Yearly Archives: 2018

By David Gorn, CALmatters  The word “amputation” threw a chill down Michael Rubenstein’s spine. The 67-year-old diabetic from San Mateo still winces at the thought. “They told me I’d need to cut it off right about here,” he said, sawing his hand across his left shin. Two months after that diagnosis, he’s on an exam […]

By David Washburn, EdSource It had, in many respects, become the little movement that could. After more than a decade of failed attempts at both the state and local levels to impose soda taxes, health advocates scored a watershed victory in 2014 when Berkeley voters approved by a two-thirds majority a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary […]

By Antoinette Siu, CALmatters When phone bank worker Melissa Mendez, age 26, felt financially squeezed a few months ago —“I was short on cash and needed to pay rent”— she walked into a Cash 1 storefront in Sacramento and took out a payday loan. The annual interest rate: 460 percent. That rate would shock a […]

By Elizabeth Castillo, CALmatters Although California can’t do much to block the Trump administration’s controversial immigration policies, opponents in the “Resistance State” keep finding ways to chip away at their foundations. The latest: pushing the state and its Democratic leaders to cancel its business deals with, investments in, and campaign donations from private companies with […]

By Elizabeth Castillo, KQED News/CALmatters Jessica Rosales recalls plunging into a downward spiral after discovering that her birth control had failed and she was pregnant. A financially unstable third-year student at UC Riverside, she immediately sought an abortion — something the campus student health clinic did not provide. Instead she was referred to private medical […]

By Mikhail Zinshteyn, EdSource Three dozen private California colleges and universities are offering a path to guaranteed admissions for community college students, adding a new option for those who want to earn their bachelor’s degrees in four years. The actions of the private colleges are part of a continuing trend that has seen stronger ties […]

By Jessica Calefati, CALmatters California’s public schools have enjoyed a remarkable restoration of funding since the bone-deep cuts they endured during the recession, but many are now facing a grave financial threat as they struggle to protect pensions crucial for teachers’ retirement. Over the next three years, schools may need to use well over half […]

By Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local Evan Wolkenstein has a lot on his mind these days. In a very San Franciscan touch, the high school teacher has, at age 44, just had his first child. And, in what is also a very San Franciscan touch, he is consumed with existential angst about where he and his […]

By Sukey Lewis, KQED News/The California Report Last Oct. 23, as the wildfires that ignited two weeks earlier still smoldered across Northern California, a few hundred survivors gathered at a press conference in downtown Santa Rosa to hear an update on their next major hurdle: getting rid of the ash, toxic debris and waste left behind […]