What Trump’s victory means for education in California

Diana Lambert, Zaidee Stavely, John Fensterwald, Karen D'Souza, Amy DiPierro, And Michael Burke

Published

November 6, 2024

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This story was updated to include comments from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The re-election of Donald Trump is certain to bring a period of conflict, tension and litigation between the White House and California’s political and education leaders whose policies and values the president castigates. It also could potentially have major implications for California schools.

Trump, whose position on education has focused more on cultural ideology than on policies to improve education, has threatened to cut school funding to states, such as California, with policies that protect transgender students and promote diversity, equity and inclusion in their schools. He also has pledged to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, a move that would impact millions of California families and their children.

“California will seek to work with the incoming president - but let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law," said Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “Federalism is the cornerstone of our democracy. It’s the United STATES of America.”

Newsom, who has been a high-profile adversary to Trump, foreshadowed the coming tensions between the president-elect and the nation’s largest and, by some measures, bluest state in a statement on X, or Twitter, on Oct. 18.

“Donald Trump just said he will take away $7.9 BILLION in school funding from California’s kids if we don’t do whatever he wants. This man is unhinged and unfit to be President,” wrote Newsom.

 The $7.9 billion represents the total annual federal K-12 funding for California,  about 7% of the total California spending on education in 2024-25, according to state Department of Finance figures. 

California officials preparing

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Attorney General Rob Bonta has said that his team has been preparing for possible litigation to stop many of President Trump’s expected policies, including attacking rights and protections for transgender children and youth, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and ending protections for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

California has sued the federal government more than 100 times over Trump’s past rules and regulatory rollbacks, according to CalMatters.

Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, worries that Trump's tax cuts to the rich will be paid for by budget cuts in public education. 

“The president-elect's commitment to cutting taxes for affluent Americans means there will be no new funding for public schools," Fuller said. “Watch out for efforts to expand vouchers and tax credits for well-off parents who opt for private schools.”

Trump proposals often contradict policy

Michael Kirst, former president of the State Board of Education and chief education advisor to former Governor Jerry Brown, said there is a contradiction between what Trump proposes and federal education policy.

 “He says he wants to turn control back to locals, but his campaign platform and statements indicate a deep interest in getting involved in local decision-making: having parents elect principals, cutting back teacher tenure and instituting merit pay,” Kirst said. “He wants to examine the curriculum of schools for ‘woke’ ideology.”

The Every Student Succeeds Act, the primary law governing federal education policy, limits federal involvement in education, Kirst said. ESSA bans federal intervention in setting curriculum and federal involvement with teacher evaluations, which will affect Trump’s plan to offer merit pay. 

“Some of his aides talk about slashing K-12 spending, but who knows what will happen?” Kirst said. Congress could transfer some funding for schools to create incentives for school choice, but that would require changes in school law, he said.

Student debt relief at risk

A second Trump administration could have far-reaching consequences for Americans with student debt, said Mike Pierce, the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, in a statement. 

“President-elect Trump’s dark vision for millions of American families with student debt is as extreme as it is unpopular—dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, undoing hard-fought protections for student loan borrowers, driving millions into the open arms of predatory for-profit schools and private lenders, and leaving millions drowning in student debt,” Pierce said. “The threat posed by these plans is real and will imperil the financial stability of millions of working families.”

Deportation promise causing fear

The Trump proclamation that has evoked the most fear for Californians is his pledge to deport undocumented immigrants en masse. An estimated 1 million California children - about 1 in 10 - have an undocumented immigrant parent. About 165,000 California students are recent immigrants themselves.  In 2016, after Trump's first election, attendance at schools dropped.

In a call with reporters last week, Newsom said that Trump’s promise to deport undocumented immigrants would be devastating to California’s economy, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“No state has more to lose or more to gain in this election in November,” he said.

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Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas told reporters the state would be ready to forcefully protect its immigrant population, which could face major upheaval under Trump’s proposed mass deportation program, according to Politico.

 “We'll do everything we can to ensure that people feel protected, and they feel welcomed,” he said, though he did not discuss specifics.

Manuel Rustin, an American History teacher at John Muir High School, an early college magnet program in Pasadena Unified, said his students have expressed concern and angst over what a second Trump presidency might be like, considering the intense anti-immigrant sentiment of his campaign and his promise of mass deportations. 

“I expect students today will be very quiet, melancholy, confused, and worried like I witnessed them back in 2016,” Rustin said. “My plan: Similar to 2016, I plan to hold space for students to safely express their thoughts, reactions, and questions.”

Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit that runs many Bay Area child care centers, fears that many of the families he works with will be terrified today.

“What is sad is that today, children will come to Kidango, and some of them will be crying and scared that their parents or a close relative will be taken away from them,” Moore said. “This is what happened in 2016.”

Teachers in the crosshairs

A Trump presidency also could have a big impact on how educators teach and on whether they choose to stay in the profession. Trump has claimed teachers have been indoctrinating children with anti-American ideologies. His solution: create a new credentialing agency to certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them.” 

He also wants to abolish teacher tenure and to give preference in federal funding to states and school districts that support his efforts to do so. 

“He will go after teacher associations backing Democrats, with a vengeance,” Fuller predicts.

Public education and the labor movement are more important than ever, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers in a statement today. “I do know one thing: Educators, healthcare professionals and public employees will be doing everything they can to make a difference in the lives of the people they serve. And our guiding principle will be to continue to do the work to improve people’s lives: to fight for our children’s future and the promise of America.”

How California teachers have navigated a contentious presidential election

EdSource survey of California teachers reveals the strategies they chose and how they dealt with misinformation.

John Fensterwald

Published

November 3, 2024

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Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

In the months preceding this week’s election, some California history and social studies teachers have proceeded cautiously in covering the presidential campaign, while others have embraced the opportunity confidently and comprehensively.  But most included instruction about the presidential election in their courses, according to responses to an EdSource survey of California history and social science teachers.  

Their responses underscore that most teachers understood the potential pitfalls of teaching politics in polarized times, compounded by a contagion of misinformation on social media. (Go here to read the questionnaire.)

“A lot of kids are turned off about government and politics. We in the classroom are giving them a sense of access and empowerment,” said Rachel Reinhard, who teaches 12th grade U.S. History and Government at Oakland High School. “We’re showing that elections are ways that individuals can exert power on the system and make sense of an incredibly fast-paced and changing world.”

Yet some teachers have struggled to explain how Republican Donald Trump’s rhetoric, threats of retribution, and vows to expel undocumented immigrants have added anxiety to an unprecedentedly tense and divisive election.

“The dilemma for any responsible teacher right now is to explain the stakes while being nonpartisan,” said Mike Fishback, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade social studies at Almaden Country Day School, a private school in San Jose.

The California Council for the Social Studies agreed to send EdSource’s survey to its 2,000-member email list, which includes more than 500 active members, most of them teachers. Of those, 64 teachers -- about 1 in 8 member teachers -- returned the survey by the Oct. 16 deadline. EdSource did not require teachers to submit their names or their schools, although 16 teachers did identify themselves, and many said they were willing to be contacted for an EdSource article.

Among the top-line results of the survey:

• More than three-quarters of teachers who answered the survey said they are teaching about the election and the presidential campaign, and most of those who aren’t said it was their choice, not a district mandate.
• Asked if they planned to discuss the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, 37% said no, 29% said yes, and 34% said maybe.
• Asked if they planned to discuss potential election interference, 39% said no, 23% said yes, and 38% said maybe.
• Asked to express their level of concern about student incivility in dealing with the election, 44% said they were slightly or not at all concerned; 23% said they were somewhat concerned; and 15% said they were moderately, very or greatly concerned. An additional 19% said they were neutral on the issue.

Inoculating for incivility

Creating a classroom culture of respect is critical to promoting openness and avoiding disrespect amid disagreements, Barrett Vitol, a U.S. History and Government teacher at Aptos High in Pajaro Valley Unified, told EdSource. He characterized the district as politically and economically diverse with “extreme wealth and hard poverty,” where some students in farmworker families “are genuinely worried” about the outcome of the election.

“When we come together in August, we spend a lot of time helping to build community,” said Vitol, who said he shares with students his own experience as a volunteer for the 2000 Democratic presidential campaign for then Vice President Al Gore.

“You have to role model someone who will be politically active without disrespecting other people,” he said, adding that he also relies on humor to defuse tensions.

Bob Kelly, a U.S. History and Government teacher at the 500-student Minarets High and Charter High School in Chawanakee Unified, also set class norms early in the year, with a “social compact that holds the students accountable to being respectful to each other,” he said. The rural school district abuts Yosemite National Park.

Bruce Aster, who teaches U.S. Government at Carlsbad High School, said that his goal “is to teach civil discourse from day one.” He tells his students, ‘If you demonize your opponent, you will not get their ears.’ That’s a big theme in all my classes.”

 Many of the teachers cited guides and resources they drew on to promote civil dialogue, bridge differences of opinion and lay out frameworks for discussions. Popular sources include Braver Angels, a volunteer-led national nonprofit, and Boston-based Facing History and Ourselves, which offers lessons, explainers and activities on teaching the election.

While sources of misinformation have proliferated on the internet, so have tools to expose them. Teachers pointed to sites like adfontesmedia.com, AllSides.com and mediafactcheck.com that analyze news sources’ reliability and point to alternative sources with different political perspectives.

Reinhard refers to encouraging students to seek trustworthy and accurate news sources as building a “muscle memory.”

“I am hoping they would create a habit to counter what they are seeing on social media,” said Reinhard, who is in her second year teaching high school in Oakland after serving as director of the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project; it supports K-12 teachers in planning for history instruction.

Oakland High teacher Rachel Reinhard interacts with students during a U.S. Government class last week.Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

Karen Clark Yamamoto, who chairs the history department at Western High in the Anaheim Union High School District, said students found the revelations of bias in their favorite sites enlightening. “They realized, ‘I don’t know as much as I thought I did,’” she said.

To help students clarify their own political views, several teachers had students take the Pew Media Typology Quiz, whose questions reveal whether students have conservative or liberal philosophies.  

Classroom priorities and strategies  

The EdSource questionnaire asked teachers to describe the focus of their instruction and their plans for covering the election. The consensus was that a teacher should give students the tools to make informed choices about candidates and ballot issues.

James Yates, a teacher at Stellar Charter School in Redding, wrote, “I will teach my students how to investigate each candidate. I want them to look past the rumors and prejudice to see who will really help our country thrive.”

Kelly wrote, “We focus on helping the students make sense of the offices, candidates and propositions by understanding which issues matter to them the most.”

“Essentially, we focus on students informing themselves and using their own ideology to decide what is best,” said Jon Resendez, a U.S. Government and Economics teacher at Portola High in Irvine Unified. He has found that students, unlike some of their parents, are open when forming their political beliefs. 

r“It’s normal for teenagers to be more flexible than adults in their perspective as they learn more,” he said. “They adjust their voting behavior.”

Little outside criticism

Slightly more than a third of teachers responded to the question about whether they had experienced any criticism from teaching about the presidential election. The majority -- 16 of 23 -- said they had not, but five reported being criticized by parents, three by students and two by administrators or other colleagues. 

All eight teachers EdSource spoke with said they were unconcerned about parental pressure or criticism.

“No parents are reaching out to express concern,” said Resendez. “Parents assume we will tackle issues head-on.”

Kelly, of Chawanakee Unified, uses his students’ work to inform parents about the elections. His students created election guides that they shared at the school’s back-to-school showcase in late October. It included separate objective profiles of Democrat Kamala Harris and Trump, drafted by students chosen because they didn't support the candidates, Kelly said, along with summaries of local candidates and statewide ballot propositions.

At his back-to-school night, Fishback, of the Almaden County Day School in San Jose, encourages parents of his middle school students to discuss election issues and candidates with them.

He said that he tells them, “’I need you. If you have not passed along your political values, now is the time to do it. I want them to come to class knowing what families believe and why. My job is to help the students encounter and engage with different perspectives on a variety of contentious issues.’ ”

What the teachers taught and how

The survey asked teachers to check off a list of topics for presenting the presidential election and to add to it. Of 48 teachers who responded to the question, 37 said they reviewed candidates’ positions on key issues and 35 discussed the Electoral College; 28 asked students to explain issues that are important to them and 23 included fact-checking candidates’ claims and statements. Fifteen said they discussed claims that there would be widespread voter fraud.

One teacher included discussing gerrymandering, and another said classes would focus on differences among political parties but not the candidates themselves.

The teachers reported that they approached the topics with different strategies. Some had students participate in the traditional statewide mock election organized by the California Secretary of State or held their own elections. Some teachers held candidates’ debates, while others intentionally did not, focusing instead on objective analyses of candidates’ positions and the accuracy of media coverage.

“I’m not interested in debates,” said Reinhard of Oakland High. “Debates often create false parity. I’m not interested in having students try to win a debate around some information I find problematic.”

Yamamoto asks her students in Anaheim to pick five issues they care about and investigate the positions of the parties and the candidates’ websites to determine which party more closely aligns with their views. Inflation, health care and reproductive rights were among the issues. They did the same process with the 10 state initiatives on the ballot.

Barrett organized a model Congress for his students at Aptos High. Students wrote their own bills and had to persuade committee chairs and each legislative house to pass them. “Extreme” bills on immigration didn’t make the cut; those that did pass include creating affordable health care, limiting homework, requiring those over 70 to take an extra diving test, taxing billionaires, and granting immigrants who pay taxes for five years a path to citizenship, he said.

Some students become deeply invested in their bills, but usually they can control themselves, Barrett said.

Aster, of Carlsbad, and Kelly, of Chawanakee Unified, continued what they have done for years: bringing in outside speakers to represent parties and candidates for a debate run by students. “We seek regular folks, not politicians,” said Aster. “It’s always civil, and students see that you can be gracious while speaking strongly.”

Several teachers said they didn't avoid controversy, including looking at the rhetoric of the campaign: Trump’s racist language and post-election authoritarian threats and Democrats’ calling him a "fascist" and a "clown." But students looked at the furor through an analytical lens to keep discussions “from going off the rails,” said Fishback. He asked his students, How would you characterize Trump, and what has been the impact of his language on the campaign?

Most teachers emphasized they kept their own presidential preferences to themselves. “I work hard to be objective; I want it to be a mystery as to my views, though I don’t want them to think I don’t care,” said Aster. Kelly said he would tell students after the election whom he voted for if they asked.

"As much I like to lean into politics, the line I don’t cross is siding with one candidate over another," said Fishback.

Seeing themselves as voters

Aster has been teaching high school for more than three decades.

"I see part of my job is to be a cheerleader for the American system and to have them look forward to participating in it,” Aster said.  “I don’t want them to come away thinking the system is rigged.”

Last spring, when it appeared likely to be Trump vs. Joe Biden, students in Reinhard’s Government class at Oakland High had no interest in the election. “They were deadened by it,” she said. The nomination of Harris, the hometown candidate and a younger woman of color, however, at least sparked interest, she said.

More findings in the EdSource Questionnaire

• The teachers were from all regions of the state, with 27% from Southern California, 17% from the Central Valley and Central Coast and 17% from the San Francisco Bay Areas, 14% from the Sacramento area, 10% from Northern California, 9% from the San Diego area and 3% from the Inland Empire of San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
• Of the teachers who said they aren’t teaching about the presidential election, only three – two who teach in a largely Democratic district and one from a largely Republican district – said it was their school’s and/or district’s policy not to discuss the subject. Another teacher is discussing the election but not the candidates.
• Offered multiple choices to explain their reasons for not teaching the election to their students, the majority said there is too much other course material to get through, especially AP courses in U.S. History and Economics and one semester in Government. However, one-third of the 24 respondents to this question said they were concerned about complaints from parents, and five teachers said they had reservations that students would discuss the election respectfully. Five teachers said they were unsure how to address the subject.
• Teachers were evenly split on how much time to spend on the election, with 39% of 49 respondents spending more than one week on it and 39% spending between two days and a week. Several said they spread discussion of the election out over time, based on topics in the courses they were teaching, and another teacher said five to 10 minutes per day.
• Most of the respondents were high school teachers who teach multiple subjects; 43% introduced the election in a 12th grade Government course, while 42% taught it in 11th grade American History; 27% taught it in 9th grade Ethnic Studies and 25% introduced it in 10th grade World History. A quarter of respondents were middle school social studies teachers. Individual teachers taught it in AP Psychology, ninth grade Geography, and an English course in persuasive essays.

Transitional Kindergarten

Transitional kindergarten can’t expand without the right kind of classrooms

Zaidee Stavely And Lasherica Thornton

Published

October 16, 2024

Credit: Sarah Tully/EdSource

This is the fourth in a series of stories on the challenges impacting California’s efforts to offer high-quality instruction to all 4-year-olds by 2025.

Transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds has been touted as a way to boost declining enrollment and offer universal preschool. One major roadblock: Some districts just don’t have the space.

Some districts do not have room to accommodate additional transitional kindergarten, or TK, classes at all schools. Others, especially those in less affluent areas, lack the resources to add toilets and playground equipment made for 4-year-olds. A lack of state funding makes the problem worse.

“We’re going to see inequitable outcomes as a result of the inequitable access to appropriate facilities for transitional kindergarten,” said Jessica Sawko, education director at Children Now, an advocacy organization. “The state needs to continue to invest in the facilities that it has asked school districts to create.”

Some districts, such as Oakland Unified, are losing potential TK students because they don’t have space at all schools. Some elementary schools in Oakland don’t have any TK classrooms, and many have only one. As a result, some children end up on waitlists for their preferred school, and families are opting to wait until kindergarten to enroll their children.

Oakland district spokesperson John Sasaki acknowledged in an email that “there is a general capacity issue as we build out TK-appropriate classroom spaces,” noting that demand also varies between schools.

“School A may have 100 applications for 24 seats and school B may have 15 applications for 24 seats. Those families for school A may not go to school B because it’s far away, etc. and so it’s less that we weren’t able to accommodate, and more about family choice and preference,” Sasaki wrote.

Emily Privot McNamara applied for her 4-year-old son to attend transitional kindergarten in Oakland as soon as the district opened enrollment in 2023.

She was hoping for her son to attend his neighborhood school, Montclair Elementary, less than a two-minute drive from their house. Her neighbors told her getting into Montclair for kindergarten was easy for their children, since the district gives priority to students who live in the neighborhood.

But getting into TK there was different. Montclair has far fewer TK classrooms than kindergarten classrooms; in 2023-24 the school enrolled 28 students in TK, compared to 90 in kindergarten. McNamara’s son didn’t get into Montclair or Thornhill Elementary, another nearby school. Instead, the district offered him a seat at Emerson Elementary, more than 3 miles from their house and a 10-minute drive each way.

The McNamaras considered sending their son to Emerson for TK and then moving him to Montclair for kindergarten, but felt that would be too many transitions.

“We’d had several years of shifts and changes. We wanted to start consistency. The idea was once we got into TK, we could stay there a number of years,” McNamara said.

So the McNamaras declined the spot at Emerson and kept their son in private preschool, paying $1,900 a month for tuition. They stayed on the waitlist for Montclair but were never admitted. 

McNamara’s son is one of 143 children who applied to transitional kindergarten in Oakland Unified in 2023-24 but ultimately chose not to enroll, according to Sasaki. That number is equivalent to about 12% of the district’s total transitional kindergarten enrollment that year.

TK enrollment has been lower than expected statewide. According to the California Department of Education, 151,491 students were enrolled in TK in the 2023-24 school year, far below projections. The Learning Policy Institute had estimated that between 159,500 and 199,400 would enroll.

A lot of districts, on paper, they’re under-enrolled. However, the devil’s in the details. … Is there potential extra space where it’s actually needed? And what’s the condition and quality of those spaces?”

Jeff Vincent, Center for Cities+Schools

Oakland Unified and Alum Rock Unified in San Jose are both trying to use empty space creatively, revamping previously closed elementary school campuses and converting them into early childhood centers to serve both TK and younger students in preschool. Oakland gives priority at this center and another early childhood center to students who come from neighborhoods with schools that don’t have a single transitional kindergarten classroom. Yet the situation in Oakland, where some schools are under-enrolled, while others have waitlists, shows that expanding TK is more complicated than simply filling empty classrooms with 4-year-olds, said Jeff Vincent, who co-directs the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley and has done extensive research on school facilities.

“A lot of districts, on paper, they’re under-enrolled,” said Vincent. “However, the devil’s in the details on that, right? Is there potential extra space where it’s actually needed? And what’s the condition and quality of those spaces, and what would it take to turn them into TK-appropriate classrooms?”

A problem statewide

According to a February 2023 Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) budget brief, 25% of districts said they did not have adequate classroom space to meet projected transitional kindergarten enrollment. Similarly, a survey conducted by the California Department of Education and analyzed by the Learning Policy Institute found that 18% of school districts did not have enough classroom space for transitional kindergarten expansion, and more than a third cited facilities as the biggest challenge.

That report found that school districts will need 946 additional classrooms to enroll all projected transitional kindergarten students in 2025-26. TK has been gradually expanding since 2022 to reach all the state’s 4-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year.

One of the challenges for districts is the requirement for transitional kindergarten classrooms.

State guidelines for TK and kindergarten classrooms are more stringent than for classrooms for older children. New classrooms must include bathrooms with toilets sized for young children, and be at least 1,350 square feet. Renovated classrooms must be at least 1,250 square feet. In contrast, classrooms for grades 1-12 must be at least 960 square feet.

Victoria Wang, one of the authors of the report, said some districts told the Learning Policy Institute that the lack of classrooms has made it difficult to offer full-day TK and that they are instead offering half-day morning and afternoon TK sessions in the same classrooms, in order to accommodate more students. Parents who need a longer program to meet their child care needs are unlikely to enroll in half-day TK.

Many districts cited not being able to provide bathrooms connected to classrooms as a challenge.

“If they don’t have a bathroom that’s in the actual classroom space, a staff member will need to walk with the child to go to the bathroom,” Wang said. “That’s just an additional layer of challenge staffing-wise.”

In San Juan Unified, near Sacramento, lack of classrooms “has been a concern,” said spokesperson Raj Rai. In 2023-24, 16 of the district’s 28 transitional kindergarten classrooms had waitlists, and about 249 students who applied eventually declined to enroll in TK at the schools where they were assigned, she said. The district has been offering spots in state-subsidized preschool to some families on the waitlist.

San Diego Unified and San Francisco Unified also had waitlists at some schools, but they would not share how many of the children who applied did not enroll.

Some districts that wanted to expand to more 4-year-olds faster than the state’s phased timeline for TK expansion could not because of facilities constraints, Wang said. The state required schools to offer TK to all 4-year-olds who would turn 5 before April 2 in 2023-24, and to all 4-year-olds who would turn 5 before June 2 in 2024-25, but districts could enroll younger children if they had room and met stricter rules: a 1:10 adult-child ratio and a maximum class size of 20. 

A spokesperson for Garden Grove Unified in Orange County said the district had to place 84 children who were younger than the TK birthday cutoff on a waitlist this year; 25 had been pulled from the list as of mid-September.

Inequitable access to funding

Districts are often forced to choose between renovating current classrooms, demolishing, then reconstructing new transitional kindergarten classrooms, or purchasing portables, said John Rodriguez, facilities planning director for Central Unified, a 16,000-student district in Fresno County. 

“What do you do when there’s growth?” he said. “And where’s the money going to come from?”

This year, overall facilities funding was cut by $500 million to address the budget shortfall, and funding set aside for transitional kindergarten facilities has run out. The state had provided $490 million in grants to construct or retrofit early education facilities, including for TK, in 2021-22 and $100 million in 2022-23, but that funding was “oversubscribed,” the LAO budget brief found. Additional promised funding of $550 million for TK facilities was first delayed to 2024-25, then to 2025-26, and ultimately was eliminated from the budget altogether.

“It puts at risk the ability for school districts who do not currently have the right facilities to provide those proper learning environments,” Sawko, from Children Now, said.

California voters will be able to vote in November on $40 billion in local construction bonds and on a $10 billion statewide bond to put toward facilities, but none of those funds would be exclusively for transitional kindergarten. Because districts are also struggling to meet facilities needs such as outdated or deteriorating buildings, TK may not take priority.

The ability to build new classrooms or renovate old ones is often tied to a district’s property wealth, said Sara Hinkley, California program manager for the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley.

“The only way for districts to do real facility upgrades, like adding bathrooms and reconfiguring a number of classrooms, is by getting capital funding, which means going to their voters or tapping into an existing bond measure, and districts have really different capacities to do that,” said Hinkley. “If they have less property wealth, they just have less ability to tap their voters to pay for those kinds of things.”

Julie Boesch, the administrator for small school district support in Kern County, said some of the county’s small districts don’t have the classrooms to serve transitional kindergartners at all sites, so they bus them all to one school, sometimes far from home. Other superintendents have said they may not offer transitional kindergarten at all, she said.

She said one small school district north of Bakersfield is constructing a new building for transitional kindergarten but could not afford a new playground. Another district was approved for some state funding for a new TK building but had to put it off because it could not afford its portion. The district did not qualify for the state to pay the full share because its total assessed property value was just over the current $5 million limit. That limit for a district to qualify for full financial help would be increased to $15 million in assessed property value if voters pass Proposition 2, the state construction bond.

“People are really struggling with figuring out what to do and having enough money when they do get funding,” Boesch said. “The frustrations are real.”

Winters Joint Unified School District, a small district serving about 1,500 students in Yolo County in the Central Valley, had to divert funds planned for other facilities to meet the urgent demand for TK classroom space. According to Superintendent Rody Boonchouy, voters passed a bond measure in 2020 to address major maintenance issues, including adding a multipurpose room to an elementary school. But then, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to expand TK to all 4-year-olds.

“It was a big, ‘Uh oh, what do we do?’ Everything came to a halt and everything shifted toward, ‘How do we ensure we have capacity for TK as it expands?’” Boonchouy said.

After a long process that included a demographic study and analysis of all facilities needs, the district is using some of the bond money to build four transitional kindergarten classrooms in a dedicated wing of the elementary school, with its own playground. The district was also able to do some maintenance at other schools, but it no longer has funds for the planned multipurpose room.

Without that bond money, the district wouldn’t be able to build new TK classrooms at all, a situation Boonchouy knows many other districts face.

“Ideally, in a perfect world,” Boonchouy said, “that legislation (expanding transitional kindergarten) would have come with money to build facilities for it.”

Zaidee Stavely covers bilingual education, early education and immigration as it relates to schools and hosts EdSource's Education Beat podcast.

Lasherica Thornton covers education in California's Central Valley.

Dr. Edgar Zazueta ACSA Executive Director Today the California Department of Education (CDE) released the 2023-2024 data from the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) and English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC). California public school students are showing measurable improvement in standardized testing post-COVID-19, a sign that collaboration between educators, families and our school communities is helping students meet or exceed standards in English Language Arts, mathematics and science.  Compared with 2022-23, mathematics scores increased across all grades, grade six ELA increased by 3.4 percent in the average scale score compared to 2022-23 and grade eight mathematics increased by 6.2 percent.  Numbers were also encouraging for our marginalized and at-risk student populations. Black and Hispanic students showed positive score trends in mathematics across all grades, the percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged students meeting or exceeding standards rose, and foster youth scores increased in ELA and science at numerous grade levels.  Fallbrook Union Elementary, Santa Maria Joint Union High School, Benicia, Compton and Los Angeles Unified School Districts were each recognized today by CDE for their unique strategies to achieve large gains across multiple groups. These efforts are commendable and I extend my sincerest congratulations to the educators in these districts.  While the statewide trends are encouraging, we recognize that there is still a lot of work to do. The data improvements haven’t crossed the pre-COVID-19 threshold, which will be the next step in the continuous improvement process for California public school students. To read the Summary Document: https://content.acsa.org/2024-25-final-state-budget-summary/