California education news: What’s the latest?

Two California parent groups filed a lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday following updated guidelines from state health officials to have students wear face masks at school when they return in person this fall.

Let Them Breathe and Reopen California Schools filed the lawsuit in San Diego County Superior Court against the governor, along with State Public Health Officer Dr. Tomas Aragón, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly and Dr. Naomi Bardach, an advisor to the state on school pandemic safety, according to the Mercury News.

The complaint alleges that the state masking rules for all students regardless of vaccination status is not based on scientific research and can impede education.

All K-12 students and adults in K-12 school settings are required to wear masks indoors when students are present. But it’s up to local schools or districts to determine how to handle students who refuse to comply with the mask rules. The school guidance from the California Department of Public Health also aligns with recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

“A return to a normal school year is crucial to the mental and physical health recovery for students across California who have endured months of isolation,” said Jonathan Zachreson, founder of Reopen California Schools, an advocacy organization of nearly 16,000 California public school parents.

California will soon offer free annual passes to 19 state parks for fourth-grade students and their families.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 148 Thursday, establishing the California State Park Adventure Pass program. The program is scheduled to begin by Sept. 21.

“Nature is a public good and a crucial public health tool,” said First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who championed the program. “For adults and children alike, quality time in nature is good for our hearts, minds, and bodies, No state is better positioned than California to leverage the great outdoors to augment our communities’ health and well-being — especially for youth in underserved communities.”

The federal government has the Every Kid Outdoors Program, which allows families with fourth graders free access to federal parks.

Earlier this month Newsom signed legislation approving $5.6 million to fund the parks program, as well as an additional $3 million to establish the State Library Park Pass, which allows individuals to check out a day-use state park pass from a library for free.

Seven Stanford University students tested positive for the coronavirus this week, despite being vaccinated.

The Bay Area private university announced Thursday in an email to students that the infected students were symptomatic. However, it didn’t offer details about whether the cases were connected or part of an outbreak, according to The Mercury News. 

Stanford recommends that everyone wear face coverings in indoor spaces, despite most physical distancing and masking requirements being lifted for fully vaccinated people. The university also requires face coverings in campus spaces that are open to the public, such as the Stanford Bookstore. According to the university, students who have submitted proof of vaccination are no longer required to get tested weekly. Nearly 90% of people visiting the campus regularly are vaccinated.

Dozens of parents protested outside the Clovis Unified district board meeting Wednesday night demanding that district trustees not adhere to state-mandated mask requirements, according to the Fresno Bee.

Board members called for the state to allow local officials to decide whether masks should be required in their schools, according to the article.

New Covid-19 cases are increasing in the central San Joaquin Valley. More than 100 people were hospitalized with Covid-19 Wednesday, a two-month high, according to the newspaper.

Stockton Unified’s school board is to blame for the constant turnover of superintendents in the school district, according to a grand jury report released Wednesday.

The 2020-21 San Joaquin County Grand Jury launched an investigation into the school district after it received numerous complaints from members of the public and reviewed media accounts of conflicts within the district, according to a press release from the grand jury.

The district has had 14 superintendents — interim and permanent — in the last 30 years, according to the Stockton Record. The average tenure has been 19 months. The district has had three superintendents in the last year, according to the newspaper.

The constant change in leadership at the district has made it impossible to increase student achievement in the district, according to the grand jury. It also has made it possible for board members to act inappropriately and to sometimes exceed the limits of their authority, according to the report.

The grand jury is recommending that the school board publicly commit to change, adhere to standards of governance and provide transparency and accountability to the public.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed California’s historic $6 billion broadband bill into law on Tuesday, securing a future for one of the country’s largest investments into internet infrastructure.

“As we work to build California back stronger than before, the state is committed to addressing the challenges laid bare by the pandemic, including the digital divide holding back too many communities in a state renowned for its pioneering technology and innovation economy,” Newsom said on Tuesday from Traver Joint Elementary in Tulare County, where many rural districts struggled to connect students to the internet during distance learning.

Like many schools serving low-income students this past year, Traver Joint Elementary distributed Wi-Fi hotspots so students could access distance learning programs during the pandemic. But even hotspots could be a weak solution in areas that don’t receive strong cell service or in households where multiple people are using the service.

The broadband package includes the following:

• $3.25 billion to build, operate and maintain an open access, state-owned middle mile network;
• $2 billion to set up last-mile broadband connections that will connect homes and businesses with local networks;
• $750 million for a loan loss reserve fund so local governments and nonprofits can secure financing for broadband;
• Creation of a broadband czar position at the California Department of Technology.

“This $6 billion investment will make broadband more accessible than ever before, expanding opportunity across the spectrum for students, families and businesses — from enhanced educational supports to job opportunities to health care and other essential services,” Newsom said.

The Long Beach Unified School District’s Board of Education has elected a new board president.

The board unanimously approved board member Juan Benitez to serve as the president for the upcoming school year, the Long Beach Post reported.

Last year, board member Megan Kerr tried to nominate Benitez as president for this past school year, but that attempt failed. The rest of the board was criticized for not supporting Benitez at the time, including by Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia and State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, the Post reported.

Following the vote to elect him president on Monday, Benitez thanked outgoing board president Diana Craighead “for serving as president of our board during an extremely challenging year. You took some punches, you handled them always with grace and I think honored our district in your service. I want to thank my colleagues for your vote of confidence.”

The San Diego Community College District has now raised more than $2 million to date for its San Diego Promise program, which pays for two years of tuition for eligible students.

The district raised more than $600,000 in the fiscal year ending on June 30 and has now raised over $2 million since the program’s inception in 2016, the district said in a press release.

“All students deserve access to higher education, regardless of their financial situation, and these generous donations will help even more students participate in the San Diego Promise, including veterans, former foster youth, and adult learners returning to school,” Carlos O. Turner Cortez, chancellor of the district, said in a statement. “Fundraising momentum is growing and will continue to grow as more of our region’s residents learn about the impacts this program is having on our community.”

Donations to the program go directly to students. In addition to tuition assistance, the district over the past year also used the money to provide laptops and other supplies to students as they mostly attended  classes from home, district spokesperson Leslie Stump told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond is inviting California teenagers to meet with him virtually at 3 p.m. Wednesday to discuss vaccinations and their concerns about returning to school in the fall.

Part of supporting the physical and emotional needs of students is allowing them to be heard, according to a press release announcing the event.

The event will be moderated by Rana Banankhah, incoming student member of the California Board of Education. There also will be a recorded message from players with the Golden State Warriors basketball team.

The event will be broadcast live on Facebookand Instagram.

A graduate this year of the San Dieguito Union High School District is suing the district for negligence, claiming it failed to protect her from abuse and harassment from another student since middle school that included hacking into the district computer to alter her high school grades.

“It messed with my self-esteem,” Haley Dinsmore told the San Diego Union-Tribune. said. “It made me question my whole life.”

In legal filings, the San Dieguito district denied responsibility or liability, the newspaper reported. But last month the district sued the California-based company that provided its student information system, Aeries Software. The Union-Tribute said the lawsuit alleges Aeries failed to keep students’ information secure and the district seeks to recover any judgments or settlements the district may incur from litigation against it.

Dinsmore may not have been the only student affected by a data breach. Two families filed a class-action lawsuit in May 2020 against Aeries for a data breach that coincides with the timeline of the hacking alleged in Dinsmore’s lawsuit, the Union-Tribune said. According to a court filing, Aeries said that 166 school district databases were exposed to unauthorized access by an individual beginning in November 2019, but the company did not tell school districts about the breach until April 2020.

Dinsmore said the harassment started in middle school when she declined a request for a date by a minor identified only as John Roe in the lawsuit. The boy retaliated by taking over her Instagram account, hacking into her family’s computer, and sending death threats, according to a lawsuit Dinsmore and her parents filed last year against the boy and his parents. When the two were in high school, the lawsuit alleges that John Roe hacked into that school’s student information system and lowered Dinsmore’s grades from A’s to B’s.

Days later, San Dieguito Union High filed a police report and Roe was arrested. Months later, a data breach in San Dieguito became the subject of a class-action lawsuit, the Union-Tribune said.

Indiana University’s requirement that students be vaccinated against Covid-19 was upheld Monday by a federal judge.

The ruling appears to be the first that upholds a university’s coronavirus vaccination mandate, according to The New York Times.

Eight students sued the university, with their lawyer arguing that the requirement violated their constitutional rights and claimed that the university couldn’t require vaccination while the existing vaccines are approved under an emergency use authorization.

The lawyer, James Bopp Jr., said he planned to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, the Times reported.

“The Fourteenth Amendment permits Indiana University to pursue a reasonable and due process of vaccination in the legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty and staff,” Judge Damon R. Leichty of the U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana said in Monday’s ruling, according to the Times.

Last week, the University of California finalized its own requirement that students, faculty and staff be vaccinated against Covid-19 regardless of whether one of the vaccines receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration before the fall terms begin at those campuses.

The state’s other public university system, California State University, is planning to wait for full FDA approval before its own requirement goes into effect. The California Community Colleges system urged faculty, students and staff to be vaccinated but left to the system’s 73 districts to decide whether to require vaccines before they can return to campuses in the fall.

Adopting a policy that’s more closely aligned with California’s position and stricter than that of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended Monday that all adults and students over the age of 2 wear a mask while at school.

Universal masking is “the most effective strategy to create consistent messages and expectations among students without the added burden of needing to monitor everyone’s vaccination status,” said Dr. Sara Bode, chair-elect of the AAP Council on School Health Executive Committee, in a statement.

Earlier this month, the CDC issued guidance that called for only students who have not been vaccinated for Covid-19 should be required to wear masks. The California Department of Public Health, however, ruled that all students and staff should wear masks, agreeing with the pediatricians that a universal requirement eliminates the need to monitor who has been vaccinated and would protect individuals who, for various medical reasons, are exempt from the mask mandate. The vaccine is not yet approved for children under 12.

The state’s position also is intended to provide reassurance to parents who have questioned whether it will be safe to resume in-person school amid rapidly rising rates of Covid transmission by the more virulent Delta variant. However, some parent groups have protested the requirement, and at least one group, Reopen Schools California, has threatened to sue.

The California Department of Public Health initially stated that non-exempt students who refuse to wear a mask should not be admitted to school. Within hours, the department  backtracked to continue to leave enforcement of masking to local districts.

With the rise in transmissions this month, Los Angeles became the first county to again require masking immediately in all indoor spaces.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of California’s system of 116 community colleges, will temporarily join the Biden administration as a higher education advisor.

Oakley will begin his role with the Biden administration on July 26 and plans to return to the community college system in late fall, according to an announcement Monday from Pamela Haynes, the president of the Board of Governors overseeing the colleges.

Daisy Gonzales, deputy chancellor of the community college system, will become the system’s acting chancellor.

The statement said Oakley’s temporary assignment in the Biden administration “is a win for California and the nation, providing more opportunity to improve higher education policy and help millions of American families.”

Oakley has been chancellor of the community college system since 2016. Haynes added that Oakley has the full support of the Board of Governors in taking the temporary post with the Biden administration.

A federal judge in Texas ordered the government to stop accepting new applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, on Friday.

The program, which provides temporary protection from deportation and permission to work for hundreds of thousands of undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children, has been the subject of multiple court cases. First instituted in 2012, the Trump administration attempted to end the program in 2017 and first-time applications were not accepted from then until December 2020, when a separate federal judge ordered the government to begin accepting them again.

In a separate court case, Texas and eight other states sued to end DACA, arguing that the Obama administration did not have the legal authority to grant deportation protection and work permits. That case sparked Friday’s order to once again stop accepting new applications, from District Court Judge Andrew Hanen.

The case affects about 300,000 people now eligible to apply for DACA for the first time. To be eligible for DACA, applicants must have come to the U.S. before they turned 16 and have lived here since June 15, 2007, in addition to attending school or having graduated high school and not been convicted of certain crimes.

The judge did not order the government to end DACA for immigrants who currently have the protection.

Eight of the 23 California State University campuses will participate in the system’s new CSUCCESS (California State University Connectivity Contributing to Equity and Student Success) initiative to provide up to 35,000 Apple iPad Air devices to first-year and transfer students. Students will also receive an Apple pencil and Apple Smart Keyboard folio as part of the initiative to use for the entirety of their undergraduate experience.

“CSUCCESS will assure that students have immediate access to innovative, new mobile tools they need to support their learning, particularly when faced with the lingering effects of the pandemic,” CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro said. “The new initiative will establish a foundation for their achievement and has the potential to play a key role in eliminating stubborn equity gaps among our talented and diverse students. In addition to truly addressing equity and access, we see iPad Air as a powerful tool to prepare our students for their future careers.”

The campuses, which include Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Fresno, Humboldt State, Los Angeles, Maritime Academy, Northridge and San Marcos, will use a mix of funding to provide the devices. That funding could come from savings, federal Covid relief aid for pandemic-related losses, or new funding from the 2021-22 state budget, a representative from the chancellor’s office said.

There are no income-based eligibility requirements to participate and students must register for the program directly on their campus.

The University of California has finalized a policy that will require all students and staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19 before they can attend any of the university’s campuses in the fall, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The university made the announcement Thursday as Covid-19 infection rates began to climb among the state’s unvaccinated residents. Experts are particularly concerned about the Delta variant, the most common variant in the state. It is believed to be twice as contagious as the more common coronavirus strains.

Physical distancing and masking are also expected to continue on the campuses.

University officials consulted with UC infectious disease experts and reviewed medical studies to draw up the vaccination policy, said UC President Michael Drake. The university announced it would require the vaccines in June.

Only a few other university systems in the country have announced they will mandate Covid-19 vaccines while they are still under emergency use authorization. Previously, UC  university officials said they would only require the vaccines once they had full FDA approval.

Enrollment at California state universities has increased by almost 95,000 students in the last five years, increasing housing problems in campus communities, according to a Public Policy Institute of California report.

College students in California have to compete for affordable housing in an already crowded and expensive housing market. The state is home to four of the eight most expensive rental markets in the country, according to the report. And areas once considered affordable, such as Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield, have seen rental costs skyrocket in recent years.

Students who live on campus are more likely to remain in college, although most students at University of California and California State University campuses move off campus after their freshman year, according to the report. At many campuses university housing is more costly than private housing.

High school students who were in distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic suffered socially, emotionally and academically, according to research published this week by the Educational Research Association.

“Many news stories have reported on individual stories of teenagers who have suffered from anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges during the pandemic,” said Angela L. Duckworth, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study. “This study gives some of the first empirical evidence of how learning remotely has affected adolescent well-being.”

The study compared students who took classes remotely and their counterparts who studied in person. Students who studied at home scored lower on the “thriving index” than students who went to school in person.

The differences were not great, but even small effects are noteworthy when they impact millions of people, according to a press release on the report.

Native American leaders in California rallied Wednesday outside the State House to urge passage of a bill that would replace a recently toppled statue of 18^th century Spanish colonizer Junipero Serra with a monument in Capitol Park that honors Native American tribes living in the Sacramento area.

“The Serra statue is a symbol of a dark period of time when genocide was inflicted on our people and the beginning of the mentality that views people living in California as less than human,” said Assemblyman James Ramos, D-Highland, the first Native American elected to the Legislature and sponsor of the bill. “Most Californians have a romanticized image of the mission period, and don’t realize that for the state’s Native Americans it was a period of forced assimilation and servitude, family separation, starvation and other abuses.”

Jesus Tarango, chairman of Wilton Rancheria, whose tribe is among those sponsoring AB 338, said at the rally, “This bill will begin to tell that history for us and for future generations.”

Assembly Bill 338 has moved through the Legislature with little opposition and needs only the approval of the Senate before it heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature. It would authorize a monument honoring indigenous California that would be designed in consultation with Native American leaders and funded privately by tribal nations. It would replace the life-size statue of Father Serra, which was erected on the State House grounds in 1967. It was toppled on July 4, 2020; Serra statues in San Francisco and Los Angeles were torn down about the same time.

Serra was a Franciscan missionary who founded nine California missions, including the first, in San Diego, in 1769, to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Pope Francis canonized Serra during a visit to the United States in 2015.

In opposing AB 338, the Pacific Justice Institute – Center of Public Policy, said, “The provision to tear out the law written to erect and maintain a monument in honor of Father Serra is nothing less than the validation and codification of anti-Christian mob violence.”

Small school districts aren’t the fattest of targets for cybercriminals, but they also tend to be easier prey than big districts and businesses with larger IT departments. Those small districts include the Newhall School District in Santa Clarita, whose cyberattack last fall crippled the 6,000-student elementary district for about a week, while sidelining its 310 teachers from leading distance learning.

As profiled by CalMatters, the ransomware assault knocked out the district’s computer network by installing encrypted software through the internet. Newhall was one of more than two dozen school districts and universities in California attacked by cybercriminals in the past five years — though the unreported numbers could be bigger. Victims include Visalia Unified, Rialto School District in San Bernardino, Sierra College and the University of California, according to Seculore Solutions, a software company based in Maryland.

Cyberattacks have sharply increased during the pandemic as schools and businesses moved more operations online. Because they rely on open WiFi networks to share software, school districts are “low-hanging fruit,” software researcher Andrew Brandt told CalMatters writer Zayna Syed.

Newhall’s four-person IT department had taken basic precautions, like installing internal firewalls to ward off computer viruses, that proved inadequate. Because the district had cyber insurance, an advanced network and security company helped to retrieve files. The FBI discourages paying ransom and Newhall Superintendent Jeff Pelzel declined to tell CalMatters if the district paid it. But he did say that the teachers’ lesson plans and other intellectual property were a factor in the decision. It took a week to get back online and months before all operations were back to normal.

The California Department of Education only recently began expanding its work helping districts with cybersecurity issues, CalMatters reported.

The California State Board of Education on Wednesday voted to push back its timeline for reviewing and revising the California Mathematics Framework, a voluntary guidance document on how schools and teachers should implement the state’s math standards.

The vote will give the authors of the framework about six more months to incorporate requested changes to the framework. A second 60-day public review period previously scheduled for June-July 2021 will now take place December 2021-February 2022, and an official vote on the framework by the state board will be moved to May 2022 instead of November 2021.

“The math framework development timeline from 2019 is out of date and needs to be adjusted to allow for completion of edits directed by the Instructional Quality Commission,” said Janet Weeks, director of communications for the California State Board of Education.

The move comes almost two months after a decision by the Instructional Quality Commission to make changes to the framework following a 60-day public review period that solicited more than 500 comments from teachers, parents and math education experts.

Teachers, parents and education equity groups such as the Ed Trust-West and Californians Together have expressed support for the framework and its aims to reduce segregation within schools based upon students’ perceived math abilities. But others are wary of its approach and fear that it would hold students back from reaching their full potential in math or getting personalized lessons.

A flashpoint in the debate is a proposal to encourage districts to have students take the same level of math from middle school to their sophomore year, rather than separating them into advanced and slower math pathways starting as early as fifth grade. Parents and teachers said that the move could hold students back from reaching their full potential in math. Others criticized elements of the framework that incorporated elements of social justice into practical applications for math lessons.

Many studies on math education have shown that so-called math tracking in middle school often holds Black, Latino and Native American students back from options to take advanced math and other courses required for college admission.

Legislation that would award grants to eligible schools to help them diversify their teacher workforce passed the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday.

The California Diversifying the Teacher Workforce Grant Program would provide one-time competitive grants to local school districts, charter schools and county offices of education to develop or expand programs that recruit and retain more black and brown teachers.

In the 2017-18 school year fewer than 21 percent of  California teachers were Latino and 4 percent were African American, while 54 percent of the state’s students were Latino and 5.4 percent were African American, according to the bill.

“We regularly talk about equity,” said Mike Gipson, D-Carson, author of Assembly Bill 520. “This bill will put and place equity front and center as a priority to improve student achievement. We need to create a better space for our students to grow, to learn and succeed.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called into the committee meeting to express support for the bill, which the California Department of Education is sponsoring.

“Research shows that when you diversify the teacher workforce — yet even having one teacher of color provides all kinds of benefits for students of color and for teachers, for students of all backgrounds,” he said. “In other words, this is a measure that is simply just a win-win.”

Only school districts that have had significant turnover of teachers, receive Title 1 funding, have a disproportionate number of inexperienced teachers and who have a commitment to developing culturally responsive teachers focused on the educational outcomes of high needs, low-performing students are eligible for a grant.

The Assembly Appropriations Committee analysis did not offer the amount of the grants or the total cost for the bill, saying instead that it would likely cost in the tens of millions of dollars.

Some of the allowed uses for the funds include providing professional development for teachers, collaborating with teacher education and coaching programs to support teachers, setting up career pathways to encourage teachers to pursue administrative positions, creating a positive school climate and offering coaching around social emotional learning.

Committee member Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, expressed support for diversifying the teacher workforce, but questioned whether the legislation would replicate a recently funded program in the newly approved budget bill. The budget allocated $350 million to establish the Teacher Residency Grant Program. Among the goals of the program is diversifying the teacher workforce.

Senate Bill 520 passed the committee and will go to the Senate Appropriations Committee next.

The U.S. Department of Education is making temporary changes to the federal aid verification process that it says will reduce barriers that prevent students from accessing financial aid.

In a press release, the department said that in a typical year, Pell Grant-eligible students are asked to submit documentation to verify their income, such as transcripts of tax returns. Non-Pell Grant students are not asked to verify their income.

“As a result, the verification process disproportionately burdens students from low-income backgrounds and students of color. The process can be extremely challenging for students, particularly because at least 20 percent of Pell-eligible applicants are exempt from tax filing due to their low-income levels,” the statement from the department reads.

This year, those documents will not be necessary for Pell Grant-eligible students and the department will focus only on identity theft and fraud. The changes will apply to students as they fill out their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form for the upcoming 2021-22 cycle.

“This has been an exceptionally tough year,” Richard Cordray, Chief Operating Officer of Federal Student Aid (FSA), said in a statement. “We need to ensure students have the most straightforward path to acquiring the financial aid they need to enroll in college and continue their path to a degree.

– Michael Burke

In guidance issued Monday, the California Department of Public Health said that schools “must exclude students from campus” who don’t wear a mask indoors and refuse to wear one that the school provides.

The wording amplifies on the masking requirement that the public health department announced on Friday. The requirement does not apply to students who are exempt from wearing a face covering, under state guidelines. These include children under 2, students with medical or mental health conditions or are hearing impaired or communicating with a hearing impaired person. For students who are excluded for not wearing a mask, schools must provide alternative educational opportunities, the state said.

California’s position differs from the guidance issued Friday by the federal Centers for Disease Control, which said only unvaccinated students and staff would be mandated to wear masks. However, the CDC said states do have the discretion to impose additional protections, as conditions warrant.

California’s mask mandate also applies to adults indoors at schools.

The new guidance explains the reasons for its ruling on masks. Masking, it said, is one of the most effective measures to control the spread of Covid-19 by both aerosols and droplets. It’s vital in schools that cannot maintain the recommended 3-foot physical distancing between individuals and serves as a precaution against the spread of more transmissible variants like the Delta variant and a protection when it’s difficult to identify those who are not vaccinated.

In a statement cited by the California School Boards Association, Ben Chida, the chief deputy cabinet secretary for Gov. Gavin Newsom, acknowledged that the mask requirement may embroil school district leaders in disputes.

“We think that easily implemented and effective measures like masking are a far better option than other, harder-to-implement options,” he said. “In terms of the cultural and political disputes that arise, part of what we’re trying to do is absorb as much of the impact as possible at the state level so that it’s not a local fight.”

Buoyed by private investment and stock market gains, CalPERS announced Monday a return of 21.3% on investments for the fiscal year that ended June 30. That return is triple the 7% annual targeted rate of return currently built into CalPERS’ financial assumptions and marks a sharp recovery from an initial drop in stock market values from the impact of Covid-19.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is the nation’s largest public employee pension system, serving more than 2 million employees and retirees, including classified school employees, such as bus drivers, kitchen workers and teacher’s aides. Teachers and school administrators are members of CalSTRS, which will report its yearly financial results toward the end of July.

CalPERS’ investment portfolio rose $80 billion by the end of June to a record value of $469 billion.

CalPERS has struggled since the Great Recession to be in a position to pay its long-term financial obligations to retirees, notwithstanding sharp rate increases imposed on public employers since 2013 legislation. The latest return on investments raises the percentage of assets needed to fully fund obligations from 71% last year to 82%, CalPERS reported.

Theresa Taylor, chair of the CalPERS Investment Committee, cautioned not to expect similar rates of return every year. “But as pleased as we are with these great returns, let me emphasize that we don’t count on this kind of investing environment every year. We know markets go up and down.”

West Contra Costa Unified’s teachers union, the United Teachers of Richmond, voted to ratify a tentative contract agreement with the district calling for smaller class sizes and more counselors.

About 95%, of the teachers who voted were in favor of the contract, union officials announced Monday. West Contra Costa Unified’s school board must vote to approve the contract and could do so as early as Wednesday’s school board meeting.

The agreement calls for an average class size for grades TK-3 of 22 students, with a maximum of 23 students. It also mandates an average of 30 students (with a 31 student maximum) for grades 4-8 in elementary schools and also in K-8 schools. Math, English, English language development, social sciences and science classes at middle and high schools will have a maximum of 36 students, with a maximum of 52 students for physical education and 37 for other classes.

The new class-size requirements will result in more than 120 more teachers in classrooms next school year, district officials said Monday.

The contract would allow teachers to volunteer to accept students over their maximum in exchange for a salary increase of 3.5%.

The contract also calls for the hiring of 12 new academic counselors, resulting in a 338:1 student-to-counselor ratio for K-8 and middle schools and a 350:1 student-to-counselor ratio for high schools — down from 700:1. Each comprehensive high school will also have at least one college and career counselor.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers on Monday announced their plans for how to spend the $6 billion that California is allocating towards broadband in the 2021-22 budget.

Included in the broadband blueprint are plans to expand the state’s internet infrastructure with a particular focus on areas that have historically been unserved or underserved by private internet service providers. Specifically, the bill directs $3.25 billion to build middle-mile broadband lines, which connect the greater highway of broadband service to the last mile, which are end-users.

The bill also sets aside $2 billion for “last-mile” lines in rural and urban areas to connect consumers’ homes and businesses with local networks.

Other directives in the bill include:

• More vital accountability and legislative oversight;
• Creating a “broadband czar” and nine-member council within the California Department of Technology;
• Hiring a third party to build and maintain the “middle-mile network” — high-capacity fiber lines that carry large amounts of data at higher speeds over longer distances between local networks.

“This broadband package is historic,” Newsom said on Monday in a prepared statement. “It transcends politics, and it will be a legacy project that will benefit generations of rural and urban residents alike. This legislation will yield vital, broadened access for California families by prioritizing the unserved and underserved areas, facilities, households, and businesses that remain disconnected in the digital era.”

The plans are detailed in AB 156, known as the broadband trailer bill, and it elaborates on directives and policies laid out in the 2021-22 state budget. AB 156 must be approved by the full Legislature and then signed by the governor.

Gov. Gavin Newsom extolled the benefits to California students of record level-spending on education in the 2021-21 state budget during a bill signing with students at Shearer Elementary in Napa Valley Unified on Friday.

“This is a transformation budget,” he said. “Mark my words: this is unlike anything we have ever done in this state. So many things we’ve promoted. So many things we dreamed of. We’re delivering when we sign this bill here today.”

Technically, Newsom didn’t sign the budget legislation, which he’ll do next week, but Assembly Bill 130. That’s the 100-page K-12 “trailer bill,” which provides technical language and details for implementing the new K-12 programs in the budget. It includes transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds, which will be phased in over the next five years. The bill surfaced Sunday after weeks of negotiations, and the Legislature passed it on Thursday.

Newsom highlighted the new programs that will benefit schools like Shearer Elementary, where 3 out of 5 students are English learners and nearly all students qualify for free and reduced-price school meals. The budget includes $3 billion to transition to community schools, which will provide health benefits, afternoon enrichment programs and family supports, as well as money for high-dose tutoring for students who lost ground during the pandemic. Low-income schools will also be able to lower class sizes or hire more counselors and nurses, with an extra $1 billion earmarked for them, he said. There also will be money to recruit and train teachers for low-income schools experiencing teacher shortages.

“We have a remarkable opportunity to follow through on our promises and to produce real and sustainable results,” he said.

Accompanying him was Linda Darling-Hammond, the president of the State Board of Education and a close adviser on education.

“It’s a historic bill in multiple ways,” she said. “It is not only the amount of money going into education in California, but the way in which it’s going to be spent to support equity and the way in which it’s going to transform the way we think about our school system and what students experience.”

A group of Mills College alumnae have filed a lawsuit against the Oakland school claiming the college withheld information from alumni trustees about the possibility the college would close or merge with Northeastern University, according to SFGate.

The group, which filed the complaint on June 7 in Alameda County, is asking the court to give it two months to review the college’s books.

Mills College in Oakland, which has had financial problems, announced a merger with Northeastern University in Boston in May that would keep the campus open.

The new plan would allow the historic college campus to remain open but would cease its tradition of serving only women in its undergraduate programs. The college would become known as Mills College at Northeastern University, and current Mills students could stay or possibly transfer to Northeastern’s main campus in Boston.

The University of Southern California recently sold its presidential mansion in San Marino for $25 million and moved university President Carol Folt to a smaller $8.6 million home in Santa Monica, according to the Los Angeles Times.

University officials made the decision to sell the 14,000-square-foot mansion to cut costs. The mansion on the estate was built in 1934 on 7 acres of land donated by U.S. Army Gen. George Patton and railroad mogul Henry Huntington.

The Seeley Mudd Estate has been home to USC presidents for more than four decades, serving as the site of school dinners, galas and holiday parties.

Former State Board of Education President Michael Kirst is this year’s recipient of the Education Commission of the States’ James Bryant Conant Award, which recognizes individual contributions to public education. In announcing the selection Thursday, the commission cited Kirst’s “unwavering commitment to improving school finance systems to serve students more equitably.”

The commission, an interstate body that provides states with research and policy analyses, will present the award to him in October. Conant, for whom the award was named,  was a former president of Harvard University who laid the groundwork for the commission’s founding in the mid-1960s.

Kirst, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, served 16 years as board president and education adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown during Brown’s four terms as governor, including from 2011 through 2018.

Kirst is most identified with the Local Control Funding Formula, the 2013 law championed by Brown that ties extra funding for districts to the numbers of “high-needs” students they serve: low-income students, English learners, foster and homeless children. Kirst co-authored a paper that proposed the formula in 2007 and then oversaw its implementation. The equity-based funding system was unusual in that the Legislature  adopted it without a court order or pressure of litigation.

Kirst led the board though a decade of change, in which the state adopted a new accountability system, school improvement measures, along with new academic standards, frameworks and assessments.

Kirst is currently a senior fellow in residence at the Learning Policy Institute in Palo Alto, which was founded by Stanford professor emeritus Linda Darling-Hammond, who has succeeded Kirst as state board president.

The state board will acknowledge Kirst’s honor at its board meeting on Wednesday.

On social media boards and in public school board meetings, some Southern California parents are in an uproar over how history, race and racism is taught in schools.

At the heart of the issue is what’s known as critical race theory, an academic approach that examines how racism appears in U.S. institutions and laws. Though the framework has been around for nearly four decades, Republicans and conservative media pundits have recently been condemning its use in public schools as the nation grapples with issues such as police brutality, which disproportionately harms Black Americans.

Nine states have banned the theory from being taught in classrooms altogether, a concern to many historians and free speech advocates. And now similar controversies are stirring in California, primarily in far-right enclaves.

In Los Alamitos Unified in Orange County, district officials faced a barrage of backlash from parents after adopting a curriculum that emphasized social justice and anti-racist teaching practices.

“These concepts are not unifying students, they are reinforcing negative division,” David Ryst, a parent of three in Los Alamitos, told the Orange County Register. “They are not giving teachers proper training. A lot of teachers who are vocal with their liberal ideas are pushing those ideas on students.”

But teachers and district leaders say that critical race theory is not even taught in schools. Instead, it’s become a flashpoint in larger culture wars being fueled by misinformation and divisive rhetoric.

“Critical race theory is not what we’re teaching in school,” said Andrew Pulver, superintendent of Los Alamitos. “What we’re really trying to do is provide multiple points of views, diverse stories and opinions within a variety of groups, race and thought. Promoting critical thinking and seeking different levels of understanding are goals.”

California is reopening and people are heading back to work. But for mothers who lost their jobs or left their positions to take on schooling and other responsibilities at home during the pandemic, returning to the workplace isn’t so simple.

As of May 2021, employment for women without children had nearly recovered to what it was like pre-pandemic. But those with school-age children were 6% behind their peers without kids, CalMatters reports. And women living with a partner were two times more likely to still be unemployed than men living with a partner.

Women having a hard time returning to their pre-pandemic work lives also took on a larger portion of child care during the pandemic. Working moms who held the primary responsibility for child care increased from 33% to 45% in 2020, but that stayed consistent around 10% for men, according to a study from the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research.

“I think families are going to hobble through it until we get some of the big stuff like the school’s back operating,” Christine Beckman, professor of public policy at the University of Southern California, told CalMatters.

The Coronado Unified School board voted unanimously Tuesday to appeal a California Interscholastic Federation decision to revoke the division championship title bestowed on the Coronado High School basketball team after a tortilla-throwing incident on June 19, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Two members of the Coronado team threw tortillas at members of the opposing team, which was predominately Hispanic, after an altercation between the teams’ coaches and team members. A Coronado community member had brought the tortillas to the game.

The board’s decision comes after Coronado residents complained about the sanctions and the characterization of the incident as racist, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

H.E.R. will join Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brandi Carlisle, Bebe Rexha and other artists in the animated series “We the People,” directed by Barack and Michelle Obama.

The 10-part series uses three-minute music videos to give civics lessons on the Bill of Right, immigration and the courts.

H.E.R. will be in the “Active Citizenship” episode performing her original song “Change.”

“We the People” premieres Sunday on Netflix.

Last week, California’s Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed to allocate more than $400 million in the 2021-22 budget for Humboldt State to become the California State University system’s third polytechnic institution, joining the campuses in Pomona and San Luis Obispo.

For Humboldt State, the next step before officially getting that designation is to complete a self-study, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Humboldt State spokesman Grant Scott-Goforth told the Bee that the self-study will act “as an argument for the designation.” Once the self-study is finalized, the campus will go before CSU’s Board of Trustees and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the body that accredits Humboldt State and other CSU campuses.

Scott-Goforth told the Bee that Humboldt State expects to finish a draft of the self-study by this summer and plans to make a formal request to the system’s Board of Trustees for the polytechnic designation by January 2022.

As a Cal Poly, Humboldt State would have a stronger emphasis on science, technology and engineering. More seats at the campus could open up for students pursuing majors in those fields and the campus could also be eligible for more research funding, both from public and private funders.

UC San Diego is preparing to admit fewer out-of-state and international students and more California residents in the coming years to comply with orders from state lawmakers, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The budget adopted last week by the Legislature says lawmakers plan to force UC San Diego, along with UCLA and UC Berkeley, to reduce their out-of-state enrollment to 18% over the next several years and replace those students with California residents.

Lawmakers have argued that those campuses give too many seats to out-of-state and international students, and that those spots should go to California residents. Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, told the Union-Tribune that UC, and especially the San Diego, Los Angeles and Berkeley campuses, has “focused on admitting out-of-state students at the expense of in-state students.”

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla told the Union-Tribune that, while out-of-state enrollment has increased at UC San Diego over the years, no out-of-state student has ever “displaced a Californian.”

But Khosla added that he’s confident that UC San Diego will be able to find enough qualified California residents to replace the out-of-state students.

“Will we find enough Californians to replace the non-residents? The short answer is yes,” Khosla told the Union-Tribune. “We will certainly find enough Californians. I am not losing sleep over that.”

Lawmakers also say they have agreed to expand undergraduate enrollment of California residents by 6,230 at the University of California during the 2022-23 academic year. Funding for that enrollment growth was not part of the 2021-22 budget but lawmakers say it will be included in the 2022-23 budget.

While that new enrollment would be spread across the UC’s nine campuses, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that a disproportionate number of those students would likely go to UC San Diego because that campus has more room to grow.

Calbright College, the state’s only exclusively online community college, is one of nine institutions in the country selected to participate in a national research program to examine how technology can improve students’ skills for managing learning on their own.

Calbright is a free, self-paced alternative to traditional colleges intended to serve adults between the ages of 25 and 34 who lack college degrees or need additional skills to qualify for higher-paying jobs. The college uses a competency-based education model, which assesses students based on the skills they learn and not the amount of time spent in a class.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Services awarded $10 million to the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, SRI Education and Achieving the Dream to conduct the study. SRI Education is a research organization and Achieving the Dream,  a non-profit that uses a network of more than 300 colleges nationally to conduct educational research.

The researchers and the participating colleges will be a part of a new center that focuses on creating a national engagement and professional learning program to help higher education leaders and instructors adopt teaching strategies and use online course tools to help students develop these self-directed learning skills.

Besides Calbright, the other participating colleges include Bunker Hill Community College in Massachusetts, Macomb Community College in Michigan, Odessa College in Texas, Palm Beach State College in Florida, Portland State University in Oregon, Tulsa Community College in Oklahoma, Virginia State University, and Wake Technical Community College in North Carolina.

The second gubernatorial recall election in California state history is scheduled for Sept. 14. The announcement came on Thursday after months of procedural back and forth and efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom to appeal to voters and stave off a recall effort.

“I believe we have chosen a fair and reasonable date for this election to take place,” said Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis in a prepared statement. “It has always been my intention to choose an election date that gives election officials and the public ample time to ensure a smooth election with broad participation.”

According to CalMatters, Newsom’s public approval rating has been improving as the state has been recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic. But delaying the vote until September could give opponents more time to organize efforts to remove him from office.

California’s gubernatorial recall is only the fourth in the nation’s history. It started before the pandemic primarily by conservatives who are critical of Newsom’s position on the death penalty as well as issues the state faces around homelessness and immigration, but it gained support during pandemic-related business restrictions and closures.

Pomona Unified, a large suburban school district east of Los Angeles, decided to cut ties with on-campus police this week, joining a small but growing number of school districts that are attempting to reimagine student safety.

The move comes in the wake of several high-profile police misconduct cases, including the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which spurred protests across the country against police brutality. Local organizers presented to the school board in April data that showed Black and Latino students in the district were arrested at disproportionately higher rates than other students.

“This is a milestone that has been met,” Caroline Lucas, a Pomona youth organizer who advocated for the removal of officers at Pomona High, told the Los Angeles Times. “For me, it means that leaders can experiment with what transformative activists have been trying to do.”

Pomona Unified serves 23,000 students and previously contracted with Pomona police to have an officer at each of its four high schools. The district paid nearly $366,000 to fund two officers in 2019, according to the Times.

That money will instead be used to help students recover from a challenging school year online during a pandemic.

“Our focus has been about re-engaging students and making sure that they’re ready to come back to school,” Superintendent Richard Martinez said.

Pomona police spokeswoman Aly Mejia told the Times that the department “always taken pride in the meaningful relationship we’ve established with our community and Pomona youth.”

The El Dorado County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday asking state officials to allow local school districts to decide whether students wear face coverings on school campuses in the fall, according to The Sacramento Bee.

The board would like face coverings to be optional even if students are not vaccinated.

The El Dorado County Office of Education told The Sacramento Bee that it will follow guidance from the California Department of Public Health. Currently, masks are still required in all K-12 California schools.

San Francisco Unified and health experts from UC San Francisco will share information about Covid-19 and answer questions about the Covid-19 prevention strategies that will be in place at district schools next school year in a series of public meetings next week.

The district returns to full-time in-person instruction on Aug. 16.

“We are looking forward to welcoming all students back in the fall, and appreciate the support from UCSF to ensure our families and staff are ready for a safe return,” San Francisco Unified Superintendent Dr. Vincent Matthews said. “It takes a village, and I’m grateful for this partnership with local health leaders so our SFUSD community can receive the best possible guidance and information as we navigate through this pandemic.”

The meetings will be in English, Spanish and Cantonese. Interpreters can be requested. The meetings also can be viewed on Zoom or on the district’s Facebook page.

• Tuesday, July 6, from 5:30 to 6:30 pm. – Town hall will be in English with interpretation if requested.
• Wednesday, July 7, from 5:30 to 7 pm. – Town hall will be in Spanish with English interpretation.
• Thursday, July 8, from 5:30 to 7 pm. – Town hall will be in Cantonese with English interpretation.

The NCAA on Wednesday adopted a policy change that will allow athletes across the country to profit off their name, image and likeness.

The new policy, which applies to Division I athletes, enables athletes to earn compensation from activities such as signing autographs and appearing in commercials. The adoption of the policy by the NCAA came just one day before laws are set to go in effect in several states allowing athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness.

“This is an important day for college athletes since they all are now able to take advantage of name, image and likeness opportunities,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said in a statement. “With the variety of state laws adopted across the country, we will continue to work with Congress to develop a solution that will provide clarity on a national level.”

Under the new policy, athletes in states where name, image and likeness are in effect can engage in activities that are allowed under the law. Athletes in states without those laws can engage in activities consistent with the NCAA’s new policy.

California’s law on that issue isn’t scheduled to go into effect until 2023, but lawmakers are attempting to change that timeline and make it take effect later this year.

– Michael Burke

An influx of federal and state funding has most California school districts on firm financial ground, but 17 are still on the financial early warning list released by the California Department of Education.

That is considerably less than six months ago, when 55 school districts reported they could not meet their financial obligations for three consecutive years.

Two of those districts — Sacramento City Unified and Belridge Elementary School District — have received a negative certification, meaning based on current projections they will not be able to meet their financial obligations for the 2020-21 school year and next school year.

Sacramento City Unified, which has 45,000 students and a $600 million budget, has reported the same fiscal status since the beginning of the 2018-19 school year, according to the California Department of Education. Beldridge Elementary School in Kern County has been on the list since the second half of 2019-20. It has 25 students and a $1 million budget.

Fifteen of the 17 districts on the list are in qualified status, meaning based on current projections they can’t meet their obligations over three consecutive years beginning with the 2020-21 school year. The largest district of those districts is San Francisco, which serves 58,705 students and has an annual budget of $923 million.

School districts are required to file reports on their financial health twice a year. They are then certified as being in positive, qualified or negative status. Those in positive status can meet all their financial obligations.

A class-action lawsuit against the State of California on behalf of 300 non-classroom based charter schools will begin July 2 in Sacramento Superior Court.

The suit contends that the state’s formula for funding K-12 schools during the pandemic illegally denied payments to schools for additional students who enrolled in the schools.

Gov. Gavin Newsom passed an executive order last June that guaranteed charter schools and school districts would be funded based on their pre-pandemic attendance rates. The order initially did not allow for a change in funding for growing school districts and charter schools, but last September the Legislature changed course and decided  to fully fund school districts and charter schools that had increased enrollment, but not online charter schools.

The lawsuit was brought by Classical Academies, Learning Choice Academy, River Springs/Empire Springs charter schools and 13 students on behalf of the 300 schools. It contends that because of reduced funding students attending non-classroom based charter schools will have less money spent on their education then other California students.

The lawsuit asks the court to direct the state to set aside legislation that funds non-classroom based charters at 2019-20 levels and to fund them for 2020-21 and in the future based on their attendance. It also asks that the state pay the plaintiff’s costs and expenses.

Defendants include Newsom, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, State Controller Betty Yee and the California Department of Education.

California State University, Los Angeles has received a $300,000 grant to improve the success of student transfers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM fields).

The funding from the College Futures Foundation will allow the university to Successful Transfer and Retention (STAR) program, which Cal State LA said will allow the campus to collaborate with local community colleges to develop new pathways to bachelor’s degrees for transfer students.

“Through the STAR program, we are looking forward to establishing engineering and technology pathway agreements with community colleges and developing a pre- and post-transfer peer mentoring program, thereby enhancing institutional capacity to support transfer students,” Jane Dong, a Cal State LA professor who is the grant’s leading principal investigator, said in a statement.

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

– Michael Burke

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has referred an investigation into the theft of San Francisco school board recall petitions to the state’s Attorney General’s Office, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The report of a theft happened in late May, when a volunteer for the recall effort reported that a person walked up to a signature drive table and took signed petitions. So far, police have yet to identify a suspect, the Chronicle reported.

According to the Chronicle, the suspect returned the signed petitions following a verbal altercation and then fled.

The recall effort is an attempt to remove three board members — Alison Collins, Gabriela Lopez and Faauuga Moliga — from their elected offices. So far, the effort has collected more than 20,000 signatures out of the approximately 51,000 that are required for the recall to go to the ballot.

 – Michael Burke

The Legislature rejected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal in his revised state budget in May to earmark $2.6 billion for school districts and charter schools to spend on tutoring students who were set back by the pandemic. The compromise budget awaiting Newsom’s signature has other uses for the money. But the budget does contain a small amount that will help get some well-trained mentors and tutors into classrooms.

The one-time $15 million for the AmeriCorps California Student Success Coach Grant Program marks the first state investment in AmeriCorps, the federally funded national service program, and its affiliated City Year, which places 416 corps members in schools in Los Angeles, Inglewood, San Jose and Sacramento.

AmeriCorps chapters will compete for the money, which can be used to hire additional corps members, increase training in academic and social and emotional supports, or increase stipends to help recruit members, said City Year External Affairs Director Jacqueline Mejia. In high-cost San Jose, a one-bedroom apartment can cost nearly as much as AmeriCorps’ $21,000 annual stipend.

Many states and school districts are looking to in-school, small-group tutoring as a strategy to address the academic and emotional needs of students returning to school after 15 months of distance learning. But districts are also finding that well-trained aides and teachers will be stretched thin and in short supply.

Tapping into AmeriCorps is an obvious option.

“Covid-19 has hit our state and our students in unequal ways and it’s imperative we look for more ways to support the students who need it most,” said Sandra Cano, vice president and executive director of City Year Los Angeles.

In a victory for LGBT youth advocates, the Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a case that could have restricted transgender students’ ability to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.

The decision lets stand a lower court ruling that a school district in Virginia violated anti-discrimination laws when it prohibited a transgender male student from using the boys’ bathroom on campus.

The case, Grimm vs. Glouchester County School Board, centered on a high school student, Gavin Grimm, who wanted to use the boys’ bathroom at school after he began identifying as a boy. The school board prohibited it, and he and his family sued on the grounds that the school board violated his civil rights.

“I am glad that my years-long fight to have my school see me for who I am is over,” Grimm said in a statement published in the Washington Post. “Trans youth deserve to use the bathroom in peace without being humiliated and stigmatized by their own school boards and elected officials.”

The Trevor Project, a leading advocacy group for LGBT youth, hailed the Supreme Court’s decision.

“This is a monumental victory for transgender equality and human rights. The fearlessness and determination displayed by Gavin Grimm and his attorneys in this six-year-long battle for justice is nothing short of inspiring,” Amit Paley, executive director of the Trevor Project, said. “Thanks to their courageous leadership, this victory will help protect the rights of transgender and nonbinary students across the country and save young lives. … We are excited to see this case come to a close.”

California teacher candidates will soon be able to take coursework to prove they have the skills needed to become a teacher instead of two of the tests required to earn a credential.

A proposal to offer alternatives to the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, and California Subject Matter Exams for Teachers, or CSET, was part of the California’s 2021-22 budget bill passed Monday by state legislators.

Details are expected to be released in a trailer bill in the next few days. A recently released Assembly Floor Report says only that the Commission on Teacher Credentialing will determine if teacher candidates have the basic skills and subject matter competency needed to earn a credential.

Earlier this month both the state Assembly and Senate budget subcommittees on education recommended that teacher candidates should earn a B or better in qualifying coursework while earning a degree instead of taking the CBEST or CSET.

Currently, a teacher candidate is required to prove proficiency in basic reading, writing and math by passing the CBEST or other approved exams. The test is usually taken before a student is accepted into a teacher preparation program.

Teacher candidates also have been required to pass tests that are part of the California Subject Examinations for Teachers to earn a credential. Elementary school teachers must pass three tests  to earn a multiple-subject credential and middle and high school teachers earn single-subject credentials in areas such as art, biology or English by passing at least one subject exam.