California State University Maritime Academy, aka Cal Maritime, may be merging with California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, aka Cal Poly SLO. Photo by Neil Sterud
By Neil Sterud
The Spring 2024 semester at California State University Maritime Academy (Cal Maritime) has been marked by regular sessions inviting all interested parties to propose ideas for institutional improvement and cost-saving measures. Students have been kept well-informed about the institution’s state through regular emails, fostering a sense of community and transparency.
In a significant development, the Chancellor’s Office has recommended the integration of Cal Maritime with California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly SLO). This proposal, if approved by the CSU Board of Trustees, aims to address Cal Maritime’s financial and enrollment challenges. Interim President Michael J. Dumont, J.D., shared the news with the Cal Maritime community, highlighting the potential benefits of this integration for advancing the educational mission of both institutions, increasing enrollment, and safeguarding critical academic programs.
The proposed integration is seen as a strategic response to the fiscal crisis and declining enrollment, which Cal Maritime has been grappling with. Over the past seven years, enrollment has decreased by 31%, from 1,107 students in 2016 to just over 750 in 2023. The financial instability has reached a point where further budget reductions risk compromising Cal Maritime’s unique educational mission. President Dumont noted, “Our ability to obtain additional permanent funding in an amount sufficient to make a marked impact is impossible given the current budget environment.”.
Despite the challenges, the integration with Cal Poly SLO is viewed as a promising opportunity. Cal Poly SLO, with its renowned engineering programs and dynamic enrollment management capabilities, was chosen due to its programmatic similarities with Cal Maritime. The integration is expected to enhance the core educational missions of both institutions, providing greater stability and creating more opportunities for students. It will also allow for increased research opportunities and the potential to compete for greater federal funding in areas such as national security and renewable energy.
However, it is important to acknowledge that most mergers fail to achieve their objectives. The success of this integration will depend on careful planning and execution, along with the active involvement and support of all stakeholders. As President Dumont emphasized, “The integration will allow both institutions to fully leverage our mutual strengths and build upon similarities, including a shared foundation in applied learning.”
The CSU Board of Trustees will consider the proposed integration at their meetings in July and September, with a final vote expected in November 2024. If approved, the integration would begin in July 2025, with the first maritime academy students enrolling as Cal Poly SLO students in fall 2026.
Despite these financial difficulties, Cal Maritime consistently ranks as a top university for return on investment and high-paying jobs. As the institution approaches this critical juncture, the community’s involvement and input will be essential in shaping a sustainable and successful future. The regular sessions held during the spring semester have set the stage for an inclusive and collaborative process, ensuring that the voices of students, faculty, staff, and alumni are heard and considered in this transformative journey.
Assemblywoman Wilson Supportive of Merger
On June 6, Assemblywoman Lori Wilson who represents the 11th Assembly District, which includes Vallejo, released the following statement regarding the CSU Chancellor’s proposal to integrate Cal Maritime in Vallejo with Cal Poly SLO:
“The recent news of California State University Maritime Academy (Cal Maritime) integrating into California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, is a significant development for our community. My office will be closely monitoring the details of this proposal and will remain actively engaged. We encourage the community and stakeholders to vet this proposal as well. My primary concerns are ensuring that administrators, faculty, and students are well taken care of and preserving Cal Maritime as a beacon of excellence in our community.
While this proposed transition on the surface may not be ideal, it may be necessary to prevent Cal Maritime’s closure, which would be a huge loss for our community. I am optimistic that changing the university’s administrative structure and integrating it with a renowned CSU campus will allow Cal Maritime to thrive well into the future. We, as a community, must remain vigilant to ensure this process of integration is transparent and meets the needs of our community.”
Neil Sterud is an Antioch resident and a senior at Cal Maritime.
New Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Michael Nieto. Photo source: Office of the Governor of California
SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday, June 18, 2024, his appointment of 15 Superior Court Judges, which include one in Contra Costa County; two in Los Angeles County; one in Marin County; one in Napa County; one in Riverside County; one in Sacramento County; three in San Diego County; one in San Francisco County; two in San Joaquin County; one in San Mateo County; and one in Santa Clara County.
Michael Nieto, of Contra Costa County, has been appointed to serve as a Judge in the Contra Costa County Superior Court. Nieto has served as an Assistant District Attorney at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office since 2022 and has been a Deputy District Attorney there since 1997.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Nieto worked in private practice as an associate attorney for McCutcheon Doyle Brown & Enersen from June 1994 to Dec. 1996 and earned a Bachelors of Arts in Government from Harvard University.
He has served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco since 2013. Nieto earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California College of the Law (formerly Hastings), San Francisco. He fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Clare Maier. Nieto is a Democrat.
The annual compensation for each of the judicial positions is $238,479.
“The measure exceeds the scope of the power to amend the Constitution via citizen initiative” – CA Supreme Court
“Today’s ruling is the greatest threat to democracy California has faced in recent memory…the California Supreme Court has put politics ahead of the Constitution” – Californians for Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability
By Allen D. Payton
In response to a lawsuit by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state legislature, the California Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled, today, Thursday, June 20, 2024, the measure known as the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act amounts to an illegal constitutional revision and removed it from the November election ballot. However, proponents vowed tocontinue to explore their legal options and efforts to minimize
According to Ballotpedia, “The initiative would have amended the California Constitution to define all state and local levies, charges, and fees as taxes. The initiative would have also required new or increased taxes to be passed by a two-thirds legislative vote in each chamber and approved by a simple majority of voters. It would also have increased the vote requirement for local taxes proposed by local government or citizens to a two-thirds vote of the local electorate. The increased vote requirements for new or higher taxes would have not applied to citizen-initiated state ballot measures. As of 2024, state tax increases require approval by a two-thirds vote in each chamber or a simple majority vote at a statewide election
In addition, a ‘yes’ vote on the measure would have supported “amending the state constitution to define all state and local levies, charges, and fees as taxes and to require new state taxes proposed by the state legislature to be enacted via a two-thirds legislative vote and voter approval and new local taxes to be enacted via a two-thirds vote of the electorate.”
However, according to the Associated Press, “The biggest impact…would have been that the measure threatened to retroactively reverse most tax increases approved since Jan. 1, 2022. Local governments warned they would have lost billions of dollars in revenue that had previously approved by voters. And it would have threatened recent statewide tax increases.”
Proponents
Proponents of the measure, Californians for Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability, self-described as “a bipartisan coalition of homeowners, taxpayers and businesses committed to ensuring California remains affordable for families and accountable to its voters,” led the campaign in support of the initiative. The campaign explained the initiative, saying, “The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act will give voters the right to vote on all future state taxes and holds politicians accountable for new fees and other increased costs paid by working families and all Californians. The measure increases accountability by requiring politicians to spend new or higher tax revenue on its intended purpose. It will provide much-needed relief to families, farmers, and business owners, helping them to combat the growing cost-of-living crisis facing all Californians.”
According to the NAIOP, the measure would have given “voters the right to vote on all future state taxes and holds politicians accountable for new fees and other increased costs paid by working families and all Californians.” It would have increased “accountability by requiring politicians to spend new or higher tax revenue on its intended purpose. It will provide much-needed relief to families, farmers, and business owners, helping them to combat the growing cost-of-living crisis facing all Californians. The Act doesn’t cut any current state or local government funding. It simply gives voters the right to vote on all future tax increases and stops working families from paying billions more in “hidden taxes” imposed by unelected bureaucrats. They are currently gathering signatures and will need $70 million in fundraising efforts to pass the ballot measure in November of 2022.”
Supporters Respond, Will Seek Legal Options, Continue Efforts
In response to the court’s ruling, the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act (TPA) campaign issued the following statement from Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA) and Matthew Hargrove, president and CEO of the California Business Properties Association:
“Today’s ruling is the greatest threat to democracy California has faced in recent memory. Governor Newsom has effectively erased the voice of 1.43 million voters who signed the petition to qualify the Taxpayer Protection Act for the November ballot. Most importantly, the governor has cynically terminated Californians’ rights to engage in direct democracy despite his many claims that he is a defender of individual rights and democracy. Evidently, the governor wants to protect democracy and individual rights in other states, but not for all Californians.
We are disappointed that the California Supreme Court has put politics ahead of the Constitution, disregarding long-standing precedent that they should not intervene in an election before voters decide qualified initiatives.
Direct democracy and our initiative process are now at risk with this decision, showing California is firmly a one-party state where the governor and Legislature can politically influence courts to block ballot measures that threaten their ability to increase spending and raise taxes. Using the courts to block voters’ voices is the latest effort from the Democrats’ supermajority to remove any accountability measures that interfere with their agenda – a failed agenda that continues to drive up the cost of living with little accountability and few results.
This ruling sends a damning message to businesses in California and across the country that it is politically perilous to invest and grow jobs for the future.
In light of this ruling and the state’s large budget deficit, a huge amount of tax increases are on the way that are sure to make California’s cost of living even higher.
We will continue to explore our legal options and fight for the people’s right to hold their government accountable through direct democracy.”
———–
Opponents
The measure was opposed by Governor Newsom, CA Attorney General Rob Bonta, FSCME California, SEIU California State Council, California Special Districts Association, California State Association of Counties, and League of California Cities. Graham Knaus, executive director of the California State Association of Counties (CSAC), said, “This deceptive initiative would undermine the rights of local voters and their elected officials to make decisions on critical local services that residents rely upon. It creates major new tax loopholes at the expense of residents and will weaken our local services and communities.”
Bonta had relabeled the measure’s title to, “Limits Ability of Voters and State and Local Governments to Raise Revenues for Government Services. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.” The summary he required to be included on signature petition sheets read as follows: “For new or increased state taxes currently enacted by two-thirds vote of Legislature, also requires statewide election and majority voter approval. Limits voters’ ability to pass voter-proposed local special taxes by raising vote requirement to two-thirds. Eliminates voters’ ability to advise how to spend revenues from proposed general tax on same ballot as the proposed tax. Expands definition of ‘taxes’ to include certain regulatory fees, broadening application of tax approval requirements. Requires Legislature or local governing body set certain other fees.”
In spite of that, supporters were still able to gather the required signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. The signature gathering occurred in 2022.
Court’s Decision
According to information about the case #S281977 entitled LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA v. WEBER (HILTACHK) on the state Supreme Court’s website, it “presented the following issues: (1) Does the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act (TPA) constitute an impermissible attempted revision of the California Constitution by voter initiative? (2) Is this initiative measure subject to invalidation on the ground that, if adopted, it would impair essential government functions?”
The court wrote in its unanimous opinion, “we conclude that the TPA would clearly ‘accomplish such far reaching changes in the nature of our basic governmental plan as to amount to a revision’ of the (state) Constitution. The measure exceeds the scope of the power to amend the Constitution via citizen initiative.”
“It is within the people’s prerogative to make these changes, but they must be undertaken in a manner commensurate with their gravity: through the process for revision set forth in Article XVIII of the Constitution,” the decision continued.
The court concluded by “directing the (CA) Secretary of State to refrain from taking steps to place” the initiative “on the November 5, 2024 election ballot or to include the measure in the voter information guide.”
However, Section 3 of that Article clearly reads, “The electors may amend the Constitution by initiative.” Coupal of the HJTA was asked to explain what the court is referring to and what other approach or process should the proponents have followed. He did not respond prior to publication time.
Joins the other Assemblymembers representing Contra Costa: Wilson, Bauer-Kahan and Wicks, who support offering up to 20% for down payment or closing costs, not to exceed $150,000
By Allen D. Payton
A bill to make illegal immigrants eligible for the California Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loan Program, which provides up to 20 percent of downpayment assistance to prospective homebuyers, passed the State Assembly last month on a vote of 56-15. All four Assemblymembers representing Contra Costa County voted in favor of Assembly Bill 1840, including Tim Grayson (D-15), who represents Antioch, Lori Wilson (D-11), Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-16) and Buffy Wicks (D-14).
Wicks also voted for the bill, authored by Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula (D-31), as a member of the Assembly Appropriates Committee.
AB1840 Assembly Floor vote on May 21, 2024. Source: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
According to CalFHA, “The Dream For All Shared Appreciation Loan is a down payment assistance program for first-time homebuyers to be used in conjunction with the Dream For All Conventional first mortgage for down payment and/or closing costs. Upon sale or transfer of the home, the homebuyer repays the original down payment loan, plus a share of the appreciation in the value of the home.”
The program offers up to 20% for down payment or closing costs, not to exceed $150,000 and is not on a first come, first served basis. The homebuyer must register for a voucher and a randomized drawing will select registrants who will receive the voucher. The program requires at least one borrower be a first-generation homebuyer and all borrowers must be first-time homebuyers.
According to the Legislative Counsel’s Digest, “Existing law establishes the California Housing Finance Agency in the Department of Housing and Community Development, and authorizes the agency to, among other things, make loans to finance affordable housing, including residential structures, housing developments, multifamily rental housing, special needs housing, and other forms of housing, as specified. Existing law establishes the California Dream for All Program to provide shared appreciation loans to qualified first-time homebuyers, as specified.
Existing law establishes the California Dream for All Fund, which is continuously appropriated for expenditure pursuant to the program and defraying the administrative costs for the agency. Existing law authorizes moneys deposited into the fund to include, among other moneys, appropriations from the Legislature from the General Fund or other state fund.
This bill would specify that an applicant under the programwho meets all other requirements for a loan under the program, including, but not limited to, any requirements imposed by the Federal National Mortgage Association or other loan servicer, shall not be disqualified solely based on the applicant’s immigration status.
By expanding the persons eligible to receive moneys from a continuously appropriated fund, this bill would make an appropriation. The bill would recast the fund so that appropriations from the Legislature from the General Fund or other state fund are deposited into the California Dream for All Subaccount, which the bill would create and make available upon appropriation by the Legislature for specified purposes.”
AB 1840 is now up for votes by the State Senate Housing and Judiciary Committees before a possible vote on the floor.
Allows felony charges and increases sentences for certain theft and drug crimes, including fentanyl
Sacramento, CA – California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, Ph.D. announced that an initiative became eligible for the November 5, 2024, General Election ballot on June 10, 2024.
In order to become eligible for the ballot, the initiative needed 546,651 valid petition signatures, which is equal to five percent of the total votes cast for governor in the November 2022 General Election.
A measure can become eligible via random sampling of petition signatures if the sampling projects that the number of valid signatures is greater than 110 percent of the required number. The initiative needed at least 601,317 projected valid signatures to become eligible by random sampling, and it has exceeded that threshold today.
On June 27, 2024, the Secretary of State will certify the initiative as qualified for the November 5, 2024, General Election ballot, unless it is withdrawn by the proponent prior to certification pursuant to Elections Code section 9604(b).
– Allows felony charges for possessing certain drugs, including fentanyl, and for thefts under $950—both currently chargeable only as misdemeanors—with two prior drug or two prior theft convictions, as applicable. Defendants who plead guilty to felony drug possession and complete treatment can have charges dismissed.
– Increases sentences for other specified drug and theft crimes.
– Increased prison sentences may reduce savings that currently fund mental health and drug treatment programs, K-12 schools, and crime victims; any remaining savings may be used for new felony treatment program.
Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: Increased state criminal justice system costs potentially in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually, primarily due to an increase in the state prison population. Some of these costs could be offset by reductions in state spending on local mental health and substance use services, truancy and dropout prevention, and victim services due to requirements in current law. Increased local criminal justice system costs potentially in the tens of millions of dollars annually, primarily due to increased court-related workload and a net increase in the number of people in county jail and under county community supervision. (23-0017A1)
According to Ballotpedia.com, the political action committee supporting the measure, Californians to Reduce Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft, has raised over $7.2 million to support the effort. Of that amount $2.5 million was contributed by Walmart, $1.0 million from Home Depot, $500,000 from Target, $300,000 each from 7-Eleven and California Correctional Peace Officers Association Truth in American Government Fund.
The Secretary of State’s tracking number for this measure is 1959 and the Attorney General’s tracking number is 23-0017A1.
The proponent of the measure is Thomas W. Hiltachk of the Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk law firm. They can be reached at (916) 442-7757. The address for the proponent is 455 Capitol Mall, Suite 600, Sacramento, CA 95814.
Antioch Unified School District Incident Breakdown from Police Logs for Jan. 15 – June 30, 2023. Source: EdSource.org
Statewide sampling includes data from 99 incidents at 2 schools in Antioch Unified from Antioch PD Jan. 15 to June 30, 2023
Plus, data from 9 schools, 882 reported incidents in 7 other Contra Costa school districts and from 8 police departments
EdSource Special Report & Analysis
Every school day, police respond to thousands of calls from schools across California. Along with the patrols and security checks are thousands of serious incidents, some of them violent. In this continuing investigation, EdSource offers a rare view of what goes on inside schools that the public rarely gets to hear about because of the state’s strict laws related to disclosing information related to juveniles.
This unprecedented look at school policing reveals the vast presence of police in schools and comes at a time when some school communities, in the years following the police murder of George Floyd, are debating how much and what kind of policing they want and need.
An analysis of nearly 46,000 police calls from 164 police agencies involving 852 school sites – data which EdSource gathered through the state’s Public Records Act – reveals that nearly a third of all calls were about serious incidents that reasonably required a police presence, a definition obtained from experts. Of the serious incidents, more than a third involved violence which is defined as anything involving a violent act.
Students at Encore High School play basketball as a San Bernardino County Sheriff deputy parks outside of the school, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016 in Hesperia, Calif. A student had a list of 33 names of students and staff members from Encore high school who he wanted to shoot, and a detailed plan to do it, authorities said Wednesday. (James Quigg/The Daily Press via AP)
According to Managing Editor Adam Eisenberg, what EdSource obtained – a sample of all of the police calls daily affecting California schools – offers a raw first blush look at why school staff summon police, reasons that sometimes lead to student arrests, but also reasons that reveal eye-opening issues affecting students like bullying, sexual assaults, unwanted touching and weapons, drugs, physical assault and fights.
EdSource’s analysis, which included tagging every call record, reveals that about a third of all calls were deemed serious, according to the definition from experts, as those incidents that reasonably required a police presence. Just less than a third of all serious incidents involved violence, including self-harm.
The database, which is fully searchable online at, Calling the Cops (edsource.org), includes information from 57 of the state’s 58 counties but does not include all schools or districts in those counties.
The data can be accessed by category, which offers the best insight into disturbances and incidents in local schools.
Statewide statistics from sampling in report. Source: EdSource.
When California schools summon police
EdSource analysis: Nearly a third of all calls for police were for serious incidents including violence
By Thomas Peele & Daniel J. Willis,EdSource.org
Middle schooler allegedly attacks classmate twice, choking him severely. Police recommend attempted murder charges to district attorney.
School staff calls police to report squirrel with injured leg in school courtyard.
Unknown man in swimsuit briefs adorned with Australian flag trespassing at high school pool. Lifeguard sees a man follow boys 9 and 12, into the locker room. Man strips, pulls back the shower curtain to see the boy and asks: “Does this make you uncomfortable?” Man flees. Police list indecent exposure and lewd acts as possible offenses.
Officer dispatched to investigate ringing school alarm. Burnt English muffin found in teachers’ lounge.
Statewide sampling of School Police Calls. Source: EdSource
From Crescent City, Weed and Alturas in the far north to Calexico and El Cajon nearly 800 miles south, all along the Pacific Coast, across the sprawling Central Valley and up into the High Sierra and down into the Mojave Desert, police are dispatched to California schools thousands of times on any given day classes are in session.
Reasons are myriad: Students bringing guns and knives — and even a spear and a bow and arrow — to school, sexual assaults and “perversion reports” and fights. Then there are lost keys, malfunctioning alarms, and dogs — even cattle — loose on school grounds. Once, police were called for help with a swarm of bees.
Cops rush to reports of students attempting suicide and overdosing on drugs, bullying, sexual assault and unwanted touching. They surveil high schoolers leaving campuses for lunch. They break up fights between parents over spots in elementary school pickup queues. They haul drunken adults from the stands at school sporting events. They once investigated a teacher’s claim that someone stole $10,000 from her classroom desk.
Mostly the call logs capture the anguish of youngsters with mental health challenges, victims whose nude photos are showing up on social media for all to see and parents turning to school administrators to deal with it all.
The data offered a raw, first-blush look at why school staff summon cops, reasons that sometimes lead to juvenile and adult arrests.
All incidents included in the police logs largely remain out of public view due to state laws that shield juveniles and allow police to withhold information on investigations. As a result, the data collected as a representative sample of the state is also clearly an undercount of what routinely occurs in California schools.
An EdSource analysis found that nearly a third of all calls for police were for incidents deemed serious. After consulting police experts, EdSource tagged the data with a definition for serious incidents as those that reasonably required a police presence. Included among serious incidents are those tagged as violent, which include anything involving a violent act, including self-harm.
The share of serious incidents increases to 4 out of 10 when police patrols are set aside. They make up about a third of all records, but most have little detail on what police were doing at or near the school.
The analysis also showed that high school students in districts with their own police departments are policed at a higher rate than in districts that rely on municipal police and sheriffs.
School police calls across California
Four years after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, igniting a national revolt and the defund-the-police movement, only about 20 of California’s 977 public-school districts made significant changes to school policing.
Most that acted ended contracts with municipal police departments to post cops — commonly called school resource officers — in schools. And three districts that made changes reversed course and brought police back after short hiatuses.
EdSource’s investigation sampled records showing calls from and about schools to city and school district police departments and county sheriffs. In some cases, officers stationed in schools dispatch themselves to a problem by radioing their dispatcher. Schools without campus police often call 911. Typically, police record their activity as “patrol” or “school check,” vague descriptions that raise questions about the use of public resources.
Whenever a school resource officer ran along a corridor, one hand on a radio microphone, or a sheriff’s deputy raced along a country road with lights and sirens on to reach a distant rural school, they contributed to what data showed is a vast, continuing police presence in California’s pre-K to 12 public education, EdSource found.
The records resurfaced a debate lingering years after Floyd’s killing about how much policing schools need and if deploying armed officers does more harm than good.
Similarly to police debates at the municipal level, school policing can be polarizing. Across California, the issue emerges as a political divide, with some seeing the police as necessary to ensure safety and others seeing them as agents of racial injustice.
In 2021, the ACLU of Southern California issued ascathing report that recommended an end to school policing in the Golden State, calling it “discriminatory, costly, and counterproductive.” In schools with regularly assigned cops, students across “all groups” were more likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement, researchers found.
A 2020 University of Maryland study published in the journal Criminology and Public Policy, found school districts that increased policing through federal grants “did not increase school safety.” Researchers recommended improving safety through “the many alternatives” to police in schools.
In California, school policing is “a structure. It’s part of the budgets, it’s part of the vocabulary of the schools. It’s part of what the expectation is from the parents and the students,” said Southwestern Law School professor Jyoti Nandam, who has researched school policing for 25 years and calls it “completely unnecessary,” adding, America is the lone civilized country where it is practiced.
In rural California, school policing is seen as routine, allowing students to become “comfortable interacting with someone in a uniform, wearing a badge, and carrying a gun, so that as they grew older, they see those people as a friendly face, a resource that they could go to as opposed to someone that they should be afraid of,” Tulare County School Superintendent Tim Hire told EdSource. The practice is spreading in Tulare, where three small districts recently agreed to share a resource officer to travel among them.
Such decisions are often couched as safety matters, a vigilant effort to prevent the next school shooting and avoid the failure of Uvalde, Texas police to stop the gunman who slaughtered 19 students and two teachers in 2022.
When state Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, introduced legislation in February to require an armed police officer in each public school with more than 50 students, he described the need in base terms: “We need good guys and girls with guns, ready to act.”
Essayli’s idea is “a step backward,” Assembly Education Committee member Mia Bonta D-Alameda, said at a hearing where the bill died in April. “We know it to be true that there’s a disproportionate impact on Black and brown students when police officers are in schools.”
A matter of local control
The state Department of Education offers no guidance or best practices, calling policing a local matter, a spokesperson said. There’s little consistency statewide in whether police are deployed in schools. Nineteen school districts have their own police departments, including Los Angeles Unified, which refused to release its police call data, some with only a handful of officers.
Los Angeles Unified cut its police department’s budget by 35% in 2020 and banned officers from being posted in schools. Following reports of escalating violence, the district recently reinstated police to two schools through mid-June. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho had informed the school board that he was planning to return police to 20 schools, but he got community and trustee backlash.
Oakland Unified disbanded its police department in favor of non-police staffers to keep peace in schools and respond to emergencies. Principals were trained on when to call city police only as a last resort. Still, data shows eight of the district’s 18 traditional middle and high schools combined to call city police 225 times, with nearly half of them serious, between Jan. 15 and June 30, 2023. Reasons include assault with a deadly weapon, suicide attempts, battery and terrorist/criminal threats.
Retired Long Beach and San Diego school Superintendent Carl Cohn, who served on the California State Board of Education from 2011 to 2018, said Oakland’s model of deploying people to talk students through peaceful resolutions of disputes can work. In the early 1990s, he ran the Long Beach schools anti-gang task force, hiring people with “street cred,” including former gang members.
They “could stop instantly what was going on on a campus by their mere presence,” Cohn said. “Their credibility with youngsters that might be on the verge of gang affiliation was really powerful.”
Yet Cohn’s “not on board with this notion of ‘let’s abandon the school police altogether.’ It’s the type of thing where ultimately there’s enough bad things from time to time happening that the safety of children has to be front and center.” Police must be well-trained, and school officials must cooperate with them, he added.
Shutting down the Oakland Unified police department of 11 officers and changing its policing culture is tough and ongoing, said a leader of a racial-justice group that pushed for the change.
“There’s still the ideology of policing that exists on campus and is embedded in the infrastructure of schools that we’re also up against,” said Jessica Black, a Black Organizing Project activist. “The criminalization of young people, implicit bias, and anti-Black racist practices” still need to be confronted.
It was only after Floyd’s murder that Dr. Tony Moos, a physician, learned that her four children who had each attended high school in the affluent Santa Clara County city of Los Altos had “negative interactions” with school resources officers “that they’d kept to themselves,” she said.
Moos was motivated to act and got the city to examine school police practices and make changes.
After hearings that included a Black high school teacher saying a resource officer had once pushed her to the ground, the city pulled police from the high school. The city also replaced its police chief in 2022. The new hire, a Black woman, came with much-needed experience.
Out of public view
California law grants police wide powers to withhold documents, including investigatory records, requested under the Public Records Act without revealing how many such records are being withheld. Many departments withheld from EdSource some — or even all — of the school calls they received.
The same is true about what information police can reveal in news releases or public statements about individual school incidents, especially involving juveniles. The public is often then not informed about police activity in schools.
That means that the serious incidents — weapons, death threats, rapes, assaults, fights, drugs — that police are responding to in 3 out of 10 calls often remain confidential.
Police in Crescent City, Del Norte County, for example, didn’t release information about the attempted murder of a student at Crescent Elk Middle School by a classmate who allegedly repeatedly choked him on Jan. 23, 2023, until EdSource asked about the incident more than a year later.
When EdSource asked police in Avenal, Kings County to elaborate on a call record of a late-night report of “shots fired” at the city’s high school, a lawyer responded claiming the information was exempt from disclosure.
“The problem is that (the exemptions) apply to virtually everything law enforcement does. They never expire. So, every police report is potentially covered by the investigatory records exemption,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, an open government group. The lack of disclosure of police activity in schools makes it all the harder to determine what the correct level of policing should be, he added.
Given the importance of the issue, the lack of information is troubling, Loy said. The debate over school policing “should be held on the basis of full and complete data and not driven by anecdote.”
A day of policing
The one-day record of police responding to a school for serious incidents was 10, the data sample shows.
That was May 17, 2023, at Burroughs High School in the Sierra Sands Unified School District in Ridgecrest, a desert city of 28,000 in eastern Kern County near Death Valley.
The first occurred at 8:38 a.m. when a school resource officer arrested a student for battery and released him to his parents. District Assistant Superintendent Brian Auld, who’s in charge of security, told EdSource the student “didn’t even go to the police station.”
That was followed at 9:09 a.m. by reports of two students who appeared to be under the influence of drugs. They were evaluated and returned to class. Another report of two students apparently under the influence came in at 10:26 a.m. One student was impaired and released to their parents, Auld said.
Less than 10 minutes later, the resource officer responded to a student in “mental distress” who was taken for a psychological evaluation.
At 1:23 p.m., police were alerted to a terrorist threat that ended up involving a student threatening to beat up someone, Auld said.
About 20 minutes later, two girls began fighting in art class.
One grabbed what Auld called “an art project” — apparently a ceramic object — and allegedly swung it at the other girl’s head. Police called it assault with a deadly weapon, arresting the aggressor. “Deadly weapon sounds like a knife or a gun. The officer made the decision that (the object) could have done serious bodily harm,” Auld said. “I’m not downplaying it.”
At 3:14 p.m. a report of disturbing the peace came in. No details were provided.
At 10:26 p.m, a vandalism report to the police turned out to be benign — police found that soon-to-graduate seniors had decorated the school with toilet paper.
Ridgecrest is “a unique, isolated community” near a military base. The school district considers its relationship with the police as a successful partnership, Auld said.
District officials “have some, or even total, discretion regarding whether or not an arrest is made,” he added. The district has 15 counselors, mental health therapists and a registered behavioral therapist, Auld said. It’s also implementing restorative practices and social-emotional learning to “change behaviors before they result in suspensions, expulsions and arrests.”
The Kings of calls
The most total call and dispatch records in the data for one school that relies on calling 911 was Lemoore High School, in Lemoore, a city of 26,600 in Kings County with 471 calls over a nearly six-month period.
Lemoore police, which refers to school police as youth development officers, provided scant detail on the reasons for the calls, listing hundreds in records as premises checks.
In an interview, Lt. Alvaro Santos, who supervises Lemoore’s school policing, attributed the numbers to the department’s practice of having all available officers “drop what they’re doing” during the times students arrive at school and leave for lunch and later go home, basically surrounding the buildings, some on side streets out of view of students.
“They’re around the school. They could be either parked on a side street or they could be driving by looking for vehicle code violations or anything that would pose a danger to the students,” Santos said. He said the schools are near a main road through the city and that there are concerns about drunk drivers in the area.
More serious calls
Sampled data shows that middle schools have a higher rate of serious incidents reported to police than high schools. At Cesar Chavez Middle School, in East Palo Alto, 41% of calls to police reported violent incidents, threats and sexual misconduct, data shows.
In one of two calls that East Palo Alto police labeled “perversion report,” a student allegedly used a phone to make “a TikTok” of another girl using the restroom, according to a recording of a heavily redacted 911 call to police from a school official. Police refused to release any details.
Fresno’s Gaston Middle School is in a neighborhood plagued by violence, gangs and drugs, all of which follow students through the school doors, both police and Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson said.
A patrol car for a Fresno Unified student resource officer sits outside of Gaston Middle School and its health clinic. Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
“I would love for there to be no acts of any physical harm on another person, but that’s impossible,” Sgt. Anthony Alvarado said.
Fresno Unified has been debating what level of policing to have in its schools for several years. In 2020 police were pulled from the district’s middle schools but remained in high schools. After several violent incidents, police were returned to some middle schools in 2022 and the rest in 2023.
School “feels like a prison”
The daily presence of Kern High School District police at Mira Monte High in Bakersfield “feels ghetto,” sophomore Jose Delgado said.
The school “feels like a prison. It’s like they don’t trust us at all.”
Still, Delgado said, he understands the need for police, noting a lot of fights at the school. “It’s for the best, but it makes us feel ghetto.”
Data shows 163 police call records at Delgado’s school for the five-and-a-half month period. They describe incidents including assault with a deadly weapon, an irate parent, out-of-control juveniles and resisting a police officer.
Delgado’s sense of school as a prison and not being trusted are among the reasons why the negatives of school policing “completely outweigh the positives,” Nandam, the Southwestern Law School professor said.
The students who police typically interact with “are not the children that are doing well in school,” Nandam said. “Part of why there isn’t an outrage, a global outrage, is because it’s not impacting the people that are in power, the people who have agency.”
Children seeing police in schools can be akin to going to an airport and encountering armed officers at a security checkpoint, said University of Florida education professor Chris Curran, who has studied school policing extensively. “It’s natural to wonder what’s wrong, why are there people with guns?” he said. “You find yourself saying, ‘What do I not know about? What’s this danger that has necessitated assault rifles?’”
No state guidance
When he was a state Assembly member in 2020, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Assemblymember Mia Bonta’s spouse, clearly came down on the side of removing police from schools when he spoke at a forum after Floyd’s murder.
“It’s just really important to call out this incredible moment,” he said, lauding districts, including Oakland, that ended policing. “There’s a general dehumanization of children of color, a belief that they need to be surveilled and monitored and watched and policed.”
“The outcomes don’t make our students safer,” he said. School policing is “not achieving what we’re seeking,” a video of the forum shows. It was hosted by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource
Asked recently if Bonta’s position on school policing as the state’s top law enforcement officer mirrors what he said in 2020, his press secretary replied “no” via email.
Bonta, who’s expected to enter the 2026 governor’s race, “has always believed that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for school safety, and that schools need to work towards data-driven policies that fit their community,” Alexandra Duquet wrote.
“School resource officers can be an important component of ensuring students and school personnel safety,” Duquet wrote. “Their primary focus should be ensuring the safety of all on campus — not discipline — and they be given tools such as implicit bias training that ensure the equitable treatment of all students.”
Thurmond, a declared 2026 gubernatorial candidate, took no position on school policing during the forum. He recently told EdSource he favors “well-trained school resource officers to handle serious situations.” He also called for “more training of school staff so they’re not calling police for something that’s a student discipline matter.”
Thurmond also said that during his time as a member of the West Contra Costa Unified School District board from 2008-2012 he saw police officers help students, calling them “some of the best social workers I’ve worked with.”
State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who during Thurmond’s forum praised Oakland’s shuttering of its school police department, said in an interview that school districts should consider alternatives to police the way some cities have started using trained civilians to respond to 911 mental-health-crisis calls.
State Senator Nancy Skinner (D-9, Berkeley) Official photo
“Kids are emotional. Kids don’t have impulse control the way adults should, and to bring an officer in, especially since all of our officers are armed, can, rather than defuse the situation, make it worse,” Skinner said. Kids can act out what they experience at home or on the street, she added.
Skinner, the author of several major police accountability bills, also said she saw value in the data EdSource obtained and published.
Police logs can help officials decide if civilian staff should deal with more school incidents at a time when California’s suffering a police shortage, she said. That could leave sworn officers available for “real public safety needs. We never want to prevent a school from calling 911 if that’s needed. However, there might be some appropriate guidelines or boundaries that cities and schools could work out.”
Stopping a police chase
The executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, Mo Candy, a retired cop, said districts would be mistaken to remove resource officers from campuses. Police will always be needed to respond to schools, and “we need for students and faculty to be able to feel like this officer is more than just a law enforcement officer, that they really are another trusted adult in that school environment.” A trained and well-known officer, “may be the person who comes into a situation with the coolest head,” he said.
Loretta Whitson, executive director of the California School Counselors Association, has seen what can happen when police approach a student situation lacking the cool-headedness Candy described.
As a school counselor in the Monrovia Unified School District in Los Angeles County, she once worked with a child who ran away from school multiple times. Finally, an exasperated principal called the police, who chased after the student.
“The principal didn’t stop them. I felt as (officers) went on in their rant this kid is getting more damaged. So, I said, ‘Stop, stop,”’ Whitson said. “We already had a very damaged kid, and this wasn’t helping.” The student was later found to need special education services, she said.
Tom Nolan, a retired Boston police lieutenant turned sociologist who’s taught at several universities and studied school policing, said when law enforcement officers are called into a school situation, “they become the shot callers,” deciding what to do whether it is in the child’s best interest or not. Too often, principals are calling them for minor problems like lost keys and disciplinary matters, he said.
“The research is unequivocal in demonstrating that the police coming into schools, or police being assigned to schools, is almost always a bad idea. It has bad outcomes for children. It has bad outcomes for school safety.”
Nolan said police are not school counselors and shouldn’t play that role. “That’s something that’s a very specific skill set that is attained through years of graduate level study by mental health practitioners and clinicians.”
The California Police Chiefs Association declined to make anyone from its leadership available for an interview. In an email, its executive director described school policing as a matter best discussed at local levels.
Brian Marvel, president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, a powerful federation of police unions, wasn’t available for an interview, a spokesperson said. In a statement, Marvel, a San Diego police officer, said cops assigned to schools “play an important role in” schools. They act as “educators, emergency/crisis managers, first responders, informal counselors, mentors, and model the kind of behavior that builds trust and respect between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”
Data shows that sometimes, regardless of who might be available to counsel or advise a student, one may just do something dumb, like putting a death threat in writing.
On June 15, 2023, James Morris, the county administrator who also acts as Inglewood Unified superintendent, received a death threat via email, police call records show. Morris, a veteran administrator, was brought on to lift Inglewood out of years of state receivership because of fiscal woes.
“I can just say, generally, it was a student,” Morris said when asked about the threat. Police took a report, but Morris said he didn’t want charges filed.
“I’ve been doing this for 44 years. It takes a lot to rattle me,” he said. “It was a young person who just needed help.”
Charts of the AUSD Police Call Log for Jan. 15-June 30, 2023. Source: EdSource.org
No SRO’s in Antioch Unified
As previously reported, in December 2020 the Antioch City Council voted on a split, 3-2 vote to rescind the previous 3-2 vote to approve acceptance of a U.S. DOJ COPS Hiring Program Grant of $750,000 for six School Resource Officers (SRO’s). They would have been assigned to three of the district’s high schools and three middle school campuses.
Contra Costa County School Police Call Log Data for Jan. 15 – June 30, 2023
Following is the data from the police call logs from eight districts in Contra Costa County included in a sampling of schools representing California for the period Jan. 15 to June 30, 2023. The database does not include all schools or districts.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Friday that the state has released $470 million to 302 school districts, charters and county offices of education to fund the Golden State Pathways program.
The program allows students to “advance seamlessly from high school to college and career and provides the workforce needed for economic growth.”
“It’s an incredibly historic investment for the state,” said Anne Stanton, president of the Linked Learning Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates giving youth opportunities to learn about careers.
Both the state and federal governments previously made big investments in preparing students for college or career at the K-12 level, but the Golden State Pathways program is different in that it challenges school districts, colleges, employers and other community groups to create “pathways” — or a focused series of courses — that prepare K-12 students for college and career at the same time. These pathways aim to prepare students for well-paying careers in fields such as health care, education and technology, while also ensuring that they take 12 college credits through dual enrollment courses and the A-G classes needed to apply to public four-year universities.
“By establishing career technical pathways that are also college preparatory, the Golden State Pathways Program provides a game-changing opportunity for California’s young people,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Thurmond said in a statement.
The Golden State Pathways are an important part of the new master plan for education — Newsom’s vision to transform career education in California — which is expected by the year’s end.
The state is distributing the vast majority of the funding — $422 million — to enable schools to implement their plans in partnership with higher education and other community partners. The remaining $48 million will assist those who still need grants for planning.
All sorts of schools throughout the state — rural and urban, large and small — benefited from the funding.
Schools in the rural Northern California counties of Tehama and Humboldt — whose K-12 enrollment is under 30,000 students — jointly received about $30 million to implement and plan pathways to help students stay on track for college and careers with livable wages.
“That’s a big deal to have that kind of influx going to that many small schools,” said Jim Southwick, assistant superintendent of the Tehama County Office of Education, which plans to expand career pathways in education, health care, construction, manufacturing and agriculture.
Schools in Tehama had previously begun to implement career pathways at the high school level in concert with local employers and Shasta College. However, many students struggled to complete the pathways because they were ill-prepared in middle school, Southwick said.
But one middle school pilot program did successfully introduce students to career education, he added, leading to an influx of funding through the Golden State Pathways that will expand the program to other middle schools.
Long Beach Unified, the fourth-largest district in the state, received about $12 million through the Golden State Pathways program. District spokesperson Elvia Cano said the funding will provide counseling and extra support for students navigating dual enrollment, Advanced Placement courses, college aid, externships and other work-based learning opportunities.
The district also plans to increase access to dual enrollment through partner Long Beach Community College and to create a new pathway in arts, media and entertainment at select high schools.
Advocates are celebrating the governor’s commitment to the program despite the uncertainty surrounding the budget this year.
Linda Collins, founder and executive director of Career Ladders Project, which supports redesigning community colleges to support students, said, “It’s an impressive commitment at a time that it’s desperately needed.”
Newsom said in a statement that this funding will help students even if they don’t go to college , saying it “will be a game-changer for thousands of students as the state invests in pathways to good-paying, high-need careers — including those that don’t require college degrees.”
UPDATE:
A total of almost $7.7 million in Implementation and Planning Grants were awarded to schools in Contra Costa County.
Antioch Unified Awarded Funding
Asked if the Antioch Unified School District has or will be receiving any of the funding, Acting Superintendent Dr. Rob Martinez shared, “While the District has not received formal notification as of yet from the California Department of Education, the information below has been listed on the CDE websites as reports of funding allocations.
The first link is for fund to districts as direct funding, which shows Antioch Unified School District receiving $522,500” for an Implementation Grant.
“There will also be an award to the Contra Costa County Consortium Grant which we opted to be part of which is listed at $1,775,000 (We anticipate that we will see a portion of those funds, to be determined by the consortium),” he added.
Other Contra Costa Districts, One School Also Awarded Grants
Senator Glazer’s request leads to findings of workers cheated out of $63.9 million in past wages
Calls it a failure to act on behalf of workers
Report claims inadequate staffing, poor oversight have weakened protections for workers
SACRAMENTO – California Labor Commissioners have stood idly by as a massive backlog in wage theft cases piled up worth $63.9 million in lost wages to workers as its enforcement unit failed to enforce and collect wages in 76 percent of cases in which employers were found to owe wages, according to a report released Wednesday by Grant Parks, the California State Auditor.
The scathing audit came as a result of a March 2023 request through the Joint Legislative Audit Committee by Senator Steve Glazer, D-Contra Costa, and Assemblyman David Alvarez, D-San Diego. It was based on news reports about the lack of wage theft enforcement.
Parks reported his findings to the Governor, President pro Tempore of the Senate and Speaker of the Assembly about the “Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, also known as the Labor Commissioner’s Office (LCO).” Lilia García-Brower is the current state Labor Commissioner and was appointed to the position by Governor Newsom in July 2019. Neither her name or photo appears on the website for the Labor Commissioner’s Office. Ironically, according to the agency’s website, “The mission of the LCO is to ensure a just day’s pay in every workplace in the State and to promote economic justice through robust enforcement of labor laws. By combating wage theft, protecting workers from retaliation, and educating the public, we put earned wages into workers’ pockets and help level the playing field for law-abiding employers.”
The audit “reviewed the backlog of wage claims submitted by workers from fiscal years 2017–18 through 2022–23, and determined that the LCO is not providing timely adjudication of wage claims for workers primarily because of insufficient staffing to process those claims.”
Furthermore, the state Auditor reported, “In addition to its delays in processing wage claims, the LCO has not been successful in collecting judgments from employers. A possible factor contributing to its low collection rate is that the Enforcement Unit does not consistently use all of the methods available to it for collecting payments owed to workers.”
Senator Glazer released this statement on the audit’s findings:
“The California State Auditor’s report makes clear that our State Labor Commissioner is a toothless enforcer of our wage theft laws. This deeply troubling assessment exposes a system that has fundamentally failed the workers it is supposed to protect. According to the auditor, there is a backlog of 47,000 claims registered on June 30, 2023. This is a state embarrassment and a stain on the department that workers depend on for justice.
The report also highlights an alarming increase in the average number of days to resolve claims, which has skyrocketed from 420 days in 2017/18 to an astounding 890 days in 2022/23. This drastic decline in efficiency is not just a statistic; it represents thousands of workers enduring prolonged injustice and financial hardship.
This lack of enforcement emboldens companies to exploit workers, knowing they can likely escape any real consequences, thus perpetuating and increasing further abuse. These findings paint a grim picture of an agency overwhelmed and ineffective, leaving workers vulnerable and without recourse. Immediate and decisive action to restore integrity and effectiveness to the Labor Commissioner’s office is needed. The workers of California deserve nothing less than a robust system that ensures timely and fair resolution of wage theft claims.”
