California education news: What’s the latest?

Four California public universities lost out on $47 million combined in federal Covid relief dollars by failing to apply for the money, according to a state audit reported on by CalMatters. 

“As a result, some students may have missed out on support services and equipment during what has been an unprecedented disruption in schooling worldwide,” the nonprofit news organization reported

Chico State, Cal State Long Beach, UC Merced and UC San Diego all missed out on money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to the state auditor.

“Of six University of California and Cal State University campuses audited, four used Department of Education funding for expenses where they should have asked FEMA for reimbursement,” CalMatters reported.

The 66-page audit found the schools may still be able to claim at least some of the money by applying for it now.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has upheld a lower court decision that backed a Pasadena private religious school’s decision to expel two students for being in same-sex marriages, Courthouse News Service reported.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Fuller Theological Seminary did not violate Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination in kicking out the students because the school’s decision was based on religious beliefs.

Former students Nathan Brittsan and Joanna Maxon had sued the school for discrimination, but lost in a lower court in 2020. The school claimed it took the action because the students violated its policy against “homosexual forms of explicit sexual conduct.”

“The language of Title IX does not condition an institution’s ability to claim the religious exemption on filing written notice or on any other process—the exemption is mandatory and automatic,” the panel wrote in an eight-page decision.

It was not immediately clear if the former students will file further appeals.

Since thousands of West Contra Costa Unified families still have not submitted their childrens’ Covid-19 vaccine verifications in order to continue in-person instruction, the district scrapped its original vaccine mandate deadline of Jan. 3 and pushed it back to Feb. 18.

That gives families an extra month to get their children ages 12 and up vaccinated and notify the district. Families who don’t do so by Feb. 18 will be forced to enroll their children in the district’s independent study program, Vista Virtual Academy, or take their children out of district schools.

School board members voted Wednesday to scrap the previous deadline after Superintendent Kenneth “Chris” Hurst expressed that the district was not prepared to offer independent study to the thousands of students who hadn’t submitted their vaccine verification, which would have put the district out of compliance with state law. Districts are required to offer an independent study option this school year.

One final blast of cash is set to arrive soon for roughly 36 million American families who are eligible for the advance payment for the child tax credit, as USA Today reported.

But after that, the money will stop unless Congress passes President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better social spending package, which is currently stalled in the Senate. While Democrats hope to pass the bill by Christmas, some experts warn that debate over the economic package could drag into 2022.

“It is possible that, if Congress does eventually pass the bill with the current advance payment provision still in it, the Jan. 15 payment could be made late once the IRS has the authority from Congress to issue the payment,” said Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting, as USA Today reported.

The expanded child tax credit has already lifted many children out of poverty, experts note. In California, for example, the benefit has cut child poverty from 20% to 13.7% and kept more than 600,000 kids above the poverty line, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute. 

Excessive adversity, such as racism, can activate biological reactions that lead to lifelong problems in physical and mental well-being, experts say. 

Early experiences literally shape the architecture of the developing brain, as Knowable cited. Since the brain is connected to the rest of the body, early traumatic experiences affect all of our biological systems, for better or worse, over time. This knowledge can help us better understand why people of color in the United States are at greater risk of developing chronic medical conditions and aging prematurely than white people.

When confronted with a threat, stress response systems inside our body become activated. Blood pressure and heart rate increase. The immune system triggers an inflammatory response to prepare for wound healing and fighting infection. Metabolic systems mobilize blood sugar to fuel the “fight or flight” response. Once the threat has been managed, the stress response returns to baseline. 

If the level of adversity remains high for long periods of time (confronting racism or poverty, for instance), continuous activation of the stress response can have a wear-and-tear effect inside the body that leads to “toxic stress,” triggering a host of resulting health problems. Children, at a formative stage in their lives, are most acutely shaped by such stress, as Knowable cited. 

Los Angeles Unified — which enrolls about a fifth of California students –will not require students 12 and older to receive both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine by Jan.10 in order to attend in-person classes, as previously determined.

School board members voted Tuesday to scrap the previous deadline, though some expressed reluctance. Under the new policy, students 12 and older must be fully vaccinated before the start of the 2022-23 school year.

The decision came amid concern that thousands of students had not yet submitted their vaccine verification, and would have to enroll in the district’s independent study program, City of Angels, which is understaffed. School board members said the decision was made in order to not destabilize the current learning environment — not to appease anti-vax groups.

Despite the families who haven’t submitted their vaccination verification, the district said that 87% of eligible students had received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.

California’s new effort to develop a statewide education data system officially has its first executive director. Mary Ann Miller Bates, a senior fellow in the White House Office of Management and Budget, will lead Cradle-to-Career, a new state data system that aims to connect the state’s fragmented data on the education of students in the state from pre-K through college to career. The goal is to provide trend data that will help students and their families with career and college planning.

The hiring of Bates occurred in a closed session during the board’s second-ever meeting, which was held over Zoom. The closed session lasted about 30 minutes, and the board’s attending members voted unanimously for Miller Bates. Two members of the 21-member board, Sean Elo-Rivera and John Laird, were not present. The new system’s board includes 21 legislators, education leaders and advocates.

Miller Bates was previously the executive director and founding deputy director of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a nonprofit that seeks to “reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence.” She is also a former Fulbright scholar.

Miller Bates was selected from among three candidates two weeks ago with plans to negotiate a final contract and return to the board for an official hire.

A spokesperson for the board did not respond to EdSource’s request for Miller Bates’ contract including her salary and start date.

Advocates have long pushed for California to implement such a system. Plans call for it to be in place by 2023.

The project’s work will include linking a slew of data systems that contain much of the information so that a student’s education experience can be accessed and analyzed. The state plans to cobble together a comprehensive set of dashboards from data collected from early childhood education, pre-K-12 schools and the state’s public colleges and universities. The information will not be identified by student but rather will describe trends.

The earliest phases will focus on education and workforce data that is expected to be available within a year or two, while social services and health information is expected within five years.

In a presentation to the board on Nov. 30, Miller Bates detailed her plans for her first year and her first 100 days if she were chosen as executive director. The two other candidates also addressed the board with their ideas.

Her first year, according to the presentation, would include hiring additional Cradle-to-Career staff, designing data dashboards and submitting a budget to the governing board. The presentation also included questions she would try to understand within the first few months in the position, such as: “How agile can we make our process?” and “Why did prior efforts over the past decades to build a statewide longitudinal data system in California fail?”

Amid ongoing haggling over President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion Build Back Better Act, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday kicked off a rally of parents, child care providers and advocates from across the country to push for the passage of the bill, which they say will bolster a system in crisis and change the lives of American families with young children. 

“Build Back Better is about schools and health and so much else, but it all comes down to the children. And in San Francisco, we have a saying: children learning, parents earning. That’s a good formula for our families,” said Pelosi at the rally, which was held simultaneously at the National Mall in Washington and California’s Nixon Library, and also streamed online via Zoom. 

The event, which featured video of children singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” as well as a recitation of Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise,” was organized by the Child Care for Every Family Network, the National Women’s Law Center, Parent Voices and dozens of other advocacy organizations. 

The groundbreaking initiative, which would transform the early childhood education space with a roughly $400 billion investment in universal preschool and affordable child care, is facing a tough road in the Senate after narrowly passing in the House. Moderate Democrats, aligning with Republicans on this issue over deficit concerns, threaten to derail the long-awaited overhaul of the child care industry.

While many admit child care is the backbone of our economy, many child care providers, a workforce dominated by women of color, are underpaid and overworked even as parents struggle to afford the steep cost of care.

“The free market works well in many different sectors, but child care is not one of them,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in her remarks about a report on the grim state of child care. “Those who provide child care aren’t paid well, and many who need it can’t afford it.”

Child care workers have long been among the lowest-paid workers in the country. Almost 98% of occupations pay more, according to data from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California Berkeley. The Biden plan calls for capping family fees and increasing pay for child care staff.

After a 47% increase in Covid-19 case rates since Thanksgiving, the California Department of Health recommended Monday that everyone returning from out-of-state travel get tested for Covid-19  within three to five days, regardless of vaccination status.

The recommendation is not a requirement, and won’t be enforced by the state, but it could serve as a guide for school districts seeking to reduce Covid spread after the winter break.

Also on Monday, the Department of Public Health announced a statewide indoor mask mandate for public spaces starting Monday and expiring Jan. 15. Universal indoor masking was already required in schools and in about half of counties.

Despite campaign promises to ease the burden of student loan debt and calls from experts and lawmakers to continue the pause on those repayments, federal student loan payments will be due again starting Feb. 1.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki, during a briefing Friday, said the Biden administration is preparing for a “smooth transition back into repayment” after a March 2020 moratorium and two extensions by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. However, Psaki said the administration is still assessing the impact of the Covid-19 omicron variant.

The announcement followed an analysis by the Roosevelt Institute estimating that 18 million borrowers will spend around $7 billion a month as they begin to pay back their federal student loans after up to two years, resulting in an $85 billion hit to the U.S. economy. The analysis also found that if Biden flexed his executive authority and canceled $50,000 in student loan debt per person, it could result in more than $173 billion being added to the country’s gross domestic product in the first year.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., cited the Roosevelt Institute findings in a letter urging Biden to at least continue the pause on federal student loan repayment until the economy reaches pre-pandemic employment levels.

Ten teachers in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, scrambled for $1 bills on hands and knees last week during a hockey game, spurring critics to call the event “dehumanizing” and “dystopian,” according to the Washington Post.

The event was intended to help teachers pay for classroom supplies and other materials, according to the report. Schools had to apply to enter the competition, dubbed “Dash for Cash,” which featured $5,000 in $1 bills donated by a local mortgage company. The cash was dumped on a carpet on the ice rink and teachers raced to stuff bills into their pockets.

To help students and families better engage with school, Fresno Unified has unveiled several online tools intended to improve communication and boost academic performance, the Fresno Bee reported.

Parent University, Exercise Your Brain, Clever and ATLAS Connect, a messaging system that translates classroom announcements into Spanish and Hmong, are among the offerings for students and families.

Superintendent Bob Nelson said the tools are aimed at helping students cope with the return to in-person school, which has proven to be more difficult than expected after a year and a half of remote learning.

“It’s no great secret that the last year and a half, pandemic educating has just been hard,” Nelson said at a news conference last week. “2020 was rough. We thought 2021 might be a little bit easier, but it’s actually probably proven as hard or harder than 2020, given staffing gaps.”

The chair of the state Assembly’s higher education committee announced Friday he won’t run for re-election next year.

Jose Medina, D-Riverside, could have sought a sixth term in office for the 2023-24 term. Instead, 2022 will be his last year in the Assembly. Medina, 68, was first elected to the Assembly in 2012.

“I am happy to pass the torch to our next generation of leaders. My hope, from my work with students and our young people, is that they too, are inspired to run for public office,” he said in a statement.

As one of the state’s legislative education leaders, Medina played a pivotal role in securing increased state funding for education. This year, he authored AB 101, which requires all California students to take ethnic studies course as a high school graduation requirement. He also authored AB 1456, which would have made an historic expansion to the Cal Grant, California’s main college financial aid program, but the bill was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Long Beach City College has named Mike Muñoz as its next superintendent-president, the college announced Friday.

Muñoz, the college’s interim superintendent-president since March, will start in the permanent role on Jan. 1. The board overseeing the college will vote next week on his contract.

Muñoz, who was also previously the college’s vice president of student services, called it the “honor of a lifetime” to be the next leader of Long Beach City College. “We’ve seen significant improvements as we focus on advancing racial equity on campus and better serving our students from historically underserved communities. I’m so proud to be chosen for this role and I look forward to continuing to help our students achieve their educational goals,” he said.

Muñoz is himself a former community college student. He attended East Los Angeles College and Fullerton College before transferring to the University of California Irvine, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology and social behavior. He later earned a master’s degree in counseling and his doctor of education, specializing in community college leadership, from California State University.

All five superintendents in Calaveras County and one in Tuolumne County are pleading with Gov. Gavin Newsom to change the vaccine mandate for students, arguing that half or more of their students could leave if required to vaccinate against Covid-19.

According to the Union Democrat, a local newspaper, Michael Merrill, superintendent of the Summerville Union High School District in Tuolumne, stated in a letter dated Dec. 1 that according to surveys, 61% of the 650 students currently enrolled may not return for in-person learning if required to get the vaccine.

A former dean of East Los Angeles College was charged with embezzlement of government funds and misappropriation of government funds.

Paul De La Cerda is accused of overbilling the college for work trips and forging documents he submitted for reimbursement, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The newspaper reports that he allegedly overbilled the school about $1,600 for several hotel stays between March 2017 and 2019.

De La Cerda previously served as the dean of economic development and innovation with East Los Angeles College.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds if it has been at least six months since they received their second shot of that vaccine. The move clears the way for several million teenagers to receive an additional shot, as the New York Times reported.

Adults have been eligible since Nov. 19 to receive a booster six months after their second shot of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccines, or two months after a Johnson & Johnson shot. Nearly 50 million Americans — or 1 in 4 of those fully vaccinated — have gotten the additional shots.

The FDA expanded Pfizer’s authorization to cover the younger age group on an emergency basis. The other two coronavirus vaccines, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, remain authorized for use only for adults.

The FDA move, which was expected, comes as a spate of laboratory tests have suggested that the new variant, omicron, seemed to blunt the power of two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sets vaccination policy for the federal government, is widely expected to endorse the FDA’s action, as the New York Times cited.

Note: The district later announced that Alberto Carvalho was indeed selected to be the new Los Angeles Unified Superintendent. Please see our full story here. 

The head of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools has emerged as the frontrunner to be the next superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Los Angeles Times is reporting.

Alberto Carvalho could be hired as early as Thursday, the newspaper reported, with the city’s school board meeting in closed session.

“Carvalho is credited in the Miami-Dade district with providing stable leadership and improved academic performance, and creating special programs that offer more schooling choices for parents. In Los Angeles, he would immediately have to confront a school district where many students have long struggled to achieve and were further set back — academically and emotionally — by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the Times reported.

Miami-Dade is the country’s fourth-largest school district. He would replace Austin Beutner, who stepped down in June at the end of a three-year contract.

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday seemed to lean toward requiring states to provide taxpayer funds to private religious schools if those funds are also provided to private nonsectarian schools, numerous news outlets reported.

At question is a case from Maine in which state law allows public funds to pay for private school tuition when no public school is available to students, but excludes religious schools, citing the First Amendment.

“Religious people and groups have been on a winning streak at the Supreme Court, which seemed likely to continue in the new case,” The New York Times reported, adding that a majority of the justices were signaling they would not allow Maine to exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.

The two schools at issue each espouse evangelical Christian views, with one saying its students are taught “to spread the word of Christianity.”

In briefs filed with the court, lawyers for Maine wrote that both schools “candidly admit that they discriminate against homosexuals, individuals who are transgender and non-Christians.”

Marin County health officials said Wednesday that parents who sent their child to a Corta Madera elementary school last month knowing the student had tested positive for Covid-19 are under criminal investigation.

It was not clear when or if the parents would be charged.

“We are aware of, and actively investigating, a recent incident involving a Marin County family who breached local Covid-19 isolation and quarantine orders and exposed a classroom to Covid-19,” read a statement issued by Marin County Public Health, CBS San Francisco reported.

“The case has been referred to law enforcement and the District Attorney’s office for review and action for failure to comply with the local isolation and quarantine order under California Health and Safety Code,” health officials said in the statement.

The parents sent the child to the Neil Cummins Elementary School. In all, eight children tested positive for Covid-19. No one became seriously ill or was hospitalized, CBS reported.

The California Department of Education is offering $2 million in grants to community organizations that partner with schools to provide programs that help students build healthy social connections.

The goal of the program is to offset the social isolation experienced by many students since the pandemic began. The program was funded in the 2021-22 California State Budget.

“During this extremely difficult time, many young people have found themselves disconnected from others,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. “There have been major spikes in levels of depression among California school students during the pandemic. Even as schools opened for in-person instruction in the 2021–22 school year, many students may still be experiencing some form of social isolation—especially because many students have been off campus for nearly two years.”

Funds from the program should be used to offer counseling, peer mediation or youth leadership programs and events, or to train students or staff.

The amount of each grant will depend on the scope of the application. The deadline to apply is Jan. 7. For more information, email EquityGrants@cde.ca.gov.

In a cautionary decision for school boards rife with incivility, a San Joaquin County Superior Court judge has ruled three Stockton Unified school board members are personally liable to pay the $19,600 in legal fees of a fourth member whom they sued in July for alleged slander, disclosure of private facts and invasion of privacy.

AngelAnn Flores, a community activist serving her first term on the board, charged that the board members were trying to squelch her criticism of the board and countered by filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit under an anti-SLAPP law that protects defendants from attacks intended to intimidate them. After two of the school board members then withdrew their lawsuits, the judge awarded legal fees to Flores.

“Fortunately, the San Joaquin Superior Court saw through their bullying and confirmed my constitutional right to speak up in the best interest of all SUSD students, staff and parents,” Flores told the Stockton Record. The three school board members are board President Cecilia Mendez, Alicia Rico and Raymond Zulueta.

Flores ran as a reform candidate critical of the board and the continuing influence of former Mayor Anthony Silva, who pleaded no contest two years ago to a felony count of conflict of interest and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. In a recent report, the county grand jury criticized the majority of the board for a lack of transparency and infighting.

A recent survey assessing the impact of social media on education today found that 82% of Gen Zers said it has distracted them from their schoolwork.

Not only does Gen Z, a generation of digital natives born between about 1997 and 2012, feel distracted by social media, but 56% of respondents also blamed it for feeling alienated from their peers.

Conducted by Tallo, a web-based networking platform for college students, the survey also confirmed previous research that social media often more negatively impacts young women in this cohort, which is sometimes referred to as zoomers. Three out of 4 female respondents said social media caused them to compare themselves to their peers, while only 56% of males said the same. 

While there are clearly risks to social media usage, proponents say, there are also benefits. For example, 71% of survey respondents said that they have learned a new study habit from social media. Students also reported using social platforms to learn more about prospective colleges.

Job recovery in the child care industry continues to be challenged, according to a recent analysis by the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE). 

The early care and education sector, a workforce dominated by women of color, has suffered extensive job losses due to Covid-19, exacerbating a crisis that existed long before the pandemic. 

Job recovery has been slow, further challenged by teachers walking away from the sector in search of higher wages at companies like McDonald’s and Amazon, the report notes. To make matters worse, child care has long been notable, experts say, as one of the lowest-paying jobs in the country.

The child care sector recorded 2,100 fewer jobs in November than the previous month, according to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This estimate includes employees in the “child day care services” industry, which includes child care, Head Start, preschool and school-age care programs. Also, the estimates include employees only and do not include self-employed workers, such as owners of home-based child care.

The CSCCE Jobs Tracker reports that about 108,000 child care jobs have been lost since February 2020 when the pandemic first upended society.

In an open letter already signed by nearly 1,000 technology professionals and college math and science professors, many from California,  warned that efforts to limit access to advanced math and promote “trendy but shallow courses over foundational skills” would cause lasting damage to education in science, technology, engineering and math (or STEM). It would also “exacerbate inequality” by narrowing access to high-income professions, the authors said.

The document, published Sunday, singled out proposed revisions to California’s K-12 math framework as embodying the problem.

The most controversial recommendation in the proposed California framework calls for offering uniform math instruction in middle school and waiting until ninth grade for Algebra I instruction. The extra time would prepare all students adequately for high school math. But that delay would hold back students ready for Algebra I in eighth grade and require high school students to add extra math courses in order to fit in advanced calculus, which is required for majoring in science, engineering and math in college.

“We are deeply concerned about the unintended consequences of recent well-intentioned approaches to reform mathematics education, particularly the California Mathematics Framework,” the letter said. “While such reforms superficially seem ‘successful’ at reducing disparities at the high school level, they are merely ‘kicking the can’ to college. While it is possible to succeed in STEM at college without taking advanced courses in high school, it is more challenging.”

The letter also takes issue with the framework’s proponents, who argue that students interested in computer science and data science can take AP Statistics and computer science in lieu of calculus.

“Another deeply worrisome trend is devaluing essential mathematical tools such as calculus and algebra in favor of seemingly more modern ‘data science.’ As STEM professionals and educators we should be sympathetic to this approach, and yet, we reject it wholeheartedly,” the letter said. “Data science is built on the foundations of algebra, calculus, and logical thinking,” it said, which “are arguably even more critical for today’s grand challenges than in the Sputnik era.”

Because of widespread debate and criticism of the framework, the timetable for adoption by the State Board of Education has been pushed back to July 2022.

The letter cautioned that any changes in educational standards should be done carefully and incrementally, based on lessons from other states and nations. In contrast, it said, California is proposing “drastic changes based on scant and inconclusive evidence. Subjecting the children of our largest state to such an experiment is the height of irresponsibility.”

Organizers of the letter include Edith Cohen, a research scientist at Google in Mountain View, and Jelani Nelson, an electrical engineering and computer sciences faculty member at UC Berkeley.

The U.S. Supreme Court, with a conservative supermajority, will begin hearing arguments Wednesday in an education case involving voucher programs and could rule to require public funding for religious schools.

The case, Carson v. Makin, out of Maine, involves a family in a small town without a high school that gives vouchers to families.  The Carsons wanted their daughter to attend a religious high school, but their town restricted the voucher to public schools.

Legal experts believe the decision in this case will lead to church-sponsored charter schools operating with public funds in many cities, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The decision could indicate whether the Supreme Court is open to striking down “Blaine amendments” to 36 state constitutions — including California’s — that bar the use of public money for religious schools. Maine does not have a Blaine amendment.

The Maine case follows the Supreme Court’s ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which said states can’t ban religious schools from choice programs simply because they’re religious. The ruling didn’t, however, say whether states could exclude them because they might spend the money on religious instruction.

California doesn’t have a voucher program, or education savings accounts, as they’re often called. But a group in favor of them has begun collecting signatures to qualify a November 2022 ballot measure that would give every family tuition — $14,000 initially — to put in an education savings account that could be used to attend a participating district, charter or accredited private or religious school.

In a rare public advisory Tuesday, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy brought to light some of the mental health struggles youth are facing in growing numbers.

The 53-page advisory highlights recent research showing that symptoms of depression and anxiety have doubled during the pandemic, according to the Los Angeles Times. It’s estimated that a quarter of America’s youth experience depression symptoms and 20% experience anxiety systems. Additionally, research shows increases in impulsivity, irritability and other negative emotions, as well as an increase in emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts.

Murthy’s advisory calls for quick action across 11 sectors, including government, social media companies, schools and even in families. Some of the recommendations include recognizing that mental health is an essential part of overall health, empowering youth and their families to recognize, manage and learn from difficult emotions, and ensuring every child has access to high-quality, affordable, culturally competent mental health care.

Americans’ trust in teachers has dropped 6 percentage points since 2019, according to a survey by Ipsos, a global research firm.

The survey, summarized in K-12 Dive, found that trust in teachers dropped from 63% in 2019 to 57% in 2021. Democrats were more likely to trust teachers, but even that number dropped from 77% to 71%. Among Republicans, trust in teachers slipped from 59% to 56%.

Chris Jackson, senior vice president and head of polling at Ipsos, told K-12 Dive that the reasons for the decline include opposition to schools’ mask and vaccine requirements as well as political conflicts over how the role of race in America should be taught in K-12 classrooms.

Overall, teachers ranked fourth among the most-trusted professionals, behind doctors, military service members and scientists. Politicians ranked last.

In a 2-1 ruling, a federal appeals court sided with San Diego Unified in its bid to require all students 16 and older to be vaccinated against Covid in order to remain enrolled in in-person classes, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

In its ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s temporary injunction halting the mandate, based on a lawsuit from a student claiming that it discriminated against students who oppose the vaccine for religious reasons. The district’s original mandate allowed pregnant students, but not those with religious opposition, to postpone getting the vaccine. In response to the injunction, the district is now requiring pregnant students to get the vaccine, as well, according to the newspaper.

The district’s mandate states that all students age 16 and over must be fully vaccinated by Dec. 20.

“Try Harder!”, an 85-minute documentary about the competition and intense ambitions of students at uber-competitive Lowell High School in San Francisco, is now showing in a limited number of theaters in California.

The movie tracks five seniors, all “earnest overachievers who have internalized, to a stunning degree, the necessity of getting into Stanford and Harvard and other top-tier colleges,” wrote New York Times critic Beandrea July, who characterized it as “equal parts vérité character study and probing meditation on the virtues of success.” In scenes shot in and out of the school, producer and director Debbie Lum captures pressures, achievements and disappointments of students leading to their admissions letter; some do and some don’t get into their first-choice school.

Getting into Lowell itself has been immersed in controversy. During the pandemic, San Francisco Unified suspended merit-based admission criteria, and the school board earlier this year voted to make permanent a lottery-based system. But a Superior Court judge threw out that decision in November, ruling that the board violated the state’s open meeting law. Last week, district Superintendent Vincent Matthews said there was not enough time to change course for 2022, so the district will keep the lottery for at least another year.

Most of Lowell’s students are Asian Americans. “Try Harder!” briefly looks at the issue and some of the students’ opposition to changing admission policies and affirmative action.

“Try Harder!” is not being streamed. Go here to see if it’s playing near you and here to see the trailer.

University of California San Diego asked all students to get a Covid-19 test as soon as possible if they traveled during Thanksgiving break, regardless of their vaccination status, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The paper reports the call to get tested “as soon as possible” is a sharp change in tone for the university. Last year, the school asked students not to travel during Thanksgiving or get tested before they left. This year, the school didn’t call for either action.

The urgent message is likely connected to concern over the omicron variant.

Alpine Union School District, a small district in San Diego County, has plans to allow unvaccinated students to keep learning in person, with district teachers, but off campus, to get around the state vaccine mandate.

According to The Washington Post, the district’s superintendent, Rich Newman, wrote a letter to parents saying, “This unique program is the first of its kind designed to provide in-person learning to students who would not be able to attend school on campus if not vaccinated.”

“In the midst of a highly politicized environment, it’s my responsibility to serve students who are vaccinated or not vaccinated,” Newman told the newspaper. “I’m working with parents who feel very strongly about this. These kids are young and are caught in an interesting, complex and political time with no choice of their own.”

Some parents applaud the move, while others accuse the district of segregating unvaccinated students from their peers.

Before the state mandated that all students wear masks indoors, the district had planned to allow parents to choose whether their children wore a mask at school.

An analysis of death certificates by the non-profit news site Voice of San Diego has found that people without a high-school diploma died from Covid-19 during the first year of the pandemic at a disproportionally high rate compared to more educated people.

In an article entitled “The First Year of COVID: A college degree was ‘an insurance policy’ against death,” the site reported, “during the first year of the pandemic, the share of San Diegans without a high school degree who died of Covid-19 was nearly three times as high as their share of the county population. San Diegans with a college degree, meanwhile, died at much lower rates than their share of the population.”

An expert suggested the high death rate for under-educated people was because they had manual jobs that didn’t allow them to stay home during the pandemic.

“Those who don’t have a bachelor’s degree or a high school degree are more likely to work in manual activities, customer service, agriculture, manufacturing and other economic activities that don’t allow them to stay safely at home,” Arturo Bustamante, a UCLA public health associate professor, told the Voice of San Diego.

Reporters entered information from more than 4,000 death certificates – which include the person’s education level – into a database in order to do the analysis.

A lottery system for admission to San Francisco’s top high school will likely stay in place for another year despite a judge’s ruling that the city’s school board violated state law when it ditched competitive admissions, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Superintendent Vince Mathews told the newspaper that there is not enough time to return to merit-based admissions to Lowell High School for the next academic year.

“We recognize that in light of the recent court decision, families are anxious to know what the admissions process will be for applying to Lowell for the 2022-2023 school year,” he said in a statement. “It would be logistically impossible to establish and implement any selective admission criteria prior to the application of Feb. 4 so I am recommending we maintain our current admissions practice at Lowell for the upcoming year.”

The San Francisco School  Board voted in February to end competitive admission at Lowell, causing an uproar. Parents sued.

Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman ruled in November that the board “clearly failed” to follow the state’s open meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, when it voted to make the change,

Application deadlines have been extended at the University of California and California State University campuses after both systems were flooded with applications Tuesday, crashing their online portals, the Los Angeles Times reported.

At UC’s nine undergraduate campuses, the deadline was extended from Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. to Wednesday at the same time, though students need to have started their application by Tuesday to be considered.

At CSU, deadlines were extended to Wednesday for the Fullerton, Long Beach and San Luis Obispo campuses. The deadline for applications to Fresno, Los Angeles, Pomona, San Diego and San Jose was extended to Dec. 15. All other campus deadlines were already set for Dec. 15 or later.

California State University requires students to be vaccinated for COVID-19 — but the policy is not evenly enforced, CapRadio reported. 

While the vaccine mandate likely has helped avoid large outbreaks of COVID-19, it is being inconsistently enforced across the system more than a month after the deadline. Some campuses barred students from in-person classes and on-campus buildings without proof of vaccination or requesting an exemption, while others allowed them to continue attending.

The lack of stable enforcement makes some students feel unsafe, and public health experts say it risks undermining the effectiveness of the safety policy. Yet others, including the Cal State Student Association and some campus administrators, say the flexibility is necessary to avoid penalizing students who come from communities where they have less access to the vaccine.

“The policy is that if you’re accessing campus facilities, you need to be vaccinated. How they enforce that is up to the discretion of the campuses,” said Cal State Chancellor’s Office spokesperson Michael Uhlenkamp, CapRadio reported. 

The CSU Chancellor’s Office is allowing campus presidents to take their needs into account when deciding how to implement the mandate, Uhlenkamp said, but told them to do everything possible to avoid disenrolling students. 

Eighty-four percent of parents feel overwhelmed by the high cost of child care, according to a new survey from the Penny Hoarder. 

As Biden’s social safety net bill makes its way through Congress, American families continue to struggle with child care while making ends meet. The survey also showed that 40% of parents have gone into debt over the costs of child care, almost 38% of parents have had to take on a second job to pay for care and almost 28% of parents say they’ve had to choose between paying for child care or paying their rent.

“Working families across the country pay a significant percentage of their annual earnings to cover the price of child care,” said Mario Cardona, chief of policy and practice for Child Care Aware of America, a national child care advocacy organization, as the Penny Hoarder cited. 

The personal finance website surveyed 2,000 parents in September about how child care impacts their lives. Despite extra financial support in the form of pandemic stimulus checks and child tax credits this year, researchers noted, a large majority of families felt overburdened.      

During the height of the pandemic, a record 35,000 families had filed an affidavit with the state to open a private home school, but the numbers are far lower this year, according to California Department of Education records.

So far this school year, 25,109 families have filed a homeschool affidavit to operate a school with five or fewer students – the number the state Department of Education says is likely to be a home school. That is 4,000 fewer than by the same time last year when more than 29,000 families had filed the paperwork.

Despite the decrease in affidavits over last year, this year’s total is still higher than any other past year. In 2019-20 a total of 22,433 affidavits were filed. Before that, about 15,000 families a year filed affidavits to run home schools with five or fewer students.

Filing a private school affidavit annually is one way to home-school a child in California. Families also can choose a home study program through a public school or can enroll their children in a private school that offers home-schooling options.

Parents who file an affidavit do not have the oversight or guidance provided by a school district or public charter school. Instead, they must provide all the curriculum, materials and instruction for their children. They also do not receive funds to cover the cost of supplies, outside classes or extracurricular activities that charter schools usually provide.

Only a quarter of Sacramento City Unified School District’s middle and high school students have turned in proof they had received at least one Covid-19 vaccine by today — the district’s deadline to meet its vaccine mandate.

The district of nearly 48,000 students joins Culver City Unified, West Contra Costa Unified, Oakland Unified, Piedmont Unified, San Diego Unified and Los Angeles Unified in requiring vaccines for eligible students and staff ahead of the state mandate that begins next summer.

Sacramento City Unified has 19,271 students in the age group covered by the mandate, but only 4,909 have turned in paperwork showing they had been vaccinated, according to the district’s website.

Although the district did not post information about the number of staff who have been vaccinated, representatives from the teachers union told a reporter at KCRA that more than 90% of the district’s teachers had shown proof of vaccination.

Students who are not vaccinated by Feb. 1 — the beginning of the second semester — will be assigned to independent study, according to the district website. In the meantime, students and staff who are not yet vaccinated will be tested regularly.

The $73 billion gaming company Roblox is poised to position itself as a leader in bringing classroom education into the “metaverse” — the evolving virtual world currently enthralling Silicon Valley.

Education Week reported Monday that the San Mateo-based company aims to reach 100 million students worldwide by the end of the decade and eventually host virtual classrooms in place of Zoom or other platforms. The company’s head of education, Rebecca Kantar, also is eyeing the platform as a host for virtual reading lessons or experiences that allow students from across the globe to collaborate in real time on science experiments.

Earlier this month, Education Week reported, Roblox announced a $10 million Roblox Community Fund to support the creation of online learning experiences that use its platform. The company seeks to expand the use of its platform for computer-science education, as well as other curricular activities.

Roblox emerged in 2006 as a free gaming platform that allowed users to create their own avatars, program their own games and play games created by other users. According to Education Week, more than 47 million people use the platform every day, nearly half of whom are younger than 13. Some of the platform’s games are educational and can be tied to academic lessons. Roblox is frequently used to teach children beginner coding skills, but its use in the K-12 education sector accounts for only a small part of its popularity.

A July New York Times article featured Roblox as possibly “the nearest and most expansive vision of the metaverse.” The New York Times reported on the “darker side” of the Roblox metaverse, which includes games involving strip clubs, Nazi re-enactments and other adult and problematic activities. The company said it does not condone these games.

Widespread supply chain shortages have hit school lunch programs, too, causing school staffs to order in bulk further in advance, substitute ingredients, order more fruit and vegetables and scramble to find hamburgers and other student favorites.

Plus, higher prices for paper products and food are putting pressure on lunch budgets.

High schools in Alhambra Unified had to cut back on their food bar offerings of ramen, pho, Korean tacos, Mexican street tacos and other items. Vivien Watts, the 16,000-student district’s executive director of food and nutrition services, said she’s not confident she can consistently find the ingredients.

“It’s really heartbreaking for us because we want to provide the best food for our kids,” Watts told the San Bernardino Sun. “We can only put on the menu what we know we can get.”

The newspaper attributed the shortages to labor shortages at food distribution centers caused by the pandemic and bottlenecks in delivering cargo at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. These problems add to school districts’ challenge of providing free breakfast and lunch to all students, under a universal meals program that Congress has funded for the second year. Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised it will become permanent, with state funding, starting next year.

“We’re working magic to make it happen,” Riverside Unified School District spokeswoman Diana Meza said. “But all schools are doing that. There’s a lot more preparation involved.”

The Alameda County Office of Education can impose stricter oversight of Oakland Unified’s budget and hiring practices, the California Department of Education ruled on Monday.

The county office of education had warned the school board two weeks ago that it would bring in a fiscal management team to review the district’s finances, out of concerns that the board would be unable to cut tens of millions of dollars from its budget. The school board appealed to the state, and the state sided with the Alameda County Office of Education.

According to the county office of education, Oakland Unified faces declining enrollment and has not prepared to reduce staffing or adopted a long-term financial plan, endangering the fiscal health of the district. County Superintendent L.K. Monroe threatened to withhold pay from the school board and superintendent, which the state agreed she has a right to do.

“It is reasonable for the (Alameda County Office of Education) to provide additional assistance to the district to identify budget solutions in a timely manner and possibly avoid deeper reductions and more intensive interventions at a later date,” according to the state.

The State Center Community College District, which operates four community colleges in the San Joaquin Valley, has a new chancellor.

Carole Goldsmith, currently the president of Fresno City College, was named the chancellor on Monday, according to the Fresno Bee. Fresno City College is one of the district’s four colleges. The other three are Madera Community College, Clovis Community College and Reedley College.

The appointment, which still needs to be approved by the district’s board, would be effective Jan. 1, according to the Bee.

A panel of federal judges issued a temporary restraining order on Sunday stopping San Diego Unified from requiring Covid vaccinations for students age 16 and over, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the order a day before students would need their first vaccine dose to comply with the requirement, which would have gone into effect Dec. 20. In its ruling, the judges sided with a student who had sued the district claiming the mandate discriminated against those who oppose the vaccine on religious grounds.

The order states that the district’s mandate allowed students to postpone getting the vaccine for medical reasons, but should have granted the same flexibility for students who oppose the vaccine for religious reasons.

The second-largest district in California, San Diego Unified has 121,000 students. The vaccine mandate would have required students age 16 and over to be vaccinated in order to attend school in person.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta weighed in Monday on a Florida case involving the rights of transgender students to use school bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

Bonta, along with 23 other state attorneys general, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County lawsuit, which centers on a school district’s unwritten policy barring transgender students from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.

“The law is clear: Discrimination based on gender identity is still discrimination,” Bonta said. “Allowing students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity is a no-brainer. It affirms who they are and helps create a school environment where everyone can grow and thrive. Transgender teenagers shouldn’t have to be in court to prove they are entitled to respect. California proudly stands in support of Drew Adams and students like him across the country. We’ve got your back.”

The brief claims, in part, that transgender students are protected under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, which prohibits school districts from discriminating on the basis of sex or gender identity.

The Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California has focused on hiring diverse faculty under the leadership of Pedro Noguera, the school’s dean.

Of the school’s 14 most recent faculty hires, 12 are people of color, according to diverseeducation.com. Noguera, who became dean in July 2020, told the website that the school needs faculty of color “who are speaking about the ways in which race and diversity are shaping our society.”

“Other universities cannot take the position that there are not enough people of color out there to hire. What are they doing to build the pipeline? We’re showing that with a concerted effort and institutional support, it can be done,” Noguera added.

Noguera said the school has been “assertive in our recruitment efforts” to add to a faculty body that has previously lacked in diversity. Most full-time faculty were white and male as of 2020, according to diverseeducation.com, with only 3% identifying as Black and 5% identifying as Latino or Hispanic.

A federal judge has ordered California prison employees to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by Jan. 12, potentially reducing the number of Covid-19 cases among young and adult inmates. Inside the state’s four youth correctional institutions, a total of 255 youth and 278 staff members have contracted the virus since the onset of the pandemic, even as the number of incarcerated youth dwindles at the state level.

Plus, a federal report found that half of the outbreaks in California’s state prisons between May and July were traced back to employees.

The order comes after months of uncertainty as the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and Gov. Gavin Newsom requested a postponement of a vaccination mandate for prison staff.

As of Oct. 22, 62% of staff working at the state’s youth prison institutions were fully vaccinated. The remaining 38% were subject to weekly Covid-19 testing. For staff across all prisons in the state, the vaccination rate is currently 66%, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Though 80% of Los Angeles Unified’s students are on track to comply with the district’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate, as of Monday, about 44,000 missed the first deadline, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Students 12 and older were told to have either received at least one shot, obtain a medical exemption or receive an extension by Sunday. LA Unified’s announced deadline for the second dose is Dec. 19. However, there are no repercussions if students missed the first deadline.  Students could still wait until the first week of December to get their first dose and still have enough time to get the second shot and achieve maximum immunity by Jan. 10, the start of the next term, according to the LA Times.

The families that don’t comply with the vaccine mandate by Jan. 10 will have to enroll their children outside of LA Unified or transfer to the district’s independent study program, City of Angels.

As three San Francisco Unified school board members face a recall election in February, some parents fear that it could mean a halt to the progress that’s been made to expand opportunities for marginalized students.

In a story published Monday, KQED spoke with Black and Latino parents who felt as though their voices have been drowned out in the recall election that has caught national attention. Recall advocates are frustrated with three of the district’s seven school board members since schools remained closed last school year despite private schools reopening. At the same time, the board took up other issues, including the renaming of schools and changing the admissions policy for Lowell High School, San Francisco’s elite public high school. City and county officials also called on board member Alison Collins to resign over what they said were anti-Asian tweets from 2016.

Collins, Faauuga Moliga, and board President Gabriela Lopez face the recall.

District surveys found that families of color were more hesitant to return to schools in the spring than white families. KQED has reported on Asian families, especially Chinese families, feeling worried about sending their children back into classrooms.

KQED also spoke with parents who praised the board’s effort to enroll more Black and Latino students at Lowell High School, as well as the creation of the district’s first Samoan dual language immersion program since Pacific Islander Moliga has served on the school board. Tongan parent Anna Mahina said seeing a fellow Pacific Islander on the school board is empowering for both students and parents “because he knows the struggles straight from the heart.”

Collins, Moliga, and Lopez told KQED that their board actions have been in response to community needs.

“There’s no way that the recall is going to close the learning loss,” said teacher and parent Cynthia Meza. “If anything, it’s going to make it that much worse.”

California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond would like to increase the number of gender-neutral bathrooms on California school campuses.

The superintendent announced last week that he will form a committee comprised of students, school staff and community organizations to make recommendations about how to best expand gender-neutral bathrooms in schools.

The announcement came days after a Chino Valley Unified District school board member proposed a resolution that would exclude transgender students from being able to use bathrooms and other facilities designated for the gender they identify with.

Thurmond issued a stern warning to Chino Valley Unified district officials stating that the proposed resolution violated state law. The proposal was defeated 3-2 at a school board meeting Thursday night after students, state lawmakers and faculty spoke against the measure. There were no speakers in support of the measure.

“We have to give our students all the support they need, including access to bathrooms they can use safely,” Thurmond said. “I have been inspired by the students who have advocated on this issue and want to give students the opportunity to be a part of finding the solutions.”

State Sen. Connie Leyva, who spoke against the resolution at the board meeting, has been asked to co-chair the committee, according to a news release from the California Department of Education. Her Senate district includes Chino Valley Unified.

The committee will be open to all California students, but a special effort will be made to engage students from the Chino Valley Unified School District, according to the release. For more information, contact safeschoolbathrooms@cde.ca.gov.