Those three little words uttered by my principal at the first staff meeting, my first day back at work, three days before the start of the school year. Excessed. Numbly, I stumble out of the meeting and make my way back to my classroom. I sit in the new green chair I had just purchased to match the decor for my universal transitional kindergarten class. I sit and stare at my classroom, trying to process what has just happened. Excessed. I have to pack my personal belongings and supplies. Excessed. I have to take everything off the walls. Excessed. Where am I going to put all these boxes? What school and grade will I be moving to, and when? Excessed.
Excessing, also known as involuntary transfer, occurs when schools have a lower number of enrolled students than were projected, and now there are too many teachers at one site. Districts move teachers between schools to fill vacancies that can open, partially due to higher/lower than expected enrollment, funding shifts, teacher retirement, etc. Excessing a teacher from their site usually happens in the spring, at the end of the school year.
Fall excessing, or being transferred to a new school/grade in the time after the new school year has begun, is rarely voluntary. It is a heartbreaker and destroys a teacher’s spirit due to the emotional investment that teachers put into their classrooms and their future students at the start of each new school year.
I explained fall excessing to my husband, a retired school bus driver, like this: “Imagine someone tells you that they have too many bus drivers and they need you to now drive a dump truck in a brand-new city. You know how to drive, you’ve been doing it for ages, and you are well trained to drive vehicles. However, you’ve never driven a dump truck before, and you’ve never driven in this new city. There is no new training for driving a dump truck, and you are expected to master the new vehicle, new city and its rules within two days.”
Sounds great, right?
In the spring of 2024 my union, San Diego Education Association, and my district came to an agreement to “minimize fall staffing movement.” This signed and approved contract agreement is supposed to encourage the district to sort out their enrollment numbers well before the start of the school year. The idea behind the agreement is to reduce the chances of a teacher being moved after school has already started. But it wasn’t enough to keep me from being excessed.
So I call for reinforcements. A teacher friend whose district hasn’t started yet gets busy packing up my old classroom. My husband loads my new green chair into his truck and takes it home. Eight hours later, my personal classroom items are making their way onto two pallets, headed to the school’s multipurpose room, while a stunned teacher who has been moved down two grade levels is making his way into the classroom to now teach transitional kindergarten.
My former classroom looks like it’s been pillaged, with leftover boxes, rolls of tape and a steady stream of boxes from the new teacher. The once sunny and bright room looks sad and forlorn, like she’s having trouble letting me go, as I am struggling to let her go as well.
I grapple with the hopes and dreams I had for these new students, whose names were already written on their tables, and etched on my heart. The students will be fine, they will only know one teacher, the one taking my place, three days before the official start of school. But I will always know that they were mine first.
The next few days are a blur of packing the last few boxes, crying, showing the new teacher the curriculum, crying and talking to union reps and the human resources department at my district. I feel crushed, unimportant, deflated. I am dismayed to hear that I have to stay on my campus for, a minimum of three weeks, but likely more like six or seven weeks. As a newly excessed teacher, I have to wait until the official fall excess date, typically the third or fourth Friday of September, before I know where the district will place me. In the meantime, I will remain on my campus as a support teacher. It is a painful reminder of who I am to the school district. A body, an ID number. A bus driver who can be told to drive a dump truck.
In an ironic plot twist, only half of the district’s excessed teachers were moved to new school sites. The other half, myself included, were allowed to stay at our current schools. To reduce the number of combo classes, I was directed to teach a newly created first grade class. At this point, I felt like a pawn in a mysterious chess game, with the rules only known to the upper administration.
I’m just a teacher who was excited to get ready for going back to school, but instead was delivered a big dose of fall excessing. I took my green chair with me to my new classroom, but it wasn’t the same. I left a little piece of me in that former classroom and with those students who were supposed to be mine.
•••
Kelly Gonzales is a primary grade teacher at a Title 1 school in San Diego, and a teacher leader with the California Reading and Literature Project.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
A kindergarten student raises her hand in a dual-language immersion class.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
My post doc after finishing my degree in 1984 was teaching first grade at the bilingual elementary where I had done dissertation research. As I headed out into the real world, a widely admired literacy professor advised, “Just make sure everything you have them read is deeply meaningful.” Sounded about right.
It took me nearly three years to realize how not right that was.
The first hint
I had seen in my research that kindergarten classrooms at the school were almost devoid of children’s direct experiences with print. It was all about “readiness” and “developmental appropriateness.”
So, one of my teacher colleagues and I did a small study using photocopied booklets (“libritos”) we wrote and illustrated for kindergartners in Spanish reading. We thought using engaging little booklets, with opportunities for kids to memorize, “pretend-read,” enjoy, and talk about the little books would help “prepare the ground” for learning to read.
The study went well, and there was great enthusiasm. But we found no differences on any measure of pre-reading or emergent reading between the kindergartners using the libritos and the overall performance of the four comparison classrooms.
A dive into the data, however, showed that not all comparison classrooms were alike.
While scores were low in two of them, the other two, taught by teachers new to the school, had scores that were off our charts. Many of those kindergartners were actually … reading.
I had to visit. What I saw was shocking: classes like well-oiled machines. Kids in small groups rotating efficiently as a bell signaled the end of each 15-minute block.
One group with the teacher doing directed fast-paced instruction on letters, sounds and combining them to read syllables, then words (for the Spanish readers) or cvc words (like “dad” or “pal,” for the English readers), then short phrases or sentences.
Another group on the rug playing literacy games or looking at books. Another engaged in an aide-directed activity, such as dictation. Another working independently, copying then illustrating words or phrases posted on an easel.
This did not fit the child-centered conception of kindergarten I brought with me from graduate school. But children were productively engaged. And those darned study results.
We re-ran the study the following year, using new and better stories and illustrations (upgraded to “Libros”) and involving only Libros classrooms and the two classrooms that did so well the year before. We basically got the same results. In fact, testers commented that children from the two teachers I’d visited were really “into it,” eager to show what they could do with print. Children in the Libros classrooms were more wary.
The second hint
I was teaching first grade while doing this study, and students who had been in these teachers’ classes came into my class the following year. These kids could read. Their reading was syllable by syllable and robotic—e.g., “Pe. pe. da. la. pe. lo. ta.” (“Pepe gives the ball”) but I was able to fix this by using a prompt I’d learned when observing Reading Recovery in New Zealand: “Read it like you’re talking” (“Léelo como si estuvieras hablando”), pointing out the words meant something, and they should read that way.
(I gave the feedback about robotic reading to the two kindergarten teachers. The following year, their kids came in reading like champs.)
These kids had a firm grip on the “alphabetic principle” and decoding. Moving them quickly to more challenging and interesting reading material was pure joy. Students from other kindergarten classrooms … not so much.
The third hint
I had a small, diverse group learning to read in English. They had very little in the way of literacy foundations, so it was up to me to lay them. Still working on the “make sure everything they read is meaningful” premise, I struggled. So did they.
One of my English readers was a diminutive boy who had trouble “getting it.” He tried and was conscientious, but letters and words remained mysteries. One day he was not in class. His family had moved to a nearby district. I was sorry to see him go; he was bright and inquisitive. But I admit (embarrassedly) to being relieved.
A month later, he reappeared. “Ohhh,” I thought, but put on a happy face and welcomed him. “Hey, how you doing? Where you been?” I asked. He told me he had gone to another school, but his family had decided to move back. He didn’t seem to mind. But neither was he particularly enthused.
When reading time came around for the English reading group, he got the reading book he’d been using, opened it, and started reading. I did a double take. “Where’d you learn to read?” I asked.
“My teacher taught me at the other school,” he answered. My teacher taught me at the other school. Daggers to the heart.
“So, what did you do at your other school?” I asked, trying to be as nonchalant as he. “I practiced my spelling words.” “And what else?” I asked. “And learned my letters and read in my book.” He was reading. And better than anyone else in the group.
Fourth — and nailed it
In the last two years of my brief first-grade teaching career, I got a post-doctoral fellowship to pursue my research while continuing to teach half-time. This required finding another teacher to share a classroom.
Our first meeting was not auspicious. She was dedicated to phonics first, while I was still — albeit now a bit wobbly — in the “make it meaningful” camp.
She took Monday, Tuesday and alternating Wednesdays; I had the other Wednesday, then finished the week.
She would handle letters, sounds, phonics, and decoding; I would focus on comprehension, generally trying to make the best of what I was sure would be meager literacy gruel she served up.
Despite our mutual suspicions, we made it work.
I soon saw her foundational focus early in the week helped kids get the foothold needed to read accurately and with confidence. She likewise saw when she returned on Mondays that our students were reading and writing in ways qualitatively different from what she had seen when she taught her own classroom in prior years. Our kids were moving ahead at a fast, but unforced, pace.
Many landed in that happy place I later came to know as “self-teaching”, what teachers sometimes refer to as “the light goes on.” Children suddenly understand the rules of the reading road, and they progress rapidly as new letters, sounds and spelling patterns become absorbed into a growing understanding of how to read. By the end of that year and the next one with our second crop of first graders, we had our kids get further than either of us had ever accomplished individually. I told this story to someone a few years back who said we had created a demonstration site for Scarborough’s rope, a reading-education metaphor that visually depicts the interconnected strands needed for skilled reading.
Whatever it was, we had each learned some lessons.
•••
Claude Goldenberg is Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and a former first grade and junior high teacher.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Paradise Elementary in Butte County was one of nearly 19,000 structures destroyed in the November 2018 Camp fire.
Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource
Diann Kitamura was superintendent of Santa Rosa City Schools in 2017 when the Tubbs fire became the most destructive fire in state history, burning through nearly 37,000 acres and destroying two school structures, plus the homes of about 800 students and 100 staff.
That record was broken the following year, when the Camp fire tore through Butte County, including the town of Paradise, where eight of nine school structures were damaged or destroyed; more than 50,000 people were displaced, and 85 people were killed. Meagan Meloy heads the homeless and foster youth services department at the Butte County Office of Education, which stepped in to support the thousands of students who were suddenly homeless from one day to the next.
Now, more than seven years for Kitamura and six years for Meloy after leading their Northern California school districts through the fire recovery efforts, they discuss lessons they learned and offer tips to the districts dealing with the aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County on how they could ease the suffering of their communities.
At the time of the Tubbs fire, there had been no recent fires impacting schools on that scale, and Kitamura had no model to guide her and her team. She now extends support to other districts going through their own recovery process.
Both Kitamura and Meloy say they believe their experiences can help school leaders across Los Angeles County as they deal with the widespread devastation of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
Former State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, center, and former Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura, right, at the Hidden Valley Satellite school, Santa Rosa, after the school was destroyed in the Tubbs fire in 2017.Credit: Diann Kitamura
Kitamura said it’s important to understand that the impact of fires goes beyond the people whose homes burned down: “Even if their school didn’t burn, their home might have burned; even if their home might not have burned, their school had burned.”
She added that despite the complex tasks involved, leaders should stay focused on what most matters. “It was really my own common sense and my deep, deep, deep care and love for my students, my staff and my families that guided the decisions every step of the way of how I was going to operate,” Kitamura said.
To ensure the physical and emotional well-being of their school communities, Kitamura said, leaders must think of a wide range of tasks, including making sure the business department is creating budget codes specific to disaster-related expenses, determining what instructional materials were destroyed and need replacing, identifying what resources the Federal Emergency Management Agency can offer, beefing up air quality monitoring across the areas that burned, figuring out if the insurance policies are adequate, and more.
“It’s going to be a long process, and it’ll come in waves,” said Meloy of fire recovery efforts in Butte County.
‘Create some kind of normality for students as soon as possible’
Meloy said the immediate need after a fire is to ensure the safety of all students and staff, and she highlighted the importance of finding a place and time for the greater school community to gather, given the impact of such a crisis.
“It maybe can’t happen immediately, but as soon as possible, when it’s safe and feasible, provide opportunities for the school community to just come together, support one another socially, emotionally,” she said. “Create some kind of normality for students as soon as possible.”
Meagan Meloy working at the Local Assistance Center after the Park fire in Butte County during the summer of 2024.Credit: Meagan Meloy
Use systems that are already in place to help as many families as possible. For instance, students whose families lose their homes to fires are likely to qualify for resources available to students experiencing homelessness. That’s because homelessness among children and youth is defined broadly under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which mandates that every school district, county office of education and charter school hire a local liaison to ensure that homeless youth are identified and education services are coordinated to increase these students’ chances of succeeding academically.
This federal law defines homeless students, in part, as “children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; or are abandoned in hospitals.”
Districts typically already have systems in place for this student group to ensure students have stability across three basic needs: shelter, food, and gas — the same needs that Kitamura noted are most urgent for students displaced by fires.
But Meloy, who has worked with the county education office for 21 years, offers a warning about the language used when communicating with families about their children’s education rights while they search for stable, permanent housing.
“A lot of the families that lost their homes in the Camp fire had never experienced homelessness before and weren’t comfortable with self-identifying. (Consider) using terms like ‘displaced,’ ‘temporary,’ ‘not stable’ rather than that label of homeless or homelessness that can be kind of off-putting to people. They may not want to even think of themselves as fitting under that category,” Meloy said.
While students displaced by fires may be eligible for student homelessness resources, schools and districts are often limited in the amount of funding available for this student group and in how funding can be used.
For example, homeless liaisons cannot typically purchase gas gift cards to hand out to families who need help transporting their children to school.
To meet some of the needs that education funding typically cannot be applied to, Meloy and her team relied on funding from a local foundation, North Valley Community Foundation, which received donations from a wide range of sources.
“Without that, I don’t know how we would have met the need for transportation,” she said.
Schools in Los Angeles County can also tap into the network of partners that liaisons and other school staff often work with. Both Meloy and Kitamura noted that their schools faced difficulties managing an influx of physical donations after fires.
Meloy said while some donations such as school supplies were helpful for her team of liaisons, they were not “really best equipped to” sort through donations like food and clothing.
It’s best for liaisons to work with “partner agencies who already have storage and systems for disbursing other items” so that they and other school staff can “stay focused on the school stuff,” she said.
It can also be helpful to communicate to the public that cash donations are most helpful in recovery efforts.
“I know that sounds maybe not appropriate … but in Santa Rosa City Schools, I had to haul out nine truck and trailer loads of stuff, and people who are displaced, they have no place to hold stuff,” said Kitamura, who is now the deputy superintendent of equitable education services with the Sonoma County Office of Education. “What they need is food, shelter and gasoline in most cases right now.”
Meloy also underscored what she called “secondary homelessness.”
For example, a family with sufficient home insurance might be able to purchase another home that had previously been a rental, which might then cause a group of renters to go on the search for housing.
“It’s families who maybe were not directly impacted in the sense that they lost their home in the fire, but it ripples out into the housing market and pushes people out,” Meloy said.
Addressing both physical and emotional needs
With the majority of Paradise Unified schools destroyed, enrolling students at neighboring schools became a primary task for Meloy and her staff.
To streamline the process, Meloy’s department asked every school district to identify an enrollment point of contact for families displaced by the Camp fire. Families were asked to text or call 211, the state’s local community services number, to be connected with a district point of contact, who worked with each family to help them decide where to enroll their children.
As student enrollment was handled in Butte County, Meloy noticed that the trauma that students had experienced became clearer and that the wide range of support, from mental health counseling to transportation to tutoring, might become difficult to track over time.
Meloy’s recommendation to L.A. County education staff is to create a filter in the district’s student information system that can be applied to students who were affected by fires. With this filter, school staff can have “some kind of a system where those students can then be flagged for extra support” over several years.
That filter can become particularly helpful when students’ trauma around fires is triggered by conditions similar to those that can spark fires. For example, Kitamura’s students dealt with power shut-offs during strong winds, poor air quality, and smoke traveling from other regional fires for years following the Tubbs fire. “The trauma from the fires is exacerbated” each time, said Kitamura.
Meloy said staff should be “prepared to see behaviors that would be consistent with someone who has experienced trauma.” In her case, she saw some students begin acting out in class by fighting or throwing things, while some other students became more shut down, dissociating while in class, and being extra quiet.
“Understand that it’s a trauma response,” said Meloy. “If it’s a windy day, it’s probably going to be, years from now, a tough day at school.”
To support Los Angeles County schools with mental health counseling, Kitamura is currently recruiting a group of counselors from across several Northern California schools who are prepared to offer counseling for students.
“I only learned after experience with the fire to do these kinds of things for other districts,” said Kitamura, who is in contact with the LA County Office of Education regarding this effort.
Meloy offered a reminder to not underestimate the trauma that staff membrs have also experienced: “In a classroom with students who have experienced this trauma, when you’ve experienced it yourself, it can be really overwhelming, so don’t forget about the staff and the support they need.”
Kitamura also recommended that the LA education office “beef up” on air quality monitoring; “make sure they are ready to go; make sure they are accurate, and make sure that the places you’re measuring are close to the places where the most burn happens.”
Lessons in preparation
Kitamura and Meloy also noted that once the emergency was over, they moved to planning for future fires.
Kitamura’s district, for example, established a redundant server in a separate location so officials could still communicate with their school community in the event that their primary servers went down or were burned.
Meloy noted the lack of dedicated, ongoing funding for the work that homeless liaisons do — and how it undermines all planning. Both Kitamura and Meloy called on legislators to provide funding support for students displaced by fires, given that the issue now surges regularly across the state.
“It is no longer, sadly, an isolated, once-in-a-decade event. It is continuing to happen. I had been thinking about, from the homeless liaison perspective, wildfires being a rural issue,” Meloy said. “But it’s really everywhere. I would love to see some dedicated funding for that.”
As Kitamura put it: “There will be more wildfires. There will be more crises. So … we better plan accordingly.”
Politico reports that Trump plans to go after the tax-exempt status of non-profit organizations he doesn’t like or send in DOGE to destroy them. Should we refer to him as King Donald? He also intends to wipe out the career civil service, replacing civil servants with appointees who are committed to his agenda, not to the U.S. government.
His second term is not about making America “great again” but about vengeance, retribution, and cruelty, as well as complete power over the federal government. Trump is now intent on punishing anyone who ever criticized him or stood in his way. It doesn’t matter to him that federal law prohibits the President from influencing IRS decisions. When has a law ever stopped him? Emoluments clause? Forget about it. Due process? No way. A nonpartisan civil service? No way.
LATEST: President DONALD TRUMPannounced this afternoon that he plans to invoke “Schedule F,” which would reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers. The change would make it easier for Trump to fire career government employees he believes are not in line with his agenda. The move comes three months after a Day One executive order which reinstalled Schedule F from his first term.
“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” Trump said in his post. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”
NONPROFITS FEEL THE HEAT: The Trump administration is mounting a sweeping offensive on America’s nonprofit sector, deploying a blend of funding cuts, the elimination of tax benefits, bureaucratic paralysis and even installing a small DOGE team to target organizations that challenge the president’s agenda.
The tactics include indirect measures, like hollowing out entire grant-making agencies like AmeriCorps and USAID, and making federal personnel or contract cuts at other agencies so deep that groups can no longer access grants or loans. But there are also more direct efforts, like visits from DOGE or the USDA halting $500 million in deliveries to food banks.
DOGE staffers have attempted to install their own operatives inside major nonprofits like NeighborWorks, a community development group, and the Vera Institute, which advocates for lower incarceration rates.
It’s a campaign that’s hitting a sector that’s already struggling. “You’re cutting or eliminating government funding at the same time when donations are going down, at the same time that costs are going up for the nonprofits and the demand for their services is going up,” said RICK COHEN, chief communications officer at the National Council of Nonprofits.
In just over two months, at least 10,000 nonprofit workers have lost their jobs, according to an estimate from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. And groups providing essential services including housing, education and domestic violence support — and who are already scrambling in an uncertain economic environment — could now face an even steeper funding drought.
“Non profits have been running wild off of the drunken unchecked spending of the federal government and that stopped on Jan 20. We are no longer going to support organizations that stand in stark contrast to the mission of the president of the United States,” White House spokesperson HARRISON FIELDS said in a statement.
The Trump White House is considering a budget proposal that would completely eliminate funding for Head Start, a federal program providing early childhood education administered by 1,700 nonprofit and for-profit organizations, the Associated Press reported. It’s unclear if Congress, as it did during Trump’s first term, will keep funding for groups that Trump’s proposed budgets stripped.
Meanwhile, other groups such as NeighborWorks and the Vera Institute are being pressured from the inside. DOGE staffers met with senior leadership at NeighborWorks on Tuesday and requested that a DOGE operative be embedded in the organization’s staff, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting granted anonymity to avoid retribution.
“NeighborWorks America is a congressionally chartered nonprofit corporation,” not a government agency, said NeighborWorks spokesperson DOUGLAS ROBINSON, emphasizing that the group is aligned with the administration’s housing goals.
NeighborWorks, which provides grants and training to 250 community development groups, is usually governed by a five-person board composed of senior leaders from five different federal agencies.
“There’s concern they’re going to load the board up, get rid of officers, and install someone else to implode the organization,” one of the people said. “Slashing that organization during a housing crisis really goes against the president’s platform of creating additional homes and the ticket to the American dream.”
At the same time, Trump is escalating rhetoric against nonprofits that don’t receive federal dollars but have challenged his administration, including good governance groups.
Asked this week about whether he’d consider revoking tax-exempt status from groups beyond Harvard, Trump singled out Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit ethics watchdog group. “They’re supposed to be a charitable organization,” Trump said. “The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump.”
“For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government,” said CREW spokesperson JORDAN LIBOWITZ.
Meanwhile, White House officials are finalizing a set of executive orders that would revoke the tax-exempt status of environmental nonprofits, particularly those opposing oil, gas and coal development, Bloomberg reported. The move could be unveiled as early as Earth Day on Tuesday, symbolically reinforcing the administration’s fossil-fuel priorities.
Meanwhile the AP reported that DOGE contacted the Vera Institute of Justice, which tries to reduce incarceration rates, and said that DOGE planned to embed a team at Vera and all other nonprofits that receive federal funding. Vera told them they had already lost their federal funding so DOGE staffers were not welcome.
Vera, which has an annual budget of around $45 million that mostly comes from private funders, advocates for reducing the number of people imprisoned in the U.S. They consult with law enforcement and public agencies to design alternative programs to respond to mental health crises or traffic violations, and also support access to lawyers for all immigrants facing deportation.
Nonprofits told the AP that the Trump administration was eroding civil society by its efforts to undermine their work.
Travon Reed is currently a housing navigator in South Los Angeles who helps those who live on the street to find housing through the Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System (HOPICS). He credits the classes he took at East Los Angeles College for preparing him for his career in social work.
He described his classes at East L.A. as “the gifts that keep on giving.”
But when he was job hunting after graduating in 2022, employers didn’t seem to value what he had learned in his college courses. He settled for an entry-level social work position, repeating most of the training he had already received in college.
“I had to get here, and then kind of prove that I wasn’t brand-spanking new to the concept of social work,” Reed said. “I could have been given a little more recognition.”
Career education is something that happens in school, college, in an apprenticeship, on the job, through the military or even volunteering. But this valuable experience isn’t always reflected in the records of prospective employees like Reed.
That’s why California is embarking on a years-long effort to build infrastructure for a new virtual platform called the Career Passport. Its goal is to bring all these experiences into a digital portfolio — somewhat like a resume — called a “learning employment record.” This record, available to every Californian, would automatically update as a person gains skills and credentials with information validated by schools and employers.
Gov. Gavin Newsom described his vision for the Career Passport in a news conference in December.
“They take all your life experiences, take all of those skills you developed and create a passport where those skills can be utilized in the private sector and advance your opportunities as it relates to your career and your future,” Newsom said.
The concept of a learning employment record can sound deceptively simple, even obvious, but advocates for these records say that actually making this work isn’t easy.
“If this was easy to do, people would’ve done it a long time ago,” said Wilson Finch, vice president of initiatives at the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), a national nonprofit that supports the creation of education-to-career pathways.
The idea of learning and employment records has been embraced by employers, colleges, workforce boards and political leaders around the country to resolve deep frustration among both job seekers and employers. The idea could have powerful ramifications for local and state economies, its backers contend, as long as potential issues such as fraud and fair representation of skills are solved.
“Any employer will tell you they’re not happy with the candidates they’re getting. They’re getting too many people, many of whom are not anywhere aligned to what they need,” Finch said. “And then you talk to the job seekers, and they’re applying for jobs all over the place and not hearing anything back.”
California won’t have to ‘figure out the potholes’
California’s Career Passport embodies many of the goals of the state’s Master Plan for Career Education, which aims to ease Californians’ sometimes fraught transitions between school, college, vocational training and, ultimately, a career.
Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget earmarks $100 million in one-time funding to begin building the infrastructure for the Career Passport and to expand Credit for Prior Learning, which allows students to receive college credit for training they get in the workplace, military service, a hobby or even volunteering.
The California Community Colleges system is leading the effort to build out the Career Passport. It will be a multiyear process, according to Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives.
He said the effort is “focused on colleges to start, but designed in a way that allows for other entities to ultimately use it and participate as well.”
Finch said he’s excited to see that the Career Passport’s scope is the entire state, not just one group, like unemployed Californians.
“I’ve been working in this space long enough to know that when you only target a specific area, the impact is very limited,” Finch said.
There is a big push for learning and employment records all around the country. Some are happening in metro areas, like Pittsburgh or Dallas-Fort Worth. In Colorado, community colleges have taken the lead. Alabama piloted its version, called Talent Triad, in specific industries, such as health and advanced manufacturing, where the need was particularly great. California could learn from other states’ efforts.
“California shouldn’t have to figure out the potholes, so to speak,” said Mike Simmons, the associate executive director of business development and strategic partnerships for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
What could be tricky is the sheer size and diversity of the state, whose workforce in Fresno looks really different from Silicon Valley, Simmons said.
Over the last year, the state’s Office of Cradle to Career Data hosted wide-ranging conversations about what its Career Passport will look like through a specialtask force. That group included employers, the California Department of Education, teachers, all three state higher education systems and many state agencies, including the Labor & Workforce Development, Rehabilitation and California Volunteers.
Reed represented the student perspective on the task force.
“I was so stoked to hear that there would be some linkage between schools and employers, and that everything would be cohesive,” he said.
Credit: California Cradle2Career Data System
The problem goes beyond technology
To apply for a job, an applicant may need to request school transcripts, submit copies of professional licenses and put together a resume that distills their work experience and training. This requires time, fees and energy to ensure that a lot of different organizations are swiftly communicating with each other.
“We heard from students that it’s really hard to request transcripts from different institutions,” said Mary Ann Bates, executive director for the Office of Cradle to Career Data.
That’s why the task force is focused on a related effort to improve and expand the state’s eTranscript system, making sharing student transcripts seamless and free.
But the problem goes beyond technology. Those promoting learning and employment records — or career education, in general — say that K-12 schools, colleges, state agencies, community organizations and employers aren’t working together the way they should.
It can feel like educators and employers are speaking different languages. There’s an emphasis on grades and credit for college transcripts, while employers are more interested in whether a prospective employee has certain skills, Finch said.
One problem is that employers don’t always accept that the training and experience are authentic, because anyone can exaggerate or outright lie on their resume. Reed believes that if his colleges had vouched for classes that provided specific skills, such as trauma-informed care and motivational interviewing, it might have saved him from unnecessary training.
The current employment system favors those who have a college degree. Some human resources departments will simply filter out applicants without a bachelor’s degree. A student who is only a few credits short of a degree looks the same on paper as someone with no college experience.
“It’s an all-or-nothing system,” Finch said.
Those who attended college but never received a degree — which describes roughly 1 out of 5 Californians over 25 years old — would benefit from a new system. A learning and employment record could demonstrate that an applicant has the skills needed for a job through specific college courses, job training and maybe a boot camp, Finch said.
Ultimately, the success of the Career Passport depends on buy-in. Employers will go wherever they can find potential employees, and job seekers will go wherever they can find jobs. Making it work requires a critical mass of both.
Reed said his biggest worry about the Career Passport is: “In the land of the free, will we get everyone to uniformly accept it?”
California Department of Education and California Department of Public
Health issue
joint guidance
on the coronavirus to school districts.
Colleges in California and nationally
move to
online instruction in response to the coronavirus. The California
Department of Education
receives
a USDA waiver that enables districts to feed students during
coronavirus-related closures.
Newsom signs
executive order
assuring closed schools remain funded as schools throughout the state
announce closures and distance learning
begins.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond
advises districts
to plan for providing distance learning through the end of the school
year.
Colleges
begin to announce
plans not to resume classes in person. CSU, UC later announce
decision to keep most fall classes online.
EdSource analysis
shows wide disparities in how much school districts will receive
through federal CARES Act.
Newsom projects a $54 billion deficit and $19 billion less in
Proposition 98 funding over two years for schools and community
colleges. Proposed budget
slashes funding for preschool and child care plans, teacher development programs.
Superintendents of urban California districts pen open letter to lawmakers saying proposed budget cuts will set back restarting school.
In historic action, UC
moves to drop
SAT/ACT and develop a replacement exam for admissions.
College graduates forced to abandon the traditional celebrations and
ceremonies associated with graduation turn to
families or even video games to mark their accomplishments.
In Los Angeles, Oakland, West Contra Costa County
, Sacramento and San Francisco, K-12 officials reconsider
whether police should be in schools and activists urge for their
removal in the wake of the George Floyd killing.
A spike in Covid-19 cases prompts
more districts to plan for online education for the beginning of the
2020-2021 school year.
State imposes
strict regulations for school opening and closing based on counties on
state’s monitoring list. Establishes waiver process
to allow some elementary schools to reopen.
In response to new regulations, many school districts abandon plans
for fall hybrid learning and in-person classes.
Los Angeles Unified reaches deal
with teachers over distance learning while other districts struggle to
finalize plans.
State health officials release first health and safety guidance
for how colleges and universities can reopen, but most classes must be
offered remotely and have other restrictions in place.
State-issued guidance
permitting limited openings will apply to districts in counties on the
coronavirus watch list, where schools are shut down, followed by guidance
allowing small cohorts of 14 students and two adults for special
education, homeless and foster students.
Los Angeles Unified announces plan
to offer coronavirus testing to all students, staff. Power outages
due to a heat wave hit California as school resumes virtually across
the state.
Almost all colleges and universities open
with few in-person classes, but dorms still house students and some
campuses plan for testing and contact tracing.
Newsom introduces
four-tiered color coded county tracking system to replace the previous
monitoring list for counties. The “Blueprint for a Safer Economy”
tracks counties by the number of Covid-19 cases recorded each day and
the percentage of positive cases out of the total number of tests
administered, both averaged over seven days. The system has had a
major impact on a school’s ability to reopen for in-person
instruction.
$900 billion Covid-19 relief package, including $82 billion for K-12
and colleges, plus $22 billion for Covid-19 testing that could help to
reopen schools. Of the $82 billion, $6.5 billion went to California
for K-12 schools.
, which allowed in-person instruction in counties in “purple” tier
with daily case rate of less than 25, and a $2 billion
incentive program
to bring back in-person instruction for elementary grades and students
with special needs in prioritized categories by mid-February.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump storm the United States
Capitol in a riot. California educators
condemn and reflect
on what many call an “insurrection.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes a new state budget increasing funding to
California colleges to stabilize tuition rates, provide emergency aid,
and “re-engage” students who have dropped out due to the Covid-19
pandemic. The budget also proposes $4.6 billion for summer school
programs.
Teachers and other school employees in Mariposa County are among the
first in the state to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
to create a permanent, virtual K-12 academy, citing concerns about the
pandemic’s impact.
Newsom announces the creation of Safe Schools for All Hub, a site
providing resources to school districts regarding California’s Covid-19
strategies.
Covid-19 death toll passes 400,000 in the U.S., CDC announces.
In a news conference, Newsom announces streamlined vaccination efforts,
including an age-based eligibility system and putting teachers high on
the state’s priority vaccination list.
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing extends a waiver
allowing those in preparation programs to continue teaching as they
finish their credentials, the latest move to combat a teacher shortage
during the pandemic.
Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. surpasses 500,000, CDC announces.
The Biden administration confirms all schools must resume annual
standardized testing, with modifications to protect against Covid. The
requirement had been suspended in March 2020.
The California Department of Public Health reports that infection rates
have fallen significantly, allowing many elementary schools to begin
reopening.
The California Legislature approves a plan providing $2 billion in
incentives for districts that reopen for in-person learning beginning
April 1, starting with the earliest grades first.
allocating about $15 billion to K-12 schools in California to combat the
pandemic and related recession.
One-year anniversary of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring
Covid-19 a global pandemic.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updates
guidelines on distancing in schools in elementary schools. Elementary
schoolers can safely distance from 3 feet, while middle and high schools
should maintain a distance of 6 feet.
U.S. Department of Education announces California is behind on returning
to in-person instruction.
CDC announces that about 80% of K-12 staff, teachers, staff and child
care workers have received at least their first dose of the Covid
vaccine.
after facing lawsuits and criticism from a group of parents for not
reopening sooner.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announces that it will continue
reimbursing schools and child care centers for free meals, a move
serving food insecure families during the pandemic.
The University of California system announces it will no longer consider
SAT or ACT scores in scholarship or admissions decisions.
California announces a plan to spend $6 billion to expand broadband
internet access to thousands of students underserved by private internet
service providers during distance learning.
State rescinds mandate requiring schools to send home children who
refuse to wear a mask, announcing that it will allow schools to decide
what to do.
The University of California system announces that it will require
students, faculty and staff to show proof of vaccination against Covid.
The California State University System announces that all faculty,
students and staff will be required to show proof of vaccination.
CDC updates masking guidance, recommending masking indoors and in high
transmission areas, amid a surge in the Covid virus’s new delta variant.
Several California community colleges, including ones in the Los Angeles
Community College District and Los Rios Community College District,
implement vaccine mandates amid surging cases.
to be vaccinated against Covid or undergo weekly testing.
Culver City Unified, in west Los Angeles, announces that it will require
all students to be vaccinated against and undergo weekly testing,
becoming the first school district in California to do so.
Several rural districts in California close schools, following an
increase in cases of the delta variant of Covid-19.
The Los Angeles Unified school board votes to require all students 12
and older to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19, becoming the largest
public school district to do so.
The chancellor of the California Community College system announces
student enrollment has dropped below 2 million students for the first
time in over 30 years due to the pandemic.
A judge rules that California students with disabilities can resume
independent study after Assembly Bill 130 was passed, requiring all
schools to provide in-person classes. The bill made an exception for
those who qualified for independent study, but shut out several students
who had various disabilities preventing them from wearing a mask or
making them susceptible to Covid.
The UC system announces it will stick with test-free admissions and will
not replace the SAT and ACT with a new exam.
CDC announces the death toll in the U.S. has surpassed 800,000.
Several school districts, including Los Angeles Unified and West Contra
Costa Unified, announce plans to delay vaccine mandate deadlines.
CDC updates quarantine and isolation guidelines, and California
announces the state will follow them.
CDC reports 1 million active Covid cases in the U.S, the highest daily
total of any country.
About 900 teachers and aides stage a “sickout” to protest the lack of
Covid-19 protections in San Francisco public schools in the midst of a
surge of cases.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announces that funding for schools and community
colleges will increase to over $100 million in the midst of a pandemic
affecting state revenue.
Newsom signs an executive order loosening state regulations for
substitute teachers to combat staffing shortages.
protest by several teachers at a West Contra Costa Unified middle
school, over half of Stege Elementary school’s teachers call out to
protest Covid-19 policies.
Oakland-based research group Children Now releases report card detailing
the effects of the pandemic, wildfires and racial injustice on
children’s education and mental health.
Several CSU and UC campuses suspend in-person classes following a surge
of cases.
San Diego State University sees a record number of fall 2022 applicants,
indicating a bounce back to pre-pandemic levels.
The chancellor of the CSU system announces tuition will not increase for
the 2022-23 school year as many students continue to face financial
struggles due to the pandemic.
A panel for the CSU system recommends eliminating SAT and ACT exams for
admission, following several colleges across the nation during the
pandemic.
EdSource reports that graduation rates held steady during the pandemic.
CDC issues new rating system allowing most students in K-12 schools to
remove masks indoors.
Covid-19 deaths worldwide surpass 6 million.
Two year anniversary of when the World Health Organization declared the
coronavirus a global pandemic.
California ends school mask mandate.
President Joe Biden proposes $88.3 billion dollars in new discretionary
funds for American colleges, a 16% increase from the previous year.
Almost 1 million Covid deaths have been reported in the U.S.
The National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers announces
state-based preschool programs suffered from massive pandemic-related
losses, including enrollment decline and loss of state funding.
Biden and the Department of Education announce an extension of the
student loan payment pause until Aug. 31. The pandemic-era policy
assisted millions of borrowers nationwide.
College students introduce a bill to add a 24-hour mental health hotline
number on student ID cards due to the growing mental health crisis
associated with the pandemic and other social justice issues.
U.S. Covid deaths top 1 million.
Newsom announces a revised state budget allocating $128 billion to
schools and community colleges in the state, $20 billion more than
initially proposed. The new budget is slated to provide $3.3 billion for
districts affected by inconsistent attendance due to new Covid variants.
The Public Policy Institute of California reveals that science
instruction decreased in K-12 schools across the state during the
pandemic. More than 200 districts were surveyed, citing teacher burnout
related to the pandemic and a lack of funding for science, technology,
engineering and math programs.
California to provide free lunch to all K-12 students, expanding on the
USDA’s pandemic-era universal meal program.
Several public universities and colleges begin in-person instructions
with few Covid restrictions.
As educators worry about the pandemic’s effect on students, the state
Department of Education announces it will delay release of standardized
test scores from the previous year, prompting a public outcry.
standardized test scores projected to show declines related to global
pandemic. This is a contrast from the initial announcement indicating a
delay.
EdSource reports that California students have performed significantly
worse on state standardized states, highlighting another one of the
pandemic’s impacts on education.
CSU board of trustees abandons a plan to require a fourth year of math
for admission, citing pandemic-related concerns.
Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes a budget decrease for California Community
Colleges and K-12 schools, while continuing to allocate funding for
“learning recovery from Covid.”
Officials from the Department of Public Health announce plans to end the
Covid vaccine mandate for school children.
Several elementary schools in Marin County institute a temporary mask
mandate following an uptick in cases.
CDC adds Covid-19 vaccine to recommended immunization schedule for
children ages 6-17.
CalFresh announces it will end two temporary exceptions allowing more
students to qualify for CalFresh during the pandemic.
Despite hopes of return to a “pre-pandemic normalcy,” state data reports
a decline in TK-12 enrollment.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers,
testifies in front of Congress regarding Covid-related closures at
schools.
World Health Organization announces that Covid-19 is no longer
considered a global pandemic.
CalMatters reports that the Golden State Education and Training Grant
Program, which allows those affected by job loss due to Covid to enroll
in a college program, is set to end by June 15 in order to combat
ongoing budget deficit.
School officials and union leaders for Los Angeles Unified reach
agreement to extend winter breaks. If ratified, the measure will extend
the school year in hopes of combating Covid-related learning loss.
State Legislature mandates a change in literacy standards, hoping to
combat reading loss.
In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rules President Joe Biden
lacked the authority to implement a plan erasing $400 billion in college
student debt, leaving millions of people affected by financial woes
during the pandemic in a limbo.
The Legislature announces two bills to combat a teacher shortage
exacerbated by the pandemic, including one set to pay student teachers
for their required 600 hours of instruction.
to prevent them from testifying in a suit alleging that the state failed
to prevent learning loss for low-income and other high-risk groups. Some
professors from the university planned to testify regarding the effects
of the pandemic on chronic absenteeism and student engagement/enrollment
measures.
Reversing course, the department announces it will not pursue a lawsuit
against the Stanford researchers.
Chancellor for California Community Colleges announces enrollment has
increased, bouncing back after years of pandemic-related declines.
Los Angeles Unified School District announces it will no longer require
employees be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The mandate was under
controversy as many claimed it was discriminatory.
CAASPP Smarter Balanced assessments reveal that districts have done
little to reverse learning loss due to the pandemic. The learning loss
disproportionately affected Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged
students.
Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes a rainy day fund to protect California
colleges from expected budget shortfalls.
Los Angeles Unified loosens Covid restrictions, allowing children and
school to return to school if symptoms are mild.
A study published by the New England Journal of Medicine finds that long
Covid will have lasting effects on IQ levels and cognitive ability of
schoolchildren.
California Community Colleges reports that the system has lost more than
$5 million due to fraudulent registrations, a trend that has seen an
increase since the pandemic.
Trump-appointed judge in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules
that Los Angeles Unified employees can sue the district over expired
Covid policies. The suit had been thrown out by a lower court as the
rules were no longer in effect.
The New York Times reports that $190 billion given to schools to help
students recover from pandemic-related learning loss did little to
improve test scores.
Toddlers and babies born during the pandemic suffered from significant
developmental delays due to its effects, the New York Times reports.
Los Angeles Unified superintendent announces that the district has
recovered from some learning loss during the pandemic, with reading
scores showing English proficiency increasing from 41% to 43%. Math
scores also rose by 2 percentage points.
Study by Northwest Evaluation Association reports that a significant
number of eighth graders are approximately a year behind in learning
progress due to the pandemic.
EdWeek reports that district administrators have until Sept. 30 to claim
share of Covid-related federal aid set aside to assist homeless
students.
CSU system announces 461,000 enrolled students, the largest number since
the beginning of the pandemic.
State data indicates improving scores on standardized tests, but not to
pre-pandemic levels. Government officials say the scores show that
districts are making up for learning loss.
The Center on Reinventing Public Education gives California a D grade on
its reporting of the effects of Covid on students.
EdSource reports that several schools and colleges around California
will receive over $45 billion in bonds for construction in a “post-Covid
vote of confidence.”
West Contra Costa district announces it will cut several administrative
and staff positions due to a budget deficit, citing declining enrollment
and expiration of Covid-relief grants as causes.
