California education news: What’s the latest?

Child development experts have long warned that kids today are often overscheduled, undercutting their ability to develop skills they’ll need as adults, such as coping with setbacks and building relationships, as KQED reported. Now a group of economists say they’ve been able to calculate some of these psychological costs.

In an analysis in the Economics of Education Review, three economists found that students are assigned so much homework and signed up for so many extracurriculars that the flurry of activity is no longer building their academic skills. Instead, the activities were harming their mental well-being, making students more anxious, depressed and angry. 

“We’re not saying that all these activities are bad, but that the total is bad,” said Carolina Caetano, one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor of economics at the University of Georgia, as KQED reported. An overloaded schedule, she said, eats away at time for sleep and socializing, which are also key to well-being.

Researchers found that the downside was most evident in high school when students feel pressure to get high grades and load up on extracurriculars for their college applications.

“If you feel stretched, you’re probably on the too-much side of this,” she said.

The University of California, Merced, campus will be featured on the next episode of Amazon Prime’s “The College Tour.” The show is a half-hour program that showcases colleges from around the world.

The episode, which was filmed on campus in October, will premiere in May for the show’s 11th season and feature 10 Merced students. The university will hold a premiere watch party on campus 6 p.m. on Feb. 8.

The episode will also be available to watch on the university’s website and YouTube page.

Legislation being introduced by Assemblymember Marc Berman would require that all public high schools in California offer at least one computer science course and would establish computer science as a high school graduation requirement.

Berman was scheduled to join Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond at a news conference this morning to announce the proposed legislation.

“Despite being the undisputed cradle of innovation, California has for too long failed to offer students from all backgrounds access to computer science courses, falling well behind 40 states and leaving a growing equity gap,” according to a news release from Berman’s office.

Twenty-seven other states currently require high schools to offer a computer science course, with five of those states requiring a computer science course for graduation.

New California Standards for the Teaching Profession could be adopted Thursday by the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

The new standards describe the knowledge, skills and abilities expected of effective veteran teachers, according to the commission agenda. Teacher induction programs and teacher preparation programs are based on these standards, which also serve as a road map for teachers during their teaching careers.

If the commission adopts the revised standards at its Thursday meeting, teacher induction programs would have until the 2025-26 academic year to fully implement the program. To watch the meeting go here.

Sacramento State plans to serve thousands of students in fast-growing Placer County by building a campus annex on 301 acres donated by the late Eli Broad, a businessman and philanthropist.

Plans for the Sacramento State Placer Center include facilities that could be shared with community partners, including a library, forensic science lab, conference center and performing arts building, according to the university.

California State University’s board of trustees approved plans for the center on Jan. 31. It will be developed in four phases over 25 years, eventually growing to 12,000 full-time equivalent students.

“Sacramento State and the greater Sacramento region are becoming increasingly diverse, and the Placer Center will be a welcoming and inclusive place where students and faculty thrive and the community and individuals will be provided with equitable access,”  said Sacramento State President Luke Wood at the meeting.

Conservative lawyer Jeffrey Hall has issued a letter finding fault with the Coronado library’s LGBTQ+ content and alleging the library discriminated against a mom seeking to hold reading events for children focused on religious and patriotic themes, KPBS reported.

The letter also calls on the San Diego-area library to change the ways it labels and places books that contain explicit materials.

“In the event you fail to take advantage of this opportunity, formal legal action is eminently justified,” the Washington, D.C.-based Hall wrote in the Dec. 22 letter to Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey, KPBS reported. “We are confident that a court would readily rule in favor of our clients.”

Parents Rachel Racz and Jessica Tompane, represented by Hall, did not respond to KPBS’s request for comment. Meanwhile, city officials declined to comment specifically on the allegations but said they are responding to the letter and are working to “explore the nature of their complaint,” KPBS reported.

“You don’t get to walk into any public library and say: `I’m going to take that chair and do a program and call it a library program,’” Carl Luna, president of Friends of the Coronado Public Library, told KPBS.

“If you’re going to do a story time at this library and any other library, it has to be run by the library. They’re liable for content. They have to go through the books.”

A  $10 million gift will help UCLA affirm its commitment to ethnic studies by funding research projects as well as creating endowed chairs for Asian American, African American, Chicano and American Indian studies — all as a part of the university’s Institute of American Cultures, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Morgan Chu, who provided the gift alongside Helen Chu, said ethnic studies is like a “rainbow with contrasting colors and different points of view” that help connect people across cultures. 

“It’s just a way to teach everyone about the richness of the history and background of all cultures,” Chu told the Los Angeles Times. He also emphasized that the gift was not a response to current politics. 

The UCLA Institute of American Cultures had never received a gift of this size. 

“UCLA has long been at the forefront of the examination of the histories, cultures, contributions and experiences of different racial and ethnic groups in the United States,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement the Los Angeles Times reported. “The Chus’ investment will allow us to deepen the impact of this essential work.”

The criminal case of Jennifer Crumbley, the first parent in America charged with involuntary manslaughter in a mass school shooting, could set precedent across the nation to hold parents accountable for their children’s violent actions, USA Today reported. 

Prosecutors say Crumbley knew her son Ethan Crumbley was in mental distress, including on the day in November 2021 when he killed four children at his Michigan high school, USA Today reported. She and her husband are accused of buying the gun Ethan used rather than getting him help. 

Ethan, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, was sentenced in December to life without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 24 years.

Legal experts told USA Today that the “groundbreaking case” could impact how society views parents’ culpability when their children get their hands on guns and harm others. 

Testifying for herself Thursday, Crumbley told jurors that she saw her parental role as someone who protects her son from harm, not protecting others from him.

But prosecutors say Ethan’s parents should have taken him for treatment on the morning of the shooting when the school told them about his disturbing drawings and statements, USA Today reported. Prosecutors also say the parents bought the murder weapon as a birthday gift days before the shooting. 

“The fact that two parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter for the four lives their son took with the gun they bought him,” USA Today reported, “should send a strong message that parents must be extremely cautious with guns in the home.” 

Two former officials of Patterson Joint Unified in Stanislaus County pleaded guilty Thursday to a scheme that stole more than $1 million in federal funds, which were used to remodel homes and purchase vehicles, among other things,  The Sacramento Bee reported. 

Jeffrey Menge, the former assistant superintendent of the Central Valley district, embezzled between $1 million and $1.5 million from 2019 until 2022 using a fake company he created, according to court documents. Menge hired Eric Drabert as the district’s IT director to help with the scheme, according to the Bee’s report. 

Menge and Drabert “intentionally and fraudulently” double-billed, overbilled and billed the 6,000-student school district for items not delivered by Cencal Tech, the phony company, according to the Bee’s reporting of the court records. 

The two used the school money to purchase laptop computers, cryptocurrency and big-dollar expenses such as home remodels and vehicles. For example, Menge built a shop on his property, remodeled his home and purchased expensive vehicles, including a Ferrari; Drabert, who stole at least $250,000, paid to remodel a cabin in Calaveras County, according to the court records.

Their guilty pleas to theft concerning programs receiving federal funds could result in prison sentences of up to 10 years and $250,000 in fines, the Bee reported.

Three complaints have been filed this week with the West Contra Costa Unified School District alleging some schools failed to provide students with qualified teachers, according to Public Advocates, a nonprofit civil rights law firm. 

Attorneys have discovered numerous teacher vacancies at Stege Elementary School, Helms Middle School and John F. Kennedy High School, according to the complaints. There’s also been a pattern of filling vacancies with long-term substitutes, which attorneys say is illegal. 

Although teacher shortages are a national problem, West Contra Costa is facing more vacancies than surrounding districts, said Karissa Provenza, a law fellow at Public Advocates. If the district can’t fill vacancies, officials need to “take advantage of the numerous lawful options for filling vacancies with emergency yearlong teachers instead of subs,” she said.

“Beyond the emergency fixes, the district and the state need to boldly invest in sustainable solutions to attract and retain teachers from within the community who reflect the diverse backgrounds of their students,” Provenza added. 

Teacher vacancies are not only undermining quality instruction for students, attorneys said, but they’re placing burdens on educators in the district by relying on them to fill vacant classes and passing students along. 

“Some (students) have gone several years in a row being assigned to a class without a permanent, qualified teacher,” said Jeremiah Romm, a complainant and educator who has taught at Helms Middle School for 16 years, in a statement. “It becomes difficult to convince students that this district cares about their success, and I don’t know if I believe that myself.”

Educator vacancies have kept Sam Cleare, a complainant and educator at Stege Elementary School for seven years, from collaborating with other teachers and focusing on instruction. Cleare said there have been times when 10 or more students are placed in classrooms for multiple days because of the lack of substitutes. 

“Working over the contractual limit of students is unacceptable,” Cleare said. “It is impossible for students to learn or for me to teach with these conditions. I have had to speak with many parents and explain that their child hasn’t had a teacher for multiple years. These conversations leave me heartbroken. The inequitable learning opportunities are unacceptable.”

Elementary and middle school students are still recovering from learning losses over the pandemic and there are stark differences among districts across the country, The New York Times reported.

The Times analyzed data from the first detailed national study, led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard, on how students in the U.S. are recovering. The study shows the first clear picture of how much students have caught up and how far they need to go, according to the Times.

To look up test scores in school districts go here. 

Learning loss has been the greatest in math, and students have made up a third of what they lost, the Times reported. In reading, students have made up a quarter. The findings show students are making progress but still won’t be able to catch up before the expiration of the $122 billion federal pandemic relief package in September.

The gains were larger than researchers expected, but the gap that was already large between rich and poor communities has widened. Students living in poor communities are at greater disadvantages now than they were in 2019.

But there are outliers. Some wealthy districts barely improved while some poor districts made huge recoveries, the Times reported.

Temecula Valley Unified School District officials are not releasing the number or names of people who applied to take former school board member Danny Gonzalez’ seat following his resignation in December, despite board members’ plan to publicly interview candidates and potentially appoint a new board member on Feb. 13, The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise reported. 

The board’s decision will determine whether the district returns to its previous 3-2 conservative majority, responsible for banning critical race theory, temporarily removing the Social Studies Alive! curriculum and passing a policy requiring school officials to notify the parents of any child shows signs of being transgender. 

The board’s bylaws prevent the district from announcing candidates’ names publicly until the applications have been reviewed by a subcommittee, which will likely meet before Feb. 13, district spokesperson Jimmy Evans told news outlet in a text message. 

On Jan. 29, the Southern California News Group asked to see information about the applicants through a California Public Records Act request. 

David Loy, the First Amendment Coalition’s legal director, said that while the district may be allowed to withhold the names, keeping them under wraps would prevent the public from being able to vet potential candidates before the Feb. 13 date. 

“There has been a clear lack of transparency with the public and fellow board members, which has led to a complete loss of public trust, so this is hardly a surprise to us,” Jeff Pack, the co-founder of One Temecula Valley PAC, told The Press-Enterprise. 

“One Temecula Valley PAC stands for good governance, and we believe it is important that stakeholders and the public have an opportunity to be actively involved in this process, with the opportunity to research and raise concerns with potential candidates prior to any appointment,” Pack said.

In its analysis of the Governor’s recent 2024-25 state budget proposal, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan fiscal and policy advisor, recommends a more prudent approach to higher education spending in the face of plunging revenues. 

The Governor’s initial budget calls for higher community college spending despite Proposition 98 funding that falls short of covering existing college costs, the LAO warns. The Governor’s university deferral proposals would also contribute $1.5 billion to the state’s projected budget deficit in 2025-26. 

 In a recent brief, the LAO recommends the Legislature hold higher education funding flat in 2024-25 and then revisit the budget again in 2025-26. This approach would lessen the risk to the university system as well as other state programs that would have to be cut to make room for extra higher education spending in 2025-26. The state has historically limited higher education costs instead of increasing them amid multi-year deficits. 

When technologist Satya Nitta worked at IBM, he worked to build a new kind of personal digital tutor, as EdSurge reported. Before ChatGPT existed, Nitta was working with one of the highest-profile AI systems at the time, IBM’s Watson, which had notably beaten humans on the “Jeopardy” quiz show in 2011.

Nitta says his team spent about five years trying, but in the end, he concluded that even though the generative AI technology brings new capabilities that will change education, the tech just isn’t up to delivering a generalized personal tutor, and it won’t be for decades.

“We’ll have flying cars before we will have AI tutors,” he says,  EdSurge reported. “It is a deeply human process that AI is hopelessly incapable of meeting in a meaningful way. It’s like being a therapist or like being a nurse.”

Sal Khan, head of the nonprofit Khan Academy, and other ed-tech titans, beg to differ. Khan recently told The New York Times: “We’re at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen. And the way we’re going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.”

U.S. colleges and universities won’t receive students’ applications for financial aid until at least March, the Education Department alerted yesterday, as NBC reported.

The delay was caused by the department’s decision to fix its error in calculating student aid eligibility for the 2024-25 academic year. Generally, schools receive student data from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, in late fall or early winter, soon after students start receiving the applications themselves.

But a glitchy rollout of a new, purportedly simplified FAFSA form led to students’ being unable to access applications until the first week of 2024. The department confirmed this month that it had failed to update its tables in light of inflation.

“On the very day that schools were expecting FAFSA applicant information, they were instead notified by the U.S. Department of Education that they shouldn’t expect to receive that data until March, at the earliest,” said Justin Draeger, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, NBC reported. “These continued delays, communicated at the last minute, threaten to harm the very students and families that federal student aid is intended to help.”

The California Center on Teaching Careers has launched a campaign to recruit support staff for schools. The Be Their Joy campaign encourages people to take classified staff positions that  include jobs as custodians, cafeteria workers, crossing guards, bus drivers, yard supervisors, teaching aides and mental health staff.

California has about 500 openings for bus drivers, another 500 for paraprofessionals, and about a third of the school districts need custodians, according to a news release from the center.

Individuals interested in classified jobs can find listings on the Be Their Joy website.

“We are delighted to launch the Be Their Joy campaign today, taking a serious step forward in solving a critical problem for administrators right now,” said Marvin Lopez, executive director of the center. “Simply put, the more support educators have in the school and within the classroom, the more teachers can focus on teaching. This campaign promotes the tangible benefits of these roles, like pay and flexibility, while also touting those wonderful intangible benefits — like the positive impact you can have on students.”

Sacramento State will establish a Black Honors College at the university this fall.

President Luke Wood made the announcement Sunday on X, formerly known as Twitter. The honors college will support Black students at the university, and will be the first of its kind in the nation, Wood said.

“What most people don’t know is that we actually have the highest population of Black and African American students in the entire Cal State system and, not only that, more than all of the UCs except for UCLA,” Wood said. “So, when you think of ground zero for serving Black students and also historically failing them it has been Sacramento State. While we have the highest population of African American students, we are in the bottom quartile of success and we have been for years.”

The university will hold a community briefing on the plan at 5 p.m. Feb. 19 in Library Room 11.

Sunburst Youth Academy, located at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, has become a popular choice for students who are falling through the cracks, The Orange County Register reported. 

Each session, the school brings in roughly 200 new students from six counties – each of whom leave their families and choose a military style education. The program is free for students between the ages of 15 ½ and 18 and who are behind on high school credits. 

“They have to jump through hoops to be here,” Sunburst Youth Academy recruiter and Air Force Staff Sgt. Crystal Housman, told The Orange County Register. “Parents don’t make them come. They have to want to come.”

More than 85% of the students who join Sunburst finish, The Orange County Register reported.

“We take their phones away. We take their internet away. We take their TVs away. We take their friends away. We take their girlfriends (and boyfriends) away. So it’s a lot,” then-Sgt. 1st Class Justin Harman, with the California State Guard, told The Orange County Register. 

Two employees are suing the Stanislaus County Office of Education (SCOE), alleging they violated the state education code by failing to provide holidays off and paid vacation, The Modesto Bee reported. 

The lawsuit, filed on Jan. 16, further alleges when SCOE used to provide paid time off, they lowered employees’ pay. 

The employees, occupational therapists Susan Lyneis and Regina Ceja, also claim that SCOE told them they would receive paid time off with the same income in a July 2023 email, The Modesto Bee reported. 

Lyneis declined to provide a comment to The Modesto Bee, while Ceja did not immediately respond. The attorneys involved also declined. 

SCOE spokesperson Judy Boring declined to provide a comment to The Modesto Bee because it is an active lawsuit. She also said SCOE had changed its categorization of “certain work groups” in a way that “no one was negatively impacted.” 

Over 20,000 student workers across the 23 California State University campuses are voting on whether to form a union, a move that would make them the largest undergraduate union in the United States, The Orange County Register reported. Voting began Thursday and will continue until Feb. 22. 

“There’s this idea that it’s just supposed to be a fun college job to get some extra spending money,” said Elisa Mendez-Pintado, now a graduate student at San Diego State University. “But in California, these jobs are what keep us living.”

Mendez-Pintado became a union organizer in 2022 during her senior year at the university; she worked on campus to pay for rent, food and gas, the Register reported. 

According to The Register, organizers hope a union contract will secure raises and benefits such as sick pay. 

A union of student workers, if approved, would join campus unions of dining hall workers, faculty, adjunct professors and doctoral students. 

“Student work is real work, and therefore we should be treated like real employees,” Mendez-Pintado told The Register. 

Republican legislators on Wednesday requested an investigation into the Department of Education’s rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), The Hill reported. 

Typically launched in October for high school seniors and college students to apply for financial aid, FAFSA was delayed by months due to changes to create a new, simplified form. 

The education department launched the form for a limited time in late December. But the applications were not accessible at all times until Jan. 6, which Republicans called a “botched” effort, The Hill reported. 

According to The Hill, Jan. 6 was six days past the deadline Congress set for the education department to launch the new FAFSA. 

The delay also impacted the period of time colleges had to make financial aid offers and for incoming college students to decide which school to attend, The HIll reported. 

The California Student Aid Commission extended the priority deadline from March 2 to April 2 for students applying to four-year institutions and set a Sept. 3 deadline for students attending a California community college in 2024-25, EdSource reported. 

“All these challenges and delays may cause some students—particularly low-income students who are most dependent on federal aid—to give up and not pursue postsecondary education,” the lawmakers said in a letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, The Hill reported.

In keeping with revamped state and county health guidelines, LAUSD students and teachers can now return to the classroom if their Covid-19 symptoms are mild or if they have been fever-free without having taken fever-reducing medicines,  KTLA reported. 

Those who stop isolating before reaching the 10-day mark, however, will be required to wear a mask for the following 10 days. 

Meanwhile, students and staff who are asymptomatic will no longer be required to stay home, as long as they wear a well-fitted mask for 10 days after testing positive. 

Strategic planning, community engagement and work principles were among the top accomplishments that California’s Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission achieved last year.

The commission released its semi-annual report, “Transformational Change Report,” this week details the progress it made between July 2023 through December. The 47-page report summarizes community engagement efforts and progress on different initiatives. 

The state has done in-person and virtual community events in six counties: Sacramento, Yolo, San Francisco, Sonoma, Los Angeles and San Diego. 

So far, the state has poured millions into mental health for schools as part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s  Master Plan for Kids’ Mental Health. The California Department of Health Care Services will invest $4.7 billion over multiple years in youth behavioral services.

Between July and December, the Department of Health Care Services awarded $50 million in grants to 69 organizations to support youth programs that provide services to improve mental health, according to the report.

Although the governor’s 2024 budget projected a $38 million deficit, it did not call for cuts to behavioral health, the report said. The commission has a budget of about $65 million and is working to reduce nonessential spending and support early interventions that can reduce long-term costs. 

In 2024 the commission will consider adopting a four-year strategic plan, according to the report. The first strategic plan was developed in 2019.

The commission is also monitoring legislation that could affect mental health policies. 

San Francisco students could start taking Algebra 1 classes before high school next month — a move the district is making after years of parent pushback, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

San Francisco Unified School District students have not been able to take Algebra 1 until high school, and on Wednesday district officials presented three possible pathways forward to change that, according to the Chronicle. In 2014 the school board voted to not offer Algebra 1 until high school to avoid separating kids into different academic levels in middle school and boost enrollment in higher levels of math.

The first option would give incoming eighth graders the choice between taking eighth-grade math as it is currently taught or taking a course that includes both eighth-grade math and Algebra 1. The second pathway is taking Algebra 1 as an elective during or before the school day and would mean the district needs to hire additional math teachers.

The third option would offer Algebra 1 as a summer course before ninth grade, and is estimated to cost the district an additional $200,000.

Officials in President Joe Biden’s administration are privately opposing a proposal to allow the hiring of undocumented students for campus jobs across the University of California, Politico reported Wednesday.

Citing anonymous UC officials, Politico reported that the Department of Homeland Security has urged UC to reconsider the idea, which the system’s board of regents could take a vote on during a meeting Thursday. If UC does approve the policy, they could face a lawsuit from the White House. The DHS officials have warned UC that the administration might sue or take other action to block the policy if approved, according to Politico.

For more than a year, a coalition of undocumented students and legal scholars have been calling on UC to authorize the students to be employed across the university system. They argue that UC is allowed to do so and say that a 1986 federal statute banning the hiring of immigrants without legal status doesn’t apply to UC because it is a state entity.

UC officials since last spring have been studying the issue. On the agenda for Thursday’s regents meeting in San Francisco is an action item concerning the proposal, though the item includes no specific details about what action the regents might take. The regents will discuss the issue in closed session before they potentially take action in open session.

More than a dozen undocumented students have been on a hunger strike since Tuesday as they urge UC officials to allow them to be employed.

Former Fresno State administrator Frank Lamas has filed a lawsuit against the California State University board of trustees, according to the Fresno Bee.

The new suit filed by Lamas seeks reimbursement for legal fees and court costs — to the tune of $25,000 — related to two lawsuits that name him as a codefendant.

Lamas was at the center of a sexual harassment scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of CSU Chancellor and former Fresno State President Joseph I. Castro. An independent probe ordered by CSU trustees found that Castro turned a “blind eye” to over a dozen allegations of sexual harassment against Lamas.

The suit claims CSU broke the law by not providing Lamas a defense or indemnifying him against these lawsuits.

One suit brought by a university employee in 2022 claiming harassment and retaliation named Lamas, alongside Castro and the CSU board. Another case brought by a student alleging sexual harassment named Lamas, Castro and the CSU board — though Lamas and Castro were later dismissed from the case.

Lamas sent a statement to the Bee: “I deny the allegations made against me in this lawsuit as in the previous one where charges were dismissed against me.”

Roughly two-thirds of all undergraduate grades at UC Berkeley in 2022 were A’s or A-minuses, a stark increase from a decade ago, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

UC Berkeley data shows that while grade inflation accelerated during the pandemic, it has been a long standing trend, with average grades at Berkeley rising higher every year.

The surge in A’s can be chalked up to changes in the school’s grading policies during the pandemic, according to Oliver O’Reilly, vice provost for undergraduate education and a mechanical engineering professor at Berkeley,  the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

It should be noted that grade inflation is not unique to Berkeley. Nearly 80% of grades at Yale University were A’s last year, up from 67% in 2011. At Harvard University, a hefty 79% of undergraduate grades in 2020-21 were A’s in 2020-21, compared with 60% a decade earlier.

Nature made the cut in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed 2024-25 budget. Funding for the beloved state program that gives fourth graders and their families free access to many California State Parks has been preserved despite deficit woes,  the Mercury News reported.

When Newsom first presented his budget, the California State Parks Foundation warned about missing funds for the California State Park Adventure Pass. But it turns out the $2.1 million to support the program was included in a pot of funding aimed at education instead. If this proposed budget gets passed this summer, all fourth graders in California should be able to get passes for 54 state parks this fall.

It should be noted that the budget does not include money to continue the library program that lets people check out passes to visit more than 200 California state parks and beaches for free. Roughly 33,000 passes have been sent to public libraries in recent years, with many branches reporting they are among the most popular items they offer.

Joseph Komrosky, the president of the Temecula Valley Unified School District school board, will face a recall election this spring – likely between April 19 and May 26, KTLA reported. 

“I have fulfilled my campaign promises to my constituents and have done exactly what I was elected to do,” he told the Press-Enterprise of Riverside. 

“I’ve represented the voices in my community by fighting for traditional family values, such as parental rights. … I will rigorously seek out and stand against any evil such as pervasive obscenity, vulgarity, pornography, and erotica here at TVUSD. I will continue to resist these harmful things with every ounce of my being.”

Since his election, the board’s conservative majority has banned critical race theory, temporarily removed the Social Studies Alive! curriculum over a mention of LGBTQ+ activist Harvey Milk, fired the former superintendent and passed a policy mandating school officials notify parents if their child shows signs of being transgender. 

One Temecula Valley PAC, a political action committee, submitted the signatures for Komrosky’ recall in December. Election officials have now confirmed the required 4,884 voter signatures. 

“This is an amazing day for our school district, city and community and we’re hoping this is yet another step to correcting the wrongs that have occurred over the past year under Komrosky and his cohorts,” co-founder of One Temecula Valley PAC Jeff Pack told KTLA. 

Two California school districts were listed among the 10 most diverse in the United States, by Niche, a school ranking and review website. Both school districts are in Sacramento County.

Natomas Unified School District ranked No. 2 in the rankings and Elk Grove Unified ranked No. 6. The next most diverse school district in California is Fairfield-Suisun Unified, which ranked 29th nationally.

Niche based its 2024 rankings on racial and economic diversity, as well as survey responses on school culture and diversity, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Natomas is the most diverse in California, according to a ranking of the state’s schools. Elk Grove Unified ranks second, followed, in order, by Fairfield-Suisun Unified, Culver City Unified, San Francisco Unified, New Haven Unified (Alameda County), San Diego Unified, San Leandro Unified, Santa Clara Unified and Sacramento City Unified.

The California Department of Education will host a math workshop, “Proven Professional Development in Mathematics,” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday in its boardroom at 1420 N Street in Sacramento.

The math convening for educators, researchers, curriculum experts, industry professionals and ed-tech innovators is open to everyone, according to a news release from CDE. It also will be livestreamed on the department’s Facebook page.

“All of California’s students should have access to effective, high-quality math instruction that will prepare them for the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow,” said Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. “We need to engage students in developing a love for math while supporting those on an accelerated path. Convenings like this are vital to help our educators to meet these goals.”

Interested individuals also are invited to submit innovative and effective professional development modules, training programs and curricula. Register here to attend.

Latinos make up a majority of young Californians, according to a report from nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the report estimates that in 2022 52% of children under 18 and 50.4% of Californians 18-24 are Latino. This is a marked increase from older, majority white generations: Californians over 65 are 21.9% Latino and 52.8% white.

California has double the national rate of immigrants: 27% of Californians are foreign-born. More than half (54%) are naturalized citizens, and the remainder are mostly legal, permanent residents, the report states. Nearly half (46%) of California children have one immigrant parent, according to a PPIC report focused on immigration.

California lost 433,000 people between July 2020 and July 2023, according to the California Department of Finance. During this period, 47 of 58 counties have experienced population declines. This decline has big ramifications for school enrollment. Los Angeles and rural areas are seeing big decreases, while the Inland Empire and Sacramento are growing.

The declines were driven by residents leaving the state as well as fewer immigrants, an increase in deaths due to Covid and birth rates hitting record lows.

But California remains a relatively young state. The state’s median age is 37.9 years old, compared with 38.8 nationwide, according to the American Community Survey.

After nearly seven years as Fresno Unified superintendent, Bob Nelson will leave the district to accept a tenure-track position at California State University, Fresno, he told EdSource on Monday. 

Nelson will join the educational leadership division at the Kremen School of Education and Human Development, the school district also announced in a news release Monday. 

According to the release, Nelson achieved the following during his superintendency, among other accolades: 

• Averted two strikes, including a teachers strike in 2023 
• Partnered to develop the Bulldog Bound Guaranteed Admissions program.
• “Demonstrated adept leadership during the challenges posed by the pandemic.”

“Serving as the superintendent in the district where I initially taught elementary school and first served as a leader has been the pinnacle of my career thus far,” Nelson stated in the release. “I am thankful to have the opportunity to land in a future position where I can continue serving Valley educators as well.”

Nelson will continue serving as superintendent until July 31, leaving the school board six months to find his replacement, he told EdSource. If a permanent superintendent isn’t named by then, Deputy Superintendent Misty Her is expected to be named as interim superintendent, the school district confirmed in its media release. 

“This commitment to stability and excellence by the Fresno Unified Board of Education is a strength our Fresno Unified family will continue to benefit from,” the school district release stated. 

According to the media release, Fresno Unified has been led by only two superintendents over the last two decades, even though superintendent tenure in large urban school systems is 30 months. 

Data shows that alternative schools successfully re-engage youth in schools, according to a new data brief from the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities at Stanford University.

“On average, the positive transition rate for students in these schools mirrors the four-year cohort graduation rates of the average traditional high school,” said Jorge Ruiz de Velasco, deputy director of the Gardner Center.

A positive transition can include graduation, completion of GED, or transfer to a community college, among other similar milestones.

The data further shows that alternative schools, of which there are nearly 1,000 statewide, can successfully re-engage youth in school.

The brief is “the first publicly available data on these schools and youth in more than a decade,” Ruiz de Velasco said.

Alternative high schools include continuation schools, community schools, court schools and special alternative charter schools. There are 178,000 students enrolled in alternative high schools statewide, totaling “about 11-15% of all California high school students in grades 10-12,” according to Ruiz de Velasco.

The data brief can be read at this link.

Following three months of bargaining, the Santa Barbara Teachers Association and the Santa Barbara Unified School District have reached an impasse, the Santa Barbara Independent reported. 

An impasse — where “their differences in positions are so substantial and prolonged that future meetings would be futile” — comes as both sides have struggled to agree on wages, along with hours and conditions. 

After the California Public Employee Relations Board likely certifies the impasse, both parties would be assigned a state mediator for free. 

With a 20-year-old policy prohibiting “portable communication devices” still intact, Fresno teachers are struggling to keep students away from their phones and punish those who don’t follow classroom rules, the Fresno Bee reported. 

Fresno Unified school board President Susan Wittrup recognized in an email to the Bee that the current policy is outdated and encouraged teachers to collaborate with site leaders and instructional superintendents to help develop strategies. 

“The major thing is that there is a lack of accountability in our system,” Manuel Bonilla, president of the Fresno Teachers Association, told the Bee. “If the culture is not to hold things accountable, what happens is that everything kind of gets pushed down to the people lower.”

So far, schools in Fresno have taken various approaches, with some requiring students to lock their phones in a pouch and others maintaining a phone-free policy entirely. 

Peter Beck, a teacher at Fresno High School, has attempted a new strategy in which everyone plugs their phone into a charger at the start of the class. Three minutes before the end of the class, students can go back to their phones. 

But some have refused to put their phones away and charge their phones to begin with. 

“When I try to do something with the phone, teachers are like, ‘Come on, the kid is not a bad kid,’ and the administration is like, ‘You know, you don’t really have guidance on what to do from the district,’” he said. 

“And if I have to call every parent whose kid was on the phone, good morning, I’d be working all night.”

A.J. Kato, a spokesperson for the Fresno Unified School District, told the Bee that a new policy is currently in the works for the next academic year. 

A survey of Modesto City Schools residents revealed that voters are likely to approve another bond measure for the school district, The Modesto Bee reported.

Modesto City Schools was awarded Measures D and E in 2018 for K-8 schools and Measure L in 2022 for high schools. The district is considering pursuing its fourth bond measure in six years to repair and upgrade schools, the Bee reported.

In December, consulting firm TeamCiviX surveyed 531 district residents about their support for a new elementary school bond measure, and around 70% said the district needed additional funds, the Bee reported. The survey presented possible bond measures, outlining costs to voters and the use of funds.

According to the Bee, the survey also determined that 44,000 voters – a number that would make passing the measure “feasible” – are likely to approve the bond measure.

“The most basic question we’re trying to answer with this survey is ‘Is it feasible?’ and our answer to that question is yes,” Charles Heath, a TeamCiviX representative, told board members at a meeting this week.

The Biden administration announced Friday that it is canceling nearly $5 billion in student loans for 74,000 borrowers — the administration’s latest measure to address student debt, Forbes reported.

According to Forbes, the administration approved loan forgiveness for 44,000 public servants, such as teachers, nurses and firefighters, who qualified for loan forgiveness after 10 years and an additional 30,000 borrowers on income-driven repayment plans.

The Biden administration is taking this step to fix administrative issues that have delayed loan forgiveness of individuals who qualify for both programs, Forbes reported. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program should’ve forgiven debt after a decade, and the income-driven repayment plans should’ve forgiven debt after a certain amount of time.

It’s unknown when the loans will be forgiven, but the billions of dollars worth of debt being erased will add to the more than $136 billion the Biden administration has canceled so far, Forbes reported.

Nearly 1,000 students are leaving Oakland Unified School District and transferring to a nearby district, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, which is a significant jump compared with previous years. 

According to The Chronicle, the boost in transfers was “probably” because of Jewish families choosing to leave because of anti-Israel sentiments among students and staff. A total of 950 transfers were approved, about 200 more transfers that would be expected in a typical year. There are about 34,000 students enrolled in Oakland Unified. 

But at the same time, 900 students transferred into Oakland Unified with 200 being enrolled this month, The Chronicle reported. Enrollment fluctuation is typical, but the reasons to transfer this year reflect the political battles related to the war in Gaza. 

Many Jewish families have said they don’t feel safe or comfortable because of a declaration by the teachers union. The declaration associated Israel with genocide and apartheid and urged district educators to teach a pro-Palestinian curriculum.

A boarding school in Massachusetts banned smartphones on campus and has started to see positive cultural shifts, The Guardian reported. 

Students and staff at Buxton boarding school were given Light Phones to use instead, which have limited technology capabilities. Light Phones can make calls and send text messages but don’t have cameras and can’t download applications, The Guardian reported. 

Buxton boarding school has tried the experiment for one full school year and noticed students were more engaged and had more face-to-face interactions. There was also a surge of students who signed up for a photography class that uses film cameras.

It was difficult to asses academic progress because Buxton uses a narrative evaluation system, The Guardian reported. Some students also managed to sneak smartphones into the school but, still, according to The Guardian, most agree the school is better off without smartphones. 

The National Center for Education Statistics found more than three-quarters of schools in the United States have restricted non-academic uses of smartphones as of 2020. In 2018, France banned smartphone use in schools.

The state’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) last week found that Oakland Unified School District school closures in 2022 violated educators’ rights and that the resulting April 2022 one-day teachers strike was legal, the teachers union said in a Tuesday news release emailed to EdSource. 

Oakland Unified and the Oakland Education Association created a policy in 2019 prohibiting the school district from closing schools without a nine-month planning process, according to the union. The district, the union said, “ignored” the policy in 2022 when it closed schools and ignored the union’s demands to negotiate. 

Oakland Unified filed an unfair labor practice charge, alleging that the union violated the Educational Employment Relations Act with an unlawful one-day strike following the school closure decision, the PERB decision noted. 

“The school closures caused unnecessary disruption and dislocation, especially in low-income, predominately Black and Brown neighborhoods, leading to more educational segregation and financial drain,” said Ismael Armendariz, the union president. “OUSD should have followed the policy to engage with the community, have an opportunity for conversation and most of all, trust educators.”

At least 14 Fresno Unified schools have social media accounts associated with school fight videos, ranging from elementary to high school grades, The Fresno Bee found. Most accounts have more than 100 followers. The accounts are not operated by the school district.

The account names usually include the school’s name and either the word “fight” or “fightpage,” the Bee reported, while featuring the school’s logo or mascot as profile pictures. 

Experts told the Bee that social media accounts documenting school fights normalize violence among students and “add to a student’s burden of learning to socialize normally in an already stressful post-Covid environment,” the Bee reported. 

According to the Bee, concerned parents have complained to the Fresno Unified school board. The school district did not respond to the Bee’s questions about the fight videos. 

“It’s really frustrating because all this stuff is happening, and I don’t feel like the school is doing anything about it,” said Pyle Elementary parent Jessica Jolliffe. Two Pyle Elementary fifth graders fought in a video posted on Instagram in December.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released a guidance memorandum to “help ensure eligible young adults gain access” to a housing support program called Foster Youth to Independence. The memorandum was created for the program’s grant recipients to better understand how to best leverage funding and provide wider access to eligible youth.

The program, also known as FYI, provides federal housing vouchers and accompanying support services to youth ages 18 to 24 who have left foster care or are transitioning out of it and who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Youth with the FYI voucher typically pay 30% of their monthly adjusted income as their rent, with the voucher covering the remainder of the rent amount.

The program was recently found to be underutilized in California despite recent federal policy changes aimed at easing access to it, according to a recent report from John Burton Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit focused on supporting California foster and homeless youth.

Part of the reason for the underutilization, per the report, is that some county representatives and staff in charge of voucher distribution were unaware of details that would facilitate the issuing of more vouchers.

FYI is one of the few programs targeted to this population, which is disproportionately at risk of homelessness.

Child care providers continue to struggle, KPBS reported.

California’s child care workforce is led by mostly women of color, and experts say these workers are struggling financially. Almost 75% of providers don’t pay themselves a salary because they need to maintain staff in their programs. For those who do pay themselves, the average salary is less than $30,000 a year. Many providers don’t have health care benefits, and few have retirement plans.

“This is a workforce that has really been developed, unfortunately, on the backs of women and women of color,” said Courtney Baltiyskyy, the director of advocacy for the San Diego YMCA, KPBS reported.  “And when we think about succession planning for this workforce, it’s just not happening.”

Last year, the Child Care Providers Union, which represents more than 40,000 providers in California, negotiated a $2.1 billion contract with the state, including the largest pay raise to date and the first retirement fund for unionized child care workers. However, some say the rollout has been too slow, leaving providers to grapple with the rising cost of living. 

An estimated two-thirds of American preschool programs may be segregated by race and class, a reality that contradicts the widely held belief that preschool may be the great equalizer, EdSurge reports.

Sociologist Casey Stockstill, an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, explored this finding in a new book, “False Starts: The Segregated Lives of Preschoolers,” taking readers inside two preschool classrooms and unpacking how race and class divide children in their earliest education experiences.

“I didn’t set out for it to be a comparison about social class,” Stockstill said of her research. But the two programs, so similar on paper, turned out to be “just so incredibly different.”

One key difference she found is how much more reading occurred in the private preschool compared to the Head Start classroom she studied. 

“It’s important because if you’re a policymaker or just a concerned citizen, thinking, ‘What levers could we pull to make sure we’re giving a great experience to marginalized children?’ A lot of them have been pulled at Head Start — the experienced teachers, the low ratio, the full-day care, a social worker,” she said. “And yet what I’m finding is, separate is still not equal. We know that in so many other settings. I would argue that’s also true of preschool.” 

California’s Department of Health Care Services today launched two new mobile applications that offer free behavioral health services to families with children ages 0-25. In a press release, the state department cited that “about one-third of California adolescents experienced serious psychological distress” during 2019-2021, and that there was 20 percent increase in adolescent suicides during the same years.

BrightLife Kids is for children ages 0-12 and their caregivers, while Soluna is for youth ages 13-25.

Both apps will offer free, one-on-one coaching sessions, information on emergency resources for those in a mental health crisis, a “searchable directory and live care navigation services” that can help users connect with resources available via their health plan or at their school, and tools to help them manage stress, among other resources.  The apps are funded by the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative.

While each coaching session will be offered by “a trained and qualified behavioral health wellness coach,” rather than licensed professionals, there will be licensed behavioral health professionals “on standby to intervene, if clinically appropriate,” per the press release.

Coaches will offer sessions in both English and Spanish. Live translation will be offered in 17 additional languages: Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Korean, Armenian, Russian, Farsi, Japanese, Arabic, Cambodian, Hindi, Hmong, Thai, Laotian, Punjabi, Mien, and Ukrainian.

A bill advancing to the Assembly floor could mean the end of youth tackle football, at least for children younger than 12.

The bill, authored by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, would phase in the ban, according to CalMatters. The ban would begin for children younger than 6 in 2025 and eventually include all children younger than 12 in 2029.

Research shows that people who spend more than 11 years playing football are more likely to have brain trauma, according to CalMatters.

This isn’t the first time legislators have taken up the issue. In 2018 a similar bill failed.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a legal alert to school district superintendents, charter school administrators, county offices of education and school boards last week warning them that policies requiring staff to disclose a students’ gender identity are against state law.

“Forced outing” policies, as Bonta calls them, discriminate against students based on gender identity and infringe on their constitutional rights and their right to privacy, according to the legal alert. The policies are against the California equal protection clause and the state’s education and government codes, according to a news release from Bonta’s office.

“Unconstitutional school policies that forcibly out and endanger the psychological and emotional well-being of transgender and gender-nonconforming students have no place in our classrooms,” stated in the release. “Today’s alert serves as a reminder to all school officials of their duty to ensure a safe and inclusive learning environment, particularly for our most vulnerable student populations susceptible to violence and harassment. At the California Department of Justice, we will continue safeguarding the civil rights of all students.” 

Among the school districts that have passed parental notification policies are Chino Valley Unified in San Bernardino County, Murrieta Valley Unified and Temecula Valley Unified in Riverside County, Orange Unified in Orange County, Anderson Union High School District in Shasta County, and Rocklin Unified and Dry Creek Joint Elementary in Placer County. The policies require teachers and other school staff to inform parents, generally within three days, if a student asks to use a different name or pronoun, or to take part in a program, or to use a facility associated with a gender other than the one they had at birth.

Affecting multiple school years, the pandemic caused K-12 students to fall behind academically. But according to test scores from the online assessment i-Ready, kindergarteners – children who were in diapers during the pandemic – need help catching up in academics as well, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Compared to students entering kindergarten before the pandemic, current students started school with weaker math and reading skills and were less likely to start school at grade level, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

“We are still seeing sizable gaps in school readiness, in school performance for kids who weren’t even in school at the time of the pandemic,” Emily Oster, a Brown University researcher who has studied pandemic-era learning, told The Wall Street Journal. 

Based on reporting from The Wall Street Journal, possible causes include: lower participation in early-childhood education; decreased participation in kindergarten, which is optional in some states; the pandemic’s impact on families outside of school; and shifts in student enrollment or test participation. 

Senate Bill 483 –  legislation banning California K-12 schools from physically or mechanically restraining students in a face-down position –  advanced in the state legislature this week, following a parent’s testimony, The Davis Enterprise reported. 

Davis parent Stacia Langley testified Wednesday during a bill hearing that her 13-year-old son Max Benson, who had autism, died in November 2018 after being restrained face-down at Guiding Hands School, a private school in El Dorado Hills, according to The Davis Enterprise. The campus is now closed. 

“I am here to express my strong support for SB 483 because my son Max cannot,” Langley told committee members, the Enterprise reported. 

The California Senate Education Committee unanimously approved the proposed law, sending it to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Enterprise reported.