California education news: What’s the latest?

The medical information of some students at San Diego Unified was compromised in a cybersecurity breach last fall, district officials told families this month, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The district did not respond to questions from the Union-Tribune about how many students had their information compromised. The breach happened on Oct. 25 and families were notified in December. Staff and students in the district have since been issued new passwords to access the district’s network.

The district is currently conducting an investigation and plans to notify affected students as it identifies them, a spokesperson told the Union-Tribune.

Colleges and universities should take more responsibility for students’ mental health — not just by providing more counselors, but by improving campus culture and climate overall, according to a report released today.

At least 60% of college students said they experienced mental health challenges in 2021, due in part to hostile politics, violence, wealth disparities and other factors, the report found. But a significant source of stress originates from the college itself. Financial worries, social isolation, a competitive culture, prejudice and discrimination on campus and under-staffed counseling centers all contribute to student depression and anxiety.  

“I wasn’t surprised by the findings, but I was surprised that there’s been very little discussion about institutional responsibility in addressing mental health issues,” said report co-author Samuel Museus, an ethnic studies professor at UC San Diego and director of the National Institute for Transformation and Equity. “We have a responsibility to cultivate a more supportive campus culture.”

The report, “Degrees of Distress: How higher education institutions hurt and help student mental health,” was published by the College Futures Foundation, a nonprofit focused on increasing college graduation rates among underrepresented students in California. The report is based on a review of several hundred studies and analyses of mental health among college students. Lindsay Pérez Huber, education professor at Cal State Long Beach, was Museus’ co-author.

Among other things, the report recommends:

• Promoting self-care, including good sleep, nutrition, exercise, mindfulness, spirituality, gratitude and mutual aid.
• Improving students’ connections to their home communities.
• Providing culturally relevant curricula, campus art and spaces that uplift marginalized student groups.
• Protecting and strengthening programs focused on the well-being of diverse students, such as ethnic studies.
• Diversifying counseling staffs and providing culturally relevant mental health programs.

“The general narrative of student mental health is that it’s the problem of individual students, as opposed to something that is shaped by institutions,” Museus said. “We think there’s a lot more that institutions can do to support student mental health.”

EdSource receives funding from several foundations, including the College Futures Foundation. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.

Concerned about revisions to Florida textbooks related to history and civil rights, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office filed a public records request last week to determine if any of those publishers are also doing business with California.

The request, filed with the Florida Department of Education and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office, seeks communications between the state and publishers regarding revisions that publishers made to win approval for use in Florida classrooms.

“California will not be complicit in Florida’s attempt to whitewash history through laws and backroom deals,” Newsom’s letter said. “California deserves to know whether any of the companies designing textbooks for our state’s classrooms are the same ones kowtowing to Florida’s extremist agenda.”

Newsom’s office has also sent requests to publishers whose books are under consideration for use in California, asking whether they’ve revised social studies textbooks to reflect Florida’s new standards.

June 1 is the deadline for publishers to respond.

Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvahlo has reduced an elementary school program that parents and teachers credit with helping struggling students catch up academically, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The program, Primary Promise, helps students in kindergarten through third grade who need extra help in math and reading. Former superintendent Austin Beutner launched the program in 2020 in 305 of the district’s 450 elementary schools. Carvalho cut the program to only 168 schools, saying it’s too costly and not as effective as he hoped.

Instead, the district is hiring reading instructors at more than 20 middle schools and coaches to help English learners.

Parents and teachers protested the cutbacks.

“This program has helped immensely, and I know it’s not just my kid,” Danielle Watkins, who has twin third-graders at Charnock Road Elementary, told the Times. “I was really upset to hear that they were getting rid of Primary Promise, knowing how much it benefited my son. I want others to have that kind of opportunity as well.”

Sausalito Marin City School District teachers rallied this week in support of higher raises amid contract talks with the district, the Marin Independent Journal reported.

The district is offering the teachers union a 3% raise this fiscal year and for 2023-24, the Marin Independent Journal reported, which teachers say is not competitive with surrounding districts. Teachers say the district’s offer would make it hard for them to justify staying at the district.

The union has about 27 members, and union members say the district has one of the lowest starting salaries in the area.

Rather than wait on the City of Oakland to fulfill their request of building crosswalks on the high-traffic, dangerous street outside of Oakland Tech High School — a process that often takes months, if not years — activists striped their own temporary crosswalks on Broadway this week, Oaklandside reported.

The action comes about two months after a student was hit as he crossed Broadway, suffering fractures, according to Oaklandside. Cars constantly speed on Broadway in the afternoon and during Oakland Tech’s lunchtime, when students will cross the street to get to restaurants and food stores. There are no crosswalks directly in front of the school, prompting many students to jaywalk across the four-lane street instead of walking to the end of the block to cross at the traffic light.

To show city officials how easy and beneficial it would be to put a crosswalk across Broadway in front of the school, volunteers from local traffic safety organizations created a temporary, rainbow-colored crosswalk of their own, Oaklandside reported. They also used traffic cones and delineators to reduce the lanes that led into the crosswalk, built plywood ramps for people with disabilities and made large traffic signs.

The organizers received written endorsements from nearly all of the businesses on the other side of the street as well as permission from the city to create the pop-up crosswalks. They also talked to local traffic engineers and adhered to the Oakland Department of Transportation’s guidelines for traffic slowdowns.

The University of Idaho is on the verge of buying the for-profit University of Phoenix and turning it into a nonprofit, Inside Higher Ed reported.

The Idaho State Board of Education approve the deal Thursday, according to reports.

The Idaho deal comes after a University of Phoenix-proposed deal with the University of Arkansas System fell apart last month amid sharp disagreement among the system’s board members and concerns expressed by critics of for-profit higher education, according to Inside Higher Ed.

Under the proposal, the University of Idaho will create and fully control a new nonprofit corporation that would issue bonds to pay $550 million to buy the University of Phoenix’s assets, which include about 85,000 students, significant technology and roughly 3,000 full-time and adjunct faculty members, according to Inside Higher Ed. The University of Phoenix has a campus in Ontario, San Bernardino County.

The University of Phoenix was once the biggest university in the United States, and it was also the flag bearer of a for-profit higher education sector that burgeoned during the 2000s and early 2010s but has shrunk significantly in the last decade. Although it is far from its peak of nearly 470,000 students in 2010, documents show its current enrollment at about 85,000, making it still one of the nation’s largest institutions, according to Inside Higher Ed.

A bitter funding dispute between Santa Ana City Council members and school district officials could leave thousands of kids without crossing guards this year in a town where drivers are known to treat the streets as if they are freeways, The Voice of OC reported.

The issue centers on the city’s yearslong arrangement to pay for crossing guards that serve the Santa Ana Unified School District, guiding children through busy intersections to as many as 41 schools, according to the Voice of OC. But when a new five-year, $7 million crossing-guard agreement landed on council members’ desks at a meeting this week, a majority of them opted to hold off.

It’s part of a long-standing political feud between the council and the school board, the Voice of OC reported.

“Come the next school year, in August, we would not have any crossing guards assisting students” without some kind of agreement, city Public Works Director Nabil Saba said in response to council questions at a meeting.

Some council members said the district should split the cost with the city, while others said the district should pay for the guards, the Voice of OC reported. The district and the city have until June 30 to reach an agreement, the news site reported.

Amid the federal budget debate, roughly 90% of parents with small children view family issues as a top priority, one report finds. Conducted by the advocacy group Zero to Three, the survey also showed great concern over possible cuts to child care, education, and housing programs. Almost two-thirds of parents reported struggling to find affordable high-quality child care. 

Notably, there is a consensus among parents who voted Democrat in 2022 (94%) and those who voted Republican (90%) that Congress should prioritize the needs of children in the upcoming federal budget. Other key findings include that 82% of parents are worried about cuts to special education and 83% are concerned about cuts to food assistance. Many parents also expect the lack of such critical resources to affect their jobs and financial stability.

“When it comes to programs supporting children and families, we’re seeing strong support across the partisan divide,” said Miriam Calderón, chief policy officer of Zero to Three. “At a time when some in Congress want to make deep cuts, Democratic and Republican voters are in broad agreement that Congress must address the debt ceiling without trading away critical supports that their constituents look to.”

Mississippi went from the second-to-last slot in literacy in 2013 to being ranked 21st in 2022. Louisiana and Alabama, meanwhile, were among only three states to see modest gains in fourth-grade reading during the pandemic, which saw massive learning setbacks in general, as the Washington Post reported.

The turnaround in these states has grabbed national attention, showing rapid progress is possible even in areas that have struggled for decades with poverty and dismal literacy rates. The states have passed laws adopting similar reforms that emphasize the tenets of structured literacy, including phonics and early screenings for struggling kids.

“In this region, we have decided to go big,” said Kymyona Burk, a key architect of the Mississippi reforms who is now a senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd, a national advocacy group,  the Washington Post reported.

These Deep South states were not the first to pass major literacy laws. Much of Mississippi’s legislation was based on a 2002 law in Florida that saw the Sunshine State achieve some of the country’s highest reading scores. The states also still have far to go to make sure every child can read.

But the country has taken notice of what some have called the Mississippi miracle. Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Virginia are among the states that have recently adopted similar policies. As Mississippi climbed the rankings, the Barksdale Institute, an influential organization in literacy policy in the state, got phone calls from about two dozen states.

The institute’s CEO, Kelly Butler, said she tells them there’s no secret to the strategy.

“We know how to teach reading,” she said. “We just have to do it everywhere.”

Erika Endrijonas, the president of Pasadena City College, was recently selected as the next president of Santa Barbara City College.

If the college’s board of trustees formally approves her contract next month, Endrijonas will start in her new role on Aug. 1.

Endrijonas has been the president at Pasadena City College since 2019 and for more than four years prior to that, she was president of Los Angeles Valley College. Her career as a community college administrator began at Santa Barbara City College, where she was a dean overseeing departments including business, technology and health and human services.

“It has been my goal since I left SBCC to return,” she said in a statement. “It is where I started my community college career. I am thrilled to render service in a place I love.”

Construction for a new elementary school in Sacramento County will break ground at a ceremony Tuesday, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Alder Creek Elementary School will be part of the Folsom Cordova Unified School and will serve an estimated 764 students in grades TK, according to the Bee.

Construction of the school is expected to be completed by July 2024 and the school will open for the 2024-25 school year.

The number of English learners is shrinking at many dual-language immersion schools while the number of English-dominant and white students is increasing, according to a new analysis released by The Century Foundation and Children’s Equity Project.

The organizations analyzed 1,600 dual-language immersion programs in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

They found that over five years, the share of English learners shrank while the number of English speakers increased in most dual-language immersion schools in several large cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San José and New York City.

When comparing student enrollment by ethnicity, the number of white students increased at many dual language immersion schools in Los Angeles and other cities, including New York City, Dallas, Albuquerque, Portland and Washington, D.C.

“The potential shifts suggested in these data — from the goal of advancing linguistic equity and expanding educational opportunity for ELs and toward language enrichment for English-dominant children — should trigger alarm bells,” wrote the report’s authors.

Dual-language immersion (DLI) programs are designed to teach both English learners and English speakers in both English and another language, to help all students become bilingual and biliterate in both languages. There is evidence that dual-immersion programs help English learners both learn English and maintain their home language. Ideally, they should enroll equal numbers of students learning English and students who already speak English fluently.

“In order to deliver on DLI programs’ promise, education policymakers will need to protect equitable DLI access,” the authors wrote.

The authors recommended that school districts prioritize enrollment of English learners in dual-language programs, at the same time as making sure these programs are fully integrated linguistically, racially and socioeconomically and represent the surrounding communities. They also recommended districts establish more dual language programs in neighborhoods where more English learners live.

Fourteen colleges and school districts in California are among those that will receive federal grants to hire and train mental health professionals in high-needs schools, the U.S. Department of Education announced Monday.

The grants are part of an overall investment of more than $95 million, spread among 35 states, through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The money is in addition to $286 million the administration has already awarded to train and hire mental health professionals and diversify the field.

California institutions among the latest round of grantees are:  San Francisco State University, University Corporation at Monterey Bay, Los Angeles Unified School District, Santa Ana Unified School District, Riverside County Office of Education, Del Norte County Unified School District, University of the Pacific, San Diego County Office of Education, Humboldt State University Sponsored Programs Foundation, Solano County Superintendent of Schools, Santa Clara County Office of Education, California State University Long Beach Research Foundation, Northern Humboldt Union High School District and Oxnard School District.

Overall, the grants are expected to fund 2,173 new school mental health professionals in California.

The department expects to award more grants for school-based mental health services over the next five years, as part of President Joe Biden’s goal to double the number of school counselors, psychologists and social workers.

A San Jose-baed charter school network has found a unique solution to its staffing shortage: hiring teachers in other states and allowing them to work virtually, the Mercury News reported.

Alpha Public Schools, which operates four schools in San Jose, has hired 11 teachers from Alaska, Maryland and Texas to teach online.

“I know it’s not ideal for our students — we all know that,” Shara Hegde, chief executive officer of Alpha Public Schools, told the Mercury News. “But until we really, radically change the education profession here in the United States, we’re going to be looking at solutions like this.”

Staffing shortages are not unique to Alpha Public Schools. Eighty percent of California’s school districts are understaffed, according to the Learning Policy Institute.

The nonprofit developer that was going to build the homeless housing portion of UC Berkeley’s People’s Park development has pulled out of the project, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Resources for Community Development, a developer based in Berkeley, said it was dropping out because of court delays. In February, a California appeals court blocked UC Berkeley from continuing with the project, citing environmental concerns. It was the latest of several delays to the project caused by court rulings.

“This creates significant delays and new challenges that negatively impact our capacity to move forward,” Lauren Lyon, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit developer, said in a statement to the Chronicle.

UC Berkeley plans to continue with its plans to build student housing on a portion of the site and find another developer to continue with the housing for the community, Dan Mogulof, a spokesperson told the Chronicle.

“The university’s commitment to donate a significant portion of the site for the construction of supportive housing is unwavering, as is our commitment to the other, essential elements of the project, including urgently needed student housing; revitalized, open green space; and a commemoration of the site’s storied past,” Mogulof said. “The university also shares the perspectives of RCD, the City of Berkeley, and the Governor regarding the recent appellate court ruling and we look forward to presenting our arguments to the California Supreme Court.”

New research reveals that nearly 1,700 licensed child care centers across the state, roughly 1 in 4, have exceeded the amount of allowable lead in drinking water given to preschool-age children and infants. This means that babies and toddlers may have been drinking high levels of water for decades, the report suggests. 

The tests were conducted to comply with Assembly Bill 2370, authored by Assemblymember Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, and sponsored by the Environmental Working Group. This law requires licensed child care centers to test their tap water for lead contamination. 

It has long been known that many American public schools don’t have safe water for students to drink. Despite a flurry of testing, policy changes and the movement to replace water infrastructure in recent years, many children are still exposed to lead at school, according to the report, “Get the Lead Out.”

Even a little lead exposure, such as from water fountains, can harm health, impacting the brain and nervous system. Studies connect elevated lead levels to lower IQ and decreased focus as well as violent crime and delinquency. This threat is affecting children just as they struggle to recover from the pandemic.

“Despite all the work we’ve done to try to protect kids from the debilitating impacts of lead exposure through their drinking water and elsewhere, test results released today show we have failed to prevent harm to the most vulnerable Californians,” said Susan Little, EWG’s senior advocate for California government affairs. “Parents and decisionmakers alike need to understand that the water our children drink in California can contain high levels of lead. Young people in our state are being put in dire risk.”

The highest levels of lead were detected at the La Petite Academy, in San Diego, according to the report. These levels are comparable to some of the highest amounts of lead detected in Flint, Michigan.

S.F. Unified may bring back algebra in eighth grade

The San Francisco Unified School District is considering returning algebra instruction to eighth grade classrooms after years of fierce debate with parents over math instruction, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

A vocal group of parents has argued that the district’s decision to delay teaching Algebra 1 until high school hobbles children who are ready to take the math course in middle school. But some experts and district leaders have argued that pushing back algebra can level the playing field for kids who are struggling in math, the newspaper reported. Parents sued over the matter earlier this year.

Superintendent Matt Wayne told the Chronicle in an interview that the district will be looking closely at math instruction and course sequencing in the months ahead. A progress report to the board is expected on May 23.

“We’ll share some thoughts about where we need to go with math,” he said. “We have work to do around math.”

California State University employees that are members of Teamsters Local 2010 filed a second charge of unfair labor practices with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board on Tuesday alleging that the 23-campus system is failing to “bargain in good faith” by refusing to negotiate wages for any year except the current year.

The first charge against Cal State was filed in March. The Teamsters and other unionized CSU workers will see their contracts expire on June 30. More than 60,000 workers are demanding higher wages and better working conditions.

Cal State workers, during rallies this week, threatened to strike if negotiations continue to go poorly.

A federal appeals court in Boston on Wednesday overturned the convictions of two wealthy businessmen in the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal — including by rejecting a central claim of prosecutors: that the fathers had knowingly conspired with other parents to buy their children’s way into Harvard, Stanford and USC, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Both Gamal Abdelaziz, a former Las Vegas casino executive, and John Wilson, a private equity executive, paid self-styled college admissions consultant William “Rick” Singer to get their kids into the schools by presenting them as better athletes than they were, according to court filings.

Abdelaziz and Wilson were convicted of mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bribery in 2021, and sentenced last year to a year in prison and 15 months in prison, respectively.

Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch wrote for the court that the government had “failed to prove that Abdelaziz or Wilson agreed to join the overarching conspiracy,” but nonetheless introduced “a significant amount of powerful evidence related to other parents’ wrongdoing.”

That, she wrote, created “an unacceptable risk that the jury convicted Abdelaziz and Wilson based on others’ conduct rather than their own.”

Abdelaziz was accused of paying $300,000 to get his daughter into USC as a basketball recruit, while Wilson was accused of paying $220,000 to get his son into USC as a water polo recruit and $1 million to get his twin daughters into Harvard and Stanford.

The court upheld Wilson’s conviction for filing a false tax return, for misrepresenting a payment to Singer as a tax-deductible donation.

Federal prosecutors are studying the appellate court ruling for a possible appeal, the Times reported.

On Tuesday, the California Charter Schools Association released the first part of a two-part report called “The Face of Charter Public School Teachers 2023.” 

The report shows a workforce made up of mostly female teachers who tend to be new to the profession, according to the CSSA. Half of the teachers are white, 23% are Hispanic, 6% are Asian and 5% are Black.

The average charter school teacher has nine years of experience compared with 14 years for teachers at traditional public schools, according to the report.

More than 685,000 students — 12% of the public school student population — are enrolled in California’s 1,285 public charter schools. In 2019, 30,114 teachers worked in the schools, according to the CCSA.

The second part of the report, to be released next week, will feature interviews from charter school teachers.

Over the last few decades, Latinos have made big educational gains in both high school and college attainment, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 1996, 58.2% of the Latino population ages 25 to 29 had graduated from high school. That increased to 88.5% in 2021, according to census data. In 2005, one-third of Latinos 25-34 had some college. By 2021, over half of young Latinos had some college.

Latinos of all backgrounds have made gains, but those of Mexican and Central American origin have made the greatest strides. In 2005, 21% of 18- to 24-year-olds of Mexican origin were in college or graduate school. In 2021, that share jumped to 33%. Latinos from Central America jumped 8 points to 29.2%. Young Latinos from Cuba and South America already had higher levels of college enrollment, but they also saw a modest jump to 45.6% and 47%, from 43.3% and 41.3%, respectively.

Latinos skew younger with a median age of 30.5 years, and it is younger Latinos who are making the greatest gains. In 2021, Latinos represented 20.1% of the U.S. college population — up from 11.4% in 2006.

These increases are notable because Latinos represent a growing share of the U.S. population. Their numbers have quadrupled since 1980.

Oakland Unified students are on their fifth day at home or at school with limited instruction because their teachers are on strike. The Oakland branch of the NAACP has urged the teachers union to end the strike, saying it is hurting children.

“We know that our children’s education should never be compromised, and education is critical to ending intergenerational poverty,” said Cynthia Adams, president of the Oakland NAACP in a statement Monday. “As the academic school year nears the end, it is our position that all students, including the most vulnerable, should be learning and thriving in school.”

Half of the children in the district are Hispanic, 20% are Black, 10% are Asian and 10% are white. Nearly three-quarters of the district’s children come from low-income families, according to state data. 

Oakland’s scores on standardized tests lag behind the state average. Just over 35% of the district’s students met or exceeded standards in English language arts, compared with the state average of 47.6% in 2022. There was a similar gap in math, with 25.9% of Oakland students meeting or exceeding standards in math, compared with 33.4% of the state’s students.

The statement expressed its support for the district’s teachers but questioned whether a strike should have been called so close to the end of the school year. The school year in the district ends May 25.

“We strongly urge the OEA to reconsider its decision to continue to strike at such a critical time in the school year,” Adams said. “As an educator in OUSD for over 35 years, I have seen the devastating effects of learning disruption on our students. Currently, students are taking exams, preparing for college and other important activities and need the support of their teachers and community to finish their school year strong.”

The union responded Wednesday afternoon with a statement from Kampala Taiz-Rancifer, its first vice president: “As an educator, a Black mother of OUSD students, and a member of the NAACP, I am proud to belong to a community that overwhelmingly supports the OEA strike for racially just community schools.”

Three years after the pandemic shuttered schools, as The 74 reported, data shows that enrollment in the vast majority of the nation’s largest school districts has yet to recover.

Kindergarten counts continue to dwindle in many states — evidence of falling birth rates and a growing array of alternatives luring parents away from traditional public schools. Experts fear those trends, plus a possible recession and the looming demise of federal relief funds, will fuel a perfect storm for education.

The $190 billion in pandemic relief that was provided to schools allowed many districts to make up for the loss of funds tied to falling enrollment and delay deep cuts. Those funds are set to end in 17 months. As budget deficits grow and housing costs push families out of urban centers, education leaders are facing options such as closing schools or laying off staff.

“I’m not a pro-school closure guy. That’s the worst part of school reform,” said Brian Eschbacher, an enrollment consultant and a former Denver Public Schools official, The 74 reported. “But if anyone was holding out hope for a bounce back, we have put that to rest.”

Amid a youth mental health crisis, the American Psychological Association has issued recommendations for guiding teenagers’ use of social media. As NPR reported, the advisory, the first of its kind from the APA, is aimed at teens, parents, teachers and policymakers. 

There’s mounting evidence that social media can exacerbate and even cause high rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness, experts say.

“Right now, I think the country is struggling with what we do around social media,” says Arthur Evans, CEO of the APA. The report, he says, marshals the latest science about social media to arm people “with the information that they need to be good parents and to be good policymakers in this area.”

The 10 key recommendations in the report,  NPR reported, summarize recent scientific findings and advise parent on actions, such as monitoring teens’ feeds and training them in social media literacy, before they begin using these platforms.

However, some therapists and clinicians say the recommendations place too heavy a burden on parents. Cooperation from tech companies and regulatory authorities might be required for any reforms to stick.

“We’re in a crisis here, and a family’s ability or a parent’s ability to manage this right now is very limited,” says Robert Keane, a therapist at Walden Behavioral Care, an inpatient facility that helps teens with eating disorders. “Families really need help.”

Jeanette Rodriguez-Chien has been selected as the next superintendent of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District, according to The Press Democrat.

Rodriguez-Chien is currently the deputy superintendent for the San Diego County Office of Education, a role she has held since July 2020.

“I am thrilled about the opportunity to work with the Sonoma Valley students, staff, parents and community,” Rodriguez-Chien said in a statement. “I am looking forward to building relationships with people, understanding the desires of the various stakeholders and ensuring our district prepares students for their future endeavors.”

If her appointment is formally approved by the district’s board, Rodriguez-Chien will begin in her new role July 1.

Andrea Hoffman, a trustee for the Los Angeles Community College District, has been elected president of the California Community College Trustees, an advocacy group representing the local trustees across California’s 73 community college districts.

“I am honored to have been elected by my peers to serve as the President of CCCT,” Hoffman said in a statement. “I am following past presidents who have provided strong leadership for our organization and ensured that trustees were at the table on important issues.”

Hoffman was elected to the position at the organization’s annual conference held this past weekend in Monterey.

The trustees group advocates to the statewide community college system’s board of governors as well as to the state Legislature. It is an arm of the Community College League of California.

The number of foster youth in California decreased over the course of 15 years, but youth of color remain overrepresented, according to a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropy and research organization. Researchers found that the Covid-19 pandemic, in part, led to the decrease in foster youth cases.

There were more than 147,000 foster youth ages 14 to 21 nationwide in 2021, a drop from over 271,000 in 2006. In California, 35% of all foster youth were age 14 or over in 2006. By 2021, the number decreased to 26%. In part, researchers attribute the drops in foster youth to the Covid-19 pandemic and lower reporting of cases.

Additionally, youth of color remain overrepresented in foster care in California. Latino youth made up 40% of the foster care system in 2006; by 2021, they made up 53%. This increase aligns with a rise in the general Latino population in the state during the same timeframe.

The number of Black foster youth decreased between 2006 and 2021 from 30% to 20% of the foster youth population. But in the general population in the state, Blacks represented 7% of the population in 2006 and 5% in 2021, indicating an over-representation in the foster care system.

The report also provided insight into why foster youth enter the system. In California and nationwide, neglect has become increasingly cited as the entry reason.

“Because neglect is the most frequent reason young people enter foster care,” the report authors wrote, “state and federal leaders must examine the role of underlying issues of poverty in these cases and focus on strengthening families and communities to reduce the need for child removals.”

Trinity College Dublin, a university in Ireland, will remove the name Berkeley from its main library on campus, The New York Times reported. The university concluded that George Berkeley, whom the library is named after, owned slaves in colonial Rhode Island, according to the Times.

The University of California, Berkeley, was also named for the 18th-century philosopher, but a spokesman for the campus told the Times that it has no plans to change its name.

“We acknowledge that the university’s founders chose to name their new town and campus after an individual whose views warrant no honor or commemoration,” said the spokesman, Dan Mogulof. He added that the name Berkeley “has come to embody and represent very different values and perspectives.”

The provost of Trinity College, Linda Doyle, said in a statement that the Berkeley name conflicts with the college’s values.

“George Berkeley’s enormous contribution to philosophical thought is not in question,” Doyle said. “However, it is also clear that he was both an owner of enslaved people and a theorist of slavery and racial discrimination, which is in clear conflict with Trinity’s core values.”

Elementary teachers in San Rafael City Schools, who had threatened to strike, have reached a tentative pact with the district after a 12-hour negotiation session, the Marin Independent Journal reported.

Details of the agreement will remain confidential until the board has a chance to review them, district spokesperson Christina Perrino said.

San Rafael’s 258 elementary teachers and their supporters staged a rally outside district offices on Thursday, calling for a 14% raise and greater parity with the district’s high school teachers, who typically earn more.

“We are excited to have a tentative agreement,” union president Brianna Padilla told the IJ. “The terms of the agreement will be released once they are released to our membership. Voting for ratification will take place as soon as possible.”

The 7,000-student district has three high schools, one middle school, one K-8 school and six elementary schools.

The teachers union at Los Angeles Unified voted to approve a three-year contract that gives them a 21% raise, reduces class sizes, boosts student mental health offerings and increases services for immigrant students and their families, the Associated Press reported.

“This contract will set the national standard for all other educators to achieve livable wages and solidify an equitable future where students are supported in a healthy learning environment,” Cecily Myart-Cruz , president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said Friday.

The union’s 35,000 teachers, counselors, librarians, nurses and other staff voted 94% to approve the contract, which came after 11 months of negotiations. The contract is retroactive to July 2022 and runs through Jan. 1 2025.

The contract comes on the heels of a strike by the district’s service workers, including bus drivers and cafeteria workers, which teachers supported. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho last month characterized the agreement as “a necessary step not only to make Los Angeles Unified the district of choice for families but also the district of choice for teachers and employees.”

After more than a decade-long legal battle over the construction contract for Fresno Unified’s Gaston Middle School, the California Supreme Court ruled last week that the controversial lease-leaseback contract was illegal, the Fresno Bee reported.

Lease-leaseback agreements allow school districts to forego the traditional bidding process of awarding contracts to the lowest bidder in order to pick developers who will front at least some of the construction costs and accept repayment from the district over time, according to the Bee. In 2012, a different contractor sued the district, alleging that Fresno Unified wrongfully used this agreement to sign with Harris Construction.

California Supreme Court Justice Martin Jenkens, in his opinion on the case, determined that the district had the money from bond measures to pay for the construction project, thus not needing the lease-leaseback agreement.

Whether or not Harris Construction will have to pay back Fresno Unified the $36 million it received under the agreement — plus interest — remains in question.

Clovis Unified and the Association of Clovis Educators, which represents the district’s school psychologists, declared an impasse in contract negotiations that have gone on for more than a year, the Fresno Bee reported.

Pay, staffing and grievance procedures remain points of disagreement after dozens of bargaining sessions, according to the Bee. The union requested a 14.5% raise, and the district countered with 13.5%. The union maintains that the district is well within their means of being able to provide the extra 1% raise, which they estimate will cost around $100,000, according to the Bee.

After declaring an impasse, the state’s Public Employment Relations Board will appoint a mediator to guide negotiations.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond will formally mediate the negotiations to end the teacher strike that began this morning in Oakland Unified, according to officials at the California Department of Education.

Oakland Unified and the Oakland Education Association, its teachers union, have been negotiating a new three-year contract since October. The teachers union is asking for pay raises and a list of what the union describes as “common good” items, such as improved environmental health in classrooms, increased school safety and culturally relevant curriculum.

Thurmond and a team from the California Department of Education informally attempted to broker an agreement during a visit to Oakland Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday morning Thurmond offered to officially mediate discussions with both parties, by afternoon they agreed, according to CDE officials.

“We are disappointed that the parties could not find an agreement in time to avert a strike,” he said in a prepared statement. “We observed how hard both sides worked and will start immediately working with the parties in a formal mediation capacity. Our goal is to help the parties reach an agreement and to end the strike so that students can return to class as quickly as possible.”

Thurmond successfully mediated a similar strike in Oakland in 2019, according to the news release.

A UC Berkeley professor has announced she falsely claimed American Indian bloodlines.

In a statement posted on her personal website, Elizabeth M. Hoover, an associate professor of environmental science, policy, and management, said she is white and “incorrectly identified” as Indigenous without researching her ancestry, the LA Times reported Thursday.

“In uncritically living an identity based on family stories without seeking out a documented connection to these communities, I caused harm,” Hoover wrote. “I hurt Native people who have been my friends, colleagues, students and family, both directly through fractured trust and through activating historical harms.”

Desi Small-Rodriguez, an assistant professor of sociology and American Indian studies at UCLA, wrote in a tweet that UC Berkeley should fire Hoover, the Times reported.

Adrienne Keene, the author of Native Appropriations, an online forum, who claimed to be a close friend and colleague of Hoover, tweeted that she was devastated, enraged, and exhausted over the issue for the last year, according to the Times.

“I have spent countless hours supporting her current and former students, trying to process my own emotions and having to continue on at an institution that gave her a Ph.D., her first job and tenure,” she wrote.

Police have detained a person of interest in the stabbing spree that has rocked UC Davis, the East Bay Times reported.

That person had been reported by a resident who saw him sitting by the playground in Sycamore Park, the site of the second attack. The person went with the police voluntarily and was not arrested, the Times reported.

Davis Police have also collected biological evidence in each of three stabbing cases and said that although they have witnesses they have been unable to create a sketch of the person of interest in the case, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Biological evidence was also collected by police from each of the three stabbing scenes and is being analyzed “to determine potential sources,” authorities said.

A sketch artist worked with a witness in the killing of Karim Abou Najm, a 20-year-old UC Davis student,  but the witness ultimately was not confident the sketch was an accurate portrayal so police decided against distributing it, Davis police said, according to the Chronicle.

“A sketch that illustrates a misleading representation of a suspect could lead to the false apprehension of an innocent person,” Davis police said in an update posted to Facebook.

More than two-thirds of parents (70%) surveyed believe that their child is experiencing more burnout than they are. This new survey of 2,000 parents of school-aged children found that 66% of parents said that their child comes home with a “low mental battery” after school, and half of them noticed some sort of signs of stress and burnout in their child.

Top signs of stress were changes in sleep patterns (44%), changes in appetite (37%), physical complaints such as headaches or stomach aches (35%), decreased interest in activities they once enjoyed (34%), and avoidance of social interactions or activities (33%).

The survey, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Presence, a teletherapy provider, also found that 81% of parents wished schools offered more accessible mental health services amid the mounting youth mental health crisis and what the Surgeon General has characterized as a loneliness epidemic. 

Mental health-related trips to emergency rooms by children, teenagers and young adults rose from 2011 to 2020, according to a Journal of the American Medical Association report. The sharpest spike was for suicide-related visits, which increased fivefold, as the New York Times reported.  The findings suggest an “urgent” need for expanded crisis services, according to the physicians who published the report.

The research, drawn from data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, looked at yearly mental health-related visits by people 6 to 24 years old. In effect, the proportion of E.R. visits for mental health-related issues rose sharply, from 7.7% to 13.1%. The increase in suicide-related issues was the most pronounced, increasing to 4.2% of all pediatric emergency room visits in 2020 from 0.9% percent in 2011.

A growing number of children and adolescents are grappling with mental distress, but medical systems have not kept up, as the New York Times reported. A lack of treatment options and access to preventive care has led many families to seek help in emergency rooms, which are ill-equipped to deal with mental health. A recent Times investigation found that hundreds of young people sleep in emergency rooms every night, as they wait for placement in proper treatment programs.

Carlos Cortez, the chancellor of the San Diego Community College District, resigned from the position so he can care for his parents who are dealing with health issues, the district said.

Cortez had been on emergency family leave since March 30 to be with his parents, who live in Florida.

“I am incredibly proud of the progress we have made together over the past two years on behalf of our students and community we serve,” Cortez said in a statement.

Greg Smith, the district’s vice chancellor of people, culture and technology services, will serve as acting chancellor as the district launches a national search for a permanent chancellor.

A shelter in place was lifted Tuesday morning at UC Davis following a nonfatal stabbing overnight of a homeless woman in the city of Davis, but the suspect remains at large, campus officials said.

The stabbing was the third in Davis in less than a week. A student at UC Davis was killed in a stabbing that occurred Saturday evening, which was the second. The first occurred Thursday at Central Park in the city’s downtown.

The latest stabbing occurred overnight Monday and resulted in a shelter-in-place alert that was issued for the UC Davis campus. Police had also ordered residents in downtown Davis to shelter in place. Those orders were lifted around 5 a.m. Tuesday.

“Officers have concluded their detailed search of the downtown Davis area and were not able to locate the suspect,” the Davis Police Department said, according to The Sacramento Bee. “Officers will continue to heavily patrol the area.”

The latest incident shook the city following two fatal stabbings in three days, last Thursday and Saturday at Davis parks. The Davis Police Department reported only one homicide death for all of 2022.

Read more here.

Oakland teachers will go on strike Thursday if they cannot reach an agreement with Oakland Unified by that day, Oakland Education Association leaders at a news  conference Monday. The strike would affect 35,000 K-12 students.

Oakland Unified and the teachers union have been in negotiations since October over a number of issues including increased pay, campus safety and reduced class sizes.

Union leaders claim district officials have come to negotiations unprepared and that they are not bargaining in good faith. The union is striking over the district’s unfair labor practices, said President Ismael Armendariz.

“We promise you we have done everything we can to avert this strike,” Armendariz said. “The district has truly failed our students, and the time for us to act is now.”

Oakland Unified issued a statement saying its leadership was disappointed to hear about the strike announcement:

“We are pleased to hear that OEA will continue to negotiate with us at the bargaining table,” it stated. “We look forward to reaching an agreement that benefits our students, educators, and district.

“We appreciate the hard work of both negotiating teams as they have worked nearly non-stop to come to a resolution. Our team has remained at the bargaining table daily since Thursday and is committed to continuing to work in good faith toward a contract that works for both sides. We remain optimistic that we will collectively come to a resolution in time to prevent the teachers from hitting the picket lines, and keeping our kids in school.”

The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group for young LGBTQ people, has released its annual 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People.

Many of its findings are dire: 41% of LGBTQ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year. The rates were highest for young people who are not cisgender — meaning they do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth: transgender men (56%) transgender women (48%) and nonbinary/genderqueer young people (48%).

The survey found that LGBTQ youth who received support and acceptance at home, school, in the doctor’s office and in local policy debates were less likely to suffer from poor mental health, including suicide attempts, suicidal ideation, anxiety and depression.

Researchers with the Trevor Project say that these findings demonstrate that bigotry and victimization harm the mental health of LGBTQ youth and that support and acceptance can be life-saving.

“As the existence of LGBTQ young people continues to be unfairly put up for debate, it’s critical to consistently underscore that these challenges are not inherent to LGBTQ identity, but rather stem from stigma, discrimination, and violence,” said Dr. Ronita Nath, vice president of research for the Trevor Project, in a statement.

Here are some key findings:

• The survey found that 60% of LGBTQ young people reported they have felt discriminated against in the past year due to their sexual orientation or identity. Twenty-four percent reported they were physically threatened or harmed. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they were verbally harassed at school.
• Half of transgender and nonbinary people said none of the people they live with respect their pronouns, and 21% of those respondents attempted suicide in the last year. Rates were lower for respondents who lived in homes where everyone respected their pronouns: 12%.
• Those with access to a gender-neutral bathroom at school were less likely to report attempting suicide (15%) than those who didn’t (21%).
• Transgender and nonbinary young people were more likely to find affirming spaces online (70%) or at school (52%) than at home (35%).
• 28% of those who were threatened with or subjected to conversion therapy attempted suicide in the past year compared with 11% of those who were not. This corroborates the view of some psychiatric professionals that conversion therapy — a treatment purporting to “cure” those who do not identify as cisgender and heterosexual — worsens the mental health of LGBTQ youth.
• Nearly 2 in 3 LGBTQ young people said hearing about proposed state or local laws banning the discussion of LGBTQ people at school made their mental health a lot worse. On the other hand, 79% said that hearing about laws aimed at banning conversion therapy made them feel better.
• Among transgender and nonbinary young people, 11% reported being on gender-affirming hormones and 2% reported taking puberty blockers. Nearly two-thirds of those on gender-affirming hormones were concerned about losing access to this care.
• Eighty-two percent of respondents said the people in their lives should know more about support and acceptance.

The Trevor Project’s annual survey relies on a sample from 28,524 LGBTQ people between 13 and 24 years old who were recruited via targeted ads on social media.

Anyone who needs to talk about their mental health or thoughts of suicide can call the organization’s hotline at 1-866-488-7386.

Two teachers at a middle school in Escondido, near San Diego, last week sued the school district and the state Board of Education over a policy that bars teachers from discussing a student’s gender transition with parents.

The suit, filed on the teachers’ behalf by the conservative Thomas More Society, argues that the state’s policy of preventing teachers from discussing a student’s transgender status with parents violates the teachers’ right to free speech.

“Schools routinely send notes home to parents about trivial matters, like missing homework, so it is unfathomable that Escondido Union School District has a policy that forces teachers to withhold from parents some of the most fundamental and basic information about their children,” said Paul Jonna, an attorney for the Thomas More Society.

Currently, California law protects students’ right to privacy in issues related to gender. If a student is “out” at school, teachers may not inform the student’s parents without the student’s permission. The rule is intended to protect students from potential emotional or physical harm from family members who might disapprove of their transition.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

Citing the hefty raises for teachers in Los Angeles Unified, teachers in nearby Culver City Unified are demanding more money from their district, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.

The Culver City Federation of Teachers held a rally at City Hall last week to garner support for higher salaries. The district is offering 2% raises, in contrast to the 21% raises Los Angeles Unified is giving its teachers.

“We are not going to settle for 2%. We are not going to settle for less than the COLA,” Ray Long, president of the Culver City teachers union, told the school board last week. “We are fed up. It’s time for us to be paid what we deserve to be paid.”

Superintendent Quoc Tran said the 2% offer is merely a starting point and the district is willing to offer more.

The union says that the district received 8% more from the state this year, although the district said that figure could change pending the state budget revisions later this month.

“We could definitely afford more (than 2%), but we are not going to put the district in a position where two years from now we are unable to support salaries,” Tran said, the newspaper reported.

Amid the ongoing child care crisis, two new bills in the California Legislature would raise pay for child care providers and lower family fees for subsidized care.

Sen. Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara, and Assembly Majority Leader Eloise Gómez Reyes, D-Colton, have introduced legislation, Senate Bill 380 and Assembly Bill 596, that would raise provider pay as well as lower family costs. SB 380 passed out of the Senate Education Committee this week while AB 596 passed out of the Assembly Education Committee.

“We are at a crisis point in our child care system. Childcare employment rates have long struggled to meet the need for California families,” Limón has said. “Providers have been underpaid, undervalued, and overutilized. It is past time that we pay child care workers what they are worth.” 

Also in the early education space, new kindergarten legislation from Senator Susan Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, passed out of the Senate Education Committee. This bill, SB 767, which would make kindergarten compulsory, attempts to close the achievement gap.

“As a public school teacher for nearly 20 years, I have witnessed the detrimental impact on young students who miss out on fundamental early education,” said Rubio. 

Currently, children are only required to attend school in California once they turn 6. Until that age, it is up to parents to decide whether to enroll their children in kindergarten or preschool or keep them at home. 

However, before the pandemic, the overwhelming majority of 5-year-olds enrolled in kindergarten anyway. According to the California Kindergarten Association, only about 5% to 7% of students do not enroll in kindergarten. 

Results of the Center for Disease Control’s 2021 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey released Thursday provide a jarring look at the urgent state of teen physical and mental health.

A third of female students said they have considered suicide in the past year, 24% had made a suicide plan, and more than 13% said they’ve attempted suicide, Politico reported.

The survey, which is conducted biennially, also found that 1 in 5 high school students had witnessed violence in their communities, and 3.5% said they carried a gun, according to Politico. About 9% of students said they had been forced into sex at some point in their life.

The survey also showed two important shifts in high school student demographics, Politico reported: a rise in the number of responded identified as being part of a racial or ethnic minority group, from 48.9% in 2019 to more than 49% in 2021, and a rise in the number of students identified as LGBQ+ from 11% in 2019 to about 25% in 2021.

The day after the Oakland teachers union, Oakland Education Association, announced that its members voted to authorize a strike as early as May 1, hundreds of teachers and their supporters packed the district’s school board meeting Wednesday, Oaklandside reported.

The teachers carried signs and banners and chanted songs calling on the district to meet their demands for higher salaries, campus safety measures, and reduced caseloads and class sizes in their new contract, according to Oaklandside.

While the Oakland Education Association and Oakland Unified have been in contract negotiations since October, the union is accusing the district of bad-faith bargaining, which is the reason it could potentially strike. The district has denied that it’s bargaining in bad faith, and filed an injunction earlier this week with the Public Employee Relations Board in an attempt to stop the potential strike. However, the Public Employee Relations Board denied that request Wednesday.

A day after a mother walking her 6-year-old daughter to school was killed by a speeding driver,  a Los Angeles City Council committee advanced a measure on Wednesday to install speed humps at all schools in the city, the news site MyNewsLA reported.

The Tuesday morning accident in the city’s Mid-Wilshire area near the Hancock Park Elementary School left the 6-year-old in critical condition. An assistant police chief told the Los Angeles Times the accident was “a tragedy beyond anybody’s imagination.”

Wednesday, the City Council’s transportation committee moved quickly to address traffic around schools.

“We have to do the work to ensure that the safety of our children, our mothers, fathers and grandparents are the priority. I want to use every tool in our toolbox to ensure that the safety of our people take precedence over traffic time,” said Councilmember Heather  Hutt, the committee’s chair.

The committee approved a measure for the establishment of a dedicated speed hump program for all schools in the city. The committee also approved a separate but related motion seeking to bolster the city’s crossing guard program, MyNewsLA reported. The city has roughly 200 vacant crossing guard positions.

UCLA announced an effort Wednesday to raise funds for student scholarships as part of a larger goal of creating debt-free education by 2030 by removing the need for student loans, The Orange County Register reported. The move is driven by a $15 million donation.

The UCLA  Affordability Initiative was unveiled thanks to the gift of real estate investor and UCLA graduate Peter Merlone, according to the newspaper.

“UCLA was founded on the notion that access to a top-tier education should be available to talented individuals of all backgrounds and financial means,” Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement. “Peter Merlone’s gift, and the UCLA Affordability Initiative as a whole, will help us preserve our ability to attract stellar students from across the state — and set them up for success after graduation.”

According to the university, traditional discussion of college affordability generally focuses on the cost of tuition, while overlooking ancillary costs such as housing, books, food, transportation, and other expenses, the newspaper reported.

Amid a national reckoning of pandemic learning loss, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Wednesday on the impact of school closures during the height of the public health crisis. 

The subcommittee’s Republican chairman, U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, hailed the work of teachers but grilled Weingarten on the consultations between the teachers union and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, questioning why the AFT pushed for “closure triggers” for schools given the low risk of school vs. community transmission. He stressed the need for clarifying the process that led to prolonged school closures given their grim impact on youth mental health and academic outcomes.

“We’re investigating the decision-making process behind school closures and the effects it had so that we can do better in the future,” said Wenstrup during a contentious hearing that veered from issues of Covid lockdowns to school shootings and book banning.

Weingarten testified that the teachers union provided the CDC with some “draft language” regarding allowing work-from-home status for educators who were deemed to be at “high risk” as well as suggesting that schools in communities with high levels of viral transmission retain the option to return to virtual learning as variants emerged.

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, a medical doctor and a former director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, questioned whether the AFT had the right to make scientific recommendations.

“The fact is schools were relatively safe places for both students and educators. These are scientific questions that a scientific organization should be able to study and answer. The AFT is not a scientific organization,” Miller-Meeks asserted.

Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., also a doctor, defended the use of social distancing during the pandemic and also suggested that lawmakers focus on taking measures to mitigate learning loss and mental health crises going forward. 

During the hearing, Weingarten suggested it was appropriate for public health authorities to consult with education groups. 

“Ultimately, our goal was to have clear guidance, so that teachers in classrooms, bus drivers, the school nurses knew, but most of us did not know what this meant. And we needed clear guidance from the scientists that we could follow,” Weingarten said.

She also maintained that her focus had always been on how to reopen schools, citing attempts at layered mitigation strategies.

“From the earliest days of COVID, the AFT knew that safety was the pathway to opening schools and keeping them open,” Weingarten told the committee. “We know that kids learn best in person, so opening schools safely — even as the pandemic surged — guided the AFT’s every action.”

She also agreed with lawmakers that remote instruction was no substitute for in-person instruction.

“I regret Covid. I regret what happened here. I regret the fear that was there.”