California education news: What’s the latest?

Bryan Reece, the chancellor of the Contra Costa Community College District who had been placed on paid suspension two weeks ago, has resigned, according to a statement sent to district employees Wednesday night.

Reece’s resignation was effective Feb. 11, Judy Walters, president of the district’s board of trustees, wrote in an email to employees. He had served as chancellor since Nov. 1, 2020. The trustees appointed “Mojdeh Mehdizadeh, to become the district’s interim chancellor for the period of February 16, 2022 through June 30, 2024, at a starting annual base salary of $357,714,” Walters wrote.

Reece had been first placed on administrative leave Sept. 14, but reinstated Oct. 1 while an investigation of an unspecified personnel matter continued.

Reece was fired as president of Norco College in the Riverside Community College District in June 2019, where he had worked since 2016. No reason was made public.

Along with Los Angeles County’s 80 school districts and the L.A. County Library, the Los Angeles County Office of Education is asking the Federal Communications Commission to take more strides toward closing the digital divide for students.

School and library officials are requesting that the FCC extend funding for school and library tools and services, change requirements surrounding its discount program for those services and adjust the household eligibility for discounted broadband services.

The request comes as many students continue to navigate online learning as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. About 365,000 households lack broadband internet services, with most of those in lower-income communities and Black and Latino households.

The FCC currently runs the Emergency Connectivity Fund, which provides funding for schools and libraries to help cover equipment and service costs for use by students, teachers and others who may lack access at home. The fund is set to expire June 30, but L.A. County schools and libraries are pushing to extend the deadline as students, teachers and staff continue to rely on access amid the pandemic. Schools and libraries must access this funding through the FCC’s E-Rate program, which limits how funding can be requested.

County school and library officials are also asking that the FCC consider altering the eligibility threshold for households applying to its Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides discounts on internet services. Households can receive up to $30 a month toward internet services or up to $75 a month for those on qualifying Tribal lands and can receive a one-time discount on devices. Eligibility is currently based on federal poverty guidelines, but school and library officials are asking that the FCC adjust the threshold to account more adequately for California’s cost of living as was done in Alaska and Hawaii.

“All 80 of our districts and partners in the county Library system have made a powerful statement about the critical importance of affordable and accessible broadband for students and their families,” Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo said in a press release. “With just a few key changes by the FCC, funding already in place can be effectively aligned to make the needed infrastructure improvements to end the digital divide for communities that need it most.”

The daughter of Mexican immigrants who grew up in the Imperial Valley and has represented pro bono clients applying for asylum and seeking compliance with fair housing laws has been nominated for the California Supreme Court.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the nomination of Patricia Guerrero, 50, on Tuesday. She currently serves as a judge for the California 4th District Court of Appeal, which hears cases in San Diego and Imperial counties. She would be the first Latina to serve on the state’s highest court.

“If confirmed, I look forward to helping instill confidence in the equality and integrity of our judicial system while honoring the sacrifices of my immigrant parents and demonstrating to young people that anything is possible in our wonderful and diverse country,” she said in a statement.

After working her way through UC Berkeley and Stanford Law School, Guerrero worked in private practice and served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California and as a Superior Court judge in San Diego County. In her volunteer work, she discussed legal issues in schools though the Judicial Council’s Judges in the Classroom program.

Guerrero would succeed former Justice Mariano-Florentino “Tino” Cuéllar, who also grew up in the Imperial Valley after emigrating from Mexico. Cuéllar resigned to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was a dissenter in two important education cases before the seven-member court in 2016. In 4-3 decisions, the court declined to hear a lawsuit that had challenged teacher tenure and dismissal laws, Vergara v. California, and two combined lawsuits in which lower courts found no constitutional basis for challenging the Legislature’s authority to determine what it considers adequate school funding.

The deciding vote in that case was cast by the court’s then-newest member, Leondra Kruger. Kruger is one of three individuals President Joe Biden is considering to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. If she does succeed him, Newsom would get a third nominee to the high court. His first nominee, Martin Jenkins, the first openly gay justice, was Newsom’s chief legal adviser.

Guerrero’s nomination must be confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced the awarding of an additional $116 million toward the state’s Homekey program, which provides housing for people experiencing homelessness or on the brink of it.

The millions in new funding will be allocated to seven projects located across the state in the cities of Los Angeles, Salinas and Napa, plus the counties of Orange and Ventura. Each city and county will use the funding to acquire permanent housing that includes a variety of amenities, such as education and employment services, housing stability support and community-building activities like gardening and art. The funding announced Wednesday is in addition to $322.8 million awarded to cities and counties statewide since late last year.

While the Homekey program, which is administered by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, was created to help individuals of all ages, there are a handful of projects in the state that specifically support young people who are homeless. Two of those projects receiving funding Wednesday are located in Ventura County and the city of Napa.

Many governors across the country are using their annual State of the State addresses to highlight the essential role of early learning and child care for families and society at large, according to an analysis by the First Five Years Fund, a research and advocacy group.

Amid a deepening child care crisis, the focus seems to cut across party lines, researchers say, with 66% of the governors stressing that investing in child care is one of the best ways to get parents back into the workforce and help the economy and 50% pointing to funding pre-K programs as a critical way to invest in the future of their state. It’s also noteworthy that 1 in 5 governors suggested that emergency federal funds were critical to helping working families and the child care sector weather the pandemic.

“Child care and pre-K have proved to be a rare, unifying priority for both Democratic and Republican leaders for years,” said Sarah Rittling, executive director of the fund. “This year’s State of the State speeches continue that long tradition, with bipartisan governors from across the country affirming their commitment to improving access to high-quality early learning and care options. It’s clear that in any state, from South Carolina to Hawaii, leaders know these are smart investments for parents, children and their states’ economies.”

With inflation at a 40-year high, most families are feeling the pinch of higher prices at the grocery store, on their heating bill and when they pay rent. But, as Market Watch reported, there’s one expense that’s grown even faster in recent years: child care. 

The growth in child care prices exceeded the annual rate of inflation in 2020 and 2019, according to a new report from Child Care Aware, an advocacy and research organization. The average annual cost of day care for infants hit just over $12,300 in 2020, an increase of  $1,000 over the prior year. 

Inflation, which measures how fast prices increase over time, hit an annual rate of 7.5% in January, which means that households are spending about $250 more per month on goods and services than they were in 2019, as Market Watch cited, when inflation was about 2.1%.

Meanwhile, over the past three decades, child care costs have accelerated faster than other basic family expenses such as housing and groceries, and incomes haven’t kept pace, according to research from First Five Years Fund, a group that advocates for affordable child care. 

San Franciscans exasperated over how public schools have been managed during the pandemic tossed three school board members out of office Tuesday in a recall election that drew national attention. In a landslide, voters recalled board President Gabriela López and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga. Partial returns from 128,000 mostly mail-in votes, more than seven out 10 backed the recall, with nearly 79% voting to oust Collins, 75% to remove Lopez and 72% to recall Moliga.

It marked the first recall election in San Francisco in 40 years.

The turnout is expected to be light; fewer than half of registered voters retuned mail-in ballots, compared with last year’s recall vote of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Organizers who started the recall effort more than a year ago included parents who grew impatient as schools remained closed last year, even though Covid infection rates were among the lowest in the state. They criticized the board’s misplaced priorities — renaming 44 schools with what they considered white supremacist associations, including George Washington High, Abraham Lincoln High and Diane Feinstein Elementary, board infighting, and an unsolved $125 million deficit.

“It’s not about renaming, itself,” recall co-lead Autumn Looijen told Politico. “It’s about renaming while the house is on fire.”

Collins sued the other board members for $87 million claiming they infringed her free speech — a lawsuit thrown out of court. The board eventually board shelved the renaming plan, and a judge put in abeyance another controversial decision, to move from a merit-based admissions policy at selective Lowell High School to a lottery. The board cited systemic racism and a lack of student diversity as reasons for the change. That riled the Asian community, which considered the decision aimed at them, since 50% of Lowell’s 2,800 students are Asians.

The recall campaign raised $2 million, more than 10 times the funding of recall opponents. Among those backing the recall were state Sen. Scott Weiner, several members of the board of supervisors and Mayor London Breed, who will name the replacement members who will serve until a November election.

Recall opponents, which included United Educators of San Francisco, characterized the election as an effort to privatize schools and undermine progressive values. Big donors included the business and real estate community and venture capitalist Arthur Rock, a Democrat.

National observers watched with fascination to divine the significance of infighting among progressives in a city where Republicans make up 7% of registered voters. Others saw the vote as a nonpartisan reminder that parents in San Francisco, as elsewhere, want schools open and budgets balanced.

Organizers might have attempted to recall all seven board members, but only three had served long enough to qualify for a recall.

San Francisco voters are headed to the ballot box Tuesday for the special recall election of three school board members, the city’s first recall election since 1983.

School board members Gabriela Lopez, Faauuga Moliga and Alison Collins have been the targets of a $1.9 million recall campaign that’s caught national attention. The effort stems from anger over the board’s reluctance to open schools last year, as well as other issues.

With only a small number of returns of early mail-in ballots, it’s likely the special election will have low turnout, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday.

Two Oakland educators haven’t eaten for 15 days in protest of the decision to close, merge and reduce grades for 11 schools in the district.

Andre San-Chez and Moses Omolade, who work at Westlake Middle School, have pledged to continue their hunger strike until Gov. Gavin Newsom meets with them, as well as Oakland Unified’s superintendent and school board members.

Newsom’s office, as of Tuesday, has not responded to EdSource’s inquiries regarding any plans to meet with the hunger strikers.

Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, D-Alameda, has met with the hunger strikers and introduced a bill that could potentially put off the closures. The district was under pressure to make the decision in order to receive a $10 million grant from the state, contingent on following through with its previous fiscal solvency plans. If Oakland Unified didn’t close at least some of its schools this year, Alameda County Superintendent L.K. Monroe warned, it would not qualify for the grant.

Bonta’s Assembly Bill 1912, co-authored by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, would provide the district with that $10 million grant and push the closure deadline back to the end of the 2023-24 fiscal year.

The University of California Berkeley could be forced to admit 3,050 fewer incoming freshmen in fall 2022 than previously anticipated under a court ruling, the university said Monday.

The California Court of Appeals issued a ruling that requires Berkeley to follow a lower court order requiring the campus to freeze enrollment at 42,437 students, the same number of students that enrolled in 2020-21. UC’s board of regents is appealing the ruling to the California Supreme Court.

To get to its 2020-21 enrollment levels, Berkeley estimates that it would have to reduce the incoming freshman class by at least 3,050 students than it previously expected to admit. To achieve that, the campus would also need to offer admission to about 5,100 fewer students than it had planned to.

“In a typical year, the campus offers admission to approximately 21,000 freshmen and transfer students and enrolls about 9,500 of them. Based on the usual yield rates at Berkeley — the number of students who accept an offer of admission — a reduction of at least 5,100 in undergraduate admissions offers would be needed in order to reduce by 3,050 students the overall enrollment level that had been planned for 2022-23,” Berkeley said in a statement.

The mental health of students, teachers and principals was the top concern among superintendents surveyed recently by the Rand Corp. Concerns about mental health outweighed worries about student engagement, discipline, student and teacher attendance and declining enrollment.

The survey, conducted in October through December 2021, included 359 superintendents across the United States. It also found that in 75% of districts, polarization related to Covid vaccines and safety measures was interfering with schools’ ability to educate students. Controversy surrounding critical race theory was a concern for 40% of the respondents.

Declining enrollment and teacher shortages were “major” concerns among superintendents of urban and high-poverty districts as well as districts that serve mostly Black and Latino students.

Among other things, the report recommends that districts start now to develop plans for remote and hybrid instruction in case a new variant forces school closures again. It also suggests that districts create partnerships with organizations such as teacher colleges to alleviate staff shortages.

As Covid cases and hospitalizations plummet, California will likely drop its statewide school mask mandate sometime after Feb. 28, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly announced Monday.

Ghaly said the state will drop its general indoor mask mandate for vaccinated people starting Tuesday, but this does not apply to schools. Ghaly added that the state is considering dropping the school mask mandate as well but was not prepared to do so quite yet. Over the next two weeks, state health officials will review student vaccination rates to determine when would be an appropriate time to drop the mandate, then announce the decision Feb. 28.

Individual school districts and local health authorities will still reserve the right to keep their own masking policies after the statewide mandate is dropped, Ghaly said.

San Francisco voters have one more day to vote on whether to recall three members of the San Francisco Unified school board.

The election targets school board members Gabriela Lopez, Faauuga Moliga and Alison Collins. Recall organizers, who began their campaign more than a year ago, say the board mishandled school closures during the pandemic, tried to remove a historic mural, eliminated competitive admissions to an elite high school and attempted to rename 44 schools, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The board is also facing a $125 million deficit and needs to hire a new superintendent.

Recall organizers have raised far more money than their opponents. The pro-recall campaign has brought in more than $1.9 million, while supporters of Lopez, Moliga and Collins have raised $86,000.

Twelve California community organizations will share $38 million in grant funds to help young people who are experiencing homelessness, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Friday.

The money will go toward housing, mental health services, meals, transportation and other services aimed at helping young people in California who are experiencing short- or long-term housing instability. More than 35% of the nation’s homeless youth live in California, where the numbers have been increasing due to high housing costs and economic uncertainty tied to the pandemic.

The organizations include Volunteers of America Los Angeles, San Diego Youth Services, Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco and Waking the Village in Sacramento, among others.

“These grants will provide relief and emergency support to young people across California experiencing homelessness, who are too often left in dire situations to fend for themselves,” Newsom said. “We’re providing immediate aid for those living on our streets — bringing resources and services directly to young people in need and helping them onto a path towards a stable future.”

Teachers unions may be an obstacle as Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to lift mask mandates in schools, Politico reported.

California’s teachers unions appear resistant to prematurely lifting mask mandates in schools, citing health and safety concerns. Numerous other states have already lifted school mask requirements, and Newsom is apparently prepared to do the same in California, according to the report.

The state’s largest teachers union, the California Teachers Association, declined to comment for the story, but the second-largest union, the California Federation of Teachers, said that decisions about masks should not be politicized.

“We support developing a plan for transitioning away from masking in schools — an offramp — that is based on science and not politics,” CFT President Jeff Freitas said.

Negotiations between the unions and Newsom are ongoing.

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing staff and a team of educators with expertise in teaching literacy will spend the next four years developing and fine-tuning a performance assessment to replace the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, also known as the RICA, in order for teachers to earn a preliminary multiple subject or preliminary education specialist credential.

Senate Bill 488, which became law in October, requires that the commission replace the RICA with a performance assessment by July 1, 2025.

The state’s current performance assessments allow teachers to demonstrate their competence by submitting evidence of their instructional practice through video clips or written narrative.

Commission Chair Tine Sloan hopes the development of the assessment will help drive instruction in teacher development programs.

“The success of this performance assessment is not just about creating a robust way for candidates to demonstrate their ability to conduct literacy instruction, it’s an opportunity for programs, one, to use something concrete to design their preparation around, and two, to have data and evidence of the way their candidates are engaging in literacy instruction,” she said at a commission meeting Friday.

The California reading instruction test has been a major hurdle for many aspiring teachers for years, prompting the legislation and efforts by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to look for alternatives. About a third of all the teacher candidates who take the test fail the first time, according to state data collected between 2012 and 2017.

Critics also have said that the test is outdated, racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage. Supporters have argued that it ensures prospective teachers understand how to teach reading based on phonics.

Four high school football players from the California School for the Deaf, Riverside, were invited to participate in the coin toss at the Super Bowl as “honorary captains.”

As reported by the New York Times, the four players, Trevin Adams, Christian Jimenez, Jory Valencia and Enos Zornoza, are the captains of their team, the Cubs, which broke records with an almost undefeated season. The team rose to stardom after seven straight losing seasons, defying stereotypes about the abilities of deaf football players.

“I don’t think I ever thought I would go to the Super Bowl,” Jimenez told the newspaper. “My parents have never had that experience. I’m 16 years old and I’m doing the coin toss. I don’t think anything is ever going to replace this.”

California has two schools for the deaf, one in Riverside, serving students in Southern California, and one in Fremont, serving students in Northern California.

A new campaign to recruit more teachers plays with the “I Want You” campaign used during World War I and II to enlist soldiers.

Instead of Uncle Sam pointing at you sternly and asking that you enlist, now it’s three children smiling and pointing to request that you become a teacher.

The campaign was launched by the California Center on Teaching Careers. It includes free online teaching job fairs and an app to help navigate the credentialing process and finding a job.

“We cannot keep playing musical chairs with our existing teachers between districts. To solve this problem, we must recruit new educators into this field,” said Donna Glassman-Sommer, executive director of the California Center on Teaching Careers, according to the Visalia Times-Delta.

California Center on Teaching Careers is housed in the Tulare County Office of Education.

Supporters of legislation to change how districts are funded from daily attendance to yearly enrollment continued to press their case in a news conference Thursday. It was organized by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who announced he would co-sponsor the legislation to make the switch.

Thurmond said that Senate Bill 830, the enrollment-based funding bill authored by Senate Appropriations Chair Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, would not only generate $3 billion more for school districts but would do so more equitably. It would end the situation, he said, in which low-income schools with “the kind of circumstances that drive higher rates of absenteeism find that they lose revenue they need to actually address the issues that cause chronic absenteeism.”

Portantino stressed that California is one of only six states that continue to fund based on a school’s average daily attendance over a year. SB 830 would require districts to apply half of the additional money — the difference between lower funding generated by attendance and the higher amount from enrollment — to measures to address truancy and chronic absenteeism. As a result, Portantino said he expects attendance would actually rise, because more resources would be committed to getting students to school.

Since the start of Covid, the state has protected districts from sharp increases in absences by letting them use pre-pandemic attendance levels. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Finance are proposing to stick with attendance-based funding moving forward, but to allow districts to use a three-year rolling average of daily attendance to even out swings and declines in enrollment.

Saying that Newsom’s “heart is in the right place,” Portantino said he’s open to the option of a three-year average, too, but to apply it to enrollment, not attendance.

Leaders of three labor unions — California School Employees Association, Teamsters Local 856 and the Service Employees International Union  Local 99 — and Los Angeles Unified board President Kelly Gonez also attended the news conference. Gonez said that LAUSD  would gain between $200 million and $300 million in funding if SB 830 were enacted.

With inflation accelerating costs in most areas, school districts received some good news from CalPERS, the pension fund serving school employees other than teachers and administrators.

CalPERS has lowered its projected contribution rates for districts significantly for the five-year period starting in 2022-23. Contributions next year will still be a record high, jumping from 22.92% of an employee’s salary in 2021-22  to 25.40%, but that will be 0.7% less than had been forecast. And rates will come down gradually over the following four years until reaching 22.5% of salary in 2026-27. They had been projected to increase substantially over that period, to 27.60%.

The new rates reflect the huge investment gains in 2020-21, which added $11.1 billion to the CalPERS portfolio. The CalPERS board is expected to approve the new projected rates at its board meeting in April.

Meanwhile, the contribution rate of employees hired after Jan. 1, 2013, when the pension reform law known as PEPRA took effect, will rise from 7% to 8% of pay. Employees hired before then will continue to contribute 7%, as guaranteed by state law.

Students at Occidental College in Los Angeles are protesting what they say was a botched and delayed response to racist texts that a now-former student sent to a classmate in late 2020.

“All Asian people need to die,” one of the texts read, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. Another blamed the global pandemic on Asians, repeating that they “need to die.”

The texts were not disclosed until this month. College President Harry J. Elam “expressed remorse and regret” over the former student’s messages this week, the Times reported.

An Occidental senior, Shanna Yeh, told the newspaper, “It angers me that it took the entire student body feeling hurt and harmed” for the school to finally acknowledge the texts.

As the San Francisco school board recall election nears, the Associated Press reported the ending of merit-based admissions to the city’s top public high school has motivated Asians to become deeply involved in the effort to remove three board members.

The board’s decision to change Lowell High School admissions to a lottery is viewed by San Francisco’s Asian American community “as a direct attack,” the AP reported.

“It is so blatantly discriminatory against Asians,” said Ann Hsu, mother of two San Francisco high schoolers in a story the news service published Thursday. “It is so apparent that the sole purpose is that there’s too many Asians at Lowell.”

The highly watched election is Tuesday.

Most families with children are familiar with the federal child tax credit, given that parents of more than 60 million children received enhanced payments in 2021. But there’s another tax credit geared to parents that may be less well known than the child tax credit but that can be far more generous, as CBS News reported, providing up to $8,000 in tax credits this year. 

The child and dependent care credit was boosted through the 2021 American Rescue Plan, increasing how much parents can claim on their tax returns for child care expenses as well as making it fully refundable. 

The child and dependent care credit isn’t new — it’s been around since the 1970s. It was designed to help working parents offset the cost of day care, after school programs and summer camps. But the credit hadn’t kept up with the pace of child care costs, with the child advocacy group First Five Years Fund noting in 2018 that it only covered about 10% of the typical annual cost of care for two children.

The American Rescue Plan created several tax benefits for families, including a generous expansion of the Child and Dependent Care Credit. Under the expansion, parents can receive a tax credit worth as much as $8,000 — nearly four times the previous limit of $2,100. 

“They are recognizing the increasing cost of child care in our country,” said Robbin Caruso, co-lead of Prager Metis’ National Tax Controversy Practice, as CBS reported. “It’s a huge opportunity for taxpayers, and it shouldn’t be missed out on.”

Nearly 16,000 child care providers, 8,900 child care centers and 7,000 licensed family child care programs permanently closed from December 2019 to March 2021, according to a new report from Child Care Aware of America. 

“Parents continue to struggle to find and afford child care as they re-enter the workforce,” said Lynette M. Fraga, CEO of Child Care Aware. “Child care programs are short-staffed, and providers are burned out. And still, too few children have access to high-quality early learning experiences to prepare them for success in school and beyond. Without large-scale investments in our child care system, such as the Build Back Better Act, these trends will continue.” 

The data, which examines child care supply, demand and affordability, also shows that the national annual average price of child care in 2020 was around $10,174, a 5% increase from 2019.

Other key findings include that, in 3 out of 4 regions of the country, the annual price of center-based child care for an infant exceeds the cost of housing. Across the nation, the annual price of child care exceeds the annual cost of in‑state tuition at a public four‑year university.  

After weeks of protests by students, teachers and families, hours of outcry at school board meetings, and an ongoing hunger strike by two educators, Oakland Unified’s school board in the early hours of Wednesday morning voted to close, merge or reduce grades for 11 schools across the district.

A tense, eight-hour special school board meeting that started Tuesday concluded with school board members voting 4-2 on an amended list of closures, mergers and grade reductions. Board members Gary Yee, Sam Davis, Aimee Eng and Shanti Gonzales voted in favor of the closures; Mike Hutchinson and VanCedric Williams voted against them, and Clifford Thompson abstained.

Under the plan, Community Day School and Parker Elementary will close at the end of the current school year. Carl Munck, Brookfield, Grass Valley, Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy and Horace Mann elementary schools will close at the end of the 2022-23 school year. RISE Community School and New Highland Academy will merge for the start of the 2022-23 school year. Also, La Escuelita TK-8 will no longer offer grades six through eight at the start of the next school year, and Hillcrest K-8 will no longer offer grades six to eight by the start of the 2023-24 school year.

Advocates are calling for protests, staff sickouts and student protests starting Wednesday to denounce the board’s decision.

For weeks, Oakland Unified students, teachers and parents have condemned the school board’s proposal to close and merge up to 15 of the district’s schools, a plan that is expected to pass at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

More than 1,800 people attended the virtual school board meeting, and at 8:40 p.m. the public comment portion of the meeting had reached its second hour. Students whose schools were slated to close spoke about their love of coming to school and seeing their friends and teachers, and adults questioned the reasoning behind closing schools, which the district maintains is needed to address years of enrollment loss.

At the top of the meeting, board member Mike Hutchinson proposed pushing the proposal off until January 2023, giving the district enough time to properly engage with the community and explore alternatives. However, Hutchinson’s proposal didn’t garner enough votes.

Prior to the meeting, board member Sam Davis announced that he would amend the proposal to remove the following schools from the closure and merger list: Prescott Elementary, Westlake Middle School, West Oakland Middle School, Ralph Bunche Academy, Dewey Academy, Manzanita Community School and Fruitvale Elementary School. Davis is expected to amend the resolution after public comment.

Westlake teachers Moses Omolade and André San-Chez, who are on day eight of a hunger strike in protest of the closures, said that even though their school was taken off of the list, they will continue their hunger strike until the district backs off of all school closure plans.

Incoming superintendent Alberto Carvalho will take over the superintendent’s position Monday, following a vote from the L.A. Unified school board. Carvalho, who spent the last 13 years running Miami-Dade County Public Schools, completed his last day with the district Friday. He spent the last three weeks visiting schools across the L.A. district before beginning his new role.

Carvalho will spend the next four years as superintendent, coming to L.A. Unified as one of the highest-paid superintendents in the country. He said he plans to focus on narrowing achievement gaps among various student groups, including low-income students, disabled students and Black and Latino students, as he did at Miami-Dade, the fourth-largest public school system in the country. L.A. Unified is the second-largest district in the country, behind New York City.

Two Oakland teachers have been on a hunger strike for eight days in a protest of Oakland Unified’s proposal to close and merge up to 15 schools.

The board is expected to vote tonight on the proposal, which is expected to pass since the majority of board members have expressed support for it. For weeks, students, teachers and members of the community have held rallies decrying the closures, which affect mostly Black and Latino children.

The teachers, Moses Omolade and André San-Chez, began experienced health problems and medical teams responded to Westlake Middle School to examine them, KPIX reported Tuesday.

Omolade, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle last week, said they do not plan to back down until the school closure proposal is lifted, even if it means risking death.

With the state’s indoor masking requirement expiring Feb. 15, California public health officials said Monday they are also considering updating the masking requirements at schools.

Currently, all K-12 students in California are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status. Several other states this week announced plans to lift their mask mandates for schools as cases from the omicron surge continued to drop.

“The state is continuing to work with education, public health and community leaders to update masking requirements at schools to adapt to changing conditions and ensure the safety of kids, teachers and staff,” California public health officials said in their statement Monday.

Additional adjustments to the state’s policies will be announced in the coming week, they said.

After an unruly protest last week against the state mask mandate, Oakdale Joint Unified in Stanislaus County said that students who refuse to wear masks in classrooms will be referred to independent study, the Modesto Bee reported.

The protest, held at a high school and district office, included about 300 students who refused to wear masks indoors on campus, in violation of state health requirements to slow the spread of Covid. Superintendent Dave Kline said the protesting students could study in the gym and cafeteria, leading to false reports on social media that the students were “barricaded” without heat, the newspaper reported.

The social media attention led to threats of physical violence against school staff, which prompted Kline to refer the student protesters to independent study. The school board is slated to meet Monday night.

“It’s disrupting our educational environment to the point where we just cannot — it’s unsustainable,” Kline told the Bee.

President Joe Biden’s plan to make community college tuition-free was deleted from the Build Back Better spending bill as part of a series of compromises with Republicans, Jill Biden told a group of community college leaders, the New York Times reported.

“One year ago, I told this group that Joe, my husband Joe, was going to fight for community colleges,” Jill Biden, a longtime champion of community colleges, told the Community College National Legislative Summit in Washington, according to the newspaper. “But Joe has also had to make compromises. Congress hasn’t passed the Build Back Better legislation — yet. And free community college is no longer a part of that package.”

The bill originally included $45.5 billion to cover two years of community college tuition for all eligible students, for five years. States would have been required to cover a portion. Democrats are still trying to push through a financial aid package for low- and middle-income students, and may try again for the full tuition waiver for all students in the future, the newspaper reported.

A middle school in San Francisco Unified gave A’s to a sixth grader who never attended class because she was enrolled at a nearby parochial school, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The student received an A in social studies and an A in physical education despite never attending Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. The rest of her grades were “pass” or F’s, the paper reported. Her absences varied from 51 to 82, depending on the class.

The student had attended fifth grade in the district but enrolled at a parochial school for sixth grade. The district assigned her to a middle school anyway, and she remained enrolled even after her mother told the district the girl was attending school elsewhere.

Michael Essien, principal of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School and a veteran educator, said his staff has been overwhelmed this school year due to the teacher shortage, helping students who fell behind during distance learning, low morale and the omicron variant surge.

“We’ve never had a situation like this. Never,” Essien told the newspaper. “Just to be clear, it’s still not an excuse. That means at some point in the system, we failed at our jobs at the school site with taking basic steps and doing our due diligence.”

West Contra Costa Unified’s teachers union, the United Teachers of Richmond, overwhelmingly approved a tentative agreement with the district this week for additional Covid safety measures, citing student and community actions for bringing safety concerns to light.

The district and union reached a tentative agreement Saturday after months of negotiating, and union-members voted 93% in favor of approval throughout the week, United teachers of Richmond announced Friday.

The agreement calls for KN95 masks to be provided daily to all students and staff, weekly testing at all schools for the rest of the school year and twice-a-week testing for all classes where there’s a positive Covid case. It also calls for baseline testing after February and spring break and increases in substitute teacher pay and rates for staff teachers to substitute during their preparation time.

Clovis Unified School District, the last large school district in California without an educators union, now has one to represent its school psychologists and mental health staff.

Forty-nine of the 71 district mental health professionals who participated in the election voted to join the Association of Clovis Educators, formed in June by teachers, psychologists, counselors and others. The association is affiliated with the California Teachers Association and National Education Association. The vote was announced by the Public Employment Relations Board in Sacramento on Friday.

The Association of Clovis Educators is continuing efforts to unionize teachers, who are currently represented by a faculty senate.

The mental health workers began organizing during the pandemic, using Zoom, Facebook, texts, emails and podcasts to build support, according to a news release from the California Teachers Association. They felt they were being left out of district decision-making, according to the release.

“Today, we can say what we’ve long known: that Clovis can still be Clovis while also being a union district,” said Kristin Heimerdinger, a Buchanan High School teacher and ACE spokesperson. “We are thrilled with today’s vote. This is a victory for ACE, for our school psychologists and mental health support professionals, and for students. It is also a building block for our ongoing organizing efforts of more than 2,100 educators, which will continue.”

Barry Jage, the district’s associate superintendent of human resources and employee relations,  released a statement saying the district appreciates and supports the work of its 7,000 employees, including psychologists and mental health professionals.

“We have worked specifically with this group in recent years to increase staffing and add services to best support our students and remain committed to our district’s long history of valuing the voices of our employees and working with their representative groups for the benefit of our students,” Jager said.

A report in USA Today alleges that California State University Chancellor Joseph Castro mishandled sexual harassment allegations against Frank Lamas, Fresno State University’s former vice president for student affairs.

According to the report, when Castro was president of Fresno State, he received at least 12 complaints about Lamas over a six-year period. The complaints included allegations that Lamas stared at women’s breasts, touched women inappropriately, made sexist remarks and retaliated against employees.

The report alleges that Castro never formally disciplined Lamas and that he paid Lamas to leave the university after an investigation into an accusation that Lamas implied he would help an employee get promoted in exchange for sexual favors.

According to the Fresno Bee, Castro released a statement Thursday, in which he says he took all allegations against Lamas seriously, but that the university could not formally investigate any of them until a formal complaint was filed in 2019.

“The unfortunate reality is that public universities face more complex termination procedures and significant civil liability in terminating an employee without documented evidence,” Castro said in the statement.

Los Angeles County schools have about 70% fewer Covid-19 cases now than at the beginning of the spring semester, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Covid-19 cases are still higher in schools than they were before the latest surge.

In the beginning of January, 14% of tests in schools were positive, while last week 4% were positive.

Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer reiterated the importance of wearing masks indoors and outdoors at school and other precautions to avoid more spreading of the virus.

Half of Californians believe the state is “headed in the right direction” and more than half think that the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic is in the past, according to a poll published Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California.

“Although encouraging signs of an economic recovery are present, rising prices are a worrisome trend for consumers,” the poll found.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic-dominated state Legislature “will be able to work together and accomplish a lot this year,” the poll found.

The poll said Covid-19, homelessness and jobs, the economy and inflation top the list when Californians were asked to name the most important issues for the governor and Legislature to work on in 2022.

“Fewer than half of Californians rate their financial situation as excellent or good,” the PPIC found, with  “sharp differences across income and education groups; Californians with lower income levels and less formal education are less likely to rate their personal finances positively.”

Two in 3 say the worst is behind us in the coronavirus outbreak—a significant decline since last May, according to the findings. “About four in ten are concerned about getting the coronavirus and requiring hospitalization—a significant increase since last May. In the midst of the omicron surge, there continue to be demographic, political, and regional disparities in COVID vaccinations.”

The poll also found that about half of Californians think that the state is in an economic recession, with more saying it is a serious or moderate recession rather than a mild recession. “About six in ten Californians in the Central Valley, Inland Empire, and Orange/San Diego—compared to fewer than half elsewhere—think the state is in a recession. Republicans are far more likely than Democrats and independents to hold this view. In recent months, about half of Californians have said the state was in a recession, while earlier in the pandemic the share saying this was much higher.”

Trustees of the Contra Costa Community College District Wednesday placed Chancellor Bryan Reece on paid suspension for a second time, they announced in a statement.

The board “unanimously voted to place Reece on paid administrative leave due to personnel matters. The Governing Board has appointed Mojdeh Mehdizadeh to serve as Acting Chancellor to ensure the stability of the district,” said the statement released late Wednesday.  Mehdizadeh is the district’s vice chancellor.

In a separate email to district  employees, board President Judy Walters wrote, “this is a personnel matter and we cannot comment further at this time.” Reece had first been suspended last year, but was later reinstated.

The board did not specify the reasons for Reece’s suspension on Sept. 14 or for his reinstatement on Oct. 1 following a 3-2 vote during a lengthy closed-door session of the board. Reece had asked that he be reinstated so he could continue his job while the board considered the matter. District spokesman Tim Leong told EdSource that Reece will return to work “while the investigation of a personnel matter continues.”

West Contra Costa Unified is suspending its student vaccine mandate deadline, which had been set for Feb. 18, because thousands of students still have not verified their vaccination status.

The district’s school board on Wednesday directed Superintendent Chris Hurst to return to the next meeting on Feb. 16 with a new deadline proposal, as well as a plan to implement the mandate. Oakland Unified and Los Angeles Unified have already pushed their vaccine deadlines back to August, in line with the expected deadline of the statewide student vaccine mandate.

The original enforcement date for West Contra Unified’s student vaccine mandate was set for Jan. 3, but school board members voted to push it back since more than 7,000 students 12 and older had not verified their vaccination with the district. More have verified their vaccination since then, but the status of more than 6,000 students remained unknown to the district Wednesday.

The district’s independent study program, Vista Virtual Academy, couldn’t even accommodate a small fraction of those students, district officials said. Not offering those students an independent study alternative would have violated state law.

Prior to the meeting, Board President Otheree Christian and board member Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy had also proposed reconsidering the board’s April 2021 “action statement” — not policy — to “reopen for 100% in-person learning this fall pursuant to local, state and federal guidelines.” The board members scrapped the proposal, however, after parents said they were concerned that would result in the district closing campuses. Gonzalez-Hoy said closing campuses was never the intention behind the proposal, but rather to add additional language to ensure safeguards such as testing and masking.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office is estimating that the cost of living increase will be nearly 1% higher than Gov. Gavin Newsom projected in his proposed state budget last month, providing an additional $500 million in general funding for TK-12 schools. And it could grow again by the time of the revised budget in May.

The state bases the COLA on a federal government formula estimating the costs of goods and services for state and local governments. Updated data since the Newsom administration drafted the budget would raise the COLA from 5.33% to 6.17%, according to an LAO brief on Feb. 1 (see page 3). That would increase funding to the Local Control Funding Formula from $3.3 billion to $3.8 billion.

However, an overall decline in student enrollment could reduce that amount, the LAO said — how much depends on which of several proposals to soften that impact the Legislature and Newsom agree on. The budget assumes a 2.2% loss in enrollment.

School Services of California, Inc., a school consulting firm, noted in an analysis that the Federal Reserve’s plans to raise interest rates between now and April could further affect the final COLA calculations.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician known for her work related to childhood trauma, is resigning from her job as California’s first surgeon general to focus on her family, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Burke Harris was appointed to the position in 2019 by Gov. Gavin Newsom. An expert on the long-term health effects of trauma, she was a strong advocate for children’s mental and physical health. Among other steps, she promoted screening for “adverse childhood experiences,” or signs of early trauma.

She also played a key role in California’s efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus, especially among Black and other marginalized communities.

“Dr. Burke Harris’ expertise and leadership in championing equity, mental health and early childhood development have been instrumental in advancing the health and well-being of Californians,” Newsom said. “I thank her for the impactful initiatives and frameworks she has put in place as California’s first-ever Surgeon General.”

California’s chief health officer, Dr. Devika Bhushan, will serve as acting surgeon general.

A new study of about 84,000 Japanese families suggests that the more screen time baby boys were exposed to at age 1, the greater the likelihood they showed signs of autism spectrum disorder by age 3. The pattern did not appear to hold for girls.

In the study, about 330 women said that their child had been diagnosed with autism by age 3, a prevalence of about 0.4%. There were three times as many autistic boys as autistic girls, and the proportion of children with autism increased as screen time increased, according to the study, as Spectrum reported. Some have taken issue with the findings, suggesting there’s a lack of specificity in the methodology.

“The findings are also hard to evaluate because the study lacks detailed information about variables that correlate with infant TV watching,” as Spectrum noted. “These factors were either not measured or only crudely accounted for in the new study.”

However, some researchers are beginning to believe that environmental factors such as exposure to screens, rather than solely biological factors such as genetic predisposition, may play a role in the skyrocketing numbers of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, as Psychology Today reported.

Experts have long warned about the adverse effects of screen exposure on the health of very young children. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that children should not be exposed to screens until they are at least 18 months of age.

Sen. Joe Manchin has declared that President Joe Biden’s vast social and environment bill is “dead,” suggesting that any new push for Democrats’ top domestic priorities would have to arise from a fresh round of negotiations, as AP reported.

“What Build Back Better bill?” Manchin said when reporters asked about it, as PBS reported. “There is no, I mean, I don’t know what you’re all talking about.” Asked if he’d had any talks about it, he added, “No, no, no, no. It’s dead.”

The West Virginia Democrat confirmed the stance he’d taken in December, when he said he couldn’t support the legislation as written. But his latest comments illustrated the election-year challenges facing his party as it struggles to resuscitate parts of the package and win over voters weary of the 2-year-old pandemic and coping with the worst inflation in decades.

Perhaps the most conservative member of his party, Manchin has repeatedly said he remains open to a smaller bill including provisions including free pre-kindergarten programs, environmental reforms and federal health care subsidies. But he has also said negotiations have yet to begin.

That lack of activity, along with Biden’s dismal approval rating in polls, has prompted worries that the landmark effort could fade away. 

In-person classes at UCLA resumed Wednesday after threats of violence made by a former lecturer in the university’s philosophy department caused the campus to move classes online Tuesday.

The suspect, Matthew Harris, currently lives in Boulder, Colorado, and was taken into custody on state charges there Tuesday, police in Boulder said during a news conference Tuesday. Federal prosecutors are also reviewing possible federal charges, Cole Finegan, the U.S. attorney for the District of Colorado, said during the news conference.

Harris sent threats to the philosophy department that included a video titled “UCLA Philosophy Mass Shooting” as well as “an 800-page manifesto with specific threats towards some members of our department,” according to an email that was provided to the Los Angeles Times.

In an email to students, UCLA administrators said they are “greatly relieved” that Harris had been taken into custody.

“The threats made yesterday were frightening for many of us and caused our community to feel vulnerable at an already challenging time,” they said.

After seeing a large number of staff and student Covid absences throughout January, West Contra Costa Unified’s school board will consider two proposals on Wednesday to push back the vaccine mandate deadline to the first day of the 2022-23 school year and to reconsider the board’s April 2021 action statement committing to 100% in-person instruction this year.

The district initially pushed the vaccine mandate deadline back from Jan. 3 to Feb. 18 due to a low number of families verifying their vaccine status. According to the agenda for Wednesday’s board meeting, the district has not seen a “sizable increase in the number of vaccinated students.” Oakland Unified and Los Angeles Unified have already pushed their vaccine deadlines back to August, in line with the expected deadline of the statewide student vaccine mandate.

The board is also reconsidering its “action statement” — not policy — made last year to “reopen for 100% in-person learning this fall pursuant to local, state and federal guidelines.” Though the board at the time voted 3-2 to approve it,  board President Otheree Christian and board member Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy requested the board revisit the statement “to determine whether it should be modified in any way at this time to provide for greater flexibility,” according to the agenda.

Still, the district makes it clear in the agenda that reconsidering the statement “is not intended to change direction of in-person learning.”

Students, parents and teachers begged Oakland Unified school board members not to approve the district’s proposal to close or merge 15 schools at a special board meeting Monday and are planning protests over the next week against the proposal.

Close to 2,000 people attended Monday night’s virtual meeting, which started at 6 p.m. and continued into the early hours of Tuesday morning. They called on the board to abandon the plan, which they say disproportionately impacts Black and brown students and leads to relatively little cost savings. Two of the seven board members, Mike Hutchinson and VanCedric Williams, proposed pushing the decision back to allow for more time to hear from the community and look into possible alternatives, but no other board members supported it. The board will take a vote on the proposal Feb. 8.

Oakland Unified has been considering closing schools and merging others in recent years in an effort to address enrollment declines in district-run schools.

Some meeting attendees said they would be going on a hunger strike to oppose the closures, and a protest is planned for Tuesday. Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Association of Black Lawyers argued against the closures and said their offices would be reviewing the matter for potential litigation.

West Contra Costa Unified and its teachers union, United Teachers of Richmond, reached a tentative agreement Saturday addressing Covid safety concerns, avoiding a potential strike.

According to United Teachers of Richmond, the agreement calls for KN95 masks to be provided daily to all students and staff, weekly testing at all schools for the rest of the school year and twice-a-week testing for all classes where there’s a positive Covid case. It also calls for baseline testing after February and spring break and increases in substitute teacher pay and rates for staff teachers to substitute during their preparation time.

UTR members will vote to ratify the agreement this week.

Thirty-one public schools in California were designated “purple star schools” under a new program launched by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to support students whose parents serve in the military.

The schools, which include traditional and charter elementary, middle and high schools, are clustered around military bases throughout California. The schools provide extra support, such as counseling and help with transferring, for students who must move frequently due to a parent’s deployment or relocation.

California has about 184,000 active duty service members and 56,000 serving in the National Guard and Reserves, according to the state. The schools are near Fort Irwin in San Bernardino County, Camp Pendleton in San Diego County and other military bases.

“These schools are crucial to supporting our military-connected students and ensuring that they maintain their academic, college, and career aspirations while their parents serve our country,” Thurmond said.

San Francisco Unified reached a one-year deal with its teachers union late Friday that includes bonuses and a boost in pay for substitutes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The deal does not include raises for teachers, aside from the regular salary increases based on their years of experience. The district is facing a $125 million funding shortfall next year, the newspaper reported.

The bonuses include $4,000 next year for all teachers, plus additional bonuses of $3,000 for Advanced Placement teachers and $3,000 for teachers in high-needs schools. Substitute teachers will get a raise of $60 per day.

“Given all of the struggles educators have been through over the past two years, we are relieved that we could get one-time compensation directly to all members, as well as a much-needed increase in substitute pay,” Cassondra Curiel, president of the United Educators of San Francisco, said in a joint statement with the district, the Chronicle reported. “We are fighting for the schools our students deserve in a particularly challenging period. This is a step in the right direction.”

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urged schools to spend Covid relief funds on helping students with mental health support and academic tutoring in a speech on Thursday.

Cardona acknowledged how hard teachers are working under difficult circumstances this school year.

“I know you’re tired, I know you’re stretched,” Cardona said. “I see you, and I understand what you’re going through. It will get better.”

The education secretary urged schools to spend relief funds on a strategy known as “high-dosage” tutoring, giving every student who is struggling academically at least 90 minutes a week with a trained tutor.

He also said schools should hire more mental health counselors, psychologists and social workers, in addition to hiring and retaining more paraprofessionals to support students with disabilities, and expanding after-school programs and summer school.

The education secretary said the decisions schools make in the next few months are critical.

“We’re either closing educational opportunity gaps, or making them worse with the decisions we’re going to make in the next coming months and years,” Cardona said.