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  • Parents of truant students won’t face jail, sanctions under new bill

    Parents of truant students won’t face jail, sanctions under new bill


    California showed progress in some areas, such as health insurance, school discipline and absenteeism.

    Allison Yin/EdSource

    Top takeaways
    • Bill seeks to repeal criminal misdemeanor offense of state’s truancy law
    • CalWORKs sanctions over student truancy would be replaced by screenings for resources and access to work program
    • Districts in recent years appear less likely to lean on punitive measure to address unexcused student absences

    In 2011, when criminal penalties were first tied to truancy, five parents in Orange County were arrested for their children’s truancy. Other counties similarly chose the punitive approach over the years, with Merced County initiating an anti-truancy push in 2017 that included the arrest of 10 parents. Those parents were charged with misdemeanors, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

    If a proposed bill is passed this legislative session, jail time and fines of up to $2,000 for parents of truant students could soon be eliminated in California.

    Assembly Bill 461, introduced by Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, D-Silicon Valley, would repeal the criminal misdemeanor offense of the existing truancy law, meaning that parents of truant students, 6 years of age or older, in grades 1-8, would no longer be punished by fines or up to a year in county jail.

    The bill proposes an additional change: families receiving cash assistance via the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program, known as CalWORKs, would no longer be penalized if a student aged 16 years or older is chronically truant. The current penalty requires that a truant child is removed from the calculation of the family’s monthly cash assistance.

    “Criminalizing parents for their children’s truancy ignores the root causes of absenteeism and only deepens family hardships,” said Ahrens in his author’s statement.

    Under the state’s truancy law, parents of habitually absent students were previously arrested, but it remains unclear how many cases resulted in criminal charges in the nearly 15 years since it went into effect.

    State law dictates that a district can declare a student truant and refer them to the district attorney after three unexcused absences of more than 30 minutes during one school year.

    Once a student’s case is referred to the district attorney, prosecutors have wide discretion over how to charge parents for their child’s truancy, from an infraction – akin to a traffic violation, to a misdemeanor – contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

    In California, the percentage of chronically absent students catapulted from the pre-pandemic rate of 12.1% in 2018-19 to 30% in 2021-22, as schools reopened for in-person instruction. The percentage has since dropped to about 20% in 2023-24, according to state data, though rates range widely across student groups.

    State education law lists over a dozen reasons for excusing students from school, but most excused absences are related to illness and mental health. Unexcused absences often mean that students lacked documentation such as a note from a doctor, or that they provided no reason for their absence, or that the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence, school officials say.

    Districts often try to avoid punitive measures

    There is no central repository tracking truancy cases, but EdSource found last year that school districts have increasingly gone to great lengths to avoid referring chronically truant students to the local district attorney. Instead, they opt for alternatives such as sending more notifications to parents after a student’s absence than what’s required by law, or scheduling multiple meetings between parents and school staff to better understand and address the underlying reasons for frequent absences.

    The decision by districts to lean into alternatives rather than available punitive measures is partly why Ahrens and AB 461’s supporters are pushing to change the law.

    “If we’re not prosecuting these cases…then why should we have this in the books? We don’t need the stick if everything else is already working to the benefit of our families,” said Yesenia Jimenez, senior policy associate at End Child Poverty CA, an advocacy organization that co-sponsored the bill.

    Eleven organizations have expressed support for the bill, with three of them co-sponsoring, and there is no listed opposition as of Monday.

    Early conversations about Assembly Bill 461 focused solely on the link between public benefits and chronic truancy, Jimenez said.

    CalWORKS provides cash assistance to families with unmet basic needs, such as housing, food, or medical care. Monthly grants range in amounts dependent on region, income, and the number of eligible family members, with the average monthly grant being about $1,000 during the 2024-25 fiscal year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

    Provisions of the proposed law

    AB 461 also proposes changes to the CalWORKS program, including:

    • Entirely eliminating the financial sanction on families if students are deemed truant
    • Making a family with a truant child eligible for family stabilization services and allowing a student 16 years or older to voluntarily participate in CalWORKS’ welfare-to-work program, so long as their participation supports and does not interfere with school attendance
    • Qualifying families for stabilization services if they’re undergoing homelessness, undertreated behavioral needs, and including individual or group therapy, temporary housing assistance and parenting education among the services they receive
    • Granting access to resources such as substance abuse services, vocational education, and mental health services to a truant student aged 16 years or older who opts into the welfare-to-work program

    Jimenez, whose team researched the sharp rise in chronic absenteeism at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, said they knew the rates were steadily decreasing each school year.

    While AB 461 began as a way to reform public benefits programs, the team behind the bill began to more heavily consider the criminal penalties families might face as a result of truancy once the Trump administration ramped up actions targeting immigrants, Jimenez shared.

    “Now we’re just facing a completely other beast in the sense that our families are afraid to go to school because we’re seeing (the Department of Homeland Security) show up at elementary schools attempting to deport families, and families have already been subject to deportation,” she said, referring to a case early this month when immigration officials seeking information about five students in first through sixth grades were denied entry at two Los Angeles Unified elementary schools.

    With the provisions of the proposed bill, supporters are looking to circumvent immigrant families from being penalized for school absences due to fear of immigration officials.

    In Southern California this month, an undocumented father was arrested while leaving home to drive his teenage daughter to school. Some advocates have compared the ordeal to the 2017 arrest of an undocumented father who similarly was detained by ICE during a morning school drop-off.

    “We don’t want (truancy) to be the reason why our families, who we’re trying to protect, could be essentially pipelined not only into the carceral system but certainly into the deportation system at this point in time,” said Jimenez.

    Some families opted to keep their children home from school early this year in Kern County after the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol arrested 78 people. At least 40 have been deported, according to a lawsuit filed in February.

    A bill signed into law last year requires changes to the truancy notifications sent to families by removing threatening language about punitive measures they might be subject to and instead opting for sharing resources about supportive services, including mental health resources.

    Advocates for AB 461 agree with the premise of the bill, said Jimenez, but they wish to go further in removing the potential for arrest.

    AB 461 most recently passed through the Committee on Human Services and on Tuesday will be heard by the Committee on Public Safety.





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  • How to balance the health and educational needs of chronically ill students 

    How to balance the health and educational needs of chronically ill students 


    Credit: Alison Yin/EdSource

    Any parent or teacher who has worked with a seriously ill child knows how difficult it is to meet the child’s educational, physical and emotional needs all at once. 

    Melanie Brady, a lecturer at USC’s Rossier School of Education, suggests that parents and teachers can improve the lives and schooling of sick students in Los Angeles as long as they realize the uniqueness of each child and understand that there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach to balancing both a student’s health and their education during formative K-12 years. 

    Students with chronic conditions or who are going through difficult periods of treatment often don’t have the best options to pursue their education. But here are some steps Brady suggests both parents and teachers can take. 

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

    What kinds of options are there on a traditional school campus to support students who are sick? 

    It varies depending on the (grade level), ability and performance and needs. So, I think that if a parent finds themselves in a situation, they want to plan ahead and contact the teacher — and also plan ahead and ask the doctors or the nurses for resources.

    You want to talk to the school and see what’s available. Sometimes, people who have long-term health conditions already will have a 504 plan in place, or an IEP (individualized education program). When those are not in place and something takes somebody by surprise, that’s where the process needs to be initiated. 

    What kinds of options are there if a student can’t pursue their education on a traditional campus? 

    If a person, the parent, needs more support for their student, see if (the school or district has) a liaison. Sometimes, the hospitals will also have a liaison, usually in the form of a nurse or social worker. If it’s a larger hospital, they will have a schoolroom. They will have some teachers. They will have a process to try to help collaborate with the home studies. 

    There are (also) home school options that sometimes the schools will collaborate with for independent study, especially with teenagers. That’s a helpful thing. 

    There are also California Virtual Academies. And they are set up with the whole academic public education that’s similar to the L.A. schools and the public schools throughout the state. There are several different options to take a look at, but working within the current setting is probably the best place to start for any parent or student, especially when the difficulties or the challenges that are upcoming are new.  

    What types of pedagogy are most effective in working with students who are enduring chronic medical conditions?  

    One of the things is actually really simple, and I actually found it on the California Department of Education website, and they have articulated just a basic goal that’s kind of broad but important: working with that individual child and what they can do and trying to help them not to lose ground.

    But then you have these different dynamics that require flexibility, because if the condition changes, if they’re in the hospital, there’s timing of treatment. They’re not going to be able to be in a room or have bedside teaching when certain things are going on. 

    Some people may not be able to leave their bed. That’s where bedside teaching is going to be helpful, and also to engage with students (in) conversation, because the longer they’re in the hospital, the more prone they are to depression. There (are also) things to do to ameliorate that for those students, to try to bring them together. 

    They have different educational needs, especially in that environment. And you can’t do teaching like you can all at once in a K-12 classroom. 

    How do educational approaches vary across age groups when it comes to working with sick students? 

    When we’re looking at the younger children, we really want to make sure they have significant playtime. Playtime is so important to the development of their minds and their brains. There’s a lot of learning that goes on there. There’s stress relief that goes on there.

    Part of it is to be aware of what the typical development is, but also where a child is, because I think that they’re already in a distressing social- emotional space. So, moving forward from where they are is what’s important — and not comparing them to others. I don’t think we have to look so far to see that once they get to double digits (in age), with some of the social media platforms, how negatively impacted they can be because of those comparisons.

    It really needs to be a building-them-up kind of thing, because when a student feels like they have at least one area where they can do well, and one thing to be self-confident about in terms of their skill sets, I think that goes a long way to helping somebody feel like they have something that’s of value out in the world. A kid might be really good at chess. Somebody might be good at math, not good at language. Somebody might be good at art, but maybe struggles with some of the other subjects. (Finding) something that people are good at, and helping them be good at that thing, can go a long way for helping them with their identity development and forming of themselves.

    How can dealing with ongoing treatment affect students’ mental health? 

    Not only do you want to try to maintain the current level of education and help with the focus on school as a recovery, (but students also) fall behind with friendships. They’re not in their usual environment. They’re removed from things they knew before. They have lost autonomy. And then, there can also be, because of these spaces, the accelerating of maturity, so there’s these individual thought responses in terms of behavior within these spaces.  

    The other problems that can happen in this space is with the emotional struggles, the social-emotional difficulties that can impede your working memory. It can make it difficult to focus. A person may or may not have learning difficulties or learning disabilities, but it certainly could highlight or accentuate some of those struggles and make it a little bit difficult. 

    And, the thing that we want to try to help them with is to prevent that risk of not engaging with school because of their absence. We want to help support that so that there’s as little fallout as possible for them as they hopefully are adjusting back to home life and some real normalcy and in getting back into being present in a physical school environment. 

    What are the most important things educators and schools need to understand about working with students who are dealing with serious medical conditions?

    I don’t think there’s an environment today where anybody (working with these students) feels like they’re underworked. I think we all feel a little bit stressed and stretched out very thin. And, I think there are a lot of accountability measures that we try to use to make sure that we’re doing our due diligence, but I think sometimes they can fall short. 

    Let’s say there’s a situation that needs some attention, there’s some support that’s being asked for. These students who have any of these needs hear “no” so often. There are so many no’s, there are so many struggles. It’s quite a weight of discouragement. In that space, anytime I can say yes, because they’ve been told no so often, I want to be able to say, “Yeah, we can take a look at modifying that assignment.” Yes, we can take a look at what might help the students out in terms of social-emotional support.

    Modifying assignments for students becomes very cumbersome. But if we could just realize the enormous impact that we have every day on everybody and take that extra minute or that extra situation and say yes and help somebody, that can be really powerful.





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  • What rights do immigrant students and families have in California schools and colleges? | Quick Guide

    What rights do immigrant students and families have in California schools and colleges? | Quick Guide


    Two students share a bench during lunch at Rudsdale Newcomer High School in Oakland.

    Anne Wernikoff for EdSource

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    In the first months of the first Trump administration in 2017, a father in Los Angeles was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after dropping his 12-year-old daughter off at school.

    The ripple effect was immediate.

    “Right away there was a drop in attendance in L.A. schools because parents were thinking, ‘Oh, if I drop off my kids, ICE is going to pick me up,’” said Ana Mendoza, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Southern California and director of the organization’s Education Equity Project. “The need for safety and sanctuary policies became really salient because students weren’t going to schools or families were tentative about their participation in schools.”

    In the wake of this year’s presidential election, there is again widespread uncertainty among immigrant families in California about what is to come, given President-elect Donald Trump’s promises of mass deportation.

    State Attorney General Rob Bonta recently released updated guidelines and model policies about what K-12 schools, colleges and universities can and cannot do under state and federal law, regarding keeping immigrant students and families’ data private, when to allow an immigration enforcement officer on campus, how to respond to the detention or deportation of a student’s family member, and how to respond to bullying or harassment of a student based on immigration status.

    The original guidelines and policies were released in 2018 by then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra, after California passed Assembly Bill 699, requiring schools to pass policies that limited collaboration with immigration enforcement. Bonta is now asking schools to update their policies.

    “School districts should be examining what their board policies are and to make sure they’re updated and take any measures to make sure that families feel safe,” Mendoza said.

    An estimated 1 in 10, or 1 million, children in California have at least one undocumented parent. And about 133,000 children in California public schools are undocumented themselves, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

    In California’s colleges and universities, an estimated 86,800 students are undocumented, and about 6,800 employees in TK-12 schools, colleges and universities have temporary work permits and protection from deportation under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

    “Undocumented students and faculty and staff are afraid for their safety, and this will impact their retention and enrollment in higher education if they’re not feeling safe or they’re feeling targeted,” said Luz Bertadillo, director of campus engagement for the Presidents’ Alliance for Higher Education and Immigration, a national organization of college and university leaders. “For campuses to have a strong stance on what they’re doing to support undocumented students is important, or at least letting their students know they’re thinking about them and they’re taking action. Even though they cannot guarantee their safety, at least they’re taking those initiatives to safeguard.”

    What rights do immigrant students and family members have at school and college, regardless of their immigration status?

    The right to attend public school 

    All children present in the United States, regardless of immigration status, have a right to attend public school. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Plyler v. Doe that states cannot deny students a free, public education based on their immigration status or their parents or guardians’ immigration status. Some states — including California in 1994 with Proposition 187 — and school districts have since attempted to pass laws that would either deny enrollment to students who did not have valid immigration status or report their status to authorities, but all these laws have been struck down by courts.

    California schools are not allowed to request or collect information about Social Security numbers, immigration status or U.S. citizenship when enrolling students. Students and parents do not have to answer questions from schools about their immigration status, citizenship or whether they have a Social Security number.

    “This often comes up in requests for student documents,” Mendoza said. “I had an intake once where a parent gave a passport during enrollment, and the front office person was asking the parent for a visa. No. The school has no right to ask for documents about your citizenship or immigration status.”

    Schools can ask for some information like a student’s place of birth, when they first came to the U.S. or attended school in the U.S., in order to determine whether a student is eligible for special federal or state programs for recently arrived immigrant students or English learners. However, parents are not required to give schools this information, and schools cannot use this information to prevent children from enrolling in school. The Office of the Attorney General suggests that schools should collect this information separately from enrolling students.

    Privacy of school records

    The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, restricts schools from sharing students’ personal information in most cases with other agencies or organizations, including federal immigration authorities. The law requires that schools get a parent or guardian’s consent before releasing any student information to another agency or organization, or if the student is 18 or older, schools must get consent from the student.

    However, in some cases, schools may be required to provide information without consent in response to a court order or judicial subpoena.

    Colleges are also restricted from sharing information except in certain cases. Bertadillo said her organization recommends that college leaders have conversations with all the different departments that might manage information about students’ or families’ immigration status, such as information technology, admissions, registrar, and financial aid, to review their practices for storing or sharing the data.

    “We hear some campuses have citizenship status on their transcripts and those transcripts get sent to graduate schools, to jobs, and that’s essentially outing students,” Bertadillo said.

    She said it’s important for colleges and schools to pass or revisit procedures about what to do if immigration officials ask for data or attempt to enter a campus.

    “A lot of institutions created them back in Trump 1.0. We’re recommending they reaffirm or revisit them, so that the campus knows that this is in place,” Bertadillo said.

    Safe haven at school

    The Department of Homeland Security has designated schools and colleges as protected areas where immigration enforcement should be avoided as much as possible. President-elect Trump has said he may rescind this policy.

    In the event that ICE officers do enter schools or ask to question students, the attorney general’s guidelines say school staff should ask officers for a judicial warrant. Without a judicial warrant, school staff are not required to give an ICE officer permission to enter the school or conduct a search, or to provide information or records about a student or family, the guidelines say.

    A bill introduced by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond would establish a “safe zone” of 1 mile around schools and prohibit schools from allowing ICE to enter a campus or share information without a judicial warrant.

    Under California law, schools must notify parents or guardians if they release a student to a law-enforcement officer, except in cases of suspected child abuse or neglect.

    California law does not require schools to notify parents or guardians before law enforcement officers question a child at school, but it does not prohibit schools from notifying them either. California’s attorney general suggests that school districts and charter schools should create policies that require notification of parents or guardians before a law enforcement officer questions or removes a student, unless that officer has a judicial warrant or court order.

    In addition, the attorney general says if a police officer or immigration agent tries to enter a school or talk to a student for purposes of immigration enforcement, the superintendent or principal should e-mail the Bureau of Children’s Justice in the California Department of Justice.

    “Schools should retrain their staff on their visitor management policies, to make sure everyone who comes onto campus, including law enforcement, is questioned about what their purpose is, and that school staff is trained on what to do if law enforcement asks to see information about students or staff,” said Mendoza.

    Support from school if a family member is detained or deported

    If a student reports that their parents or guardians were detained or deported, California law requires that the school must follow parents’ instructions about whom to contact in an emergency. The attorney general’s guidance says “schools should not contact Child Protective Services unless the school is unsuccessful in arranging for the care of the child through the emergency contact information.”

    The guidance also suggests that schools should help students and family members contact legal assistance, their consulate, and help them locate their detained family members through ICE’s detainee locator system.

    Mendoza said it is important to note that if a student’s parents are detained or deported, and as a result they have to go live with another family member, at that point, they are eligible for support for homeless students under the federal McKinney-Vento Act.

    Protection from discrimination and harassment

    Federal law prohibits discrimination and harassment based on race, national origin, color, sex, age, disability and religion. California’s law AB 699 also made immigration status a protected characteristic, meaning that schools are required to have policies that prohibit discrimination, harassment and bullying based on immigration status.

    Mendoza said it’s important for families and students who experience bullying or harassment to know they can submit complaints through their schools or to different agencies in California. “There are advocates out there willing to support them if their schools do not act in accordance with best practices or with the law,” Mendoza said.

    Free lunch, subsidized child care and special education

    In California, all students have a right to a free school lunch, since the 2022-23 school year. In addition, some students whose families are considered low-income qualify for subsidized child care, either all day for infants and preschoolers, or after school for school-age children. Students with disabilities have a right to special education to meet their needs, under federal law.

    Immigrant families are often afraid to apply for public services because they are worried this will count against them when applying for permanent residency. This is largely due to the “public charge” test, which immigration officers use to determine whether green-card applicants are likely to depend on public benefits. 

    Currently, immigration officers can only consider whether applicants have used cash assistance for income, like SSI or CalWORKs, or long-term institutionalized care paid for by public insurance, such as Medi-Cal. They do not consider school lunch, child care or food stamps. And officers are not allowed to look at whether applicants’ family members, like U.S. citizen children, use public benefits. During the first Trump administration, the president changed this policy to include family members and some other benefits. It is unclear whether he may attempt to change this again in the future. However, even under the changes during his first term, school lunch and child care were not included.

    In-state tuition and scholarships for college

    Under the California Dream Act, undocumented students qualify for in-state tuition and state financial aid at California colleges and universities if they attended high school for three or more years or attained credits at community college or adult school and graduated from high school or attained an associate degree or finished minimum transfer requirements at a California community college. The number of students applying for the California Dream Act has plummeted in recent years.





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  • ‘Students are scared’: Border Patrol raids fuel fear in schools

    ‘Students are scared’: Border Patrol raids fuel fear in schools


    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.

    Delano is a rural community approximately 40 miles north of Bakersfield that is heavily populated by immigrants and farmworkers. The deaths of two residents fleeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in 2018, after dropping their daughter off at high school, led to community protests against ICE.

    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.”





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  • How federal cuts are already affecting disabled students in California

    How federal cuts are already affecting disabled students in California


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

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    TOP TAKEAWAYS
    • Federal cuts are directly impacting programs designed to support students with disabilities in their transition to adulthood and programs that train special education teachers.
    • These cuts have caused significant concern from advocates and educators for disabled students.
    • Regional special education administrators in California are calling on Congress to rescind the cuts and for the state to fill the gap in the meantime.

    Jake, a 17-year-old junior, is beginning to think about life after he graduates from Mt. Carmel High School in San Diego County. 

    This is a daunting task for any teen, but his mother, Angela, says it’s been especially thorny for Jake, who is on the autism spectrum, has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and struggles with anxiety. 

    The prospect of getting a job one day soon has made him “suicidal,” said Angela, who asked not to share her family’s last name to protect her son’s privacy about his diagnoses. She said her son has told her, “I’m going to be homeless; I won’t get a job.”

    So Angela was thrilled when Jake was accepted into a new program at his school, Charting My Path for Future Success, which helps students with disabilities navigate into adulthood. In late January, Jake began to meet with a caseworker who seemed to understand his needs. At the time, Angela thought, “My prayers have been answered,” she said.

    That changed on Feb. 12, when Jake’s school district, Poway Unified, received a notice that the Trump administration had cut funding for the grant behind Charting My Path for Future Success.

    “We don’t have a clear understanding of why this decision was made or why this particular grant program was cut so suddenly,” said Stacey McCrath-Smith, director of special education at Poway Unified. “It was very upsetting to our staff. It was hard to explain to families and parents.”

    An email from the U.S. Department of Education said the grant was “deemed to be inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” Representatives from the department did not respond to questions from EdSource.

    Educators and disability advocates in California are raising the alarm about federal cuts that are already affecting programs that support students with disabilities. That includes research like Charting My Path for Future Success, but also cuts to special education teacher training. 

    The disability advocacy community is in defense mode, said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy for The Arc, a national advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

    “There are many, many pieces that we’re concerned about,” Linscott said.

    Linscott and other advocates for disabled students worry that other Trump administration proposals, such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and cutting Medicaid, could further harm disabled students. But some cuts have already taken effect.

    The morning after the district was told its grant funding was cut off, Poway Unified notified four teachers being trained to help disabled teens transition to adulthood that they would immediately be reassigned to other positions in the district. This is despite early signs of success, such as one nonverbal student who had become highly engaged in sessions about career planning in a way he had never been in academic classes, McCrath-Smith said. 

    Jake will no longer receive training to help prepare him for college and employment. Now he will not receive mentoring or lessons on goal-setting, finding an apartment and other skills. His mother said he struggles with real-world topics like banking or how a resume works. She’s been looking for alternatives, but is unsure how her son will find help for his unique needs.

    “It was like a gut punch,” Angela said.

    Educators’ worries extend beyond the 420 students in California, including students at Sweetwater Union High and Mt. Diablo Unified school districts, who were a part of the national study.

    “The recent and abrupt elimination of critical funding and research developments will significantly impact important ongoing special education research and services to students, not only in our member [local education agencies], but in others who would ultimately benefit from the results of their research,” according to a letter written on behalf of the SELPA (Special Education Local Plan Area) Administrators of California, California County Superintendents, the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education and the three districts hit by the cuts. 

    The March 21 letter calls on Congress to compel the U.S. Department of Education to reverse its decision, and for the California Legislature to bridge the immediate funding gap of $2.8 million for this “vital” special education research.

    A lawsuit filed on behalf of researchers against the U.S. Department of Education this month challenged whether the executive branch has the constitutional power to cut nearly $900 million from the Institute of Education Sciences. The suit called the department’s actions “dramatic, unreasoned and unlawful,” noting that the canceled grants left students with disabilities “in the lurch, with no time or help to even transition out of the Charting My Path Program.”

    Cuts to special education teacher training

    The Trump administration also abruptly terminated $600 million in federal teacher training grants, including programs to address the acute shortage of special education teachers who work with California’s nearly 840,000 students with disabilities.

    Three SELPAs in the state reported losing funding to create a pipeline of special education teachers, according to a March 25 letter sent to California state and federal legislators on behalf of the affected districts, SELPA Administrators of California and California County Superintendents.

    Under these cuts, the Tulare County SELPA reported that it will lose about $10 million, San Diego’s South County SELPA will lose $4.1 million and the West San Gabriel SELPA will lose up to $650,000. Those cuts are in limbo now as they’re also being challenged in court.

    Teacher shortages can impede the education of students with disabilities, said Tamara Schiern, executive director of the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA. When districts are unable to fill openings for these positions, they either hire teachers who are not fully credentialed or long-term substitutes. 

    According to a federal survey, there’s both a state and nationwide shortage of teachers with the appropriate special education credentials, with 40% of districts reporting in 2020-21 that they struggled to staff special education roles.

    The West San Gabriel Valley SELPA typically has 30 vacancies to fill each year in its 14 districts, and it would struggle to find credentialed teachers for eight to 12 of them, Schiern said.

    In one example, Schiern said a string of long-term substitute teachers was covering a class of elementary school students with autism. Parents complained, and then the district, which she declined to disclose, asked the SELPA for help. The agency was able to help set the classroom up and model instructional strategies, but when a new substitute teacher came in, the agency had to start from scratch again.

    “That’s what a teacher shortage looks like on the ground,” Schiern said.

    This is why the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA began a program to train teacher residents specifically in special education. Funding came from state and district sources, but districts with high-need students received federal reimbursement for their share. This year, the program supported 27 teacher residents; ultimately, the goal was to cover 40 residents. 

    But federal cuts to the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant mean that the annual stipend for the residents will be slashed from $37,000 to $27,000; the coordinator for the program was cut, and only half the number of teacher residents can be supported, Schiern said.

    In the meantime, the letter from special education administrators and superintendents asks California’s congressional delegation to pressure the U.S. Department of Education to reinstate the funding and the state legislators to cover the $14.9 million shortfall.

    “The sudden loss of federal funding for teacher residency grant programs will have a significant and profound impact on an already fragile system,” reads the letter.

    The San Gabriel Valley is a community that is ethnically and racially diverse, with a large population of immigrants and English learners. The region’s SELPA looks to parents and paraprofessionals to recruit special education teachers who can reflect that demographic diversity, Schiern said, adding that representation matters in education for both students and parents — a point backed by research. 

    This made the program attractive for California to fund, but it also may have made the program a target for the Trump administration, which has canceled contracts for programs that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.

    “I can’t help but feel that that could be part of the issue,” Schiern said. “A lot of what California does is at odds with the federal government right now.”

    We want to hear from you

    A new administration always brings change, and education is once again at the center of the national conversation. As we track these developments, we want to hear from you. What policies are you interested in reading about? What questions do you have about how federal decisions might shape education in California? How will this change affect disabled students in California?

    Your input will help inform our coverage.





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  • For former foster care students, college help exists long after exiting the system

    For former foster care students, college help exists long after exiting the system


    Deborah Vanessa Lopez, left, is a program manager that works with students formerly in the foster system at Rio Hondo College. She has worked with Faylen Bush, right, who is set to transfer out of Rio Hondo College this year.

    Credit: Faylen Bush and Deborah Vanessa Lopez

    When Faylen Bush returned to college in 2023 after being laid off from work, he planned to pursue construction management to build on the skill set he had acquired over several years in that field as a concrete carpenter and protect himself from future layoffs.

    He was married and had three young children, and he had little time to spare as he pursued a more stable future for his family. He knew that to succeed in college, he needed to remain more focused on his career goals than he was when he had been in college about a decade earlier, when he was first entering adulthood after leaving the foster system amid a cycle of housing instability and juvenile detention.

    Faylen Bush

    And so, when a program at his school, Rio Hondo College in Los Angeles County, reached out to Bush with resources for students with experience in the foster system, he paid little attention. He was unsure that the resources would apply to him at all because he was in his early thirties.

    But the program, Guardian Scholars, was persistent. They tried to reach him multiple times until he finally decided to go to their office and learn more. He learned that Guardian Scholars is a chapter-based organization across California’s college campuses that supports students who have foster care experience. It is an organization that, since its inception in 1998 at Cal State Fullerton, has sought to increase college enrollment, retention, and graduation rates among former foster youth as a pathway toward overall stability in their lives.

    “I can honestly say that stepping into the office, sitting with Deborah, and having that conversation opened up a whole world of opportunities for me,” said Bush of his first meeting with Guardian Scholars staff.

    “Deborah” is Deborah Lopez, a Guardian Scholars program manager. She and her team connect students with access to counselors who are trained to support former foster youth, grants to purchase textbooks, meal vouchers, on-campus jobs, access to conferences to further students’ professional networks, and more.

    “Our students experience a tremendous amount of trauma even if it was one day or 15 years of their life” in foster care, Lopez said. This thinking serves as the foundation for their program: They extend support to every single Rio Hondo College student with experience in the foster system, no matter when or how long their experience was.

    Bush said he is aware of the statistics he is up against given his upbringing. According to a national 2020 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, far fewer students with experience in foster care have a bachelor’s degree — nearly 5% for men and about 9% for women, than students without foster experience, about 31% for men and close to 36% for women.

    Deborah Lopez

    These rates persist despite several studies showing that the majority of current and former foster youth report an interest in attending and graduating from college.

    But Lopez knows the statistics of the students who have received support targeted to their foster care background. For example, across the California community colleges, students are more likely to enroll in credit-bearing courses and to remain enrolled in school if they are enrolled in foster-specific support programs, according to a 2021 report from John Burton Advocates for Youth, an influential nonprofit that advocates for California’s homeless and foster youth.

    “One of the things that has worked for us as a program is consistency,” said Lopez, who has worked with the program for nearly a decade.

    While many of their students have graduated and transferred from Rio Hondo, some have needed to cut back on classes or drop out altogether. “But eventually, they come back, and we’re here,” said Lopez.

    With the support he has received, Bush has not only remained on track to transfer to a four-year university later this year — he has applied to several Cal State and University of California schools, though he is particularly interested in UCLA. His career goal has also changed in the year-and-a-half since he returned to school. He is now pursuing psychology and a career in counseling, and, while the career change might seem abrupt, it’s a return to the goals he had about a decade ago.

    Foster youth also need a blueprint

    As Bush tells it, the consistent instability throughout his childhood played a critical role in how his life unfolded as he entered adulthood.

    “The system is trying to help … and it’s providing homes, but I still feel like a necessary component is to provide that blueprint for success after you age out,” said Bush of the foster system.

    He went on to describe the blueprint that a teenager without foster experience might have: If their parents went to college, they might also attend college; if their parents were part of the workforce, they might decide to pursue a similar path after high school.

    “Someone who has experienced the foster system, they don’t have that blueprint and, sadly, the statistics show there’s a small percentage of success stories,” he added.

    He was around 10 years old when both of his parents died, leaving him and his sister in the foster system. Their maternal grandmother was near them in Lancaster, a city in northern Los Angeles County, but she was caring for her own young children plus some of her grandchildren and couldn’t take them in.

    They remained in foster placement for two years until an aunt in Louisiana reached out and requested they be placed with her.

    Thus began Bush’s experience with kinship in which a child in foster care is placed with a family member. He was living with family once again, but his life was no more stable than before.

    “I can honestly say she tried her best, but she didn’t really have the resources to fully cater to our needs. To her it was more like, OK, you guys live with me now,’ and that’s it,” Bush said. “But there was trauma that needed to be addressed. There was, for both of us, abandonment issues that needed to be addressed.”

    By the time he was 14, Bush was regularly suspended from school, eventually missing enough days to become truant and land in juvenile detention.

    “That set a course for me, going in and out of juvenile corrections,” he said. He continued getting into trouble, eventually spending over a year inside.

    Once released at 16, he returned to his aunt’s home, but he had developed resentment toward her because she had not visited him during his time inside. He learned that she continued receiving payment as he was still officially under her care, and so began a cycle of housing instability as he began to stay at friends’ homes and hotel rooms rather than sleep at his aunt’s home.

    To route the payment to himself and pay for housing, Bush figured out how to emancipate himself at 17. It’s a process that Lopez noted few of their students go through given its difficulty.

    Bush knew he had a path forward: football. After his time in juvenile detention, his football coach continued to invest in him, sending him to university training camps. But his behavior landed him in trouble again, and he was in a fight so bad during the summer going into his senior year of high school that the coach ended the relationship.

    “I would always wind up in situations where I’m in trouble. I always used to ask myself when I was in front of the principal, when I was in front of the judge, ‘Why am I here?’ said Bush, reflecting on his youth. “And then I learned over time, it’s the decisions that I’m making.”

    “Before, there were a lot of things that were happening that were out of my control,” he continued. He slowly learned there were things he had control over, such as his path toward emancipation, but without the proper, stable guidance of an adult through his upbringing, he was often unclear on how to properly use that newfound power.

    Unable to play football after the fight, he reached out to a former foster parent in California who agreed to take him in so he could start fresh in his home state.

    With his high school requirements complete, he attended Southwest College in Los Angeles, playing football for the team and eventually landing a scholarship to continue playing the sport in Oklahoma.

    He had dreams of continuing his studies in psychology, eventually earning a doctorate in the field and becoming a school counselor.

    But the pressure of supporting his family took center stage once he and his now-wife had their first child, so he declined his university scholarship. “It was such a big transition at that time, and I felt the need to support my family,” said Bush.

    From then through the fall of 2023, Bush worked odd jobs and eventually secured stable work in the construction industry as he and his wife had two more children. His return to school was prompted by his layoff, but he was also keenly aware of the harsh reality of working in such a physically demanding field.

    “The longevity for a Black carpenter isn’t that long. I have to figure out how I’m going to maneuver within this industry so that I can make it for at least 15 years,” he said of his thinking at the time.

    It wasn’t long after landing in the Guardian Scholars office that he began thinking more deeply about his goals. What began as a return to school to secure job stability in a field he’d entered solely to provide for his family has since become a path back to the goals Bush had long before he had the level of support he has found with Lopez and her team at Guardian Scholars.

    “My daughters and my son,” he said. “I feel they are the best thing out of my whole life. I’m trying to put myself in a position where I can be the best example and the best provider for them. I know now, at 33, with all my life experiences, this is what seems clearest to me.”





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  • How Oakland Unified is helping immigrant students fill education gaps

    How Oakland Unified is helping immigrant students fill education gaps


    Teacher Shannon Darcey helps a student interpret a graph.

    Zaidee Stavely / EdSource

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    In her home country of Guatemala, Maribel attended a one-room schoolhouse for two years, but the teacher was often absent, causing class to be canceled. She never learned how to read. The school closed during Covid, and she never returned to class until last year, when she moved to Oakland.

    Now 11 and enrolled in middle school, she is learning English and at the same time filling gaps in her education — how to read, interpret graphs and acquire other skills she never learned before.

    Maribel’s school, Urban Promise Academy, is one of four middle and high schools in Oakland trying out a new curriculum developed just for students who did not attend school for years in their home countries. School staff asked EdSource to only use middle names to identify students because they are recent immigrants. There is heightened fear among immigrant students and families because of the Trump administration’s promises to ramp up immigration enforcement.

    In Maribel’s classroom, though, no fear was palpable. Instead, there was joy.

    On one recent morning in her English class, Maribel and her peers were analyzing graphs showing favorite colors, favorite foods, favorite sports and home languages among students in a class. They were practicing marking the x-axis and y-axis, pronouncing numbers in English and talking about what the graphs meant.

    “How many students like pizza?” asked teacher Shannon Darcey.

    “Eight students like pizza,” responded a student.

    Teacher Shannon Darcey teaches new immigrant students skills like interpreting graphs at the same time as they learn English.
    Zaidee Stavely / EdSource

    About 3,300 students in Oakland Unified this school year — close to 10% of the total student population — immigrated from other countries in the last three years. Of those, at least 600 had more than two years in which they did not attend school in their home countries. These students are often referred to as students with interrupted formal education, or SIFE.

    The reasons students missed school vary. Some lived in rural communities far from schools, for example. For others, it was dangerous to attend school because of gang violence or war in their communities. Other students simply had to work.

    When students haven’t yet mastered academic reading, writing, or math in their home language, they have a lot more to learn in order to grasp middle or high-school level material, even as they are learning English. But if the materials or curriculum are designed for younger students, it can be boring or seem too childish for teenagers.

    Before this school year, Darcey taught English to recent immigrant students with a huge range of academic knowledge. Some students were reading at seventh or eighth grade level in Spanish, for example, while others could not read at all. She remembers some students being frustrated.

    “I had one kid … Every single day for six months, he was like, ‘I can’t read. Why are you giving me this?’” Darcey said. “He felt like, ‘Everyone else in here knows what is happening, and I have no idea what this is. Why are you telling me to have a book in my hands?’”

    For years, Darcey tried to access curriculum designed especially for students who have had big gaps in schooling. She had heard about a curriculum called Bridges, developed by researchers at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. But when she tried to get materials from them, she was told they were only available for teachers in New York.

    Julie Kessler, director of newcomer and English language learner programs in Oakland Unified, said many teachers she has worked with in Oakland Unified and San Francisco Unified were frustrated at not being able to access the Bridges curriculum.

    “And so it’s like, who’s got a bootleg copy of it?” Kessler said. “And it’s just been inaccessible to the field.”

    She said she has often seen students with big gaps in schooling disengaged in class.

    “They are experiencing sometimes an alternate assignment, sometimes sitting with like a Disney book or a children’s book, when even the scaffolded newcomer curriculum is inaccessible to them,” Kessler said. “We were seeing a lot of that because teachers didn’t have a way to connect them to what was happening.”

    Last year, though, Kessler was able to secure funding from the California Department of Social Services’ California Newcomer Education and Well-Being program, to develop a new curriculum considering the needs of Oakland’s newcomer population and aligned to the California English Language Development standards. She worked with some of the authors of the Bridges curriculum, who now have an organization called the SIFE Equity Project.

    The resulting Curriculum for SIFE Equity is open source, available to all teachers anywhere on the internet. And Kessler said there are teachers in San Rafael, Elk Grove, San Diego and Vista using it, in addition to Oakland. Outside of California, the curriculum is also being used in New York City and Prince William County, Virginia.

    “We’re hearing a lot of gratitude from teachers who are like, ‘Oh my God, finally something that I can use with this group of students that feels worthy of their time, that feels respectful of them and feels like it’s doing the skill building that we know that they need,’” Kessler said.

    The curriculum currently includes about 50 days of instruction — less than a third of a school year. Kessler said the district is now trying to get more funding from the Department of Social Services to develop a full 180 days, so it can be used for a full school year.

    Darcey said the curriculum has made a huge difference. She now has separate English classes just for students who have gaps in their education.

    A student’s “identity map,” used to organize information that will later be used in a slideshow.
    Zaidee Stavely / EdSource

    The class began the school year with a unit on identity. Studens learned how to say their names, how old they are, where they are from, what language they speak. They later put together “identity maps” with their name in the middle, and information about their hometowns, their ages, their responsibilities, families and what they like to eat and do for fun written in spokes all around. Then they created slideshows with the information and added photos.

    Fourteen-year-old Anallely’s map shows that she likes salad, fish and marimba music, that she speaks the indigenous language Mam in addition to Spanish, and her hometown is in the mountains and forest of Guatemala, where it is hot and rainy.

    Anallely only attended school in her hometown until third grade. After that, she stopped going so she could work with her father, planting and harvesting coffee on a farm. 

    She said she had never learned about graphs or maps to organize information before coming to school in Oakland. 

    “It’s very useful, because you can use them to define how many people like something or which is their favorite, or where they are from,” she said in Spanish.

    She hopes to someday become a doctor to help babies and people who are sick. She’d also like to travel the world.

    Most of Darcey’s students are new to reading in any language, so Darcey also works with them in small groups to teach them letter sounds, and how to sound out syllables and one-syllable words like tap, nap and sat, using a curriculum called UFLI Foundations, adapted for recent immigrant students by teachers at Oakland International High School.

    Teacher Shannon Darcey works with new immigrant students on sounding out syllables.
    Zaidee Stavely / EdSource

    Another student, Arturo, never attended school in his life until he enrolled at Urban Promise Academy at 14 years old.

    “In previous years, a kid like that in my class, I would’ve felt like, ‘Oh my God, they’re like totally lost, and it feels like they’re just sitting there 80% of the time,’” Darcey said. But she doesn’t feel that way about Arturo. “He is engaged, he’s trying. Can he read the words on the page yet? No. But he’s still able to follow what’s happening.”

    Darcey is grateful to work with these students.

    “They bring such an eagerness and excitement, a willingness to try new things that maybe other kids their age are not as enthusiastic about,” Darcey said. “They often bring a work ethic that I think can really help a lot of them be successful in school.”

    Giving these students skills to navigate the world is important, Darcey said, because they are already part of our society. 

    “We’re going to prepare them to be successful in their lives,” she said.

    Maribel, the student who only attended two years of school in Guatemala, said she was afraid to come to school in the U.S. at first, but now she looks forward to it.

    “The teacher speaks some Spanish and she always helps us if we need anything,” Maribel said. “I can write some words in English now, and I’m writing more in Spanish, too. And I’m learning to read.”

    A previous version of this article incorrectly named the literacy curriculum Darcey uses as SIPPS. She uses UFLI Foundations.





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  • Cal State unveils artificial intelligence tools for students

    Cal State unveils artificial intelligence tools for students


    Credit: Pexels.com

    California State University (CSU) will make generative artificial intelligence technologies like ChatGPT available to students, staff and faculty across its 23 campuses at no personal cost to them in anticipation that AI will reshape higher education and the state’s workforce.

    Seeking to train students in AI skills and boost their career prospects, CSU will also be part of a new body, called the AI Workforce Acceleration Board, according to an announcement Tuesday at San Jose State University. That panel will include CSU academic leaders and representatives from the governor’s office as well as firms like Microsoft, IBM and artificial-intelligence chip manufacturer Nvidia.

    “This initiative will elevate the CSU student experience, enhancing student success with personalized and future-focused learning tools across all fields of study, and preparing our increasingly AI-driven workforce,” Chancellor Mildred García said at a news conference.

    The AI Workforce Acceleration Board will aim to ensure that CSU students are prepared for AI-related jobs or graduate school when they finish their degrees, CSU officials said. The board will also organize events challenging CSU students and faculty to use AI to help address problems like climate change and housing affordability. 

    In addition, CSU plans to facilitate faculty use of AI in their teaching and research. It will also connect students to AI-related apprenticeship programs, according to the announcement.

    The rise of artificial intelligence has provoked optimistic predictions that the technology will trigger rapid innovation in higher education — equipping students with chatbot tutors, administrators with the ability to automate rote tasks and scholars with models that advance their research. But those bright visions are counterbalanced by fears AI will erode the value of a college degree, undermine the academic integrity of research and unleash widespread AI-assisted cheating in classrooms. 

    California leaders have been eager to cement the state’s place as a leader in developing generative AI, and say there is a need to educate more home-grown talent to work in the sector. More than half of AI workers in the U.S. were born in other countries, according to a 2019 report by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. 

    Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023 signed an executive order directing the state to study the impact of AI on California’s workforce and, in August, announced an agreement with Santa Clara-based Nvidia to offer AI certificate programs and workshops at community colleges.

    CSU’s focus on artificial intelligence comes at a time when campuses across the university system, especially those struggling with troubling enrollment downturns, are looking to trim costs ahead of an expected state budget cut. Noting that financial reality, CSU chief information officer Ed Clark said the chancellor’s office has allocated money from one-time savings to fund AI initiatives. “The truth is, we are piecemealing it,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can with the resources we have available one-time, and we’re going to have to do the same thing next year as well.”

    Among the tools CSU is adopting is OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu, a version of the chatbot already in use at higher education institutions including Arizona State University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Unlike the free version of ChatGPT, conversations using ChatGPT Edu will stay within CSU and cannot be used to train OpenAI models, Clark said. Data privacy is a particular concern for universities, since users may wish to use ChatGPT to analyze sensitive or confidential information.

    An OpenAI official said the agreement with CSU represents the “single largest deployment of ChatGPT around the world.” By negotiating a system-wide deal with OpenAI, Clark said, CSU is making sure the technology is available to all of its campuses, not just those that can afford to purchase enterprise access to ChatGPT on their own.

    The university will pay about $16.9 million over the lifetime of its partnership with OpenAI, which is “less than current and planned expenditures for these technologies,” a CSU spokesperson said.

    Generative AI tools from other companies will also be made available to CSU affiliates, including functions within software the university system already purchases, such as Microsoft Office and Zoom video conferencing. The system also plans to offer AI training modules to teach students, faculty and staff members skills like prompt engineering while guiding them on how to use the technology in a responsible way. Training provided by Nvidia will come with compute power so students can learn to work with GPUs, the electronic circuits used to train and deploy AI models, said Louis Stewart, the company’s head of strategic initiatives.

    CSU officials are still determining the final lineup of the board, Clark said, but anticipate that it will include members of Newsom’s cabinet as well as representatives of Adobe, Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon Web Services, Instructure, Intel, LinkedIn and OpenAI. Clark said CSU-affiliated members will include Elizabeth Boyd, chair of the academic senate; Cynthia Teniente-Matson, the president of San Jose State University; Iese Esera, the president of the Cal State Student Association; and Clark himself.

    Universities have varied in their embrace of artificial intelligence technology, with some eagerly hiring administrators and faculty knowledgeable about the field or updating policies around issues like academic integrity to account for AI. 

    CSU leaders have been contemplating the impact generative artificial intelligence will have on campuses for several years, including in the system-wide academic senate. A CSU committee in June released a list of recommendations for how the university system should incorporate AI.

    The California Faculty Association, which represents CSU employees including professors, librarians and coaches, is seeking to add an article to its contract with CSU regarding the use of AI, citing concerns that adoption of the technology could “replace roles at the University that will make it difficult or impossible to solve classroom, human resources, or other issues” and otherwise negatively impact CFA members. Faculty unions outside CSU have voiced related worries.





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  • Do California college students regret their chosen majors?

    Do California college students regret their chosen majors?


    “I transferred as a political science student but added a double major for social welfare with the impending changes of the administration, because I wanted to protect the same welfare programs that raised me,” Ghotra said.

    She transferred to UC Berkeley from community college as a political science major after investing two years to prepare for completing the major. Following the shift in the federal government’s priorities, she wanted to protect welfare programs, and bridge the knowledge gap between those who would benefit from welfare programs and the programs themselves.

    “I learn about welfare programs at the federal and the California level,” Ghotra said. “So I look at CalFresh, for example, and EBT. That’s actually a project I’m working on, is: How do we make that more accessible, more understandable for immigrant communities that may not be more familiar with English or hide away from bureaucratic processes?”

    By Kelcie Lee

     





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  • Drama class helps Compton students find themselves on stage 

    Drama class helps Compton students find themselves on stage 


    Catherine Borek’s drama class working on a scene.

    Credit: Courtesy of Catherine Borek

    Catherine Borek first came to Compton’s Dominguez High School intending to spend a few years with Teach for America before becoming a professor. That was 29 years ago. Hired to teach AP English literature, the newbie teacher quickly jumped into the fray as a drama teacher as well. 

    A theater kid back in high school, she knew instinctively she needed to bring classical texts to life for her students by lifting the words off the page and into the spotlight. The experience has changed her life and the lives of many of her students.

    “You find yourself when you’re up on that stage,” said Borek, a tireless educator who was named a California Teacher of the Year in 2023. 

    Alas, there was no stage, no rehearsal space and no fundraising. All she had going for her was chutzpah. The cash-strapped school had not put on a play in 20 years. That’s when Borek discovered her “MacGyver mode.”

    Catherine Borek

    “You take what you have, and you make something out of that,” said the 50-year-old mother of two. “We put on plays; we put on operas; we put on poetry slams.” 

    The unstoppable teacher can make theater magic happen in a computer lab. She can put on a show without a cent from the school budget. She can get teenagers to put their phones away and enjoy being social. She helps them ignite the ingenuity in each other. 

    “There’s something about creativity that’s almost religious to me,” as she puts it. “It’s the space to almost be divine, you know? And we use theater to get us there.” 

    Borek joined Teach for America — a nonprofit that recruits graduates from top universities to serve at least two years teaching in low-income schools — right out of Reed College. She had intended to be a teacher only temporarily, but quickly fell in love with her vocation.

    She believes that students from the hardscrabble Compton district, a place where gunshots are as much a part of the environment as graduation, deserve every bit as much cultural enrichment as children of privilege. She often refers to her students as “scholars,” preferring to discuss their merits instead of her own.

    “It lifts you up,” she said with customary modesty. “The students have a different energy here. They’re so gung-ho and excited and enthusiastic that it helps dispel some of the melancholy that we see around the world right now.”

    That’s why, over the years, she has empowered her students to be cultural ambassadors, combating long-held stereotypes of Compton. They have completed the LA Marathon, collaborated with the LA Opera, made it to the regional level of the Poetry Out Loud competition, starred in a Keurig commercial and started a rugby club. A 2003 documentary about Borek’s first class play, “OT: Our Town,” a staging of the Thorton Wilder famous paean to small-town life, captures the raucous creativity of a student ensemble tackling a masterpiece on a makeshift stage in the cafeteria.

    In that documentary, Ebony Star Norwood-Brown, the 16-year-old playing the narrator, wryly noted that the arts is one way to battle tired “Boyz n the Hood” tropes. 

    “Compton is home of gangster rap and gangsters,” said Norwood-Brown. “That’s all people know about Compton. That’s all people think about Compton. … We’re way different from what you think we are.”

    Drama has also become an antidote to a world dominated by screens where teens sometimes miss out on the magic of human connection, the bond between students and teachers that can make a lesson spark. Fist bumps and check-ins are part of her curriculum.

    “One of the most heartbreaking parts of the pandemic is that we became an online learning community instead of a human, face-to-face learning community,” she said wistfully. “Pre-pandemic, it wasn’t quite as sedentary, and I don’t remember computers being the No. 1 source of knowledge and information.”

    Borek prefers to frame learning as a cathartic experience, so that lessons resonate more deeply amid our short-attention span culture. She once had her class, a generation scarred by the pandemic, make scary movies to help them confront their fears. 

    “Borek’s approach to instruction and lesson building is a reminder of what the last few years have demonstrated to be most important in education: people and the bodies we occupy,” said Caleb Oliver, principal of Dominguez. “When technology fails and funds are low, these endure as the conduit to learning that has stood the test of time. We learn best through action and others.”

    Catherine Borek, center, in a yellow top, relaxes with some of her drama students.
    Credit: Courtesy of Catherine Borek

    The veteran teacher soon realized that many of her students needed drama, not just to become more creative, but also to help them cope with the pressing mental health issues that mark their generation. This is theater as exposure therapy. 

    “While so many of our students are struggling with anxiety and depression, theater is one of the best forms of therapy,” she said. “It offers exposure bit by bit. We expose them to good stress, and we help them strengthen their wings so that they can fly.”

    She recalls one student so paralyzed by anxiety that he couldn’t even get up onstage when he started. He wanted to drop the class. But she convinced him to stick with it until he could stand his ground in the spotlight.

    “Communication, teamwork and a positive attitude are among the skills that we strive to leave our students with to be ready for college and the workplace,” Oliver said. “Borek’s students always return years later crediting her with igniting these skills within them in her class.”

    Two other students, new immigrants, were shy because they didn’t speak much English and felt awkward with their peers. During the semester, they became emboldened enough to perform a poem onstage. 

    “They worked together not just to say the poem, but to become the poem,” Borek said. “These words became movements, these young women worked through language barriers to communicate beyond words. That is the power of the arts.” 

    Drama can also provide an escape valve for students feeling crushed by the stress of trying to get into their dream college amid a sea of valedictorians.

    “There’s a lot of pressure on kids in high school right now,” she said. “It’s sort of an unforgiving, relentless punch in the face. And even if parents aren’t telling them they need to be perfect, they’re hearing it from everywhere else. You’ve got to get straight As.”

    Feeling overwhelmed by the world can make some young people wall themselves off. Drama can help break down those barriers.

    “I honestly do feel like it changed my life,” said Nathalie Reyes, 17. “I used to be super shy, and speaking up in class felt nearly impossible, but drama gave me a space where I could experiment with my voice. It taught me how to take up space, be confident in my ideas, and not overthink every little thing.”

    Steeping in the wisdom of the past is one way to shield yourself against the worries of the present. That’s why unlocking the universality of literature is the heart of Borek’s mission. 

    As the narrator in “Our Town,” puts it: “There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”

    To her great chagrin, when her English students first read Arthur Miller’s iconic tragedy “Death of a Salesman,” it just didn’t click with them. The trouble was they loathed Willy Loman, the has-been traveling salesman. 

    Never one to give up easily, Borek took them to see a revival of the play in Burbank. It was a light bulb moment. The production opened their eyes to Miller’s piercing insights into the dark side of the American dream. One of her students even realized that Loman reminded him of his own father. Tears were shed.

    “It was gobsmacking for them,” she recalls happily. “I can’t tell you how many students came up to me and they’re like, ‘Man, I related to that, the frustration between that father and son.’ It was their first time at the theater, and they were crying.”





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