California education news: What’s the latest?

The San Diego Unified School District inaugurated a new, joint campus in City Heights on Wednesday that will house Central Elementary School and Wilson Middle School — and is intended to support a largely immigrant and underserved community, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The new combined campus — the George Walker Smith Educational Campus — cost the district $250 million and is one of its most significant financial investments. The money had been approved by voters for facilities projects.

This past academic year, Central Elementary School enrolled 530 students, while Wilson Middle School enrolled 730.

“The great reverend [whom the new campus is named after] dedicated his life [to] fighting against discrimination, fighting for inclusion, fighting for equity, and this complex represents part of that dream of bringing people of all walks of life into one complex in the City Heights community,” said Superintendent Lamont Jackson at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday, the Tribune reported.

In addition to classrooms, the new campus includes spaces for employee child care, preschool, a Spanish biliteracy program and after-school enrichment.

The elementary will also be home to program-specific classrooms such as a robotics lab, a music room and a special education classroom.

“For many students, Central Elementary is their first home on American soil,” said its principal, Angelica Hueso-Garcia, at the event, the Tribune reported. “You can imagine the impact a campus like this can have on how these students perceive themselves and the world around them.”

One third of Americans over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree, an increasingly important dividing line that affects the way that Americans live and die.

Princeton researchers Anne Case and Angus Deaton have a new paper out that looks into the rapidly widening gap in mortality between those who do or don’t have a bachelor’s degree. It is being published for the conference held by the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA). The authors are economists perhaps best known for coining the phrase “deaths of despair,” which includes drug overdoses, alcoholic liver disease and suicides.

These types of deaths, which rose rapidly after 1992, have become key to understanding the divide between those with and without a college degree. In 2019, the mortality rate for those without a degree more than doubled to 95 out of 100,000 people 25 to 84 years old. The rate for those with a degree is 29 people, compared to 26 people in 1992.

Case and Deaton’s earlier focus on “deaths of despair” was on middle-aged Americans, but they write that is the youngest cohort, aged 25 to 34, who are at greatest risk: “This is an increasingly understood, but still underappreciated fact about deaths of despair, that the young are the worst affected.”

It’s not just about deaths of despair. College-educated Americans have been faring better than those without a degree in just about every marker of mortality. Deaths from cancer and cardiovascular disease have fallen in the last 30 years, but the gap has been growing and it favors the better-educated. The new paper includes pandemic data, which shows that deaths by COVID increased in both groups, but COVID hit the less-educated harder.

Case and Deaton’s findings seem to prove the theory that those with power and resources will more effectively seize the means to prevent death, but what is notable is that this is happening “on steroids” in the United States.

In 1980, life expectancy in the United States was in the middle of a pack of 22 wealthy countries, but since then, it has diverged and is far below the bottom of the pack. Case and Deaton point out that were college-educated Americans their own country, it would be nearly at the head of the pack, just behind Japan. Case and Deaton note the U.S. is the only country where life expectancies are trending in different directions.

The authors note that there are widening gaps between those with degrees and those without on range of outcomes that include marriage rates, out-of-wedlock childbearing, religious observance, wages, employment as well as death and pain. They call it a “deterioration in the situation of less-educated people in today’s United States.”

In their 2020 book “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism,” they noted some possible causes: the rise of globalization and automation without a strong safety net, a health care system tied to employment, a decline in unions and an increasing number of business-friendly state laws that harm workers. They also point out that a degree is sometimes used by employers as a way to screen workers rather than hiring workers based on skills.

Seven California county superintendents are in Washington D.C. advocating for California students and opposing a federal shutdown.

The federal government is set to shutdown if lawmakers don’t come to a deal on a government funding bill by the end of the day Sept. 30.

Superintendents Brock Falkenberg, Lake County; Fabio Robles, Trinity County; Patty Gunderson, Lassen County; Mary Ann Dewan, Santa Clara County; Ed Manansala, El Dorado County; Jeff Aranguena, Mariposa County; and Cesar Morales, Ventura County will have 20 meetings over three days with members of Congress and federal agency officials.

Besides the federal shutdown, the superintendents will discuss protecting education from funding cuts; fixing Title 1 funding flaws; providing full federal funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which serves students in special education; extending the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which provides some Forest Service funding for rural schools; and ensuring student privacy and cybersecurity safeguards in schools.

Fresno Unified School District, at its Wednesday school board meeting, previewed its 2023 state test scores

On the 2022-23 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, 33.2% of Fresno Unified students met or exceeded English language arts standards, a 1% gain from the 21-22 school year.

In math, 23.3% met or exceeded state standards, a 2.5% increase.

The district’s students, overall, made minor gains, but most students are still not meeting state standards.

“Yes, we did have growth,” said Zerina Hargrove, the Fresno Unified assistant superintendent of research, evaluation and assessment. “But the facts are, overall, we had just as many students who slid backwards as (many students) who moved forward.”

The state accountability system calls for school districts to focus on the growth of every child at every performance band of not meeting standards, nearly meeting standards and meeting or exceeding standards, according to Hargrove.

To better student performance, the district must find ways to maintain and accelerate growth of students who meet the standards, Hargrove said, and address the needs of students not meeting standards at all.

“Every school is different. Every leader is different. Every community is different. And with those differences come different needs,” she said. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach to the why behind our current reality.”

One of the nation’s largest school districts, Los Angeles Unified, has recently settled four lawsuits, totaling more than $15.1 million,  for sexual abuse allegations at one of its prestigious programs, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Though a nationally acclaimed humanities magnet program, Grover Cleveland Charter High School “fostered a culture of sexual abuse in which students were exploited by their teachers,” The LA Times reported about allegations between the mid-1990s to 2009.

The latest lawsuit, settled Tuesday, will cost the district $7.9 million, following April settlements for $1.95 million, $3 million and $2.25 million, the LA Times reported.

Attorneys representing the former students say the district’s negligence allowed teachers to groom students, leading to manipulation, exploitation and abuse, the LA Times reported.

Four teachers were named in the lawsuits, some appearing in more than one case. Another lawsuit, naming a fifth teacher who was arrested, must still be resolved. None of the teachers work in Los Angeles, according to The LA Times.

Roughly three out of four California babies are children of color, according to the State of Babies Yearbook: 2023, a national report published by Zero to Three, a research and advocacy organization.

Other key points in this report include the grim truth that two million infants and toddlers in this country are living in poverty, almost 39% of babies live in impoverished households and 14% of households with infants and toddlers are food insecure. In California, roughly 72% of babies live in families with low incomes. 

Trauma is also a recurring theme in the report as almost 26% of babies and toddlers have lived through at least one adverse childhood experience, leaving them vulnerable to physical or mental health conditions, experts say. 

“The data in the Yearbook tell a concerning story but show that policy choices can break the constraints of poverty, safeguard health coverage and provide essential child care support for families with young children,” said Miriam Calderón, chief policy officer of Zero to Three, in a release. “We stand at a crossroads of policy and possibility. During the pandemic, we saw how bold action can lift babies and families out of poverty and provide them with the support they need to thrive. Unfortunately, many of those investments are expiring.”

The Santa Rosa City Schools District will limit public comments at board meetings in response to a rash of hateful Zoom-bombing incidents in local public meetings, The Press Democrat reported.

The recent escalation of antisemitic, racist and homophobic comments has posed a challenge in “maintaining respectful discourse among those who participate in the Public Comment portion of the Board meeting via Zoom,” the district said in a news release, the newspaper reported.

Public comments at board meetings will now be limited to in-person and emailed remarks.

According to the news release, the decision to curtail online public input was made after “a series of disruptive hate speech comments and inappropriate behavior” during the district’s last regular board meeting on Sept. 13.

The remarks from about a dozen people via Zoom were cut short by district officials, but attendees said their actions still diverted attention from important discussions on school business, including safety concerns amid an uptick in violence at Herbert Slater Middle School, according to the newspaper.

California State University campuses will begin accepting applications for the fall 2024 term on Oct. 1.

Students can apply to any of the university system’s 23 campuses at calstate.edu/apply.

“The CSU is committed to making a high-quality education accessible and attainable for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds,” said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor for strategic enrollment management. “That commitment is demonstrated in our high admittance rate. Currently, 9 out of 10 California students who apply are admitted to the CSU.”

The application fee is $70 per university, but some applicants may qualify for fee waivers. The 2024 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, will be available in December.

The Moorpark Unified School District in Ventura County has suspended and is investigating a high school teacher after he was recorded yelling racist comments and profanities at a sidewalk fruit seller earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported.

District personnel identified the teacher as Gnel Frankian. The district hired him full time in August to teach French at Moorpark High School. He previously worked at Antelope Valley High School.

In the 90-second video, Frankian is seen walking from his vehicle at a gas station toward the sidewalk. He engages a male vendor of a fruit cart dubbed La Palma Fresh Fruit and twice yells, “What is your problem?” Both men were recording the confrontation with their cellphones, the Times reported.

A pair of gas station patrons attempted to intervene, but Frankian tells them that he “almost had an accident,” and blames the vendor.

Frankian then walks within a few feet of the vendor and yells, “Get the f— out of here, you f—ing illegal.”

The district has provided counselors for Moorpark High students. The school’s student population is 55% Latino, the newspaper reported.

Employees at the Los Angeles Unified School District will no longer have to be vaccinated against COVID-19, per a resolution approved by the school board Tuesday.

As former teachers in the district claimed the mandate was illegal and discriminatory during public comment — citing individual cases of having to leave their jobs at LAUSD or having to move from Los Angeles altogether — district officials maintained that the mandate was essential during the height of the pandemic.

“I said it earlier, and I will say it again, health care protection for our employees and the health and well-being of our students and their families is a human right,” said district Superintendent Alberto Carvalho at the meeting. “We have a moral and professional responsibility for guaranteeing it.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District school board approved a resolution Tuesday that would direct Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to devise a charter co-location policy designed to limit co-locations on more vulnerable campuses, including Black Student Achievement Plan campuses, community schools and the district’s 100 priority schools. 

“At its core, this resolution is simply directing the District to develop a clear, accountable and transparent charter school colocation policy,” board member Rocío Rivas said in a statement. “Increased clarity and transparency about the co-location process is the first step toward equitable distribution of resources for all students.”

With charter co-locations having polarized the LAUSD community for years, the resolution comes as a relief for proponents — including United Teachers Los Angeles — who have argued co-locations lead to challenges with securing necessary resources and spaces, as well as hostile environments. 

However, those in favor of charters have maintained that the resolution will likely lead to more co-locations and multisite offers, further dividing campus communities and prolonging commutes for students — many of whom are already disadvantaged. 

“We commend the school board for passing a resolution that protects the interests of our students, promotes equity, and establishes clear guidelines and expectations that benefit all involved,” read a statement from Fernando Chavez, a resource specialist teacher at Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnets and member of UTLA. 

“With proper oversight on co-located schools, we can ensure that all students, regardless of their background or circumstances, have equal access to a high-quality education within LAUSD.”

Even in high school, Miguel Agyei worried about the cost of college. The son of parents who work at a hospital and for UPS, Agyei wanted to go to a school away from his home state of Illinois, but that was too expensive. He instead picked close-by Bradley University and worked to pay the costs his financial aid didn’t cover, as Hechinger reported.

An athlete who ran track and field, he set the record in the 60-meter hurdles, but the meet that determined who would get athletic scholarships was canceled because of Covid. He asked his coaches if there was money to help him buy textbooks, but they said there wasn’t. He had to get help from an advocacy group called College Possible just to pay rent. To cover his other expenses, he worked five days a week.

“It was very, very stressful,” said Agyei, who also borrowed $25,000 in student loans, as Hechinger reported. “I would go to practice, go to class, work five or six hours, do my homework, go to bed and get up and do it again.”

All the while, his bills from the college kept going up. Bradley is among nearly 700 universities and colleges that, over the last decade, have raised the prices paid by their lowest-income students more than the prices paid by their highest-income ones, according to federal data analyzed by The Hechinger Report.

The increase in the price of college is falling more heavily on the families who are the least able to absorb it, as federal and state financial aid fails to keep up with rising costs, and colleges choose to give aid to wealthier families they know can pay.

“Those increases can really make or break a student staying in college,” said Scott Del Rossi, vice president of college and career success at College Possible, which helps low-income and minority students go to and through college, as Hechinger reported. “Do they put it on their credit card? Do they just give up?”

Bradley increased the net price for its students from families earning under $30,000 by 36%, more than three and a half times the rate of increase for its students from families that make $110,000 a year or more.

During the pandemic, federal subsidies kept many child care providers afloat. But that aid will begin to disappear on Saturday, as Marketplace reported. To make matters worse, federal spending on children fell 16% between the government’s fiscal years 2022 and 2023, according to a report from First Focus on Children, an advocacy group.

Lauren Hipp of Seattle, 38, is afraid her family’s day care center won’t survive without the federal pandemic aid. It’s a “continued sense of panic and fear,” she said, as Marketplace reported.

Hipp, a mother of three, follows child care issues closely for her job with the advocacy group MomsRising. While she can work from home, “there is no way that I could keep up a full-time job and have even just my toddler at home,” she said. “It would be extremely difficult.”

Roughly 70,000 child care programs will likely close after they lose their federal pandemic aid, according to The Century Foundation. That could cost families around $9 billion a year in lost income, as Century Foundation senior fellow Julie Kashen noted.

“That’s a combination of parents having to reduce their work hours or leave their jobs altogether,” she said.

At the same time, there’s less federal aid available for parents. Without that pandemic aid like expanded child tax credits, more kids fell into poverty, according to Scott Del Rossi, vice president of college and career success at College Possible at First Focus on Children. “Child poverty more than doubled to over 12%,” she said.

A new statute that enables the state to override school boards that censor books denigrating LGBTQ+ students and other minority groups went into effect immediately when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law on Monday.

Assembly Bill 1078, for which Newsom advocated, enables parents and others to file a complaint with the state superintendent of public instruction if the removal of a book or instructional material violates the state FAIR Education Act. The statute, passed in 2011, requires instructional materials to accurately portray the history, viewpoints and experiences of California’s diverse and underrepresented racial, ethnic, and other groups, including LGBTQ+ Californians.  The state superintendent could order a remedy, such as the purchase of a library book or instructional material.

The bill, authored by Assemblyman Corey Jackson, D-Perris, also enables the state superintendent to fine a district that deliberately avoids updating a school textbook to avoid complying with the FAIR Act. The state can also order a new textbook and bill the district for the cost.

Newsom became active in pushing for AB 1078 after the school board of Temecula Valley Unified initially stalled buying a new social studies textbook for fifth graders that contained a section on the history of LBGTQ+ civil rights. It included a passage on the late gay activist Harvey Milk, whom the board president denigrated as a pedophile.

In signing the bill, Newsom relished the opportunity to place California in a national limelight. “From Temecula to Tallahassee, fringe ideologues from across the country are attempting to whitewash history and ban books from schools,” he said. “With this new law, we are cementing California’s role as the true freedom state: a place where families — not political fanatics — have the freedom to decide what’s right for them.”

Because the bill was passed with an urgency provision, it took effect on its signing.

Sixty-one schools in Los Angeles Unified have been awarded $100,000 each in grant money by the California Department of Education to expand their dual enrollment programs with the Los Angeles Community College District, L.A. Unified announced.

The funding, through the state’s College and Careers Access Pathways Grant, will help the schools collaborate with local community colleges to build new dual enrollment pathways, courses and programs, the district said. It will also support tutoring and parent outreach around dual enrollment programs.

“We are very grateful for this grant, which amplifies the transformative power of dual enrollment for our students,” the district’s board president, Jackie Goldberg, said in a statement. “Earning college credits in high school accelerates their academic journey and sets them on a path to success.”

Nine school districts and one community college near Whittier in Los Angeles County received $20,000 each to address student homelessness, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported.

The $20,000 checks were presented to the districts at a Whittier Area School Trustees Association event by Janice Hahn, who is chair of Los Angeles County’s board of Supervisors. Hahn also represents District 4, which includes Whittier.

“Schools are the frontlines of all the big problems,” Hahn told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, “They see it first, and if that money can go towards helping students who are in poverty or who may be homeless or may be food insecure, I think it will make a big difference.”

The districts that received the funding are:

• Whittier Union High School District
• El Rancho Unified School District
• Norwalk-La Mirada School District
• Whittier City School District
• Los Nietos School District
• South Whittier School District
• East Whittier City School District
• Lowell Joint School District
• Little Lake City School District

Rio Hondo College, located in Whittier, was the lone community college to get funding.

After angering LGBTQ advocates by vetoing a bill involving transgender children in custody disputes, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a raft of bills this weekend that aim to protect LGBTQ rights, both inside and outside schools.

Newsom vetoed AB 957, a bill by Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson, D–Suisun City, that would require courts to take into account a parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity or gender expression as one factor in any custody dispute. Newsom wrote that he was vetoing the bill because he was loathe for the executive and legislative branches of state to “attempt to dictate — in prescriptive terms that single out one characteristic — legal standards for the judicial branch to apply.”

He wrote that the court, under existing law, is already required to consider a child’s health, safety and welfare when determining a child’s best interests, and this includes the parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity.

But the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus said in a statement the veto was a “missed opportunity to remind the nation that California is a safe haven for transgender and nonbinary children.”

Following the veto, Newsom signed several bills that were a priority for the caucus and other LGBTQ advocates.

“These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance, and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities,” wrote Newsom, in a statement.

These bills include:

• AB 5 is known as the Safe and Supportive Schools Act, and it sets deadlines for school teachers and staff to undergo LGBTQ cultural competency training. It was written by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles.
• SB 857 requires the state to set up an advisory task force to identify and address the needs of LGBTQ students. It was written by Senator John Laird, D-Santa Cruz.
• SB 760, by Senator Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, requires public schools to have at least one all-gender bathroom.
• AB 223, by Assemblymember Christopher Ward, D-San Diego, protects the confidentiality of minors’ court petition to change their gender.
• AB 760 requires the CSU and UC system to affirm the name and gender of students, staff and faculty. It would bar the system from charging fees to update or reissue records. The bill was written by Assemblymember Lori Wilson, D-Fairfield.
• SB 407, written by Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, requires foster care families to “demonstrate an ability and willingness to meet the needs of a child, regardless of the child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

Just as her predecessor, L.K. Monroe, did before being defeated for re-election last year, Alameda County Superintendent of Schools Alysse Castro is warning Oakland Unified that it cannot continue to ignore its financial straits.

Castro cited “troubling and troublingly familiar pattern of not implementing standard accounting practices, deferring decision making, and breaking commitments” in a letter this month to the district.

One continuing financial drain is under-enrolled schools; nine of Oakland’s elementary schools enroll under 200 students, with one at just 91, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jill Tucker wrote in an article Monday.

The district was already facing difficulties balancing over the next two years before it approved a pay raise for teachers that will add $110 million in costs over the next three years. And that, Castro pointed out, doesn’t include raises for other staff employees that have not been negotiated.

The previous school board voted to close five under-enrolled elementary schools, but the current board reversed that decision in January, and it was time to “put it to bed once and for all,” President Mike Hutchinson said.

Oakland, with 33,000 students, has long had about twice as many schools as districts with similar enrollment.

Hutchinson said the district would look for cost efficiencies elsewhere and would do a “redesign” of the under-enrolled schools to attract more families to them.

Today President Joe Biden announced the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention — a move that researchers, school shooting survivors and other young activists have long fought for. The move comes as action to address gun violence has stalled in Congress.

Researchers and advocates have long decried the lack of federal funding on guns until 2019. This coordination and resources could help tackle the question about the root causes of gun violence in school, Jaclyn Schildkraut, the executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, told Education Week.

The University of California, Merced and Riverbank Unified in Stanislaus County announced a partnership that will guarantee admissions to the school district’s students, according to a media release emailed to EdSource.

Through the Merced Automatic Admissions Program (MAAP), Riverbank Unified juniors who meet the minimum University of California A-G course requirements with a weighted 3.5 GPA and with no grade lower than a “C” can gain admission to UC Merced, as long as they maintain that eligibility throughout their senior year. As juniors, students submit the MAAP application by July 1 before their senior year of high school, Riverbank News further detailed.

Students in their senior year can then apply for undergraduate admission to UC Merced. When applying to the university, students can choose any major to study.

Riverbank Unified joins more than a dozen other school districts and schools in the UC Merced program, including:

• Central Unified
• Chowchilla Union High School District
• Cutler-Orosi Joint Unified
• Dinuba Unified
• Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified
• Golden Plains Unified
• Los Baños Unified
• Le Grande Union High School
• Madera Unified
• Mariposa County Unified
• Merced Union High School
• Modesto City Schools
• Parlier Unified
• Sanger Unified
• Sacramento City Unified
• Tulare Unified
• Visalia Unified

Even with new students joining the district each year through its Transitional Kindergarten program, the San Diego Unified School District has seen an average drop in enrollment by 2% each year, the San Diego Union Tribune reported.

96,500 children have been enrolled in San Diego Unified’s Transitional Kindergarten through twelfth grade as of three weeks into the academic year – a decrease in 550 students from the previous year and a 6% drop of 6,500 children since the fall of 2019.

As the overall enrollment has decreased, Transitional Kindergarten has brought the district about 2,500 additional students since 2019. The district is still working on building new facilities that can accommodate the students and has a waitlist of about 250, district officials told the Tribune.

“We believe [Transitional Kindergarten] could be our best opportunity to restore enrollment,” Marceline Sciuto, operations support officer for the district, told the Tribune.

The enrollment decline has, in part, been driven by families leaving San Diego for other more affordable areas. And a lot of the new housing that has been built is more geared toward adults without children, Sciuto said.

“This is a district bleeding out, so how we stop the bleeding is fundamental to our viability as an organization and our continued ability to serve the families … of San Diego,” Board Trustee Cody Petterson told the Tribune.

This story was updated to correct enrollment information about San Diego Unified.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has ranked as the state’s sixth most competitive public school – only admitting a third of its applicants in 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 

UC Davis trailed Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a 37% acceptance rate, followed by San Diego State University and California State University Long Beach. 

CSU Long Beach’s director of admissions Andrew Wright told the Chronicle that admissions rates are closely connected with the number of continuing students – as the number of continuing students largely determines how many applicants they can admit to the university. 

“As we saw a higher number of students continuing for Fall 2022, our admissions rates would follow suit since we did not have increased space availability,” he wrote in an email to the Chronicle. 

The U.S. will fall off a “child care cliff, the day pandemic-era funding for the industry runs out, soon, as Axios reported.

The funding amounted to a $24 billion Band-aid patched over an industry that’s long been beleaguered. When the bandage comes off, the state of child care in the U.S. is likely to be even worse than it was before 2020.

“There’s going to be a real crisis here,” said Cathy Creighton, director of Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations Buffalo Co-Lab, who’s studying the impact of the additional funding for providers, as Axios reported.

As many as 70,000 centers, looking after 3.2 million children, may close after the funding runs out, according to one widely cited estimate from the Century Foundation. If the dire forecasts prove true, millions of parents — particularly mothers — are going to be left with some hard choices. Their child care provider could shut down or raise prices past affordable levels, which is widely expected — and many parents could exit the job market entirely.

Child care is a public good, many experts argue, as studies find kids who get high-quality care wind up getting better educations, and better-paying jobs in the long term, but it’s provided by a private market.

As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen once put it: “Childcare is a textbook example of a broken market.” 

Madera Unified School District, a system of about 20,000 students, recently implemented a $1.4 million weapons detection system at each of its middle and high schools with plans to also use it at athletic events and graduation ceremonies, according to The Fresno Bee. 

Lawrence Fernandez, the district’s director of safety and security, told The Bee that Madera Unified bought the system due to the increase of active shootings nationwide and recent school shootings, such as the Covenant School shooting in Tennessee and an Oklahoma shooting at a football game in August.

“With the introduction of this detection system, MUSD aims to create a safer environment for students and staff across the district’s high schools and middle schools,” the school district said in a late August media release emailed to EdSource.

The new system, Evolv Express, uses sensors and artificial intelligence to detect weapons that could be hidden in students’ bags and pockets, The Bee reported. The detection system is used in sporting stadiums, such as the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, the district’s media release noted.

The system is unlike traditional detection systems because students simply walk through the Evolv Express rather than having to empty out their belongings or be searched with the district’s previous “intrusive” metal-wanding.

With Evolv, if there is a potential weapon, school staff conduct a “targeted” search by asking students to step aside and checking the area of the bag that the system has identified. Implementing the system in Madera Unified will enhance the district’s existing security measures without causing unnecessary delays to daily operations, the district said in its release.

Madera Unified is the first school district in the Central Valley and the second in California to implement the noninvasive system, the media release said.

The Moreno Valley school board in Riverside County has fired Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora, a move that appears related to a proposed $27 million settlement with the family of eighth-grader Diego Stolz who was beaten to death by bullies in 2019, The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise reported.

The proposed settlement was made public last week by lawyers for Stolz’s family. The board has yet to vote on it. No reason for the firing of Kedziora was made public, with the board citing privacy laws.

Kedziora declined to comment on his dismissal, the newspaper reported.

The Sept. 16, 2019,  attack on the boy at Landmark Middle School was captured on video and shared on social media. His head hit a pillar. He fell to the ground, unconscious, and his assailant and another boy continued punching him. He never regained consciousness and died days later.

His family alleged the school failed to act after they told Landmark assistant principal Kamilah O’Connor days before the attack that the boys were bullying Stolz. O’Connor, the family said, promised to suspend the two boys. Instead, they were still in school on the day of the attack.

According to The Press-Enterprise, the attackers spent 47 days in custody and in November 2020 “made admissions” — the juvenile court term for the equivalent of pleading guilty— to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury. They were sentenced to probation, including therapy for anger management issues, impulsivity and a lack of empathy.

More than two dozen members of the public who spoke at a meeting before the board’s decision said it’s clear that the firing was related to the boy’s killing and the proposed settlement, the news organization reported.

“It’s politics: They want someone’s head,” district employee Andrea Chavez said. “But I also believe it’s not the right person that they are pointing the finger at.”

Before Stolz’s death, dealing with bullying “wasn’t prioritized, there was no accountability, it was clearly neglect,” Moreno Valley resident Joanne Steffan said. “When something like this happens, the person who is really responsible is the superintendent. And we all know that.”

Others argued that firing Kedziora wouldn’t make things better.

“We are truly remorseful. There’s not one person that you will talk to that hasn’t cried over what happened to Diego,” Moreno Valley parent Wendy Ashley said. “But firing Dr. Kedziora does not bring Diego back.”

Moreno Valley Unified grandparent Russell Schaefer said Kedziora was to blame.

“I’m not saying the amount (of money) is unjust, but this could have been prevented from happening,” Schaefer said, The Press-Enterprise reported. “This money could have been for the children’s safety and education. And I believe you, Kedziora, are responsible for this mess.”

A federal judge in San Diego has ruled that a school district that follows California state policy by letting students decide whether to tell their parents that they identify as transgender is violating parents’ right to raise their children, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The ruling, by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California, sharply conflicts with a ruling that a judge in the state’s Eastern District issued earlier this year.

In the earlier decision,  Judge John Mendez of Sacramento ruled that students have a right to tell their parents about their gender and sexuality on their own terms. He also found that the state has an interest in “creating a zone of protection for transgender students and those questioning their gender identity from adverse hostile reactions, including, but not limited to, domestic abuse and bullying.”

But Benitez, known for deeply conservative rulings, wrote  that “a student who announces the desire to be publicly known in school by a new name, gender, or pronoun and is referred to by teachers and students and others by said new name, gender, or pronoun, can hardly be said to have a reasonable expectation of privacy or expect non-disclosure.”

Both judges are appointees of former President George W. Bush.

The case Benitez ruled on involves the Escondido Union School District in San Diego County, which was sued for enforcing a 2015 state law requiring public schools to allow transgender students to take part in all programs and to use restrooms and other facilities that are consistent with their gender identity.

Accompanying regulations by the state Department of Education told schools to consult with transgender students on who, if anyone, should be informed of their gender identity.

Telling parents that a student is transgender is no different than a school’s obligation to inform parents if a child suffers a sports injury, is the victim of a sexual assault, or has suicidal thoughts, Benitez wrote, the newspaper reported.

The differing opinions are likely to now be heard by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Chronicle reported.  Mendez’s decision, involving the Chico Unified School District, has already been appealed.

An appeal of Benitez’s ruling is also expected, the newspaper reported.

For many American parents, the school car line is a form of daily penance, as the Atlantic wittily reported. The command from some teacher to “pull all the way forward, please!” The breakdown of the system when someone inevitably doesn’t. The long minutes spent idling, spewing exhaust. The cones, walkie-talkies, and little signs hung from rearview mirrors that help deliver many kids right to their school’s doorstep.

Car lines may well be a classic tragedy-of-the-commons problem, as the Atlantic opined. Every parent acting in their self-interest makes us all pay in the form of dirtier air, increased traffic, less human connection, and more frustration. This soul-sucking system is sadly the norm, but does have to be this way?

Just a few generations ago, in 1969, nearly 1 in 2 kids walked or biked to school. Now only about 1 in 10 kids get to school those ways. And only about a third of children who live within just one mile of school walk or bike there. School buses — a one-time rite of passage for American children — seem to have all but vanished, no longer the leading vehicle for getting kids to school. According to the most recent data, a solid majority of kids—54%—are driven to school.

Many school sites now are designed to accommodate serpentine drop-off lanes, which,  make accessing the school by foot far more onerous. As Seattle’s School Traffic Safety Committee puts it, “Creating new private car infrastructure inequitably favors more affluent families while also setting up the expectation that families will be able to easily drive to and from the school at arrival and departure times.”

School is often too far away for many kids to access by foot or bike. The number of students living within one mile of their school has declined by about a quarter over the past few decades, as local officials have gravitated toward cheaper land at the periphery of their district for new school sites.

Of course, some parents who could send their child to a neighborhood school within walking distance choose a private or charter school farther away, motivated by school quality. The car line, for many parents, is a way to invest in their kids’ future.

Another concern is traffic safety; the U.S. has not done a bad job creating safe environments for pedestrians or cyclists of any age, especially in the past decade. Many parents say they’d allow their kids to walk or bike to school, except for one dangerous street, as the Atlantic put it. Some schools go so far as to actively discourage families from walking, citing safety concerns.

​​As students struggle with deep learning loss in mathematics, some educators are pushing for a return to a more structured teaching strategy dubbed the “science of math,” as the 74 reported.

A companion to the better-known “science of reading” movement, a push that has ushered in enormous change in how that subject is taught, the “science of math” also calls for a more orderly, explicit approach to classroom instruction.

Sarah Powell, associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the movement’s most vocal proponents, said the circuitous discovery-led path to learning popularized in recent years might “sound sexy” but doesn’t help kids master the skills they need to succeed — at least not in math. 

“Some teachers are helping to set students up for success,” she said, “while others are not,” as the 74 reported.“We don’t want to waste students’ time.”

Meanwhile, critics call the movement poorly researched, saying it resurrects ineffective techniques that should have been abandoned years ago. They say, too, that it won’t counter the current mathematics crisis, evidenced by a spiral of low test results nationwide.

Powell, who works in the department of special education, said she observed a fourth-grade teacher last school year who instructed her students, at the start of class, to find a partner and begin to solve a mathematical problem right away, with no prior instruction.

“That can be a really intimidating strategy for a lot of students, especially if they haven’t worked on a multistep word problem before,” Powell said. “If you put an adult in that situation, they would be really, really annoyed. And that we put students in that situation is quite unfair, particularly when they have weak or sometimes nonexistent foundations in math.

Teachers should explain the problem first and arm students with some of the vocabulary they will need to solve it. A lesson on perimeter shouldn’t start with students staring at a figure on a sheet of paper, asking themselves where the perimeter might be found, she said, but with a teacher providing a definition of the term, in this case, the distance around the outside of a shape. 

“We would like to see teachers go over vocabulary that’s going to be important or say, ‘Let’s do a problem together,’” she said. “Be more systematic with that than open-ended because it could be that when you do allow students to explore, you might have some students engaging in no exploration … or maybe incorrect exploration.”

Four schools in Hacienda La Puente Unified, with 16,000 students in Los Angeles, received a National Blue Ribbon Award, the most this year from any California school district. The U.S. Department of Education announced the 353 public and private school winners nationwide, including 33 in California, on Tuesday (see pages 2 to 5 for California recipients).

A National Blue Ribbon is the most prestigious national school recognition. It is awarded to the highest performing schools as measured by state and national standardized tests and to schools most successful in closing achievement gaps between a school’s student groups and all students. Nominated schools must describe their school culture and philosophy, curriculum, instructional practices, and parent and community involvement.

The four Hacienda La Puente recipients — about one-eighth of the district’s 31 schools — include two elementary schools, a middle school, and Glen A. Wilson High, one of four high schools in a district that spans City of Industry, La Puente, and the unincorporated Los Angeles County areas of Hacienda Heights and Valinda. It is the second Blue Ribbon award for Wedgeworth Elementary, which has a Mandarin dual language immersion program, and for Los Molinos Elementary, which received the state 2023 Civic Learning Award.

“I am a proud product of HLPUSD and a Wilson High School alumna,” said school board President Christine Salazar. “This recognition represents all the hard work and dedication happening here and across all our schools for years and years to come.”

Garden Grove Unified, an Orange County district that often racks up Blue Ribbon and state Distinguished School awards, and San Francisco Unified each received three National Blue Ribbons. That’s welcome news in San Francisco, which has endured a steep enrollment decline and a successful school board recall election and is facing a massive budget deficit.

Garden Grove Superintendent Gabriela Mafi called the awards “a testament to our commitment to our district goals of the development of academic and personal skills to ensure students’ lifelong success.” Anthony and Paine elementary schools received the Blue Ribbon for the first time and Cook Elementary School is receiving it for the second time. All three serve an average of 65% of students on free and reduced meal status with the majority of students coming from a home where English is not the primary language, Mafi said.

Districts with two Blue Ribbon winners are Fresno Unified, East Whittier Elementary School District and Corona-Norco Unified. Seventeen additional districts had a single school honoree, including the state’s two largest districts: Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified.

In announcing the winners, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said, “The leaders, educators, and staff at our National Blue Ribbon Schools continually inspire me with their dedication to fostering academic excellence and building positive school cultures that support students of all backgrounds to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.”

The San Diego Community College District has entered negotiations with a real estate development firm as the district looks to build affordable student housing at San Diego City College, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The project would be the first affordable student housing at San Diego City College and would include 808 beds. The building would offer several types of units, including studio apartments, two-bedroom apartments and suites.

The affordable housing project would come at a time when many students at the college could benefit from lower housing costs. According to the Union-Tribune, a 2022 survey found that about 60% of students at the college had trouble paying their living expenses.

“This is a landmark decision,” district trustee Bernie Rhinerson said, according to The Union-Tribune. “I see this as one of the more important votes that I will cast because we have never thought about being in housing. But as the cost of housing and homelessness has impacted our students more and more, it’s become a statewide issue, a regional issue and it’s an issue for our students.”

A former student at El Roble Intermediate School in the Claremont Unified School District has sued the district, alleging it didn’t do enough to protect him when he was physically assaulted by another student, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The student alleged in a complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court that he was attacked and bullied three separate times this year and that district and school staff knew the attacker had a history of violence, according to the Times.

The former student’s attorney, Raymond Babaian, told the Times that what the student suffered “will leave a scar for the remainder of his life.” The student’s parents withdrew him from the school as a result of the attacks, the Times reported, citing the complaint.

“What makes it worse is that this particular school was on notice of an ongoing pattern of similar actions, yet nothing was done to prevent it,” Babaian added.

Immigrant rights advocates are urging Congress to create a permanent solution for undocumented immigrants, after a federal judge last week ruled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals illegal again.

The decision does not change anything for DACA recipients or potential applicants. No new applications will be accepted, but current DACA recipients are still able to apply to renew their status every two years.

District Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas first found DACA unlawful in 2022, after Texas and other states sued the U.S. government over the program. In his ruling, he said part of what made it unlawful was because when President Barack Obama first created the program, there was no public comment period. President Joe Biden responded by issuing a new rule and opening a public comment period, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to Hanen to decide whether this would change his ruling. Last week, Hanen declared the new rule did not change anything, and he again found DACA to be illegal.

The decision is likely to be appealed and eventually end up in the Supreme Court, a process that could take years.

Many immigrant rights organizations condemned the judge’s decision and called for a permanent solution.

“As a former DACA recipient, I’m deeply disappointed by Judge Hanen’s latest ruling against DACA. It’s disheartening to see this happen yet again,” said Iliana Perez, executive director of Immigrants Rising, an organization based in San Francisco. “As DACA’s fate heads towards the Supreme Court, it emphasizes the urgent need for a bipartisan, long-term policy solution not just for DACA recipients but for all deserving undocumented immigrants in our country.”

DACA currently offers temporary protection from deportation and permission to work for about 579,000 young people who came to the U.S. as children, including about 164,000 in California. The program has benefited more than 800,000 people since it began in 2012, but former President Donald Trump ordered immigration officials to stop accepting new applications in 2017.

An estimated 300,000 people would be eligible to apply for DACA if new applications were accepted. Since almost no new applications have been allowed since 2017, and the minimum age to apply is 15, most current high school and college students have not been able to apply. Just 1% of DACA holders were under age 21, as of March, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Despite efforts to bolster its enrollment — including the expansion of universal transitional kindergarten — the Los Angeles Unified School district has experienced the second largest percentage enrollment decline in California, The 74 reported.

LAUSD’s enrollment during the 2015-2016 academic year stood at 639,337. That figure dropped more than 15% by the 2022-2023 academic year, which saw 538,295 students enrolled.

“Enrollment declines in LAUSD can be attributed to people enrolling in charter schools, which LAUSD is one of the top largest charter sectors in the nation,” Morgan Polikoff, education associate professor at the University of Southern California, told The 74.

Families leaving California because of the cost of living — along with the COVID-19 pandemic — have also accelerated the decline.

The UC board of regents has been considering methods to protect UC President Michael Drake against racist attacks on his home, but they have yet to land on a solution, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Late Wednesday, the regents voted 13-7 against a proposal that would have used private funds to purchase a new, $12 million home for Drake after his home was .

“We are very concerned about making sure President Drake and his family are safe and secure. … But we will not be going forward with this proposal,” board Chair Rich Leib said after the meeting, the Los Angeles Times reported.

As of Friday, Drake was unavailable to provide the Los Angeles Times with a comment.

Board members told the Los Angeles Times anonymously that the considerations at play provoked more disagreement than tuition increases and standardized testing.

“Investing funds from a private gift to purchase a residence where he, his family and future presidents can be safe is not only prudent and responsible, but smart,” one regent said Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported. “It is unconscionable to continue to wait, hoping for better options in one of the tightest, most expensive housing markets in the country. Pledging to care about his safety rings hollow after five months of inaction since he was the victim of a terrible hate crime.”

A Pajaro Valley Unified substitute teacher was filmed going on a racist rant after getting into a fender bender with a Latino student, and no longer works for the district, the Bay Area News Group reported.

Superintendent Murry Schekman did not identify the teacher to the Bay Area News Group but confirmed that Sept. 8 was her last day at Watsonville High School. It’s unclear if the teacher left voluntarily or was fired.

Watsonville High principal Joe Gregorio sent a letter to families Monday indicating that families voiced concerns about the incident and that the district is addressing those concerns. Gregorio also said Pajaro Valley Unified “does not tolerate hate or racism.”

Escondido Union School District’s policy ensuring that school staff keep students’ transgender or gender-nonconforming identity private, including to their parents, was temporarily blocked by a federal judge Thursday, the San Diego Union Tribune reported.

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez’ order bars the district from enforcing the policy during the litigation of a lawsuit filed by two middle-school teachers in April. Benitez, in his ruling, argued that the district’s policy “is as foreign to federal constitutional and statutory law as it is medically unwise,” according to the Union Tribune.

The district’s policy is in line with California education guidance, saying that anti-discrimination laws are a matter of safety and include a right to privacy for transgender students, according to the Union Tribune. State officials and LGBTQ advocates have warned that “forced outing” can put transgender and gender non-conforming students in danger.

Stockton Unified school board members voluntarily turned in their district-issued credit cards after records showed board members were spending in violation of district policy, the Stockton Record Net reported.

The records came to light at a recent budget oversight committee meeting. Board President AngelAnn Flores took to the floor to address her credit card use, and handed a packet to everyone in the room containing her credit card expense reports as well as those of other school board trustees, according to the Record Net.

The expense reports show Flores charged nearly a dozen gas station trips to her credit card, according to the Record Net. While gas is not an allowable purchase under district policy, it’s unclear if that also applies to filling up a rental car.

Former school board member Zachary Avelar, who left office in December, spent $61 at a local card room that also sells alcohol and food. It’s unclear if Avelar spent that money on alcohol or gambling, which are restricted purchases under the district’s credit card policy.

Board member Cecilia Mendez spent $6,714 in 2021 and $4,503 in 2022, including 84 transactions at Mi Ranchito Cafe in Stockton, according to the Record Net. Board members have a spending limit of $3,000 per year each.

Moreno Valley Unified will pay $27 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed in October 2019 by the family of 13-year-old Diego Stolz, who died after an attack by two classmates, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Attorneys for Diego’s aunt and uncle Juana and Felipe Salcedo said they had complained about bullying to school officials for at least a year before the incident, and district officials had given them an anti-bullying pamphlet, according to the Times.

Diego had met with his middle school vice principal, Kamilah O’Connor, in the week before his fatal attack about the bullying, after a separate incident in which he was punched in the chest. O’Connor reassured him that the bullies would be suspended for three days starting on Monday. But when Diego returned to campus, he found the bullies waiting for him, according to the Times.

The two teens who attacked Diego were charged with voluntary manslaughter and assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, according to the Times.

Michael Marlatt, acknowledged that Diego was struck a week prior to the fatal attack, and that the district did not take steps to address the prior assault.

David Ring, an attorney for Diego’s family, told the LA Times that this is the largest bullying settlement in the United States. Still, “the family would give all the money back to have their baby, the youngest kid, back.”

Many factors, from curriculum to educators to cost, have driven parents to choose one type of schooling for their kids over another. And once the pandemic shattered the steady rhythm of in-person learning, as USA Today reported, even more parents sought an option outside of the public education system.

Public school enrollment fell nearly 3% nationwide from 2019 to 2020 and hasn’t rebounded, though declining birthrates and immigration patterns also cut into this cohort.

Home schooling surged, and though it has dipped some since the height of enrollment, the option is still more popular than before the Covid-19 crisis. Charter schools gained and retained hundreds of thousands of students. National data showcasing private school enrollment predates the pandemic, but some surveys suggest enrollment increased at these institutions, too. Other options such as learning pods, which connect small groups of students, are also showing they have staying power, as USA Today reported.

At the same time, school choice advocates have capitalized on parent dissatisfaction with public schools to create new alternatives to traditional education. Some of that disengagement was triggered during remote learning at the height of the pandemic. Several states this year passed legislation that entitles every child’s family to use public funds for essentially any option.

Child care is about to get even more expensive, as federal funds dry up, leading an estimated 70,000 child-care centers to close, leaving parents with even fewer — and far less affordable — options, as the Washington Post reported. 

With her toddlers’ day care closing in weeks, Lexie Monigal found herself back in a familiar bind: desperately searching for child care while contemplating quitting her job as a surgical nurse in Menasha, Wisconsin. It’s the second time this year her day care has suddenly announced plans to shutter — both due to financial woes — leaving her without someone to watch her 2-year-olds and worsening a long-standing shortage of child care in Wisconsin.

“I’ve called around, searched and searched and searched, and so far, nothing,” said Monigal, 27, who is eight months pregnant with her third child, as the Washington Post reported.  “I’m getting to the point where I’d rather quit my job and really struggle financially than keep having to worry about finding care.”

Millions of parents — mothers, in particular — could soon be making similar calculations, as states run out of $24 billion in stimulus money Congress had set aside for child care during the pandemic. That relief money has helped keep the industry afloat by propping up workers’ salaries, boosting training programs and waiving family payment requirements.

Now, with that money expiring this month, an estimated 70,000 child-care programs — or about 1 in 3 — could shutter, causing 3.2 million children to lose care, according to a study by the Century Foundation, a liberal think tank. That translates to $10.6 billion in lost U.S. economic activity, researchers found, adding new strain to a nation already struggling with a dire lack of child care.

“It isn’t just individual children or parents that will be impacted, it’s the economy as a whole,” said Julie Kashen, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, as the Washington Post reported. “When more than 3 million children lose care, that means all of those parents are going to have to figure out something else or reduce their work hours or leave their jobs altogether.”

Berenecea Johnson Eanes was appointed Wednesday as the new president of California State University, Los Angeles.

“I am honored to join this outstanding university and its vibrant and diverse campus community,” Eanes said. “I look forward to engaging and collaborating with Cal State LA’s talented students, staff and faculty to continue the institution’s journey to new heights in student success, research, scholarship and creative activity, and community engagement.”

Eanes is the first woman to serve as president of the university. She is currently president of York College, City University of New York. Eanes is succeeding interim President Leroy M. Morishita. Former President William A. Covino retired in July.

Eanes previously served as vice president for student affairs at CSU Fullerton from 2012 to 2019. She’s also worked as a professor and administrator at Columbia University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Morehouse College, Georgia State University, Clark Atlanta University, Hamilton College and Teach for Africa, Ethiopia. She has a bachelor’s degree in public health from Dillard University, a master’s in social work from Boston University and a doctorate in social work from Clark Atlanta University.

Eanes will start her presidency on Jan. 8.

In the raging debate over how U.S. schools teach children to read, few figures have been as controversial yet lionized as Lucy Calkins, the literacy guru and curriculum entrepreneur.

For four decades, her organization, the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and her widely purchased curriculum inspired passion among many teachers. But there was also fierce pushback, as the New York Times reported. Critics argue that Calkins downplayed phonics and overlooked an exhaustive body of scientific research, one largely codified by 1999, on how children become skilled readers.

Now her group has been disbanded by Teachers College, Columbia University, according to a recent announcement. Her organization, which was housed on campus and consisted of a nonprofit branch and several profitable private companies, has long shared its revenues with the college, as the New York Times reported.

It marks the end of an era for Teachers College and perhaps another setback for balanced literacy, the embattled but still widely popular movement in which Calkins is one of several prominent leaders.

“Moving forward, TC wants to foster more conversations and collaboration among different evidence-based approaches to literacy, and ensure our programs are aligned with the needs of teachers and school districts looking to partner,” the statement read.

Calkins, 71, remains a tenured professor, but is now on sabbatical. She has announced the formation of a new company, Mossflower Literacy, to continue her work with schools. A number of staff members from Teachers College are joining this new company.

The break in the relationship between Teachers College and Calkins comes amid intense political pressure on schools of education to connect teacher training with what is known about cognition, the vast body of existing brain research often called the science of reading. in light of the deepening national literacy crisis. 

The Contra Costa County district attorney has charged a Diablo Valley Community College communications instructor with nine felonies involving human trafficking, pandering, pimping, and other allegations related to using force while engaging in sexual acts, according to a statement issued Tuesday.

One of the alleged victims is a student at the college, the East Bay Times reported.

Kyle Lee Whitmore, 39,  of Crockett, is being held without bail after his arrest on Sept. 7,  a spokesperson for District Attorney Diana Becton said in the statement. Whitmore is an instructor at the college in Pleasant Hill. He is also the school’s track coach. Diablo Valley is part of the Contra Costa Community College District.

Whitmore is an instructor of communication studies and has been the school’s track coach since 2014. He was formerly a coach at Hercules High School, also in Contra Costa County. The district has placed him on administrative leave and removed his online profiles as both an instructor and a coach.

Prosecutors charged him with two counts of human trafficking, two counts of pandering, one count of pimping, and four counts of forcible sexual penetration with a foreign object. His arraignment was postponed on Tuesday. He is next expected in court on Sept. 19.

According to the district attorney’s statement,  prosecutors allege that Whitmore trafficked two victims to commit crimes of prostitution. The first victim — referred to as Jane Doe No. 1 — told authorities at the college about her situation. A follow-up investigation by college police and the county sheriff’s office led to Whitmore’s arrest.

Details involving a second alleged victim were not immediately available.

In a statement to the newspaper, district spokesperson Tim Leong said the college district “is “devastated by the seriousness of the allegations that have been raised thus far. The safety of our students and staff is our main priority. We take seriously any accusations of inappropriate behavior by our employees and honor the expectation that our students, staff, and visitors have to be safe when they visit our campuses.”

The district attorney’s office asks that members of the public who have any additional information about the case contact the investigation division at the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office at (925) 313-2600.

Carrie Stark always relied on math games to engage her students, assuming they would pick up concepts like multiplication by seeing them in action. Alas, the kids had fun, as AP reported, but the lessons never stuck.

A few years ago the teacher changed her approach, turning to a more direct explanation after discovering evidence-based practices known as the science of math.

“I could see how the game related to multiplication, but the kids weren’t making those connections,” said Stark, a math teacher near Kansas City, as AP reported. “You have to explicitly teach the content.”

As American schools work to turn around math scores that plunged during the pandemic, some researchers are pushing for more attention to a set of research-based practices for teaching math. The movement has passionate backers, but is still in its infancy, especially compared with the phonics-based “science of reading” that has inspired changes in how classrooms across the country approach literacy.

Experts say math research hasn’t gotten as much funding or attention, especially beyond the elementary level. Meanwhile, experts say the math instruction schools are currently using doesn’t work well. The U.S. trails other high-income countries in math performance, and lately more students graduate from high school with deficits in basic math skills.

Advocates say teaching practices supported by research could help, but they are still coming into focus.

“I don’t think the movement has caught on yet. I think it’s an idea,” said Matthew Burns, a professor of special education at the University of Florida who was among researchers who helped create a Science of Math website as a resource for teachers.

As in the reading wars, there’s a debate over which evidence-based practices belong under the banner of the science of math, but researchers agree on some core ideas. One key idea is that math instruction must be systematic and explicit. Teachers need to give clear and precise instructions and introduce new concepts in small chunks while building on older concepts. These approaches have been endorsed by dozens of studies highlighted by the Institute of Education Sciences, an arm of the U.S. Education Department that evaluates teaching practices. That guidance starkly contrasts with popular exploratory or inquiry-based models of education, where students explore and discover concepts on their own.

California lawmakers passed a bill Monday that would establish a grant program to help more high schools set up Dream Resource Centers.

Dream Resource Centers provide counseling on financial aid, immigration law, and other resources to help immigrant students and children of immigrants.

There is no funding in the budget for this grant, however, and the bill would not go into effect until the Legislature funds it.

After two decades of failed efforts to persuade the Legislature, supporters of requiring that all high school students take a course in personal finance have taken the first step toward putting the idea before voters next year.

A new group, Californians for Financial Education, has submitted wording of a proposed initiative to the California Attorney General to mandate a one-semester course for a diploma starting in 2029-30, with all districts offering the course in 2026-27. It would include topics like developing budgeting skills for independent living, learning the importance of establishing credit while avoiding predatory loan practices, building an understanding of loans and college financing, learning about the tax system, and raising awareness of scams, fraud and identity theft.

Leading the effort is Tim Ranzetta, a Stanford Business School graduate and financial executive from Palo Alto, came up with the idea after introducing a personal finance course as a volunteer for Eastside College Prep, a small private school for low-income students in East Palo Alto.

Since then, he co-founded the nonprofit  Next Gen Personal Finance, which has provided curriculum and teacher training in personal finance for thousands of teachers, and launched the NGPF Mission 2030 Fund: Financial Education for All Fund to advocate for courses nationwide. According to its website, 23 states now require or are phasing in a personal finance course as a graduation requirement.

“California has lagged behind the rest of the nation when it comes to personal finance education, and this initiative would ensure that all students — regardless of where they go to school — have the equal opportunity to learn about personal finance skills,” Ranzetta said in a news release announcing the initiative effort.

Previous bills received initial support, but legislators either refused to pass the state-funded course mandate or watered down the bills to integrate personal finance skills into economics or consumer math courses. In the latest effort, Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, author of Assembly Bill 984, withdrew an amended version that would have authorized an economics course, including personal finance skills, aligned to the existing history-social studies framework.

McCarty said his initial bill had plenty of support from legislators, but opponents questioned adding another graduation course on top of ethnic studies, which is scheduled to be required by 2029-30.  “Personal finance is a key issue for youth, with ties to life skills and math,” he said. “I’m floored that so many teenagers do not know the difference between a debit and a credit card or the impact of missing a payment on an introductory credit card rate.”

Once the attorney general authorizes an official title and summary, the supporters can begin collecting signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. According to a survey touted by the backers, nearly 4 in 5 Californians said they would vote yes on the ballot question.

McCarty said the initiative has his full support.

Correction: A previous version incorrectly stated that financial literacy would become an additional course requirement for admission to CSU and UC.  It would be a new requirement for a high school diploma.

Students who live in Mexico within 45 miles of the border would be eligible for in-state tuition at community colleges under a new bill now headed to the governor’s desk.

Assembly Bill 91 would apply to community colleges near the border — Cuyamaca College, Grossmont College, Imperial Valley College, MiraCosta College, Palomar College, San Diego City College, San Diego Mesa College, San Diego Miramar College, and Southwestern College. Each college could enroll the equivalent of up to 150 full-time students.

In order for the bill to go into effect, however, the governing board of the California Community Colleges would have to enter into a similar agreement with a university in the state of Baja California, to allow California residents to attend there with in-state tuition as well.

A group of Los Angeles Unified employees over three years received more than $750,000 in extra pay, much of which was improperly approved, the Los Angeles Times reported. Investigations followed and resulted in the departures of at least 10 employees, including four who were senior administrators, the Times reported, citing court documents and district records.

An internal investigation focused on a group of employees from the district’s Westside region, with five employees collecting overtime pay of between $78,000 and $149,000 over a three-year span beginning in 2017. One administrator with a salary of $127,509 received overtime pay of $55,569 in just one year.

No criminal or civil charges were brought against the employees, who also were not ordered to pay back their extra pay, according to the Times.

Ramon Cortines, the district’s former superintendent who retired shortly before the period of time that was investigated, told the Times that the situation was “unconscionable.”

“The people that were generally involved in getting overtime were not at the bottom of the rung,” Cortines said. “I believe that it took money from those that needed it most.”

Public four-year universities in San Diego County are seeing or expected to see increased enrollment this fall as students return to campuses, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

At San Diego State University, 37,087 students arrived this fall, about 900 more than a year ago. And Cal State San Marcos enrolled 16,008 students, up by 334 since last year.

Classes have yet to start at UC San Diego, but that campus is expecting to enroll 42,300 when students arrive later this month, which would be an increase of about 300 students compared with a year ago, the Union-Tribune reported.

Assembly Bill 370 passed both houses Monday and is headed to the governor’s desk.

If signed, the bill will give more opportunities for students to receive the seal of biliteracy, particularly students who learned English as a second language.

In order to earn the seal of biliteracy on their high school diploma, students must show proficiency in English and another language.

The bill expands the ways in which a student can show proficiency in English. Previously, a student had to complete all English language arts classes required for graduation with at least a 2.0 GPA and meet or exceed the English language arts portion of California’s standardized test in 11th grade. In addition, English learners had to show overall English proficiency on the English Language Proficiency Assessment of California.

If the new bill is signed by the governor, students could show proficiency in English in one of several different ways — by completing all English courses with a 3.0 GPA, meeting the standard on California’s standardized test in 11th grade, completing at least one college-level English language arts class with at least a 3.0 grade point average; achieving a score of 3 or higher on an English Advanced Placement exam or a score of 4 or higher on an English International Baccalaureate exam; or achieving a score of 480 or higher on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing section of the SAT.

This is similar to what is required of students to show proficiency in a language other than English to obtain the seal. Students can get a score of 3 or higher on an Advanced Placement exam or a score of 4 or more on the International Baccalaureate (IB) exam; take four years of classes in the language with a GPA of 3.0 or higher and demonstrate oral proficiency in the language by passing a district test with a score of proficient or higher; or pass the SAT II world language exam with a score of 600 or higher.

Advocates for the bill say that many bilingual students, particularly English learners, have not received the state seal of biliteracy, because there weren’t enough options to show students are proficient in English.