Author Archives: Public Press staff

By Theresa Harrington/EdSource Today For 11 years, students from all over the world have gathered at Oakland International High to learn English and math, as they also learn to navigate new lives far from where they were born. Chanthavy, 16, who left Cambodia in 2009 and learned English in Malaysia before arriving in the U.S. […]

By Julie Cart, CALmatters  As California accelerates its efforts to reduce greenhouses gases over the next decade, experts are pointing to vulnerabilities in its celebrated cap-and-trade system, weaknesses that could make the state’s goals difficult — even impossible — to reach. Cap and trade, featuring a market where permission to pollute is bought and sold, […]

By Jeremy Dalmas, KALW/Crosscurrents April 15 just passed and you, hopefully, finished paying the IRS. But if you’re an independent contractor in San Francisco, your taxes to the city are due next on May 31. This is separate from the money you pay to the IRS or the state of California. Confused? You’re not alone. […]

By Matt Levin, CALmatters The median price of a California single-family home is now well over half a million dollars. That’s more than double what the average house costs in the rest of the U.S. Put a more nauseating way, you could buy two “average” non-California houses for the price of one California house. Can’t […]

By Charlotte Silver, Mission Local San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is using a gunfight that surprised a sleepy street in Bernal Heights last October as part of his salvo against property owners who illegally rent out their homes on short-term rental sites like Airbnb. On Wednesday, Herrera announced that his office had filed a […]

By Felicia Mello, CALmatters The message popped into UC Berkeley sophomore Varsha Sarveshwar’s inbox a few days before the start of her Introduction to General Astronomy course last fall. It contained the usual details about class times and textbooks. But then there was something surprising: a plea from the professor to skip the first day […]

By Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local Retirement, for Larry Bush, looks a lot like work did. The former journalist, politico, fixer and government apparatchik is seated on a recliner in his Castro district living room, his feet up; his tiny dog, Izabel, sitting across his legs; and a MacBook in his lap. He’s following the money. […]

By Laurel Rosenhall, CALmatters Three companies found to have sold toxic lead paint for decades — despite knowing it posed health hazards for children — are waging a major battle to avoid paying the several hundred million dollars in liability that California courts have slapped on them. And they’re asking you, the California voter, to […]

By Kelly O’Mara, KQED News Fix San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood is located downtown, bordered by some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. Yet, it has a bad reputation. Tourists are told to avoid the area. You can often see drug dealing out in the open, and garbage on the streets. “Growing up we always […]

By Judy Lin, CALmatters California’s tax system, which relies heavily on the wealthy for state income, is prone to boom-and-bust cycles. While it delivers big returns from the rich whenever Wall Street goes on a bull run, it forces state and local governments to cut services, raise taxes or borrow money in a downturn. During […]