Californians for School Facilities (CSF) provides federal lobbying for nationwide school facility program funding. Bob Canavan, CSF’s Washington, D.C. lobbyist, John Dominguez (CSF Vice Chair), Joe Dixon (CSF and CASH Past Chair), John Baracy (CASH Board Member) and David Walrath were in Washington, D.C. recently to lobby for The Rebuild America’s Schools Act of 2019…
Monthly Archives: March 2019
Lessons from the Los Angeles and Oakland teachers’ strikes
March 21, 2019
After two teachers’ strikes in as many months in California, it is too soon to tell whether the labor disputes in Oakland and Los Angeles presage a new era of school-based activism. But regardless of what comes next, this year’s strikes had much in common, and yielded valuable lessons and insights for other districts where…
School oversight agency making waves with its candor
March 21, 2019
The state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) leads the investigation of Sweetwater Union High School District’s financial crisis, and recently turned heads for their candor discussing the district’s mess. FCMAT’s Michael Fine told Sweetwater officials they were in the middle of a fiscal crisis brought on by $30 million in overspending. The district…
Facilities maintenance a looming issue for Poway Unified
March 21, 2019
The Poway Unified School District is facing a growing dilemma after its facilities condition assessment report showed the district could face a liability of up to $811 million in facilities maintenance costs by 2045. The district’s maintenance liability in 2019 is $94.7 million, caused by a backlog of deferred maintenance. This backlog is due to…
Taking stock five years into landmark changes for California’s schools, a new report calls for doubling down on efforts to deepen and strengthen “one of the country’s most ambitious equity-focused education reforms.” The lengthy analysis by the Palo Alto-based nonprofit Learning Policy Institute is mostly positive about the policy changes that former Gov. Jerry Brown…
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced a $5 billion school choice proposal recently, pitching a national tax credit scholarship program that would allow parents to send their children to the public – or private – K-12 school of their choice. But the proposal faces a steep uphill battle in Congress, where Democrats now control the…
In a highly anticipated but narrow decision on pensions for teachers and other state and local public employees, the CA Supreme Court on Monday upheld the elimination of the “air time” retirement benefit in the 2012 pension reform law that then-Gov. Jerry Brown championed. The seven justices also made clear in the unanimous ruling that…
Underscoring the high priority he has placed on the issue, Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill approved by lawmakers at lightning speed that will require more transparency in charter school operations. The new law requires California’s 1,300-plus charter schools to follow the same laws governing open meetings, public records and conflicts of…
CA’s second largest school district took more than four weeks to fully resolve a heating system outage at a school in City Heights. The district announced it is improving how it addresses and communicates issues around maintenance after this incident caused outrage among parents and staff. The outage that began in late January affected 15…
CA governor’s new task force on charter schools convenes
March 21, 2019
A new task force that will examine the financial impact of charter schools and report back to Gov. Gavin Newsom by July 1 met for the first time privately on March 7. Charter schools, unions, school districts are represented on the 11-member group. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond led the meeting, at Newsom’s request,…