Author Archives: Public Press staff

By David Washburn, EdSource California in recent years has arguably become the best state in the nation at holding school districts accountable for their suspension rates — but a number of districts are still lagging considerably when it comes to addressing suspension disparities among specific groups of students and supporting alternatives to traditional discipline, according […]

By Craig Miller, KQED News Fix The spotlight will be on a San Francisco courtroom Wednesday, when climate science finally gets its day in court. The cities of Oakland and San Francisco are suing several oil companies for the costs of adapting to climate change impacts, such as rising sea levels that threaten to flood […]

By Lee Romney, EdSource Ever since the Oakland Unified School District launched its African-American Male Achievement office eight years ago people have been asking, “What about the girls?” Among them were community leaders like Nzingha Dugas, who under contract to the district for many years ran academic enrichment programs and a basketball league that she […]

By Farida Jhabvala Romero, KQED/CALmatters Amparo Cid traces her work as an attorney helping recent immigrants and their families in the Central Valley fight injustices and potential deportation to her experience as a child in 1994. That was when California voters passed Proposition 187, an initiative that denied undocumented immigrants access to publicly funded services. […]

By Matt Weiser, KQED News Fix/Water Deeply California is well behind the curve on groundwater regulation. With a few exceptions, groundwater extraction has never been regulated in the state or even monitored with any precision. However, a 2014 law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, at last will require groundwater basins in the state to reverse […]

By Carolyn Jones, EdSource Most teachers are embracing California’s new science standards, but the rollout has been hampered by teacher shortages, lackluster elementary science education, lack of supplies and other obstacles, according to a new report. The report by the Public Policy Institute of California surveyed 204 school districts across California at the end of […]

By Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local At some point on Wednesday, the meeting’s going to careen off the rails. “S**t-show breaks out” isn’t a Police Commission agenda item, but it might as well be. Various members of the public will recriminate one other and members of the government; members of the government will recriminate various members […]

By Julian Mark, Mission Local Nearly three years have passed since Dora Mejia filed a lawsuit against the City of San Francisco that exposed the barriers many monolingual sexual assault victims experience when interacting with the San Francisco Police Department, but advocates say the problems still remain. Mejia was arrested after her ex-partner sexually assaulted […]

By David Washburn, EdSource Fifty years ago this week, Latino students in Los Angeles shocked their teachers, their principals — and the world — by organizing massive school walkouts to protest their unequal education in the Los Angeles Unified School District. School authorities were caught unawares. They stood by dumbfounded as high school kids — […]

By Sukey Lewis, Marisa Lagos and Lisa Pickoff-White, KQED News Fix/The California Report Napa County Fire Chief Barry Biermann wasn’t scheduled to work until Monday morning, but he decided to head in Sunday, Oct. 8, just in case. He knew that conditions in Napa’s wine country, known for its Mediterranean climate and valleys of vineyards, […]