A teacher kicks off a lesson during an AP Research class.
Credit: Allison Shelley for EDUimages
High school seniors walked the stage last month, but the FAFSA fiasco has left some still in limbo about their college plans for the fall.
Changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) were supposed to make accessing financial aid easier for students and their families. Instead, it created new challenges for our students at the UCLA Community School, a public LAUSD school located in Koreatown. Despite our best efforts, our predominantly working class, Latino students lived in constant uncertainty around their college plans because issues with the application process led to delays in financial aid packages from universities.
Although it was a frustrating experience, our counseling team found a silver lining — using this opportunity to teach our students how to overcome one of the many systemic challenges they will face as first-generation college students. As a Latino first-gen student myself, I leveraged my lived experiences and worked with colleagues in our College Center to teach our students the critical college knowledge they will need to navigate a system that seems stacked against them.
Working in a community school means intentionally anticipating challenges and systemic barriers students and their families face along their educational journey. Community schools, located in neighborhoods with large numbers of high-needs students, work extra closely with community agencies and local government to provide a range of resources and services to students and families.
Two years ago, we created a College and Careers Transition course to help seniors develop a plan for college and/or careers after high school. However, we didn’t realize how important this course would be until we faced the FAFSA fiasco, which was a huge technical nightmare that delayed aid packages to students who were relying on federal aid to make their college decisions. First-generation college students and underserved communities have always needed support in the application process, but this year, more than ever. Through a collaborative partnership with UCLA, the Fulfillment Fund and Gear Up 4 LA, we helped all students access aid through one-on-one support and educated students and families on how to complete FAFSA once in college.
Although students were given dedicated class time to complete the application, several students needed extra support. One ambitious student, whom I’ll call Nadia to protect her privacy, was accepted to highly selective colleges and would visit the College Center every day seeking support and understanding. The first issue we faced was verifying their parents’ identities. Although the family had created their Federal Student Aid IDs and submitted verification documents as soon as the application opened (late) in January, Nadia was not able to complete the form. This issue occurred for more than half of our students simply because they are part of mixed-immigration status families. Not being able to provide a parent’s signature on the form meant that the Student Aid Index (SAI) could not be calculated, therefore leaving students uncertain of the amount of financial aid they would receive.
Although FAFSA provided temporary workarounds, Nadia was still not able to receive an accurate provisional aid letter by the May 15 deadline observed by most colleges in California. Pressured by looming deadlines she deferred admission to her second-choice college because she did not want to risk committing to a school she could not afford. After checking FAFSA every day for months, the day finally came when Nadia could access her Student Aid Index and she elected to attend community college for academic and financial reasons. In a turn of events, she got off the waitlist for her dream university, the University of Southern California (USC). We spent the week leading up to graduation watching Nadia take the lessons learned from the course as she advocated for herself to secure her aid package from USC. She will start there this year. However, while Nadia had a week to have important financial conversations with family, other students had less than 24 hours or no time at all. Some students felt forced to commit to a school without aid packages or deferred to community college to minimize the financial risk.
While we are hopeful that next year’s FAFSA process will be smoother, this year’s fiasco has helped us build confidence in students and their families who are sending children to college for the very first time. Our transition course affirmed students’ own agency and the power of community. We taught students to have hope and to find it in their circles of support. We also provided coordinated, one-on-one support for every student, which wouldn’t have been possible without the support of UCLA and college access partners like the Fulfillment Fund.
This experience has demonstrated how critical college access programs are in supporting first-generation college students and the many barriers they will face in their higher education journeys.
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Jonathan Oyaga is a research associate for UCLA Center for Community Schooling, a campuswide initiative to advance university-assisted community schools, and an educational aide at the UCLA Community School, working in the College and Career Center to support students’ postsecondary transitions.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
This summer was filled with stress for Leslie Valdovinos as she awaited her financial aid offer letter for her fourth year at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
“I don’t have a backup plan in case I can’t rely on financial aid,” Valdovinos said. “Financial aid is the only plan that I have.”
Leslie Valdovinos
Widespread problems with the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) caused unprecedented difficulties with the application resulting in delays in college decisions and making it particularly hard for the many “mixed-status” students in California — students who have at least one parent without a Social Security number — to complete the form. Students are still experiencing delays in getting their financial aid information.
“It’s very stressful because tuition is going up, and I’m not sure how my financial situation is going to look like for this school year,” Valdovinos said.
Valdovinos finally received her financial aid offer letter on Aug. 8, but many are still waiting. As of May, 28% of students nationwide had not received their financial aid offer, according to a survey done by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
Some students have been able to get scholarships to help cover the costs of school. Azul Hernandez, an incoming freshman at California State University, San Bernardino has gotten help from local scholarships.
“Right now, I am able to cover my tuition for this year through local scholarships that I was awarded but am still fighting to get aid to help cover the years to come and other fees like books,” Hernandez said.
California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) has started offering a $4,000 “backup” scholarship to support low-income students whose financial aid is delayed. The money is aimed at low-income California residents.
“This initiative comes as a response to the challenges posed by FAFSA delays, with CSUMB committing to support its community by ensuring no student is left behind due to procedural setbacks. The scholarship is designed to provide immediate relief to students who are still awaiting federal and state aid decisions,” said a notice announcing the program.
While some students might be able to make it through the school year without financial aid, many will not be able to continue with school if they do not get their financial aid offer in time.
Jonathan Ramirez is supposed to start his first year at Victor Valley College in a few weeks but has not yet received his financial aid letter.
“I’m kind of worried because, you know, I don’t really have that much money, and I kind of want that money because I want to keep going to college and get a career and stuff. Without (financial aid) I don’t think I’ll be able to,” Ramirez said.
If he doesn’t receive his financial aid and has to drop out of school, Ramirez said he plans on going to a trade school or start working to save up money.
With the decline of completed FAFSA forms across the state, Ashish Vaidya, president and CEO of Growing Inland Achievement, is concerned that fewer students will be able to attend college. Through Aug. 2, 49% or 298,026 members of the Class of 2024 completed an application. That’s 30, 550 fewer than 2023.
Vaidya described this year’s rollout of the FAFSA as having “a catastrophic impact on the students, especially in the Inland Empire,” referring to a feared drop in the number of students who would attend college.
Growing Inland Achievement (GIA) is a nonprofit organization working toward education and economic equity in the Inland Empire, which is made up of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. GIA supports students through the financial aid process with workshops, step-by-step guides and digital resources to help students be successful.
“This is an all-hands-on-deck sort of approach,” Vaidya said.
Other organizations, such as uAspire, a nonprofit that focuses on supporting students with the financial aid process, work with students directly with free one-on-one advice and financial aid workshops.
Valdovinos took advantage of the workshops and tutorials provided by her school, though she found the one-on-one attention the most helpful because it was so personalized.
“(The tutorials) gave a nice guideline of what was going on, but I think because me and my brother’s and my sister’s applications were different, it was very frustrating because it didn’t really have all of our personal situations accounted for,” she said.
Valdovinos said she hopes next year’s application will include “more detailed and accessible explanations for each section of the FAFSA, including examples and FAQs of all the possible scenarios that may come up,” which she said would help reduce confusion.
Typically, as has been the process for decades, high school seniors and community college transfer students would begin completing the FAFSA in October to meet California’s March priority deadline for access to state aid like the Cal Grant. During that period, those students would submit applications to the colleges and universities that they’re seeking admission to, so they would have their offer letters by early spring. The traditional timing allowed financial aid offices to send details about grants, loans and scholarships to students around March and April, in time for them to make a decision on the college they plan to attend in the fall.
But this year’s repeated FAFSA disruptions means colleges haven’t been able to send out aid awards, either because students have had trouble applying, the department has miscalculated some students’ aid, or colleges haven’t received any aid information from the department. Each award letter sent by colleges to their admitted students that complete a financial aid application is customized with a combination of federal, state and institutional grants, loans and scholarships.
On Aug. 7, the Department of Education announced that the 2024-25 FAFSA will once again be delayed as the Federal Student Aid office works to identify and correct problems in the form. The new form will have a phased rollout, opening on Oct. 1 for testing, then launching on Dec. 1 with full functionality, “including submission and back-end processing at the same time.”
“When they roll out the new FAFSA for the following year, you know, it will be a much improved process if you don’t have the glitches and the hiccups that we faced this past year,” Vaidya said. “So we’re hopeful about that; however, we’re not going to rest on our laurels.”
GIA plans to amp up efforts this coming year to reach more students and get out the message that “college is for everyone.”
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona promised changes for next year’s FAFSA.
“Following a challenging 2024-25 FAFSA cycle, the Department listened carefully to the input of students, families, and higher education institutions, made substantial changes to leadership and operations at Federal Student Aid, and is taking a new approach this year that will significantly improve the FAFSA experience,” he said.
Ashley Bolter, a recent graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, is a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
Hundreds of UCLA students protest in support of Palestinians on May 2, 2024.
Credit: Christine Kao
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that goes into effect Thursday ordering UCLA to ensure equal access to Jewish students in reaction to the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian encampments last spring.
Three Jewish students in June sued the University of California system, arguing that UCLA allowed protesters to erect an encampment that blocked Jewish students from accessing parts of campus, including classrooms and an undergraduate library.
U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi agreed that UCLA knew students could not enter parts of campus because of their religious beliefs.
“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” he wrote.
“UCLA does not dispute this,” Scarsi wrote. “Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.”
The order bars the UC defendants from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.” It also gives the campus until Aug. 15 to instruct campus security, police and student affairs “not to aid or participate in any obstruction of access for Jewish students to ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas.”
UCLA was one in a wave of campuses where protesters built encampments in solidarity with Palestine as part of a campaign demanding universities sever financial ties with Israel.
The Los Angeles Times and other news outlets have reported on incidents in which Jewish students said they were blocked from entering the encampment. An April 30 video of Jewish students being rebuffed by protesters when they attempted to walk through the camp went viral. Pro-Palestinian organizers have said restricting who could enter the camp was a measure meant to protect protesters from harassment and abuse.
Counter protesters attacked the camp on the evening of April 30, attempting to tear down barricades and hurling objects at the protesters. The university was criticized for not doing more to protect the pro-Palestine students.
The university’s police chief was temporarily reassigned in May pending a review of the school’s security processes. UC President Michael Drake has also requested an investigation into how the campus responded to the violent attack on the pro-Palestinian camp.
Attorneys for the UC system seeking to prevent the injunction argued that the university has already taken steps to ensure its students’ safety and access to education, including by creating a new campus safety office that is “empowered to take decisive action in response to protest.”
Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said in a written statement that the ruling interferes with how the university can react to events on its campus.
“UCLA is committed to fostering a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” Osako said. “The district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Clement & Murphy PLLC represent the plaintiffs. Becket indicated in a press release about the order that UC defendants are expected to appeal the ruling.
“UCLA is still in charge of its own campus,” Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and an attorney for the students, said in a statement to EdSource. “But the court’s order means that however UCLA decides to manage its campus, allowing the exclusion of Jewish students is not an option on the table.”
The Los Angeles Times reported that UC leaders are working on a systemwide plan regarding how its campuses will respond should protests of the Israel-Hamas war continue in the fall. Drake has until Oct. 1 to issue a report to that effect, according to the Times.
Students who are chronically absent from school are much more likely to struggle with mental health challenges, with pre-teen boys and teen girls reporting some of the highest signs of distress.
When students need help, availability of mental health support often depends on the income of families. “As household income increased, so did the availability of mental health services” in children’s schools, University of Southern California researchers found in a survey of 2,500 households nationwide.
Their findings are part of an in-depth report on the continuing national school absenteeism crisis in which 25% of students, or about 12 million children, across 42 states and Washington, D.C., were chronically absent in the 2022-23 school year. That rate remains higher than the pre-pandemic national rate of 15%.
EDITORS NOTE
This in-depth report on chronic absenteeism is part of an EdSource partnership with the Associated Press and Stanford Professor Thomas Dee.
“Chronic absenteeism in California is still twice what it was prior to the pandemic, and roughly 1 in 4 kids in public schools are chronically absent. That is just really striking and is a serious barrier to achieving academic recovery for this generation of students who were so harmed by the pandemic,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford University education professor and economist who gathered nationwide data in collaboration with The Associated Press and the release of the USC research.
Emotional and behavioral problems also have kept kids home from school. University of Southern California research shared exclusively with AP found strong relationships between absenteeism and poor mental health.
For example, in the USC study, almost a quarter of chronically absent kids had high levels of emotional or behavioral problems, according to a parent questionnaire, compared with just 7% of kids with good attendance. Emotional symptoms among teen girls were especially linked with missing lots of school.
Families with the lowest incomes reported a much higher rate of using mental health services if they were offered to their children in school — more than five times higher than those with the highest incomes. And, crucially, the researchers also found that 1 in 5 respondents would have used mental health services if they were made available at their school, with higher rates among Black and Hispanic families who were surveyed.
“There is tremendous opportunity here for schools to increase the offerings but also, if they have the offerings, to increase the outreach to the kids and the families that need it because there is clearly an unmet need,” said Amie Rapaport, who co-authored the report and is the co-director of Center for Economic and Social Research at USC.
‘I had a very bad year’
If Jennifer Hwang’s son made it to his first grade classroom, it was rarely without a fight.
He struggled with severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and Hwang says his teacher’s habit of discarding art work in front of him would spike his anxiety, leading to violent outbursts and refusing to even get in the car or walk onto campus.
“I thought I would have a good year in first grade, but I didn’t,” said her son, 8, whose name Hwang declined to share to protect his privacy. “I had a very bad year.”
The absences began piling up during the second semester of that 2022-23 school year; he started missing two to three days most weeks. He soon became chronically absent, meaning he missed at least 40 days total. That classified him as chronically absent because he had missed at least 10% or more days in one school year. He began to see a therapist outside the L.A. Unified district.
Hwang tried getting her son an individualized education program (IEP), which would grant him access to school-based counseling services given his ADHD diagnosis. But because her son’s academic performance was up to par, the school said he didn’t need it.
She also inquired about him seeing a child psychologist who went to his Riverside Drive Charter campus in Sherman Oaks once or twice a week — but the waitlists were too long. Because he was already seeing a therapist outside of school, Hwang gave up on pressing for school resources.
The USC report published Thursday highlights that pre-teen boys, which includes children ages 5 to 12, are struggling significantly with symptoms of hyperactivity and conduct problems, while teen girls, ages 13 to 17, are struggling most with emotional symptoms, such as depression and anxiety.
Morgan Polikoff, a co-author of the USC report, said they cannot confirm there is “a cause and effect here,” noting that the correlation between chronic absenteeism and mental health challenges could “go both directions.”
“In reality, it’s probably both ways. There’s probably some kids for whom increasing anxiety is leading them to stay home, and there’s probably kids who are missing a lot of school and that’s increasing their anxiety. So it probably is bi-directional or multi-directional,” Rapaport agreed.
Both the USC researchers and Dee advocated for more research to better understand the causes of persistently high chronic absenteeism rates.
LAUSD’s chronic absenteeism problem
Last year, for second grade, everything changed, Hwang said, largely thanks to a teacher who adapted assignments to suit her son’s social-emotional needs and incorporated “brain breaks” into the school day, which Hwang’s son said helped him concentrate.
“She understood him. She knew that he was bright and he felt things much more deeply, and he saw things differently and with a very different perspective,” Hwang said. “She allowed him to feel heard.”
“One day (his teacher told me), ‘Oh, my goodness, your son just gave me a hug!’ Hwang said. “That doesn’t come cheap because he does not give out hugs very often. So that he actually hugged the teacher … that says a lot.”
Hwang and her family aren’t sure what third grade will bring, but they were able to at least secure a 504, a type of plan that helps level the playing field for students with disabilities, so her son could have access to a special chair and space to doodle.
LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the nation, has struggled with high rates of chronic absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic. Nearly 33% of their over 400,000 students were chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year, down from about 40% the previous year.
Most recently, in 2023-24, preliminary data shows their rate is hovering at 32.3%, a spokesperson said.
Still not enough
LAUSD has increased its staffing of social workers and pupil attendance workers, but staffers say it’s just not enough.
“We have what we can afford at this point — more than ever before — but still not at an appropriate ratio that I think this board, or myself, would feel comfortable,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said at a news conference Monday.
Carvalho described the district’s staffing as “an unprecedented network” but did not specify how much staffing had increased.
Ofelia Sofia Ryan is one of roughly 400 LAUSD pupil services and attendance workers trying to bring students back to school.Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource
Ofelia Sofia Ryan is one of LAUSD’s roughly 400 pupil services and attendance counselors who are on the front lines helping get chronically absent students connected with mental health resources and Medi-Cal so they can get back to school.
This year, the 20-year district veteran works in five elementary schools, including Orchard Academies in the city of Bell.
“Poverty is the No. 1 issue. Financial issues are … second — the inability of a parent to monitor because they are having two jobs, which also relates to the poverty issue,” Ryan said. “Mental health, I would say that will be maybe next.”
Darlene Rivas, one of the district’s 800 psychiatric social workers (PSWs), is assigned to two East Los Angeles elementary schools: William R. Anton and Lorena Street.
“We have to be team players because it can’t just be one person,” Rivas said. “I think that’s why you see a lot of exhaustion within PSW professionals.”
There is a long waitlist for students in need of therapy, she said. If a parent can’t make it to an initial appointment, it can take months to reschedule.
Adding staffing can come from school funding, but there are competing demands.
This year Ryan said she started on an LAUSD campus two days a week. At the last minute, “boom,” they dropped a day, she said.
“That’s very unfair, because (the district tells) you, on one hand, mental health matters, attendance matters. You’re working your butt off to get attendance improved. I improved attendance in all my schools. Everything was done by the book, and then (the school) just took the money away,” said Ryan. “You cannot do anything. You are powerless.”
Carvalho regularly touts the district’s iAttend program, where he, among others, visits the homes of chronically absent students to coax them back to school. The district made more than 34,000 home visits last school year, contributing to a more than 4 percentage point decrease in chronic absenteeism, according to the district.
What the public doesn’t know is how much work it takes after the house visit to get the child back in school, Ryan said.
Local barriers require local solutions
Researchers like Dee offer advice for lowering chronic absenteeism rates: “Be acutely aware of the problem” and “look to the really local barriers.”
That advice appears to be playing out successfully farther north, in Placer County, where more and more of Roseville City School District’s 12,000 students are attending school regularly each year.
Placer’s 2023-24 absenteeism rate is expected to be about 11% — nearly double what it was pre-pandemic. But that is down from 20% in 2022-23 and 26% in 2021-22.
School staff have found the two main reasons for the absences are “misinformation and a lot of struggle,” said Jessica Hull, the district’s executive director of communication and community engagement. They zeroed in on these top reasons by closely tracking absenteeism over several years with their attendance system plus a notification system managed by a third-party team, SchoolStatus, that they hired specifically to address chronic absences.
The misinformation largely centers on families being unsure of whether to send a child to school when they are sick, not knowing they can rely on independent study if the family is going on a lengthy vacation, or not understanding the importance of enrolling in pre-kindergarten known as TK.
Roseville City School District’s attendance roadmap for parents.
This misinformation is part of what Dee and other researchers are calling “norm erosion.”
“The learning experiences of families and students during the pandemic, in particular the experience of remote schooling, may have reduced the perceived value of regular school attendance among students and parents,” said Dee.
He cautioned against blaming parents for the erosion, saying that “we’re in a crisis now that merits immediate attention and perhaps a little less finger-pointing.”
The struggles that Hull, from Roseville, said families face are often mental health challenges, particularly with middle schoolers, or families with unmet basic needs, such as unstable housing.
One of their solutions to both barriers has been constant check-ins with those chronically absent students in order to offer resources, such as access to mental health specialists, gas cards to families facing transportation issues, and offering families bags of food from the local food bank.
Another help is clearly explaining the notices behind their child being absent. “Schools are all about the acronym and all about words that no one else understands, so we start sending letters home and talking about truancy and chronically truant and excused absence and unexcused absence — all of that’s a mess,” Hull said.
Instead, parents can expect to see at schoolshalf-sheets of card stock paper explaining the terms andprinted in five languages from English to Ukrainian to Pashto.
“It’s really trying to remove that language barrier when we are talking jargon, and they’re just saying, ‘my kid needs help, we need help figuring out how to get them to school,’” Hull said.
Kids who identify with their educators are more likely to attend school, said Michael Gottfried, a University of Pennsylvania professor. According to one study led by Gottfried, California students felt “it’s important for me to see someone who’s like me early on, first thing in the day,” he said.
Los Angeles City College, one of the state’s 116 community colleges.
Larry Gordon/EdSource Today
Thousands of current and prospective California Community College (CCC) students are being crushed by unmanageable college and living expenses and hefty student loans.
That’s the finding of a new report from The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) and Student Senate for California Community Colleges (SSCCC). Our researchers analyzed data from state and federal officials to shine a light on the complex financial challenges plaguing community college students, particularly students of color.
The conclusion is clear: We must make community college more affordable and accessible.
Before diving into the findings, it’s important to understand the unique challenges of community college students. Many come from low-income backgrounds and experience food and housing insecurity while pursuing their postsecondary dreams. Many also financially support a child or other family members.
Unfortunately, the report found that community college can quickly become too expensive for these students to manage, and could even be more costly than public universities. Our researchers analyzed the price of various community colleges — including tuition, food, housing, textbooks and materials, and transportation — for a student whose family made less than $30,000 annually. We found that, including potential grant aid, Butte College still had an annual net price of $14,600. Cuesta College cost $18,900, and Long Beach City College came in at $20,200.
Furthermore, community college students often struggle to access grant aid. Prospective students may be unaware of their aid eligibility or lack the support to navigate the full application process. In 2019-20, only 51% of community college students in California applied for federal financial aid, compared with 75% of students attending public four-year universities.
All in all, 54% of students attending the state’s community colleges did not receive a single drop of grant aid in 2019-20.
Public university students, meanwhile, often fare better with financial aid because they are eligible for more generous and robust financial support from the state and their institutions. For example, unlike California community college students, they are eligible for funds from the Middle Class Scholarship for individuals pursuing a teaching credential.
As a result, thousands of community college students, particularly students of color, take out student loans. Alarmingly, while Black students made up just 5% of the California community college enrollment in 2021-22, they accounted for 20% of student borrowers.
Community college students also try to make ends meet by working while taking classes. More than 3 in 4 community college students surveyed in the 2021-22 Student Expenses and Resources Survey (SEARS) reported working at least 21 hours a week, compared with just half of their peers at California State University, University of California, and private, nonprofit institutions. And almost half of community college respondents worked at least 36 hours — nearly a full-time job.
Unfortunately, research shows that excessive work hours can negatively impact students’ academic success by slashing the time they have to learn and study.
California must do better.
It is critical to expand access to aid opportunities for community college students. First and foremost, policymakers can follow through on their commitment to reform the Cal Grant program. After years of advocacy, legislators agreed in the 2022-23 California state budget to expand eligibility to more low-income students, ensure student awards kept pace with inflation, and more. But they still haven’t provided the funding needed to complete these reforms — and the 2024-25 state budget doesn’t include it. We simply can’t keep putting this on the back burner.
In the meantime, state leaders should pursue other routes to increase aid opportunities. California just submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Education to enable students without a high school diploma — or the equivalent — to access federal assistance for higher education, known as Title IV financial aid. This could be a big step forward in supporting community college students if allowed.
Policymakers and community colleges should also explore innovative ways to ensure that incoming students complete the Free Application For Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or California Dream Act Application (CADAA). While high school students are required to submit a FAFSA or CADAA, many prospective community college students take years off between high school and postsecondary education. Increasing completion rates can maximize access to aid for those students.
Additionally, we urge policymakers to make the Student Success Completion Grant — which helps community college students cover their education and living expenses — more equitable. The grant is currently only available to those who attend full-time — generally, students with fewer external work and family responsibilities. And the amount of aid varies significantly. Students taking 12 -14.999 credits can only receive $1,298 per semester. However, once they hit 15 credits, that amount jumps to $4,000 per semester.
California Community Colleges are designed to serve all communities and uplift students from every walk of life. With intentional reforms that support the whole student, we ensure that all Californians have equitable and affordable access to a quality education at their local community college.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent encampment executive order mandating the clearing of homeless encampments on state property, coupled with the start of the school year and a new Supreme Court decision, shines light on an often-overlooked crisis — the devastating impact that both homelessness and the criminal justice system can have on our youth.
I know firsthand how housing insecurities, combined with a broken criminal justice system, can destabilize the lives of young people, pushing them further into systems that fail to support their complex journeys.
As a high school student growing up in Los Angeles, I remember coming home after a full day of classes to find something unexpected on our door — an eviction notice. My mom, an educated single mother who worked tirelessly to afford our Culver City condominium, looked at me with sorrow in her eyes.
She handed me trash bags and told me we had a day to leave the home we had spent a decade making our own. Uncertain of the future, I packed all my belongings in those bags, making sure to grab my grandfather’s wooden cane, which I needed for my leading role in the school’s upcoming Black History Month assembly.
As my mother and I slept in an acquaintance’s living room, I convinced myself to keep going to school, clinging to the fact that I had a play to complete. On the day of the play, I woke up early, grabbed the cane, and walked to Culver City High from our new neighborhood. On the way, the police stopped me and questioned why I was carrying what they considered a weapon.
Confused, I explained that the cane was for my role in the school play. They handcuffed me, searched my belongings, and asked where I lived — a question I couldn’t answer. They interrogated me about gang affiliations and potential tattoos while noting my information, likely for future stops.
Although they eventually let me go, I realized then that my reality had shifted — I was now a young Black man navigating systems not designed for my success.
Unfortunately, my story is far from unique. Black and Latino people are overrepresented in both the criminal justice system and the unhoused community. Although Black youth make up about 6% of California’s population, they account for roughly 29% of the homeless youth population.
A 2021 report from the Coalition for Juvenile Justice indicated that homeless youth are more likely to be criminalized for “survival behaviors” such as loitering, panhandling or sleeping in public places. These interactions can lead to arrests, fines or incarceration, further entrenching them in the justice system.
The Supreme Court’s misguided Grants Pass v. Johnson decision this spring allows cities and counties to criminally charge people who sleep in public. This will disproportionately affect youth and families of color — those who have historically been displaced from their housing due to redlining, rising costs, gentrification and lack of access to resources. Communities of color find themselves pushed into a criminal justice system designed to marginalize and penalize rather than support and serve them.
Intertwining the brutal inequities of homelessness with those of the criminal justice system has devastating long-term impacts, particularly for youth. The lack of stable housing often leads to repeated interactions with the criminal justice system, as these youth may be detained for minor offenses or for violating terms of probation that require them to maintain a stable address.
Criminalizing our unhoused youth further exacerbates homelessness, creating a vicious cycle of jail, debt and inevitable future homelessness. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, people who have been to prison even just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly seven times higher than the general public. A criminal record can also reduce the likelihood of a callback or job offer by almost 50%.
We must address the root causes of youth homelessness, including economic instability, lack of affordable housing, and inadequate support systems for those aging out of foster care. Let’s not place undue burdens on the youth most impacted by our systemic failures — those who have the least power to do anything about it.
While there is much work to be done, we’ve seen progress from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles in moving people inside humanely with tangible results. The recent Los Angeles Housing Services Authority Homeless Count showed declines in the number of people living outside across LA, including a nearly 20% decrease in homelessness on the Westside of LA, where I experienced housing insecurity growing up. This decline is the product of homeless service providers and community-based organizations working with policymakers to provide quality case management, interim and permanent supportive housing, mental health supports, and workforce development opportunities for our unhoused neighbors.
Gov. Newsom and other leaders should seize this moment to end the youth homelessness-to-prison pipeline once and for all. LA County’s Office of Diversion and Reentry Housing program has successfully housed thousands of people, including youth, through diversion and development programs tailored to both young people and adults.
Also, organizations like Safe Place for Youth and Covenant House California provide a comprehensive range of services, including housing support, education, employment resources, and mental health care for homeless and at-risk youth. The SJC Santa Monica Youth Resource Team, a collaborative network that connects youth with essential services like shelter, counseling and job training, is doing everything possible to end youth homelessness in this generation.
It’s not just about what we do, but how we do it. Los Angeles and all of California must continue to lead with compassion, confronting the roots of this crisis with the care and dignity that all our neighbors deserve.
Even though I nearly gave up on high school, I had a counselor who was, committed to helping me apply to colleges and then assistant principal Leslie Lockhart, who paid for my application to UCLA. Because of their efforts, I completed my undergraduate and graduate studies at UCLA.
We overcame our challenges because of support systems that focused on my family’s needs with healing and dignity. Now is the time to double down on resources and evidence-based practices for the communities we serve.
We must prioritize care, not cages.
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Ryan J. Smith, who holds a doctorate in education, is the president and CEO of the St. Joseph Center, a homelessness services and poverty alleviation agency, and an affordable housing commissioner for the city of Los Angeles.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
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.”
A burned sign at Oak Knoll Montessori School (Loma Alta School) from the Eaton fire on Jan. 9 in the Altadena neighborhood of Pasadena.
Credit: Kirby Lee via AP
Top Takeaways
More than 100 volunteers helped provide “psychological first aid” to students in the Pasadena Unified School District following the Eaton fire.
Mental health professionals say normalcy remains far away for many students impacted by January’s fires, and long-term trauma is expected.
The volunteer effort has died down, but the district is looking for ways to provide ongoing support to students with greater needs.
In a classroom that smelled like a campfire, a student at Pasadena Unified’s Sierra Madre Elementary School broke down when he saw a student-made stuffed rabbit that had X’s for eyes.
His art teacher called for help from Tanya Ward, a project director for the mental health and school counseling unit at the Los Angeles County Office of Education.
Ward arrived immediately and pulled the student aside.
“That’s a dead bunny. That’s a dead bunny,” the student repeated, sobbing.
“What does that make you feel?” Ward asked him. “What do you think about that bunny with X eyes? Could it be something else?”
The student began to breathe and seemed less agitated. He started talking haltingly about how the stuffed rabbit — in reality, a sock wrapped around a rice-filled balloon — made him feel.
Sad. And scared.
“Then he was able to go back,” Ward said. “I sat with him for a little bit longer, just to help him get going with his project. … The other students didn’t tease him or make fun of him. They just embraced him.” …
Ward is one of roughly 100 volunteers from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, or LACOE, and beyond, who have provided mental health support at Pasadena Unified School District school sites and enabled hundreds of students to get back on track in the months following the Eaton Fire, which displaced about 10,000 of the district’s 14,000 students.
“We’ve always been ready. But to be able to be welcomed and ushered into this work — and be able to have solutions — and to know that you have people who’ve got your back, it’s pretty unbelievable,” said Julianne Reynoso, Pasadena Unified’s assistant superintendent of student wellness and support services. “I would never have imagined this level of support.”
Supporting families
Shortly after the Eaton fire burned more than 14,000 acres, John Lynch, a community schools initiative coordinator for LACOE, started making phone calls to check in on families and find out what support they needed, from economic needs requiring gift cards to housing.
He called 100 about families at Altadena’s Eliot Arts Magnet alone — all while dealing with his own long-term displacement from the region.
“It was a way for me to really know, to be in community with other people who live in my community, and we’re kind of going through something similar, even though we’ve all experienced this differently,” Lynch said.
“Families that are displaced, I think they — we — … have maybe felt a little bit forgotten, as the rest of the world kind of goes back to their everyday life,” he added. “People are just like, “Wow! Thank you for calling, and for remembering that we’re kind of going through this tragedy.”
Supporting students
When students returned to school after the fire, many had been separated from their peers for months.
“Some hadn’t even really come back from Christmas break. And then the fires closed down their school, so they had not seen peers, their friends, for several weeks,” said Anna Heinbuch, a school counseling coordinator at LACOE.
“A lot of our students were just happy to be in a space where they were with their peers and able just to talk about something other than the fires.”
Within weeks of the fires, Heinbuch facilitated a “psychological first aid” session in the gym of Marshall Fundamental Secondary School — gauging students’ wellness, helping them through whatever they were dealing with and providing them with suggestions for next steps, such as access to a school social worker.
She brought coloring books to help comfort the students and taught them breathing exercises they could do by themselves. She asked whether they had been sleeping well and eating properly.
The initial period of assessing students’ needs lasted a few weeks, and then the effort rolled back. But Kim Griffin Esperon, a LACOE project director of mental health and school counseling, who organized the volunteer effort, began hearing from principals who expressed an increased need for longer-term support.
And Griffin Esperon worked to bring in longer-term support, which lasted until the end of March.
Volunteers said students’ grief had started to deepen. Some longed for their lost pets and missed the other animals that made Altadena home. Others, whose homes survived, felt survivor’s guilt.
Some students began to act out in the classroom. Others felt less engaged academically. Many struggled when they were away from their parents or siblings.
“This is going to take a long time for some of these kids to work their way through,” Griffin Esperon said. “There’s no rushing back to normal for these students because their lives will not probably feel normal to them for quite a while.”
The road ahead
More transitions lie ahead for some students — from potential housing changes to friends who may move elsewhere.
And with the volunteer effort having achieved as much as it can for now, Reynoso said the goal is to connect students who need it with longer-term care and support.
Pasadena Unified is continuing to monitor students’ well-being, Griffin Esperon said, and has recently received funding to hire two crisis counselors. The district will also rely on parents who have health insurance to provide support for their children, she added.
“Despite what crisis or trauma they’ve been through, we want (students) to feel connected,” Reynoso said. “We’re definitely seeing the need … for long-term care, and we’re looking at every opportunity we possibly can.”
Police and protesters faced off on May 31, 2024, at UC Santa Cruz.
Credit: Photo by Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz
Civil rights groups representing two students and one professor are suing the University of California Santa Cruz, alleging that the campus unlawfully banned students and faculty from campus last spring after they participated in pro-Palestinian protests.
By filing the lawsuit, the civil rights groups, including the ACLU of Northern California, are seeking an injunction to prevent the university from banning students again, if there are additional protests in the upcoming fall term, which begins later this month.
The complaint, filed in Santa Cruz County Superior Court on Monday, says that more than 110 students and faculty were banned from campus for up to 14 days after being arrested at a pro-Palestinian encampment on May 31. Campus officials at the time invoked section 626.4 of California’s penal code, which allows campus chancellors to ban individuals from campus for up to two weeks if they disrupt the orderly operation of the campus.
The lawsuit, however, alleges that campus officials violated the law by not first providing the individuals with a hearing before banning them. The lawsuit cites precedent in a California Supreme Court case, Braxton v. Municipal Court, when the court ruled that campus officials can ban someone without a hearing only if their continued presence “constitutes a substantial and material threat of significant injury to persons or property.” According to the lawsuit, the campus didn’t provide the banned individuals with findings about how they presented such a threat.
The bans had consequences for students and faculty. One of the student plaintiffs, Laaila Irshad, ended up failing multiple classes required for her biology major because she wasn’t able to turn in assignments, meet with her professors or access her computer. Christine Hong, another plaintiff and a professor of critical race and ethnic studies, struggled to prepare for a summer class she would teach on the Korean War.
“Even though these were short-term bans, they had a significant impact on the students as well as faculty members who were instantly banished from campus,” said Rachel Lederman, senior counsel with the Center for Protest Law & Litigation. “And it’s blatantly illegal.”
UC Santa Cruz officials were not available for an interview. In a statement, a campus spokesperson said “the decisions made in the spring were necessary and critical to preserve safety, access, and operations of the campus.”
The lawsuit comes on the heels of UC President Michael Drake announcing that encampments would be banned across the 10-campus UC system this academic year. He asked each campus to come up with its own policy to enforce those rules.
Fall classes at Santa Cruz begin on Sept. 26. If the plaintiffs are successful in getting an injunction before then, it would apply only to the Santa Cruz campus. But Lederman said she’s hopeful that such a decision would “send a message” to all UC campuses that they “can’t just summarily ban people from campus without a hearing and without finding that the individual poses a danger.”
Irshad, now entering her third year at Santa Cruz, said she ended up changing her major as a result of being banned from campus for 12 days in the spring. She wasn’t able to turn in several assignments during that period, and she couldn’t go to her professors’ in-person office hours to ask for extensions.
She eventually got a hearing on June 11 and her ban was lifted the next day. But by then, it was too late, she said. She ended up failing a chemistry course required for her biology major, as well as a writing course she needed to fulfill one of her general education requirements.
Irshad has since changed her major to critical race and ethnic studies. She previously hoped to pursue a career in environmental restoration, but has set aside that goal.
“I spent the past two years of my college education paying for classes within bio and now have to make up for lost time, I guess,” she said.
Ahead of the fall quarter, Irshad isn’t sure if she will participate in protests again. “I know I have a right to protest. I just am very scared about the impact or the ramifications of what might happen,” she said.
It wasn’t only students who were impacted by the bans. Hong, the faculty plaintiff, had planned to spend the final weeks of the spring term preparing to teach a summer class about the Korean War.
Hong needed to record lectures for the course, which was online and asynchronous. She said she had a “critical window of time” in late May and early June when she wanted to record them, but she didn’t have access to the campus recording studio nor to the tech staff who would have helped her edit the lectures. She also couldn’t use her office, where she keeps books and other course materials that would have helped her further prepare for the class.
Hong’s ban from campus was lifted after 11 days. She ended up offering the class anyway, which had about 75 students. But she said there’s “no question” the quality of the course suffered because of the time she wasn’t able to spend preparing to teach it.
“Who gets impacted by this? It’s the students; the students get impacted by this,” she said.
California’s 1.6 million high school students are starting another year, but without a critical school supply that I would argue is necessary for teens: condoms.
Why should California public high schools be required to provide condoms to students? Because condom availability programs are an effective public health strategy supported by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help keep sexually active high school students safe. According to the CDC:
This year, the Golden State has a golden opportunity to protect high school students in California from alarming statistics like these in the form of the YHES Act.
The Youth Health Equity + Safety (YHES) Act (SB 954) would expand access to condoms by requiring public and charter high schools to make free condoms readily available to students, giving them the opportunity to protect themselves from STIs that negatively impact their well-being, shorten their lifespan and easily spread to the wider community.
The organization I lead, the California School-Based Health Alliance (CSHA), helps improve health access and equity by supporting schools and health care partners to bring health services to where the kids are — at school. The alliance is a proud co-sponsor of this bill because providing condoms in California’s high schools equips young people to make healthier decisions if they choose to be sexually active.
Although some districts, such as Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified and Oakland Unified, already offer condom access programs, the majority of schools in California do not.
An online survey by TeenSource, an initiative of Essential Access Health, found that 68% of California teens lack access to condoms at their high school, and 98% agreed that easier access would increase condom use among sexually active teens.
SB 954 would require all public and charter high schools to make internal and external condoms readily available to students for free beginning at the start of the 2025-26 school year. Condoms would need to be placed in a minimum of two locations on school grounds where they are easily accessible to students during school hours without requiring assistance or permission from school staff.
California’s high school students have a right to consent to and access medically accurate, confidential, culturally relevant, and age-appropriate health services in schools. Our state has made great strides in reducing unintended pregnancy among adolescents in the past 20 years. Unfortunately, half of all reported cases of STIs in 2022 were among young people aged 15-24. The scope of the epidemic requires bold action.
This year marks the second time state Sen. Caroline Menjivar, D-Van Nuys, has moved this sensible bill through the state’s Legislature. Menjivar has secured $5 million to cover the costs of distributing free condoms in public high schools for three years. The bill also specifies that if funds are not designated for this purpose, schools have no obligation to provide free condoms — addressing any concern as to an unfunded mandate.
To reduce public health disparities, we must ensure that California youth have equitable access to condoms in high schools. Advocates for youth health and education equity urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign the YHES Act into law.
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Sergio J. Morales, MPA, is the executive director of the California School-Based Health Alliance (CSHA), a nonprofit organization that aims to improve the health and academic success of children and youth by advancing health services in schools.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
