Author Archives: Public Press staff

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 […]

By Carolyn Jones, EdSource One night three years ago, Milton kissed his mother gently on the head, careful not to wake her, and slipped out of their home in rural Guatemala where he had lived his whole life. As his parents and six younger siblings slept, he caught a bus north. His goal: reaching the […]

By Felicia Mello, CALmatters  As tribal archaeologist for the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Myra Masiel uses her UC Berkeley anthropology training daily. Her mission: Track down skeletons of Native Californians extracted from gravesites over the last two centuries and shipped off to museums around the world, and return them to the tribe’s ancestral land […]

By David Washburn, EdSource A third of parents surveyed nationally say they fear for their children’s safety at school, but a significant majority — 63 percent — do not support the idea of arming teachers as a way to make schools safer, according to a new poll on attitudes toward public schools. The poll, released […]

By Laurel Rosenhall, CALmatters  Asked this spring to identify the most important issue facing California lawmakers, the leader of the state Senate didn’t hesitate: wildfires. Two months later — with fires blazing from the Oregon border to San Diego — legislators are poised to wade into a political firestorm sparked by last year’s historic fires […]

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 […]