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  • California, districts try to recruit and retain Black teachers; advocates say more should be done

    California, districts try to recruit and retain Black teachers; advocates say more should be done


    A middle school science teacher explains a lesson on climate change using a SMART board.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Recruiting and retaining Black teachers has taken on new urgency in recent years as California lawmakers try to ease the state’s teacher shortage. The state and individual school districts have launched initiatives to recruit teachers of color, but educators and advocates say more needs to be done.

    Hiring a diverse group of teachers helps all students, but the impact is particularly significant for students of color, who then score higher on tests and are more likely to graduate from college, according to the Learning Policy Institute. A recently released report also found that Black boys are less likely to be identified for special education when they have a Black teacher.

    BLACK TEACHERS: HOW TO RECRUIT THEM AND MAKE THEM STAY

    This is the third part of a special series on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California. The recruitment and hiring of Black educators has lagged, even as a teacher shortage has given the task new urgency.

    Our series looks at the obstacles that keep Black people from becoming teachers, and the bias and lack of support some face when they join the profession.

    In the last five years, state lawmakers have made earning a credential easier and more affordable, and have offered incentives for school staff to become teachers — all moves meant to ease the teacher shortage and help to diversify the educator workforce.

    Despite efforts by the state and school districts, the number of Black teachers doesn’t seem to be increasing. Black teachers say that to keep them in the classroom, teacher preparation must be more affordable, pay and benefits increased, and more done to ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

    “Black educators specifically said that they felt like they were being pushed out of the state of California,” said Jalisa Evans, chief executive director of the Black Educator Advocates Network of a recent survey of Black teachers. “When we look at the future of Black educators for the state, it can go either way, because what Black educators are feeling right now is that they’re not welcome.”

    Task force offers recommendations

    State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called diversifying the teacher workforce a priority and established the California Department of Education Educator Diversity Advisory Group in 2021. 

    The advisory group has made several recommendations, including beginning a public relations campaign and offering sustained funding to recruit and retain teachers of color, and providing guidance and accountability to school districts on the matter. The group also wants universities, community groups and school districts to enter into partnerships to build pathways for teachers of color.

    Since then, California has created a set of public service announcements and a video to help recruit teachers and has invested $10 million to help people of color to become school administrators, said Travis Bristol, chairman of the advisory group and an associate professor of education at UC Berkeley. Staff from county offices of education also have been meeting to share ideas on how they can support districts’ efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color, he said.

    The state also has invested more than $350 million over the past six years to fund teacher residency programs, and recently passed legislation to ensure residents are paid a minimum salary. Residents work alongside an experienced teacher-mentor for a year of clinical training while completing coursework in a university preparation program — a time commitment that often precludes them from taking a job.

    Legislators have also proposed a bill that would require that student teachers be paid. Completing the 600 hours of unpaid student teaching required by the state, while paying for tuition, books, supplies and living expenses, is a challenge for many Black teacher candidates.

    Black teacher candidates typically take on much more student debt than their white counterparts, in part, because of the large racial wealth gap in the United States. A 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that the median white family had $184,000 in family wealth (property and cash), while the median Latino family had $38,000 and the median Black family had $23,000.

    Lack of data makes it difficult to know what is working

    It’s difficult to know if state efforts are working. California hasn’t released any data on teacher demographics since the 2018-19 school year, although the data is submitted annually by school districts. The California Department of Education (CDE) did not provide updated data or interviews requested by EdSource for this story.

    The most recent data from CDE shows the number of Black teachers in California declined from 4.2% in 2009 to 3.9% during the 2018-19 school year. The National Center for Education Statistics data from the 2020-21 show that Black teachers made up 3.8% of the state educator workforce. 

    Having current data is a critical first step to understanding the problem and addressing it, said Mayra Lara, director of Southern California partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust-West, an education research and advocacy organization.

    “Let’s be clear: The California Department of Education needs to annually publish educator demographic and experience data,” Lara said. “It has failed to do so for the past four years. … Without this data, families, communities and decision-makers really are in the dark when it comes to the diversity of the educator workforce.” 

    LA Unified losing Black teachers despite efforts

    While most state programs focus on recruiting and retaining all teachers of color, some California school districts have initiatives focused solely on recruiting Black teachers.

    The state’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, passed the Black Student Excellence through Educator Diversity, Preparation and Retention resolution two years ago. It required district staff to develop a strategic plan to ensure schools have Black teachers, administrators and mental health workers, and to advocate for programs that offer pathways for Black people to become teachers. 

    When the resolution was passed, in February 2022, Los Angeles Unified had 1,889 Black teachers —  9% of its teacher workforce. The following school year, that number declined to 1,823 or 7.9% of district teachers. The number of Black teachers in the district has gone down each year since 2016. The district did not provide data for the current school year.

    Robert Whitman, director of the Educational Transformation Office at LA Unified, attributed the decrease, in part, to the difficulty attracting teachers to the district, primarily because of the area’s high cost of living.

    “Those who are coming out of colleges now, in some cases, we find that they can make more money doing other things,” Whitman said. “And so, they may not necessarily see education as the most viable option.”

    The underrepresentation of people of color prompted the district to create its own in-house credentialing program, approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Whitman said. The program allows classified staff, such as substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, administrative assistants and bus drivers, to become credentialed teachers while earning a salary and benefits at their original jobs.

    Grow-your-own programs such as this, and the state’s Classified School Employee Credentialing program, and a soon-to-be launched apprenticeship program, are meant to diversify the educator workforce because school staff recruited from the community more closely match the demographics of the student body than traditionally trained and recruited teachers, according to research.

    Los Angeles Unified has other initiatives to increase the number of Black educators in the district, Whitman said, including working with universities and colleges to bring Black teachers, counselors and psychiatric social workers to their campuses. The district also has programs that help school workers earn a credential for free, and channels employees completing a bachelor’s degree toward the district’s teacher preparation program where they can begin teaching while earning their credential.

    All new teachers at Los Angeles Unified are supported by mentors and affinity groups, which have been well received by Black teachers, who credit them with inspiring and helping them to see themselves as leaders in the district, Whitman said.

    Oakland has more Black teachers than students

    Recruiting and retaining Black teachers is an important part of the Oakland Unified three-year strategic plan, said Sarah Glasband, director of recruitment and retention for the district. To achieve its goals, the district has launched several partnerships that make an apprenticeship program, and a residency program that includes a housing subsidy, possible. A partnership with the Black Teacher Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization, offers affinity groups, workshops and seminars to support the district’s Black teachers.

    The district also has a Classified School Employee Program funded by the state and a new high school program to train future teachers. District pathway programs have an average attrition rate of less than 10%, Glasband said.

    This year, 21.3% of the district’s K-12 teachers are Black, compared with 20.3% of their student population, according to district data. Oakland Unified had a retention rate of about 85% for Black teachers between 2019 and 2023.

    Better pay, a path to leadership will help teachers stay

    Black teachers interviewed by EdSource and researchers say that to keep them in the classroom, more needs to be done to make teacher preparation affordable, improve pay and benefits, and ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

    The Black Educator Advocates Network  came up with five recommendations after surveying 128 former and current Black teachers in California about what it would take to keep them in the classroom:

    • Hire more Black educators and staff
    • Build an anti-racist, culturally responsive and inclusive school environment
    • Create safe spaces for Black educators and students to come together
    • Provide and require culturally responsive training for all staff
    • Recognize, provide leadership opportunities and include Black educators in decision making

    Teachers interviewed by EdSource said paying teachers more also would make it easier for them to stay.

    “I don’t want to say that it’s the pay that’s going to get more Black teachers,” Brooke Sims, a Stockton teacher, told EdSource. “But you get better pay, you get better health care.”

    The average teacher salary in the state is $88,508, with the average starting pay at $51,600, according to the 2023 National Education Association report, “State of Educator Pay in America.” California’s minimum living wage was $54,070 last year, according to the report.

    State efforts, such as an initiative that pays teachers $5,000 annually for five years after they earn National Board Certification, will help with pay parity across school districts, Bristol said. Teachers prove through assessments and a portfolio that they meet the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. To be eligible for the grant, teachers must work at least half of their time in a high-needs school. Teachers who qualify are also given $2,500 to cover the cost of certification.

    This incentive will help teachers continue their education and improve their practice, said Los Angeles teacher Petrina Miller. “It’s awesome,” she said.

    Teacher candidates must be actively recruited

    Many Black college students have not considered a teaching career because they have never had a Black teacher, said Preston Jackson, who teaches physical education at California Middle School in Sacramento. Those who consider a teaching career are often deterred by the cost of teacher preparation, taking required tests and unpaid student teaching.

    “In order to increase the number of Black teachers in schools, it has to become deliberate,” Jackson said. “You have to actively recruit and actively seek them out to bring them into the profession.”

    Since starting in 2005, Jackson has been one of only a handful of Black teachers at his school.

    “And for almost every single one of my kids, I’m the first Black teacher they’ve ever had,” said Jackson. “…  And for some of them, I’m the first one they’ve ever seen.” 

    Mentors are needed to help retain new teachers

    Mentor teachers are the key ingredient to helping new Black educators transition successfully into teaching, according to teachers interviewed by EdSource. Alicia Simba says she could have taken a job for $25,000 more annually in a Bay Area district with few Black teachers or students, but opted to take a lower salary to work in Oakland Unified.

    But like many young teachers, Simba knew she wanted mentors to help her navigate her first years in the classroom. She works alongside Black teachers in Oakland Unified who have more than 20 years of teaching experience. One of her mentor teachers shared her experience of teaching on the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Other teachers told her about teaching in the 1980s during the crack cocaine epidemic.

    “It really helps dispel some of the sort of narratives that I hear, which is that being a teacher is completely unsustainable,” Simba said. “Like, there’s no way that anyone could ever be a teacher long term, which are things that, you know, I’ve heard my friends say, and I’ve thought it myself.” 

    The most obvious way to retain Black teachers would be to make sure they are treated the same as non-Black teachers, said Brenda Walker, a Black teacher and president of the Associated Chino Teachers.

    “If you are a district administrator, site administrator, site or colleague, parent or student,  my bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and my special education credential are just as valuable and carry as much weight, and are as respected as any other educator,” she said.

    “However, it’s just as critical for all those groups to acknowledge and respect the unique cultural experience I bring to the table and acknowledge and respect that I’m a proud product of my ancestral history.”





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  • California districts try many options before charging parents for student truancy

    California districts try many options before charging parents for student truancy


    Credit: Fermin Leal / EdSource

    While California’s school truancy law remains on the books, school districts in recent years appear to have become less and less likely to enforce punitive measures against parents.

    Multiple phone calls, emails, letters and requests for meetings are what parents should expect if their child is deemed truant. If those steps don’t get the child back into school, state law gives districts the right to take parents to court.

    But how often that happens is up to school officials and prosecutors and, clearly, officials say, the times have changed. Punitive measures have been shown to be less effective, especially if the reason for the child missing school is beyond the parent’s control.

    While parents have been arrested in California for their children being habitually absent from school, it is unclear how many cases resulted in criminal charges. According to state law, a district can declare a student truant and refer them to the district attorney after three unexcused absences of more than 30 minutes during the school year, potentially facing fines and even jail time.

    “It’s fair to say that most districts go beyond what the law requires in terms of trying to address these challenges internally at the district level prior to engaging the criminal justice system,” said Jonathan Raven, assistant CEO of the California District Attorneys Association.

    State law gives prosecutors wide discretion over how to charge parents when their child is truant, from an infraction, akin to a traffic violation, to a misdemeanor, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

    Chronic absenteeism in California schools is part of a national crisis over children missing school, especially during the pandemic. In California, the percentage of chronically absent students skyrocketed from the pre-pandemic rate of 12.1% in 2018-19 to 30% in 2021-22, after the pandemic. The percentage dropped to nearly 25% in 2022-23.

    The state’s truancy law grew out of Kamala Harris’s efforts as a prosecutor to stem the number of high school dropouts who ended up in the criminal justice system.

    In San Francisco, where she was the district attorney from 2004 to 2010, she implemented a truancy initiative that introduced the threat of prosecution of parents and guardians when children habitually missed school. That initiative became the model for a 2010 state law that Harris sponsored which adopted strict penalties for parents of truant students: a fine not to exceed $2,000, jail time not to exceed one year, or both.

    The penalties could be applied if a student was habitually truant, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year and only after parents had been offered a range of support services to address the student’s truancy. Truancy courts were created where the penalties could be deferred so long as the students begin attending school. While attorney general from 2011 to 2017, her office created an on-line truancy hub with truancy reports from 2013 to 2016.

    The first arrests under the law were in 2011 of five parents in Orange County. The arrest option has since become controversial as districts focus first on how to solve the problems leading to truancy. During her 2019 presidential campaign, Harris stood by the goals of the law but insisted in a podcast interview at the time, that she “never sent a parent to jail” when she was a district attorney. Even though the 2010 state law specifically changed the penal code to include fines and jail time as potential penalties in truancy cases, she said in the same 2019 interview that she regretted knowing some district attorneys had criminalized parents under that state law.

    California’s law specifies that with students who are habitually truant, the goal is to keep young people out of the juvenile justice system and in school.

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

    While six out of 10 absences were excused during the 2022-23 school year, four out of 10 were unexcused, state data shows. Both numbers were similar to pre-pandemic levels. The 2023-24 data has not yet been released.

    A case study in Santa Clara County

    In Santa Clara County, just south of San Francisco, for example, a prosecutor from the district attorney’s office speaks with parents at the start of the school year.

    “I go to back-to-school nights to speak not about the law and its consequences, but about attendance and its importance, and particularly attendance in the earliest grades,” said Alisha Schoen, community prosecutor for Santa Clara’s district attorney’s office.

    Educators and researchers highlight targeted and constant communication with families — such as phone calls, emails, texts, letters and direct, in-person contact — as a powerful solution to chronic absences. In Santa Clara County, school districts conduct home visits if a student is near truancy.

    If that communication doesn’t result in the student attending school regularly, the family is then referred to the local student attendance review board, SARB. The SARB will open a case during which the family must sign an attendance contract stipulating their child will attend school regularly.

    With methods in place to help students return to school, attendance issues are most often solved at the school or district level, said Schoen.

    But if the student continues missing school, despite all interventions, the student attendance review board then has the discretion to send the case to the local district attorney’s office, at which point the parents could be prosecuted.

    Those cases go to Schoen, who might either issue the parents an infraction, like a traffic violation, which is not punishable with jail time but could carry a fine, or decide that the district or school must take additional action in addressing the absences prior to involving the court.

    “The cases that I file in my court are almost always cases where the parents refused to come to the school site meeting, did not come to the SARB, didn’t answer the door at the home visit, so this is the necessary step to get them to the table so that then we can talk about the problem and offer supportive services,” Schoen said.

    Upon being issued the infraction, the parents then enter what Santa Clara County calls a collaborative truancy court, through which they offer students and their parents access to a county behavioral health social worker, enroll parents in a 10-week in-person or online parenting class, and assign a caseworker to families who might be experiencing far-reaching challenges such as homelessness or unemployment.

    “Our throughline is that truancy is a red flag that tells us this child or their family are experiencing some crisis, and we have to recognize that red flag as such, and then get the supportive services to the family to address that underlying crisis so that the attendance can then improve,” said Schoen.

    Schoen described how they issue infractions, for example, not misdemeanors; if parents plead guilty, they request the lowest possible fine; and they make every effort to dismiss the case to avoid fines.

    “We don’t believe that assigning a large fine will improve their child’s attendance, and it could possibly have a negative effect,” said Schoen.

    Of over 234,000 students enrolled in Santa Clara County during the 2023-2024 school year, Schoen’s office heard 130 truancy cases — although some of those cases were from the previous school year. Infractions were issued to 34 parents; 28 were dismissed as student attendance improved, and six parents pleaded guilty. Those six were issued fines, and their court fees were waived. The remaining cases will be continuing this year.

    In the past, some counties are known to have taken a more punitive approach.

    Merced County in 2017 initiated an anti-truancy effort that included the arrest of 10 parents for failing to send their children to school. They were charged with misdemeanors, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

    Jennifer McHugh, a deputy district attorney in Yolo County, considers it “very unlikely” that she would support jailing parents in truancy cases because once the case is over, “have you really solved the problem?”

    In the last year, McHugh got school district referrals for 15-20 students who were excessively truant.

    “In the past year, it’s only been one district that’s sent me names of truant students, and I don’t think they’re sending me everyone who’s been truant three or more times, because those would be way more people,” said McHugh. “They’re sending me the people who are excessively truant, you know, 60, 70, 80% of the time that this child’s truant kind of cases.”

    Those students and their families entered mediation with the district attorney’s office. During mediation, McHugh meets for 30 minutes to an hour at the county office of education — “a neutral place,” she said — to sign an attendance contract. The meeting includes the student, their parents, McHugh, student support services from the district who have made previous contact with the parents, and others with direct knowledge of the student’s situation.

    The point of the contract is not perfect attendance; rather, “good enough” attendance is what McHugh is looking for in order to avoid further court involvement. It’s up to every district to decide when to prosecute.

    “My perspective on it is we’re trying to resolve the issue. We’re trying to get them into school,” she said.

    Of the 15-20 students in mediation, only two cases were filed against parents. In one case, the student began attending school and the case was dismissed. The second case is pending.

    Impacts of targeting chronic absenteeism

    While the law stipulates that students with many absences are truant, language today describes the problem as chronic absenteeism, a situation that can be fixed with the proper supports. Another issue is who is targeted when district attorneys get involved in fighting truancy or chronic absenteeism.

    “The problem is having kids being labeled unexcused, it’s not equally distributed,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that works to improve student attendance.

    Her research on unexcused absences, published last year in a PACE report, also found that California “schools serving more socioeconomically disadvantaged students communicate more punitive approaches.”

    Certain demographics of students are more likely to have unexcused absences: Black, Native American, Latino, and Pacific Islander, regardless of socioeconomic status, along with low-income students, the study found.

    Schools serving students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged were far more likely “to publish policies stating that truancy would result in suspension of driver’s licenses, loss of school privileges like extracurricular participation, and Saturday school or in-school detention,” the report said.

    The researchers reviewed the school handbooks of 40 California middle and high schools — half of the schools had a population of over 90% of socioeconomically disadvantaged students and the other half had a population of less than 50% of socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

    There are some biases in the system “around how absences are treated and who gets labeled unexcused,” Chang told EdSource. “And sometimes that’s because we don’t have the supports and resources to really do outreach to families.”

    She added, “When the truancy laws got created, you didn’t have chronic absence even as a metric or even as an accountability metric for schools, and by having chronic absence as an accountability metric, you are saying: ‘Hey, schools, you’ve got to do something about this.’ So it’s not just the court system that has evolved over time. There is a pretty broad standing consensus that you want to invest in prevention first and you use a legal system as a last resort.”





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  • California education leaders try to reassure students of protections against Trump policies

    California education leaders try to reassure students of protections against Trump policies


    In this Jan. 25, 2017, file photo, protesters rally outside of City Hall in San Francisco in the wake of Donald Trump’s first election as president..

    Credit: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu,file

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    When Alejandra Lopez saw swing states that had gone for Joe Biden in 2020 leaning red for Donald Trump on Tuesday night, it felt like déjà vu.

    “I was really distraught. Honestly, I really would have never thought I would see him having a second term in office,” said Lopez, who is a second-year political science student at Cal Poly Pomona.

    For Lopez, the stakes were personal. Both of her parents are undocumented immigrants from Mexico who have lived in the U.S. for almost 20 years. Trump has pledged to enact mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

    When Trump won for the first time in 2016, Lopez was 11 years old. She remembers feeling scared that her parents — or even she, a U.S. citizen — would be deported and crying all day in class. Now, she feels more angry.

    “I’m angry that he was elected into office again, that he has promised the same thing again, and that people keep perpetuating it and moving it forward, not recognizing how harmful it can be,” she said. “You look back, and you see that time and time again, he’s just rephrased the same hate that he’s spewed.”

    Many California children and their families, including immigrants, transgender students and Black and Latino students, among others, are feeling similar fear and uncertainty, after the election of a candidate who has threatened to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, and to cut school funding to states that protect transgender students and promote diversity, equity and inclusion in their schools.

    California education leaders and advocates said the fear is palpable and justifiable, but they also urged TK-12 schools, colleges and universities to make sure students and families know about policies to protect their rights, some of which were enacted during the first Trump administration.

    An estimated 1 million California children — about 1 in 10 — have an undocumented immigrant parent, the state estimates. Many more have undocumented family members. About 165,000 California students are recent immigrants themselves.

    “If we thought teaching was hard yesterday, wait for today’s questions like, “Is Trump going to send me back to the gangs?” and “Is he going to deport my mother/father/brother/cousin?” wrote teacher Larry Ferlazzo on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday.

    Xilonin Cruz-González, deputy director of the advocacy organization Californians Together, said schools must reach out now to immigrant families to ensure they feel welcome and safe in school.

    “Even though it feels scary, especially for immigrant families, because of the rhetoric we’ve heard through the election cycle and we anticipate we will continue to hear, it’s important to remember, especially in California, we have legal protections for immigrant students,” Cruz-González said. “We have federal protections that require us to make sure our schools are safe and welcoming for all students. And we have California laws, especially AB 699, that was passed in 2017, that requires school districts to ensure that our immigrant students are welcomed into our public schools.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court established in 1982, in the case Plyler vs. Doe, that all children have a right to a free public education, regardless of their immigration status.

    California’s Assembly Bill 699 was passed in response to the previous Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and the fear it caused among immigrant families in California. The bill instructs schools not to collect information about families’ immigration status unless required by law, and requires schools to pass policies limiting assistance with immigration enforcement at public schools, among other things.

    Lindsey Bird was a newcomer teacher, working with recent immigrant students in 2016 when Trump was first elected. She said she had Syrian refugee students in tears that day.

    “They felt like their humanity was on the ballot, and they lost,” she said.

    Bird now works with Teach Plus California, coaching teachers throughout the state on how best to teach English learners. She said teachers are “heartbroken” for their students after Tuesday’s election and eager to share information with their students about their rights.

    “One teacher told me, ‘I’ll let myself grieve for the remainder of the week, but then I feel like my mama bear mode has been activated because I feel like I have to protect my students,’” Bird said. “So she was asking, ‘How can I protect them? What are my rights? What are their rights?’”

    Megan Stanton-Trehan, a senior attorney at Disability Rights California who represents students with disabilities, said she saw many students with disabilities and students of color struggle during the last Trump presidency.

    “I am really concerned about my clients who have disabilities, who are students of color, who are transgender,” said Stanton-Trehan. “In California, we may have a state that is protecting those students to some degree. We have laws that protect them here that are not dependent upon the way the federal government interprets the law, but that’s a lot of burden to put on the state.”

    She said that the lessons of that first term, however, are in the power of people standing up to such policies.

    “I think it’s definitely more than ever a time to really center those students and their needs and, really, their voices too,” Stanton-Trehan said. “They’re the next generation, and they’re living through this as well. They’re the ones at the forefront. If there’s any silver lining, it’s perhaps how galvanizing this can be for young people to say enough is enough.”

    State Attorney General Rob Bonta has said that his team is preparing to protect immigrants, transgender students and others, with possible litigation against Trump’s expected policies.

    “Fortunately, and unfortunately, we have four years of Trump 1.0 under our belts. We know what to expect, and we won’t be caught flat-footed,” said a Bonta spokesperson. “California’s Legislature has enacted strong protections for the rights of all students in California, and the Department of Justice will ensure those protections are enforced across the state. We are paying attention to what Trump and his advisers have said about their plans for a second administration, and we will be prepared to defend California’s values.”

    U.C. Berkeley political science professor Dan Schnur said Gov. Gavin Newsom has battled Trump before, but faces a new reality with Harris’ loss.

    “Newsom’s challenge is going to be balancing what’s best for him as governor and what’s best for him as a potential presidential candidate,” Schnur said.

    And Trump recognizes, Schnur said, “how much he can benefit politically with his base by beating up on California. The question is how he decides how much of that political benefit can be realized by threats and how much can be realized through follow-up on those threats.”

    Trump’s campaign promise of shutting down the U.S. Department of Education is an example.

    Such a move “is a long, long, long shot,” Schnur said “Even if Republicans do win a House majority, he’s going to have a lot of members here who are reluctant to cast that vote.”

    But Trump’s railing against transgender people and false claims that children receive gender reassignment surgeries at public schools may keep political traction, Schnur said.

    “I think that debate is much more likely to be central to his agenda.”

    LGBTQ+ youth were a major focus of this election season up and down the ballot, according to Jorge Reyes Salinas, communications director for LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Equality California. 

    Trump attacked transgender women playing sports and gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Local school board candidates promoted policies that outed transgender students to their parents, in opposition to a new state law. Anti-bullying policies at local school districts that specifically name LGBTQ youth have become a flash point.

    California already has laws on the books that protect these communities, and Salinas noted that voters supported Proposition 3, which enshrines the right to same-sex marriage.

    “I think being in California does provide a peace of mind,” Salinas said.

    Equality California will be working with other organizations to ensure that there are no gaps in protecting LGBTQ+ youth in California, and that state laws that do support them are implemented. 

    Some school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, sent messages out to parents prior to or during Election Day, highlighting protections for students and offering mental health support for students experiencing anxiety or fear after the election.

    The union representing teachers in LAUSD, United Teachers Los Angeles, issued a statement saying that “Ensuring that students and their families are informed and safe will always be our top priority. We are committed to ensuring that every LAUSD student, especially BIPOC, immigrant, and LGBTQIA+ students, has access to the education, resources, and support they deserve.”

    Some colleges and universities sent similar messages to students. Santa Monica College sent a message to students before the election to offer counseling and “debriefing” spaces for all students, but particularly for LGBTQ students, undocumented students and “racially minoritized communities.” In a Nov. 6 message, San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney encouraged students to seek support from campus counseling services as well as groups including the Dream Resource Center and the Queer & Trans Resource Center.

    Higher education officials in California are well aware they could face legal and funding challenges from the Trump administration on such issues as enrolling undocumented students, free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion. In a rare move Wednesday, the leaders of California’s three public higher education systems shared a joint statement emphasizing that their campuses are welcoming to students and staff from all backgrounds.

    “Following the presidential election results, we understand that there is a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety within California’s higher education community,” reads the statement, which was signed by Michael Drake, president of the University of California; Mildred García, chancellor of the California State University; and Sonya Christian, chancellor of California Community Colleges.

    “The University of California, the California State University, and the California Community Colleges remain steadfast and committed to our values of diversity and inclusivity,” they added.

    Ju Hong, director of the UCLA Dream Resource Center, said Trump’s call for mass deportation is stoking fear among undocumented students and students who are citizens but have family members who are undocumented.

    Hong said there’s also concern that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program could get terminated by the courts during Trump’s presidency. Hong himself is a DACA recipient. If the program gets terminated, he wouldn’t be able to keep his job and would be at risk of deportation. 

    Hong called on UC leaders, including the system’s board of regents, to support immigrant students and staff, both with public statements of support and by advocating for more funding for programs like the Dream Resource Center.

    “Hopefully they think through what are some creative ways to proactively support immigrant students on and off campus,” Hong said.

    Kevin R. Johnson, professor and former dean of the UC Davis School of Law, said he is concerned that the election of Trump to a second presidency could deter undocumented students from attending public universities, even in California, where they are eligible for in-state tuition and where all three public college and university systems have legal services for undocumented students and family members.

    “I do think that over the next few months, we will see a great deal of fear and consternation in the immigrant community, including the immigrant student community,” Johnson said. “I fear that the general tenor and thrust of President Trump and some others about immigrants can chill undocumented students from attending a public university and be worried that any appearance in public places could lead to their removal.”





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