In this post, Peter Greene continues his coverage of a teacher in West Ada, Idaho, who got into trouble for putting up a poster that showed different colored hands in the air and said “Everyone is Welcome Here.” District leaders said the poster was unwelcome because it violated federal guidelines that banished DEI, and had to be removed. Some didn’t object to the sentiment but objected to the portrayal of nonwhite hands.
Greene wrote:
Sarah Inama has put her poster up in a new classroom.
Inama, you may recall, is the 6th grade world history teacher told by her district bosses at West Ada School District that her “Everyone Is Welcome Here” poster, complete with hands of many human shades, would not be tolerated in the district. (I’ve been following this here, here, and here). West Ada is the largest district in Idaho, but their treatment of Inama has been spectacularly awful, both from an Awful Display of Racism standpoint, a Grotesque Mistreatment of Staff standpoint, and a Boneheaded PR Management standpoint.
Inama went to local news and the story blew up, delivering the shame that West Ada so richly deserved. We know a lot more thanks to some stellar reporting by Carly Flandro and the folks at Idaho Ed News, who FOIAed 1200 emails surrounding this and showcasing the board’s stumbling response. You should read the resulting stories (here and here).
The day after Inama was on the Today show, the district issued a memo entitled “Ensuring a Consistent and Supportive Learning Environment.” They decided to go with sports analogies. The Chief Academic Officer is a like a referee who enforces rules “to ensure a fair and level playing field.” And there’s this howler–
If one player decided to wear a different uniform, use a different-sized ball, or ignore the rules, the game would lose its structure, creating confusion and imbalance.
Then a report from BoiseDev that the Board of Trustees is considering making every teacher put up an “Everyone is welcome” poster– just without those multi-colored hands. Responding to BoiseDev, a district spokesperson explained:
Regarding the Everyone is Welcome Here posters, the district determined that while the phrase itself is broadly positive, certain design elements have been associated over time with political entities and initiatives that are now subject to federal restriction.
Inama told Idaho EdNews, “That’s appeasing not a political view, but a bigoted view that shouldn’t even be considered by a public school district.”
Inama was told the poster was divisive, that it was “not neutral,” that the problem was not the message, but the hands of v arious skin tones. Teachers shouldn’t have political stuff in the classroom. Inama nails the issue here
“I really still don’t understand how it’s a political statement,” she said. “I don’t think the classroom is a place for anyone to push a personal agenda or political agenda of any kind, but we are responsible for first making sure that our students are able to learn in our classroom.”
Some parents and students showed up at school to make chalk drawings in support. And yet many folks within and outside the district saw this as a divisive issue. How could anyone do that? Meet district parent Brittany Bieghler, who was dropping her kids off the day that parents were chalking the “Everyone is welcome here” message on the sidewalks.
“The ‘Everyone is Welcome’ slogan is one filled with marxism and DEI, there is no need for those statements because anyone with a brain knows that everyone is welcome to attend school, so there is no need to have it posted, written or worn on school grounds,” she wrote. “My family and I relocated here from a state that did not align with our beliefs and we expected it to be different here, but it seems as time goes by, its becoming more like our former state, which is extremely disheartening.”
“Anyone with a brain” might begin to suspect that everyone is not welcome here under these circumstances. And the school board itself couldn’t decide what to respond, drafting an assortment of emails that tried to show conciliation to those that were defiant and defensive, including one complaining in MAGA-esque tones that Inama was naughty for going to “new media.”
Imana resigned from her position, and by June the word was out that she was a new hire at Boise Schools. She told Idaho Ed News,
I’m so grateful to be able to work within a district that knows the beauty of inclusion and diversity and doesn’t for a second consider it an opinion but embraces it. As an educator, it’s an amazing feeling to know your (district’s) officials, board, and administrators fully uphold the fundamentals of public education and (have) the dignity to proudly support them. I really feel at home knowing we are truly all on the same team … and that’s a team that is rooting on all of our students.
Damned straight. And just last week, as reported by KTVB news, Inama posted video of herself putting up an “Everyone is welcome here” poster in her new classroom.
So the story ends well for Inama, and that’s a great thing. This is the sort of boneheaded administrative foolishness that can drive teachers out of the profession. The unfortunate part of the story is that up the road in West Ada schools, the administration, board and a non-zero number of parents think that challenging racism is bad and saying that students of all races are welcome in school is just one person’s opinion that shouldn’t be expressed openly in a school. Shame on West Ada.
Jess Piper lives on a farm in rural Missouri. She taught English literature for 16 years, then decided to run for the legislature even though her district is ruby-red. Since then, she has been organizing, agitating, encouraging Democrats to run for office in every district. It annoys her that Democrats don’t even put up candidates in districts, so many voters have no choice. She was a speaker at the last conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, and she was wonderful. Oh, yes, she’s a big presence on TikTok.
Have you ever seen a bucket with live crabs in it? It’s fascinating to watch. I’ve seen it a few times when I visited the coast and stood to watch fishermen on the piers.
A fisherman can pull up crabs all day long and leave them in a bucket. He won’t have to babysit the bucket.
The crabs won’t let any of their own escape. As soon as one starts to find a place to pull itself up, another crab will grab it and pull it back down into the bucket. The creatures are stuck there not because there is no way out, but because they won’t let another crab try to get out.
No matter how long you watch in amazement and horror, the crabs are caught in a game that never stops. One crab gets high enough to grab the outer part on the bucket only to be pulled back by the others.
Like a circle of hell…round and round for eternity. Dante style.
It turns out, some people aren’t much better than crabs.
You have likely heard of the crab in the bucket mentality, but if you haven’t, here’s the gist: it’s the mindset of people who try to prevent others from gaining a favorable position, even if attaining such position would not directly impact those trying to stop them.
Every crab for itself. It’s jealousy and envy and spite.
If I can’t have it, neither can you. And if you try to get it, I will pull you back down.
The GOP mindset in two sentences.
It used to be a little less pronounced than it is now — I don’t know many Trump supporters who are happy these days even though they got every thing they’ve ever wanted and more. The crabs in a bucket mentality has only gotten worse.
Bitterness and cruelty are the point. The resentment Republicans show to people who aren’t like them is so ingrained in the party, that I don’t know that I need to expand on that point. They hate with a viciousness that seems to have no bounds.
A Trump supporter yells at counter-protesters outside of the U.S. Supreme Court during the Million MAGA March in Washington. Credit: Caroline Brehman.
Trump supporters, and most Republicans, have a problem with others getting ahead or even making progress. Look at the way the regime is dismantling public education and civil rights and women’s healthcare and even programs for the most oppressed and marginalized groups.
Attacks on public education are meant to keep poor kids off the playing field. The fact that states like Missouri have defunded schools for so many years that 33% of schools are running a 4-day week is evidence. Almost every 4-day week school district is in a defunded rural area.
The fact that my state is now 50th in educational funding while finding millions in taxpayer money to send to private religious schools is another piece of evidence.
If you try to better yourself through education, they will attempt to pull you back down into the bucket.
The crab mentality.
Why would I care if someone is gay and wants to marry? What has that got to do with me or my marriage? Nothing. Why would I ever interfere with the love two other people have for each other? Why would I stand in the way?
I wouldn’t, but many Republicans would. It would seem they think letting others get married keeps them down…in the bucket.
If a person feels they were born the wrong gender and wants to express their own gender differently, why would I have anything to say about that? It’s not my body and it’s not my business. Why would I stand in the way of trans rights or anyone’s ability to get the healthcare that helps them realize their happiness?
I wouldn’t, but many Republicans would. It would seem like letting a trans kid play soccer makes them uncomfortable and keeps them down…in the bucket.
If someone is religious, and it’s not my religion, what would that have to do with me? If they worship in a church or a synagogue or a mosque, why would I have any say about that and how in the world would that impose any restrictions on my own religion or non-religion?
It wouldn’t, but many Republicans think it does. It would seem letting other people make up their own minds about their own faith makes them feel less than and keeps them down…in the bucket.
This mentality is not contained to one party, though. Democrats do it as well.
Ask me how I know…
I ran for office in ‘22. I called the party to ask for help, they told me, “you can’t win.” Okay, I know I am not at all likely to flip a seat that no Democrat has won in three decades, but why is “you can’t win” the first thing the party would tell a rural person standing up in a red district?
I wonder if this quip has caused others to decide against running?
I ran anyway. I ran hard. I did everything I could to at least show up for the people, listen to folks, and make a difference. I raised almost 275K in a ruby red district. That’s nearly unheard of.
I signed up to walk in parades and have booths at fairs. My team knocked over 1,000 doors and we called about that many numbers. We cleaned up the VAN data that had not been recorded for years.
That was work I did for free for the party, but I was getting too much attention and some of the crabs weren’t happy. I needed to be pulled back down into the bucket.
Others might argue that Jess Piper’s energetic state House campaign in northwest Missouri, which has already raised over a quarter million dollars this cycle, is another counterexample showing Democrats’ commitment to branching out beyond the two major metros.
That’s an extraordinary fundraising haul for any rural House candidate, especially a Democrat in an un-winnable district. Piper has leveraged all available social media tools by tweeting, Tik Tok-ing and Instagramming her way to raise more than any other Democratic House candidate.
In fact, the last two fundraising reports show Piper with more cash on hand than the entire House Democratic Campaign Committee.
But, I suspect, instead of deploying a significant portion of her financial haul in large chunks to 4 or 5 swing districts where she could have a decisive impact and help her party gain seats — perhaps even helping position herself to chair the party next cycle — she’ll instead spend it to close her margin from 30 to perhaps 20 points.
See what he did there?
How dare I run in a rural race and expect to win? How dare I circumvent the party’s expectations? How dare I raise money in a red district because it’s not worth it and I can’t win anyway. How dare I not send donor money to the party or to others who might win an easier race in an easier district.
How dare I attempt to get out of the bucket and pull my community out with me?
We can easily recognize the crabs in the other party, but we need to examine what we do as well. We need to step away from jealousy and greed and pride and spite.
We can’t make progress by pulling others down. We can’t win by keeping others from rising above their condition.
Help those pulling themselves up and they will reach back down and help the others still stuck.
The New York Times published an article by Dana Goldstein asserting that Democrats are divided about vouchers. Her evidence: Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the organization created by hedge fund managers to advocate for charter schools, for evaluation of teachers by their students’ test scores, for Teach for America, and for every other failed corporate reform idea, now, unsurprisingly, supports vouchers.
This is no surprise. DFER never represented parents, teachers, or students. They gained notoriety because they raised big dollars on Wall Street to persuade key politicians to join their campaign to undermine public schools. In D.C. and in state capitols, money rules.
Goldstein tells us that the teachers’ unions, the usual suspect, woo Democrats to support public schools, but that’s not entirely true.
Most people don’t want their public schools to be privatized. Most people don’t want public money to subsidize religious schools. The proof is there. Voucher referenda have been on state ballots numerous times since 1967, and the public has voted against them every time.
In the 2024 elections, vouchers were on the ballot in three states, and lost in all three states.
Now that a number of states have voucher programs that are well established, we know three things about them.
Most students who get vouchers are already in private schools. Their parents are already paying private school tuition.
As Josh Cowen demonstrates in his book “The Privateers,” the academic results of children who leave public schools to attend private schools are abysmal.
Vouchers diminish the funding available for public schools, since the state takes on the responsibility of subsidizing tuition for students whose parents currently pay the bills.
DFER still has money but it has no constituency. The Democratic Party is not split. Its leaders know that the vast majority of students attend public schools, and those schools need help, not a diversion of funds to religious schools, private schools, and homeschools.
Donald Trump is so panicked by what is contained in the Trump-Epstein files that he’s now slamming his own followers demanding its release, calling them “stupid” and “weaklings.” Whine as he may, Trump has lost control of the narrative given a new poll released Wednesday which found nearly 70% of Americans believe the Trump regime has engaged in a cover up of the Epstein files–including 59% of Trump supporters. At the very least it appears that Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein was involved in sex ring where children were raped yet did nothing to stop that evil. But Trump’s actions could be worse than that.
However, lost in the discussion is that Trump’s current Attorney General Pam Bondi was Florida’s Attorney General from 2011 to 2019 in the very state that was ground zero for Epstein raping and trafficking children. Why didn’t she investigate and prosecute Epstein for these heinous crimes committed in Florida?!
Taking a quick step back, Epstein received in 2008 the “deal of a lifetime” from local Florida prosecutors and George W. Bush’s Department of Justice. At the time, Bush’s DOJ had identified 36 underage girls who were victims of Epstein. But they offered the well-connected Epstein a deal to plead guilty to just two prostitution charges in state court. He was then sentenced to 18 months in jail–which he served in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail where he was allowed daily work release. In addition, Bush’s DOJ agreed not to prosecute him for federal crimes. Worse, Epstein’s victims were not even told of the deal in advance so they could object.
After Epstein’s release from jail in 2009, Epstein returned to his lavish lifestyle and was able to “continue his abuse of minors”—a point made in a 2020 report by Trump’s own DOJ after Epstein died in the custody of the Trump administration. So again, why didn’t Bondi investigate Epstein for his crimes while she was AG from 2011 to 2019?!
After years of pandemic declines, enrollment at California’s community colleges may finally be starting to rebound in a significant way.
Several colleges across the state, from San Diego to San Jose, are reporting that their enrollments are up by double digit percentages this fall. Statewide data for the fall isn’t yet available, but enrollment in the spring was up 8% across the system of 116 colleges, according to a memo prepared by the state chancellor’s office.
College officials cited the expansion of dual enrollment and more interest in career-focused programs as being among the main drivers of the enrollment growth.
“In conversations with CEOs for fall 2023, I’m hearing good news, positive trends. And in fact, many of the districts are telling me that they’re seeing double-digit enrollment growth,” Sonya Christian, the statewide chancellor for the system, told the system’s board of governors Tuesday.
Given that, the memo prepared by the chancellor’s office says the system now has “a meaningful positive enrollment outlook for the first time in over five years.”
Still, enrollment across the system as of the spring was down 16% compared to pre-pandemic levels. And although the colleges are seeing big increases in dual enrollment and more enrollments from some older students, other students have not returned. Among students between the ages of 20 and 24, enrollment was down 27% as of the spring compared with pre-Covid levels. It was also down 22% among students between the ages of 25 and 34.
Christian’s goal for the colleges, outlined in her official Vision 2030 plan for the system, is to increase enrollment to greater than pre-pandemic levels by 2030. The board of governors voted Tuesday to begin formally implementing that vision. Among other goals, her plan calls to enroll more low-income adults, who she says have been historically left behind by the system. She also wants colleges to further expand dual enrollment by having every high school student taking a college class.
Dual enrollment has already been growing steadily across the state. In spring 2023, enrollment among students ages 19 and younger was up 14% compared with spring 2022, an increase that was largely aided by growth in dual enrollment programs. As of the spring, students in that age group had surpassed their pre-pandemic enrollment levels, making them the only age group to do so.
At the San Jose Evergreen Community College District, enrollment this fall is up by about 15% compared with a year ago, and the largest increases are among students aged 17 or younger, thanks to dual enrollment expansions. The district has specifically focused on expanding partnerships with high schools in East San Jose to enroll underserved high schoolers in that area, said Beatriz Chaidez, the district’s interim chancellor, in an interview.
“People see the value in community colleges, and that’s creating the increased interest, and we’re casting a wider net with our K-12 partners,” Chaidez added.
Colleges are also reporting growth in career training and skill-based programs. At Mt. San Jacinto College in Riverside County, where enrollment is up 13% compared with last fall, “there is a notable trend of students gravitating more towards career-focused educational paths,” said Brandon Moore, the college’s vice president of enrollment management, in an email.
Moore said there has been a “significant uptick” in enrollment in the college’s automotive and computer information systems programs. “Furthermore, budding programs such as culinary arts are also carving a niche, reflecting a growing interest in specialized skill-based education,” he added.
The San Diego Community College District, where enrollment is up by 14% this fall but still well below pre-pandemic levels, is similarly seeing increased demand for career training programs, said Ashanti Hands, president of San Diego Mesa College. That’s specifically the case for short-term certificate programs in subjects such as accounting, biotechnology and cybersecurity.
“These are students who want to come and really focus on being able to find work,” Hands said. “They can do that within a short amount of time. It’s the immediate return on their investment.”
Christian, who became statewide chancellor in June, wants to connect even more students to the workforce by targeting the state’s adults who have graduated from high school but don’t have a postsecondary degree. According to her office, there are 6.8 million of them in California between the ages of 25 and 54, and those individuals are disproportionately likely to be low-income and struggling to find well-paid work.
Under Christian’s Vision 2030, the colleges would enroll many of those individuals and help connect them to good jobs. The Vision 2030 planning document notes that if the colleges enrolled 5% of those individuals, it would generate 300,000 new students across the system. During the 2022-23 academic year, the system enrolled about 1.92 million students, down by more than 300,000 compared with pre-pandemic levels.
“Vision 2030 asks the fundamental question: Why have we not yet reached these individuals? When students cannot find their way to college, it is our responsibility to bring college to them,” Christian said.
Hands, the Mesa College president, said she’s confident that community colleges across the state, including the San Diego colleges, will be able to fully recover the enrollment they lost during the pandemic. But she added that, as those increases happen in areas like dual enrollment and workforce programs, the colleges won’t look the same as they did before the pandemic.
“We are not there yet, but the way that we are moving, I have no doubt that we will get back to those numbers,” she said. “But it won’t be business as usual because I think we’re going to need to be mindful that we may be seeing different students, a different group of students.”
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California school superintendents have been leaving their jobs in large numbers this year. Many reached retirement age; others, tired of dealing with the aftermath of pandemic school closures, are retiring early or leaving for other jobs or business opportunities. Some are just looking for a change.
Then there are the superintendents who, having put off plans for retirement to help districts through pandemic closures, now finally feel comfortable enough to leave.
The result: a turnover of superintendents, with older, more experienced veterans being replaced by new, less experienced leaders.
EdSource interviewed five California superintendents who either recently left or are leaving their jobs, to better understand what compelled them to step down.
Covid, threats push Chris Evans to early retirement
Chris Evans retired as the superintendent of Natomas Unified after the 2022-23 school year. Credit: Jeff McPhee
Former Natomas Unified Superintendent Chris Evans has been the target of multiple personal threats in recent years, but in September 2021, the hateful rhetoric grew so intense that the school board agreed to pay for security for his home.
A school board meeting in September 2021 was abruptly canceled during public comment because of the raucous behavior of some in the audience.
Parents and members of the Sacramento community were upset about comments made by an Inderkum High School teacher who was secretly recorded claiming he kept an antifa flag in his classroom and encouraged his students to protest, according to media reports.
Evans announced at the meeting that the teacher had been put on paid leave pending an investigation.
“Following the Sept. 1 meeting, each trustee and Chris received numerous — 150-plus — disturbing emails that were forwarded, I believe, to local and federal law enforcement agencies,” said Susan Heredia, Natomas Unified board president.
“People would show up in front of my house, take pictures, speak to my children,” Evans said. “They would call the district and say they were headed to my house and would be intercepted going to my house.”
Last June, Evans stepped down from his position as superintendent at age 52, after 11 years leading the district. He had planned to retire at 55. He blames his early departure on the Covid-19 pandemic.
“For me, Covid did it,” Evans said. “Covid and everything that came from that — the politics of it. It was exhausting. That took two years off my career.”
Evans is still working in the district temporarily, helping first-time Superintendent Robyn Castillo transition to her new role. After that, he will focus on his new endeavor at Action-Oriented Leaders, an education consulting firm that focuses on helping superintendents and school boards problem-solve and troubleshoot, he said.
Brett McFadden opted for a quieter job closer to home
Brett McFadden left his job as superintendent of Nevada Joint Union High School District after the 2021-22 school year.Courtesy of the Monterey County Office of Education
Brett McFadden, 55, left his job as superintendent of Nevada Joint Union High School District in Grass Valley after the 2021-22 school year, primarily to be closer to his home in Aptos with his wife, an administrator at Monterey Peninsula Unified School District.
He was superintendent at Nevada Joint Union for four years before accepting a job as a deputy superintendent at the Monterey County Office of Education.
It was difficult being a school superintendent during the Covid-19 pandemic, McFadden said. Nevada Joint Union High School District, like others in the state, had contentious school board meetings that centered on issues like masking, vaccines and the teaching of critical race theory.
“We went from board meetings that were not that well attended to board meetings that would have 300-plus people because of one particular contentious issue,” he said.
The community had a long history of treating everyone respectfully before the pandemic, but that changed within months, McFadden said.
“We lost empathy and grace,” McFadden said.
There also was a sharp increase in vitriolic comments from the community, he said.
“You know you can take those with a grain of salt, but when you hear 30 or 40 of them, and then you’re accused of not caring about kids, or destroying the education of kids or destroying kids’ lives after you’ve committed your entire career and your entire sense of being as a human being, as a professional, to fostering students’ lives and opportunities, that takes a toll on people,” McFadden said.
Despite the difficulties of the last few years, McFadden misses working at a school district. He expects he’ll return to one in some capacity someday, although he isn’t sure when.
Normalcy and ‘the sweet spot’ entice Brian Dolan to retire
Brian Dolan will retire as superintendent of Dixon Unified School District after this school year.Credit: Stewart Savage, Abaton Consulting
Dixon Unified Superintendent Brian Dolan, 62, has reached the “sweet spot” — the age where superintendents begin to reap the best retirement benefits. He’ll retire after this school year.
Although Covid-19 took the fun out of the job for a while, Dolan is glad he stayed long enough to see things almost return to normal.
“If I were at retirement age, just coming out of Covid, I would’ve needed to work another year just to put a little shine back on the apple,” he said.
Three of the six districts in Solano County had their superintendents retire in the last three years, Dolan said.
“None of us are going out early, but all of us are going out as early as we can,” he said.
Other than some discontent during Covid-19 school closures, Dixon’s school board meetings haven’t had the drama seen in many other districts, Dolan said. They haven’t been contentious and Dolan hasn’t been threatened. But he acknowledges the jobs of all school employees have become harder.
Dolan has spent a quarter-century of his 35-year career at Dixon Unified School District — 13 as its superintendent. He still finds delight in talking to students who recognize him on the street or when he answers his door on Halloween. The youngest ones pronounce his name Mr. Donut.
“Wow. I wouldn’t change a thing for myself, because there are so many good things to come out of this as well, but it’s hard work,” Dolan said.
He doesn’t plan to sit out for too long — probably just the six months required by the state. Dolan sees himself doing administrative coaching or support, or working with student teachers in the future.
Cathy Nichols-Washer pushed back retirement until things got better
Cathy Nichols-Washer was the superintendent of Lodi Unified for 15 years. Credit: Ken Sato
Cathy Nichols-Washer, 60, stayed at the helm of Lodi Unified School District in northern San Joaquin County longer than she thought she would. After 15 years, she was the longest-serving superintendent in the district’s history when she retired at the end of last school year.
Like many superintendents, Nichols-Washer didn’t have the heart to follow through with plans to retire two years earlier, because the Covid-19 pandemic changed her plans.
“I just didn’t feel right leaving the district in the midst of all that,” she said. … “So I stayed, and then, after Covid was over and we kind of got things — I’m not going to say back to normal, but back to a place that felt good and comfortable — you know, on a good track again, then I felt comfortable leaving.”
During the pandemic, superintendents had to manage the district and get their job done, while dealing with the negativity directed at them at board meetings, on social media and through emails. Nichols-Washer found it particularly difficult to explain to the community why state Covid regulations were changing weekly, if not daily.
To make matters worse, everyone had a different opinion about the dangers of Covid, she said. Some staff members were afraid to come to work and some parents were afraid to send their children. Others were fighting every regulation, refusing to wear masks, choosing not to be vaccinated, said Nichols-Washer.
“And then there was anger, because people felt so strongly about the issue that it came out, in many cases, in a very aggressive manner,” she said. “And so board meetings got very contentious, packed board meetings, people yelling and screaming, unruly.”
Nichols-Washer understands why so many superintendents leave as soon as they reach retirement age. “You can’t blame them,” she said.
Gregory Franklin moved from Tustin Unified to professor post at USC
Gregory Franklin retired as superintendent of Tustin Unified in the middle of the 2021-22 school year.Credit: Courtesy of Gregory Franklin
Gregory Franklin, 61, retired as superintendent of Tustin Unified School District in Orange County in the middle of the 2021-22 school year to be a professor of education at the University of Southern California, a position he says doesn’t come around often.
Franklin said he could have started working at the university at the beginning of the school year, but he wanted to allow the school board to find a replacement without having to get an interim superintendent.
He has nothing but good things to say about the Tustin Unified school board, which he says puts the education of children first. He was superintendent of the school district for 10 years.
“There was a position that came open, and I applied for it,” Franklin said. “I was pretty close to retirement anyway, so I probably left maybe a year or two earlier than I would have otherwise.”
Being a superintendent has always been a hard job, but it became much harder after the pandemic school closures and the “really brutal politics at the district level” that followed, he said.
Anger at school closures morphed into anger at masking and other Covid regulations.
After the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, school districts took a look at what they were doing to contribute to the inequity, Franklin said. Schools started to diversify the range of novels and authors available in school so that students could see characters in stories that had similar backgrounds and family structures as their own, but that also made some people angry, he said.
Then LGBTQ+ rights and students’ right to privacy about their gender decisions bumped up against parental rights, making more people angry, he said.
“And so we had one thing after another, really starting in May 2020, that has spun things up,” Franklin said. “The number of irate speakers who come to school board meetings now to berate the superintendent, the school board, and school leaders — it’s hard for people. “
The crowds were larger and more animated at the No Kings rallies than on Constitution Avenue, where Trump summoned up a parade in honor of his 79th birthday.
Yesterday evening, I saw tweets comparing the demeanor of the American service members to their parade counterparts in Russia, North Korea, and China. The soldiers in other countries marched in perfect symmetry, with not an eye or a boot out of place. The Americans seemed to be strolling. The tweets were meant to mock us. Some were posted by someone in another country. I responded, “Those Russian troops in perfect formation have not been able to beat Ukraine in three years. If they engaged American troops, our army would kick them all the way back to Moscow.”
The country that invented jazz was never going to be good at putting on a military parade. It was never going to be us.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s flaccid, chaotic, lightly attended, and generally awkward military parade, a meme began doing the rounds. Its basic format was the juxtaposition of images of the kinds of parades Trump presumably wanted with the parade he actually got.
Over here, thousands of Chinese soldiers marching in perfectly synchronized lockstep; over there, a lone U.S. soldier holding up a drone. Over here, North Korean legs kicking up and coming back down with astounding precision; over there, a dozen U.S. soldiers walking somewhat purposelessly through Washington.
Trump’s biggest mistake was wanting a military parade in the first place. The United States military is not a birthday party rental company. Any therapist will tell you that no number of green tanks on the street is enough to heal the deep void left by a father’s withheld love.
But, setting aside the wisdom of wanting a military parade, there is the issue of execution. Even if you’re going to do the wrong thing, do it well. Do it with flair. With the most powerful military in history at his disposal, Trump couldn’t even pull off a decent parade.
But I’m here to say it’s not his fault alone. It’s hard to wring a military parade of the kind he dreamed of from a people free in their bones.
You see, it is a good thing not to be good at some things. The great beauty of his terrible parade is the reminder that Trump is waging a war against the American spirit, and this fight he is struggling to win.
No matter how much money and effort you throw at the parade, you cannot escape the fact that America is not the country of North Korean unity. We’re the country of Korean tacos.
The Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho once described those tacos, as made famous by the chef Roy Choi, of similar heritage, thus: “There were so many things happening: The familiarity of the iconic L.A. taco, the Korean tradition of wrapping food, the falling-apart short rib that almost tastes like barbacoa, the complementing sweetness of the corn tortilla.” Korea running into Mexico, running into North Carolina, and beyond. Today on the website of the Kogi food empire that Choi built, these are some of the recipes: a Korean barbecue pizza, a Korean Philly cheesesteak, a kimchi fried chicken sandwich, a Korean gyro, and Korean pulled pork nachos. I may be wrong, but here is my hypothesis: the kinds of places good at putting on parades like North Korea’s will never come up with food like this; and the kinds of places good at making food like this will never rival the give-me-synchronicity-or-give-me-death parades of places like North Korea.
America is not the country of perfectly synced swinging arms. It’s the country of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” That song, by the legendary Duke Ellington, belongs to a genre of music that could only have been invented in America — jazz. As the documentarian Ken Burns explained, jazz was born in New Orleans when and because people from so many heritages were jammed together — the sounds of Africa and the sounds of Appalachia and the sounds of Germany and the sounds of indigenous people colliding to make something new. It was never scripted, always improvisational. Ellington himself made the connection to democracy:
Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom…In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me societies that have the thing Trump wanted in his parade don’t got that swing, and societies that got that swing don’t have the thing he craved.
America is not a country of uniformity, even in its uniforms. It’s a big multicolored mess.
What is striking in the images of Chinese and North Korean and Iranian parades is the uniformity, right down to the uniforms themselves. The soldiers are often seen wearing the same thing. It gives the kind of picture Trump likes. But the images this weekend were not like that at all. In America, different units wear different uniforms. Images from the parade this weekend showed one uniform after another. The military is not a monolith. It is made up of units with their own histories and traditions and identities and loyalties. There are rivalries and competing slogans.
I may be wrong, but I would wager that societies that have first-rate matchy-matchy uniform aesthetics may look good but fight wars mediocrely, and societies that allow for variety and diversity may give less pleasant aerial shots during parades but fight wars better.
Today is ten years to the day since Trump came down the escalator and changed the course of the country and, in so many ways, changed us. It is a moment to think back and think of how much coarser, uglier, crueler the nation has become in the hands of an unwell man. The daily drumbeat of abductions and cuts and eviscerations and illegal actions and sadistic policy ideas slowly corrodes the heart. We are being remade in Trump’s sickness.
And yet. And yet what the parade reminded me is that Trump, in one regard, at least, faces steep odds. His project depends on turning Americans into something we are deeply not: uniform, cohesive, disciplined, in lockstep.
But we are more hotsteppers than locksteppers. We are more improvised solo than phalanx. We are more unruly than rule-following. Trump has a lot working in his favor as he seeks to build a dictatorship for his self-enrichment. But what will always push against him is this deep inner nature that has stood through time: the chaotic, colorful spontaneity of the American soul. We don’t march shoulder to shoulder. We shimmy.
Eva Levenson, now a sophomore at Berkeley High School, has struggled with dyslexia since childhood but private phonics-based intervention made a difference. “I don’t understand what’s in the way of making a shift when, both in other states and locally, districts are able to help kids now,” she recently told the school board. “How is it possible we aren’t doing it in Berkeley right now?”
Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight
This story is a collaboration between EdSource and Berkeleyside, a nonprofit online newsroom covering the city of Berkeley. EdSource Reporter John Fensterwald contributed to this report.
How kids are taught to read in Berkeley is slowly starting to shift.
Teachers are studying the science of reading. More students are learning phonics, sounding out words by letters and syllables. And the school district is screening every student to flag those who may have dyslexia, a learning disorder that causes difficulty with reading, writing and spelling.
But these changes didn’t come easily. They are the result of a federal class-action lawsuit, filed in 2017, by four families of Berkeley students with dyslexia who claimed the district failed to teach them how to read.
And though the suit settled in 2021, the district’s method of teaching reading, a balanced literacy curriculum developed by Columbia University Teachers College professor Lucy Calkins called Units of Study, remains in place.
Rather than teaching students to sound out letters, the curriculum relies on a method called three-cueing — where students use context clues like pictures to figure out words — that has now been discredited and banned in several states. Some Berkeley teachers still use cueing, while others have dropped the practice.
Now, the wheels are just beginning to turn in a district long devoted to Calkins. Advocates hope that aligning with the science of reading will help close one of the largest achievement gaps in the country — last year, 26% of Black students in Berkeley schools met state standards in reading, compared with 83% of white students.
“Historically, Berkeley has been — and is — widely known for being a balanced literacy district,” Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel said during a November panel discussion referring to the Calkins teaching method.
Enikia Ford Morthel, Berkeley schools superintendent, right.Credit: Kelly Sullivan / Berkeleyside
“What we want to be known for is being a district that is disrupting the narrative, disrupting persistent trends and data and really responding to our students,” she said. “This is not just another initiative. This truly is an imperative.”
Some students and parents aren’t yet convinced. Without a firm commitment to adopt a curriculum rooted in the science of reading, they are skeptical that they will see all the changes they believe are long overdue.
“At some point, you have to take responsibility,” said Rebecca Levenson, a parent of two children with dyslexia. Levenson wasn’t part of the lawsuit against the district, but she believes “it’s important for parents who see their children suffer to use their voice and power to make a difference for other families that are in that same situation.”
The Berkeley lawsuit was the second filed in California in 2017 over literacy instruction. In the other suit, the public-interest law firm Public Counsel charged on behalf of students in the lowest-performing schools that California had failed to meet their constitutional right to read. Under a $50 million settlement in 2020, 75 schools received funding and assistance to improve reading instruction. They were encouraged, but not mandated, to select instruction based on the science of reading.
While a district review of its elementary school literacy curriculum found that Units of Study failed to teach foundational literacy skills like phonics and vocabulary, Ford Morthel has stopped short of calling on the district to drop Lucy Calkins. The district is now beginning the process of adopting a new curriculum for the fall of 2025.
At a recent school board meeting, George Ellis, the court-appointed monitor, hammered home the importance of changing the Calkins curriculum. Without a “sound, comprehensive” core curriculum, he said, “it doesn’t matter what interventions we’re really providing, because we’re just filling up holes all over the place, and we’re never going to get caught up here.”
Attorneys and advocates hope the Berkeley lawsuit will spur other school districts to act faster to avoid legal action, accelerating the adoption of the science of reading in California and across the country. But Berkeley’s experience also demonstrates just how many barriers stand in the way of changing reading instruction.
Berkeley’s reading guru
When Lucy Calkins developed her approach in the 1990s, the balanced literacy teaching method was heralded as a new philosophy of education. Rather than teaching from rigid phonics textbooks, teachers introduced students to an entire library of independent books with the goal of teaching kids to love reading.
Calkins was the “guru of reading for people in Berkeley,” said Maggie Riddle, a former teacher and principal at Berkeley’s Jefferson Elementary, now called Ruth Acty. Once Calkins’ approach came to Berkeley, phonics came to be seen as a rote, old-school way of teaching, “dumbing down” instruction. “Berkeley was anti-phonics. One hundred percent,” Riddle said.
Berkeley wasn’t alone in this. Balanced literacy once enjoyed nearly universal popularity. “It was being used in every single Bay Area district,” said Deborah Jacobson, a special education attorney who brought the suit, a federal class action, against the Berkeley district seven years ago.
Special education attorney Deborah Jacobson, photographed at home on this month, brought up the federal class action lawsuit against the Berkeley school district in 2017. Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight
But the approach has fallen under fire amid a national reckoning over reading instruction, with a consensus growing that balanced literacy goes against what we know about how the brain works when learning to read.
This understanding anchors the science of reading, an approach backed by decades of exhaustive scientific research that suggests most children need systematic lessons in phonics, or how to sound out words, as well as other fundamentals, such as building knowledge and vocabulary, to learn to read. Teaching foundational reading skills especially benefits English learners. Advocates say reading is a civil right and phonics helps bring social justice to Black students.
More than half of states have passed laws requiring schools to align with research-based methods or favoring phonics. In September, Columbia University cut ties with the Reading and Writing Project that Calkins led for decades, citing the need to seek out new perspectives. Calkins herself has revised her curriculum to incorporate more explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness.
A decade ago, California adopted a framework for K-12 literacy that encouraged districts to use evidence-based reading instruction, now commonly called the science of reading. But it wasn’t required, and the state didn’t push districts to adopt it.
Still, advocates say these changes don’t go far enough. The California Early Literacy Coalition plans to sponsor legislation that would create a comprehensive state literacy plan, mandating training in the science of reading for all teachers, not just new ones, and requiring the use of textbooks rooted in the approach.
In Berkeley, lawsuit cast a light
When Berkeley Unified was sued in 2017, Riddle said she saw it as an opportunity. She had moved up through the ranks to become head of K-8 schools and led legal negotiations for the district for two years. “Nobody ever wants the district to be sued, but it cast a light on the needs of kids in reading, especially kids with dyslexia,” Riddle said.
Not everyone saw it that way. It took five years to reach a settlement agreement, and the district’s core curriculum was a sticking point in negotiations. “The resistance was serious, but the lawsuit was serious, too,” recalled Riddle. During negotiations, the district implemented Fast Track Phonics to get phonics instruction into classrooms, but advocates criticized the decision as putting a Band-Aid on a broken system, leaving the core Calkins curriculum intact.
Berkeley signed the settlement agreement in 2021, but due to the pandemic, didn’t start working on implementation until the following year, extending the three-year plan until 2025. Initially, Ellis, the court monitor, criticized the school district and its board for failing to embrace the settlement. And in February, Jacobson said the district had breached the settlement agreement by moving too slowly, but decided not to file a notice in court after district leaders promised action.
In the last year and a half, the district has started taking steps toward the science of reading.
Elementary teachers did a book study of “Shifting the Balance,” an introduction to science of reading practices. The district implemented a universal screening system to flag students who might have dyslexia and started training literacy coaches to implement phonics-based intervention programs like Orton-Gillingham and Heggerty. The district also established a new department of curriculum and instruction, hired a districtwide literacy specialist, and began developing a multi-tiered system of support for struggling readers.
The district’s new focus has made a huge difference for some teachers, even those with decades of experience.
Angélica Pérez, a reading specialist at Thousand Oaks Elementary, said though she has known about phonics for years and even taught it, only recently has she received the systematic training she needed to implement it well with struggling readers.
In my 26 years in education and 15 years in the classroom, I wasn’t so aware of the importance of phonemic awareness.
Angélica Pérez, a reading specialist at Thousand Oaks Elementary in Berkeley.
The changes have won over some of the district’s critics, including Jacobson. “There is a new sense of urgency with the new administration and a new level of commitment,” Jacobson said. “Every year the light bulb seems to go on, more and more.”
Angélica Pérez’s reading room at Thousand Oaks Elementary School allows children to explore leisure reading. A longtime reading specialist, Pérez uses a phonics and phonemics curriculum to help struggling students. Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight
They have also earned the praise of the teachers union president. “There is a systematic plan to make sure our teachers are getting what they need so they can do their jobs best,” said Matt Meyer, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers.
Cost to students of the lengthy legal fight
For families whose children struggle with reading, Berkeley’s decades-long commitment to balanced literacy came at a price. Many students with dyslexia have either missed out on learning, or their parents have paid thousands of dollars in private tutoring to catch them up.
“After a certain point, the research shows that it becomes unrecoverable,” said Eliza Noh, a Berkeley parent who has a child with dyslexia. “The early years for teaching people how to read are critical.”
Levenson’s two children, Eva Levenson and Wen Dolphin, both have dyslexia and attended Berkeley schools 18 years apart. But Eva received private reading intervention, while Wen did not. The family says their experience shows the difference phonics-based intervention can make.
Rebecca Levenson and her youngest daughter,Eva, talk in their West Berkeley home. Levenson’s two children, Eva and Wen, who is in his late 20s and lives in Colorado, have struggled with dyslexia throughout their academic careers. Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight
Dolphin dropped out of school at 15, while Eva, now a sophomore at Berkeley High, is taking the same challenging classes as her peers. She began writing for The Jacket, Berkeley High’s student newspaper, and in October, penned an article about the Calkins curriculum.
“I know that my life trajectory could have been very different if I would have had the support that I needed in those really formative years,” Dolphin told a crowd at a Berkeley school board meeting last year.
When Lindsay Nofelt’s son was diagnosed with dyslexia, she shelled out thousands of dollars on a phonics-based intensive reading intervention program. Her son’s reading ability improved quickly, but what took Nofelt longer to piece together was Berkeley’s role in her son’s story.
Even after listening to Emily Hanford’s podcast “Sold a Story,” which thrust Calkins’ curriculum into the spotlight, she didn’t connect the literacy debate to Berkeley schools.
“I thought, if Emily Hanford is writing about this and sounds like it’s not serving the needs of the students, then there’s no way that Berkeley Unified school system would use such a discredited curriculum,” Nofelt said.
Students relax at lunchtime at Willard Middle School in Berkeley in August 2022. Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside/ CatchLight
But over time, Nofelt realized her son wasn’t the only one in Berkeley struggling with reading. As she learned more about the science of reading and the class-action lawsuit, she realized that the kind of reading instruction Hanford was describing in her podcast was happening in Berkeley. “When I found out they were one and the same, all of the pieces fell into place,” she said.
Two years ago, Nofelt formed Reading for Berkeley to educate parents about early literacy and give them resources to advocate for their children. It’s now a resource that Nofelt wishes she had when she was trying to help her son — digestible content designed to help families ask questions about their children’s literacy education and support their reading abilities.
Today, students with dyslexia and their parents are watching Berkeley closely, their hope resting on the district’s commitment to the science of reading.
At a recent school board meeting in January, Eva Levenson told the Berkeley school board directors and superintendent that she is still waiting to see a plan that addresses the failure of the district’s core curriculum.
“I don’t understand what’s in the way of making a shift when, both in other states and locally, districts are able to help kids now. How is it possible we aren’t doing it in Berkeley right now?”
Two San Francisco parents promote the city’s public schools at a city resource fair.
Credit: SF Department of Children, Youth and Families
If you live in San Francisco or have been here recently, you may have started seeing window signs or bumper stickers that say “I love my SF public school.” And if you’re not a San Francisco public school parent or student, you might be surprised to see these signs, given the prevailing narrative about the public schools in our fair city and in other urban areas. It turns out there are plenty of satisfied — even enthusiastic — public school parents and students in our big cities.
In California, and across the country, there is a pervasive narrative that urban public schools are “bad” and suburban schools are “good.” (Example: The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a small East Bay suburb has “better” schools than San Francisco like it’s an objective fact.) Describing a school, let alone an entire school system, as “good” or “bad” is lazy at best and coded racism at worst. Why? Because we typically rely on test scores and numerical ratings to identify a “good” school, and those ratings are highly correlated with race and income.
And there is so much more to a school than reading and math test scores.
Instead, we should talk about “fit” because a school that is a great fit for one kid may be a terrible fit for another. I am a graduate of the vaunted Palo Alto public school system. It was a good fit for me because I thrived (mostly) in a competitive academic environment; it was a terrible fit for one of my relatives, whose special needs were never adequately met in that system.
To determine a good fit, we parents and caregivers have to get really specific about what we’re looking for in a school and what each of our kids needs. Do we want rigorous academics? Arts education? A focus on social justice? Support for social-emotional development? A diverse student body?
Next, we need a reliable source of information. You can certainly learn something from looking at numerical data, like the School Accountability Report Cards. But if you really want to know whether a given school has what you’re looking for, the best source of information is current students, parents and caregivers.
If you ask urban public school parents what they think of their public schools, you will certainly hear both positives and negatives, as you would anywhere, including the suburbs. Since you can find a litany of complaints via a quick Google search, and in the spirit of the “I love my SF public school” campaign, I will focus on the positives. Here are the many things those of us displaying the signs in San Francisco — and sharing similar sentiments across the state — love about our kids’ schools:
The rich diversity of our cities is reflected in our schools. San Francisco middle school parent Jessica Franklin appreciates that her kids “are learning to engage with, interact with and learn from so many people who are so different from themselves.” Hanson Li says that, as a first-generation immigrant, he appreciates the district’s “continued commitment to immersive language programs.” His high schoolers are fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese after attending elementary and middle schools with language programs.
Our teachers are incredible. They are skilled and experienced: At her kid’s elementary school in San Francisco, Autumn Brown Garibay says five teachers have been at the school for more than 20 years, and many teachers sent their own kids to the school. They are dedicated: Sonia Gandiaga’s eighth grader in San Francisco has an “incredibly committed math teacher” who made her love math and feel confident in her math skills. They are committed to learning the latest, most effective teaching methods: At my son’s school, teachers learned how to teach a research-based phonics program and supported each other to implement the program.
Our schools have a strong sense of community that is intentionally cultivated by teachers, school leaders, and families. Oakland middle school parent Monica Purdy appreciates how effectively her son’s school is supporting his transition into sixth grade, with camping trips to build community, weekly mentoring and individual counseling. In Los Angeles, Sara Light appreciates that her kids’ school draws from the surrounding neighborhood, which helps facilitate the feeling of community.
Our children have access to enrichment programs and field trips that come with living in a world-class city. At the middle school Franklin’s kids attend, in just one year, students participated in collaborations with six different arts organizations, including the San Francisco Opera, Hip Hop for Change, and Alonzo King LINES Ballet.
No school or school district is perfect. As public school parents, we are the first to admit that our schools have areas that need improvement. Still, there are many things we love about our urban public schools.
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Jennie Herriot-Hatfield is a K-12 education consultant, former elementary school teacher, and public school parent in San Francisco. She serves on the board of directors for SF Parent Coalition, which advocates for a thriving, equitable school system.
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