California education news: What’s the latest?

More than 100 graduate students in the University of California system protested the arrest and potential criminal charges facing three UC San Diego student workers outside the San Diego Central Courthouse Monday, as reported by KPBS and CBS8.

Jessica Ng, William Schneider and a third student whose name remains unknown were arrested a month after allegedly vandalizing UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. UC San Diego said the damages were permanent and would require about a $12,000 replacement of building materials.

Members of the union, however, claim that the university has failed to implement the terms of last year’s contract agreement, causing many student workers to go unpaid.

Ng was among the protesters on Monday and said she and her colleagues were arrested outside their homes and jailed overnight. They had protested on May 30 and claim to have written “fair wages now” in sidewalk chalk.

“These charges are meant to intimidate and isolate every person who dares to stand up for themselves and their fellow workers,” she told those in attendance.

The three students who were arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism and conspiracy were slated for arraignment on Monday. The hearings, however, did not proceed.

The case hasn’t yet been submitted to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, they said in a statement. Meanwhile, the university says its investigation is still being carried out.

“The vandals used materials other than chalk to deface the walls of the new facility, and those materials seeped into the concrete,” UC San Diego said in a statement following the arrests. “The concrete had been specially treated to withstand the marine environment and had to be professionally repaired.”

The university also affirmed that it “supports its community members rights to voice their concerns lawfully” and that “UC San Diego does not tolerate vandalism or other damage to university property.”

Ojai Unified has appointed Sherrill Knox as the district’s next permanent superintendent, according to the VC Star.

Knox is a longtime administrator in the district and previously served as assistant superintendent. She was named the district’s acting superintendent since March, when former superintendent Tiffany Morse was ousted from the district amid budget problems, according to the Star. Knox became interim superintendent in April and will now be in the role permanently.

“It’s exciting to have an Ojai Unified alum leading the district out of this crisis,” Atticus Reyes, the district’s board president, told the Star. “The past year was a really strong indicator of how Dr. Knox operates. We’ve seen a real recovery in trust from the community.”

Americans’ confidence in higher education is at an all-time low, according to the results of a Gallup survey released Tuesday.

The poll, which was conducted in June, found that 17% of Americans had a “great deal” of confidence in higher education while 19% said they had “quite a lot of confidence.” Those are both down by more than 10% since Gallup conducted the same survey in 2015 and are now at a new low point.

The survey didn’t ask respondents for reasons behind the decline in confidence, but it’s likely that the rising costs of attending college are a big factor, according to Gallup.

The survey results were based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,013 adults across all 50 states.

Despite a widespread return to in-person instruction following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many community colleges continue to offer more than half of their classes online, reported Insider Higher Ed.

Many community college students have opted for more flexible options due to work commitments and family responsibilities. East Los Angeles College, for example, offered 60% of its classes in either online or hybrid formats in the Spring 2023 term. Before the pandemic struck, less than a quarter of the classes had an online option.

Vice President of student services at East Los Angeles Miguel Duenas told Inside Higher Ed that he expects the ratio to be similar this fall.

“That’s something we’ve observed for the past couple semesters,” Duenas told the publication. “It gives them the flexibility to manage their lives and a lot of the needs that they have.”

Similar preferences have been voiced by students across the California Community Colleges system, and a survey of 400 students conducted in 2021 found that more than half preferred hybrid courses, while 27% wanted to keep fully remote instruction. Only 18% said they wanted to learn in-person.

The same survey found that about half of its campuses planned to offer between 50 to 85 percent of their Spring 2022 classes in-person, while about a third of districts only planned to offer 10 to 49 percent in person.

“Many districts found that overall, students show a higher demand for online courses,” read a report from the Chancellor’s Office. “In looking at the community college districts’ mix of in-person and online courses and plans for future instruction, the survey results show a large variance across the system in efforts to meet local student need and community conditions. Some districts are quickly transitioning back to in-person instruction, while other districts are finding that there is greater demand for online instruction.”

Santa Clara County will give 50 high school students struggling with homelessness $1,200 each over the next three months, the San José Spotlight reported.

Students can use the money for peer and financial mentorship, and to aid the transition from high school into college or a career path.

This year’s funding – which takes up $3 million from the 2023-24 state budget –  comes from a pilot program created by State Senator Dave Cortese and Santa Clara County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg and will launch in summer 2024.

“This is a (turning) point for kids that are low income, because they don’t necessarily have all the tools to make it on their own,” recent high school graduate Karen Tanveer told the San José Spotlight. “A lot of the times that support is not there.”

San Jose has the highest rate of youth homelessness in the country, according to a study published by the United Way of the National Capital Area. For every 100,000 residents, there are almost 85 people between the ages of 18 and 24 who are homeless.

“What I want to see is that at the end of the three-month period, these students can all point to a specific trajectory that they are now following as a result of having three months of financial support,” Ellenberg told the San José Spotlight.

The California State University board of trustees will consider a multiyear plan for increasing tuition next week during its meeting, and students are planning to protest the proposal.

Students for Quality Education, a statewide student advocacy group, posted on Instagram that they will organize a rally during the July 11 meeting to protest the tuition increase plan.

Under the proposal, students would see tuition rates increase 6 % per year starting fall 2024 for all levels of education. The new rates would generate $840 million of revenue for the 23-campus system in its first five years, of which $280 million would go to financial aid support for low-income students.

According to the chancellor’s office, 60% of students wouldn’t be affected by the increase because grants or waivers cover their tuition.

Some faculty members across the University of California system are calling on its academic governance panel to rethink the decision a few years ago to expand the selection of math classes that qualify applicants for admission, some of which they argue don’t prepare students for college-level math, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

The faculty takes issue with data-science classes being permitted as alternatives to a second year of algebra. Some professors say students need to enter college “calculus-ready,” and delaying a second year of algebra could result in shrinking the Science, technology, engineering and math workforce, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.

The latest proposed California Math Framework, which could be adopted by the State Board of Education next week, emphasizes that not taking a second year of algebra is “leaving the usual pathway” of taking calculus in high school or the first year of college, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. However, the proposed framework also suggests high schools explore offering data science, citing the UC system’s embrace of data science as a part of a range of mathematics pathways to college.

A controversial bill making its way through the California Legislature would make it more difficult for school districts to ban textbooks. The bill would require a two-thirds vote of a school board to remove books or other instructional materials.

Districts could face financial penalties if they don’t provide books and materials that accurately reflect the diversity of the state’s students, according to the bill. School boards could appeal through their county board of education.

A hearing on the bill Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee drew passionate responses in support and opposition.

Assembly Bill 1078, authored by Assemblyman Corey Jackson and supported by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, was a response to a decision by Temecula Valley Unified board members last month to remove a textbook from the curriculum because it included information about gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

The curriculum was meant to replace outdated textbooks and had already been vetted by 47 Temecula Valley Unified teachers who taught the material in 18 elementary schools as part of a pilot program throughout the year, according to KABC Los Angeles. It was also approved by the California Department of Education.

“Parents in our district have become increasingly worried that school boards will begin to strip away their rights for their children to receive a full and inclusive history education, and teachers are concerned that they will now be tasked with either creating their own aligned materials or using very outdated books,” testified Carolyn Thomas, a Temecula Valley Unified teacher.

“We also find ourselves in the precarious position of determining how to teach the required state standards, while simultaneously complying with our employer’s decision to restrict us from teaching about the historical contributions of diverse individuals,” she said.

The California School Boards Association was among the organizations that agreed with the intent of the bill but said it would create significant complications for school districts. The CSBA is opposed to the financial penalties in the bill; the uniform complaint process, which would duplicate oversight; and the requirement that a public notice that includes the name of the district’s board members be posted on various public websites if a district fails to comply with the bill, said Carlos Machado, legislative advocate for the CSBA.

“We think that this is going in the wrong direction and could eventually hurt the district, its programs, employees and the students that are served by the district by withholding funds from the district,” he said.

The bill was approved by the Senate Education Committee and referred to the Committee on Appropriations with the understanding that its author would meet with representatives of the California School Boards Association and other stakeholders to further amend the bill.

The troubled Stockton Unified School District will soon face tough decisions over how to keep 148 staff positions in its budget that have been funded with one-time money, The Stockton Record reported.

Stockton Unified has used some of its $242 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to bankroll staff positions, an ill-advised move, according to the San Joaquin County Office of Education, the record reported.

Since the November 2022 elections, the board of trustees has eliminated some positions relying on one-time funds that won’t be available come September 2024.

The 148 staff positions — $15.5 million — will need to be funded by ESSER money next year, said Susana Ramirez, Stockton Unified’s Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services. She said those jobs impact eight of the nine unions in the district.

“We are responsible for those 148 positions until the end of the upcoming school year,” Ramirez said. “At that time, the board will need to decide what will happen with those positions or how they will be funded.”

Tony Thurmond, California’s non-partisan elected superintendent of public instruction, announced Wednesday he is “seriously exploring”  a run for governor in the 2026 election.

“I have formed an exploratory committee to begin that process,” he said in a statement. His announcement was reported by CBS Sacramento and other news outlets.  Thurmond, 54, of Richmond, is a Democrat.  He is a former member of the state assembly, the Richmond City Council and the West Contra Costa Unified School District’s board. He was first elected state superintendent in 2018 and reelected in 2022.

“Working families across California are facing so many challenges every day that require our entire state government, working together, to solve,” Thurmond said. “Over the coming months, I will be seriously exploring a run for governor in 2026.”

Thurmond is positioning himself to enter what is expected to be a crowded field.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis announced in April her bid to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former State Controller Betty Yee has also announced her candidacy. Both are Democrats. State Attorney General Rob Banta and former Los Angles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, also both Democrats, have publicly expressed interest in running in California’s open primary.

Temecula Valley Unified’s former superintendent Jodi McClay has been paid roughly $362,000 in severance since she was fired last month in a 3-1 school board vote, as reported by The Press Enterprise.

McClay – who worked in the district for more than two decades and served as superintendent since 2020 – was entitled a full year’s salary of about $320,000 on top of a vacation payout because she was fired without cause.

On top of paying McClay, who could not be reached for comment by the Press Enterprise, the school board voted to spend $50,000 to find a replacement and approved a contract for Assistant Superintendent of Educational Support Services Kimberly Velez, who will fill in as interim and earn $308,441 a year until a replacement is found.

The steep cost of child care and the escalating lack of access to it is causing a massive strain for caregivers and working parents nationwide.

The cost of child care has increased 220% in the last three decades, according to Lisa Hamilton, president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which since 1990 has tracked this and child well-being factors in an annual Kids Count report, as PBS reported.

The organization’s 2023 report, released in June, found 13% of children under the age of 5 live in a household where caregivers had to make job changes because of childcare complications. Five years ago, that number was only 9 percent, Hamilton said, as PBS reported.

The report also found that more than half of working parents with infants or toddlers reported having been late to work or leaving early in the previous three months due to child care issues. Notably, 23% of caregivers reported being fired for it.

Roybal Learning Center’s Film and Television Production Magnet program is ready for its close-up. The program opened last fall with the fanfare of a blockbuster premiere, with Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho joining actors George Clooney, Don Cheadle and Mindy Kaling, as The 74 reported. Studios, networks and streaming services like Amazon and Disney have put up $4 million to launch the program, but school leaders know that to keep it going, they’ll need sustainable public funding.

The goal is to give Black, Hispanic and Asian students who might lack the right connections to break into Hollywood a pathway into good-paying jobs in the industry and make them “part of the machinery of storytelling,” said Bryan Lourd, Clooney’s agent and an executive at Creative Artists Agency. 

Before he resigned in 2021, then-L.A. Superintendent Austin Beutner connected them with Roybal Principal Blanca Cruz. At the time, the school had a fledgling music and film production magnet program, but lacked resources to give students real-world experience, as The 74 reported.

Now, the school is getting ready to add a studio, courtesy of AVID, an editing software company. Post-production is one of three concentrations students can pick for 11th and 12th grade, along with technical and craft areas. The school matches students with mentors in the industry and is developing an apprenticeship program to give them early experience in their chosen field. 

California’s struggling child care providers will be getting the largest pay increase in state history as well as an ongoing overhaul of the reimbursement rate under the tentative agreement hammered out Friday evening between the state and the Child Care Providers United, a union that represents 40,000 home child care providers across the state.

“Today child care providers have made history by standing together, strong and united, to demand the pay we are worth and the quality child care California’s children deserve,” said Nancy Harvey, an Oakland child care provider and member of the CCPU bargaining team in a release. “We forged an agreement through 2025 that will deliver the largest increase in pay in the history of the state and set us on the path to finally be reimbursed for the full cost of providing care.”

The union negotiated its first contract, which is set to expire at the end of June, with the state in 2021, in an attempt to win better pay and benefits for the historically underpaid workforce. Those efforts have finally come to fruition, union officials said.

Key elements of the contract include $600 million in rate increases over two years, although exact percentages have yet to be released. The agreement also includes $80 million in retirement funding,  $100 million in healthcare funding and a commitment towards an overhaul of the outdated rate system.

Child care providers are hailing this as a milestone for a long-underpaid workforce dominated by women of color.

“Our new contract creates greater certainty for California providers which will allow us to retain talent and attract new talent to the field,” said Harvey, “ultimately giving families more opportunities to receive the high quality care they can expect from their neighborhood family child care providers.”

Current rates for subsidized child care are obsolete, many experts say, pegged to 2016 costs. This has put great financial pressure on child care providers, a sector already strained by the pandemic. California pays some childcare providers as little as a quarter of what the service costs, research suggests. 

Family fees will be also capped at 1 percent of family income, under the recent state budget agreement. Childcare costs squeeze families hard, often costing more than a quarter of household income on average, according to a new report. This is concerning given that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) considers child care “affordable” when it costs families no more than 7% of their household income. 

“The majority of Californians can’t afford or access quality child care, which is disastrous for our working families and young children’s developing brains,” said Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, an advocacy group. 

In the face of the childcare crisis, a brutal tug-of-war in which most families can’t afford the skyrocketing high cost of care, while many child care workers can’t survive on their pay, many advocates have long said the system was broken.

The core of the problem is that childcare costs more to provide than most parents can afford. The state offers subsidies for low-income families through vouchers and contracted slots but these subsidies have only covered part of what it costs to provide child care.  These outdated rates as part of an unwieldy system that a state-commissioned report characterized as a “market failure.”

“If you look at the way we’ve set up childcare as a nation, we have set it up as a social welfare program, not as a public good,” said Brandy Jones Lawrence, senior analyst at Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.“It’s a broken business model basically balanced on the backs of the workers.” 

While the escalating cost of care places a real burden on families, child care workers are paid worse than 98% of professions, research shows. Median pay for child care workers was $27,490 per year or $13.22 an hour in 2021, far less than the wage for retail ($14.03) and customer service ($17.75) workers.

“Children are a low priority as are the people who do the work,” said Makinya Ward, an administrator at Kids Konnect Preschool, which runs child care centers in San Mateo and Alameda counties. “Parents are expected to foot the bill, but the cost has become difficult to pay.”

This inequitable dynamic has led to many California child care workers to leave the field in search of higher pay at Target and Starbucks.

“You can’t continue to ask them to show up first for our children and families when we deal with their needs last,” said Lawrence.

At the end of the day, it’s been the children who suffer, advocates say, because they often miss out on early learning and care during a critical period of brain development, as nearly 90% of brain growth happens before children start kindergarten. 

“Early care and education teachers work with children during their most formative years of development and growth,” said Scot Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit organization that runs many Bay Area child care centers, “yet they are the lowest paid in a low-pay profession.” 

Ultimately, some say any rate increase must be just the first step if the state intends to stabilize its early education and care system. Rates must be tied to the actual cost of care to be fair. 

“People are really holding out for this alternative methodology process,” said Lawrence. “That’s a really formidable change. That’s starting to base the payments on what it costs and not on what people can afford. That’ll be a game changer if we can get that through in a state as large and impactful as California.” 

The contract will become final pending ratification by both the CCPU membership and the state later this summer.

Hours after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his student loan forgiveness plan, President Biden said he would take other steps to help borrowers facing unmanageable college debt.

“I believe the court’s decision today was a mistake. It was wrong,” Biden said. “I’m never going to stop fighting for this, using every tool available. … It’s good for the economy, good for the country.”

First, he said he would temporarily waive default rules for borrowers who are resuming payments this fall following the three-year “pause” during the pandemic. Borrowers would still need to make monthly payments, but they wouldn’t face collection agencies or negative credit reports if they miss a payment or make partial payments. The program will last for a year.

He’s also directing U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to try again to waive up to $20,000 in student debt, this time through the Higher Education Act, instead of the HEROES Act, which the Supreme Court said wasn’t lawful. The process will take some time but may be more legally sound, he said.

Biden also finalized an income-driven repayment plan, that could potentially cut some borrowers’ payments in half.

Most California State University campuses failed to repatriate Native American remains or cultural items to tribes as required under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, according to a California State Auditor report published Thursday.

The entire CSU system has only returned 6% of its collections to tribes, according to the report.

The Auditor’s Office conducted a survey of all 23 CSU campuses and conducted on-site reviews at Chico State, Sacramento State, San Diego State and San Jose State, finding that of the 21 campuses with collections falling under the repatriation law, more than half failed to return the remains or cultural items. The two campuses that had returned remains or cultural items did not follow legal requirements when doing so, according to the report.

More than half of the 21 campuses with covered collections did not yet know the extent of their collections, despite federal law requiring them to do so by late 1995.

The Auditor’s Office believes that campuses have not prioritized the repatriation program, causing them to lack the policies, funding and staffing necessary to follow the law and repatriate their collections. The Chancellor’s Office has not provided the guidance and oversight necessary for campuses to comply with the law and the state’s counterpart, according to the report. It also hasn’t prioritized funding to return the collections, though the Chancellor’s Office has recently begun planning such efforts.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced the appointments of Nancy Lee and Gregory Sarris to the University of California board of regents as well as Darlene Yee-Melichar and Jonathan Molina Mancio to the California State University board of trustees.

“These appointees will bring their unique backgrounds, perspectives and lived experiences to the ongoing work of ensuring our campuses are places where all belong,” Newsom said in a statement announcing the appointments.

Lee, a Democrat from Los Angeles,  has been chief of staff to the CEO and executive vice president of international business operations for The Walt Disney Co. since 2022. She has also held other roles for the company and was president of Aquarius Ventures in 2022.

Sarris, a Democrat from Sonoma, has been chair of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria since 1996 and has served as president of the tribe’s Economic Development Board since 2012. Sarris has also served as a professor at Loyola Marymount University from 2001 to 2005 and at UCLA from 1989 to 2001. He served as the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria endowed chair in creative writing and Native American studies with Sonoma State University from 2005 to 2021.

Yee-Melichar, of San Mateo, has served as a professor at San Francisco State University since 1990, as well as other professor roles in Texas, New York, and at Columbia University since 1980. Yee-Melichar is registered without party preference.

Molina Mancio, of Los Angeles, served as vice president of finance for the California State Student Association from 2022 to 2023  and participated in the Law Enforcement Explorer Program with U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2017 to 2021. Molina Mancio is not registered to vote.

“The Bluest Eye,” Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, will remain on the shelves of high schools in the Bonita Unified School District, the Daily Bulletin reported.

A group of parents had appealed a decision by the district’s Materials Reconsideration Committee to retain the book, leading to a board hearing, the Bulletin reported. The district, in Los Angeles County, serves San Dimas and La Verne, and part of Glendora.

Board member Jim Elliot said that while novel contains what some may view as uncomfortable topics, access to such works is important to a student’s development, the Bulletin reported. “That is the heart of learning and the foundation of critical thinking,” Elliot said.

One person expressed concerns exposing students to the book’s sexual content may have on their mental health. “My position on this is not because of my personal view on the subject but because of the negative effects these exposures have on children,” Lucas Melkesian said, the Bulletin reported.

But Christina Jones, a senior at San Dimas High School, told the board that books like “The Bluest Eye” prepare students for the real world. “I am disappointed that this is even a discussion. The school board is not forcing your child to read this book they are putting in the library.”

The novel, published in 1970, addresses racism, beauty standards, child abuse and sexual abuse through the eyes of 11-year-old Pecola in the years following the Great Depression.

The superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District will leave the position on Friday, the K-12 district announced, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Jorge A. Aguilar had held the post since 2017. “The Sac City Unified Board and Superintendent Aguilar have mutually agreed to a leadership transition for our district,” Chinua Rhodes, president of the school board, said in a prepared statement.

Aguilar’s tenure came with tumult, the Bee reported, including a budget crisis that nearly led to a state takeover in 2018. The next year an independent state fiscal adviser said he had “no confidence” in the school district’s business staff or its data.

Deputy Superintendent Lisa Allen will serve as acting superintendent during the search for a full-time replacement, according to the board’s statement.

“Every day as Sac City’s superintendent, I was motivated to change the life trajectories of our students, especially our youth least well served who are from low-income families and have low achievement levels, low graduation rates, and low college and career readiness rates,” The Bee reported Aguilar as saying in a statement.

With the state’s juvenile justice facilities shutting down this Friday, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a non-profit seeking to reduce incarceration, released a report today highlighting the state’s history of youth incarceration.

The report, titled “Beyond Repair: Envisioning a Humane Future After 132 years of Brutality in California Youth Prisons,” cites the closure as the “most significant juvenile justice reform” in state history.

For decades, youth advocates have called for this closure, citing serial infractions against youth that were recorded through the 1990s and 2000s. These included withholding food to indefinite handcuffing to staff organizing fights among youth.

California established the first correctional facility in 1890. Since then, youth facilities across the state have been renamed from California Youth Authority to the Division of Juvenile Justice. They have also been reorganized among various agencies, from the Division of Institutions to the Youth and Adults Corrections Agency to the Human Relations Agency.

In 2004, conditions were so deplorable inside the facilities that they were entered into a consent decree for over a decade, which resulted in court oversight.

The full report can be found at CJCJ.org.

Women have made huge progress rising to executive positions in business, government and academia. However, less than 33% of the country’s 500 largest districts have female superintendents, although most teachers are women, as The 74 reports.

Women continue to be passed over for leadership roles in education based on “questions about family responsibilities, stability and emotionality,” some experts say. This doesn’t just hurt women aspiring to leadership positions — it’s also shrinking the educator pipeline, increasing turnover and, in turn, negatively impacting students and their families.

In addition to this opportunity gap, there is also a significant wage gap, as The 74 reports. According to the Council of the Great City Schools, the average female superintendent earns roughly $20,000 to $30,000 less than her male counterparts. When comparing salaries of all state superintendents, both elected and appointed, women make 12% less than men. Though 73% of elected superintendents are women, they make 26% less than their male counterparts, data suggests.

The childcare crisis may get worse once pandemic federal stabilization funds end, as Business Insider reported. States like Texas and New York might see the largest number of children lose spots.

A new report from the Century Foundation, a think tank, explores what the end of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA,) stabilization funds might mean for American families. The bottom line is that about 3.2 million kids may lose a childcare spot when these funds end, although the losses might not happen all at once. According to the analysis, over 70,000 programs could shutter, roughly “one-third of those supported by American Rescue Plan stabilization funding.”

“The ARPA stabilization funds that staved off the child care sector’s collapse will come to an abrupt end in September 2023,” according to the report. “When these resources swiftly and suddenly disappear, this funding cliff will once again place the sector in danger, as it will be forced to contract, shedding caregivers and care slots in a cascade that will not only upend millions of families’ child care arrangements but also hurt regional economies.”

Congress had been working on longer-term funding for childcare as part of their negotiations for Biden’s Build Back Better. However, provisions for universal pre-K and affordable childcare were cut from the eventual Inflation Reduction Act, as Business Insider reported. The new report warns that “the nation now faces a devastating child care cliff” after legislation that included increasing childcare opportunities died in Congress in the face of conservative opposition.

The State Board of Education is expected to adopt the latest revision of the California Mathematics Framework, released this week, which focuses on the “big ideas” of math rather than isolated concepts.

The new framework, which has been in the works since 2019, emphasizes problem-solving and perseverance, encouraging students to explain their reasoning and build arguments. It also promotes culturally relevant curriculum and assessments, with the goal of boosting math performance among English learners and those who are underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

Another change is the data science pathway. The revised framework eliminates a dedicated data science pathway, replacing it with data science lessons integrated throughout all grades.

The revisions, compiled by the California Department of Education, the Instructional Quality Commission and the State Board of Education, are based on previous input from the public and educators.

The public can comment on the revised framework through noon on July 7. The state board meets the following week to consider and likely adopt the draft.

Staff at California’s School for the Deaf in Fremont are seeking an increase in pay as they struggle to afford housing in the region, according to The Sacramento Bee.

Staff at the school, including teachers and counselors, are among about 100,000 state workers represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1000. The union is currently in bargaining with the state and asking for a 30% raise over the life of a new three-year contract. The union’s current contract expires this week.

One employee, Mel Vezina, a residence life counselor at the School for the Deaf, told The Bee that they choose between commuting four hours round-trip each day to school or sleeping overnight in their car during the week.

Vezina told the Bee that they “can’t imagine working anywhere else” because they love their job but added that it’s also exhausting.

“I’m just worn out,” Vezina said. “It’s just getting harder and harder every year.”

High school students at Montebello Unified can now take college classes at East Los Angeles College as part of a new dual enrollment program between the district and community college, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported.

The program will allow the high schoolers to take classes that will earn them credits that can be used toward college certificates or even an associate’s degree. East LA College has also previously partnered with Los Angeles Unified and Alhambra Unified to offer dual enrollment courses.

“We believe these types of initiatives really empower our students to be equipped with a competitive advantage as they navigate through their academic and of course their professional journeys,” Alberto Roman, president of the college, said at a news conference, according to the Tribune.

Artists, actors, educators and policymakers celebrated the passing of Proposition 28, which guarantees an annual funding stream for music and arts education that equals 1% of the state’s general fund — roughly $941 million this year.

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, who spoke on a panel, alongside California State University, Northridge President Erika D. Beck and UCLA Associate Dean of Public Engagement Annamarie Francois, said guaranteeing arts funding under Prop. 28 is a “significant moment” for California.

Recalling some of his own experiences, Thurmond said arts education supports supporting students’ academic achievement, social development and creativity.

“It takes me back to my own days as a student, who was in the basement trying to be a break dancer — I’ll show you the moves, don’t worry — who was in the choir and the drama and really trying to find my voice as a student, ” Thurmond said. “When I think about what arts and music has meant to me personally, it is special to me that we can add arts education and music education to what we do now in California.”

The event also featured a keynote presentation by virtual artists Refik Anadol and remarks by actors Ahmed Best and John Lithgow, authors of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transforms Us, Icy Ross and Susan Magsamen, and others.

Governor Gavin Newsom was scheduled to present at the event, but was not able to make it due to a scheduling conflict.

San Diego Unified has shuffled administrators, a move that the superintendent said will decentralize the district’s leadership structure and bring more resources to schools, the Union-Tribune reported.

The district named six new area superintendents, who will work closely with principals to ensure the district understands the needs of each individual school.

“It’s really allowing the schools to drive the decisions versus us as a centralized model driving that,” Superintendent Lamont Jackson told the newspaper.

The new area superintendents all held other school administrative jobs in the area. They are: Michel Cazary, Steven Dorsey, Maria Gomez, Michelle Irwin, Mitzi Moreno and Gabriel Núñez-Soria. Five more will be announced later this month.

The new area superintendents will start work July 17.

Sacramento City Unified has renamed three schools to align with the district’s values, The Sacramento Bee reported.

All three changes will swap out names honoring historic figures associated with Native Californian genocide.

Sutter Middle School, named after local settler John Sutter, who enslaved hundreds of Native people, will now be Miwok Middle School, for the native tribe that once flourished in Northern California. Peter Burnett Elementary, named for the first elected governor of California, will now be Suy:u Elementary, for the Miwok word for “hawk.” Kit Carson International Academy, named for the frontiersman, will now be Umoja International Academy,

The name changes will go into effect this summer.

Sixty-seven UC San Diego graduate students will face disciplinary hearings — with expulsion as a potential consequence — after staging a demonstration May 5 at an alumni awards ceremony, the Los Angeles Times reported.

A video of the protest shows students streaming onto the stage at the outdoor ceremony at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego to accuse the university of failing to honor significant wage increases included in the United Auto Workers 2865 contract, according to the Times. Workers staged a five-week strike in late 2022 to fight for the contract.

The university, in its letters to graduate students notifying them of the disciplinary hearings, alleges that students violated student conduct procedures prohibiting assault and threatening conduct, union organizer Maya Gosztyla told the Times. Gosztyla said students are concerned about the allegations of assault, since there was no physical contact between students and the chancellor. Gosztyla called that allegation an “intimidation tactic.”

New Stockton Unified superintendent Michelle Rodriguez has named literacy her top priority, the Stockton Record Net reported.

Rodriguez was hired on a split vote earlier this month, and spoke to staff, trustees and community members June 21 about a plan for her first 100 days in office, according to the Record Net.

Rodriguez said that before focusing on improving reading scores, the district must first stabalize its finances. She has met with the County Office of Education and intends to move “super fast” to address Stockton Unified’s financial and structural concerns, according to the Record Net.

Rodriguez said she intends to “make some hard decisions” regarding the district’s budgeting.

She also intends to host listening sessions, town halls and weekly communication with staff and members of the community, as well as a “state of the district” event after her first 100 days in office.

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon charged a metal recycling plant with 22 felony counts of exposing students and staff at Jordan High School in Watts to dangerous levels of leads and other pollutants, The Guardian reported.

Most of the charges accuse Atlas Iron and Metal, which has operated next to Jordan High since the 1940s, of disposing of toxic waste without a permit. The company owners will be arraigned next week.

Over the years, scraps of metal have landed on campus, and toxic dust has coated classrooms and sports fields. Students and staff have often complained about the stench. The charges follow a 2022 Guardian investigation into contamination at the school, which serves mostly Black and Latino students in south Los Angeles.

“I’m glad that Atlas is going to receive this action,” Timothy Watkins, president of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, said at Gascon’s news conference this week. But he added that the charges will not “offset the harm that’s been done over the last 75 years.”

Attorneys for Atlas said the company is already working with numerous agencies and hopes to resolve the issue soon.

“We were disappointed to see the charges. Atlas is actively working with the many public agencies involved and is actually moving close to a global resolution. The District Attorney declined to engage with us and chose instead to file charges.  We have not learned the details of those charges yet, but we will defend this case vigorously,” said Benjamin N. Gluck, attorney for Atlas.

Tensions were high at a school board meeting Tuesday in Templeton, in San Luis Obispo County, as conservative and progressive attendees clashed vocally over the district’s policies surrounding the rights of transgender students, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported.

A conservative group called Moms for Liberty, whose local chapter is headed by a Templeton school board member, turned out to voice their concerns during a scheduled discussion about how to make the district’s bathrooms and locker rooms comfortable and safe for all students.

Advocates for LGBTQ students also turned out. The two groups loudly clashed throughout the meeting, the newspaper reported.

Under state law, school districts must make bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities available and safe for students of all gender identities.

The city of Taft, which provided security services to the Taft Unified School District, was not to blame for a campus shooting in 2013, a Kern County jury decided Wednesday.

The case, according to the Bakersfield Californian, centered on a shooting at Taft Union High School that left one student with serious injuries. The suspect, a 16-year-old who was also a student at the school, was later sentenced to more than 27 years in prison after he pleaded no contest to two charges of unpremeditated attempted murder.

The school district had a contract with the city to provide a school resource officer. On the day of the shooting, the officer was absent because he was snowed in at his home in Grapevine. In its lawsuit against the city, the school district argued that the city failed to fulfill its contractual obligations to provide school security, and the shooting would not have occurred if a resource officer had been on campus.

Using up the last of its major pandemic aid, the Los Angeles Unified School District approved its $18.8 billion budget for the 2023-24 academic year at its meeting Tuesday in keeping with its strategic plan to promote college and career readiness post-graduation.

As part of the budget, the district allocated more than $4 billion to decreasing class sizes, increasing employee compensation and bolstering student support, including psychologists and academic and college counselors.

Meanwhile, the budget does not anticipate employee layoffs and does not reduce literacy or numeracy support or cut funding for student equity and Black student achievement.

“As we confront the post-pandemic reality of reduced state and federal support, it must be said that our students deserve better,” board President Jackie Goldberg said in a statement. “But I’m proud of the way this budget deploys the resources available to Los Angeles Unified, advancing our student-centered Strategic Plan with investments in innovative instruction and equitable facilities.”

For the second time this month, protests about teaching gender and sexuality erupted outside the Glendale Unified School District’s meeting Tuesday, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

A physical confrontation drew dozens of protesters at about 7:15 p.m., and the Glendale police intervened.

While the board didn’t have any plans to discuss LGBTQ+ related topics on Tuesday, the meeting was home to dozens of Pride supporters who spoke up during the public comment period. Meanwhile, about 30 police officers stood outside.

“We are committed to ongoing, active participation and engagement in matters concerning our children’s education and the protection of our LGBTQ+ neighbors,” said GUSD Parents for Public Schools, a pro-LGBTQ+ group, in a statement released before the protests. “However, it is equally important to prioritize safety for our families and the Glendale community as a whole when meetings are being used to generate dangerous street conflicts and social media disinformation.”

Child care costs continue to squeeze families hard, often costing more than a quarter of household income on average, according to Care.com’s Cost of Care report.

This is noteworthy given that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services  considers child care affordable when it costs families no more than 7% of their household income. 

 “America’s child care crisis is just that: a crisis for the entire country, and it impacts us all, whether you have children or not,” said Tim Allen, CEO of Care.com in a news release. “Child care is claiming a disproportionate amount of household incomes, and a decade of rising child care costs should be a wakeup call that the system as we know it completely fails the vast majority of families.”

Three out of 4 parents also report there are fewer than half a dozen day care centers within a 20-minute drive of their home, and 64 percent reported languishing on a waitlist for daycare with nearly half waiting longer than three months to snag a spot.

National test scores plunged for 13-year-olds, according to new data that shows the largest math drop in 50 years, as the Washington Post reported, and no academic recovery from the pandemic.

Student scores plunged 9 points in math and 4 points in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, dubbed the nation’s report card. The NAEP  scores reflect testing in fall 2022, comparing it to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic and its disruptions.

“These results show that there are troubling gaps in the basic skills of these students,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the tests, The Post reported. The new data, she said, “reinforces the fact that recovery is going to take some time.”

The average math score is now the same as it was in 1990, while the average reading score is the same as it was in 2004.

Hardest hit were the lowest-performing students. In math, their scores showed declines of 12 to 14 points, while their highest-performing peers fell 6 points. The pattern for reading was similar, with low performers seeing twice the decline of higher ones.

Students from all parts of the country and of all races and ethnicities lost ground in math. Reading was more varied. Scores dropped for Black, multiracial and white students. But Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native students were described as “not measurably different.”

Most of those tested were 10 years old, in fourth or fifth grade, at the onset of the pandemic. They were in seventh or eighth grade as they took the tests.

“This is more than alarming,” said Carey Wright, former state superintendent of education in Mississippi and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the tests. “Thirteen-year-olds are in high schools, and their futures depend on being able to recover from this.”

The University of California, San Diego, will break ground this week on two construction projects: a residential village that will house 2,400 students as well as a new student union, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The student union will serve as a central social hub and gathering spot on campus. It will be called the Triton Center and will house an alumni and welcome center, a 500-person event space and student health services, the Union-Tribune reported.

The housing village — to be called the Ridge Walk North Living and Learning Neighborhood — will help meet the university’s increasing student demand for housing. The Union-Tribune noted that the project is part of a larger effort by the campus to add about 5,700 beds by 2026.

California State University released a plan Monday that included 13 recommendations to address declining Black student enrollment, retention and graduation rates across the 23 campus system.

The report was assembled by a work group consisting of university presidents and experts across the system and includes feedback from Black students, faculty and staff.

“The collective and unified commitment on the part of CSU leadership to implement the report’s recommendations underscores the importance and urgency of this work,” said Jolene Koester, interim chancellor of the system. “While correcting longstanding inequities will take time, we must take immediate and decisive action. The CSU’s Black community deserves it. Our mission and core values demand it.”

The recommendations include creating plans for early outreach to Black students, creating more welcoming and affirming spaces, developing inclusive and culturally relevant curriculum, and prioritizing Black faculty and staff recruitment.

Capistrano Unified has selected Christopher Brown, currently an assistant superintendent at Long Beach Unified, to be its next superintendent.

Brown will take over the top job at Capistrano Unified, the largest school district in Orange County, on July 1, according to The Orange County Register. At Long Beach Unified, Brown was the assistant superintendent for research, assessment and school improvement.

The superintendent position at Capistrano Unified was left vacant when the school board voted in December to oust Kristen Vital, the district’s longtime superintendent.

“I am truly humbled to be selected as the new superintendent for the Capistrano Unified School District,” Brown said in a statement. “I look forward to partnering with the board to build on the long history of success enjoyed by CUSD. I am eager to interact with our students and families in the fall and with the teachers and staff members who support them.”

Clovis Unified School District approved its first-ever union contract with psychologists and mental health support providers earlier this week. 

The contract gives the mental health workers higher pay and better benefits, guarantees a pay raise in the future and provides more mental health support for elementary students, according to The Fresno Bee. 

Under the contract, the mental health team will receive:

• A 13.75% pay increase, retroactive to July 2022, as well as a 3.5% pay hike next year.
• Stipends for additional roles, for time worked beyond their contracted hours, and for being bilingual.
• Funding for professional development and other resources.
• And contract protections for part-time positions and leave time. 

Also as a result of the contract, the district will hire more staff, meaning the school psychologists and mental health professionals can spend more time with the district’s elementary students, The Bee reported. 

Still, the 42,000-plus-student district remains the state’s largest school system without a teachers union. For years, teachers have tried unionizing, with the most recent efforts stalling. 

But teachers are hopeful that unionization will happen. They watched as the mental health workers unionized, which “was really important and paved the way for the teachers to also take that path,” third grade teacher Teresa D’addato told The Bee.

“We’re hoping — and we’re hopeful — that (unionizing) will come soon,” D’addato said. “We’ll see how things go as our minds become more open to the possibility (of unionizing) here.”

San Francisco Unified’s teacher shortage  in the 2020-21 school year was worse than that of California and the Bay Area, according to a recent report from the San Francisco civil grand jury.

The grand jury also found that nearly a quarter of San Francisco Unified teachers are not fully credentialed, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The report cited several possible reasons behind the teacher shortage, including low starting salaries, the district’s ongoing payroll fiasco, a lack of promotion of the district’s competitive benefits and programs that help teachers, and a lack of data showing why teachers decline job offers or leave the district, according to the Chronicle.

The grand jury concluded that the district does not have enough credentialed teachers to give every student a quality education, according to the Chronicle.

The majority-conservative school board of Chino Valley Unified voted 4-1 at a packed meeting Thursday to ban pride flags in classrooms, the Southern California News Group reported.

The policy allows teachers to display the California state flag, the U.S. Flag as well as other country, state and military flags, but bars them from displaying pride flags, according to SCNG.

More than 300 people attended the meeting, according to SCNG. The board was also scheduled to consider a policy that would force educators to identify transgender students to their parents, but did not take action on the policy.

Students decried the decision, saying that pride flags provide “a symbol of hope and safety” to LGBTQ+ students, and called for board president Sonja Shaw to be removed from office.

The Legislature passed a $311.7 billion 2023-24 budget Thursday and forwarded it to Gov. Gavin Newsom, where it will sit until they reach an agreement on final details.

Lawmakers were required to pass a budget by June 15 to continue to get paid. That leaves two weeks until the July 1 constitutional deadline for the governor to sign a balanced budget. Assembly Budget Committee Chair Phil Ting predicted there would be a deal in a matter of days.

Passage of Senate Bill 101 – 61 to 14 in the Assembly, with five members not voting, and 32-8 in the Senate – was along party lines, with Republicans criticizing more than $40 billion in risky revenue assumptions. Because of spring flooding, residents in parts of the state have until October to file their taxes; a better handle on revenues will be known then.

The Legislature’s budget is $5 billion larger than Newsom’s May revision. The Legislature restored $2 billion Newsom cut in transit capital spending, and added $1 billion in subsidies for mass transit. It also built in $2 billion in expected property taxes, raising the amount for Proposition 98, the formula that determines funding for schools and community colleges, by that amount.

Legislators want to restore about $3.5 billion Newsom proposed to cut from two multi-year block grants approved last year, for learning recovery and for arts and music instructions, although the latter can be used for general purposes. Instead, lawmakers would delay an unallocated $400 million of $500 million for a new priority of the governor approved last year: the Golden State Pathways, which would promote career opportunities, including apprenticeships, for low-income high school students in high-skill, high-wage areas, including technology, education and health.

Newsom also is proposing less of an increase in funding for child-care providers, who are being paid at levels tied to 2016 costs, than the Legislature approved. Otherwise, they agree on major elements of education funding in Newsom’s May revision.

Carol Christ, the chancellor of University of California, Berkeley, will retire next summer, she announced Thursday.

“My time in office has been meaningful and rewarding beyond compare, and I will sorely miss the challenges, the opportunities, and the daily interactions with the members of Cal’s amazing extended family,” Christ said in a statement.

Christ has been Berkeley’s chancellor since 2017. She said she initially planned to stay in the role for between three and five years. But the onset of Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 changed those plans.“What I, or anyone else, never expected was a global pandemic that descended quickly upon the world and had the effect of slowing everything down, including our university’s most important efforts and endeavors. I simply could not imagine parting ways with so much left to do,” Christ said.

“When I’m closer to the end of my tenure, I look forward to sharing with all of you thoughts about my time in office, our university, and the state of higher education. For now, however, there is much work left to be done.”

Christ started her career in higher education at Berkeley, where she was a professor and an administrator for three decades before she became president of Smith College, a private liberal arts college for women in Massachusetts, in 2002. She stayed there until 2013 and returned to Berkeley in 2015, serving in multiple roles before becoming chancellor in 2017.

In her final year as chancellor, Christ said she will spend her time “focusing on key initiatives and projects,” including student housing and “strengthening our financial foundations.” UC plans to soon convene a search committee to find a successor, said Michael Drake, UC’s systemwide president, in a tweet.“Carol Christ has been a visionary leader @UCBerkeley, leading the campus into dynamic new heights. She’s also been a valued friend and colleague to me.”

West Contra Costa Unified’s school board approved the district’s budget for the 23-24 school year Wednesday.

Under the budget plan, the district’s general fund is projected to receive about $482 million in revenue during the next fiscal year and spend about $541 million . The district expects that about $109 million will be carried over from the current fiscal year, leaving an ending balance of about $70 million.

At the school board meeting last week, West Contra Costa Associate Superintendent of Business Services Robert McEntire explained to the board that the district anticipates to spend beyond its projected revenue for the following two fiscal years. Without making cuts, West Contra Costa Unified would exhaust its reserves below the state-mandated minimum, triggering receivership.

Mister Phillips, the only school board member to vote no on the 23-24 budget, said that the budget wasn’t “truly balanced,” given the district’s financial position in the following years.

“I think we have to bite the bullet and actually make structural changes, so our budget is balanced, not just on paper,” Phillips said.

Board president Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy said the district has been pushing cuts “year by year” and has reached a point where they can’t be pushed any more.

“We have to make a very difficult decision next year and we all have to come together to figure out what to do,” Gonzalez-Hoy said.

Fresno County’s three largest school districts are providing summer meals again this year to children under 18, regardless of school enrollment. 

While the free meals for all children isn’t a new practice among Fresno Unified, Clovis Unified and Central Unified, students are now required to eat the meals at the school site, a change from previous summers. In the past, families could obtain the meals in drive-through or on-campus pickups. 

“The only requirements are that the student must be present to receive their meal and must eat it in the designated area,” Central Unified district spokesperson Gilbert Magallon told The Fresno Bee, which reported the dates and locations for the summer meals in each district.

California runs on child care. That’s the rallying cry of the Child Care Providers United, a union that represents 40,000 home child care providers across the state.  The union negotiated its first contract, which is set to expire at the end of June, with the state in 2021, in an attempt to win better pay and benefits for the historically underpaid workforce. 

Amid budget negotiations, CCPU members and supporters held a protest in Sacramento on Thursday to lobby legislators to raise the amount the state pays for the roughly 300,000 child care vouchers given to low-income families and to overhaul the way those rates are set to reflect the actual cost of care.

“We fight for a transformational contract that ensures livable compensation. We need a raise,” said Rasiene Reece, who has been a child care provider in Victorville for 20 years. “We are not babysitters. Child care is essential for California, and child care is past due.”

Child care advocates have long decried the state of the child care system, in which many families can’t afford the care they need and many providers can’t survive on their poverty-level wages. The median wage for a California child care worker in 2019 was $13.43 per hour, according to a report from Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. 

“Advocates are appreciative of the Legislature’s unwavering support for child care and efforts to include a 25% rate increase in the proposed budget,” said Josefina Ramirez Notsinneh, director of early childhood at Children Now, an advocacy group. “We are hearing that the administration is still focused on the collective bargaining efforts and has not shared much. We are hopeful that with the legislative deal and the unified ECE pressure, the governor will support this proposal. We are moving in the right direction to ensure that we fix and transform child care and early learning in California.”

In response to the child care crisis, the Legislature has proposed a roughly 25% raise in the reimbursement rate while Newsom has proposed an 8.2% cost-of-living adjustment to centers. Along with waiving child care fees through September, which Newsom also proposed, the Legislature’s proposal capped family fees at 1% of income and waived fees for families with income under 75% of the state median. 

Rate increases for home childncare providers are subject to bargaining as part of ongoing negotiations between the CCPU and the administration. 

A growing number of college professors in California are choosing to encourage the limited use of artificial intelligence in classroom assignments, CalMatters reported.

One was Diablo Valley Community College adjunct professor Frako Loden, who created an assignment to see how students in her American Cinema class interacted with ChatGPT, according to CalMatters.

For their final opinion piece of the semester, they were to pick a discussion question about the 1950s movie “A Place in the Sun,” insert it into ChatGPT as a prompt, and then grade the response themselves. But the AI got key details of the plot wrong in some cases, Loden said.

Loden’s assignment illustrates not only the limitations of ChatGPT — Loden said she found in her own research that many details of movie plots it gives are not only false, but “ideologically loaded” and “maybe even racist” — but how professors are increasingly experimenting with its use in the classroom.

California’s public higher education systems have not yet created a formal policy regarding the use of generative AI, which can create images and text that are nearly indistinguishable from those made by humans. That leaves professors in the role of watchdog, preventing breaches of academic integrity.

“Faculty have to come to a decision, whether it’s in California or nationwide. And the decision is, do you want to adopt?” Tony Kashani, a professor of education at Antioch University who is writing a book about the use of AI in the classroom, told CalMatters. “On campus, there’s a lot of contention about this.”

Trustees of the Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County are considering a policy that would require school officials to identify transgender students to their families, The Sacramento Bee reported.

The proposed policy would put the school district at direct odds with the California Department of Education, which has issued guidance to school districts to protect the privacy of transgender students who may not be out at home, according to the Bee. The proposal is scheduled to be debated at a board meeting Thursday.

It would require schools to notify parents and guardians in writing within three days of learning that a student has requested to be identified by a different gender. They must also be informed if a student has used a name other than their legal name, or accessed a bathroom other than the one for their sex assigned at birth, the Bee reported.

“This policy is meant to foster trust between district employees, and our students’ parents and guardians,” district board President Sonja Shaw said in a statement. “I stand for the authority of parents to guide the upbringing of their children and their involvement in decisions related to their education, health, safety, and wellbeing.”

Jorge Reyes Salinas, of the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality California, told the Bee that Chino Valley Unified’s proposal is “truly sick” and that it “directly, blatantly goes against state law.”