Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Palisades, Pasadena schools suffer major damage amid closures; UCLA moves classes online

Howard Blume and Jaweed Kaleem, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho arrived at Palisades Charter High School on Wednesday morning to find flames still ablaze atop a classroom building in the back of the historic campus. Joined by school board member Nick Melvoin, he walked up concrete steps that now abruptly ended at nothing, only a view of rubble, smoke and a charred structural skeleton twisted by extreme heat. At that moment at least, 70% of the campus had survived. The picture was worse at two nearby elementary schools that the superintendent sadly predicted would be total losses. There are about 1,000 Los Angeles Unified campuses. “This building is now standing at the moment,” Carvalho said at a later stop, describing what appeared to be the Marquez Charter Elementary School auditorium, “but it’s probably not going to be standing for too much longer, because fire is burning behind it. There’s nobody here to put this fire out.”

How Trump’s Cabinet Picks Could Affect K-12 Schools

Evie Bland, Education Week

Since former President Donald Trump won the November election, educators’ concerns have centered on his politically complicated pledges to cut federal education funding and dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, and what stamp former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, whom he plans to nominate to lead the U.S. Department of Education, might put on the agency. But Trump’s vision for disruptive change crosses all Cabinet agencies, with potentially broad implications for K-12 schools. That’s because many agencies beyond the Education Department have a toehold in what schools do and the policies that affect their students.

Talking to Young Children About Gaza

Reem Abuelhaj, Rethinking Schools

Fundamental to our work as educators and caretakers of children is an obligation to tell young people the truth about the world and give them tools to take action. For those of us in a wave of grief as we watch Palestinian children be killed and injured, starved, and denied medical care, it has been challenging to know whether and how to engage with the young children in our lives about what is going on. As a Palestinian American elementary school teacher, I found myself unable to look at the 1st and 2nd graders in my classroom without seeing the faces of Gazan children of the same ages. This is a deeply painful time. Many schools and educational institutions have adopted policies and practices that silence educators from talking about Palestine and Israel under threat of penalty or losing employment. Many adults have chosen not to have conversations with their children about Israel’s genocide in Gaza for fear that it will be too overwhelming or scary.

Language, Culture, and Power

What if ICE Agents Show Up? Schools Prepare Teachers and Parents.

Dana Goldstein, New York Times

If immigration agents arrive on the doorstep of a New York City public school, principals have been told what to do. Ask the officers to wait outside, and call a school district lawyer. The school system has enrolled about 40,000 recent immigrant students since 2022. Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office with promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the district has shared with school staff a protocol to try to shield students who have a tenuous legal status.

What rights do immigrant students and families have in California schools and colleges?

Zaidee Stavely, Ed Source

In the first months of the first Trump administration in 2017, a father in Los Angeles was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after dropping his 12-year-old daughter off at school. The ripple effect was immediate. “Right away there was a drop in attendance in L.A. schools because parents were thinking, ‘Oh, if I drop off my kids, ICE is going to pick me up,’” said Ana Mendoza, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Southern California and director of the organization’s Education Equity Project. “The need for safety and sanctuary policies became really salient because students weren’t going to schools or families were tentative about their participation in schools.” In the wake of this year’s presidential election, there is again widespread uncertainty among immigrant families in California about what is to come, given President-elect Donald Trump’s promises of mass deportation.

NYC school board to vote on resolution affirming support for undocumented students

Michael Elsen-Rooney, Chalkbeat

New York City’s school board is set to vote later this month on a resolution reaffirming the school system’s support for undocumented students as President-elect Donald Trump prepares what he says will be a “mass deportation.”The Panel for Educational Policy’s resolution is advisory and wouldn’t change the Education Department’s policy. But it enumerates many of the existing rights and protections for undocumented students in city schools. Those include guidelines preventing school staff and NYPD safety agents from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in most cases, and rules barring discrimination against students based on their immigration status. The resolution also urges the city Education Department to advocate for the preservation of federal programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — commonly known as DACA — that provide legal protections for some immigrants. It also opposes the creation of a “Muslim registry system,” a proposal from Trump’s first term to create a database of people from some Muslim-majority countries.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Climate change threatens well-being of youths. Here’s how to help them cope

Bernard Wolfson, OC Register

We’ve all read the stories and seen the images: The life-threatening heat waves. The wildfires of unprecedented ferocity. The record-breaking storms washing away entire neighborhoods. The melting glaciers, the rising sea levels, the coastal flooding. As California wildfires stretch into the colder months and hurricane survivors sort through the ruins left by floodwaters, let’s talk about an underreported victim of climate change: the emotional well-being of young people. A nascent but growing body of research shows that a large proportion of adolescents and young adults, in the United States and abroad, feel anxious and worried about the impact of an unstable climate in their lives today and in the future. Abby Rafeek, 14, is disquieted by the ravages of climate change, both near her home and far away. “It’s definitely affecting my life, because it’s causing stress thinking about the future and how, if we’re not addressing the problem now as a society, our planet is going to get worse,” says Rafeek, a high school student who lives in Gardena.

The Shame That Keeps Millions of Girls Out of School

Trisha Mukherjee, New York Times

When she was a teenager, Jossy Nation would collect water from a nearby river as the sun rose to wash the well-worn rags she used as sanitary pads, then lay them out to dry in a hidden spot. But during the rainy season in her remote village in Nigeria, the fabric wouldn’t dry, and Ms. Nation, now 30, would be swallowed by panic. “I feel sick,” she said, recalling the stress of running out of usable rags. “Sometimes I have to use one rag for the whole 24 hours.” Laser-focused on her education, Ms. Nation would push herself to go to school, even though some of her classmates stayed home during their periods. In class, she would shift uncomfortably in her seat, worrying that blood would stain her clothes and bring shame.

The 19th Explains: Can trans rights survive in a Republican-controlled Congress?

Orion Rummler, The 19th

For two years, as states pushed anti-trans laws, Republicans in Congress filed dozens upon dozens of bills that would restrict transgender rights on a national scale — but most of those bills never advanced. Now, as a new GOP-controlled Congress signals that anti-trans legislation is a top priority and President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a wave of federal anti-trans laws and executive orders is on the horizon. How could congressional Republicans restrict health care for trans Americans? Will Democrats block anti-trans legislation? And what anti-trans policies can Trump enact without Congress? Here’s what trans people should know about how this new Congress, and the first days of Trump’s presidency, could shape their lives.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Free College for the Working Class

Kevin Carey, Washington Monthly

In late 2023, then candidate Donald Trump released a series of internet videos outlining his agenda for education. Mixed into his typical stew of bald-faced lies and racial denialism, alongside plans to abolish the U.S. Department of Education and privatize public schools, was something that, coming from Trump, should be cause for genuine surprise: a sensible policy idea. 

Trump proposed creating a new, free, online university called the American Academy, which would offer high-quality courses in an array of subjects ranging from ancient history to accounting to training in the skilled trades. The American Academy would accept transfer credits from other colleges and universities and offer the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, increasing access to higher education and creating new price competition in the college market to help tamp down rising tuition prices and spiraling student debt.

The number of 18-year-olds is about to drop sharply, packing a wallop for colleges — and the economy 

Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report

Pickup trucks with trailers and cars with yawning trunks pulled up onto untended lawns in front of buildings from which people lugged books, furniture, mattresses, trophy cases and artwork.

Anything else of value had already been sold by a company that specializes in auctioning off the leftover assets of failed businesses. At least one of the buildings was soon to be demolished altogether, its red-brick walls dumped into its 1921 foundation. This was the unceremonious end of Iowa Wesleyan University, a 181-year-old institution that closed in 2023 after financial losses due in part to discounts it gave out as it struggled to attract a shrinking pool of students.

Universities and the Coming Storm

Francois Furstenberg, The American Prospect

As the incoming Trump administration develops plans to seize control of American universities from the “Marxist maniacs” who allegedly rule them, it’s worth taking a closer look at their systems of governance. The past year’s events, with its impassioned protests and theatrical congressional hearings, overshadow a reality sharply different from the one of conservative fantasies—of woke tenured professors imposing their politics across their institutions. Universities today no longer resemble the bucolic, faculty-run campuses of the imagination. With their sprawling real estate holdings, giant medical complexes, revenue-generating degree programs, and ballooning investment portfolios, our nation’s major universities look more like corporate conglomerates than mission-driven nonprofits. Hedge funds with universities attached, as the quip goes.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

How much more money would Colorado need to adequately teach students? New studies say $3.5 billion to $4.1 billion

Jason Gonzales, Chalkbeat

Colorado would need to spend $3.5 billion to $4.1 billion more to adequately resource K-12 public schools and help students learn, according to two studies released Friday. The studies, commissioned by state lawmakers and conducted by two independent groups, offer different models and figures to adequately fund schools. But they similarly say Colorado should dramatically increase K-12 spending beyond the $9.8 billion budgeted this year — an argument education advocates have made for years. “The studies contain recommendations for increased funding, highlighting the challenges our schools face in providing every student — especially those with the greatest needs — the opportunities they deserve to thrive,” said Susana Córdova, Colorado education commissioner.

Federal courthouse renamed after Latino family in segregation fight

Russell Contreras, Axios

President Biden has signed a bill that renames the U.S. Courthouse in Los Angeles after the Latino parents who helped end legal school segregation in California and set up the 1954 landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. The big picture: Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez U.S. Courthouse comes decades after Latino activists tried to draw attention to the pre-Brown case, which set the stage for racial desegregation nationwide. Zoom in: It’s the first federal courthouse in U.S. history named after a Latina and sits just blocks from where the 1947 Mendez v. Westminster case was originally decided.

Creating an anti-racist dental profession

Frank Legett, Bite

Racism is insidious and, frequently, a subconscious form of prejudice. Whenever someone points out that they saw a nice Chinese doctor or that the dentist was Aboriginal but did a really good job, the comment highlights a subconscious belief that one group of people is superior to another.

Racism can also happen on a grand scale. Last year, Australia held a referendum to recognise First Peoples of Australia. It was defeated 60 percent to 40 percent. “A common distortion spread by social media was that blackfellas were coming to take your land and home,” says Dr Jess Manuela, a dentist and palawa woman from lutruwita. She is also co-president and director of the Indigenous Dental Association Australia (IDAA), the peak body for Aboriginal dental clinicians.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Strengthening Democracy by Practicing It

Marshall Ganz, Nonprofit Quarterly

Millions of Americans could strengthen our democracy by practicing it. Tocqueville argued that in a democracy, “knowledge of how to combine,” is the “mother of all forms of knowledge.” Yet it is precisely Americans’ useful knowledge of the practices that enable purposeful collective action that we have allowed to atrophy. Many are out of practice at coming together, committing to one another in pursuit of a shared purpose, deliberating together, deciding together, and acting together—the essential practices of democracy in its most everyday form. The same goes for skills related to group decision-making, managing internal conflict, or holding one another accountable—the most basic democratic practices. We see, hear, and read about the major threats to democracy every day, but a closer look reveals the depth of the challenges we face in our everyday lives.

john a. powell on Polarization and ‘The Power of Bridging’ [Audio]

Alexis Madrigal, KQED

After the divisive 2016 presidential election, many families cut short Thanksgiving plans with their relatives of different political persuasions, according to a 2018 study. The result, writes law professor and civil rights advocate john a. powell, was that American families spent millions of fewer hours connecting and reflecting with each other. As director of UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute, powell thinks a lot about divisions in our society and how to bridge them. We talk to powell, author of the new book “The Power of Bridging” about how he thinks we should approach a second Trump administration…and the upcoming holiday season.

School Choice Is Not What It Sounds Like

Carol Burris, The Progressive

In 2017, PBS released School Inc., a rightwing billionaire-funded documentary created by the late Andrew Coulson, a conservative author and former director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. School Inc. showcased Coulson’s theory that for-profit schooling, funded by parents without government involvement, is the best delivery model for education. In a review for the long-running Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post, the education historian Diane Ravitch and I criticized Coulson’s romanticization of the era of American schooling before public education, during which children were homeschooled, church-schooled, or taught by private tutors—except for the poor, who, if they were lucky, were trained in charity schools. The “school choice movement,” which Coulson’s documentary promoted, has always been a classic bait-and-switch swindle: Charter schools were the bait for vouchers, and vouchers the lure for public acceptance of market-based schooling. While narrow debates about accountability, taxpayer costs, and the public funding of religious schools raise important concerns, the gravest threat posed by the school choice movement is its ultimate objective: putting an end to public responsibility for education.

Other News of Note

The ‘weather whiplash’ fueling the Los Angeles fires is becoming more common

The Grist

It’s supposed to be the rainy season in Southern California, but the last time Los Angeles measured more than a tenth-inch of rain was eight months ago, after the city logged one of the soggiest periods in its recorded history. Since then, bone-dry conditions have set the stage for the catastrophic wildfires now descending upon the metropolis from multiple directions.This quick cycling between very wet and very dry periods — one example of what scientists have come to call “weather whiplash” — creates prime conditions for wildfires: The rain encourages an abundance of brush and grass, and once all that vegetation dries out, it only takes a spark and a gust of wind to fuel a deadly fire. That’s what happened in Los Angeles County this week, when a fierce windstorm fueled the Palisades and Eaton fires, which as of Wednesday night had killed at least five people, destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes.