed with the state attorney general in Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board that taxpayer funding for religious web-based classes would violate America’s sacred separation of church and state. This key element of our Constitution insulates all faiths from state intrusion, while vesting shared civic duties, like education, within a tolerant and secular government.
But muddled logic ruled this day in the high court among jurists like Samuel Alito, a self-described “practical originalist,” long insisting that judges must abide by the Constitution’s original intent. Alito at one point attacked Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, claiming that he “reeks of hostility towards Islam.”
This odd allegation stemmed from Drummond’s point that “while many Oklahomans undoubtedly support charter schools sponsored by various Christian faiths, the precedent … will compel approval of similar applications by all faiths.” Alito mangled the argument, alleging that Drummond is “motivated by hostility toward particular religions.”
Alito dodged the bedrock question of whether taxpayer support of religion is permitted by the nation’s founding covenants. Instead, his tortured reasoning claimed that public programs cannot “discriminate” against religious schools.
California hosts more charter schools than any other state. In districts like Los Angeles Unified, one-fifth of all students attend a charter school, which did help lift student achievement for two decades before the pandemic. Still, Alito is not alone in negotiating the shifting ideologies and ironic surprises that mark the charter school movement.
These publicly funded but independently run campuses were first authorized by Minnesota’s Legislature in 1991, founded on the rather Christian yearning for fairness, allowing poor families to escape mediocre public schools and shop for effective teachers. California’s charter law, approved one year later, emphasized how these small hot-houses of innovation would hurry reform of regular public schools.
But few advocates foresaw how the rapid spread of charters would drive religious schools into the ground. Why pay even modest tuition for parochial school when a free charter has opened nearby? Enrollment in Catholic schools has fallen by one-third nationwide since the advent of charter schools; more than one thousand campuses have closed. Small Christian schools have taken a hit as well, with nearly one hundred shuttered in Los Angeles alone.
So, the pushback by religious educators is understandable, with some (not all) sects eager to tap into public funding. If the Supreme Court now rules that states must subsidize faith-filled charter schools, Alito could realize his apparent wish for more Catholic or Confucian schools.
But do spiritual leaders desire a messy entanglement with government? States typically require local school boards, when chartering independent educators, to ensure safe buildings, enforce shared curricular goals, and demonstrate that schools elevate student learning. Conservative jurists may well invite the state to squash evangelical charters that exclude Jewish kids, or protect the errant Presbyterian pupil who refuses to chant from the Quran.
The high court has already permitted limited public financing of religious schools. This includes taxpayer-financed vouchers in select states that help parents pay tuition for sectarian schools, along with tax credits that mostly benefit affluent families enrolling children in private schools. (Los Angeles Unified recently settled with the Catholic archdiocese, reimbursing the church $3 million to cover Title I services required by related court decisions.)
But these earlier rulings “involved fairly discrete state involvement,” Chief Justice John Roberts said during oral arguments, while warning that Oklahoma’s potential oversight of religious schools “does strike me as much more comprehensive involvement.” His vote will likely decide whether public dollars flow to religious schools.
Perhaps it’s reassuring that right-wing judges like Alito remain so protective of religious liberty, sniffing out unlikely opponents of Islam or the Vatican. But telling states and taxpayers we must subsidize sectarian schools, then inviting government inside churches, synagogues and mosques, will only fracture the once common cause of public schools.
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Bruce Fuller is an emeritus professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley and author of “When Schools Work.”
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A student in Oakland’s Skyline High School Education and Community Health Pathway sculpts a clay model of the endocrine system.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
UPDATE: The California Department of Education has announced a new timeline for the Golden State Pathways Program. Learn more.
In June 2022, the California Legislature decided to invest a half billion dollars into the Golden State Pathways Program, a career and college preparation program that Gov. Gavin Newsom called a “game-changer” for high school students. But two years later, frustration is rising among school leaders who have begun another school year without the promised funding.
Advocates say the vision of the Golden State Pathways Program laid out by the Legislature is both progressive and practical. Career pathways aim to prepare high school students with both college preparatory courses and career education in fields such as STEM, education or health care. But those same advocates are frustrated by the program’s rollout, which they say has been beset by late deadlines, a confusing application process and delayed funding.
“We are approaching a third budget cycle, and to not have the money out the door is derelict,” said Kevin Gordon, president of the education consultancy Capitol Advisors Group. He lobbies on behalf of clients that include school districts that were promised funding.
Previously announced Golden State Pathways Program grant recipients include school districts large and small, charters, regional occupational centers and county offices of education. Recipients could receive up to $500,000 to implement one career pathway, and $200,000 to plan a pathway. Districts with many high schools and pathways could expect millions or even tens of millions of dollars in grants.
Schools plan to use the grant money to expand dual enrollment, increase exposure to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers through programs like job shadowing, and to hire support staff to help students with their college and career plans.
Administrators counting on that funding said the news that the California Department of Education (CDE) was reviewing grant awards has thrown their plans and budgets for this school year into disarray.
One administrator at a midsize school district said the prospect of not receiving the expected grants, especially in the wake of sunsetting pandemic funds, is difficult. This administrator asked to speak on background, citing a concern that CDE could hold it against the district during the ongoing grant review process.
“Our district had an implementation plan that we are continuing to move forward with, and we are hopeful that the funding will materialize,” the administrator said. “The unfortunate part is that there are other resources that students will not receive if the funding doesn’t come through.”
A group of organizations penned a letter asking state leaders to do everything in their power to get the promised funds flowing by November for a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Signatories included advocacy groups such EdTrust-West, school districts in Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento and even businesses such as the port of Long Beach. The letter to Newsom, Thurmond and Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education, referred to delays that have affected the competitive grant program.
“We are extremely concerned, as this is not the first time processes have been delayed without a stated resolution date,” the letter stated.
Tulare County Superintendent of Schools Tim Hire said he hopes to work with the state to find a swift resolution for the sake of students. The Tulare County Office of Education was selected as the lead agency for the state in November.
“When there’s a delay, that means kids aren’t accessing those experiences and resources,” Hire said.
Schools are in limbo
There were signs during May’s announcement of grant awards that something went awry, according to school administrators.
One school district was awarded three times the funding it requested, and others were awarded 1.5 times what they applied for, according to a countywide administrator. This administrator also asked for anonymity over a concern about CDE’s possible reaction to speaking out.
These local education agencies (LEAs) “don’t have the capacity to do three times as much work, even if they were awarded three times as much money,” the countrywide administrator said. This problem left school leaders “frustrated and a bit confused.”
Hire confirmed that “overallocation” of grants was a problem across the state. Some schools received more than they asked, while others received none, but it wasn’t clear why.
“Why did a district receive more than they requested?” he stated. “That’s a legitimate question to ask.”
Scott Roark, a spokesperson for the department, said last May’s announcement was “preliminary.” The reconsideration of the recipients resulted from a “substantial” number of appeals, according to a July 16 statement.
“Upon receiving appeals for Golden State Pathways Grant awards, the CDE determined that it was necessary to review all awards allocations in order to ensure that allocations are distributed consistently and fairly,” Roark wrote in a statement. The review will conclude by the end of September, he added. There will be a window for further appeals before funds are released.
Many schools believed the announcement was official and included the awards in annual school budgets passed before July 1, according to an administrator who also declined to be identified by name, and who assisted schools with their grant applications.
Roark said that the department received appeals for a “range of reasons” but declined to say what those reasons were.
The review of $470 million in funds, now stretching well beyond the beginning of the school year, has put districts in an uneasy position.
Some school districts have put their plans on hold amid the uncertainty. By the time the grant funding is actually released, “it will likely be too late to hire,” said the administrator at a mid-sized district. “That puts the program launch another year behind.”
Long Beach Unified is splitting the difference by moving forward with only a portion of the initiatives the district outlined in its grant application. In the initial announcement, the district was awarded $10.7 million in implementation grants and $335,523 in planning grants.
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was initially awarded $37.8 million in implementation grants and $200,000 in planning grants. A district spokesperson said it will be difficult to understand the effect of the revised awards until they’re announced.
“We will have a better sense of its impact at that time,” said Britt Vaughan, a spokesperson for LAUSD.
Regional leaders don’t have contracts
It’s not just schools that have been left in financial limbo by the delayed rollout.
Up to 5% of $500 million for the program is set aside for grant administration, mostly through county offices of education. But that funding has yet to go out to the state lead and eight regional agencies for work they have been doing since January.
Hire said that not having a contractual agreement yet with CDE has put the Tulare County Office of Education in an “uncomfortable position,” especially during a tight budget year.
“We delayed hiring and just spread the workload among our current staff, which is challenging and probably not the best delivery of service,” Hire said.
Colby Smart, deputy superintendent for the Humboldt County Office of Education, said this program is vital for California’s workforce, not just a “nice-to- have.” He expects the state will ultimately send funding to the regional lead office for Northern California, but the office has faced many “roadblocks,” including finalizing its contract and nailing down the scope of work.
The administrator of one regional lead, who declined to use their name, said, “I’ve never in my life seen such dysfunction.”
Rollout was ‘set up to fail’
The rollout of the grant funding has faced hiccups along the way.
The legislation behind the Golden State Pathways Program passed during the 2022-23 legislative session. Requests for proposals didn’t go out that year, but the program survived a massive budget cut in the next legislative session. In January, the department put out its request for proposals.
Originally, March 19 was the deadline for grant proposals for programs that would begin in April. But due to “overwhelming interest,” the department said it needed extra time to complete the reviews. The awards were announced May 31.
Administrators who worked on the proposal said that the application process itself was fraught. CDE revised the grant application several times.
“They created something that was so complex from the get-go that it was set up to fail,” said Kathy Goodacre, the CEO of CTE Foundation, a nonprofit that works with school districts in Sonoma County. “But still, something went wrong.”
CDE denied that a review of this magnitude was unprecedented.
“Though we work to avoid significant review when possible, a review is not highly unusual and has occurred in the past,” Roark wrote in a statement.
Both the federal and state governments have made big investments in preparing high school students for college and career at the K-12 level. The Golden State Pathways Program is a key piece of the governor’s plan for career education — a broad vision to ensure that all the agencies in the state are working together coherently.
The countywide administrator said the problems with the rollout of the Golden State Pathways Program is an example of what happens when the funding for career and technical education (CTE) is not coherent. Funding for career pathways comes from over a dozen grants, some of which require applications every year. That creates a burden for both local education agencies and CDE, the administrator said.
“Funding CTE is like buying programs on gift cards,” the countywide administrator stated. “We never know what we will get.”
Even though the rollout of the Golden State Pathways Program has been frustrating, educators say that the program is critical for the state.
“Half a billion is important for our students and our future,” the countywide administrator stated. “We want students to have economic mobility and make more than their parents did.”
Faculty, staff and students at four campuses in the Cal State system said they’re starting to feel the impact of belt-tightening in the early weeks of the 2024-25 school year, saying this fall has brought heavier workloads, larger class sizes and fewer course options.
University officials at select campuses acknowledged plans to reduce costs this school year. They said they’ve opened additional course sections where there’s demand and remain committed to supporting students so that they’re on track to graduate, even as they reel in budgets to match shrinking student enrollment on some campuses.
Cal State system officials said in July that the system could experience a $1 billion budget gap in the 2025-26 school year, a forecast driven by uncertain state funding, enrollment declines and rising costs. Trustees said they expect many campus leaders to reduce their overhead this year while also looking for creative ways to raise money going forward.
“It’s extremely difficult to get a hold of the classes that you want and/or need,” said Ashley Gregory, a Cal State LA student who works with the group Students for Quality Education through an internship program funded by the California Faculty Association. “It’s really disheartening.”
Cal State LA
California State University, Los Angeles, which has a $32.4 million deficit, is directing all divisions to cut their budgets by 12.4%.
The university is budgeting with the assumption that enrollment will come in 5.3% below the target for in-state full-time equivalent students it receives from the Cal State system, the school’s interim chief financial officer, Claudio Lindow, wrote in a Thursday email to the campus. Lindlow said there are signs that actual enrollment will reduce that gap.
Gregory said she’s already feeling the consequences of budget cuts on her major and minor fields — history, Pan-African studies and Latin American studies.
“I’m constantly having conversations with other students regarding, ‘Oh, this class is no longer available. This professor is no longer here,’” Gregory said.
A university dashboard showing enrollments by course lists fewer total courses in each of Gregory’s three departments this fall compared with the same time last year. In the history department, enrollment was down from more than 1,800 students in fall 2023 to fewer than 1,700 students this semester.
Juan Lamata, the faculty mentor to Students for Quality Education and a member of the California Faculty Association Los Angeles Executive Board, said he’s observed fewer electives in the English department, leaving a more narrow range of classes available to students.
“We’re changing what an English major means at Cal State LA, because now students will not have the opportunity to take classes in things they’re interested in or things that they don’t know they’re interested in,” he said. “We’re reducing what they can even be curious about.”
Cal State LA spokesperson Erik Frost Hollins could not confirm whether the number of courses offered by the university has declined but said course sections are down almost 7% compared with last year. The universityis not experiencing longer waitlists for fall courses as a result, according to Lindow’s email, but rather has lower waitlist numbers than in the past.
Cal State LA has gone from overenrolling students in excess of the target it receives from the Chancellor’s Office to experiencing an enrollment decline post-pandemic, President Berenecea Johnson Eanes wrote in a July letter to the campus.
Each condition strained the campus in different ways, Eanes wrote. When it was overenrolled, the university absorbed the costs of additional students without receiving additional state funding, she explained, which “had an adverse impact on the experience we can provide students.” But declining enrollment “feels like a budget reduction, because of the lost tuition, even though our funding per student is up,” she added.
“The greater risk lies in falling below enrollment targets, losing both tuition and state/system support,” Eames wrote. “This is why we need to focus on reversing enrollment declines and push to meet our enrollment target every year.”
Cal State LA headcount enrollment in fall 2023 was 24,673, up 6% compared with a decade ago, but below a pre-pandemic peak of 28,253.
Cal State East Bay
Another Cal State campus is reckoning with how to make sure it offers the courses students need while adjusting to a yearslong slide in enrollment.
Cal State East Bay enrollment has fallen almost 26% from its peak in 2016 to fall 2023. Explaining a decision to cut staff and administrator positions last year, officials said the university had not fully adjusted its budget to match those declines and also anticipated that its health insurance, utilities and benefits costs would rise, contributing to a structural deficit. President Cathy Sandeen, in a July message to the campus, said the school “must continue to explore all means to further reduce our expenses.”
A longtime faculty member said she worries that in trying to reduce overhead, the university is cutting instruction unnecessarily.Jennifer Eagan, a professor at the campus since 1999,said the university deferred dozens of eligible applicants to its Master of Public Administration degree program rather than expand the program to accommodate them this year.
“We have enrollments that we could be capturing, like classes we could be filling, cohorts of master’s programs that could be underway,” said Eagan, who served as the statewide president of the California Faculty Association from 2015 to 2019. “But the enrollments now are being artificially depressed, in my view.”
Cal State East Bay’s instruction expenses fell 11% from 2021-22 into 2022-23, according to the university’s two most-recent financial statements, tracking a year-over-year decline in enrollment.
Cal State East Bay spokesperson Kimberly Hawkins said in a statement that the university is “navigating a period of lower enrollment with a continued commitment to meeting students’ needs through strategic course offerings.” Hawkins said that, though there’s been a slight increase in waitlists to get into classes, the university has opened additional sections for certain courses. “Even as enrollment trends shift, our focus remains squarely on providing our students with timely offerings that fulfill their degree objectives,” she said.
Rin Anderson, a Cal State East Bay student interning for Students for Quality Education, said they see signs of tight budgets outside of academics, too. They said the university’s Student Equity and Success Center, which provides counseling for students from historically underrepresented communities, is underfunded and understaffed.
“The people that work for the university, who are in charge of these affinity programs, they’re overworked,” Anderson said. “They have so many different responsibilities and hats to wear.”
CSU Monterey Bay students move into campus dorms in August 2021.Credit: Monterey Bay/Flickr
Cal State Monterey Bay
After a pandemic-era slump, Cal State Monterey Bay’s enrollment is showing signs of recovery.
The Central Coast campus saw a 15.6% increasein enrollment this semester compared with fall 2023 — an increase so big that the Monterey Herald reportedthe school is moving students into staff housing and modifying some dorms to fit an extra student in an effort to whittle down its waitlist for housing.
But Monterey Bay has also reduced its budget. A university official said in a statement the campus opted to trim costs at the beginning of this fiscal year to balance its budget and doesn’t anticipate any additional cuts later in 2024-25.
Meghan O’Donnell, a history lecturer at Cal State Monterey Bay and co-president of the school’s California Faculty Association chapter, said her department has lost seven faculty members; some departed through a voluntary separation program last spring, and others left because of frustration with lack of resources. She said the department hasn’t hired replacements.
“There’s just a lot of challenges losing that level of faculty, while also being told we have to do all of the same work, if not more, because now we actually have more students than we were anticipating having this fall,” she said.
O’Donnell is concerned that larger class sizes on her campus would make it harder for colleagues to incorporate experiential and one-on-one learning techniques into their courses — the kind of practices she said are especially effective for first generation students.
In a statement, CSUMB Provost Andrew Lawson said the university has a lower student-faculty ratio than other CSU campuses and remains “committed to providing strong mentorship and experiential learning opportunities to our students.” He said the Monterey Bay campus has added additional course sections to accommodate incoming students, including in general education courses for first-year students. The university’s colleges of science and business experienced the steepest enrollment increases.
Cal State Monterey Bay is also implementing what it calls an “incentive-based budget model,” which allocates funding to each of its colleges based partially on enrollment. Budget cuts last year impacted colleges with deeper enrollment declines more than those where enrollment was steady or dipped more modestly, Lawson said.
O’Donnell said that model is starving the budgets of departments like Spanish, ethnic studies and history.
Students “are being told that their desires don’t matter as much, basically, unless they’re in a major that’s actively growing based on market demand,” she said.
Cal Maritime is the smallest campus in the California State University system.Credit: Cal Maritime / Flickr
Cal Maritime
It’s not just faculty that are feeling the squeeze.
Cal Maritime, the smallest Cal State campus, has laid off 10 staff members, a university spokesperson confirmed. Sianna Brito, the president of the university’s chapter of the California State University Employees Union (CSUEU), said the Aug. 20 layoffs affected eight CSUEU members and two managers.
Declining enrollment and financial pressure have set Cal Maritime on a path to a possible merger with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a much larger campus 250 miles south of the current campus in Vallejo. The Cal State board of trustees opened discussions on the proposal to combine the two schools at its July meeting. It will weigh additional updates in September before voting on the plan in November.
Cal Maritime interim President Michael Dumont wrote in an Aug. 20 email to the campus that “enrollment challenges, state budget cuts, increased utility and insurance costs, and unfunded compensation costs” had left the university of 761 students with a combined $3.1 million deficit across its general operating and housing funds. He said the lack of funds “allowed us no other options” but to reduce staffing this year.
“I ask that each member of our community remember that we are being forced to do less with less, and we will need to exhibit grace and practice patience with one another as we continue assessing our operations and as we approach the integration recommendation decision,” he wrote. “We need to be clear eyed and realize that what we have been able to support or accommodate in the past may not be able to occur this year.”
Brito was among the staff who lost jobs. She said the layoff was unusually abrupt, blindsiding the managers to whom she reports and leaving no time to plan for colleagues to take over her responsibilities, which include the logistical and fiscal work behind the school’s faculty development and study abroad programs.
“We immediately had to turn in our business cards, our keys. We were locked out of our emails. We had to turn in laptops, and we were escorted off campus immediately upon being notified that we were laid off,” she said.
That was a shift from past layoffs, Brito said, in which departing employees continued working until their layoff date and were celebrated in campuswide emails. This time around, she said, Brito and her colleagues will be paid out until their official layoff date in October, but they ceased working the same day they were notified.
There could also be implications for students. Part of Brito’s job had been the fiscal processing that allows Cal Maritime students who aren’t studying for a Coast Guard license to study abroad.
“Now my job is parceled out to people who don’t have the institutional knowledge of the program,” she said. “So I personally feel like our students are not going to get the best experience with me not supporting that program.”
This story has been updated to reflect that only Cal State Monterey Bay is using the incentive-based budget model.
A teach-in on Palestine at Cal State Long Beach on May 2, 2024.
Credit: Courtesy of Ben Huff
California State University, Long Beach is facing accusations that a policy limiting amplified sound on campus violates free speech rights and has been selectively enforced to single out faculty members who criticized the university.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California last Thursday sent a letter to campus leaders on behalf of two faculty members it said received notices warning that they violated the school’s sound amplification policies during a teach-in about Palestine last spring.
Cal State Long Beach regulations for devices like megaphones and microphones “are unconstitutional as written, and there is good reason to suspect that warnings … may have been issued because of disagreement with the professors’ political speech,” ACLU attorney Jonathan Markovitz wrote.
Cal State Long Beach spokesperson Jeff Cook said in a statement that the university respects “the perspectives expressed in the letter from the ACLU but (disagrees) with several of the characterizations made. As our review of the letter continues, we also reaffirm that campus policies related to ‘Time, Place and Manner’ are viewpoint-neutral.”
The confrontation at Cal State Long Beach highlights the potential for backlash as universities around the country place a new emphasis on rules around how, where and when people can assemble on their campuses this fall, a reaction to a wave of pro-Palestinian protests last spring. University officials frame revamped guardrails as promoting the peaceful exchange of ideas in continuation of past practices, but critics argue the restrictions will chill free speech.
The California State University Chancellor’s Office last month debuted a systemwide time, place and manner policy in response to legislation requiring schools in both the Cal State and University of California systems to notify students of free speech rules on their campuses at the start of the academic year.
Cal State Chancellor Mildred García additionally notified campus presidents in an Aug. 27 letter that activities like forming encampments and occupying buildings “are also prohibited by law and by systemwide directive.” García’s letter has sparked pushback from the California Faculty Association, which argues the university system is imposing new standards of employee conduct unilaterally, failing to give the faculty union an opportunity to bargain.
The ACLU letter was sent on behalf of professors Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, who in May co-wrote an article with four other Cal State Long Beach faculty members condemning the university’s ties to Boeing and other defense contractors.
“My understanding is that, while many faculty members used amplified sound while participating in the teach-in that provides the ostensible basis for the warning emails, the only faculty members who received these warnings (the Alimahomed-Wilsons, Araceli Esparza, Steven Osuna, Azza Basarudin) were the co-authors of the article,” Markovitz wrote. “I hope that this is mere coincidence, but the correlation is at least notable.”
The letter asks the university to stop enforcing its sound amplification restrictions and repeal them until they can be amended “to comport with constitutional requirements.”
The matter discussed in the ACLU letter stems from a May 2 teach-in held at the campus.
The student-organized demonstration started with a march from the school’s upper campus to its lower campus, where a group of hundreds gathered for a teach-in outside an administration building, the five professors named in the ACLU letter said in a group interview. They recalled that roughly eight to 12 speakers shared remarks using a megaphone or a microphone.
“The whole time, we had mic and megaphone problems,” Osuna said. “It wasn’t very loud. So that’s the part that’s really funny to me – we all kept on trying to tell people, ‘Can you hear us? Can you hear us?’”
Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson, Esparza and Basarudin shared remarks about why Palestine is a feminist issue, while Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Osuna gave a talk describing the university’s connections to Boeing. The latter presentation became the basis for an opinion piece the five professors and a colleague published on May 20 in the website Mondoweiss, which argued that the university’s close relationship with Boeing makes it complicit in the violence in Gaza.
The five professors said that on Aug. 19, the first day of the fall term, they each received emails notifying them that they had violated the time, place and manner policy and would risk formal written reprimand or other disciplinary action if they did not comply with it in the future.
“They waited all this time to send us this message on the first day of the semester,” Osuna said. “It’s kind of letting us know, ‘We have our eyes on you.’ That’s the feeling.”
Osuna said that a similar warning email sent to a sixth person was rescinded because there wasn’t evidence to show they had used a microphone.
A free speech argument
Markovitz argued in the letter addressed to Associate Vice President Patricia A. Pérez last week that Cal State Long Beach’s amplified sound policy is unconstitutional because regulations affecting speech must be narrowly tailored.
While some limits on amplified sound may be legitimate, he wrote, it is “clearly impermissible to require advance permission for any use of amplification anywhere on campus.” He argued that the campus’ volume limitations could be used to prohibit shouting or chanting without amplification, even if that is not the university’s intention. And he said the time limitations are “poorly written and unclear,” making it difficult to decipher when and where amplification is allowed.
“The policy’s lack of clarity is a serious problem in its own right, because it makes it impossible for members of the University community to know when they might be in violation of the policy, or when they will be denied permission for amplified sound,” Markovitz wrote. “The risk of arbitrary enforcement is especially pronounced because the policy provides no guidelines indicating when the required requests for advance permission will be granted or denied.”
Markovitz’s letter also expressed concerns that the university has not enforced its sound amplification consistently, but rather is using the policy to discriminate against faculty members based on their political views.
“The inference of viewpoint discrimination or retaliation is bolstered by my understanding that faculty have regularly used amplified sound at union rallies without obtaining advance permission, and without receiving warnings of (time, place and manner) violations later on,” Markovitz wrote. “Again, I hope that the apparent inconsistent application of the university’s amplification has been merely an honest mistake, but I am concerned that hope may not be justified.”
‘A fabric of our university’
Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson said she and other faculty who received the emails have used megaphones at previous teach-ins and protests, including an event following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
“Teach-ins have been a fabric of our university,” she said, “and have never been policed in these ways.”
“Our students see this, too,” Alimahomed-Wilson added. “So what does it mean when all our students are like, ‘Oh, those professors have gotten doxed over this. Now, those professors are getting criminalized over this. They’re getting charged.’”? I think the impact is really chilling.”
Alimahomed-Wilson and her colleagues said their support for student protesters is an extension of their duties as faculty members: research, teaching and service to students.
“We teach our students about justice, about the military-industrial complex, about settler-colonialism, and if we don’t speak out against what is happening right now, we’re not doing our job,” Basarudin said.
