Author Archives: Public Press staff

By Louis Freedberg, EdSource Backers of the landmark lawsuit that has the potential to substantially diminish the power of public employee unions in California and nationally are not sitting back reveling in the victory they won on the Supreme Court late last month. The divided ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and […]

By Ben Christopher, CALmatters Give yourself a round of applause, California. For a decade, voter participation during midterm primary elections has been slipping down and down. Last time around, in 2014, the state hit an all-time low for voter apathy: Only 1-in-4 registered voters bothered to participate. But this June, we broke the trend. With […]

By Larry Gordon, EdSource California is likely to be little affected by the Trump administration’s latest moves against racial affirmative action in part because the state already banned such racial preferences in public education policies and state university admissions more than two decades ago, experts said. Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation […]

By Ben Bradford, Capital Public Radio/CALmatters Redwood City approved more than a year ago the kind of affordable-housing project California desperately needs: a 20-unit building, downtown, near transit lines, in the heart of Silicon Valley, where the state’s housing crisis is most severe. The developer was a nonprofit, Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco. But […]

By Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local In recent weeks, Gabriella Rodezno passed the bar, got a job and watched an NBA finals game in person. “I died and went to heaven,” says the 32-year-old Mission native. “I won the lottery.” Well, jackpot. Now, winning the lottery is pretty nice. And pretty rare. But, in a manner […]

By Ben Christopher, CALmatters After months of signature gathering and legislative wrangling, here’s the final list of propositions that made the cut for the November election. On the list are proposals to slash the gas tax, split the state in three, reintroduce rent control, absolve major corporations of their legal debt and borrow billions to […]

By Farida Jhabvala Romero, KQED News Majed Balawi has spent months and nearly $25,000 in his quest to apply for a visa for his wife, who lives in war-torn Yemen. Balawi, is a naturalized U.S. citizen and he worries his wife might not survive the ongoing bloodshed and famine faced by millions of people in […]

By John Fensterwald, EdSource California plans to spend $13.3 million over six years to identify and replicate successful ingredients of community engagement, an essential but, for many school districts, elusive part of local control — the shorthand for setting budgeting and academic priorities under the state’s school financing law. The new money — included in […]

By Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local First things first, here it is. Here’s the 137-page historical study of a laundromat, underwritten to the tune of $23,000 by Robert Tillman, who hopes to build an eight-story, 75-unit tower atop where the washers and dryers now churn at Mission and 25th streets. And it turns out that, decades […]

By Chris Nichols, Capital Public Radio/CALmatters Toy cars are scattered across the floor in Marie Camacho’s small one-bedroom apartment in Sacramento. Photos of her 4-year-old boy, Julian, line the walls. The 32-year-old single mom juggles two part-time jobs, but she can’t stand to be away from her son. “He likes being around his mom,” said […]