Santa Cruz County Education Digest

The California Faculty Association has announced it will strike in January at the state’s 23 CSU campuses. It’s part of an ongoing effort by the group to obtain a 12% raise for the 29,000 professors and lecturers it represents.

The number of nursing students enrolling in high-priced private programs has nearly doubled over the past 10 years as the state’s public universities have stagnated in growth. Private universities charge up to seven times the tuition of public schools for a bachelor’s degree, but nurses say their starting salaries are worth the cost.

Despite a few improvements, results show students are still struggling on several fronts.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has formally backed an August motion by two law groups to keep the Temecula Valley Unified School District from being able to notify parents about transgender children or censor instruction about race. A hearing for the motion is scheduled for Jan. 24.

Salaries for school superintendents in California have risen as much as 60 percent in the past decade. This comes as good superintendents have become more difficult to hire and retain.

A Cal Poly Humboldt professor is partnering with USDA researchers to study biochar, which results from heating dry plant-based materials at high temperatures without oxygen. The CO2 in the charcoal then stays in the soil for hundreds of years, rather than in the atmosphere.

Homeschool students in San Diego County are up by 88 percent since the 2017-18 school year, based on Washington Post data analysis. This tops an overall increase in the United States of 50 percent for this same timeframe.

Oakland School District teachers planned lessons for students related to the history of Gaza. District superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell emailed parents and staff to say the teaching isn’t approved or sanctioned by the district.

The California Faculty Association is seeking a 12 percent pay increase, while university officials counter with 5 percent in each of the next three years.

Faculty at four California State University campuses are striking this week for higher pay as part of contract negotiations. Walkouts at the first campus, Cal Poly Pomona, began Dec. 4.

In 2020, the state agreed to a settlement in a lawsuit that claimed too many students were not learning to read. As part of that agreement, the state spent over $50 million on 75 schools with the lowest reading scores.

The Cabrillo College Board of Trustees will consider creating a new ad hoc committee tasked with exploring initiatives and programs in support of Indigenous students and Native American studies at the school.

Students and teachers alike are decrying the actions of the Temecula Valley Unified School District board, which became conservative in majority following the recent elections of three members. The board’s actions include banning critical race theory and mandating parental notification if their child is transgender.

Most undocumented college students in California are not eligible for DACA anymore, creating new dilemmas for students and colleges around employment, financial aid and the threat of deportation.

In response to a significant surge in ridership at UC Santa Cruz, the local transit agency has begun rolling out a new fleet of specialized buses it believes can meet the moment.

A partnership between regional educational institutions has been awarded funding that will strengthen local economies. The Central Coast K-16 Regional Collaborative, encompassing agencies from the counties of Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, San Benito, Monterey, San Luis Obispo and Ventura, has secured $18.1 million from the state’s Community Economic Resilience Fund.

A graduate student workers union and the University of Southern California have agreed to a three-year labor contract that averts a looming strike. The deal calls for pay increases each of the three years.

State officials passed a 1,000-page document in July outlining new guidelines for teaching math in California. Funding has not been allocated, though the state superintendent intends to introduce legislation that could change this.

Alex Pang and Fahim Hasan Khan are working on algorithms that can monitor shoreline change, identify rip currents, and alert lifeguards of potential hazards.

Two members of the Sunol Glen Unified School District board have been served with recall notices. This came after the board approved a resolution that banned schools in the Alameda County district from flying the LGBTQ+ pride flag.

Lacking power at the state level, conservatives are leaning into local governance to protest California’s progressive politics. The fight in Huntington Beach could be a harbinger of what’s to come.

Assembly Bill 1096, taking effect Jan. 1, will let community colleges in the state provide courses in non-English languages, regardless if a student is also taking ESL. Previously, a student had to sign up for the latter to qualify for the former.

California’s community colleges are seeing enrollment gains for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Older students—those over 50—are some of the first to return.

Beyond the whirring of power tools and sprawling construction of Old Kresge, new residence halls and academic centers stand among the redwoods. These are the buildings that have sprouted out of the first phase of the Kresge Renewal project.

Hartnell College Faculty Association members organized a rally at the Main Campus on Oct. 25 to protest against working conditions for part-time teachers and to ask administrators for improvements.

Young people are stuck earning low wages, working long hours—often while going to school—and often without benefits or work protections. Their hardships may hamper the state’s economy for years to come, researchers say.

UC Berkeley, Stanford and UC Davis are among the schools that have had incidents related to the Israel-Hamas war. Schools are working to keep students safe and prevent disputes escalating to violence.

Tribes like the Muwekma Ohlone have been asking UC Berkeley for decades to give back ancestral remains from burial sites around the Bay Area. The school is in the process of repatriating 4,400 remains and 25,000 tribal items.

After taking a beating from the elements at UC Santa Cruz’s Seymour Marine Discovery Center, the structure supporting the blue whale skeleton known as Ms. Blue has been deemed unsafe. But the bones are staying, and the center wants input on Ms. Blue’s next chapter.

Women are nearly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, but among boys and girls, the likelihood is the same.

De Anza College is the latest Bay Area institution where students, faculty and community members are pushing for a name change to honor indigenous people who were harmed and pushed out by Spanish colonizers several centuries ago.

State law requires community colleges to spend at least half their general fund on instructors. But administrators say they want more flexibility to pay for the growing need for student services.