California education news: What’s the latest?

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, at an education summit Monday in San Diego, identified teacher residency programs, increasing teacher pay and other initiatives as solutions to California’s growing teacher shortage.

Cardona spoke at the Carnegie Foundation’s Summit on Improvement in Education conference to about 1,300 educators and other attendees, the San Diego Union Tribune reported. He called on schools to dramatically change in order to better serve students. One of the biggest challenges to implementing change, he said, is the lack of available teachers and school staff, since many have left or are considering leaving the profession.

Cardona proposed schools tap into their federal pandemic aid funds to address the shortage, implementing or scaling up teacher residency programs, increasing teacher pay and paying future teachers while they are in training, the Union-Tribune reported. Cardona acknowledged that many people are turned away from the profession because they don’t get paid while they’re working as student teachers.

Cardona also called on California and other states to allocate more funding toward prospective teachers through teacher residency program grants, scholarships and loan forgiveness. He also called on states to establish teaching as a registered apprenticeship, according to the Union-Tribune.

California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond expressed frustration Monday as Sacramento City Unified students stayed home for a fourth day. The school district’s teachers and staff went on strike Wednesday afternoon, calling for pay increases and improved working conditions.

Negotiations between the district and union leaders from the Sacramento City Teachers Association and SEIU 1021 broke down Wednesday night but continued on Sunday, according to Thurmond.

Earlier this week Thurmond proposed that Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jorge Aguilar, the district’s school board, representatives of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, the Sacramento County Office of Education and the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, or FCMAT, meet with union and district leaders to resolve the strike. Aguilar declined Thurmond’s invitation.

“Because this is a local issue, we do not want to circumvent the appropriate process for reaching agreement with our local labor partners,” Aguilar said in a statement Friday. “That process calls for the district to meet with SCTA to resolve these issues and bring an end to the strike.”

Thurmond said he invited representatives from these specific organizations because he wanted everyone in attendance during negotiations who could answer questions to help resolve the strike. The Sacramento County Office of Education is in charge of fiscal oversight for all the school districts in the county and FCMAT is the state agency that evaluates districts that are financially at risk. One of the points of contention among district and union officials is whether the district can afford the increasing compensation for teachers and staff.

“My goal was to get this thing done so the kids could return to school today,” Thurmond said.

The Sacramento City Teachers Association and school district leaders have been negotiating a contract since early 2019. They also have been bargaining over Covid-related issues for about two years, reaching an impasse in December.

The unions have complained of staffing shortages that have left hundreds of students without a full-time teacher or substitute each day. They say 600 students are on a waiting list for independent study and are getting no instruction.

Thurmond said he was discouraged that the two parties went several days without negotiating, but is encouraged they are back at the table now. He saids he expects both parties would agree to follow the recommendations of a fact-finding report prepared by a panel from the California Public Employment Relations Board if they can’t come to a compromise on their own.

The teachers union has agreed to the recommendations in the report, which include salary increases, retroactive Covid sick pay and a 25% increase in the daily rate for substitutes that was proposed by the district. It also recommends that the district not implement its proposals to offer a long-term independent study program with required instructional time in excess of state requirements, as well as plan to have teachers offer Zoom and in-person instruction simultaneously.

Thurmond, who took part in strike negotiations between Oakland Unified and teachers union representatives in 2019, said he would not be in the room for negotiations in Sacramento, although he would be happy to take part.

Thurmond said that the recent teacher strikes in California reflect what is happening across the country. Most teachers are calling for better compensation and improved working conditions, which have been made worse by staffing shortages, he said.

If the parties can’t come to an agreement, Thurmond said there is nothing he can do legally.

“We will use every tool available to get them back to school,” he said. “This has got to be resolved.”

A federal judge in Southern California on Monday found that former President Donald Trump and former Chapman University law school professor John C. Eastman “most likely committed felonies” in their failed effort to overturn the 2020 election, the New York Times is reporting.

“The illegality of the plan was obvious,” Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California wrote in an order requiring Eastman to turn over more than 100 emails to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Eastman resigned under pressure from Chapman’s Fowler School of Law in Orange County days after the attack on the Capitol. He had urged Trump to convince then Vice President Mike Pence that he had the power to not certify the electors from several key states, throwing the election to the House of Representatives.

The ruling came in a lawsuit Eastman filed to block the release of the emails to the Jan. 6 committee, citing attorney-client privilege. Carter rejected Eastman’s argument that the emails are protected by attorney-client privilege.

“The true animating force behind these emails was advancing a political strategy: to persuade Vice President Pence to take unilateral action on January 6,” Carter wrote.

“Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the vice president to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election,” the judge wrote.

In his 2023 fiscal year budget released Monday, President Joe Biden proposed $88.3 billion in new discretionary spending for schools and colleges, an increase of 15.6% over last year’s spending.

The money includes $1 billion for schools to hire more counselors, nurses and other staff to help students recover from the pandemic, as well as $468 million for full-service community schools. It also includes $36.5 billion for Title I schools, more than double what was allotted in 2021, to help students living in poverty.

Special education is also highlighted. The budget includes $16.3 billion in grants to states, one of the largest ever increases in the history of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Much of the money is earmarked for early intervention programs for young children and programs to expand the special education teacher pipeline.

“Across the country, we must focus our efforts on recovery,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. “That means ensuring all students — especially those from underserved communities and those most impacted by the pandemic — receive the resources they need to thrive.”

Anticipating a possible uptick in Covid cases after spring break, the state has sent 14.3 million at-home Covid tests plus other materials to all public and private schools, enough for all students and staff to be tested before returning to the classroom, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced over the weekend.

The tests, in addition to masks, gloves, hand sanitizer and social media messaging materials, are part of California’s SMARTER plan to curb the spread of Covid.

“California is focused on keeping schools open and students safe, and we’re not letting our guard down,” Newsom said. “We know that COVID-19 is still present in our communities, but the SMARTER Plan is how we keep people safe and continue moving the state forward.”

As of Monday, California had an average of 2,001 new Covid cases a day, and 54 deaths, according to the state Department of Public Health, numbers that have been steadily dropping since the omicron surge in January.

California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond has asked Sacramento City Unified officials and union leaders to return to the table to resolve the strike that has closed schools for three days.

Sacramento City Unified teachers and school staff represented by SEIU 1021 went on strike Wednesday morning. The district serves 45,078 students. Negotiations between union and district officials broke down Wednesday night.

Thurmond also extended the invitation to “meet to restore dialogue” to district Superintendent Jorge Aguilar, the district’s school board, representatives of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, the Sacramento County Office of Education and the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, according to the California Department of Education.

It’s not clear whether Thurmond planned to be at the table for negotiations.

Aguilar declined Thurmond’s invitation, saying it was not the appropriate process for reaching an agreement with the district’s labor partners.

“We urge SCTA to present a counterproposal to the district’s last proposal so that we can give it due consideration and provide a response,” Aguilar said. “Our community is also wanting to understand what it will take to end this strike. With a counterproposal, the district’s negotiators are prepared to meet around the clock with SCTA so that we can bring our students on Monday. We reached out to SCTA again earlier today to request a response to the district’s last proposal.”

The Sacramento City Teachers Association and school district leaders have been negotiating a contract since early 2019. They also have been bargaining over Covid-related issues for about two years, reaching an impasse in December.

The unions have complained of staffing shortages that have left hundreds of students without a full-time teacher or substitute each day. They say 600 students are on a waiting list for independent study and are getting no instruction.

The district has offered teachers an ongoing 2% salary increase starting in the 2021-22 school year, a 2% bonus for this school year and 1% bonuses for both the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, according to the district. They also are offering increased pay for substitutes and nurses and three additional paid professional development days.

Nine school districts, charter schools and county offices of education were awarded $1.8 million in grants from private funders to improve training for teachers to better serve children learning English in addition to their home languages.

The funding is expected to be used to help develop new bilingual curriculum, or to hire coaches or conduct trainings to support teachers to implement the resources and best practices outlined in the Multilingual Learning Toolkit, developed by a coalition of nonprofit organizations, researchers and in collaboration with the California Department of Education.

“Multilingual children need support now more than ever with the pandemic creating further inequities in their learning experiences,” said Patricia Lozano, Executive Director of the organization Early Edge California, in a press release about the grants. “Let’s build an assets-based approach to teaching multilingual learners as a permanent part of California’s education system.” 

The awardees are Franklin-McKinley School District in San Jose, Fullerton School District, Oakland Unified School District, Salinas City Elementary School District, Semitropic School District, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, a network of charter schools in Los Angeles, the Orange County Department of Education, the San Mateo County Superintendent of Schools, and the Tehama County Department of Education.

The grants were awarded by the Emerging Bilingual Collaborative, a project of the New Venture Fund backed by a coalition of five California-based funders – California Community Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, James B. McClatchy Foundation, Silver Giving Foundation, and Sobrato Philanthropies.

EdSource receives funding from over a dozen foundations, including the above-mentioned foundations. Editorial decisions and content, however, remain under the sole control of EdSource.

Sacramento City Unified teachers and other employees continue their strike today, which began Wednesday after negotiations with the district failed.

According to the Sacramento Bee, representatives for both the district and the Sacramento City Teachers Association said they were open to bargaining but have not yet resumed negotiations.

The district first proposed cuts to health benefits for family members, an unpaid furlough day and a 1% salary reduction, but has since proposed a 2% wage increase and some one-time bonuses, increased pay for substitutes and nurses and three additional paid professional development days.

Teacher and classified staff unions say staffing shortages have left hundreds of students without a full-time teacher or substitute each day and that 600 students are on a waiting list for independent study. They want additional sick pay and retroactive COVID sick leave, increased pay for special education teachers with additional students, and a raise.

In an effort to beef up physical and mental health services at schools, the federal government will provide more resources and make it easier for schools to get support from Medicaid to provide on-campus health services, the U.S. secretaries of education and health and human services announced Thursday.

The two departments will offer resources to help schools handle a wide array of student health struggles, including trauma, addiction, child abuse and self-harm, among other issues. Many students’ mental and physical health was declining before the pandemic, but the stress related to Covid exacerbated matters. Children with disabilities and those who identify as LGBTQ, are Black or Latino or low-income have been especially affected.

“Our nation’s children have been particularly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, including significant impacts on their mental health,” the secretaries said. “While the pandemic’s long-term impacts on children and youth are not fully understood, working together to build resilience in children, youth, and families can promote equity and support recovery efforts. … We will elevate opportunities under the American Rescue Plan funding along with existing federal resources to build a lasting and sustainable health care infrastructure for our children and youth.”

The two departments are hosting a free webinar at noon March 30 on how schools can create partnerships with health centers. Register here.

The University of Southern California is pulling its Rossier School of Education from U.S. News & World Report’s next annual ranking of best graduate schools after finding “a history of inaccuracies” in data provided to the magazine, the L.A. Times reported Wednesday.

Details on what information was allegedly inaccurate, the Times reported, were not immediately available. University officials said they were looking back at five years of submissions.

“USC officials have informed the U.S. Department of Education and accreditors of the situation,” the Times reported it was told by Charles Zukoski, USC’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

USC hired Jones Day, an independent law firm, to investigate the Rossier School’s past submissions to U.S. News & World Report, Zukoski said. The Rossier School was ranked No. 11 in the most recent ranking of best education schools.

San Francisco’s school board “hit the reset button” and held a calm first meeting after a contentious recall election in which three incumbents were ousted, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

“The meeting largely lacked the divisiveness and lengthy board member monologues that punctuated many 7-to-10-hour meetings in previous months,” the Chronicle’s Jill Tucker reported.

“Parents are ready for a boring board of education,” Meredith Dodson, executive director for the San Francisco Parent Coalition told the newspaper. “After two years of being ignored and treated with contempt, parents could not be more ready for a school board that is ready to effectively govern and focus on educating our children.”

Sacramento City Unified teachers and some of district’s classified staff went on strike Wednesday morning, closing all district schools. The district serves 45,078 students.

The teachers union and school district leaders have been negotiating a contract since early 2019. They also have been bargaining over Covid-related issues for about two years, reaching an impasse in December.

District leaders, teachers union representatives and state-appointed mediators negotiated throughout the afternoon and evening Monday, before ending talks at about 10 p.m., according to the district.

Wednesday morning thousands of school staff represented by the Sacramento City Teachers Association and SEIU 1021 marched in front of district schools and its headquarters holding signs and chanting. The two unions represent 4,600 teachers and other school staff, according to the Sacramento City Teachers Association.

The unions have complained of staffing shortages that have left hundreds of students without a full-time teacher or substitute each day. They say 600 students are on a waiting list for independent study and are getting no instruction. The unions also oppose a district proposal to freeze wages for certificated staff and cut health benefits for family members, saying that would only cause more staffing shortages.

The district has offered teachers an ongoing 2% salary increase starting in the 2021-22 school year, a 2% bonus for this school year and 1% bonuses for both the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, according to the district. They also are offering increased pay for substitutes and nurses and three additional paid professional development days.

“Given that SCTA and SEIU are moving forward with a strike, we remain very concerned about our students, their families and our entire community,” said Christina Pritchett, president of the SCUSD board of education. “The current proposals to increase compensation are a reflection of what we can currently afford in our budget. We urge SCTA to return to the bargaining table and give these proposals to increase employee compensation due consideration.”

Close to 545,000 Californians may struggle to repay student loans when the federal pause on  such payments ends on May 1, the Sacramento Bee reported Wednesday

Based on a study by the California Policy Lab, the Bee reported that those likely to be at risk when the pause ends are people who were “delinquent or in default on any loan in the year before the pause, or if they were delinquent on a pause-ineligible loan during the pause period.”

The repayment pause helped such borrowers get through the pandemic, the newspaper reported. “Put plainly, the pause on student loan payments worked,” Dalié Jiménez, director of the Student Loan Law Initiative at University of California, Irvine School of Law, told the Bee.

President Joe Biden is reportedly considering extending the pause for a fourth time.

The social safety net buttressing families during the pandemic is fraying, USA Today reported. 

Expanded child tax credits, which gave parents as much as $300 a month per child, have been dead for months after Congress voted against extending them. And despite lobbying efforts, the latest spending plan excludes a provision that had allowed all schools to offer universal free meals. The cutbacks are already taking a toll, research suggests, as inflation rises and many parents and schools struggle to meet their children’s basic needs. 

For all its turmoil, the pandemic actually was a time of historic drops in child poverty because of the robust social safety net, said Megan Curran, policy director at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy, as USA Today reported. But as those programs have come to an end, so, too, have the gains.

A month after the beefed-up child tax credit expired, 3.7 million children fell into poverty, according to a study by Curran and her team. The child poverty rate grew from 12.1% in December 2021 to 17% the next month, a 41% increase. Black and Hispanic children experienced the sharpest increases in poverty. The February numbers, released Tuesday, show a continuation of that trend: 16.7% of children remained in poverty. 

The most common item purchased with the monthly payments, by low- and medium-income families alike, was food. After just two months of payments last summer, the number of adults who said their children were going hungry dropped by several million. 

Affordable child care and universal pre-K could be a big boon for the economy and for parents’ wallets — if Democrats are ever able to pass it, Business Insider reports. 

That’s according to a new study from progressive think tank The Century Foundation, assessing the potential impact of Democrats’ proposed legislation. The Build Back Better Act would enact universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds in America and pour billions into slashing the costs of child care. 

According to the study, 3 million more parents would either enter the labor force or boost their work hours, as Business Insider reports. Mothers, who have been hardest hit by pandemic-era labor constraints, would get the biggest boost.

“Women are not able to answer the ‘help wanted’ ad if they don’t have steady, affordable child care, because they know they can’t be reliable, productive employees,” Gina Raimondo, the U.S. secretary of commerce, previously told Insider. “So they’re not applying for these jobs.”

Those parents returning would lead to a boom in economic productivity — parents’ output would go up by $48 billion yearly, according to the report.

CSU’s Board of Trustees voted Tuesday to eliminate using standardized tests like the SAT and ACT for admission to its 23 campuses.

The 23-campus system — the nation’s largest public university system — became the latest to remove the standardized testing requirement and replace it with a so-called multifactor admission score that allows colleges to consider 21 factors. Those factors include work experience, leadership roles, extracurricular activities and special status such as foster youth, first-generation or military.

As of March 1, more than 1,820 four-year colleges and universities, including the University of California, have eliminated the SAT or ACT from admission requirements, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

Advocates for underrepresented students had argued that the standardized tests discriminated against them.

“This decision aligns with the California State University’s continued efforts to level the playing field and provide greater access to a high-quality college degree for students from all backgrounds,” said Acting Chancellor Steve Relyea. “In essence, we are eliminating our reliance on a high-stress, high-stakes test that has shown negligible benefit and providing our applicants with greater opportunities to demonstrate their drive, talents and potential for college success.”

Students from West Contra Costa Unified’s Vista virtual academy and Hercules Middle School launched a weather balloon miles up into the earth’s stratosphere Tuesday after studying weather patterns and learning about meteorological studies.

The balloon launch, dubbed “Mission Validate” is part of the district’s partnership with the “Never Stop Looking Up” research Group, a collective of scientists, engineers and mathematicians who work to inspire students.

The balloon will collect weather data, which students will analyze. GPS location of the weather balloon can be tracked here.

Members of the United Teachers Los Angeles voted to ratify the union’s agreement with Los Angeles Unified to lift the district’s masking mandate Wednesday after reaching a tentative agreement Friday over the mask mandate pending a vote from the union’s members.

Of the members who voted, 84% voted for the agreement, which would end the indoor mask mandate and ensure continued weekly testing for students and employees through the end of the school year. Only students and staff at early education centers or in other early education programs outside of expanded transitional kindergarten and transitional kindergarten will be required to continue to wear their masks, per the agreement. Students and staff will also be required to test before returning from spring break in April.

“Our health and safety priorities in negotiations with the district are two-fold: to ensure the continuation of the weekly COVID-19 testing program that has helped keep our communities safe and to protect our youngest learners in early education programs who are not able to be vaccinated.” UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz said in a statement. “The agreement achieves both of these critical goals.”

Though the agreement calls for the district to continue weekly testing until June, the district is still seeking to change that policy. The district will meet with the teachers union in mid-April and mid-May to re-negotiate.

After sharp declines in enrollment during the pandemic, new applications to enroll in San Francisco Unified failed to rebound for next year, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

About 14,000 families submitted applications for fall 2022, mostly to enter kindergarten, sixth grade and ninth grade. Overall, the district has about 50,000 students. The application numbers were similar to last year, even after the district invested heavily in outreach efforts.

The district was hoping for a significant enrollment boost as it emerges from the pandemic and a controversial school board recall. The district currently faces a $125 million budget shortfall.

“The fact is, we have nearly a decade of declining enrollment — we cannot blame the pandemic entirely,” school board President Jenny Lam told the newspaper. “We need to increase enrollment across all grades. … We are going to be working hard to rebuild trust with families in many facets of their child’s education.”

A new analysis by the research nonprofit PACE (Policy Analysis for  California Education) examines the tradeoffs and various options for one of the key decisions awaiting the Legislature this spring: how to fund TK-12 schools following two years of steep drops in student enrollment and attendance. Even before Covid, the California Department of Finance had projected that enrollment would fall statewide over the next decade.

California uses a district’s average daily attendance as the basis for determining its general funding through the Local Control Funding Formula; it encompasses more than 70% of revenue from the state.

Californian is one of only six states to base funding on attendance; most states have switched to an overall enrollment-based funding formula.

Since Covid, attendance has plummeted and chronic absenteeism has risen in most districts; the preliminary estimate is that enrollment has dropped 4.6% over two years; attendance fell by 500,000 students in 2019-20, the year of remote learning – 8.5%.

Attendance-based funding incentivizes districts to reach out to families to see that kids show up to school; it may be a reason why California ranks among the top 10 states in student attendance, with a pre-Covid 5-year average of 95.6%. But it’s also a regressive fiscal policy, as Carrie Hahnel and Christina Baumgardner, authors of the report Student Count Options for School Funding, point out: Districts with more low-income, foster and homeless students and English learners tend to have lower attendance rates for multiple reasons, and therefore they suffer greater financial penalties. “This dilutes the equitable funding goals” of the Local Control Funding Formula, they state.

Funding based on enrollment, as currently measured in October, would cost an additional $3.4 billion – but that would not result in higher overall state funding; the total would be redistributed, benefiting districts with students with the greatest needs.

Hahnel will elaborate on the findings and policy tradeoffs as a panelist on Thursday from 4 to 5 p.m. during an EdSource roundtable on the ramifications of declining enrollment. To learn more and register, go here.

Teachers in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District reached a tentative deal with the district early Saturday that would give them a 10.5% raise over the next three years, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The agreement, reached at 1 a.m. Saturday after months of negotiations, represents a compromise between the district and the Mt. Diablo Education Association. Initially, the district offered a 7.5% raise, due to declining enrollment, while the teachers wanted a 12.5% salary boost.

Last week, union members voted overwhelmingly to strike by the end of March, authorizing the first teachers’ strike in the district in more than 40 years. Teachers will vote this week on whether to accept the tentative deal.

“Both (the union) and the district believe this settlement is the best agreement possible after discussion with the fact-finding panel, and considering the available up-to-date information,” according to a joint statement by the district and the union. “Thank you to everyone who has actively engaged in this process, from bargaining team members and board members, to those who attended meetings and public events, to those who have shown support and encouragement to all involved in pursuit of reaching the best possible settlement for our students, our educators, our community, our schools, and our district.”

Los Angeles Unified students will no longer need to wear masks indoors beginning next week, the district announced following a week of negotiation with United Teachers Los Angeles over health and safety protocols. As the indoor mandate ends no later than Wednesday, LAUSD will continue to test students and employees weekly through the end of the school year but will meet twice over testing policy before the agreement expires at the end of June.

“We know some in our school communities and offices will continue to wear masks, while others may not,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in a statement. “Please consider your situation and do what’s best for you or your child. Now that this important issue is behind us, it is time to focus on each student’s full academic potential.”

Over the last week, LAUSD has been one of few school districts to keep its mandate in place following the state’s decision to lift the requirement. The district lifted its outdoor mask mandate in February and has repeatedly voiced over the last week its intention to align with the state and move toward strongly recommending masks indoors rather than requiring them. However, according to an agreement between the district and the teachers union, any changes to the indoor mandate needed first to be negotiated.

Though weekly testing will continue in LAUSD, the district has previously indicated its intention to change that policy. LAUSD has spent more than four times the amount of money on Covid-19 testing and tracing than it expected in June 2021 and, in February, projected spending $527 million before the end of the school year. The district is currently seeking reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover some of those funds and has indicated a desire to invest the funds elsewhere.

“I think we can sort of throttle down some of those protocols and reinvest those dollars — which are significant — into the schoolhouse and into support systems for academic acceleration,” Carvalho told EdSource in late February.

The district will meet with the teachers union in mid-April and mid-May to revisit the testing policy.

Teachers in the Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District in Sonoma County returned to their classrooms Friday, after six-day strike over increased pay. Spring break begins Monday.

The Rohnert Park Cotati Educators Association, which represents more than 300 teachers, reached a tentative agreement with the district Thursday night, according to the district.

The three-year agreement begins this school year and includes a 6% pay raise for the current school year, with 3% ongoing pay retroactive to July 1, said Superintendent Mayra Perez in a letter to families. Next school year, teachers will get a 5% pay increase. They also will get a $2,000 one-time payment for the first year of the contract and a $1000 bonus in the second year. In the third year, there is an increase of 3.61% effective July 1, 2023, and if the cost of living adjustment is higher, the parties will meet to negotiate a split of the increase.

The teachers also agreed to work two emergency days a year without additional compensation if they are needed. The district will increase the extra duty rate to $40 per hour and increase the service credit for new hires to 20 years, Perez said.

The agreement must still be voted on by union members, Perez said.

During the strike, students attended school but were mostly supervised by administrators in auditoriums, according to media accounts.

“We think this agreement is a monumental shift for our district, which will prioritize teachers in the budget,” said the Rohnert Park Cotati Education Association on its Facebook page. “We cannot even begin to express our gratitude for all the amazing support from our community.”

The Congressional Progressive Caucus released a slate of policy priorities they believe President Joe Biden can implement by taking executive action, as The 19th reported, including child care work force issues, canceling federal student loan debt and lowering drug prices for insulin and inhalers.

The proposals include parts of the languishing Build Back Better agenda, Biden’s $1.8 trillion domestic economic agenda that included proposals intended to support working women such as universal pre-kindergarten, subsidized child care for most American families and an extension of the expanded child tax credit. 

Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus began discussing what Biden could accomplish by executive action in December as plans for a Senate vote on Build Back Better fell apart because Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he would not vote for it, sealing its fate, as The 19th reported. Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington said that “progressives understand that our mandate in this governing moment is to deliver for working people and to leave no one behind.”

“To that end, we have been pursuing a strong legislative strategy, and we will continue to do that, and that includes numerous conversations with senators, with the White House, with our own leadership, about how to move any piece of our originally called Build Back Better agenda through,” Jayapal told reporters.

The San Diego Unified School District is losing students at a faster pace than school leaders expected, which might mean financial trouble in the future, as the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. 

Enrollment for the current school year is about 95,000 students — about 4,000 fewer than district leaders had projected, according to the district’s latest financial report submitted to the county.

School leaders worry about declining enrollment because California public schools are funded based on how many students show up to class. Both enrollment and attendance totals at many districts have significantly declined during the pandemic.

The state has temporarily “held districts harmless” by letting them use pre-Covid enrollment and attendance numbers as a basis for funding. But that policy is slated to end next school year, and many are expecting a serious financial hit.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘interesting,’ but it’s going to be a tough year,” said Deputy County Superintendent Mike Simonson, as the Union Tribune reported. 

Even before the pandemic, San Diego Unified’s enrollment had been steadily declining by about 1,000 students a year, or roughly 1%. Until 2015, that decline was largely chalked up to charter schools. Then, from 2015 to 2019, both San Diego Unified and the charters began to lose students, suggesting that families were leaving San Diego entirely, most likely due to a lack of affordable housing, school leaders said.

Next came the pandemic. In the fall of 2020, San Diego Unified lost 4,300 students, or about 4%, dipping below 100,000 for the first time in recent memory.

California has not yet released statewide enrollment numbers for this school year, but from fall 2019 to 2020 enrollment dropped 2.6%, compared with a 0.4% decrease the year before. 

To soften the financial blow, Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed allowing schools to calculate their funding based on the average of daily attendance rates from the 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22 school years. Some legislators have also proposed changing the way schools are funded entirely, so it will be based on enrollment, rather than attendance.

Sacramento City Unified School District teachers and many district staff members will go on strike next Wednesday if there is no progress in negotiations between the district’s administration and two of its unions.

Hundreds of people showed up at a rally supporting school employees before the regular school board meeting Thursday afternoon. Some staff wore T-shirts sporting the logo for SEIU Local 221, while district teachers wore red T-shirts symbolizing education’s Red for Ed labor movement.

The unions complained of staffing shortages that have left hundreds of students without a full-time teacher or substitute every day. They say 600 students are on a waiting list for independent study and are getting no instruction. The unions also say that they oppose a district proposal to freeze wages for certificated staff and cut health benefits for family members, saying that would only cause more staffing shortages.

“As teachers, a strike is always a last resort,” said David Fisher, Sacramento City Teachers Association president. “We are available 24 hours, seven days a week between now and the 23rd. But we are prepared to strike for our students next Wednesday because when we fight, kids win.”

Fisher said the district is in the best financial situation in its history, but the district school board, which held a press conference earlier in the day, said the district’s budget has had a persistent structural deficit for years, meaning it has more ongoing costs than incoming revenue.

The teachers union and school district have been negotiating a contract since early 2019. They also have been bargaining over Covid-related issues for about two years, reaching an impasse in December.

Sacramento City Unified is the latest district to call for a strike this month. Teachers in Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, have been on strike since Tuesday, while teachers in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District are also considering a strike.

Los Angeles County’s troubled Central Juvenile Hall was hurriedly emptied of about 140 children last weekend ahead of the arrival of state investigators, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“In interviews with The Times, Probation Department employees described the transfer of approximately 140 children, some with mental health and serious behavior issues, as disorganized and dangerous,” the newspaper reported.

Parents were not notified and some showed up at the facility to visit their children only to find out they had been transferred elsewhere, according to the Times.

The decision to remove the children was made Friday. In November, state regulators had given the county Probation Department, which runs the facility, 60 days to make improvements. Those improvements were made, the Times reported. But a subsequent inspection showed new issues had arisen. Another state inspection had been scheduled for this week.

Juvenile halls in California house youthful offenders who are awaiting court hearings on criminal charges or have been declared a ward of the court by a judge and ordered to serve detention. Most are minors, although some nonviolent offenders between ages 18 to 21 can serve sentences in juvenile halls.

Law school applications around the country are soaring, Inside Higher Ed reported Thursday.

“All the events that we’ve had — the pandemic, the Jan. 6 Capitol insurgence, the Black Lives Matter movement, the murder of George Floyd — everything has put a spotlight on why law matters,” Kellye Testy, president and chief executive officer of the Law School Admission Council, told Inside Higher Ed.

“Law schools received especially high numbers of applications in 2021, and volumes remain above historic levels this year,” Inside Higher Ed reported.

“Flush with students, the U.S. legal education sector is undergoing some of its biggest changes in years. Law schools are amending their curricula to include more work experience and consideration for student well-being,” according to the report. “LSAC, which administers the Law School Admission Test, is developing an undergraduate curriculum that could one day replace the test for some students.”

The Contra Costa County Office of Education will take authority over West Contra Costa Unified’s financial planning because the district is “no longer a going concern” after running a projected deficit and after the school board on March 9 rejected a proposal to cut about 200 teacher and school staff positions.

A letter sent to the district on March 15 was titled “Going Concern Determination.” It said, “This means the West Contra Costa Unified School District is no longer fiscally healthy and is unable to meet its financial obligations.”

The letter outlines the actions the county will take under the state education code, since it has determined that the district isn’t expected to meet its financial obligations over the next two years. Interim Associate Superintendent of Business Services Robert McEntire predicts that under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January budget proposal, the district will be forced to overspend about $21 million in 2022-23 and $41 million in 2023-24, running out of cash in October 2023, at which time it will automatically go into state receivership.

The County Office of Education intends to take four actions described in the letter: staying or rescinding any school board action that could put the district further away from fiscal solvency; assisting the board with a multiyear financial recovery plan; assisting with the development of next year’s budget; and appointing a fiscal adviser to the district.

The school board could have sought an appeal to the county’s determination but chose not to at Wednesday’s school board meeting.

Though the county superintendent has the power to rescind board actions, the statutory deadline for districts to notify employees who could be out of work next year was Tuesday. Since the board voted March 9 not to send out most of those notices, those employees can’t be laid off.

West Contra Costa Unified’s financial outlook could significantly change between now and the May/June period when it adopts its budget for next year. The governor will revise his budget proposal in May based on changes in projected revenue, and the Legislature will vote on the state budget in June. The latest forecasts project state revenues will be as much as $20 billion higher than Newsom’s forecast.

Newsom, in January, proposed giving districts the option of being funded on a three-year average of daily attendance rates, which would significantly decrease West Contra Costa Unified’s deficit, McEntire said. The district blames much of its projected shortfall on sharp declines in enrollment and attendance. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond has also co-sponsored legislation that would take attendance out of the school funding equation, which would also soften the blow.

Teachers continue their strike in Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco.

According to the Press Democrat, the teachers union and the district did not reach a deal in their hours of negotiations with a state mediator on Tuesday.

Superintendent Mayra Perez said, “We are closer than we have been” and called the negotiations “productive.” The bargaining team for the teachers’ union, however, said they were “nickeled and pennied,” adding, “The District continues to be unreasonable.”

Teachers are calling for a 6% wage increase for this year, 5% next year and 3.6% in 2023-2024, equating to 14.6% over three years. This is what was recommended by a state-appointed neutral fact-finder, according to the Santa Rosa-based newspaper.

The district has instead offered one 3% increase and a 3% one-time bonus.

The president of San Francisco State University is opposing a decision to hire more faculty for the Arab and Muslim Ethnicity and Diasporas Studies program.

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the head of the program, professor Rabab Abdulhadi, says she was promised two additional faculty members by Kenneth Monteiro, then the university’s dean of ethnic studies, in 2006. Since then, the university has hired 10 new professors for other ethnic studies programs, but not Arab and Muslim studies.

A faculty panel found that the university broke its promise and that new teachers should be hired. But the university’s president vetoed that decision, saying the promise was not binding.

There have been ongoing tensions about the program.

After three of San Francisco Unified’s seven school board members were ousted in a recall election last month, Mayor London Breed appointed three replacements last week.

Ann Hsu, Lainie Motamedi and Lisa Weissman-Ward, all of whom have children in the public school system, have been sworn in as the district grapples with a $125 million projected deficit and considers laying off hundreds of educators, according to NBC Bay Area.

Hsu is a resident of the Richmond District and serves as president of Galileo Academy of Science and Technology’s Parent Teacher Student Association as well as chairperson of the district’s Independent Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee. She was born in China and is a former tech entrepreneur, according to NBC Bay Area.

Motamedi lives in the Inner Sunset and works as volunteer lead for the National Park Service. She most recently served as co-chair of the SFUSD Public Education Enrichment Fund Committee.

Weissman-Ward is a resident of the Mission District and works as associate director of the Stanford Law School Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. She’s a member of the National Lawyers Guild and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Motamedi, Hsu, and Weissman-Ward will serve the remainder of the recalled members’ terms, which expire Dec. 31. All three seats will be up for election in November.

San Francisco Unified superintendent Vincent Matthews apologized Monday to hundreds of educators who haven’t been paid by the district — some since January.

Educators and union leaders held a rally outside San Francisco Unified headquarters Monday calling on officials to fix the payroll glitch. The district admitted that a recent change in payroll systems caused the problem.

The district is working to fix the issue and has made between 600 and 700 payments since Friday, Matthews told ABC 7. Members of the United Educators of San Francisco say they will camp at district headquarters until they get their checks.

Both chambers of California’s Legislature have approved legislation that would save the University of California Berkeley from needing to reduce its in-person enrollment by thousands of students this fall.

Senate Bill 118, which now goes to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, would offset a court order requiring Berkeley to freeze its on-campus population at 2020-21 levels, when Berkeley enrolled about 2,600 fewer students than it currently does.

That court decision came after a neighborhood group sued UC last year and, citing the California Environmental Quality Act, argued that Berkeley hasn’t examined the impact of its growing enrollment on things like housing and noise in the area.

The legislation, which was approved 69-0 by the Assembly and 33-0 in the Senate, would give California’s public colleges and universities 18 months to complete an environmental review when a court determines that a college’s on-campus population exceeds its projections. The bill would be retroactively applied to Berkeley and gives the university more time to resolve the issue.

To comply with the court order and reduce its on-campus population, the campus had planned to ask some students to enroll online this fall and others to defer their enrollment until January. But if Newsom signs the legislation that was approved by lawmakers Monday, those measures would no longer be necessary.

Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, chair of the Assembly’s budget committee, said during Monday’s Assembly floor session that Berkeley made mistakes by not “adequately projecting” its enrollment growth and by not asking for a stay of the original court decision, which was handed down last summer by Judge Brad Seligman of Alameda County.

But, Ting added, it should not be students who pay the price for those mistakes. “I don’t think 5,000 students should really pay the price for bad bureaucratic decisions,” he said.

The Lodi Unified school board voted to give Superintendent Cathy Nichols-Washer a 5.07% pay raise, her second raise in eight months, bringing her annual base salary to $291,000, according to the Lodi News-Sentinel.

The board voted 5-1, with one abstention, to boost Washer’s salary. The longest-serving superintendent in San Joaquin County, Washer also received a 3.2% pay raise in June. Board members said the boosts in pay are consistent with her contract.

Teachers union President Michelle Orgon questioned the pay raise.

“The outline of the 5% and where our superintendent is compared to where our new teachers are, that are having a hard time struggling and having to work two jobs, it would really be helpful to have a living wage for our teachers, to only have to work one job,” Orgon told the newspaper. “That structure seems out of balance, in our opinion.”

Students at a middle school in Rohnert Park walked out of class Friday, made signs and posters, and joined their teachers on a picket line, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported.

Friday marked the second day of a strike by teachers and aides in the Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District over pay and working conditions. About 50 students from Technology Middle School participated in the protest, according to the newspaper.

“I think it’s kind of lame how they have to do this,” sixth grader Isadora McKenna-McKee told the newspaper. “Most of my family are teachers. They work a lot harder than they should.”

Los Angeles Unified is working with labor partners and stakeholders to transition away from its indoor mask mandate, the district announced Friday. LAUSD met Friday with United Teachers Los Angeles to negotiate health and safety protocols. Per UTLA’s agreement with the district, any changes to the indoor mask mandate must be negotiated between both the district and UTLA. 

Negotiation comes as California ends its indoor mask mandate for K-12 schools across the state Saturday and follows LAUSD’s end to outdoor masking requirements last month —  the first major decision made under Superintendent Alberto Carvalho since starting his new position.

Since February, Carvalho has indicated that the district would continue to adhere to the advice of medical experts over Covid-19 protocols. In an interview with EdSource last month, he said he expected masking requirements to loosen “going into the summer” and said the district would come forward with thresholds and indicators by which future Covid-19 protocols would be based.

“We ought to maintain nimbleness — the ability of our district to pivot quickly … which is what are the best indicators, the best thresholds and the best data that we follow,” he told EdSource in late February.

A member of the Orange County Board of Education is facing a possible lawsuit because she is also a member of the Tustin City Council.

According to the Voice of OC, Santa Ana resident Mike Tardif is alleging that Orange County Board of Education trustee Beckie Gomez does not have the right to hold two offices at once, because the jurisdictions overlap.

The lawsuit is identical to one brought against another trustee, Tim Shaw, last year, who at the time also held a position on the La Habra City Council.

In order for a case like this to proceed, the state Attorney General’s Office has to approve the lawsuit. In Shaw’s case, the lawsuit was approved to move forward, but Shaw resigned from office before it could go to court.

Teachers, bus drivers, maintenance workers and other staff who belong to two unions in the Sacramento City Unified School District voted to authorize a strike if union leaders believe no progress is made in negotiations.

As reported by the Sacramento Bee, leaders from the Sacramento City Teachers Association and SEIU Local 1021, which represents other staff, said they are frustrated by the teacher and staff shortage that leaves hundreds of students without a full-time teacher or substitute every day, and by the inadequate instruction for students who opted to enroll in independent study programs.

The unions also said that they oppose a district proposal to freeze wages for certificated staff and cut health benefits for family members.

In an email to families, Superintendent Jorge Aguilar wrote that a strike would cause “chaos” for families and said the district has offered to provide extra pay for substitutes, nurses, and teachers in independent study.

The House of Representatives passed a $1.5 trillion bipartisan spending package Wednesday that includes about $18.4 billion in funding for key child care and early learning programs, Fortune reported. 

The omnibus package, which is expected to pass the Senate this week, includes increases for a number of federal child care and early education programs, including roughly $11 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start and $6.2 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. The grant provides federal funding to states for child-care subsidies for low-income families and child care providers. 

While the proposed package provides funding for critical federal programs that help millions of American children and families, it doesn’t include most of President Joe Biden’s previous proposals for universal pre-kindergarten, subsidized child care or training and support for early childhood educators. The funding also doesn’t address the “sweeping, systemic problems” that many experts say plague the child care industry. 

Throughout the pandemic, child care providers have faced increased operating costs, razor-thin profit margins, unpredictable attendance and hiring challenges, all of which took a toll on an industry already in crisis.  

“The omnibus spending package includes modest, needed increases in funding to narrow and existing programs, ones that serve only a portion of eligible low-income children,” says Julie Kashen,  a senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at the Century Foundation, an advocacy organization. “In other words, it provides a little extra support to a sector that has teetered on the brink during COVID,” Fortune reported.

UC Berkeley and the city of Berkeley are moving ahead with plans to relocate unhoused people living in People’s Park as the university prepares to build student housing on the site, Berkeleyside reported.

The roughly 55 people living in the park will be moved to a  nearby motel where the university and city have signed an 18-month lease, according to the report. The move is among the major promises made by Chancellor Carol Christ when the university  decided to build housing on the site, a move that spurred several lawsuits.

University of California regents voted last year to build a $312 million project for 1,100 students  at the park, which was the site of protests during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.

Construction is scheduled to begin later this year.

West Contra Costa Unified’s school board on Wednesday voted down two proposals to potentially cut 200 teacher and school staff positions at the end of school year.

Unless the board holds a special meeting to reverse course before Tuesday — the statutory deadline for districts to notify employees who could be out of work — those employees are shielded from layoffs.

The board voted 3-2 against both proposals, which called for the reduction or discontinuance of the equivalent of 93.2 teachers and other certificated staff and 107 playground supervisors, outreach workers, tutors and other classified staff. Board members Jamela Smith-Folds, Otheree Christian, and Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy voted no on the proposals; board members Mister Phillips and Leslie Reckler voted yes.

Though Superintendent Chris Hurst assured attendees of Wednesday’s meeting that no layoffs would be final until May, and that the notices were only precautionary, teachers and union leaders warned that school staff who get pink slips would likely look elsewhere for work rather than wait to see if their notices were rescinded. The district is already struggling to recruit employees for vacant positions, so losing more staff would only make recruitment harder. That could lead to more consolidated classes, school disruption and staff burnout in the fall, opponents of the proposal said.

On the other hand, interim Associate Superintendent of Business Services Robert McEntire said he anticipated the district won’t be able to keep up with increased expenses next year and will run out of cash. As required, McEntire based that prediction on the 2022-23 state budget plan Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed in January. The governor will revise his budget proposal in May based on changes in projected revenue, and the Legislature will vote on the budget in June. The latest forecasts project state revenues will be as much as $20 billion higher than Newsom’s forecast.

The proposed staff cuts would have shaved off around $12.5 million from West Contra Costa Unified’s anticipated 2022-23 budget, putting the district in the clear another year. But it is still expected to run a deficit in 2023-24, according to McEntire.

The board did end up voting Wednesday to cut five principal and assistant principal positions, with only Smith-Folds voting no.

President Joe Biden’s administration is signaling it may extend a freeze on student loan repayment and interest, Politico reported Wednesday.

“Education Department officials instructed the companies that manage federal student loans to hold off on sending required notices to borrowers about their payments starting, according to three people familiar with the matter,” Politico’s Michael Stratford reported.

That directive, Stratford wrote, “is the clearest indication yet that the Biden administration is leaning toward another extension of the pandemic relief.”

Payments and interest on most student loans have been suspended since March 2020, when then-President Donald Trump signed the first pandemic relief legislation. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have extended the freeze.

Quality is a term that gets bandied about a lot in the national discourse about early learning programs, but there is little consensus on just what constitutes quality. Is it measured in test scores, joyful learning experiences or equitable access to a diverse range of programs?

Trust for Learning, a philanthropic partnership supporting early childhood education, recently released a report that investigates this question. It explores the fundamental principles of ideal learning, including the significance of play, nurturing and personalized learning. The report also suggests best practices for policy and assessment, “Measuring the Quality of Early Learning Environments. 

One key factor is how to address equity issues within programs and systems. The goal of the report is to envision a new approach to measuring quality in early education programs. 

“First, we cannot call early learning programs high-quality unless all children have equitable access to resources, opportunities, and experiences that nurture their development,” said Chrisanne Gayl, chief strategy and policy officer at Trust for Learning. “Our measurements of quality must take into account these equity considerations and reflect what science tells us children need to thrive emotionally, socially, physically, and academically.

“The principles of ideal learning give us a common framework to understand what high-quality programs should look like in practice. Our report provides a blueprint for practitioners and policymakers to reimagine a holistic, equity-based approach to measuring program quality across multiple settings for young children.”

A week ahead of the state-mandated March 15 deadline to formally notify school employees who could be out of work next year, West Contra Costa Unified’s school board were to vote at a special meeting Wednesday night on $12.5 million in staff cuts.

The agenda for the meeting, which was published late afternoon Tuesday, doesn’t clearly say how many positions might be eliminated. Under the proposed resolution, special education teachers or teachers in what the district deems are “hard-to-fill positions,” such as math, science, and foreign languages, aren’t included in the layoffs.

The layoffs are part of a total of $34.8 million in cuts the district projects it needs to make to the 2022-23 school year budget in order to meet its financial obligations and reduce its structural deficit, despite record state and federal funding.

As the pandemic drags into its third year, a cluster of new studies shows that about a third of children in the youngest grades are missing reading benchmarks, as the New York Times reported, up significantly from before the pandemic.

One study found that early reading skills were at a 20-year low this fall, a situation the researchers described as “alarming.” In another study, 60% of students at some impoverished schools have been identified as at high risk for reading problems — twice the number of students as before the pandemic, according to Tiffany P. Hogan, director of the Speech and Language Literacy Lab at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston.

All children have been affected, but Black and Latino children, as well as those from low-income families, those with disabilities and those who are not fluent in English, seem to have fallen the furthest behind.

“We’re in new territory,” said Hogan about the pandemic’s toll on reading. If children do not become competent readers by the end of elementary school, the risks are “pretty dramatic,” she said, as the New York Times reported. Poor readers are more likely to drop out of high school, earn less money as adults and become involved in the criminal justice system.

To be sure, the literacy crisis did not start with the pandemic. In 2019, results on national and international exams showed stagnant or declining American performance in reading, and widening gaps between high and low performers. The causes are myriad, but many experts point to a lack of teachers trained in phonics and phonemic awareness — the foundational skills of reading. The pandemic has merely worsened this situation.

In a brief mention in a short State of the State Address on Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom contrasted “reforms” in other states to prohibit the teaching of race and gender in schools to the “real transformation of our public education system” by “creating choices, real choices for parents and unprecedented support for their kids.”

Newsom did not single out Texas, which passed a law banning teaching of critical race theory, or Florida, whose governor is poised to sign a bill dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” that bars educators from discussing sexual orientation with young students.

Instead, he chided the faux reforms “being promoted in some states where…they’re banning books, where…you can sue your history teacher for teaching history and where you can’t even say you, the word ‘gay,’” he said.

Advocates of broadening taxpayer-supported school choice are collecting signatures to put an initiative on the November ballot that create education savings accounts. Families with children in school would get $15,000 per year that they could spend on a private or religious school or choose a school district or charter school.  Newsom is expected to oppose that measure if it makes the ballot.

Newsom’s reference to “real choices” were to newly enacted programs that will expand options for parents in public schools: transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds, before and after-school programs and summer school guaranteed for all low-income children, universal school breakfasts and lunches, child savings accounts for college seeded by a $500 contribution by the state, and free tuition to community college.

“That’s the California way,” he said.

During his 18-minute speech from a state office building in Sacramento, his fourth State of the State, Newsom touted California’s innovative economy, commitment to health care for low-income families and housing for the homeless, and the state’s embrace of diversity. He indicated, without giving details, that he would propose ways to reduce the impact of soaring gasoline prices.

“People have always looked to California for inspiration,” he said. Now in the, the midst of turmoil and war in Ukraine, he said that California is “doing what we’ve done for generations – expanding the horizon of what’s possible.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced on Twitter Tuesday that he’s running for a second term, with a focus on students’ mental health and literacy skills.

“I hope to serve the next 4 years with a focus on recruiting 10,000 new counselors to support our students, ensuring our children can read by the 3rd grade, and preparing our children for jobs of the future,” Thurmond wrote.

Before being elected in 2018 to the state’s top education post, Thurmond represented the Richmond area in the state Assembly and served on the West Contra Costa Unified school board and the Richmond City Council. As state superintendent, Thurmond oversees California’s 10,000 public K-12 schools and 6.2 million students.

Thurmond is a Democrat, although the position of state superintendent is nonpartisan.

The Los Angeles Unified school board approved Jaime Torrens as the senior adviser to the superintendent Tuesday. Torrens comes from Miami-Dade County Public Schools after 37 years at the school system — 10 months as deputy superintendent and two years before that as chief of staff.

Torrens joins Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who started at LAUSD last month after nearly 14 years at Miami-Dade. Torrens was originally offered the interim superintendent position for Miami-Dade following Carvalho’s departure, but he declined it.

Faced with “a major vacancy crisis,” Los Angeles Unified must make hiring a priority in its highest-need schools in order to prevent another cycle that perpetuates inequities throughout the district, a nonprofit organization urged in a policy brief.

The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which runs schools serving 13,200 students within LAUSD, released “Closing the Equity Gap in School Staffing” on Monday. While addressing LAUSD specifically, the brief said that its five recommendations could apply to other districts in which all schools compete equally for talent. “Fundamental changes are needed to make teaching at highest-need schools more attractive, sustainable and effective in the long run,” it said, adding, the district “must make a clear moral commitment” to prioritize Black and Latino students in the city’s highest-need schools.

The report said that, consistent with teacher shortages statewide, LAUSD had more than 10,000 unfilled vacancies among teachers and classified positions as of October. This included 7,000 new positions to address serious student needs, including psychiatric social workers, counselors and classroom teachers to help reduce class sizes; more than half of those were unfilled.

In past cycles, such as rehiring after the Great Recession, highest-need schools ended up with the most permanent substitute teachers, the least experienced and often underqualified teachers, the report said. Its authors are Deycy Hernandez, senior vice president of policy and advocacy, and Chase Stafford, vice president of policy and planning, at the partnership.

Its five recommendations are:

• Limiting hiring at low-need schools until highest-need schools are staffed.
• Doubling the support provided to highest-need schools for staffing.
• Giving “red carpet” treatment to teachers going to highest-need schools, such as larger stipends to National Board Certified teachers, and continuing recruitment and retention stipends for all credentialed teachers.
• Focusing investments in the pipeline on educators of color and highest-need schools.
• Transforming working conditions for staff at highest-need schools through differentiating pay for teachers at highest-need schools, reducing class sizes and course loads and providing full-time coaches to support teachers.