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Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flanked by European leaders, visited the White House yesterday. they did Statesmanship Kabuki, where everyone tiptoes around and pretends that Donny Convict’s hand is firmly guiding his ship of state — when in reality, America’s Mad King is a semi-sentient drool-bucket who’s only a handful of frayed synapses away from wearing his diaper on his head.
can we just talk about how totally fucking insane Dear Leader is?
Donny has a huge-ass painting of his Miracle Ear Nicking hanging in the White House — and he makes sure everyone sees it by pointing and whining “this was not a good day.”
if it wasn’t a good day, then why are you forever reminding yourself of it by commissioning a wall-size painting so you can relive it daily?
normal people don’t act like this.
let’s gif that shit, because you would never believe it if you didn’t see it with your own eyes.
everyone in attendance — Zelenskyy, Mark Rutte, Ursula von der Leyen, Keir Starmer, Alexander Stubb, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, and Giorgia Meloni — these are serious people who run countries, and this is what they have to endure when they come to Donny’s White House: a lunatic wants them to admire his assassination painting.
what must be going through their minds?
Donny has literally devolved into the insane dictator General Garcia from the film The In-Laws, proudly showing off his crazypants art collection.
that’s right, the White House Gift Shop has now become your one-stop destination for all merchandise MAGA. I’ll bet Zelenskyy was thrilled with his new hat. I’ll bet it’s sitting in a treasured wastebin in Ukraine right now.
tell me, does Dear Leader’s inability to read simple words — or even recognize someone sitting right across from him — make his ass seem demented?
Donny: “President Stubb of… Finland and he’s… uh… he’s somebody that where are we here, huh? where? where?” Stubb: “I’m right here.” Donny: “oh.”
Stubb was, in fact, sitting directly across from Donny.
hey Jake Tapper, are you watching this?
again, these are serious people dealing with serious issues — and Donny reacts to them like a bored child who can’t wait for the other person to stop talking, so he can start.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: “every single child has to go back to its family. this should be one of our main priorities in negotiations is to make sure that the children come back to Ukraine, to their families.”
Donny: “thank you, and we did. I was just thinking, we’re hear for a different reason, but we uh just a couple of weeks ago made the largest trade deal in history. that’s a big, that’s a big thing, and congratulations, that’s great. thank you very much.”
shut the fuck up with your children, lady, whoever you are. Donny wants to brag about his trade deals.
everyone was there to talk about ending Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but Donny was more interested in playing ever-more-outlandish rounds of Things That Never Happened The Most.
“we’re gonna stop mail-in ballots because it’s corrupt. you know, when you go to a voting booth and you do it the right way, you go to a state that runs it properly, you go in, they even ask me, they ask me for my license plate for identify, I said ‘I don’t know if I have it,’ they said ‘sir, you have to have it.’ I was very impressed, actually. but it’s very hard to cheat.”
what the fuck? okay, let’s just give Sundowning President Chucklefuck the benefit of the doubt here, and presume he meant to say drivers license, not license plate. Donny has lived in two states: Florida and New York. granted, Donny also lives in a Perpetual State of Confusion, but you can’t vote there. so let’s talk about New York and Florida. neither of those states require a drivers license to vote, so what the fuck is Donny talking about? oh wait, it’s a sir story. big strong election workers, their faces wet with tears of gratitude, were going ‘sir! sir! we need your license plate, sir! go pry that sucker off the presidential limousine, sir, and fork it over.’
so Donny’s just making shit up, but wait a minute. that clip is from Donny’s one-on-one morning meeting with Zelenskyy, ostensibly about bringing an end to the war in Ukraine — so why is Donny prattling on about whatever nonsensical ‘sir story’ pops into his empty head?
it’s because Donny has lost his fucking marbles — and we’ve all become numb to it. presidents aren’t supposed to act this way. Joe Biden didn’t wander into the tall weeds in the middle of a meeting and start blithering incoherently about whatever he’d seen on TV that morning. neither did Obama. neither did the Bushes.
Reagan did, but he was almost as demented as Donny is — so what does that tell you?
would any of the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media care to take me up on it?
oh wait, I think President Scramblebrains wants to talk about some more shit that never happened the most. lay it on us, hotshot.
“we have a thing going on right now in DC. we went from the most unsafe place anywhere to a place that now, people, friends are calling me up, Democrats are calling me up and they’re saying, ‘sir, I want to thank you. my wife and I went out to dinner last night for the first time in four years, and Washington, DC is safe, and you did that in four days.’ I’ll tell you it’s safe. I had another friend of mine, he has a son who’s a great golfer, he’s on tour, and he came in fourth yesterday in the big tournament where Scott Scheffler made the great shot and uh he said his son is going to dinner in Washington DC tonight. I said would you have allowed that to happen a year ago? he said no way, no way. he said ‘what you’ve done is incredible’ and I think the people realize it. but the press says ‘he’s a dictator, he’s trying to take over.’ no, all I want is security for our people. but people that haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington DC in two years are going out to dinner, and the restaurants in the last two days were busier than they’ve been in a long time.”
oh. Donny’s bragging that the police state he’s inflicted on the nation’s capitol has brought untold prosperity to its nightspots.
Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.
people would rather stay home in DC than risk being hassled by Donny’s gestapo thugs — yet here’s Donny spinning farcical nonsense about Democrats and golfer-dads phoning him with the tears in their eyes. poor Zelenkyy has to sit there and try keep a straight face while this complete fucking insanity happens right next to him.
After the Brown decision of 1954, after years of delay, the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson cracked down on districts that refused to desegregate their schools. The Department of Justice negotiated consent decrees with recalcitrant districts, mostly (but not only) in the South.
More that 100 such consent decrees are still in effect.
The Trump Department of Justice recently canceled the consent decree with Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana.
The head of the Department’s Civil Rights Division hailed this reversal of longstanding policy.
Expect more such rulings from the Civil Rights Division, dismantling protections for racial minorities, LGBT, and women. The only protected group in the Trump era is white men.
In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s.
The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law.
Some experts, including former justice department employees, say the change in direction for the department could be worrying.
These orders “provide students with really important protections against discrimination”, said Shaheena Simons, who was the chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the justice department for nearly a decade. “They require school districts to continue to actively work to eliminate all the remaining vestiges of the state-mandated segregation system. That means that students have protections in terms of what schools they’re assigned to, in terms of the facilities and equipment in the schools that they attend. They have protection from discrimination in terms of barriers to accessing advanced programs, gifted programs. And it means that a court is there to protect them and to enforce their rights when they’re violated and to ensure that school districts are continuing to actively desegregate.”
The justice department ended the Plaquemines parish desegregation order in an unusual process, one that some fear will be replicated elsewhere. The case was dismissed through a “joint stipulated dismissal”. Previously, courts have followed a specific process for ending similar cases, one in which school districts prove that they are complying with the court orders. That did not happen this time. Instead, the Louisiana state attorney general’s office worked with the justice department in reaching the dismissal.
“I’m not aware of anyone, any case, that has [ended] that way before,” said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF); the LDF was not specifically involved with the Plaquemines parish case. “The government as a plaintiff who represents the American people, the people of that parish, has an obligation to make sure that the district has done everything that it’s supposed to have done to comply with the federal court order in the case before it gets released, and the court itself has its own independent obligation to confirm that there’s no vestiges of discrimination left in the school district that are traceable to either present or past discrimination.”
Despite the district not proving that it is compliant with the order, the justice department has celebrated the end of the consent decree.
“No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,” Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the decision. “This is a prime example of neglect by past administrations, and we’re now getting America refocused on our bright future.”
But focusing on the age of the case implies that it was obsolete, according to Simons, who is now the senior adviser of programs and strategist at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The administration is trying to paint these cases as ancient history and no longer relevant.”
In 1966, the Johnson administration sued school districts across the country, particularly in the South, that refused to comply with desegregation demands. At the time, Plaquemines parish was led by Leander Perez, a staunch segregationist and white supremacist.
Perez had played a large role in trying to keep nearby New Orleans from desegregating, and once that effort failed, he invited 1,000 white students from the Ninth Ward to enroll in Plaquemines parish schools. By 1960, nearly 600 had accepted the offer. Perez was excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for ignoring his warning to stop trying to prevent schools run by the archdiocese of New Orleans from integrating.
Perez attempted to close the public schools in Plaquemines parish, and instead open all-white private academies, or, segregation academies, which became a feature of the post-integration south. An estimated 300 segregation academies, which, as private schools, are not governed by the same rules and regulations as public schools, are still in operation and majority white.
Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so.
According to the Century Foundation, as of 2020, 185 districts and charters consider race and/or socioeconomic status in their student assignment or admissions policies, while 722 districts and charters are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The justice department currently has about 135 desegregation cases on its docket, the majority of which are in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.skip past newsletter promotion
“Separate but equal doesn’t work,” said Johnathan Smith, former deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the justice department. “The reality is that students of color do better when they are in integrated classrooms … We know that the amount of resources that are devoted to schools are greater when there are a higher number of white students. So to have students attend majority-minority school districts means that they’re going to be shut out, whether that’s from AP classes, whether that’s from extracurricular activities. All the activities that make it possible for students to fully achieve occur when you have more integrated classrooms.”
“Public education isn’t just about education for the sake of education,” he added. “It’s about preparing people to be citizens of our democracy and to be fully engaged in our democratic institutions. When you have students that are being shut out from quality public education, the impact is not just on those communities. It’s on our democracy writ large.”
Smith, the current chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, said that the decision “signals utter contempt for communities of color by the administration, and a lack of awareness of the history of segregation that has plagued our nation’s schools”.
Expect more reversals from the Civil rights Division of the Justice Department. Harmeet K Dhillon has spent years litigating against civil rights of minorities.
Students, faculty and staff protest a potential tuition increase across the California State University system.
Credit: Michael Lee-Chang / Students for Quality Education
California State University trustees will decide this week on whether students will see a 6% tuition rate increase over the next five years.
But ahead of their Wednesday vote, the nation’s largest public university system has already tweaked the proposal: Any tuition rate increase will sunset after five years and be reevaluated for the 2029-30 academic year.
The proposal would go into effect in the fall 2024 semester and affect the system’s 460,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The first increase would be $342 for full-time undergraduate students.
Last year, CSU assembled a work group to examine sustainable funding in the 23-campus system and found the costs of operating the university system exceeded its revenues. The work group also found that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s multiyear financial compact, made with the CSU to increase enrollment and improve graduation rates in exchange for annual 5% funding increases, did not fully meet the system’s funding needs, said Steve Relyea, chief financial officer for the Cal State system, during a recent call with reporters.
“The absence of tuition increases in 11 of the past 12 years has prevented the CSU from having sufficient resources to help keep up with rising costs,” he said.
The new tuition proposal would generate $148 million of new ongoing revenue in its first year, said Ryan Storm, the system’s assistant vice chancellor for budget. Over five years, the system would see about $840 million in new funding.
The increase would also allow CSU to invest more dollars into financial aid. About 60% of undergraduate students would not be affected by the tuition increase because their tuition is covered by grants, scholarships and waivers. Eighty-one percent of undergraduate students receive some form of financial aid.
“The additional revenue would be invested in the budget priorities that reflect the values and the mission of the university,” Storm said, adding that those priorities include academic and student service support for basic needs and mental health services, improving Title IX practices, improving maintenance and building new facilities, and improving compensation to attract and retain faculty and other CSU employees.
Cal State is currently facing a $1.5 billion funding gap, in addition to demands from its faculty and employee unions to improve compensation and wages. Students who are vehemently against the rate increase will rally and protest the proposal during the board meeting Tuesday and Wednesday.
The California Faculty Association, which represents the system‘s professors, is against a tuition rate increase even though it has reached an impasse in contract negotiations to improve wages. Currently, CFA is demanding a 12% increase in compensation, while Cal State is offering 5%. The association is also advocating for a semester of paid parental leave and workload relief. It also wants to be involved whenever faculty have contact with campus police.
“We’re not buying the austerity message that the CSU is sending out,” said Charles Toombs, president of the faculty association. “We know that the CSU has plenty of money in reserves and in investments, so we know they can fund not only our salary increases in our proposals but also the salary proposals that the other unions are demanding. We just don’t buy that they need to put our salary increase on the backs of students.”
But Cal State only has about 33 days of funding — or about $766 million — in its reserves, and the board’s policy is that the system has about three to six months of funding, which it doesn’t, said Relyea, CSU’s chief financial officer.
He underscored that the system needs the new tuition revenue to increase salaries. About 70% to 80% of any university’s budget is driven by faculty and staff salary and benefits, Relyea said, adding that the tuition rate increase is “driven by wanting to and needing to compensate faculty and staff at a fair rate that represents the market.”
Fresno Unified and its teachers union reached an agreement in mid-June to attempt to mitigate the impacts of a long-standing program ending.
The multimillion-dollar program was touted by the district as a way to close gaps between student groups less than three years ago.
Finances, inconsistent program implementation and varied results are some of the reasons the district says the program was eliminated.
The Fresno Unified School District and its teachers union have reached an agreement to terminate a decade-old, once-promising student improvement program that expanded from a pilot in a handful of low-performing schools to 40 of the district’s 67 elementary schools and one middle school.
Faced with rising program costs, declining enrollment and cuts in revenue, the district decided that inconsistent results could not justify the program’s high expense of almost $30 million.
“When you have finances crash with programmatic inconsistencies … just kind of created the perfect storm for us to go a different direction,” said David Chavez, district chief of human resources, who also worked for two former superintendents.
The Designated Schools program, which operated under three superintendents, was a district initiative to improve achievement through additional daily instruction by targeting the specific needs of students. The effort was extensive: 30 additional instructional minutes per day for students, 10 extra paid days of professional development for teachers, and either a math or reading coach in each school.
Under the agreement with the Fresno Teachers Association, the coaches will return to the classroom as regular teachers, and teachers will see a phaseout of their 10-day training over the next few years. For students, aside from losing 30 minutes of instruction, there will be no transition. They can participate in the after-school program they are already entitled to attend, where they may receive intervention or instruction from teachers who choose to participate.
Dismantling the previously praised program raises questions about how and why it went awry.
The district blames inconsistent program implementation across schools, but it failed to set standards or hold schools accountable to the program’s tenets.
Going Deeper: Who Designated Schools served
Designated Schools, affecting 24,000 students and over 1,250 educators across 41 campuses, were intended to close academic gaps among students and were typically located in neighborhoods with large numbers of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. In the extra 30 minutes, all students received additional instruction or intervention in some way.
Reading specialists at Wilson Elementary, a Designated School, used those extra minutes on remedial instruction for struggling fifth graders who were unable to read even at a third or fourth grade level, said Drew Colburn, a fifth grade teacher.
During intervention time, Colburn and other teachers divided their classes into small groups by proficiency level and targeted students’ weak points, allowing all students to get additional support, without missing core instruction.
At Wilson, following slight improvements, 18.6% and 12.1% of students achieved reading and math proficiency in the 2023-24 school year, according to Ed-Data.
Teachers say they saw improvements, which may not have been as apparent on summative state tests that the district evaluated to determine program effectiveness.
“If you take that 30 minutes away from them, they’re going to come to fifth grade with even more of a deficit,” Colburn said.
Inconsistent implementation or lack of oversight?
The first “Designated Schools” were actually three of the district’s lowest-performing schools. Fresno Unified gave teachers more time to plan, additional instruction time with students and extra support as part of the state’s turnaround model to reform persistently low-achieving schools.
The schools started to see improved student performance, including double-digit gains in some instances, according to district Superintendent Misty Her.
“We thought, ‘Can we take what happened there and now replicate it into other schools?’” said Her, who was a school administrator at the time.
In 2014-15, under the label of Designated Schools, two schools, along with nine others, implemented the model. Over the last decade and multiple years of implementation, the program expanded with the district being the initiative’s biggest advocate.
The model, when implemented as intended, supported improved student outcomes on state assessments for English and math, Fresno Unified said in May 2021 in its accountability plan for the 2021-22 school year, when the program cost $19.9 million across the 41 schools.
But, according to district leaders, schools implemented the program differently, undermining the effectiveness of the extra staff and extra 30 minutes, and leading to varying results.
Timeline of Designated School expansion, elimination
2014-15: Fresno Unified implemented the Designed Schools initiative at 10 elementary schools and one middle school
2015-16: 20 schools were added as Designated Schools
2016-17: 10 more elementary schools became Designated Schools
From 2017-2019: The model had improved scores on state assessments for low-income, foster youth and English learner student populations, according to district accountability plans.
2019: Annual funding for the program continued to increase, rising to over $18.6 million.
2020-21: Hanover Research conducted its analysis, showing mixed results from the program.
2021: Fresno Unified, in its accountability plan for the 2021-22 school year, said the initiative would “address the needs of students by providing extended time to accelerate learning and close the gap of learning loss resulting from the pandemic.”
2022: The district suggested expanding the program to its remaining two dozen elementary schools.
2023-24: Fresno Unified proposed phasing out the initiative before abandoning the idea later in the school year.
The district added a special assignment teacher to every Designated School, but gave schools the autonomy to use that position as they saw fit. Some schools used the position as an intervention teacher; others used the extra support to assist during class or pull students out for individualized or group instruction. A few schools required the specialists to take on multiple duties, consequently hindering their work in the classroom.
Laura Schwalm, chief of staff for California Education Partners, where she works with about 50 school districts on systemic change and improvement, said that before expanding an initiative, districts should have a plan, including how to fund it; set clear expectations; monitor the program and its results throughout the year to make adjustments; and invest in teachers and administrators to deliver the program.
An analysis of the program, conducted by Hanover Research in the 2020-21 school year, found that:
Academic outcomes were mixed
Program implementation varied across campuses, with only some schools aligning resources with data-driven practices
District administration had the authority and ability to address the program’s flaws. In fact, the Hanover report recommended that Fresno Unified establish a set of standards on how staff should use its additional time at Designated Schools.
The autonomy, alone, wasn’t the problem; a lack of district monitoring was. Schwalm said using different approaches could have led to improved student results and could have been used in other schools.
“If you’re not monitoring and not adjusting what you’re doing to get better results, then you can’t be surprised when you don’t get good results,” she said.
Former Superintendent Bob Nelson, who led the district from 2017 until 2024, said he and the district leadership “didn’t pay close enough attention to schools that were doing it well” to be models for other schools.
“The issue was we were not learning from the sites we had. That’s what was missing.”
Bob Nelson, former superintendent of Fresno Unified
According to a June 2022 accountability plan, the district still hailed the initiative as being “critical” to the achievement of English learners, socioeconomically disadvantaged students and foster youth.
By November 2022, Fresno Unified wanted to expand the initiative to all elementary schools to improve academic outcomes for students, according to contract negotiation documents with the teachers union.
“Less than a year and a half after they proposed every school site become a Designated School, they’re saying, ‘This program doesn’t work,’” said Manuel Bonilla, teachers union president.
Chavez, the chief of human resources, said Fresno Unified had evaluated the program’s effectiveness every year since its inception and that its continuation, especially since it was meant to be a pilot, had been a part of conversations for years.
But was it effective?
Parents, teachers and administrators told EdSource they believe students benefit from more time with their teachers. The extra 30 minutes amounted to 90 additional instructional hours each year.
“I believe it does give teachers a little bit more time to be able to work with each kid,” said Adriana Ramirez, a Wilson Elementary parent.
But both the district and teachers union agreed that its effectiveness was not a simple yes or no answer.
“Depending on the situation, some components were really good at this site, some weren’t at this (school), and one component that could have been good somewhere wasn’t necessarily really good at another place,” Chavez said.
There were “pockets of excellence,” he and other district officials admitted, but students were not seeing the academic gains the district envisioned.
Though not school-specific, the district provided data measuring the yearly progress of students at Designated Schools compared to students at non-designated schools.
EdSource also evaluated school-specific data from a GO Public Schools 2024 student outcome report based on the 2023-24 school year.
The district-provided and school-specific data is indicative that many schools were making progress under the initiative, as teachers say, while also depicting the district’s point that it was not across the board.
Without data from a 10-year longitudinal study, Bonilla, the teachers union president, said he couldn’t say whether the Designated Schools initiative was effective.
“Some of our teachers felt that it was effective and some teachers felt that there were components that could make it even more effective because it wasn’t,” Bonilla said.
Mitigating impact
The district and teachers union spent six months negotiating how to maintain student support through other programs.
The agreement approved on June 18 dedicates an additional $4 million in the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years for educators at Designated Schools to offer after-school literacy instruction or intervention.
Educators at Designated Schools, under the agreement, will have the right to refuse the work. If given the opportunity, Drew Colburn, a fifth grade Wilson Elementary teacher who was also a former after-school program coordinator, is confident educators are going to want to do that extra 30 minutes, if not more.
But if teachers decline the assignment, the after-school intervention won’t be as consistent or effective, he said.
And unfortunately, families won’t know the repercussions of the program’s elimination until this school year when it’s no longer in place, Ramirez said. “Parents,” she said, “won’t notice until it’s not there.”
Fresno Unified and its teachers union reached an agreement in mid-June to attempt to mitigate the impacts of a long-standing program ending.
The multimillion-dollar program was touted by the district as a way to close gaps between student groups less than three years ago.
Finances, inconsistent program implementation and varied results are some of the reasons the district says the program was eliminated.
The Fresno Unified School District and its teachers union have reached an agreement to terminate a decade-old, once-promising student improvement program that expanded from a pilot in a handful of low-performing schools to 40 of the district’s 67 elementary schools and one middle school.
Faced with rising program costs, declining enrollment and cuts in revenue, the district decided that inconsistent results could not justify the program’s high expense of almost $30 million.
“When you have finances crash with programmatic inconsistencies … just kind of created the perfect storm for us to go a different direction,” said David Chavez, district chief of human resources, who also worked for two former superintendents.
The Designated Schools program, which operated under three superintendents, was a district initiative to improve achievement through additional daily instruction by targeting the specific needs of students. The effort was extensive: 30 additional instructional minutes per day for students, 10 extra paid days of professional development for teachers, and either a math or reading coach in each school.
Under the agreement with the Fresno Teachers Association, the coaches will return to the classroom as regular teachers, and teachers will see a phaseout of their 10-day training over the next few years. For students, aside from losing 30 minutes of instruction, there will be no transition. They can participate in the after-school program they are already entitled to attend, where they may receive intervention or instruction from teachers who choose to participate.
Dismantling the previously praised program raises questions about how and why it went awry.
The district blames inconsistent program implementation across schools, but it failed to set standards or hold schools accountable to the program’s tenets.
Going Deeper: Who Designated Schools served
Designated Schools, affecting 24,000 students and over 1,250 educators across 41 campuses, were intended to close academic gaps among students and were typically located in neighborhoods with large numbers of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. In the extra 30 minutes, all students received additional instruction or intervention in some way.
Reading specialists at Wilson Elementary, a Designated School, used those extra minutes on remedial instruction for struggling fifth graders who were unable to read even at a third or fourth grade level, said Drew Colburn, a fifth grade teacher.
During intervention time, Colburn and other teachers divided their classes into small groups by proficiency level and targeted students’ weak points, allowing all students to get additional support, without missing core instruction.
At Wilson, following slight improvements, 18.6% and 12.1% of students achieved reading and math proficiency in the 2023-24 school year, according to Ed-Data.
Teachers say they saw improvements, which may not have been as apparent on summative state tests that the district evaluated to determine program effectiveness.
“If you take that 30 minutes away from them, they’re going to come to fifth grade with even more of a deficit,” Colburn said.
Inconsistent implementation or lack of oversight?
The first “Designated Schools” were actually three of the district’s lowest-performing schools. Fresno Unified gave teachers more time to plan, additional instruction time with students and extra support as part of the state’s turnaround model to reform persistently low-achieving schools.
The schools started to see improved student performance, including double-digit gains in some instances, according to district Superintendent Misty Her.
“We thought, ‘Can we take what happened there and now replicate it into other schools?’” said Her, who was a school administrator at the time.
In 2014-15, under the label of Designated Schools, two schools, along with nine others, implemented the model. Over the last decade and multiple years of implementation, the program expanded with the district being the initiative’s biggest advocate.
The model, when implemented as intended, supported improved student outcomes on state assessments for English and math, Fresno Unified said in May 2021 in its accountability plan for the 2021-22 school year, when the program cost $19.9 million across the 41 schools.
But, according to district leaders, schools implemented the program differently, undermining the effectiveness of the extra staff and extra 30 minutes, and leading to varying results.
Timeline of Designated School expansion, elimination
2014-15: Fresno Unified implemented the Designed Schools initiative at 10 elementary schools and one middle school
2015-16: 20 schools were added as Designated Schools
2016-17: 10 more elementary schools became Designated Schools
From 2017-2019: The model had improved scores on state assessments for low-income, foster youth and English learner student populations, according to district accountability plans.
2019: Annual funding for the program continued to increase, rising to over $18.6 million.
2020-21: Hanover Research conducted its analysis, showing mixed results from the program.
2021: Fresno Unified, in its accountability plan for the 2021-22 school year, said the initiative would “address the needs of students by providing extended time to accelerate learning and close the gap of learning loss resulting from the pandemic.”
2022: The district suggested expanding the program to its remaining two dozen elementary schools.
2023-24: Fresno Unified proposed phasing out the initiative before abandoning the idea later in the school year.
The district added a special assignment teacher to every Designated School, but gave schools the autonomy to use that position as they saw fit. Some schools used the position as an intervention teacher; others used the extra support to assist during class or pull students out for individualized or group instruction. A few schools required the specialists to take on multiple duties, consequently hindering their work in the classroom.
Laura Schwalm, chief of staff for California Education Partners, where she works with about 50 school districts on systemic change and improvement, said that before expanding an initiative, districts should have a plan, including how to fund it; set clear expectations; monitor the program and its results throughout the year to make adjustments; and invest in teachers and administrators to deliver the program.
An analysis of the program, conducted by Hanover Research in the 2020-21 school year, found that:
Academic outcomes were mixed
Program implementation varied across campuses, with only some schools aligning resources with data-driven practices
District administration had the authority and ability to address the program’s flaws. In fact, the Hanover report recommended that Fresno Unified establish a set of standards on how staff should use its additional time at Designated Schools.
The autonomy, alone, wasn’t the problem; a lack of district monitoring was. Schwalm said using different approaches could have led to improved student results and could have been used in other schools.
“If you’re not monitoring and not adjusting what you’re doing to get better results, then you can’t be surprised when you don’t get good results,” she said.
Former Superintendent Bob Nelson, who led the district from 2017 until 2024, said he and the district leadership “didn’t pay close enough attention to schools that were doing it well” to be models for other schools.
“The issue was we were not learning from the sites we had. That’s what was missing.”
Bob Nelson, former superintendent of Fresno Unified
According to a June 2022 accountability plan, the district still hailed the initiative as being “critical” to the achievement of English learners, socioeconomically disadvantaged students and foster youth.
By November 2022, Fresno Unified wanted to expand the initiative to all elementary schools to improve academic outcomes for students, according to contract negotiation documents with the teachers union.
“Less than a year and a half after they proposed every school site become a Designated School, they’re saying, ‘This program doesn’t work,’” said Manuel Bonilla, teachers union president.
Chavez, the chief of human resources, said Fresno Unified had evaluated the program’s effectiveness every year since its inception and that its continuation, especially since it was meant to be a pilot, had been a part of conversations for years.
But was it effective?
Parents, teachers and administrators told EdSource they believe students benefit from more time with their teachers. The extra 30 minutes amounted to 90 additional instructional hours each year.
“I believe it does give teachers a little bit more time to be able to work with each kid,” said Adriana Ramirez, a Wilson Elementary parent.
But both the district and teachers union agreed that its effectiveness was not a simple yes or no answer.
“Depending on the situation, some components were really good at this site, some weren’t at this (school), and one component that could have been good somewhere wasn’t necessarily really good at another place,” Chavez said.
There were “pockets of excellence,” he and other district officials admitted, but students were not seeing the academic gains the district envisioned.
Though not school-specific, the district provided data measuring the yearly progress of students at Designated Schools compared to students at non-designated schools.
EdSource also evaluated school-specific data from a GO Public Schools 2024 student outcome report based on the 2023-24 school year.
The district-provided and school-specific data is indicative that many schools were making progress under the initiative, as teachers say, while also depicting the district’s point that it was not across the board.
Without data from a 10-year longitudinal study, Bonilla, the teachers union president, said he couldn’t say whether the Designated Schools initiative was effective.
“Some of our teachers felt that it was effective and some teachers felt that there were components that could make it even more effective because it wasn’t,” Bonilla said.
Mitigating impact
The district and teachers union spent six months negotiating how to maintain student support through other programs.
The agreement approved on June 18 dedicates an additional $4 million in the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years for educators at Designated Schools to offer after-school literacy instruction or intervention.
Educators at Designated Schools, under the agreement, will have the right to refuse the work. If given the opportunity, Drew Colburn, a fifth grade Wilson Elementary teacher who was also a former after-school program coordinator, is confident educators are going to want to do that extra 30 minutes, if not more.
But if teachers decline the assignment, the after-school intervention won’t be as consistent or effective, he said.
And unfortunately, families won’t know the repercussions of the program’s elimination until this school year when it’s no longer in place, Ramirez said. “Parents,” she said, “won’t notice until it’s not there.”
Community college students like those at Fresno City College would benefit the most from Cal Grant expansion.
Credit: Ashleigh Panoo/EdSource
A long-awaited expansion to financial aid in California, once expected to go into effect this year, is now facing uncertainty.
As part of California’s 2022 budget deal, lawmakers agreed to reform the Cal Grant, the state’s main financial aid program, to make it easier to understand, and expand eligibility by about 150,000 additional students, most of them low-income community college students.
But the 2022 agreement was contingent on sufficient state revenues to implement the reform, which would cost an estimated $365 million annually. And with California now facing at least a $38 billion deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom has not committed to funding the reform, casting serious doubt on whether it will be included in this year’s budget.
That’s concerning to college access advocates and students who say the current Cal Grant program is too complicated and leaves out some of the state’s lowest-income students while the cost of attending college continues to rise.
Key lawmakers and other supporters say they plan to push for expanding the Cal Grant this year, even if they can’t get everything they initially hoped.
The Cal Grant, California’s key financial aid program, gives undergraduates grants of as much as $13,752 annually for tuition and fees, depending on the college. Students can also receive grants for living expenses. But the program is layered and confusing, awarding students different amounts depending on where they attend. Eligibility requirements also vary.
In his 2024-25 budget proposal, Newsom maintains the state’s funding for college financial aid, including $2.5 billion for Cal Grant and $636.2 million for Middle Class Scholarship, but skips a one-time funding increase for the scholarship that was part of last year’s budget agreement.
Assemblymember David Alvarez, chair of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education finance, said he has directed his staff to look at each element of Cal Grant reform and identify what can be done under this year’s budget constraints. He plans to hold hearings on the issue this spring.
“It was a significant commitment to increase access to more students,” Alvarez said in an interview. “And to the extent that we can create access to more students, if it has to be done in smaller steps, I’m willing to entertain that.”
The proposed reform calls for multiple changes. It would simplify the structure of the program by narrowing it to only two awards: one Cal Grant for community college students and another for students at four-year colleges. The current program has eight different Cal Grant awards, creating what critics say is an unnecessarily complicated system for awarding aid.
Earning a Cal Grant would also be easier. While some Cal Grants are currently lottery-based, all aid would be guaranteed under the new system to eligible students. And more students would be eligible thanks to the elimination of certain requirements.
For community college students, there would no longer be a grade point average requirement. University of California and Cal State students would need a 2.0 GPA — down from the 3.0 GPA currently required. There would also be no requirements specifying age cutoffs or how long a student has been out of high school that currently exist for UC and Cal State students, rules that prevent many older students from getting aid.
Income eligibility would be based on federal Pell Grant rules. For both awards, students would be eligible if their family’s household income is low enough to qualify for a Pell Grant. The median household income of a Pell Grant-eligible student is about $59,000. Officials say using the Pell Grant as a bar for eligibility will help increase the number of students eligible.
Eligible community college students would get an annual award of at least $1,648 to go toward nontuition expenses like housing and food. Most of those students already pay nothing in tuition. The awards for UC and Cal State students would cover the full cost of tuition, which in 2024-25 will be $14,436 for entering in-state UC students and $6,084 for entering in-state Cal State students. The awards won’t cover nontuition expenses, but students would still be free to seek federal, private and UC-administered aid to cover those costs.
In total, the changes would expand Cal Grant eligibility from just over 340,000 students to about 492,000 students, the California Student Aid Commission estimates.
Expanding aid to that many students would be costly, especially in the short term, but it could have long-term financial benefits for the state, argued Jake Brymner, deputy director of policy for the California Student Aid Commission. Not being able to afford college is the main reason many students either choose not to enroll at all or don’t finish college.
“This is so critical to our talent pipeline, to California’s workforce and to our ability to maintain robust state revenue on a wide tax base with folks who are moving into meaningful careers,” he said.
Newsom’s staff has yet to rule out the possibility that Cal Grant reform could be implemented this year. “We don’t speculate,” a spokesperson for Newsom’s Department of Finance said. “The law always envisioned us making a determination in May and we have not made any determination yet.”
The state’s revenues, however, speak for themselves. Newsom said during his January budget proposal that the state faces a $38 billion deficit. That was $30 billion lower than what the state’s Legislative Analyst Office had estimated. Lisa Qing, a policy analyst with that office, said in an email that Cal Grant expansion “would not be triggered under existing law” based on current revenue projections.
Qing added, though, that lawmakers could change existing law, such as by creating a different set of conditions to trigger Cal Grant expansion at a future date.
“There should be some sort of negotiation,” said David Ramirez, the UC Student Association’s governmental relations chair and part of the Cal Grant Reform Coalition. The coalition includes higher education advocacy organizations, civil rights groups and students who want to see the reform implemented.
“It was really troublesome to not see it funded at all” in Newsom’s January budget proposal, added Ramirez, a senior at UCLA studying geography, environmental studies and labor studies.
One potential solution, Ramirez said, could be to cut funding for the state’s Middle Class Scholarship and use those dollars to fund Cal Grant reform.
Convincing lawmakers to cut funding from the Middle Class Scholarship could be difficult, Ramirez acknowledged. But he said it would keep with his goal of prioritizing the state’s lowest-income students.
“It’s a very political thing, making sure that there’s funding for the Middle Class Scholarship, because people want to please their constituents,” he added.
Another potential compromise would be to implement some but not all elements of the reform, but Ramirez said the coalition is still trying to “assess and identify” which parts of Cal Grant reform should be prioritized over others.
Knowing what might be possible should become clearer this spring when Alvarez’s committee holds its hearings on the topic.
“The commitment is focused on increasing access to higher education for more students,” Alvarez said. “That’s what Cal Grant reform was about. And I don’t think anybody changed their mind about the importance of increasing access and reducing the cost of higher education for students.”
Chelsi Allen, a mother with children in a Fresno private school, buys farm-grown produce at a Fresno Unified farmers market. Allen saw the market while picking up her daughter from a basketball game at Fort Miller Middle School on February 5, 2024.
Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
When the end-of-school bell rang, groups of students, parents and community members headed for the on-campus farmers market displaying plump green vegetables, potted seedlings and even boxes of free food.
Reflecting the community’s diversity, signs in the booths advertised crops not often seen in mainstream grocery stores, such as chijimisai (a hybrid Asian green that’s packed with nutrients) and other items popular with Asian or Latino families, alongside the standard fare.
As adults bagged and paid for the produce or helped themselves to any free items, young children questioned the farmers about how much water or sunshine a plant needs.
Later, when after-school activities ended, more parents and their student athletes, many still wearing their game uniforms, joined the crowd in the schoolyard at Fort Miller Middle School in Fresno on Feb. 5 — one of a number of farmers markets being held on Fresno Unified campuses this year.
Fresno Unified contracted with Fresno Metro Ministry, a nonprofit organization, to bring farmers markets to schools and increase access to fresh, healthy and affordable food in neighborhoods where it’s not easy to come by.
Fresno Unified and Fresno Metro Ministry leaders say the partnership is important for students, families and the community. Here’s how:
Why start the program?
Much of Fresno is a food desert, lacking access to affordable, healthy food due to an absence of nearby grocery stores, or a food swamp with better access to junk food than nutritious food options, said Amanda Harvey, director of nutrition services with Fresno Unified.
Bringing farmers markets to schools within a food desert or swamp — which mostly exist in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods — provides access to nutritious food.
Is this the first time Fresno Unified has put farmers markets on its campuses?
In the past, the district has hosted farmers markets sponsored and run through community partnerships, Harvey said, but the partnership with Fresno Metro Ministry is run with the school district.
The big difference is that through the new partnership, Fresno Unified students and staff will learn how to operate the markets, said Chris De León, the farm and gardens program manager with Fresno Metro Ministry.
Why partner with Fresno Metro Ministry?
Fresno Metro Ministry creates school and community gardens at locations throughout Fresno to educate the community about gardening and provides land access and other resources for beginning farmers and community members to grow fresh, local produce in food-insecure neighborhoods. De León said it was a “no-brainer” for the organization to partner with the school district to engage students and bring farmers to school campuses.
What’s sold at the markets?
Xiong Farm Produce, one of the vendors at the Fort Miller Middle School farmers market, sells Romanesco broccoli. Fresno Unified has been placing farmers markets on its campuses to provide affordable, nutritious food options for families. Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
The Fresno Unified partnership is funded, in part, through a grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture that requires the farmers market to sell specialty crops, such as apricots, avocados, asparagus, beans, blueberries, broccoli, cabbage, carrots and other fruits and vegetables, as well as tree nuts, herbs and other plants.
Crops from different cultural groups, such as Latino and Southeast Asian farmers, can be offered, too. For instance, Casillas Farms and Siembra y Cosecha Farms, managed by Spanish-speaking farmers, and Xiong Farm Produce, which sold Chinese cauliflower, were at the Fort Miller market.
How does the program impact students?
The farmers markets are meant to be student-led.
Students learn how to seek out farmers, work with market vendors, organize, then promote the upcoming event and set up the market, Harvey said.
Students can even earn food safety and handling certifications, an experience Harvey called a “resume-builder.”
The farmers market itself highlights and promotes student clubs and district programs, especially activities related to agriculture.
Harvey said schools give students the autonomy to come up with ideas for the markets: “What do they want to see in their event?”
A community member and student visit a booth with herbal plants. Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
Eighth graders Lilly Blanco and Andrea Morgan (who managed a booth with herbal plants) pointed out to shoppers how enslaved Africans used herbs, a topic they’re exploring in their ethnic studies class. Aloe vera was used to treat burns and inflammation, and mullein could treat whooping cough, chronic bronchitis and congestion, Morgan said about the research she and her classmates conducted and published in pamphlets for the market.
The farmers market allows students to sell, feature or display products.
“They’ve been really excited planting their own herbs,” Morgan said.
Having students lead, plan and facilitate the events puts them at the forefront, gives them a voice and teaches them responsibility, said Yang Soua Fang, a farm and gardens project manager with Fresno Metro Ministry.
How is it beneficial for families?
While picking up her daughter from a basketball game at Fort Miller, Chelsi Allen expressed how convenient it was for her, a mother of five, to be able to shop while on campus.
“Being at the school setting,” Allen said, “I never thought about it. It just feels right to get some healthy foods and go home and cook.”
Allen, whose children attend Holy Cross Junior High, a private school in Fresno, said that what Fresno Unified is doing gives families affordable access to items needed for a balanced meal.
She pointed out the stark difference between the convenience of the school farmers market and a grocery store, where most people shop for specifics and may not seek out healthy food options that aren’t “in your face” like those at the farmers market.
“We get to serve our students every day,” said Harvey, the district’s nutrition services director, “but to be able to also bring nutritious meals to our adults in our community is huge.”
Will the school district do anything differently?
During the markets, Fresno Metro Ministry can offer food demonstrations to show families ways to serve the farm-grown produce. The food demos weren’t available at the Fort Miller market on Feb. 5, but Fresno Unified plans to do its part to promote nutritious food options to families.
Harvey said the district’s nutrition team can obtain participants’ input on introducing products into the food students eat in school.
“Is this something you’d be interested in seeing on school menus?” a survey asked farmers market attendants about kale.
“The more familiar students are with them, the more likely they are to ask for them at home,” she said. “‘I had this item at lunch; it was delicious. Let’s buy it.’”
What else do markets mean for families, school and community?
The farmers market also “puts a face to produce,” De León said.
“There’s so much: ‘What is this? How did you grow it? How do you cook it?’” he said.
He said he believes those conversations will build relationships between farmers and families, leading to more awareness and a better understanding of the importance of local farming.
Patricia Hubbard is a farmer who grows produce at Fresno Metro Ministry’s Yo’Ville Community Garden & Farm behind the Yosemite Village housing complex.
At the Fort Miller market, Hubbard sold starter plants of sweet peas and kale, including Ethiopian and Portuguese kale. The products are easy-to-grow plants that can hold kids’ interest in growing their own vegetables, Hubbard said.
“We need young people farming,” she said.
The farmers market can pique that interest while changing the narrative about farmworkers, Soua Fang said.
“There’s such a negative stereotype to being a farmworker or laborer, but yet their contribution to our society is so important for us: That’s how we can sustain ourselves,” he said. “But … it’s like we put them at the bottom of the pedestal.”
Connecting and engaging with farmers places value and respect in their craft, especially when they share the stories of how they overcome barriers to become farmers.
Are there more markets?
With plans for different schools to host markets on a monthly or quarterly basis, Fresno Unified and Fresno Metro Ministry hope to set up about 15 farmers markets on campuses this school year. In addition to the Fort Miller market, Phoenix Secondary Academy held a farmers market in the fall to launch the partnership, and a couple of markets have been held in collaboration with the Fresno High School Flea Market. For the rest of the school year, markets will be at:
Fort Miller Middle School on the first Monday of each month. The March 4 market has been rescheduled for March 18.
Fresno High School on the second Saturday of each month.
McLane High School, which is still planning dates but has confirmed April 6 for its first market.
Some of the designated schools are located in the middle of food deserts or serve high numbers of students experiencing food insecurity, Soua Fang said.
At other Fresno Unified schools where there may be agricultural programs offering gardening and farming, Fresno Metro Ministry hopes to “fill the last little gap” by creating a culture around farmers markets. At the Fresno High Flea Market, De León said the organization adds healthy food access to an already thriving market “to connect that bridge from community to school, so it’s not so separate.”
Schools interested in hosting a farmers market should reach out to Fresno Metro Ministry.
Imagine a cross-country road trip using outdated maps. What are the chances you’ll take the best routes or even get to your destination?
This is what’s happening in California classrooms. Teachers receive outdated tools to teach reading; consequently far too few students become motivated, competent readers and writers.
Our most disadvantaged students pay the steepest price. Only 2 in 10 low-income Black students in third grade are at least on grade level in English language arts. The same is true for 3 in 10 low-income Latino students, 2 in 10 English learners, and 2 in 10 students with disabilities. Overall, only 4 in 10 California third graders read on grade level.
Many factors, in and out of school, influence reading achievement. Schools cannot affect what they cannot control. But they can control how reading is taught. AB 2222, introduced by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, seeks to update how schools teach reading. It would require that instructional reading materials, teacher preparation reading courses, and in-service teacher professional development all adhere to reading research, which the bill refers to as the “science of reading.”
English learner advocacy organizations opposing AB 2222 — the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), Californians Together and, most recently, the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola Marymount University — have voiced extreme objections to the bill with no hint of attempting to find workable solutions.
Yet when Assemblymember Rubio, formerly an English learner and a teacher, called upon CABE and Californians Together to help draft legislation to serve every child in California, including English learners, the groups refused, citing a “philosophical difference.”
Philosophies aside, existing research could help teachers of English learners do a better job. Why would self-described advocates for these students walk away from developing solutions, choosing instead to deprive teachers and teacher educators of research knowledge to help students attain higher literacy levels? Whose interests are served? Certainly not students’.
Vague, misleading language and misinformation plague the field, most perniciously about the “science of reading.” The term is cited repeatedly in the bill but poorly defined.
Moreover, opponents of the bill are fond of labeling science of reading as one-size-fits-all, rigid, or a “magic pill.” It is none of these. Nor does it “isolate” phonics.
Anyone who knows anything about reading research over the past half-century knows these characterizations are simply wrong.
Many districts have indeed implemented poor practices such as excessive phonics instruction and insufficient attention to language, comprehension, vocabulary and knowledge development, all in the name of “science of reading.” This can’t be blamed on reading science. The culprit is misinformation, which opponents of the bill perpetuate.
I’ll try to clarify.
The science of reading — just as the science of anything — is a body of knowledge that informs how students develop reading skills and how we can most effectively teach reading (and writing) in different languages to monolingual or multilingual students. This science, based on decades of research from different disciplines and different student populations worldwide, shows that:
While a first language is typically acquired naturally by being around people who speak it, written language (literacy) must generally be taught, learned and practiced. This is true for a first, second or later language.
Literacy is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without foundational skills connecting the sounds of the language with the letters representing those sounds, what is typically called “phonics” or “decoding.”
The best way to help children acquire foundational literacy skills is through direct, explicit and systematic instruction to help them develop accurate and automatic word reading skills. The practice known as “three-cueing,” where students are taught to recognize words using some combination of “semantic,” “syntactic” and “grapho-phonic” cues, is far less effective for most students, including English learners: It’s insufficiently explicit about how the sounds of the language are represented in print.
Some students will require a great deal of explicit instruction; others will require much less. Instruction building on individual students’ strengths and addressing their needs is necessary.
As they develop these foundational skills, and throughout their schooling, students need instruction and other experiences to develop oral language, vocabulary, knowledge and other skills. Accurate and automatic foundational literacy skills merge with these other skills, leading to skilled fluent reading and comprehension, both of which must be supported and improved as students progress through school.
Although all this is true for students in general, some require additional considerations. For example, English learners in English-only programs (as most of these students are) must receive additional instruction in English language development, e.g., vocabulary, as they’re learning to read in English. English learners fortunate enough to be in long-term bilingual programs, continuing through middle and high school, can become speakers and readers of two languages — English and their home language.
Unfortunately, AB 2222 undermines its own cause by failing to articulate clearly what science of reading actually signifies. With some improvements, the bill could acknowledge what we know from research that is relevant to meeting the needs of English learners:
How to help English learners having difficulty with beginning and early reading get on track, either in Spanish or English;
How to help older English learners make better progress in their reading achievement by providing comprehensive advanced literacy instruction; and;
How long-term bilingual education can pay dividends in terms of bilingualism, biliteracy and generally enhanced English language achievement.
It is difficult to pack all this into a piece of legislation clearly and precisely. But try we must if we’re serious about improving reading achievement rather than winning the latest reading wars skirmish.
We should get past the squabbling, turf protection and unhelpful language and instead do the right thing for all students. AB 2222’s introduction is an important step forward on the road to universal literacy in California. We must get it on the right track and take it across the finish line.
•••
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.
The Dunamis House in Boyle Heights is owned and operated by Los Angeles Room & Board.
Credit: Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative
A home in the middle of Los Angeles has become an oasis for young adults brought together by one particular experience: homelessness.
The Dunamis House, located on Evergreen Avenue and two blocks away from Cesar Chavez Boulevard, offers a multitude of free services: a furnished room, freshly prepared meals, haircuts, workshops on topics like financial literacy, workout classes and more. Residents can also earn an income by working at the on-site café.
“There is no place like this. This is one of one,” said Sherbert Diaz, a Dunamis resident who moved into the home in December. “It gave me the opportunity to understand who I am and to leave the survival mode.”
Providing young adults with respite from the instability of homelessness is central to the mission of Los Angeles Room & Board, known as LAR&B, the nonprofit that owns and operates Dunamis House and three other homes in East Hollywood, West Adams and Westwood that serve the same purpose.
The organization was founded in 2020 by Sam Prater, who credits his 14 years of working in university student housing, plus his own experience of homelessness as a young adult, as the inspiration behind LAR&B.
“Offering someone a safe place to sleep is only one part of our mission,” Prater said. “The real work is trying to transform lives, and through the services that we provide and our incredible team, that’s where the real work happens.”
Homelessness has skyrocketed in Los Angeles in recent years. More than 6,000 children ages 0 to 17 and almost 4,000 young adults ages 18 to 24 were counted in last year’s annual survey, aimed at understanding how many people are experiencing homelessness, according to the county’s Homeless Services Authority. Such counts are typically considered estimates; advocates agree that homelessness is undercounted.
Homelessness is also most often part of a larger cycle of systemic challenges, such as high housing costs, financial instability, mental health illness and more. Exiting that cycle is far from clear-cut, and while a network of resources may often be available to someone experiencing homelessness, it can be difficult to figure out which they may qualify for and how to neatly combine them all together.
This is where LAR&B comes in. It does not expect the youth to figure out what resources they might need. Dunamis offers each resident all the resources they can. With this approach, residents have a more traditional homelike environment where, rather than trying to figure out where they will sleep every night, they can focus on attending school or earning an income.
‘You’re allowed to be who you want to be here’
Diaz had just turned 21 late last year, had no safe place to sleep, and was ineligible for a housing voucher for foster youth. Not knowing where to turn, he reached out to the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which in turn referred him to Dunamis.
As it turns out, the center is one of the places that refer young adults to LAR&B. This is because one of LAR&B’s main referral pipelines is through the county, Prater said. The LGBT Center is the lead agency for L.A. County’s coordinated entry system for youth, a network that connects people to housing.
LAR&B also receives referrals directly from colleges, including Santa Monica College and the Los Angeles Community College District, plus other partner agencies that work with foster youth, which have the organization on a list for students experiencing homelessness.
For Diaz, Dunamis was his “last hope,” he said. For years, he had been in the foster system, a system he said “never offered me peace of mind,” as Dunamis has. In the past, he was placed where he couldn’t be himself, he said, and was eventually kicked out of his last foster home for wearing makeup.
“My sexuality was always a problem,” Diaz said of the places he lived previously. “It’s a relief being (at Dunamis) because you don’t have the restrictions of anyone judging you. … You’re allowed to be who you want to be here.”
Many residents, like Josefina Sebastian, receive academic counseling while at Dunamis. She enrolled at Los Angeles City College when she arrived last April and has since transferred to California State University, Los Angeles, where she is majoring in social work.
With an active immigration case, Sebastian had found it difficult to access resources for people in her situation and was surprised to be accepted into Dunamis.
“Being here has helped me to focus more on school,” said Sebastian, 23, who also works at the Dunamis café.
Mimi Konadu, another resident, also enrolled in college after she moved into Dunamis last year, around the same time as Sebastian.
“I like that they want everybody to go to school,” she said, referring to LAR&B. She’d tried attending classes in the past, while living in the city of Palmdale in Los Angeles County, but couldn’t focus. Konadu, who is now 21, was also experiencing depression and anxiety, and being enrolled in online courses did not work for her.
“I just didn’t feel like doing anything at that time, until I got here,” said Konadu, who is attending East Los Angeles Community College. “I’m more productive every day.” The Dunamis staff’s presence and support made a significant difference, she added.
Some residents, like Dream Harris, have experienced homelessness their entire lives. He lived in Covenant House, a youth shelter in Los Angeles, right before moving to Dunamis.
While there, a friend mentioned LAR&B, but Harris said he wasn’t convinced. “It was too good to be true ‘cause I saw the pictures. I was like, ‘no, they’re going to ask for, like, money or something,” said Harris, his fellow Dunamis residents chiming in, agreeing that they too were taken aback by the beauty of the home.
“This place gives me an opportunity to really sit down and think about my decisions and what I want to do in life,” Harris said, echoing Diaz’s sentiment about finally living in a home that provided a sense of stability, so he could set aside the mindset of focusing solely on survival.
Dunamis is the first place where Harris, at 25 years old, has experienced this level of safety and stability. “I was raised in the worst of the worst. I lived on the streets at one point. I was on drugs at one point,” he said. “Now I have a nice bed to sleep in every night. I have a job now. I have opportunities, so many opportunities.”
That relief — of receiving new opportunities after extreme hardship and instability — is one that is shared by Prater, LAR&B’s founder, and it’s why Dunamis is designed and operated as it is.
As a young adult in Detroit, Prater had couch-surfed and was evicted twice. The 12th of 14 children, he was entering his teenage years when his mother died, catapulting the family into instability. His dad, he said, tried his best to offer his children as normal a childhood as possible, given their economic status, but it was tough with so many siblings.
Then, a local couple, whose church ministry was called Dunamis Outreach Ministries, learned of his family’s plight and took in three of his siblings. Prater wasn’t one of those, but he was at the Dunamis home often, and it was there that he learned there was “something more, something bigger” than the few options he had seen in front of him at that point.
That’s because in the Dunamis home, “everything is pretty, and it’s beautiful,” he said. “I felt like a weight lifted off me, and I’ll never forget that feeling of what that meant for me, what I aspired to, and then seeing them do it.”
Being exposed to such a beautiful home and generous family during those formative years provided Prater with a vision of a different life — one that he went on to pursue. He enrolled in community college at 23 and stayed in higher education, ultimately enrolling in a doctorate degree program.
“There wasn’t a way for me to repay them for the sacrifice they made for our family,” Prater said about why he named the Dunamis house after the couple that helped shape his purpose in life. “They just showed us a life in a world that we didn’t have access to in that way.”
That access to a beautiful, safe, supportive home seems to be the Dunamis way — both in Detroit where Prater lived and now in Los Angeles.
A 5-star version of student housing
In many ways, the Dunamis home’s operation is reminiscent of a college dorm.
The beds, for example, were purchased from a vendor that manufactures the extra-long twin beds typically found in dorm rooms. There is a communal kitchen that includes a fridge where, just as in a dorm, a meal might be eaten by someone other than the person it belongs to.
There are also meal times, as in a dorm’s dining hall. At Dunamis, lunch is served between noon and 2 p.m., dinner between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., and residents who plan to be around can submit requests to be fed on the weekends. On a recent Tuesday in April, the meal option was a freshly cooked spread of chicken, beef, rice, beans and vegetables, so each person could build their own bowl.
Dunamis House is large enough to include a backyard with a couple of grills and a garden that provides the produce for the meals cooked on-site, two kitchens — one that residents can use as needed, and the other where staff cooks the free meals — a lobby, and a courtyard in the middle of the building where residents gather to study or hang out.
The courtyard prior to LAR&B’s purchase of the home. Photo Credit: ZillowA design mock-up of the courtyard.Credit: Los Angeles Room & Board
What the Dunamis courtyard looks like today.Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
Surrounding the patio are a hair salon, a podcast room, a café and at least four staff offices. The home also includes 64 beds, several study room, a sun room, a living room with a large TV for movie nights.
Lining the hallways of the multistory building are posters advertising upcoming events, like a garden club that is hosted once a month on Saturdays and a support group for male-identifying residents set to begin in April. Other hallways have bulletin boards with informational posters — one showing that April is Autism Awareness Month; others offer affirmations: “I am proud of my progress. I love my place in life.”
The Dunamis home.Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
The home’s second kitchen, where residents can store their food. Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
There is always an extra bedroom available in case of a last-minute addition to the home or if there is a disagreement among roommates.Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
A typical bathroom found in each bedroom.Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
A hairstylist and barber provide free haircuts in this room every other week.Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
One of the home’s many sitting nooks.Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
In the lobby, residents can pick up Covid-19 tests and Narcan.Photo Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales
In the backyard, residents can grill and hang out underneath pergolas.Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
Other aspects of the home are dictated by the unique needs of the residents. A team of social workers, for example, is on site to meet weekly with each resident, to discuss everything from their mental health, to career coaching, to basic resources needed for their families. A barber and hairstylist visit the home every other Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to offer free haircuts.
The home does not permit social drinking, which is typically associated with college students, but it addresses incidents of substance abuse by residents. At least five residents have been referred to outpatient care for such treatment, but their place at Dunamis remains available and ready for them as soon they once again “get grounded and get well,” Prater said.
Residents can live at Dunamis for up to 36 months, after which they have the option of moving to one of LAR&B’s other homes. At that point, they begin to pay a subsidized rent of $800 monthly. The idea, said Prater, is to slowly guide the young adults so they remain housed and stable long after leaving LAR&B.
In its design, Dunamis stands in sharp contrast to many of the places where residents lived previously, such as a group home or juvenile hall, where design is rarely a top priority.
“We’re trying to be the antithesis of that,” said Prater.
The home features walls painted in warm hues, ambient lighting, modern furniture and cushioned cozy seating nooks.
“Colors and fabrics and light and airflow — all those things impact people’s experience in housing,” said Prater. “I wanted to kind of create a space that felt aspirational, inspirational, that felt like, ‘Oh wow, I’m proud to come home here.’”
The lobby prior to LAR & B’s purchase of the home.Credit: Zillow
A design mock-up of the lobby.Credit: Los Angeles Room & Board
What the lobby looks like today.Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource
His vision for Dunamis was shaped in part by his years working in university student housing, a career he left in February 2020 to grow LAR&B.
While working there, he’d hear stories from students who were trying to stay in school while struggling to meet their basic needs. He was limited in what he could offer those students — mostly short-term solutions, like a 14-day free stay in a dorm room and a $500 grant.
“If you got somebody who doesn’t have a place to live, you know how wildly disruptive it is to their life to say, ‘Alright, we can look out for you but only for 14 days’?” Prater said. “I formed L.A. Room & Board really in response to me working in that space and feeling powerless to help.”
The new Dunamis house is tucked between residential homes, an auto repair shop that hands out free meals on holidays, and a corner neighborhood market that features a mural by a locally renowned artist.
The building was originally built in 1914 but was vacant for years before LAR&B purchased it in 2022 for $11.6 million. That funding came from the California’s Homekey Program, which develops housing for the state’s homeless population. The Homekey grant requires that the county cover 45% of LAR&B’s operating costs for several years. The remaining $3 million to $3.5 million needed to cover ongoing operating costs each year is raised by Prater via private donations.
The land the building sits on measures over an acre, leaving sufficient space for large front and back yards. It’s in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood known for its deep history of social and political activism, most recently in its ongoing push against gentrification, and surrounded by downtown Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium and East Los Angeles.
And quite importantly for the LAR&B mission, the home is situated near multiple universities and colleges: University of Southern California, Cal State Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles Community College, to name a few.
But beyond the beauty of the space and its location, several residents said what most stood out to them is that they felt welcomed from day one.
“I think that’s what the difference is,” said Diaz with Konadu finishing his sentence, as Harris nodded in agreement: “It feels like a home.”
This story has been updated to correct Palmdale’s location. It is in Los Angeles County, not San Bernardino County.
The number of homeless students statewide increased by 9.3%, according to recently released state enrollment data. Out of 761 districts, 433 — or 57% — reported an increase in their number of homeless students. This map shows the change in the homeless student population by district from 2023–24 to 2024–25. Click on a district to see the percent change and the number of homeless students enrolled.
Note: A particularly sharp increase from one year to the next may be due to improved tracking or reporting practices. Please contact the district for further details.
Data source: California Department of Education and EdSource Data Analysis
