Our education coverage examines the inequities students face in Bay Area and California schools, and reports on what it will take to educate the next generation.
California Parents on Waitlist for Subsidized Childcare Anxious Over Proposed Budget Cuts
I Got Access to Hundreds of Teacher Misconduct Complaints in California — and You Can Too
Conservative Activist Sonja Shaw Advances in State Superintendent Race
A Teacher Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. Why Did California Let Him Continue Teaching?
Family of Teen Punched by Fairfield Officer Files Claim With Bay Area Civil Rights Attorneys
3 Recent Graduates Share Their Thoughts on AI
SFUSD to Open New Special Education Program for Students With Extensive Needs
UCLA Just Launched a Massive AAPI Textbook for the TikTok Generation. And It's Free
‘Feels Like Erasure’: Why Native American Students May Be Undercounted by 90% in California Schools
California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints
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"content": "\u003cp>Ever since her 1 ½-year-old son was born, Carmen Perez has been waiting for a subsidy to help with childcare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Novato mom said she didn’t have to wait this long a couple of years ago when she needed to enroll her daughters in preschool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2021, California \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/07/23/governor-newsom-signs-legislation-supporting-working-families-and-child-care-providers/\">increased funding for subsidized childcare\u003c/a> with the goal of paying for more than 200,000 new slots to support low-income families. Perez got subsidies for her girls, now 7 and 5 years old, which enabled her to work and take classes at College of Marin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was awesome,” she said. “I didn’t apply for [public assistance] because I was working and providing along with my husband.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after adding almost 130,000 slots, the state paused the expansion for three years with \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=10212.6&lawCode=WIC\">a commitment to resume the roll-out \u003c/a>in the 2026-27 fiscal year. But instead of sticking to the plan, Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to cut funding for slots as part of a push to eliminate the state deficit even after his term ends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state Assembly opposes the cuts, and the Senate wants to add 44,000 new slots. As state leaders negotiate a budget deal by June 30, parents like Perez are pushing for more childcare support, especially as President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill, H.R. 1, threatens their access to basic needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As the federal government forces work requirements on CalFresh and Medi-Cal, this is when we are supposed to be doubling down on childcare, so that families can not only work, but have their food security, have their health security,” said Mary Ignatius, executive director of the advocacy group Parent Voices California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086168\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12086168\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00251_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00251_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00251_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00251_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carmen Perez (center left) and her husband Dyson Sanchez (center right) pose for a portrait with their children at Pioneer Park in Novato on May 31, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Julia Forte Frudden, a policy analyst at Child Care Law Center in Berkeley, called Newsom’s proposals, which also include reducing a cost-of-living adjustment for childcare providers, a major setback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we see is the governor not recognizing that childcare has a high return on investment,” she said. “So this could actually help the state’s financial strains that it’s dealing with right now, not add to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Newsom administration initially proposed in January to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083461/california-advocates-want-newsom-to-fulfill-promise-to-fund-child-care-spaces\">cut funding for 4,200 “general childcare” slots\u003c/a> in licensed centers and homes when it projected a $2.9 billion shortfall. But in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083617/newsom-touts-dominance-of-california-in-final-budget-proposal\">revised budget released last month\u003c/a>, it proposed cutting 6,800 slots —mostly vouchers for home-based childcare arrangements and some childcare center slots. Newsom said, despite a recent surge in tax revenue from the booming A.I. industry, he proposed further cuts to balance the budget for two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Administration officials say the cuts are necessary to offset more than $86 million in reductions from the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and Proposition 64, which sets aside a portion of the state’s cannabis tax revenues for early childhood programs. They say the cuts wouldn’t affect families currently receiving subsidies for childcare. Instead, they’re taking back funds that were not spent by community-based agencies responsible for enrolling eligible families and reimbursing providers.[aside postID=news_12083461 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260428-VallejoChildCare-37-BL_qed.jpg']The justification doesn’t make sense to Cristina Alvarado, executive director of Child Care Alliance Los Angeles, which represents 10 agencies that altogether have more than 22,000 kids on waitlists for childcare vouchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said sometimes agencies that don’t fully spend their funds by the end of the fiscal year can transfer the money to others to enroll as many families as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No L.A. agency has offered any additional funding,” she said, because of the high demand for slots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An analysis of state spending over the last five years shows California dedicates \u003ca href=\"https://www.datawrapper.de/_/rGm2r/?v=5\">only about 2% of its total budget to childcare\u003c/a>. While the additional slots initiated by Newsom have helped tens of thousands of families afford childcare, the California Budget & Policy Center estimates that only 16% of eligible children are enrolled in subsidized childcare programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Marin County, Perez’s son, Dyson, is among nearly 680 children eligible for subsidies who are on a waitlist because there’s no more funding for new slots, according to Aideen Gaidmore, CEO of Marin Child Care Council.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The promise of additional funding gave Perez hope that she could go back to work and catch up financially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you are in the water and somebody is trying to take you out, but then they push you into the water again, that’s a game. That’s not fun. It’s playing with their feelings, playing with their mental health,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Desperate for relief, she joined Parent Voices to advocate for more funding in Sacramento. At a state Assembly budget hearing in April, she held her babbling boy in her arms while testifying about her mounting credit card debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086166\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12086166\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260603-California-Budget-Child-Care-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260603-California-Budget-Child-Care-01-KQED.jpg 1280w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260603-California-Budget-Child-Care-01-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260603-California-Budget-Child-Care-01-KQED-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carmen Perez holds her son, Dyson, while testifying about the impact of waiting for a childcare subsidy at a California Assembly Budget Subcommittee hearing on human services on April 8, 2026. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California State Assembly)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My husband makes $800 a week, and we live in Marin. Everything is expensive. We barely make … afford the rent,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perez’s voice began to crack as she wondered how she could “work more to take some pressure off of my husband” and afford extracurricular activities, maybe a trip to Disneyland, for her kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we met at a park near her home recently, Perez said she tried to hire a nanny so she could provide in-home care to an elderly person. But she couldn’t keep up with the nanny’s $35 per hour rate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said she resorted to taking Dyson to her gig job and strapping him to her back, but when he cried out of frustration, her employer told her not to come back until she finds childcare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She dreams of obtaining a Certified Nursing Assistant license so she could find a good job providing eldercare. Marin County has the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/california-population-age-projections/\">largest elderly population in the Bay Area\u003c/a>, and there’s a future in that career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086167\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12086167\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00101_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00101_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00101_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00101_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carmen Perez, a mother of four who has been waiting for more than a year for an open subsidized childcare slot for her 18-month-old son, poses for a portrait with her son at Pioneer Park in Novato on May 31, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Perez said waiting for an open childcare slot brings back bad memories of when her eldest son, who is 14, waited for a slot for 10 years until he was too old to qualify for a subsidy. She said she paid neighbors to care for him and enrolled him in preschool part-time. But that arrangement became too expensive, and she eventually pulled him out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He went straight to kindergarten, and it was so hard,” she said. “He struggled with reading and math, and I can still see the hard work he has to do by himself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her daughters, on the other hand, are doing well in school, Perez said, because preschool helped them prepare for kindergarten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She fears Dyson may have the same struggle as his older brother if he doesn’t get off the waitlist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think it’s very important to invest in the children and provide childcare for all, because a lot of families are on the waiting list,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after adding almost 130,000 slots, the state paused the expansion for three years with \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=10212.6&lawCode=WIC\">a commitment to resume the roll-out \u003c/a>in the 2026-27 fiscal year. But instead of sticking to the plan, Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to cut funding for slots as part of a push to eliminate the state deficit even after his term ends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state Assembly opposes the cuts, and the Senate wants to add 44,000 new slots. As state leaders negotiate a budget deal by June 30, parents like Perez are pushing for more childcare support, especially as President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill, H.R. 1, threatens their access to basic needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As the federal government forces work requirements on CalFresh and Medi-Cal, this is when we are supposed to be doubling down on childcare, so that families can not only work, but have their food security, have their health security,” said Mary Ignatius, executive director of the advocacy group Parent Voices California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086168\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12086168\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00251_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00251_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00251_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00251_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carmen Perez (center left) and her husband Dyson Sanchez (center right) pose for a portrait with their children at Pioneer Park in Novato on May 31, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Julia Forte Frudden, a policy analyst at Child Care Law Center in Berkeley, called Newsom’s proposals, which also include reducing a cost-of-living adjustment for childcare providers, a major setback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we see is the governor not recognizing that childcare has a high return on investment,” she said. “So this could actually help the state’s financial strains that it’s dealing with right now, not add to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Newsom administration initially proposed in January to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083461/california-advocates-want-newsom-to-fulfill-promise-to-fund-child-care-spaces\">cut funding for 4,200 “general childcare” slots\u003c/a> in licensed centers and homes when it projected a $2.9 billion shortfall. But in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083617/newsom-touts-dominance-of-california-in-final-budget-proposal\">revised budget released last month\u003c/a>, it proposed cutting 6,800 slots —mostly vouchers for home-based childcare arrangements and some childcare center slots. Newsom said, despite a recent surge in tax revenue from the booming A.I. industry, he proposed further cuts to balance the budget for two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Administration officials say the cuts are necessary to offset more than $86 million in reductions from the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and Proposition 64, which sets aside a portion of the state’s cannabis tax revenues for early childhood programs. They say the cuts wouldn’t affect families currently receiving subsidies for childcare. Instead, they’re taking back funds that were not spent by community-based agencies responsible for enrolling eligible families and reimbursing providers.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The justification doesn’t make sense to Cristina Alvarado, executive director of Child Care Alliance Los Angeles, which represents 10 agencies that altogether have more than 22,000 kids on waitlists for childcare vouchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said sometimes agencies that don’t fully spend their funds by the end of the fiscal year can transfer the money to others to enroll as many families as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No L.A. agency has offered any additional funding,” she said, because of the high demand for slots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An analysis of state spending over the last five years shows California dedicates \u003ca href=\"https://www.datawrapper.de/_/rGm2r/?v=5\">only about 2% of its total budget to childcare\u003c/a>. While the additional slots initiated by Newsom have helped tens of thousands of families afford childcare, the California Budget & Policy Center estimates that only 16% of eligible children are enrolled in subsidized childcare programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Marin County, Perez’s son, Dyson, is among nearly 680 children eligible for subsidies who are on a waitlist because there’s no more funding for new slots, according to Aideen Gaidmore, CEO of Marin Child Care Council.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The promise of additional funding gave Perez hope that she could go back to work and catch up financially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you are in the water and somebody is trying to take you out, but then they push you into the water again, that’s a game. That’s not fun. It’s playing with their feelings, playing with their mental health,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Desperate for relief, she joined Parent Voices to advocate for more funding in Sacramento. At a state Assembly budget hearing in April, she held her babbling boy in her arms while testifying about her mounting credit card debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086166\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12086166\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260603-California-Budget-Child-Care-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260603-California-Budget-Child-Care-01-KQED.jpg 1280w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260603-California-Budget-Child-Care-01-KQED-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260603-California-Budget-Child-Care-01-KQED-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carmen Perez holds her son, Dyson, while testifying about the impact of waiting for a childcare subsidy at a California Assembly Budget Subcommittee hearing on human services on April 8, 2026. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California State Assembly)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My husband makes $800 a week, and we live in Marin. Everything is expensive. We barely make … afford the rent,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perez’s voice began to crack as she wondered how she could “work more to take some pressure off of my husband” and afford extracurricular activities, maybe a trip to Disneyland, for her kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we met at a park near her home recently, Perez said she tried to hire a nanny so she could provide in-home care to an elderly person. But she couldn’t keep up with the nanny’s $35 per hour rate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said she resorted to taking Dyson to her gig job and strapping him to her back, but when he cried out of frustration, her employer told her not to come back until she finds childcare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She dreams of obtaining a Certified Nursing Assistant license so she could find a good job providing eldercare. Marin County has the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/california-population-age-projections/\">largest elderly population in the Bay Area\u003c/a>, and there’s a future in that career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086167\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12086167\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00101_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00101_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00101_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260531-CALIFORNIABUDGETCHILDCARE00101_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carmen Perez, a mother of four who has been waiting for more than a year for an open subsidized childcare slot for her 18-month-old son, poses for a portrait with her son at Pioneer Park in Novato on May 31, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Perez said waiting for an open childcare slot brings back bad memories of when her eldest son, who is 14, waited for a slot for 10 years until he was too old to qualify for a subsidy. She said she paid neighbors to care for him and enrolled him in preschool part-time. But that arrangement became too expensive, and she eventually pulled him out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He went straight to kindergarten, and it was so hard,” she said. “He struggled with reading and math, and I can still see the hard work he has to do by himself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her daughters, on the other hand, are doing well in school, Perez said, because preschool helped them prepare for kindergarten.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She fears Dyson may have the same struggle as his older brother if he doesn’t get off the waitlist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think it’s very important to invest in the children and provide childcare for all, because a lot of families are on the waiting list,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with KQED. \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was a new reporter at KQED in 2021 when former elementary teacher Joseph Brian Houg was sentenced to more than three decades in prison for sexually abusing 10 students. He’d taught at the same San Francisco Bay Area school for more than two decades. Were there warning signs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I soon discovered parents on social media saying they had complained to school administrators for years about Houg. I also knew that schools could release such complaints if they were substantiated or if teachers were disciplined. So I filed public records requests with Houg’s school — something anyone can do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I received 43 pages of records within a few months showing that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11928350/they-knew-legal-battle-over-a-los-gatos-elementary-schools-failure-to-prevent-sexual-abuse-could-go-to-trial\">parents had reported Houg\u003c/a> to the principal at least four times since 2009. They complained about him for asking students to strip down to their underwear in his classroom in order to try on costumes for a play he was directing, and for coming into their changing room. They also complained about his touching boys’ chests or stomachs and tapping one boy on the butt. I learned that the principal had twice warned Houg to stop touching students. But he was allowed to keep teaching. (The principal said in a deposition that while Houg’s actions crossed professional boundaries, they were not reported to her as sexual.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next two years, I reported on similar cases of teachers remaining in the classroom after complaints of unwanted touching. Another Bay Area elementary school, in Benicia, reported a teacher to the state’s licensing body after he \u003ca href=\"https://www.vallejosun.com/benicia-unified-sued-over-alleged-sexual-abuse-by-former-teacher-with-previous-arrest/\">resigned due to accusations of misconduct\u003c/a>. Another school hired him, and his educator license remained in good standing until he was criminally charged. (He is currently fighting those charges.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This raised a whole different set of questions for me: Should these teachers have been allowed to keep teaching in new schools? How much about a teacher’s disciplinary history did potential employers know? And what was the state’s responsibility for acting on, and sharing, the information it had about these teachers?[aside postID=news_12085808 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-12.jpg']After I entered journalism school at UC Berkeley in 2023, I wanted to investigate how common it was for teachers to continue working with kids after schools found that they had committed misconduct. California law bars the teacher licensing agency from releasing disciplinary records to the public, so my classmate and I requested records from the 300 largest school districts in California. We asked for complaints of teacher sexual misconduct made to schools in the five previous years. We also asked for any reports sent by schools to the state’s teacher licensing agency, which are required to be filed when public school educators are fired or resign due to alleged misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of districts responded within two months. We began building a spreadsheet of teachers against whom complaints were raised. Getting the records was slow: California requires public agencies to determine whether they have records to disclose within 10 days, and to release them promptly, but most dragged their feet. Whenever schools stopped responding, I copied school board members and attorneys on my emails, citing the law. By the time I graduated more than a year after filing the records requests, I had received more than 350 complaints, which I used in my \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">recent investigation\u003c/a> with KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To this day, Los Angeles Unified, the largest school district in California, still has not released any records pertaining to teacher misconduct cases that it reported to the state. Instead, the district said it would charge me $8,000 ($100 an hour for 80 hours of work) for it to “investigate approximately 2,500 potentially responsive personnel files.” The First Amendment Coalition, a California nonprofit that advocates for free speech and government transparency, is \u003ca href=\"https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/news/post/fac-sues-l-a-schools-for-concealing-teacher-misconduct-records/\">representing me in a lawsuit\u003c/a> filed in May. We argue that the Los Angeles school district is violating public records laws with its failure to release documents pertaining to alleged educator misconduct. A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson told me in a written statement this week that its policies balance the public’s right to access records with “responsible stewardship of public resources” and the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Districts slow-walking their responses isn’t the only obstacle to getting records from schools. Districts typically notify teachers before releasing complaints to give them the opportunity to block the documents’ release. The former Benicia teacher who was criminally charged with sexually abusing students in 2024 sued to block the release of complaints made against him at two school districts. The First Amendment Coalition represented me in that case, too, and we won. It took nine months to get the records. In another case in which I had requested records, the court granted an injunction preventing release of the teacher’s records, but the legal filings contained the details of the allegations against him, so the nature of the complaint became public anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least four teachers have called or emailed me directly to ask why I’m requesting their disciplinary records. They wanted to share their side of the story, which I was more than happy to hear, and some argued that their cases were not worth my time. One asked me to retract my request. (I did not.) Another sent a 1,700-word email saying that the allegations were only partially true and lamented that he did not have the money to defend himself.[aside postID=news_12084681 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260324-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-19-BL_qed.jpg']While I appreciated the complexity of individual cases, I believed that those misconduct complaints might contain important truths. Undeterred by school districts’ recalcitrance, I followed the public record-seekers’ mantra: If you can’t get records from one agency, the answers you’re looking for may exist somewhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Records of state disciplinary hearings are presumed public when teachers object to their dismissals by school districts or appeal the suspension or revocation of their licenses. And those records reside in the Department of General Services, a state agency that houses another agency responsible for convening administrative hearings of public employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This agency proved helpful with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">case of Jason Agan\u003c/a>, a San Francisco Bay Area math teacher who KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> reported on last month. Agan had been fired for sexually harassing high school students but went on to teach at two more schools, even after an independent panel convened by the Office of Administrative Hearings deemed him “unfit to teach.” Because he had asked for an outside hearing after the district moved to fire him, I requested those records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I got them the next day. The documents contained summaries of testimony from students, administrators and Agan himself at his dismissal hearing. Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, admitted to touching students’ shoulders but denied any sexual motivation, stating during his dismissal hearing that he did so to offer them support and encouragement. He maintained his teaching license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting a response from the Department of General Services was like discovering a secret portal to obtaining records quickly and easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I requested five years’ worth of decisions about other teachers by independent panels from this agency, in search of further insights into how the state’s teacher disciplinary system works and where it falls short. I obtained a gold mine of documents in less than a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had learned some important lessons: What seems to be secret isn’t always so. Sometimes you just need to know who to ask, and for what.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\">Share Your Experience\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>***\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon\">ProPublica’s Mollie Simon\u003c/a> contributed research.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with KQED. \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was a new reporter at KQED in 2021 when former elementary teacher Joseph Brian Houg was sentenced to more than three decades in prison for sexually abusing 10 students. He’d taught at the same San Francisco Bay Area school for more than two decades. Were there warning signs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I soon discovered parents on social media saying they had complained to school administrators for years about Houg. I also knew that schools could release such complaints if they were substantiated or if teachers were disciplined. So I filed public records requests with Houg’s school — something anyone can do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I received 43 pages of records within a few months showing that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11928350/they-knew-legal-battle-over-a-los-gatos-elementary-schools-failure-to-prevent-sexual-abuse-could-go-to-trial\">parents had reported Houg\u003c/a> to the principal at least four times since 2009. They complained about him for asking students to strip down to their underwear in his classroom in order to try on costumes for a play he was directing, and for coming into their changing room. They also complained about his touching boys’ chests or stomachs and tapping one boy on the butt. I learned that the principal had twice warned Houg to stop touching students. But he was allowed to keep teaching. (The principal said in a deposition that while Houg’s actions crossed professional boundaries, they were not reported to her as sexual.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next two years, I reported on similar cases of teachers remaining in the classroom after complaints of unwanted touching. Another Bay Area elementary school, in Benicia, reported a teacher to the state’s licensing body after he \u003ca href=\"https://www.vallejosun.com/benicia-unified-sued-over-alleged-sexual-abuse-by-former-teacher-with-previous-arrest/\">resigned due to accusations of misconduct\u003c/a>. Another school hired him, and his educator license remained in good standing until he was criminally charged. (He is currently fighting those charges.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This raised a whole different set of questions for me: Should these teachers have been allowed to keep teaching in new schools? How much about a teacher’s disciplinary history did potential employers know? And what was the state’s responsibility for acting on, and sharing, the information it had about these teachers?\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>After I entered journalism school at UC Berkeley in 2023, I wanted to investigate how common it was for teachers to continue working with kids after schools found that they had committed misconduct. California law bars the teacher licensing agency from releasing disciplinary records to the public, so my classmate and I requested records from the 300 largest school districts in California. We asked for complaints of teacher sexual misconduct made to schools in the five previous years. We also asked for any reports sent by schools to the state’s teacher licensing agency, which are required to be filed when public school educators are fired or resign due to alleged misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dozens of districts responded within two months. We began building a spreadsheet of teachers against whom complaints were raised. Getting the records was slow: California requires public agencies to determine whether they have records to disclose within 10 days, and to release them promptly, but most dragged their feet. Whenever schools stopped responding, I copied school board members and attorneys on my emails, citing the law. By the time I graduated more than a year after filing the records requests, I had received more than 350 complaints, which I used in my \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">recent investigation\u003c/a> with KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To this day, Los Angeles Unified, the largest school district in California, still has not released any records pertaining to teacher misconduct cases that it reported to the state. Instead, the district said it would charge me $8,000 ($100 an hour for 80 hours of work) for it to “investigate approximately 2,500 potentially responsive personnel files.” The First Amendment Coalition, a California nonprofit that advocates for free speech and government transparency, is \u003ca href=\"https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/news/post/fac-sues-l-a-schools-for-concealing-teacher-misconduct-records/\">representing me in a lawsuit\u003c/a> filed in May. We argue that the Los Angeles school district is violating public records laws with its failure to release documents pertaining to alleged educator misconduct. A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson told me in a written statement this week that its policies balance the public’s right to access records with “responsible stewardship of public resources” and the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Districts slow-walking their responses isn’t the only obstacle to getting records from schools. Districts typically notify teachers before releasing complaints to give them the opportunity to block the documents’ release. The former Benicia teacher who was criminally charged with sexually abusing students in 2024 sued to block the release of complaints made against him at two school districts. The First Amendment Coalition represented me in that case, too, and we won. It took nine months to get the records. In another case in which I had requested records, the court granted an injunction preventing release of the teacher’s records, but the legal filings contained the details of the allegations against him, so the nature of the complaint became public anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least four teachers have called or emailed me directly to ask why I’m requesting their disciplinary records. They wanted to share their side of the story, which I was more than happy to hear, and some argued that their cases were not worth my time. One asked me to retract my request. (I did not.) Another sent a 1,700-word email saying that the allegations were only partially true and lamented that he did not have the money to defend himself.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>While I appreciated the complexity of individual cases, I believed that those misconduct complaints might contain important truths. Undeterred by school districts’ recalcitrance, I followed the public record-seekers’ mantra: If you can’t get records from one agency, the answers you’re looking for may exist somewhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Records of state disciplinary hearings are presumed public when teachers object to their dismissals by school districts or appeal the suspension or revocation of their licenses. And those records reside in the Department of General Services, a state agency that houses another agency responsible for convening administrative hearings of public employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This agency proved helpful with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">case of Jason Agan\u003c/a>, a San Francisco Bay Area math teacher who KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> reported on last month. Agan had been fired for sexually harassing high school students but went on to teach at two more schools, even after an independent panel convened by the Office of Administrative Hearings deemed him “unfit to teach.” Because he had asked for an outside hearing after the district moved to fire him, I requested those records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I got them the next day. The documents contained summaries of testimony from students, administrators and Agan himself at his dismissal hearing. Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, admitted to touching students’ shoulders but denied any sexual motivation, stating during his dismissal hearing that he did so to offer them support and encouragement. He maintained his teaching license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting a response from the Department of General Services was like discovering a secret portal to obtaining records quickly and easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I requested five years’ worth of decisions about other teachers by independent panels from this agency, in search of further insights into how the state’s teacher disciplinary system works and where it falls short. I obtained a gold mine of documents in less than a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had learned some important lessons: What seems to be secret isn’t always so. Sometimes you just need to know who to ask, and for what.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\">Share Your Experience\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>***\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon\">ProPublica’s Mollie Simon\u003c/a> contributed research.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Conservative school board president Sonja Shaw, a Trump-aligned Republican known for her role in the high-profile battle over \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069570/california-advocates-fearful-as-supreme-court-weighs-bans-of-trans-student-athletes\">transgender athletes in school sports\u003c/a>, has advanced to the November runoff to serve as California’s next \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/educationnews\">state superintendent\u003c/a> of public instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified School Board, will likely face Richard Barrera, the San Diego school board president, who garnered the largest portion of a splintered Democratic vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel honored and inspired,” Barrera told KQED on Wednesday. “I’m energized, and I think we’re going to carry this coalition that has a positive unifying vision for what public schools can be in our state … to victory in November.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw, who has \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/elections/results/california\">amassed 24.8% of votes\u003c/a> in early reporting on Wednesday, rose to notoriety in 2023 after she ousted the current superintendent, Tony Thurmond, from a school board meeting in the Inland Empire. Thurmond said \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/TonyThurmond/status/1682240216491520000\">on social media\u003c/a> that students had invited him to speak in opposition to a proposed policy that would force schools to inform parents if their child identified as transgender, mirroring failed statewide legislation, before the Chino Valley School Board heckled and forcibly removed him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw and Barrera were among 10 candidates in the race for the job of overseeing the state’s 10,000 public schools as they grapple with funding cuts, higher costs and the challenges of AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw has built her campaign around the culture war issue of transgender rights in schools — particularly opposing transgender girls’ participation on athletic teams that match their gender identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086065\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12086065 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Sonja-Shaw-Getty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Sonja-Shaw-Getty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Sonja-Shaw-Getty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Sonja-Shaw-Getty-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, left, and California state superintendent candidate Sonja Shaw are seen during a news conference and protest against the participation of a transgender athlete in the 106th California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Track & Field Championships outside Veterans Memorial Stadium in Clovis, California, on May 29, 2026. \u003ccite>(Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Your daughters are in locker rooms with boys all across California,” she \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/realSonjaShaw/status/2060535081199174039\">said\u003c/a> at a press conference days before the election at the California Interscholastic Federation’s Track and Field championships, where \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084083/california-quietly-brings-back-controversial-scoring-policy-for-trans-student-athletes\">transgender athlete AB Hernandez\u003c/a> won two state titles. CIF reinstituted a pilot policy launched ahead of the competition that allows an additional girl to compete and medal in any event that includes a transgender athlete.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When are you going to stand up and say no? … Fix it at the ballot box,” Shaw continued, standing alongside Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw told KQED on Wednesday that her victory sends a clear message: “Parents and people all throughout California have had enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Barrera, who’s been endorsed by the California Teachers Association and Thurmond, is likely to pick up most of the votes from a slew of Democratic opponents. He currently sits comfortably ahead of the pack with 18.9% of the votes.[aside label=\"Live 2026 Election Results\" link1='https://www.kqed.org/elections/results/california/governor,Learn about the results of the California Governor Election' hero=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/80/2026/04/Aside-California-Governor-2026-Primary-Election-1200x1200@2x.png]Barrera has been a school board member in San Diego since 2008 and served as board president during San Diego Unified’s rise as one of the\u003ca href=\"https://www.sandiegounified.org/about/newscenter/all_news/2024NAEP\"> top-performing urban districts\u003c/a> in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barrett Snider, an education lobbyist with Capitol Advisors, said he expects the school board president to pick up supporters from educator Wendy Castaneda Leal, Los Angeles Community College District board member Nichelle Henderson and multiple statewide lawmakers, who garnered between 8% and 10% of the vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Shaw] got the most because she was really the only prominent conservative running in that race. And then you had just a large bench of sort of blue candidates,” he told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Snider said that CTA has a long track record of successfully ushering candidates into the state superintendent’s seat. He expects that now that Barrera is presumed to advance to the general election, the union will ramp up opposition to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to move the Department of Education under his control — changing the nature of the superintendent role.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Newsom’s 2026-27 budget, which suggested overhauling California’s education governance system, the state superintendent would mostly serve as an independent advocate for the state’s public education system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barrera called the plan to move the Department of Education under the governor’s office “undemocratic.” The state Senate rejected Newsom’s proposal in their version of the budget, and the Assembly has proposed handling the potential restructuring through different legislation. Newsom terms out this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086202\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12086202 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Richard-Barerra-Getty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Richard-Barerra-Getty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Richard-Barerra-Getty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Richard-Barerra-Getty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Diego Unified Board Member Richard Barrera speaks during a press conference to announce a bill that adds COVID-19 vaccines to California’s list of required inoculations for attending K-12 schools at Arleta High School on Jan. 24, 2022, in Los Angeles, California. \u003ccite>(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Arne Johnson, an advocate with the Bay Area-based transgender rights group Rainbow Family Action, said he wasn’t surprised to see Shaw advance to the general election, but worries that she’ll continue to have a platform for “stunts” and “politically motivated heat” toward transgender children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She’ll get trounced in the general election,” he said. “It’s just more funding and more time for her to cause damage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barrera said he respects that Shaw — as a school board president — brings a local perspective to the race.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I don’t respect is that she chooses to use her platform and influence to divide her community, and to single out groups of students,” he said. “It’s two very different visions of what California public schools can be. And I’m confident that in the general election, Californians are going to side with a positive unifying vision.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw, who has \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/elections/results/california\">amassed 24.8% of votes\u003c/a> in early reporting on Wednesday, rose to notoriety in 2023 after she ousted the current superintendent, Tony Thurmond, from a school board meeting in the Inland Empire. Thurmond said \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/TonyThurmond/status/1682240216491520000\">on social media\u003c/a> that students had invited him to speak in opposition to a proposed policy that would force schools to inform parents if their child identified as transgender, mirroring failed statewide legislation, before the Chino Valley School Board heckled and forcibly removed him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw and Barrera were among 10 candidates in the race for the job of overseeing the state’s 10,000 public schools as they grapple with funding cuts, higher costs and the challenges of AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw has built her campaign around the culture war issue of transgender rights in schools — particularly opposing transgender girls’ participation on athletic teams that match their gender identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086065\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12086065 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Sonja-Shaw-Getty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Sonja-Shaw-Getty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Sonja-Shaw-Getty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Sonja-Shaw-Getty-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, left, and California state superintendent candidate Sonja Shaw are seen during a news conference and protest against the participation of a transgender athlete in the 106th California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Track & Field Championships outside Veterans Memorial Stadium in Clovis, California, on May 29, 2026. \u003ccite>(Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Your daughters are in locker rooms with boys all across California,” she \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/realSonjaShaw/status/2060535081199174039\">said\u003c/a> at a press conference days before the election at the California Interscholastic Federation’s Track and Field championships, where \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084083/california-quietly-brings-back-controversial-scoring-policy-for-trans-student-athletes\">transgender athlete AB Hernandez\u003c/a> won two state titles. CIF reinstituted a pilot policy launched ahead of the competition that allows an additional girl to compete and medal in any event that includes a transgender athlete.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When are you going to stand up and say no? … Fix it at the ballot box,” Shaw continued, standing alongside Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shaw told KQED on Wednesday that her victory sends a clear message: “Parents and people all throughout California have had enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Barrera, who’s been endorsed by the California Teachers Association and Thurmond, is likely to pick up most of the votes from a slew of Democratic opponents. He currently sits comfortably ahead of the pack with 18.9% of the votes.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Barrera has been a school board member in San Diego since 2008 and served as board president during San Diego Unified’s rise as one of the\u003ca href=\"https://www.sandiegounified.org/about/newscenter/all_news/2024NAEP\"> top-performing urban districts\u003c/a> in the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barrett Snider, an education lobbyist with Capitol Advisors, said he expects the school board president to pick up supporters from educator Wendy Castaneda Leal, Los Angeles Community College District board member Nichelle Henderson and multiple statewide lawmakers, who garnered between 8% and 10% of the vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Shaw] got the most because she was really the only prominent conservative running in that race. And then you had just a large bench of sort of blue candidates,” he told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Snider said that CTA has a long track record of successfully ushering candidates into the state superintendent’s seat. He expects that now that Barrera is presumed to advance to the general election, the union will ramp up opposition to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to move the Department of Education under his control — changing the nature of the superintendent role.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Newsom’s 2026-27 budget, which suggested overhauling California’s education governance system, the state superintendent would mostly serve as an independent advocate for the state’s public education system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barrera called the plan to move the Department of Education under the governor’s office “undemocratic.” The state Senate rejected Newsom’s proposal in their version of the budget, and the Assembly has proposed handling the potential restructuring through different legislation. Newsom terms out this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12086202\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12086202 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Richard-Barerra-Getty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Richard-Barerra-Getty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Richard-Barerra-Getty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/Richard-Barerra-Getty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Diego Unified Board Member Richard Barrera speaks during a press conference to announce a bill that adds COVID-19 vaccines to California’s list of required inoculations for attending K-12 schools at Arleta High School on Jan. 24, 2022, in Los Angeles, California. \u003ccite>(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Arne Johnson, an advocate with the Bay Area-based transgender rights group Rainbow Family Action, said he wasn’t surprised to see Shaw advance to the general election, but worries that she’ll continue to have a platform for “stunts” and “politically motivated heat” toward transgender children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She’ll get trounced in the general election,” he said. “It’s just more funding and more time for her to cause damage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barrera said he respects that Shaw — as a school board president — brings a local perspective to the race.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I don’t respect is that she chooses to use her platform and influence to divide her community, and to single out groups of students,” he said. “It’s two very different visions of what California public schools can be. And I’m confident that in the general election, Californians are going to side with a positive unifying vision.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason Agan was a popular teacher at Angelo Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. But for years, students whispered about his behavior. He touched some of them in public in ways that made them uncomfortable, they said, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In late 2019, after multiple written complaints and an administrative hearing, the school district fired Agan. But he never lost his teaching license, and went on to teach at two more schools in California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Holly McDede, who reported this story for KQED and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, explains how a pattern of delays and a lack of transparency has allowed educators to continue teaching after school districts reported them to the state.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1025625890\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084681/california-teacher-previously-fired-for-sexual-harassment-is-no-longer-in-the-classroom-after-new-complaints\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Episode Transcript\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:00] \u003c/em>I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Kylie Tatom was a sophomore at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield, she started getting involved in student leadership. She helped organize things like pep rallies and prom, and through that, she worked with a popular teacher named Jason Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kylie Tatom: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:28] \u003c/em>Everybody knew him. As a teacher, he was good. People would want to get on his good side. He was a very charismatic, like the cool teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:41] \u003c/em>Agan had been on campus for years. He taught AP Calculus and ran student government. Some considered him a mentor, even a second father. But behind the scenes, some students also talked about how they felt uncomfortable around him. They say that Agan touched them in public in ways that felt inappropriate, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders unprompted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kylie Tatom: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:12] \u003c/em>As a kid, you don’t realize it’s bad, because it’s like, oh, this is a teacher, this is somebody that’s like supposed to be older than you that knows everything. Like that’s, like, you’re supposed to look up to\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:26] \u003c/em>Tatom graduated in 2017. The following year, on the heels of the Me Too movement, at least 11 other students and one parent submitted written complaints to school administrators about Agan’s behavior. And in 2019, Agan was fired by the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District. But even though Agan was fired for sexually harassing students, he kept his license to teach in California, and he would go on to teach at two other schools. Kris Corey was the Fairfield-Suisun superintendent at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:11] \u003c/em>I was just so angry about it. What a disservice it was to those girls. I was flabbergasted. I was like, how does this happen?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:23] \u003c/em>According to reporting by KQED and ProPublica, Agan’s case is one of dozens where the state has not revoked the professional licenses of educators, even after school districts determined that they had sexually harassed students or committed other misconduct of a sexual nature. Today, how a Bay Area teacher was fired for sexually harassing students. And how California allowed him to keep teaching anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:59] \u003c/em>Your story starts with this teacher at my old high school, actually, Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. Mr. Jason Agan, and I remember him for being the teacher who led the student government. He was also the only teacher who taught AP calculus on campus, as I remember. But why did he become the focus of your reporting?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:26] \u003c/em>What happened was I had requested records from 300 of the largest school districts in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:32] \u003c/em>Holly McDede is a reporter for KQED and ProPublica’s local reporting network.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:38] \u003c/em>I got these records from Fairfield-Suisun, which got my interest immediately because the records described how the school had taken steps to fire this teacher named Jason Agan who ultimately was fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that got my attention immediately because it is very rare in California to fire teachers because it’s expensive, it’s also risky. So schools will often offer teachers settlements to allow them to resign instead. That way it’s a guarantee that the teacher won’t be back at your school. Whereas if you lose these dismissal cases, the teacher could end up back in the classroom all over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Jason Agan had worked at Rodriguez High since 2001. He was there for almost the entirety of his teaching career. He called himself an “original Mustang” after the school’s mascot. And he was kind of this mathematician figure who you mentioned was in charge of leadership and student government. And so he describes himself as the man behind the curtain who organized things like pep rallies and prom. There were students who saw him as a mentor and a second father, and he was popular. But students had also talked for years about his behavior, making them uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:04] \u003c/em>So, you spent time digging into these records on Jason Agan at Rodriguez High School. What exactly was he accused of?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:14] \u003c/em>The first documented complaint was by a student, a sophomore, who said that he took her cell phone out of her back pocket while she was sitting down. So she reported this to administration at the school, and she also told the school that Agan would massage students’ shoulders during class. So Agan is warned by an administrator at the school to stop touching students, that he’s making students uncomfortable by touching them when he walks around during class. That was the first complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then a father complained to the school when he wears a t-shirt with a pi sign that spells out “pimp”. And so he’s warned by another administrator to be mindful about how he talks to students and jokes. And again, that administrator warns him to also not touch students during class, Agan has said that he would touch students during class but only to support them while they’re doing their math work. The next school year, more students end up filing complaints related to his behavior. There’s one student in particular who says that he had massaged her neck underneath her hair during class, so she complains about that. She asks to transfer out of his class. She ends up having a panic attack soon after that. Ultimately, the school puts him on leave without pay and starts the long process to fire him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:47] \u003c/em>And this is happening in and around 2018, sort of the height of the MeToo movement, right? And many of these complaints coming from young women at the high school, is that right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:02] \u003c/em>Yeah, this is soon after Me Too with the Harvey Weinstein allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:10] \u003c/em>He was my math teacher for my sophomore year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:16] \u003c/em>So I talked to Julia Steed and she was a sophomore, a 15 year old sophomore at the time. Now she’s 23.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:23] \u003c/em>I, to be honest, had already got in like, kind of like word of mouth, like, things from other students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:32] \u003c/em>She had complained about Jason Egan. She said he had touched her head multiple times, and that she also saw him massage students’ shoulders during class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:40] \u003c/em>I immediately was like, oh no, this is not feel good coming from a teacher that I was not close with whatsoever. I was like okay, this was very odd to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:55] \u003c/em>She and her classmates were definitely talking about MeToo and just boundaries and consent and were less afraid to enforce those boundaries and speak up about behavior that was making them uncomfortable. And Julia was one of the students who also filed a written complaint\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:14] \u003c/em>I would have no desire whatsoever to do any of the actions that he did. Like, I don’t know, it’s like the older I get, the more messed up I realize it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:28] \u003c/em>What happens with these formal complaints that these students are filing, Holly? Like, what is the process from there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:36] \u003c/em>The school gathers all these complaints and moves to fire Agan, so they put him on leave without pay. Then that summer, so this is the summer of 2019, there is essentially a hearing. The superintendent of the school has recommended he be fired, but he objects to that. And in California, you can have a dismissal hearing, which means that Agan appoints a teacher, the school district appoints someone, and then there’s an administrative law judge. And so these three people here testimony from students, teachers, administrators, and then they have to make a decision whether to support the district’s effort to terminate him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:18] \u003c/em>And to be clear, this isn’t like a criminal trial. He’s not accused of a crime. And this is like a hearing, not a formal courtroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:27] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. So Agan has not been accused of a crime. This is an administrative process to decide whether he can keep his job or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:36] \u003c/em>But there are people on both testifying on behalf of Agan, presumably positively and also students testifying against him. What are people saying in this hearing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:49] \u003c/em>Yeah, so there were former students who testified on Agan’s behalf, and they all said that Agan would also squeeze, rub, or massage their shoulders, but they said that that behavior did not make them uncomfortable. I did speak to one student who testified on his behalf at the time, and she said that as an adult, she came to see that his behavior at the times was not appropriate, and tells me that now she would have switched to the other side. And then there were students who testified against him. They said that they would avoid raising their hand or speaking up in class, because they didn’t want to get his attention. There was a student who said she would try to sit against the wall, that way he could not massage her shoulders. And students who ultimately said that it was impacting their education and making them not want to take advanced math classes, because as you mentioned, she was the school’s AP calculus teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:57] \u003c/em>What did this panel find and what ultimately were the consequences?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:02] \u003c/em>So the panel found that he had sexually harassed female students. They found he had massaged student shoulders during class. And they also found that he continued this behavior despite warnings to stop. In their judgment, their determination in the records, they ultimately say that he is unfit to teach and that he should be fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:24] \u003c/em>The district did their case, the teacher was there. The students were remarkably brave. They testified with the teacher sitting there. They testified against the teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:41] \u003c/em>Kris Corey was the superintendent of the Fairfield-Suisun School District at the time, and she talked to how rare it is to fire teachers and just how it was surprising really to have this panel of three people come to this unanimous decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:58] \u003c/em>Couldn’t believe it. I mean, we just, like, celebrated. And everyone was like, ‘What? How’d you do that?’ Because it just didn’t happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:12] \u003c/em>Well, I want to zoom out from this one example, Holly, because I guess until you published this story, he was actually still teaching at another school district here in the Bay Area and, in fact, went on to teach at two more schools after Rodriguez, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:30] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. He’s fired December 2019 and by the next school year he already has a job teaching math at a middle school that’s about an hour away in Sacramento called Ephraim Williams College Prep. Even though he was fired he was able to keep his credential which allowed him to continue teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:55] \u003c/em>Coming up, how Jason Agan kept on teaching. If you appreciate these deep dives into local Bay Area news, consider becoming a KQED member. We can’t do this work without your support. So join your Bay Area neighbors and become a KQED member today at kqed.org slash donate. We’ll be right back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[00:13:25] \u003c/em>Welcome back to The Bay. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. In the first part of this episode, we learned about Jason Agan, a former teacher at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. In late 2019, he was fired for sexually harassing students, but he still went on to teach at two more California schools. As reporter Holly McDede explains, despite Agan’s firing from Fairfield-Suisun, the state allowed him to keep his teaching credential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:57] \u003c/em>One of the systems that is in place is this agency called the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which is where any public school teacher who resigns or is fired due to misconduct is reported to this agency. And then that agency decides what to do with their license. So it’s the agency that can take away licenses from teachers. So Fairfield-Suisun, they report Agan to the Commission of Teacher Credentialing. They’re investigating, but they don’t make a determination on what to do with Agan’s case for nearly 500 days later. During that time, when Agan applies for this other job in Sacramento, that school and schools in general, they can’t learn from the state that it’s investigating. I mean, schools can ask the school that the teacher has left and in this case, Agan did put in his job application that he had been fired. He put that he has been accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class and he wrote that while he disagreed with the dismissal, he did not mean to make anyone feel unsafe and he was offering student support and encouragement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:15:16] \u003c/em>Administrators at Ephraim Williams did not respond to questions about how the school vetted Jason Agan. The former principal at Rodriguez High, the school Jason Agan was fired from, did not respond to questions about a reference check. We do know that Agan received stellar letters of recommendation from former colleagues. Meanwhile, in April, 2021, 500 days after the Fairfield-Suisun District sent their investigation to the state, California’s teacher licensing board finally made a decision. Jason Agan’s license would be suspended for just seven days. The reason for his suspension was not made public and ultimately Agan would continue teaching in Sacramento. But the complaints about his behavior didn’t go away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just so that I’m understanding, even if a teacher is fired for sexual harassment at a school, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they lose their credential in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:28] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. So there’s no guarantee that teachers who are fired for sexual harassment will lose their teaching licenses. Instead, cases like that, that are not necessarily criminal conduct, they go before a committee within the state that reviews cases case by case and makes a determination. They make a recommendation, and this is a committee of about seven volunteers and so. They meet in Sacramento three days once a month, they review cases and they decide what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:03] \u003c/em>So in this case, Agan goes on to get hired at another middle school in Sacramento. He has his credentials suspended for seven days, and presumably he’s still allowed to teach. What was his experience like teaching at this middle school?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:20] \u003c/em>Pretty early into the next school year, which is when students are going back to school for in-person learning, because this is all during the pandemic. So that fall, he ends up having another complaint from an eighth grader at his new school. That student had told her doctor during a routine physical that Agan had touched her lower back. She says she asked him to to stop, he went to the front of the classroom, and then he touched her shoulder. And she says in the records that it felt like asking him to stop didn’t matter. So he gets a written warning, is told that he should not be touching students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Agan, in his response to that in the record, he does deny touching her lower back and says that he would have remembered doing so based on his previous experience. Agan continues teaching at that school. The student, she told me that the rest of the school year was so difficult, she ends up leaving middle school before the school-year ends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Agan, he resigns by August, 2022. He ends up teaching at Clifford School in Redwood City. When Agan is hired at Redwood city, he does not put in his application that he had been fired. He said he left Rodriguez High because he was seeking new challenges and opportunities. Um, and I talked to the deputy superintendent at Redwood city, um, school district, Wendy Kelly, and she, she wouldn’t answer any questions related to his hiring, but she told me that the school district, they conduct reference checks and they also check credentialing statuses with the state’s teacher licensing agency. And she told me that schools rely on that agency to determine who’s fit to be in a classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And by the time Redwood City had hired Agan, he has a teaching license. He’s deemed by the state fit to work in any school in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:29] \u003c/em>How many examples like Jason Agan are there, do we know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:33] \u003c/em>It is hard to quantify, but in putting in all these record requests from schools I did find at least 67 examples, including Agan’s case, of educators where the state has not revoked their licenses after a school district determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:02] \u003c/em>It seems like for students and school communities in the meantime, that means we’re sort of left with this less than transparent system. I guess, how would you sum up the problems with this system and your takeaways from your reporting about how this system works?\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:21] \u003c/em>I think there are a few issues that I found through my reporting. I mean, there is this issue of delay. I mean in this case, it took nearly 500 days for the agency to make a determination. And once there was the seven-day suspension, you can’t see the reason behind it. Whereas in at least 12 other states around the country, when teachers, educators are disciplined, you can see the reason for the discipline. And then, I mean, then there is the question of why a seven-day suspension after a school found sexual harassment. So I think that it’s just hard to understand how the agency makes these decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:03] \u003c/em>There should be a higher level of transparency. We should have expectations, we should have guidelines, we should have rules by which we lead our profession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:12] \u003c/em>So I talked to a former commissioner who had left by the time the Agan decision came down, but her name is Alicia DeRollo. For her, the big problem or shortcoming she sees is that she feels like teachers are treated differently than other professions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:29] \u003c/em>We cannot be given a license to have responsibility over children that we could potentially harm. We can’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:40] \u003c/em>For her, it doesn’t make sense and is not good that there isn’t this higher level of transparency. I mean, she thinks that if there’s this level of transparency where you can find out of why a dentist is disciplined, then the people who work in classrooms, you should be able access this basic information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:02] \u003c/em>Transparency would make it clear to teachers what they can’t get away with, would make clear to hiring agencies of what the person has done, and would set some higher standards for what we allow in the teaching profession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:26] \u003c/em>Has Jason Agan commented on this story or for this story at all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:31] \u003c/em>No. So I sent Jason Agan a certified letter with a list of questions. I went outside his apartment and a person at his apartment answered when I rang the buzzer and then hung up. So, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Jason Agan, but in previous statements in the records, he has denied massaging students’ shoulders. He has said that he had no sexual motivation in touching students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:01] \u003c/em>What about anyone from the state credentialing agency? Did anyone comment on how someone like Agan has continued to be able to teach at other schools after what happened at Rodriguez?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:16] \u003c/em>A spokesperson said that the state’s credentialing agency is not in charge of deciding what type of offenses lead to mandatory revocation. So it would need to be lawmakers who would decide, say, for example, that sexual harassment of students should lead to revoking licenses. But the teacher licensing agency isn’t responsible for that. And they have said that they stand ready to implement any changes that the legislature wants to put forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:53] \u003c/em>And as I understand it, Holly, there’s been some additional fallout since your story was published. What has been the impact since you published your story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:04] \u003c/em>The impact was pretty immediate, which I think shows what information and public knowledge can do. So in the hours after the story published, some parents went to Clifford School and pulled their kids out of the school during the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:21] \u003c/em>That’s the school that Agan was teaching at in Redwood City, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:24] \u003c/em>Yes. Parents went to the board meeting the next day. A parent there said he had filed a Title IX complaint against Agan, but he declined to talk to me about the specifics. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools. I talked to another parent who also filed a complaint against Agan. He said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class. Agan has been replaced by a substitute and he’s no longer teaching at Clifford the rest of the school year. He didn’t respond to requests for comment about the new complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:25:01] \u003c/em>What are your takeaways from your reporting on this system and on this specific case?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:25:08] \u003c/em>This was an example worth reporting on because this teacher is not criminally accused of misconduct, but it was pretty clear in talking to students that he had made them uncomfortable over the years and it was impacting their education. There were students I talked to who at the time they tried to ignore it or looked away or didn’t say anything and regretted it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so they rely on. I mean, adults, administrators to do the right thing to protect them, but this case shows that a school can fire a teacher, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t go and teach somewhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students had talked among themselves about his behavior, making them uncomfortable, and some of the students I talked to didn’t necessarily think anything of it at the time, but then when they had left that experience, when they’d gone to college and when they were talking to other people, they started to see that that behavior at the time was not normal. And there were students I talked to who said that’s why they wanted to talk to me now, because they regretted not saying something sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools have these policies in place that you should not touch students and things like that, but there were students I talked to who wish they had called it out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:26:36] \u003c/em>Well Holly, thank you so much for your reporting and for sharing it with us on the show. Appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:26:41] \u003c/em>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED and ProPublica will continue reporting on how California handles cases of alleged teacher misconduct. We need your help to get the full picture, and we want to hear from you. You can share your experience with the state’s disciplinary process online at\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://propublica.org/kqed\"> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">propublica.org/kqed\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003ci> \u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jason Agan was a popular teacher at Angelo Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. But for years, students whispered about his behavior. He touched some of them in public in ways that made them uncomfortable, they said, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In late 2019, after multiple written complaints and an administrative hearing, the school district fired Agan. But he never lost his teaching license, and went on to teach at two more schools in California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Holly McDede, who reported this story for KQED and ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, explains how a pattern of delays and a lack of transparency has allowed educators to continue teaching after school districts reported them to the state.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1025625890\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084681/california-teacher-previously-fired-for-sexual-harassment-is-no-longer-in-the-classroom-after-new-complaints\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints | KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Episode Transcript\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:00] \u003c/em>I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Kylie Tatom was a sophomore at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield, she started getting involved in student leadership. She helped organize things like pep rallies and prom, and through that, she worked with a popular teacher named Jason Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kylie Tatom: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:28] \u003c/em>Everybody knew him. As a teacher, he was good. People would want to get on his good side. He was a very charismatic, like the cool teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:41] \u003c/em>Agan had been on campus for years. He taught AP Calculus and ran student government. Some considered him a mentor, even a second father. But behind the scenes, some students also talked about how they felt uncomfortable around him. They say that Agan touched them in public in ways that felt inappropriate, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders unprompted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kylie Tatom: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:12] \u003c/em>As a kid, you don’t realize it’s bad, because it’s like, oh, this is a teacher, this is somebody that’s like supposed to be older than you that knows everything. Like that’s, like, you’re supposed to look up to\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:26] \u003c/em>Tatom graduated in 2017. The following year, on the heels of the Me Too movement, at least 11 other students and one parent submitted written complaints to school administrators about Agan’s behavior. And in 2019, Agan was fired by the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District. But even though Agan was fired for sexually harassing students, he kept his license to teach in California, and he would go on to teach at two other schools. Kris Corey was the Fairfield-Suisun superintendent at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:11] \u003c/em>I was just so angry about it. What a disservice it was to those girls. I was flabbergasted. I was like, how does this happen?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:23] \u003c/em>According to reporting by KQED and ProPublica, Agan’s case is one of dozens where the state has not revoked the professional licenses of educators, even after school districts determined that they had sexually harassed students or committed other misconduct of a sexual nature. Today, how a Bay Area teacher was fired for sexually harassing students. And how California allowed him to keep teaching anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:59] \u003c/em>Your story starts with this teacher at my old high school, actually, Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. Mr. Jason Agan, and I remember him for being the teacher who led the student government. He was also the only teacher who taught AP calculus on campus, as I remember. But why did he become the focus of your reporting?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:26] \u003c/em>What happened was I had requested records from 300 of the largest school districts in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:32] \u003c/em>Holly McDede is a reporter for KQED and ProPublica’s local reporting network.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:38] \u003c/em>I got these records from Fairfield-Suisun, which got my interest immediately because the records described how the school had taken steps to fire this teacher named Jason Agan who ultimately was fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that got my attention immediately because it is very rare in California to fire teachers because it’s expensive, it’s also risky. So schools will often offer teachers settlements to allow them to resign instead. That way it’s a guarantee that the teacher won’t be back at your school. Whereas if you lose these dismissal cases, the teacher could end up back in the classroom all over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Jason Agan had worked at Rodriguez High since 2001. He was there for almost the entirety of his teaching career. He called himself an “original Mustang” after the school’s mascot. And he was kind of this mathematician figure who you mentioned was in charge of leadership and student government. And so he describes himself as the man behind the curtain who organized things like pep rallies and prom. There were students who saw him as a mentor and a second father, and he was popular. But students had also talked for years about his behavior, making them uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:04] \u003c/em>So, you spent time digging into these records on Jason Agan at Rodriguez High School. What exactly was he accused of?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:14] \u003c/em>The first documented complaint was by a student, a sophomore, who said that he took her cell phone out of her back pocket while she was sitting down. So she reported this to administration at the school, and she also told the school that Agan would massage students’ shoulders during class. So Agan is warned by an administrator at the school to stop touching students, that he’s making students uncomfortable by touching them when he walks around during class. That was the first complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then a father complained to the school when he wears a t-shirt with a pi sign that spells out “pimp”. And so he’s warned by another administrator to be mindful about how he talks to students and jokes. And again, that administrator warns him to also not touch students during class, Agan has said that he would touch students during class but only to support them while they’re doing their math work. The next school year, more students end up filing complaints related to his behavior. There’s one student in particular who says that he had massaged her neck underneath her hair during class, so she complains about that. She asks to transfer out of his class. She ends up having a panic attack soon after that. Ultimately, the school puts him on leave without pay and starts the long process to fire him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:47] \u003c/em>And this is happening in and around 2018, sort of the height of the MeToo movement, right? And many of these complaints coming from young women at the high school, is that right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:02] \u003c/em>Yeah, this is soon after Me Too with the Harvey Weinstein allegations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:10] \u003c/em>He was my math teacher for my sophomore year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:16] \u003c/em>So I talked to Julia Steed and she was a sophomore, a 15 year old sophomore at the time. Now she’s 23.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:23] \u003c/em>I, to be honest, had already got in like, kind of like word of mouth, like, things from other students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:32] \u003c/em>She had complained about Jason Egan. She said he had touched her head multiple times, and that she also saw him massage students’ shoulders during class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:40] \u003c/em>I immediately was like, oh no, this is not feel good coming from a teacher that I was not close with whatsoever. I was like okay, this was very odd to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:55] \u003c/em>She and her classmates were definitely talking about MeToo and just boundaries and consent and were less afraid to enforce those boundaries and speak up about behavior that was making them uncomfortable. And Julia was one of the students who also filed a written complaint\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Julia Steed: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:14] \u003c/em>I would have no desire whatsoever to do any of the actions that he did. Like, I don’t know, it’s like the older I get, the more messed up I realize it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:28] \u003c/em>What happens with these formal complaints that these students are filing, Holly? Like, what is the process from there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:36] \u003c/em>The school gathers all these complaints and moves to fire Agan, so they put him on leave without pay. Then that summer, so this is the summer of 2019, there is essentially a hearing. The superintendent of the school has recommended he be fired, but he objects to that. And in California, you can have a dismissal hearing, which means that Agan appoints a teacher, the school district appoints someone, and then there’s an administrative law judge. And so these three people here testimony from students, teachers, administrators, and then they have to make a decision whether to support the district’s effort to terminate him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:18] \u003c/em>And to be clear, this isn’t like a criminal trial. He’s not accused of a crime. And this is like a hearing, not a formal courtroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:27] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. So Agan has not been accused of a crime. This is an administrative process to decide whether he can keep his job or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:36] \u003c/em>But there are people on both testifying on behalf of Agan, presumably positively and also students testifying against him. What are people saying in this hearing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:49] \u003c/em>Yeah, so there were former students who testified on Agan’s behalf, and they all said that Agan would also squeeze, rub, or massage their shoulders, but they said that that behavior did not make them uncomfortable. I did speak to one student who testified on his behalf at the time, and she said that as an adult, she came to see that his behavior at the times was not appropriate, and tells me that now she would have switched to the other side. And then there were students who testified against him. They said that they would avoid raising their hand or speaking up in class, because they didn’t want to get his attention. There was a student who said she would try to sit against the wall, that way he could not massage her shoulders. And students who ultimately said that it was impacting their education and making them not want to take advanced math classes, because as you mentioned, she was the school’s AP calculus teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:57] \u003c/em>What did this panel find and what ultimately were the consequences?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:02] \u003c/em>So the panel found that he had sexually harassed female students. They found he had massaged student shoulders during class. And they also found that he continued this behavior despite warnings to stop. In their judgment, their determination in the records, they ultimately say that he is unfit to teach and that he should be fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:24] \u003c/em>The district did their case, the teacher was there. The students were remarkably brave. They testified with the teacher sitting there. They testified against the teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:41] \u003c/em>Kris Corey was the superintendent of the Fairfield-Suisun School District at the time, and she talked to how rare it is to fire teachers and just how it was surprising really to have this panel of three people come to this unanimous decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kris Corey: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:58] \u003c/em>Couldn’t believe it. I mean, we just, like, celebrated. And everyone was like, ‘What? How’d you do that?’ Because it just didn’t happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:12] \u003c/em>Well, I want to zoom out from this one example, Holly, because I guess until you published this story, he was actually still teaching at another school district here in the Bay Area and, in fact, went on to teach at two more schools after Rodriguez, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:30] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. He’s fired December 2019 and by the next school year he already has a job teaching math at a middle school that’s about an hour away in Sacramento called Ephraim Williams College Prep. Even though he was fired he was able to keep his credential which allowed him to continue teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:55] \u003c/em>Coming up, how Jason Agan kept on teaching. If you appreciate these deep dives into local Bay Area news, consider becoming a KQED member. We can’t do this work without your support. So join your Bay Area neighbors and become a KQED member today at kqed.org slash donate. We’ll be right back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[00:13:25] \u003c/em>Welcome back to The Bay. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. In the first part of this episode, we learned about Jason Agan, a former teacher at Rodriguez High School in Fairfield. In late 2019, he was fired for sexually harassing students, but he still went on to teach at two more California schools. As reporter Holly McDede explains, despite Agan’s firing from Fairfield-Suisun, the state allowed him to keep his teaching credential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:57] \u003c/em>One of the systems that is in place is this agency called the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which is where any public school teacher who resigns or is fired due to misconduct is reported to this agency. And then that agency decides what to do with their license. So it’s the agency that can take away licenses from teachers. So Fairfield-Suisun, they report Agan to the Commission of Teacher Credentialing. They’re investigating, but they don’t make a determination on what to do with Agan’s case for nearly 500 days later. During that time, when Agan applies for this other job in Sacramento, that school and schools in general, they can’t learn from the state that it’s investigating. I mean, schools can ask the school that the teacher has left and in this case, Agan did put in his job application that he had been fired. He put that he has been accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class and he wrote that while he disagreed with the dismissal, he did not mean to make anyone feel unsafe and he was offering student support and encouragement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:15:16] \u003c/em>Administrators at Ephraim Williams did not respond to questions about how the school vetted Jason Agan. The former principal at Rodriguez High, the school Jason Agan was fired from, did not respond to questions about a reference check. We do know that Agan received stellar letters of recommendation from former colleagues. Meanwhile, in April, 2021, 500 days after the Fairfield-Suisun District sent their investigation to the state, California’s teacher licensing board finally made a decision. Jason Agan’s license would be suspended for just seven days. The reason for his suspension was not made public and ultimately Agan would continue teaching in Sacramento. But the complaints about his behavior didn’t go away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just so that I’m understanding, even if a teacher is fired for sexual harassment at a school, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they lose their credential in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:28] \u003c/em>Yeah, that’s correct. So there’s no guarantee that teachers who are fired for sexual harassment will lose their teaching licenses. Instead, cases like that, that are not necessarily criminal conduct, they go before a committee within the state that reviews cases case by case and makes a determination. They make a recommendation, and this is a committee of about seven volunteers and so. They meet in Sacramento three days once a month, they review cases and they decide what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:03] \u003c/em>So in this case, Agan goes on to get hired at another middle school in Sacramento. He has his credentials suspended for seven days, and presumably he’s still allowed to teach. What was his experience like teaching at this middle school?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:20] \u003c/em>Pretty early into the next school year, which is when students are going back to school for in-person learning, because this is all during the pandemic. So that fall, he ends up having another complaint from an eighth grader at his new school. That student had told her doctor during a routine physical that Agan had touched her lower back. She says she asked him to to stop, he went to the front of the classroom, and then he touched her shoulder. And she says in the records that it felt like asking him to stop didn’t matter. So he gets a written warning, is told that he should not be touching students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Agan, in his response to that in the record, he does deny touching her lower back and says that he would have remembered doing so based on his previous experience. Agan continues teaching at that school. The student, she told me that the rest of the school year was so difficult, she ends up leaving middle school before the school-year ends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Agan, he resigns by August, 2022. He ends up teaching at Clifford School in Redwood City. When Agan is hired at Redwood city, he does not put in his application that he had been fired. He said he left Rodriguez High because he was seeking new challenges and opportunities. Um, and I talked to the deputy superintendent at Redwood city, um, school district, Wendy Kelly, and she, she wouldn’t answer any questions related to his hiring, but she told me that the school district, they conduct reference checks and they also check credentialing statuses with the state’s teacher licensing agency. And she told me that schools rely on that agency to determine who’s fit to be in a classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And by the time Redwood City had hired Agan, he has a teaching license. He’s deemed by the state fit to work in any school in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:29] \u003c/em>How many examples like Jason Agan are there, do we know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:33] \u003c/em>It is hard to quantify, but in putting in all these record requests from schools I did find at least 67 examples, including Agan’s case, of educators where the state has not revoked their licenses after a school district determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:02] \u003c/em>It seems like for students and school communities in the meantime, that means we’re sort of left with this less than transparent system. I guess, how would you sum up the problems with this system and your takeaways from your reporting about how this system works?\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:21] \u003c/em>I think there are a few issues that I found through my reporting. I mean, there is this issue of delay. I mean in this case, it took nearly 500 days for the agency to make a determination. And once there was the seven-day suspension, you can’t see the reason behind it. Whereas in at least 12 other states around the country, when teachers, educators are disciplined, you can see the reason for the discipline. And then, I mean, then there is the question of why a seven-day suspension after a school found sexual harassment. So I think that it’s just hard to understand how the agency makes these decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:03] \u003c/em>There should be a higher level of transparency. We should have expectations, we should have guidelines, we should have rules by which we lead our profession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:12] \u003c/em>So I talked to a former commissioner who had left by the time the Agan decision came down, but her name is Alicia DeRollo. For her, the big problem or shortcoming she sees is that she feels like teachers are treated differently than other professions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:29] \u003c/em>We cannot be given a license to have responsibility over children that we could potentially harm. We can’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:40] \u003c/em>For her, it doesn’t make sense and is not good that there isn’t this higher level of transparency. I mean, she thinks that if there’s this level of transparency where you can find out of why a dentist is disciplined, then the people who work in classrooms, you should be able access this basic information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alicia DeRollo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:02] \u003c/em>Transparency would make it clear to teachers what they can’t get away with, would make clear to hiring agencies of what the person has done, and would set some higher standards for what we allow in the teaching profession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:26] \u003c/em>Has Jason Agan commented on this story or for this story at all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:31] \u003c/em>No. So I sent Jason Agan a certified letter with a list of questions. I went outside his apartment and a person at his apartment answered when I rang the buzzer and then hung up. So, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Jason Agan, but in previous statements in the records, he has denied massaging students’ shoulders. He has said that he had no sexual motivation in touching students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:01] \u003c/em>What about anyone from the state credentialing agency? Did anyone comment on how someone like Agan has continued to be able to teach at other schools after what happened at Rodriguez?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:16] \u003c/em>A spokesperson said that the state’s credentialing agency is not in charge of deciding what type of offenses lead to mandatory revocation. So it would need to be lawmakers who would decide, say, for example, that sexual harassment of students should lead to revoking licenses. But the teacher licensing agency isn’t responsible for that. And they have said that they stand ready to implement any changes that the legislature wants to put forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:53] \u003c/em>And as I understand it, Holly, there’s been some additional fallout since your story was published. What has been the impact since you published your story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:04] \u003c/em>The impact was pretty immediate, which I think shows what information and public knowledge can do. So in the hours after the story published, some parents went to Clifford School and pulled their kids out of the school during the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:21] \u003c/em>That’s the school that Agan was teaching at in Redwood City, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:24] \u003c/em>Yes. Parents went to the board meeting the next day. A parent there said he had filed a Title IX complaint against Agan, but he declined to talk to me about the specifics. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools. I talked to another parent who also filed a complaint against Agan. He said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class. Agan has been replaced by a substitute and he’s no longer teaching at Clifford the rest of the school year. He didn’t respond to requests for comment about the new complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:25:01] \u003c/em>What are your takeaways from your reporting on this system and on this specific case?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:25:08] \u003c/em>This was an example worth reporting on because this teacher is not criminally accused of misconduct, but it was pretty clear in talking to students that he had made them uncomfortable over the years and it was impacting their education. There were students I talked to who at the time they tried to ignore it or looked away or didn’t say anything and regretted it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so they rely on. I mean, adults, administrators to do the right thing to protect them, but this case shows that a school can fire a teacher, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t go and teach somewhere else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students had talked among themselves about his behavior, making them uncomfortable, and some of the students I talked to didn’t necessarily think anything of it at the time, but then when they had left that experience, when they’d gone to college and when they were talking to other people, they started to see that that behavior at the time was not normal. And there were students I talked to who said that’s why they wanted to talk to me now, because they regretted not saying something sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools have these policies in place that you should not touch students and things like that, but there were students I talked to who wish they had called it out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:26:36] \u003c/em>Well Holly, thank you so much for your reporting and for sharing it with us on the show. Appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Holly McDede: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:26:41] \u003c/em>Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED and ProPublica will continue reporting on how California handles cases of alleged teacher misconduct. We need your help to get the full picture, and we want to hear from you. You can share your experience with the state’s disciplinary process online at\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://propublica.org/kqed\"> \u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">propublica.org/kqed\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003ci> \u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Attorneys from a prominent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12077656/how-a-bay-area-attorney-aims-to-hold-us-agents-accountable-for-violence-in-minneapolis\">Bay Area civil rights law firm\u003c/a> said they plan to file a lawsuit on behalf of the 16-year-old who was repeatedly punched in the head by a police officer after an altercation at Fairfield High School last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long-time \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11658788/attorney-john-burris-on-how-to-turn-police-shootings-into-reforms\">police watchdog \u003c/a>John Burris said Monday his firm had filed a government claim against the city of Fairfield, the first step in initiating a lawsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legal action comes after viral video footage showed Fairfield Police Officer Bianca Camacho, who also goes by the name Bianca Brown, repeatedly striking 16-year-old Maurice Williams in the head after he’s been brought to the ground and is covering his face with his hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an officer who should be terminated,” Ben Nisenbaum, another of the attorneys representing Williams, said at the firm’s Oakland headquarters. “If there is a criminal investigation, it should be into her and that she should be charged.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams was arrested amidst a physical altercation involving multiple students on May 20, according to Fairfield Police. Williams’ attorneys said he had been in a verbal argument with another student, and that it “never escalated into a physical altercation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In video footage captured by Williams’ stepmother, Camacho tells Williams’ family that he was arrested for resisting and injuring a staff member at the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12085749\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12085749\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_008-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_008-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_008-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_008-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Fairfield High School entrance sign is seen through foreground vegetation on June 1, 2026, in Fairfield. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She tells the family: “I punched him in the face. Yes, I did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used the necessary force to overcome his resistance to affect my arrest,” Camacho continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fairfield Police released body-worn camera footage last month that shows Williams evading officers’ attempts to restrain him, at one point running into a crowd of other students in an outdoor hallway of the high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams was restrained by a school resource officer, James Lewis, before Camacho approached.[aside postID=news_12084968 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260522-JAILSEARCHSUIT-18-BL-KQED.jpg']In video footage, she appears to throw the boy to the ground before punching him repeatedly in the side of the head, pulling his hair and handcuffing him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Give me your f— hands,” she yells multiple times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Fairfield Police Department said the hits were “distraction strikes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can call a punch a distraction strike. I guess you can call a gunshot fire a warning shot, but this distraction strike struck [Williams] in the head,” Nisenbaum said. “This use of force is the kind of thing that causes people to lose faith in the police that they see around them, and that is a damage especially to the person on whom it’s inflicted, a young man who doesn’t have a criminal history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams, who is a football player, said since the incident, he’s been worried about being recognized or harassed by police.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m barely even able to go outside the house now,” he said at the press conference on Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He has not been back to school, his family said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12085746\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12085746\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_001-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_001-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_001-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_001-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Fairfield Police Department lobby entrance is seen on June 1, 2026, in Fairfield. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of concern about his mental health. There’s a lot of concern about his growth. There’s a lot of concern about his future,” Williams’ uncle, Rhamell Stevenson, said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams’ attorneys said he sustained a concussion and had been suffering from headaches and dizzy spells since the incident.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, a video showing Camacho pulling a teenager from a car in July 2025 compounded excessive force allegations against the officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the video, posted by Bay City News, Myah Hamilton, then 18, is dragged from the vehicle by her hair after a traffic stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Please don’t rip me out. Can you stop, please?” Hamilton said in the video, filmed by someone sitting in the passenger seat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was charged with reckless driving and resisting arrest. It’s not clear why Hamilton was asked to get out of her vehicle, or how many times Camacho asked her to get out of the vehicle prior to using force.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fairfield Police said that Camacho was administratively reassigned following the May 20 incident. The department declined to comment on Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12085748\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12085748\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_004-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_004-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_004-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_004-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The entrance sign for Fairfield High School is seen on June 1, 2026, in Fairfield. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ilana Israel Samuels, Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District’s executive director of communications, said the district does not comment on active legal matters, but “recognizes the concerns and emotions being shared regarding the recent arrest of a student” on campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams’ family said they hope the officer is fired and faces criminal charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope that at the least, that officer is gone, fired, but also that it prompts a conversation, a restorative conversation between Fairfield School District, the police department and the community to attempt to restore some type of cohesion, because our kids deserve that,” Stevenson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/shossaini\">\u003cem>Sara Hossaini\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an officer who should be terminated,” Ben Nisenbaum, another of the attorneys representing Williams, said at the firm’s Oakland headquarters. “If there is a criminal investigation, it should be into her and that she should be charged.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams was arrested amidst a physical altercation involving multiple students on May 20, according to Fairfield Police. Williams’ attorneys said he had been in a verbal argument with another student, and that it “never escalated into a physical altercation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In video footage captured by Williams’ stepmother, Camacho tells Williams’ family that he was arrested for resisting and injuring a staff member at the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12085749\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12085749\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_008-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_008-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_008-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_008-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Fairfield High School entrance sign is seen through foreground vegetation on June 1, 2026, in Fairfield. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She tells the family: “I punched him in the face. Yes, I did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used the necessary force to overcome his resistance to affect my arrest,” Camacho continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fairfield Police released body-worn camera footage last month that shows Williams evading officers’ attempts to restrain him, at one point running into a crowd of other students in an outdoor hallway of the high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams was restrained by a school resource officer, James Lewis, before Camacho approached.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In video footage, she appears to throw the boy to the ground before punching him repeatedly in the side of the head, pulling his hair and handcuffing him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Give me your f— hands,” she yells multiple times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Fairfield Police Department said the hits were “distraction strikes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can call a punch a distraction strike. I guess you can call a gunshot fire a warning shot, but this distraction strike struck [Williams] in the head,” Nisenbaum said. “This use of force is the kind of thing that causes people to lose faith in the police that they see around them, and that is a damage especially to the person on whom it’s inflicted, a young man who doesn’t have a criminal history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams, who is a football player, said since the incident, he’s been worried about being recognized or harassed by police.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m barely even able to go outside the house now,” he said at the press conference on Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He has not been back to school, his family said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12085746\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12085746\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_001-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_001-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_001-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_001-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Fairfield Police Department lobby entrance is seen on June 1, 2026, in Fairfield. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s a lot of concern about his mental health. There’s a lot of concern about his growth. There’s a lot of concern about his future,” Williams’ uncle, Rhamell Stevenson, said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams’ attorneys said he sustained a concussion and had been suffering from headaches and dizzy spells since the incident.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, a video showing Camacho pulling a teenager from a car in July 2025 compounded excessive force allegations against the officer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the video, posted by Bay City News, Myah Hamilton, then 18, is dragged from the vehicle by her hair after a traffic stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Please don’t rip me out. Can you stop, please?” Hamilton said in the video, filmed by someone sitting in the passenger seat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was charged with reckless driving and resisting arrest. It’s not clear why Hamilton was asked to get out of her vehicle, or how many times Camacho asked her to get out of the vehicle prior to using force.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fairfield Police said that Camacho was administratively reassigned following the May 20 incident. The department declined to comment on Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12085748\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12085748\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_004-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_004-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_004-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/060126FAIRFIELD-HIGH-CLAIM_GH_004-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The entrance sign for Fairfield High School is seen on June 1, 2026, in Fairfield. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ilana Israel Samuels, Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District’s executive director of communications, said the district does not comment on active legal matters, but “recognizes the concerns and emotions being shared regarding the recent arrest of a student” on campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams’ family said they hope the officer is fired and faces criminal charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope that at the least, that officer is gone, fired, but also that it prompts a conversation, a restorative conversation between Fairfield School District, the police department and the community to attempt to restore some type of cohesion, because our kids deserve that,” Stevenson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/shossaini\">\u003cem>Sara Hossaini\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>This graduation season has felt different. Commencement speakers across the country are getting booed for promoting AI in their speeches – and the videos \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-s1-5822419/ai-colleges-commencement-booing\">have gone viral\u003c/a>. Recent college graduates were in school when ChatGPT first launched in late 2022, and \u003ca href=\"https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3955\">many are worried\u003c/a> about how AI will affect their future job prospects and society at large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, we hear from three recent graduates in the Bay Area about their thoughts on AI, how it affected their education, and how they feel about their futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"\" title=\"\">\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5359166520&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Episode transcript\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This transcript is computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Erika Cruz Guevara, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. I graduated from college 13 years ago, and I gotta be honest, no disrespect, but I don’t remember who the commencement speaker was or what they talked about. Most graduation speeches have the same themes. Some message about hope. Thanking your friends and family, the importance of following your passion, and perhaps a call to change the world for the better. But this graduation season has felt a little different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gloria Caulfield \u003c/strong>[00:00:38] The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:52] There have been several videos of students booing commencement speakers when they mention AI. These videos have gone viral.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Eric Schmidt \u003c/strong>[00:01:00] Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025. And it was this time, it was the architects of artificial intelligence. Interesting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Scott Borschetta \u003c/strong>[00:01:12] AI is rewriting production as we sit here. I know it, deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool. Hey, like I said. You can hear me now or you can pay me later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:28] Today’s college graduates were in school when ChatGPT was first released in late 2022. They’ve seen it change their classrooms. Today, three recent graduates in the Bay Area tell us how they really feel about AI and about their futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ellena Simentel \u003c/strong>[00:01:55] My name is Ellena Simentel. I graduated with my master’s in kinesiology from San Francisco State.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:02:04] Kinesiology is the study of muscle movement. It’s very interdisciplinary, so there’s kind of a lot of different aspects in the field. So we do like sports psychology. You can go into physical therapy, athletic training, occupational therapy. I wanted to be a physical therapist. I’ve been to a little bit more recently. So I did focus mostly on like muscle physiology classes and that types of things. But now I think I wanna go more into a little bit more of the psychological motivational side, either doing some kind of city planning that has to do with getting people moving, or maybe even working for some type of nonprofit like Girls on the Run or things that get people active.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:02:55] So even in undergrad we take our core class which is like one of the classes that teaches you like how to read and write in the field of kinesiology and that type of thing and midway through the semester I want to say this was like 2023. Our professor had actually changed the entire course of the class to focus on AI because it had like kind of just come out and she was like you And all of us at that point were kind of like, oh, you know, like, it’ll come and go, it is what it is. But what’s funny sitting back and looking at it now, it’s like, I feel like she really changed the class for a reason. I think it helped a lot of us just kind of get a grasp on what is AI, how to use it, the advantages maybe and some of the disadvantages. And so I obviously only took that class once, but I hope that they continue to do that for that class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:04:00] It’s good to have immediate feedback, right? That’s, I think, one of the biggest advantages as a student. You don’t have to wait for your professor. It’s very individualized and you can really use it to fix specific things in your writing, for example, like writing essays. I think it’s a great tool to make you sound professional, help fix your grammar, maybe help you with the formatting. Um, the problem and the drawback is just sometimes it takes over your thinking. You it’s, it’s very easy to just put something in and be like, okay, now write me an essay, but there’s no thought that goes into that. There’s no critical thinking that goes in to that. Um, and at the end of the day, like it’s kind of taking away from the learning itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:04:54] I’m definitely less worried than other fields. I think there’s some careers in kinesiology, like if you wanted to be an athletic trainer or maybe like a personal trainer, there’s definitely a chance that AI could swoop in and take some of your clients. You can ask for a workout routine on ChatGPT so easily. However, The motivational aspect that comes with kinesiology and sports psychology that we learn with our degree I think is more helpful than talking to something online and just kind of having that like one-on-one human support is a lot more personalized. For example, like I worked in the athletic training department for a little bit and you can feel the difference in muscle when like a muscle is tense and you can kind with tell. What it needs, AI is not gonna be hands-on like that. And so having that human interaction in this field specifically is really helpful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:06:00] I will say though that there’s just so much negativity around it and it’s kind of hard to take yourself out of the online discourse. My friend works out in this athletic studio with some of these tech guys and they talk the pros and the cons and like how people are being let go and and you know But at the same time, maybe there’s some jobs that AI should take over. Do people really need to be coding all day every day sitting on a computer? Maybe there’s things that humans shouldn’t be doing, like computer work all day. Maybe we need to go back outside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:06:43] I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there, right? I live in San Francisco currently and I can’t really see myself. Moving away anytime soon. I think there’s just so much to experience and so many people to meet. Global pandemic, like I was in college, I was taking like 20 units a semester. Every semester I was summer classes, winter classes, and I really chased the academic route. I just turned 24 and I have my master’s and I don’t think a lot of people can say that. And so I think now kind of like finding what it is exactly that I want to do with it and kind of just getting more experience in the field is really exciting to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ada He \u003c/strong>[00:07:40] My name is Ada He, and I’m currently a fourth year student at UC San Diego set to graduate on June 14th. My hometown is San Jose in the Bay Area, and I’m currently studying cognitive science with a specialization in machine learning and neural computation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:07:59] So just to boil down to simple terms, it’s basically the study of intelligence, and it’s super duper relevant for machine learning, understanding these computational models of intelligence. The reason that I chose it and specifically the machine learning and neural computation track was because I think in high school I knew that I was curious about technology but I was also curious about more so the neuroscience and psychology side of things. And so I think I was kind of struck by this idea of like what is intelligence, how can we model it computationally and I think at the time even then there were starting to be like these buzzwords around ML and like AI and how this is going to be the next big thing of the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:08:36] And so… Very practical future-oriented parents were like, you, our child, should definitely study something related to technology. And I was like, well, I’m not quite sure, so let me pick this broader major that has to do with technology, but also kind of has to do more with like the philosophy and the psychology and like the ethics of what these systems are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:09:01] I think when I first started in college, basically the only place that I was hearing about machine learning, artificial intelligence as a whole was through theory in my coursework. But I think all of it was very much creative and like human driven. I think where I really started hearing about these AI tools that were in mass production was during my second year of college. So I think in that time, that was when ChatGPT was sort of like released to Apollo can never start using it and it became like the big thing. And suddenly it felt like everyone was talking about chatgbc like, oh hey, it’s pretty smart, it can do all these things. In my third year of college then, like after the summer when we came back to school, then it was taking off and everyone was using it in their classes, everyone’s like asking it questions, and they were using it to code in my programming classes, they were asking it for essay advice, and then I think that was when I started to think like wait, isn’t that an academic integrity violation and then so is AI just being used to like help us cheat now? Started out in this very humanistic direction, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:10:12] I was using AI as a tool to investigate these hypotheses and to see if I could get it to predict the patterns that I could predict. They were supposed to be these helpful tools that would help us diagnose bigger problems that were facing people. I’ve heard of applications of AI to chart patterns of climate change. So in my head, I just thought AI and ML had so much potential to be used for good. With ChatGPT, I know it’s like- There’s so much progress now going on in the area of large language models that I wonder if the other areas of AI and other use cases are being neglected. This seems like all research is funneling into how these large language models can help us replace white collar jobs. And I’m like, when did that become the focus of artificial intelligence and machine learning?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:10:59] I think I’ve been searching for a full-time job since January. As a student who is looking for a white collar job, it’s been very very very distressing to hear all the discourse that AI is meant to replace the work that I’ve spent four years studying. I think I honestly lost track by half to have applied for more than 300 jobs at this point. Just knowing that like the odds of getting a job are so slim even if you do get a callback and then seeing the number of callbacks I’m getting compared to the number applications I put out, that is kind of insane to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I do have summer jobs lined up. I’m currently like a student employee at the UC San Diego library. And I think like I’ve been really fortunate to have that environment because working for the web team there feels very meaningful since the work we do is like all done by hand. We have a very intentional design approach and the goal of all the work that I put out there is to serve the student body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I think everything that I’ve made there has made me like feel good and I don’t like feel as much like moral confusion when I think about continuing that work this summer. But that rule runs until September, so I know that I have wiggle rooms trying to figure things out somewhat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:12:19] Every generation has faced its demons and maybe the world of AI slop these like powerfully generative tools are kind of one of the demons that my generation has to face in the sense that we have to figure out where it fits into our lives and where it fits into workflows without compromising our morals because they might be here to stay. And then we also have to figure out how to deal with them in our daily, day-to-day work, because that’s probably gonna be an inseparable part of it, whether we like it or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Kim \u003c/strong>[00:12:57] My name is Aaron Kim. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a major in political science. I came in through the community college route and I started community college in 2019. So I had a couple of years to see like at least in community college, like what higher education was like before AI, then it dropped. And then I saw everyone kind of like scrambling to react to it. It was really interesting watching the different ways professors would try to handle it. Some of them just had like a no AI policy. Others had like a, you have to use AI policy. My gosh, yeah. I remember really early on, there was a professor that told me that like, or that told the class that don’t use AI. I can tell if you use AI because it’ll take your essay, put it in ChatGPT and ask it if it wrote it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s been a bit of a consensus that’s settled around AI, where professors just kind of understood that it’s here. So they got more specific on how we’re supposed to use it. So they’re like, oh, you can use it as a writing assistant. You can use as to help start your research, but don’t use it a source and don’t make it do all your writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:14:06] But I know some people that are really hardline against it, I kind of agree with them for the most part. Like I think that AI especially, it’s not very sustainable. I feel like it’s sometimes people over-rely on it, which I’ve seen a lot. But I’ve also seen it level the playing field, especially for like ESL speakers. Sometimes I’ll see people who are like in higher education and they’re like not speaking English as a first language I I remember before AI they were excuse my language, but they were basically just shit out of luck. They were gonna be judged the same as like a native English speaker and like sometimes like it just like people were not nice about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:14:48] Yeah, I’m like a first-gen college student, so I I just kind of went to college because I don’t know, I didn’t really know why I was going. I just did it. I’m not one of those people that was like, oh yeah, I’m gonna be a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist. I ended up doing a lot of stuff in the union world and the labor world and like the community organizing world, which is why I think AI has affected me a little less personally, like a little less directly because none of the jobs that I was really looking for are really AI exposed as much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily I’m one of these people, but I do think the implementation of AI in the economy has like, I’ve received a lot of the downwind effects. I think a lot tasks are having AI implemented into it. And because of that, I think there’s just less need for a lot of entry level positions that existed in the past. My friends and I joke about it being a “nepo economy” right now, because there’s just like, nobody’s getting jobs through applications, at least not a lot. It’s just all like, you have to know somebody and that’s how you’re getting jobs. I’m still trying to really figure out what direction I want to go for that. But right now I’m just like trying to find something in social impact, you know, nonprofits or unions, um, which is just because that’s like, you know, where my heart was at during college. And that’s where a lot of my experience was at. But yeah, at this point, I think I just kind of have to try to keep an open mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just don’t really think this sort of like innovation is really helping most people in a way that’s really substantial. Like I feel like, yeah, it’s like making things more convenient for a lot of us in like really minor ways, but I just feel like, like, was this all necessary? But it’s like here and we can’t like press, there’s no undo button for things like this, so I guess I just kind of have to adapt. Luckily, in terms of my personal career trajectory, it still feels pretty peripheral. Because a lot of the organizations I’m interested in working for are concerned with working people-centered kind of policies, I think mass, uncritical, enthusiastic adoption of AI is just something that hopefully a lot them just wouldn’t do. Like how would you feel if you’re like working and your union rep is like a chat GPT, like an iPad on the like a little thing that rolls around and tries to get you to sign union cards, right? Like that’s kind of something that AI can never take away. It’s like, because of so much of organizing job or so much organizing is based on building trust human to human, you know? And that’s just something AI can ever do…I hope!\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>This graduation season has felt different. Commencement speakers across the country are getting booed for promoting AI in their speeches – and the videos \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-s1-5822419/ai-colleges-commencement-booing\">have gone viral\u003c/a>. Recent college graduates were in school when ChatGPT first launched in late 2022, and \u003ca href=\"https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3955\">many are worried\u003c/a> about how AI will affect their future job prospects and society at large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, we hear from three recent graduates in the Bay Area about their thoughts on AI, how it affected their education, and how they feel about their futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"\" title=\"\">\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5359166520&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Episode transcript\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This transcript is computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Alan Montecillo, in for Erika Cruz Guevara, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. I graduated from college 13 years ago, and I gotta be honest, no disrespect, but I don’t remember who the commencement speaker was or what they talked about. Most graduation speeches have the same themes. Some message about hope. Thanking your friends and family, the importance of following your passion, and perhaps a call to change the world for the better. But this graduation season has felt a little different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gloria Caulfield \u003c/strong>[00:00:38] The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:00:52] There have been several videos of students booing commencement speakers when they mention AI. These videos have gone viral.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Eric Schmidt \u003c/strong>[00:01:00] Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025. And it was this time, it was the architects of artificial intelligence. Interesting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Scott Borschetta \u003c/strong>[00:01:12] AI is rewriting production as we sit here. I know it, deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool. Hey, like I said. You can hear me now or you can pay me later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:28] Today’s college graduates were in school when ChatGPT was first released in late 2022. They’ve seen it change their classrooms. Today, three recent graduates in the Bay Area tell us how they really feel about AI and about their futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ellena Simentel \u003c/strong>[00:01:55] My name is Ellena Simentel. I graduated with my master’s in kinesiology from San Francisco State.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:02:04] Kinesiology is the study of muscle movement. It’s very interdisciplinary, so there’s kind of a lot of different aspects in the field. So we do like sports psychology. You can go into physical therapy, athletic training, occupational therapy. I wanted to be a physical therapist. I’ve been to a little bit more recently. So I did focus mostly on like muscle physiology classes and that types of things. But now I think I wanna go more into a little bit more of the psychological motivational side, either doing some kind of city planning that has to do with getting people moving, or maybe even working for some type of nonprofit like Girls on the Run or things that get people active.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:02:55] So even in undergrad we take our core class which is like one of the classes that teaches you like how to read and write in the field of kinesiology and that type of thing and midway through the semester I want to say this was like 2023. Our professor had actually changed the entire course of the class to focus on AI because it had like kind of just come out and she was like you And all of us at that point were kind of like, oh, you know, like, it’ll come and go, it is what it is. But what’s funny sitting back and looking at it now, it’s like, I feel like she really changed the class for a reason. I think it helped a lot of us just kind of get a grasp on what is AI, how to use it, the advantages maybe and some of the disadvantages. And so I obviously only took that class once, but I hope that they continue to do that for that class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:04:00] It’s good to have immediate feedback, right? That’s, I think, one of the biggest advantages as a student. You don’t have to wait for your professor. It’s very individualized and you can really use it to fix specific things in your writing, for example, like writing essays. I think it’s a great tool to make you sound professional, help fix your grammar, maybe help you with the formatting. Um, the problem and the drawback is just sometimes it takes over your thinking. You it’s, it’s very easy to just put something in and be like, okay, now write me an essay, but there’s no thought that goes into that. There’s no critical thinking that goes in to that. Um, and at the end of the day, like it’s kind of taking away from the learning itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:04:54] I’m definitely less worried than other fields. I think there’s some careers in kinesiology, like if you wanted to be an athletic trainer or maybe like a personal trainer, there’s definitely a chance that AI could swoop in and take some of your clients. You can ask for a workout routine on ChatGPT so easily. However, The motivational aspect that comes with kinesiology and sports psychology that we learn with our degree I think is more helpful than talking to something online and just kind of having that like one-on-one human support is a lot more personalized. For example, like I worked in the athletic training department for a little bit and you can feel the difference in muscle when like a muscle is tense and you can kind with tell. What it needs, AI is not gonna be hands-on like that. And so having that human interaction in this field specifically is really helpful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:06:00] I will say though that there’s just so much negativity around it and it’s kind of hard to take yourself out of the online discourse. My friend works out in this athletic studio with some of these tech guys and they talk the pros and the cons and like how people are being let go and and you know But at the same time, maybe there’s some jobs that AI should take over. Do people really need to be coding all day every day sitting on a computer? Maybe there’s things that humans shouldn’t be doing, like computer work all day. Maybe we need to go back outside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:06:43] I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there, right? I live in San Francisco currently and I can’t really see myself. Moving away anytime soon. I think there’s just so much to experience and so many people to meet. Global pandemic, like I was in college, I was taking like 20 units a semester. Every semester I was summer classes, winter classes, and I really chased the academic route. I just turned 24 and I have my master’s and I don’t think a lot of people can say that. And so I think now kind of like finding what it is exactly that I want to do with it and kind of just getting more experience in the field is really exciting to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ada He \u003c/strong>[00:07:40] My name is Ada He, and I’m currently a fourth year student at UC San Diego set to graduate on June 14th. My hometown is San Jose in the Bay Area, and I’m currently studying cognitive science with a specialization in machine learning and neural computation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:07:59] So just to boil down to simple terms, it’s basically the study of intelligence, and it’s super duper relevant for machine learning, understanding these computational models of intelligence. The reason that I chose it and specifically the machine learning and neural computation track was because I think in high school I knew that I was curious about technology but I was also curious about more so the neuroscience and psychology side of things. And so I think I was kind of struck by this idea of like what is intelligence, how can we model it computationally and I think at the time even then there were starting to be like these buzzwords around ML and like AI and how this is going to be the next big thing of the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:08:36] And so… Very practical future-oriented parents were like, you, our child, should definitely study something related to technology. And I was like, well, I’m not quite sure, so let me pick this broader major that has to do with technology, but also kind of has to do more with like the philosophy and the psychology and like the ethics of what these systems are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:09:01] I think when I first started in college, basically the only place that I was hearing about machine learning, artificial intelligence as a whole was through theory in my coursework. But I think all of it was very much creative and like human driven. I think where I really started hearing about these AI tools that were in mass production was during my second year of college. So I think in that time, that was when ChatGPT was sort of like released to Apollo can never start using it and it became like the big thing. And suddenly it felt like everyone was talking about chatgbc like, oh hey, it’s pretty smart, it can do all these things. In my third year of college then, like after the summer when we came back to school, then it was taking off and everyone was using it in their classes, everyone’s like asking it questions, and they were using it to code in my programming classes, they were asking it for essay advice, and then I think that was when I started to think like wait, isn’t that an academic integrity violation and then so is AI just being used to like help us cheat now? Started out in this very humanistic direction, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:10:12] I was using AI as a tool to investigate these hypotheses and to see if I could get it to predict the patterns that I could predict. They were supposed to be these helpful tools that would help us diagnose bigger problems that were facing people. I’ve heard of applications of AI to chart patterns of climate change. So in my head, I just thought AI and ML had so much potential to be used for good. With ChatGPT, I know it’s like- There’s so much progress now going on in the area of large language models that I wonder if the other areas of AI and other use cases are being neglected. This seems like all research is funneling into how these large language models can help us replace white collar jobs. And I’m like, when did that become the focus of artificial intelligence and machine learning?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:10:59] I think I’ve been searching for a full-time job since January. As a student who is looking for a white collar job, it’s been very very very distressing to hear all the discourse that AI is meant to replace the work that I’ve spent four years studying. I think I honestly lost track by half to have applied for more than 300 jobs at this point. Just knowing that like the odds of getting a job are so slim even if you do get a callback and then seeing the number of callbacks I’m getting compared to the number applications I put out, that is kind of insane to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I do have summer jobs lined up. I’m currently like a student employee at the UC San Diego library. And I think like I’ve been really fortunate to have that environment because working for the web team there feels very meaningful since the work we do is like all done by hand. We have a very intentional design approach and the goal of all the work that I put out there is to serve the student body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I think everything that I’ve made there has made me like feel good and I don’t like feel as much like moral confusion when I think about continuing that work this summer. But that rule runs until September, so I know that I have wiggle rooms trying to figure things out somewhat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:12:19] Every generation has faced its demons and maybe the world of AI slop these like powerfully generative tools are kind of one of the demons that my generation has to face in the sense that we have to figure out where it fits into our lives and where it fits into workflows without compromising our morals because they might be here to stay. And then we also have to figure out how to deal with them in our daily, day-to-day work, because that’s probably gonna be an inseparable part of it, whether we like it or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Kim \u003c/strong>[00:12:57] My name is Aaron Kim. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a major in political science. I came in through the community college route and I started community college in 2019. So I had a couple of years to see like at least in community college, like what higher education was like before AI, then it dropped. And then I saw everyone kind of like scrambling to react to it. It was really interesting watching the different ways professors would try to handle it. Some of them just had like a no AI policy. Others had like a, you have to use AI policy. My gosh, yeah. I remember really early on, there was a professor that told me that like, or that told the class that don’t use AI. I can tell if you use AI because it’ll take your essay, put it in ChatGPT and ask it if it wrote it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s been a bit of a consensus that’s settled around AI, where professors just kind of understood that it’s here. So they got more specific on how we’re supposed to use it. So they’re like, oh, you can use it as a writing assistant. You can use as to help start your research, but don’t use it a source and don’t make it do all your writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:14:06] But I know some people that are really hardline against it, I kind of agree with them for the most part. Like I think that AI especially, it’s not very sustainable. I feel like it’s sometimes people over-rely on it, which I’ve seen a lot. But I’ve also seen it level the playing field, especially for like ESL speakers. Sometimes I’ll see people who are like in higher education and they’re like not speaking English as a first language I I remember before AI they were excuse my language, but they were basically just shit out of luck. They were gonna be judged the same as like a native English speaker and like sometimes like it just like people were not nice about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:14:48] Yeah, I’m like a first-gen college student, so I I just kind of went to college because I don’t know, I didn’t really know why I was going. I just did it. I’m not one of those people that was like, oh yeah, I’m gonna be a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist. I ended up doing a lot of stuff in the union world and the labor world and like the community organizing world, which is why I think AI has affected me a little less personally, like a little less directly because none of the jobs that I was really looking for are really AI exposed as much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily I’m one of these people, but I do think the implementation of AI in the economy has like, I’ve received a lot of the downwind effects. I think a lot tasks are having AI implemented into it. And because of that, I think there’s just less need for a lot of entry level positions that existed in the past. My friends and I joke about it being a “nepo economy” right now, because there’s just like, nobody’s getting jobs through applications, at least not a lot. It’s just all like, you have to know somebody and that’s how you’re getting jobs. I’m still trying to really figure out what direction I want to go for that. But right now I’m just like trying to find something in social impact, you know, nonprofits or unions, um, which is just because that’s like, you know, where my heart was at during college. And that’s where a lot of my experience was at. But yeah, at this point, I think I just kind of have to try to keep an open mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just don’t really think this sort of like innovation is really helping most people in a way that’s really substantial. Like I feel like, yeah, it’s like making things more convenient for a lot of us in like really minor ways, but I just feel like, like, was this all necessary? But it’s like here and we can’t like press, there’s no undo button for things like this, so I guess I just kind of have to adapt. Luckily, in terms of my personal career trajectory, it still feels pretty peripheral. Because a lot of the organizations I’m interested in working for are concerned with working people-centered kind of policies, I think mass, uncritical, enthusiastic adoption of AI is just something that hopefully a lot them just wouldn’t do. Like how would you feel if you’re like working and your union rep is like a chat GPT, like an iPad on the like a little thing that rolls around and tries to get you to sign union cards, right? Like that’s kind of something that AI can never take away. It’s like, because of so much of organizing job or so much organizing is based on building trust human to human, you know? And that’s just something AI can ever do…I hope!\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>San Francisco’s county office of education will open a new special education program for students with extensive needs, hoping to cut down on the school district’s reliance on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12044978/sfusd-pays-millions-for-special-ed-this-change-could-save-money-and-help-families\">expensive and inconvenient non-public school partners\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco-unified-school-district\">San Francisco Unified School District\u003c/a> said Wednesday that the school will serve students with autism and intellectual disabilities who require “complex” academic, behavioral and social-emotional support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This new program will help us better serve students with extensive support needs here in San Francisco while strengthening partnerships with families and reducing the need for students to travel long distances for services,” Superintendent Maria Su said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new program through San Francisco’s County Office of Education will be the first option within city limits for the student population, and aims to address a longstanding complaint from families, the teachers’ union and board commissioners that SFUSD spends millions to contract out services it could provide itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The county will open two classrooms to serve 16 students between fifth and 12th grades with extensive needs in October, and double its size the following year, according to Jennifer Jimenez-Payne, SFUSD’s head of special education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program will have an assistant principal, two extensive support needs teachers and a number of specialized staff, including five paraeducators, a speech pathologist and an occupational therapist. Jimenez-Payne said the district began hiring this month and has selected two qualified teachers internally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12052404\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12052404\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-37-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-37-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-37-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-37-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">SFUSD Superintendent Maria Su speaks with students at Yick Wo Alternative Elementary School in San Francisco on Oct. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>According to Su, the new program will reduce the district’s reliance on non-public schools and cut down on how far students have to travel to get educational services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">SFUSD is federally mandated to be responsible for all students’ special education within its geographical region, or SELPA, but the district alone cannot provide all services. Currently, SFUSD pays to send about 160 students with individualized learning plans, or IEPs, that it cannot meet internally to non-public schools.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School board member Jaime Huling said the district pays upwards of $200,000 a year per student enrolled in an NPS program. The district estimated in 2025 that it would spend a total of $42 million on those services and other independent agencies and consultants that provide special education support.[aside postID=news_12082156 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-05-BL_qed.jpg']A large portion of that cost goes toward transportation, since many of the programs require students to travel three to four hours round-trip. Parents say long travel times affect their kids’ attendance and increase isolation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jimenez-Payne said about 80 students fit the qualifications of the new extensive needs program, and 26 are in the pipeline for the 16 spots opening next fall. The county will use a rolling enrollment model, and more students will become eligible as the program expands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Huling asked if the district will have the capacity to meet all of its eligible students’ needs, and potentially expand to offer seats to students in other local school districts who also travel hours away for services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the program, which will be located at the former site of the Edwin and Anita Lee Newcomer School in Chinatown, has space for up to 11 classrooms, which could serve about 88 students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Su said that there could be opportunities to repurpose classrooms or wings of other school sites for more special education classrooms in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have to go slow to go far,” she said during Tuesday night’s board meeting. “This is the first time we’re doing this, so we want to do it right.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>San Francisco’s county office of education will open a new special education program for students with extensive needs, hoping to cut down on the school district’s reliance on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12044978/sfusd-pays-millions-for-special-ed-this-change-could-save-money-and-help-families\">expensive and inconvenient non-public school partners\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco-unified-school-district\">San Francisco Unified School District\u003c/a> said Wednesday that the school will serve students with autism and intellectual disabilities who require “complex” academic, behavioral and social-emotional support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This new program will help us better serve students with extensive support needs here in San Francisco while strengthening partnerships with families and reducing the need for students to travel long distances for services,” Superintendent Maria Su said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new program through San Francisco’s County Office of Education will be the first option within city limits for the student population, and aims to address a longstanding complaint from families, the teachers’ union and board commissioners that SFUSD spends millions to contract out services it could provide itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The county will open two classrooms to serve 16 students between fifth and 12th grades with extensive needs in October, and double its size the following year, according to Jennifer Jimenez-Payne, SFUSD’s head of special education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program will have an assistant principal, two extensive support needs teachers and a number of specialized staff, including five paraeducators, a speech pathologist and an occupational therapist. Jimenez-Payne said the district began hiring this month and has selected two qualified teachers internally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12052404\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12052404\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-37-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-37-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-37-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/241023-SFUSDSuperintendent-37-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">SFUSD Superintendent Maria Su speaks with students at Yick Wo Alternative Elementary School in San Francisco on Oct. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>According to Su, the new program will reduce the district’s reliance on non-public schools and cut down on how far students have to travel to get educational services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">SFUSD is federally mandated to be responsible for all students’ special education within its geographical region, or SELPA, but the district alone cannot provide all services. Currently, SFUSD pays to send about 160 students with individualized learning plans, or IEPs, that it cannot meet internally to non-public schools.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School board member Jaime Huling said the district pays upwards of $200,000 a year per student enrolled in an NPS program. The district estimated in 2025 that it would spend a total of $42 million on those services and other independent agencies and consultants that provide special education support.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A large portion of that cost goes toward transportation, since many of the programs require students to travel three to four hours round-trip. Parents say long travel times affect their kids’ attendance and increase isolation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jimenez-Payne said about 80 students fit the qualifications of the new extensive needs program, and 26 are in the pipeline for the 16 spots opening next fall. The county will use a rolling enrollment model, and more students will become eligible as the program expands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Huling asked if the district will have the capacity to meet all of its eligible students’ needs, and potentially expand to offer seats to students in other local school districts who also travel hours away for services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the program, which will be located at the former site of the Edwin and Anita Lee Newcomer School in Chinatown, has space for up to 11 classrooms, which could serve about 88 students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Su said that there could be opportunities to repurpose classrooms or wings of other school sites for more special education classrooms in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have to go slow to go far,” she said during Tuesday night’s board meeting. “This is the first time we’re doing this, so we want to do it right.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "UCLA Just Launched a Massive AAPI Textbook for the TikTok Generation. And It's Free",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/\">LAist.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A rich trove of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/aapi\">Asian American and Pacific Islander\u003c/a> history lives in academic journals and university library stacks that many students don’t know how to tap into.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new multimedia textbook developed out of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center is trying to change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Called \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundationsandfutures.org/\" data-cms-ai=\"0\">\u003cem>Foundations and Futures\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the online platform combines written chapters, archival documents and artwork with videos and podcast clips, geared at students in high school and up, along with their teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the largest collection of Asian American and Pacific Islander histories in one location — free and open access for anyone with an Internet connection,” said Karen Umemoto, director of the UCLA center and one of the project’s co-editors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12051530\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12051530\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/UCLAAP.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1337\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/UCLAAP.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/UCLAAP-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/UCLAAP-1536x1027.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students walk past Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles, campus in Los Angeles, on Aug. 15, 2024. \u003ccite>(Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The textbook officially launched this month — Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month — after some six years of development with contributions from more than 100 authors and curriculum developers from across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designed with the TikTok generation in mind, the platform is optimized for phones and tablets for easy scrolling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of young people, of course, are really into TikTok videos and Instagram posts,” Umemoto said. “So we thought, ‘Let’s leverage that.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Responding to invisibility\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The project was seeded in 2020 when Umemoto and co-editor and fellow UCLA professor Kelly Fong began drafting proposals chapter by chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, California was moving toward implementing an \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/gavin-newsom-san-francisco-california-graduation-bills-f80ea6c0efc1a37c88b83c9fef63109c\">ethnic studies graduation requirement\u003c/a>. The professors worried AAPI histories could still be sidelined without dedicated resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084634\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1974px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084634\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/36.03.IMG_.017_MNK.PlanningExplorationOfKahoolawe.1979.FrancoSalmoiraghi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1974\" height=\"1313\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/36.03.IMG_.017_MNK.PlanningExplorationOfKahoolawe.1979.FrancoSalmoiraghi.jpg 1974w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/36.03.IMG_.017_MNK.PlanningExplorationOfKahoolawe.1979.FrancoSalmoiraghi-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/36.03.IMG_.017_MNK.PlanningExplorationOfKahoolawe.1979.FrancoSalmoiraghi-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1974px) 100vw, 1974px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grassroots activists prepare to survey Kahoʻolawe in 1976. Thanks in part to Mink’s advocacy, Congress finally voted to return the sacred land back to Hawaiʻi and end military testing there in 1993 after decades of sustained resistance. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hawaiʻi Public Radio/Foundations and Futures)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge in anti-Asian hate incidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s so many people who have no idea who we are, where we come from, how we got here,” Umemoto said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The textbook grew into a $12 million project, supported through a mix of state funding, grants and private donations.[aside postID=news_12083091 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-08-KQED.jpg']A major boost came in 2022, when the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus \u003ca href=\"https://aapilegcaucus.legislature.ca.gov/products/california-aapi-legislative-caucus-committed-teaching-aapi-history\">helped secure a $10 million state allocation.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the textbook does focus on AAPI history in California, like the Filipino farmworker movement and Vietnamese refugee communities in Orange County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But other modules cover Chinese immigrant garment workers in New York and Asian American communities in the South.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Getting into schools\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Umemoto said the textbook is for anyone to use as needed, but a major goal is helping educators incorporate AAPI perspectives into existing courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re so woefully invisible and underrepresented in educational curricula,” she said, noting that there are few teachers to instruct from lived experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/clr/public-school-teachers?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">2% of public school teachers \u003c/a>in the U.S. are AAPI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan is to offer everything from two-day in-person teacher workshops to national webinars in partnership with teachers unions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12083333\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12083333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-07-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-07-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-07-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-07-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Christman of San Francisco Heritage holds a print of landmark Supreme Court case Yick Wo v. Hopkins during a press conference at the parking lot on 3rd and Harrison streets to commemorate the case’s 140th anniversary in San Francisco on Monday, May 11, 2026. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even with the project’s launch, organizers say their work continues with raising funds for teacher training, as well as outreach and operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team is seeking another $5 million for the next three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m a professor not trained in doing startups or ed tech projects, and so I didn’t realize how much it would take just to keep the lights on,” Umemoto said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the while, the team is building the textbook to 50 chapters. It’s currently at 42.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Learning amid polarization\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The project arrives amid charged political debates over how race and identity are taught in schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Umemoto acknowledged that some critics view ethnic studies as divisive, but she said the goal of the textbook is the opposite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to learn about each other’s history so that we can build an inclusive society,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Umemoto, the work is deeply personal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084641\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1980px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084641\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2188531316.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1980\" height=\"1332\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2188531316.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2188531316-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2188531316-1536x1033.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1980px) 100vw, 1980px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 as U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Lady Bird Johnson, Muriel Humphrey, Senator Edward Kennedy Senator Robert Kennedy, and others look on, Liberty Island, New York City, New York. \u003ccite>(Yoichi Okamoto/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said she grew up knowing her parents and grandparents had been forced into camps during World War II, but did not fully understand the broader history behind the incarceration of Japanese Americans until later in life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I grew up thinking everybody was in camp,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, she hopes the textbook helps students better understand both themselves and one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In all my years of teaching, there has not been a student who has left the classroom unchanged,” Umemoto said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we want to deal with the problems of polarization, we need to start in the classroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/\">LAist.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A rich trove of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/aapi\">Asian American and Pacific Islander\u003c/a> history lives in academic journals and university library stacks that many students don’t know how to tap into.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new multimedia textbook developed out of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center is trying to change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Called \u003ca href=\"https://www.foundationsandfutures.org/\" data-cms-ai=\"0\">\u003cem>Foundations and Futures\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the online platform combines written chapters, archival documents and artwork with videos and podcast clips, geared at students in high school and up, along with their teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the largest collection of Asian American and Pacific Islander histories in one location — free and open access for anyone with an Internet connection,” said Karen Umemoto, director of the UCLA center and one of the project’s co-editors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12051530\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12051530\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/UCLAAP.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1337\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/UCLAAP.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/UCLAAP-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/UCLAAP-1536x1027.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students walk past Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles, campus in Los Angeles, on Aug. 15, 2024. \u003ccite>(Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The textbook officially launched this month — Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month — after some six years of development with contributions from more than 100 authors and curriculum developers from across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designed with the TikTok generation in mind, the platform is optimized for phones and tablets for easy scrolling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of young people, of course, are really into TikTok videos and Instagram posts,” Umemoto said. “So we thought, ‘Let’s leverage that.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Responding to invisibility\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The project was seeded in 2020 when Umemoto and co-editor and fellow UCLA professor Kelly Fong began drafting proposals chapter by chapter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, California was moving toward implementing an \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/gavin-newsom-san-francisco-california-graduation-bills-f80ea6c0efc1a37c88b83c9fef63109c\">ethnic studies graduation requirement\u003c/a>. The professors worried AAPI histories could still be sidelined without dedicated resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084634\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1974px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084634\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/36.03.IMG_.017_MNK.PlanningExplorationOfKahoolawe.1979.FrancoSalmoiraghi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1974\" height=\"1313\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/36.03.IMG_.017_MNK.PlanningExplorationOfKahoolawe.1979.FrancoSalmoiraghi.jpg 1974w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/36.03.IMG_.017_MNK.PlanningExplorationOfKahoolawe.1979.FrancoSalmoiraghi-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/36.03.IMG_.017_MNK.PlanningExplorationOfKahoolawe.1979.FrancoSalmoiraghi-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1974px) 100vw, 1974px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grassroots activists prepare to survey Kahoʻolawe in 1976. Thanks in part to Mink’s advocacy, Congress finally voted to return the sacred land back to Hawaiʻi and end military testing there in 1993 after decades of sustained resistance. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hawaiʻi Public Radio/Foundations and Futures)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge in anti-Asian hate incidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s so many people who have no idea who we are, where we come from, how we got here,” Umemoto said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The textbook grew into a $12 million project, supported through a mix of state funding, grants and private donations.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A major boost came in 2022, when the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus \u003ca href=\"https://aapilegcaucus.legislature.ca.gov/products/california-aapi-legislative-caucus-committed-teaching-aapi-history\">helped secure a $10 million state allocation.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the textbook does focus on AAPI history in California, like the Filipino farmworker movement and Vietnamese refugee communities in Orange County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But other modules cover Chinese immigrant garment workers in New York and Asian American communities in the South.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Getting into schools\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Umemoto said the textbook is for anyone to use as needed, but a major goal is helping educators incorporate AAPI perspectives into existing courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re so woefully invisible and underrepresented in educational curricula,” she said, noting that there are few teachers to instruct from lived experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/clr/public-school-teachers?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">2% of public school teachers \u003c/a>in the U.S. are AAPI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan is to offer everything from two-day in-person teacher workshops to national webinars in partnership with teachers unions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12083333\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12083333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-07-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-07-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-07-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-07-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Christman of San Francisco Heritage holds a print of landmark Supreme Court case Yick Wo v. Hopkins during a press conference at the parking lot on 3rd and Harrison streets to commemorate the case’s 140th anniversary in San Francisco on Monday, May 11, 2026. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even with the project’s launch, organizers say their work continues with raising funds for teacher training, as well as outreach and operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team is seeking another $5 million for the next three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m a professor not trained in doing startups or ed tech projects, and so I didn’t realize how much it would take just to keep the lights on,” Umemoto said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the while, the team is building the textbook to 50 chapters. It’s currently at 42.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Learning amid polarization\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The project arrives amid charged political debates over how race and identity are taught in schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Umemoto acknowledged that some critics view ethnic studies as divisive, but she said the goal of the textbook is the opposite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to learn about each other’s history so that we can build an inclusive society,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Umemoto, the work is deeply personal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084641\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1980px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084641\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2188531316.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1980\" height=\"1332\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2188531316.jpg 1980w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2188531316-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2188531316-1536x1033.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1980px) 100vw, 1980px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 as U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Lady Bird Johnson, Muriel Humphrey, Senator Edward Kennedy Senator Robert Kennedy, and others look on, Liberty Island, New York City, New York. \u003ccite>(Yoichi Okamoto/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said she grew up knowing her parents and grandparents had been forced into camps during World War II, but did not fully understand the broader history behind the incarceration of Japanese Americans until later in life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I grew up thinking everybody was in camp,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, she hopes the textbook helps students better understand both themselves and one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In all my years of teaching, there has not been a student who has left the classroom unchanged,” Umemoto said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we want to deal with the problems of polarization, we need to start in the classroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "feels-like-erasure-why-native-american-students-may-be-undercounted-by-90-in-california-schools",
"title": "‘Feels Like Erasure’: Why Native American Students May Be Undercounted by 90% in California Schools",
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"headTitle": "‘Feels Like Erasure’: Why Native American Students May Be Undercounted by 90% in California Schools | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Celestina Castillo filled out the ethnicity forms at her children’s school, she’d always check \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/latino\">Latino\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/native-american\">Native American\u003c/a>. After all, the family is proud of both its heritages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But because of a loophole in the state’s data collection system, checking Latino or Hispanic meant that her children’s Native American identity was not counted at all, and they would not receive the extra services they’re entitled to. When Castillo learned of this, she stopped checking the Latino box altogether.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the arcane way California counts its 5.8 million students, students who say they are Hispanic and Native American get counted as solely Hispanic. Native American students who also identify as another race, such as Black, white or Asian, are counted as “two or more races,” not Native American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem affects all multiracial students, but it’s especially pronounced among Native Americans because the majority are multiracial. It’s resulted in an undercount of Native American students by as much as 90%, advocates said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If someone is Black, or Asian, or white, they’re counted that way,” said Castillo, a director of a college learning center who lives in Los Angeles. “Why does it not count if someone is Native American? That’s not OK. It feels like erasure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>More services, fewer stereotypes\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Last year, California schools said they had 24,822 Native American students, but the actual number may be as high as 156,000, according to an Assembly report on a new measure, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1581\">Assembly Bill 1581\u003c/a>, that seeks to fix the problem. If those students were identified, they’d be entitled to cultural services and other programs that could help them succeed in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A more accurate count could also change the public perception of Native Americans generally, according to Assemblymember James Ramos, the San Bernardino Democrat who authored the bill. Instead of being thought of as rare or even extinct, the public could see that Native Americans are everywhere, Ramos said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll start to see the true picture of Native Americans in California,” said Ramos, a member of the Serrano/Cahuilla tribe. “Native American students should be able to stand up in the classroom and say who they are and be proud of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Changes in the U.S. Census\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There’s a long history of the government marginalizing Native Americans in California, particularly in schools. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, not long after \u003ca href=\"https://nahc.ca.gov/native-americans/california-indian-history/\">90% of California’s Native American population was murdered or killed by disease\u003c/a>, the federal government forced thousands of Native American children in California into \u003ca href=\"https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II24/20220512/114732/HHRG-117-II24-20220512-SD054.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0Rk4M_Oha8vdrx8seDjhPKAEDkJN1t4sIXtVHBvjqQz3uc3CFsKdO3aRE_aem_QNCcqOg4MiwccxyrqjJlfQ\">boarding schools\u003c/a>, where they were forced to speak English and abandon their cultures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Things started to change in 1970 when the U.S. Census Bureau started improving the way it counted Native Americans. Now, Native Americans can write in their tribal affiliation or list themselves as multiracial, and still be counted as Native American. Although Native Americans are \u003ca href=\"https://census.ca.gov/resource/tribal_gov/\">still undercounted\u003c/a> more than any other ethnic group, the census changes resulted in a tenfold increase in the official number of Native Americans in the U.S. In 1960, Native Americans only made up .3% of the population. In 2020, they were almost 3%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084724\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12084724 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/092223-Native-American-Day-MG-CM-17.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/092223-Native-American-Day-MG-CM-17.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/092223-Native-American-Day-MG-CM-17-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/092223-Native-American-Day-MG-CM-17-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Indigenous studies materials at a booth for California State University during the California Native American Day celebration at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Sept. 22, 2023. \u003ccite>(Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The improved census data also revealed that California has more Native Americans than any other state. More than 760,000 people in California identify as Native American, with most living in urban areas like Los Angeles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramos’ bill would allow Native American students to write in the name of their tribe on school forms and identify as Native American plus another race, if applicable. The hope is to give a more comprehensive, more nuanced view of California’s Native American student population, allowing them to get extra services regardless of their biracial identity. So far, the bill has no opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘We’re in the modern world, too’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Shannon Rivers, who works on education issues for the Los Angeles-based California Native Vote Project, said an accurate count of Native Americans is essential to dispel stereotypes and bring public awareness to issues affecting Native American communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the eyes of many Americans, there’s still this image of Native American people from the past, from the 1800s,” said Rivers, who is a member of the Akimel Oʼodham tribe in Arizona. “That history is important, but we’re in the modern world, too. We’re doctors, lawyers, scientists, artists, educators.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12040725\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12040725\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01.jpg\" alt=\"A closeup side image of a man wearing glasses and a suit.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblymember James Ramos, a Democrat from Rancho Cucamonga, speaks during an assembly floor meeting at the state Capitol in Sacramento, on April 18, 2022. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He’s hopeful that Ramos’ bill will improve conditions generally for Native American students in California schools. With more accurate student counts, schools could get more \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed.gov/grants-and-programs/formula-grants/formula-grants-special-populations/indian-education-formula-grants-formula\">federal and state funding\u003c/a> to provide extra services, such as tutoring, to Native American children. More schools could host events and curriculum centered on Native American history and culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Ramos was growing up in San Bernardino, he remembers staring at the ethnicity form at school and not knowing what bubble to fill. His mother was Native American, but she was labeled “white” on her birth certificate. His father, also Native American, was labeled “Hispanic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Were we white or Latino? I didn’t know. We had to accept whatever the school told us we were,” Ramos said. “I’d go home and ask, ‘Are we Caucasian?’ That started a whole other conversation. It was confusing.”[aside postID=news_12083595 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/02122026_LBR3_3SISGDN-86-KQED.jpg']Castillo, a descendant of the Tohono O’odham tribe in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, said that as a child, she thought everyone was Native American. But when she started school, she realized that very few people identified as she did, and worse, it was stigmatized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years later, she saw her own children singled out as oddities. One day, her son, who had long hair, was dressed for a Native American dance, and another child pointed and said, “Look, Mom, it’s an Indian!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My son felt like a dinosaur or a unicorn, like we didn’t exist,” Castillo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By leaving the ethnicity question blank on school forms, Castillo knew it meant her children would not receive extra services they’re entitled to, either at the charter school they attend or through Los Angeles Unified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That angered me,” Castillo said. “I’m hoping that this bill will help make Native students visible to local and state education policy makers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2026/05/native-american-students-california-2/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Celestina Castillo filled out the ethnicity forms at her children’s school, she’d always check \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/latino\">Latino\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/native-american\">Native American\u003c/a>. After all, the family is proud of both its heritages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But because of a loophole in the state’s data collection system, checking Latino or Hispanic meant that her children’s Native American identity was not counted at all, and they would not receive the extra services they’re entitled to. When Castillo learned of this, she stopped checking the Latino box altogether.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the arcane way California counts its 5.8 million students, students who say they are Hispanic and Native American get counted as solely Hispanic. Native American students who also identify as another race, such as Black, white or Asian, are counted as “two or more races,” not Native American.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem affects all multiracial students, but it’s especially pronounced among Native Americans because the majority are multiracial. It’s resulted in an undercount of Native American students by as much as 90%, advocates said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If someone is Black, or Asian, or white, they’re counted that way,” said Castillo, a director of a college learning center who lives in Los Angeles. “Why does it not count if someone is Native American? That’s not OK. It feels like erasure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>More services, fewer stereotypes\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Last year, California schools said they had 24,822 Native American students, but the actual number may be as high as 156,000, according to an Assembly report on a new measure, \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1581\">Assembly Bill 1581\u003c/a>, that seeks to fix the problem. If those students were identified, they’d be entitled to cultural services and other programs that could help them succeed in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A more accurate count could also change the public perception of Native Americans generally, according to Assemblymember James Ramos, the San Bernardino Democrat who authored the bill. Instead of being thought of as rare or even extinct, the public could see that Native Americans are everywhere, Ramos said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll start to see the true picture of Native Americans in California,” said Ramos, a member of the Serrano/Cahuilla tribe. “Native American students should be able to stand up in the classroom and say who they are and be proud of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Changes in the U.S. Census\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There’s a long history of the government marginalizing Native Americans in California, particularly in schools. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, not long after \u003ca href=\"https://nahc.ca.gov/native-americans/california-indian-history/\">90% of California’s Native American population was murdered or killed by disease\u003c/a>, the federal government forced thousands of Native American children in California into \u003ca href=\"https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II24/20220512/114732/HHRG-117-II24-20220512-SD054.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0Rk4M_Oha8vdrx8seDjhPKAEDkJN1t4sIXtVHBvjqQz3uc3CFsKdO3aRE_aem_QNCcqOg4MiwccxyrqjJlfQ\">boarding schools\u003c/a>, where they were forced to speak English and abandon their cultures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Things started to change in 1970 when the U.S. Census Bureau started improving the way it counted Native Americans. Now, Native Americans can write in their tribal affiliation or list themselves as multiracial, and still be counted as Native American. Although Native Americans are \u003ca href=\"https://census.ca.gov/resource/tribal_gov/\">still undercounted\u003c/a> more than any other ethnic group, the census changes resulted in a tenfold increase in the official number of Native Americans in the U.S. In 1960, Native Americans only made up .3% of the population. In 2020, they were almost 3%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084724\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12084724 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/092223-Native-American-Day-MG-CM-17.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/092223-Native-American-Day-MG-CM-17.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/092223-Native-American-Day-MG-CM-17-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/092223-Native-American-Day-MG-CM-17-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Indigenous studies materials at a booth for California State University during the California Native American Day celebration at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Sept. 22, 2023. \u003ccite>(Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The improved census data also revealed that California has more Native Americans than any other state. More than 760,000 people in California identify as Native American, with most living in urban areas like Los Angeles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramos’ bill would allow Native American students to write in the name of their tribe on school forms and identify as Native American plus another race, if applicable. The hope is to give a more comprehensive, more nuanced view of California’s Native American student population, allowing them to get extra services regardless of their biracial identity. So far, the bill has no opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘We’re in the modern world, too’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Shannon Rivers, who works on education issues for the Los Angeles-based California Native Vote Project, said an accurate count of Native Americans is essential to dispel stereotypes and bring public awareness to issues affecting Native American communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the eyes of many Americans, there’s still this image of Native American people from the past, from the 1800s,” said Rivers, who is a member of the Akimel Oʼodham tribe in Arizona. “That history is important, but we’re in the modern world, too. We’re doctors, lawyers, scientists, artists, educators.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12040725\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12040725\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01.jpg\" alt=\"A closeup side image of a man wearing glasses and a suit.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/041822-James-Ramos-RL-CM-01-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblymember James Ramos, a Democrat from Rancho Cucamonga, speaks during an assembly floor meeting at the state Capitol in Sacramento, on April 18, 2022. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He’s hopeful that Ramos’ bill will improve conditions generally for Native American students in California schools. With more accurate student counts, schools could get more \u003ca href=\"https://www.ed.gov/grants-and-programs/formula-grants/formula-grants-special-populations/indian-education-formula-grants-formula\">federal and state funding\u003c/a> to provide extra services, such as tutoring, to Native American children. More schools could host events and curriculum centered on Native American history and culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Ramos was growing up in San Bernardino, he remembers staring at the ethnicity form at school and not knowing what bubble to fill. His mother was Native American, but she was labeled “white” on her birth certificate. His father, also Native American, was labeled “Hispanic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Were we white or Latino? I didn’t know. We had to accept whatever the school told us we were,” Ramos said. “I’d go home and ask, ‘Are we Caucasian?’ That started a whole other conversation. It was confusing.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Castillo, a descendant of the Tohono O’odham tribe in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, said that as a child, she thought everyone was Native American. But when she started school, she realized that very few people identified as she did, and worse, it was stigmatized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years later, she saw her own children singled out as oddities. One day, her son, who had long hair, was dressed for a Native American dance, and another child pointed and said, “Look, Mom, it’s an Indian!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My son felt like a dinosaur or a unicorn, like we didn’t exist,” Castillo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By leaving the ethnicity question blank on school forms, Castillo knew it meant her children would not receive extra services they’re entitled to, either at the charter school they attend or through Los Angeles Unified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That angered me,” Castillo said. “I’m hoping that this bill will help make Native students visible to local and state education policy makers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/education/k-12-education/2026/05/native-american-students-california-2/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with KQED. \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A San Francisco Bay Area school district has replaced a middle school math teacher for the remainder of the academic year following an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">investigation by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>\u003c/a> that showed he had been accused of inappropriately touching students at two previous jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Redwood City School District has received at least two new complaints against Jason Agan, according to the parents who filed the complaints, as well as emails from the district to the parents saying it is investigating both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news outlets found that the state teacher licensing agency allowed Agan to keep his credentials following his 2019 firing from a high school in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District for what district officials characterized as sexual harassment of female students. At least 11 students and one parent at Angelo Rodriguez High School submitted written complaints about Agan’s behavior to school administrators, drawing at least two warnings to stop, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica’s\u003c/em> investigation found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in that district testified during Agan’s dismissal hearing that he made them uncomfortable by massaging their necks or shoulders as well as commenting on female students’ clothing, prompting an independent panel to deem him “unfit to teach,” according to records obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the agency responsible for educators’ licenses, suspended Agan’s teaching license for seven days in 2021, after he had already gotten another job teaching math at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School in the Fortune network of charter schools in Sacramento, an hour away from his first school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The discipline — along with a red flag icon — is noted in the state’s public database of credentialed educators, but no specific reason is given for the sanction. Anyone searching his name in the database would see he still held credentials indicating he was legally fit to teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Ephraim Williams, Agan’s second school, he drew another complaint of unwanted touching, prompting a written warning from Fortune’s human resources consultant. He left the school in June 2022 and started teaching math at Clifford School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade school in Redwood City, that August. That is where he was teaching when the investigation was published.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Weekly, president of the school board in Redwood City, told KQED and ProPublica on Saturday that the board plans to review the district’s hiring process after Clifford parents, in a \u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEQ0ENCKoPfmKBvr096qhLho3DF2DWW02P2DWu_jnr_InRmQ/viewform\">public letter\u003c/a>, called for such a review and for a third-party investigation into whether district officials were aware of prior complaints against Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Parents deserve to know their kids are safe and to know that the district is doing a good job carefully vetting those who will be working closely with their children,” Weekly said in a written statement to the news outlets.[aside postID=news_12082980 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/CA-Teacher-Discipline-Agan-final.jpg']Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker told the Clifford School community on Thursday that the district has enlisted a third-party investigator to review its hiring practices and procedures, according to a letter that the district spokesperson shared with the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deputy superintendent Wendy Kelly previously told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators. She declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or say whether the school district was aware he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clifford principal Kristy Jackson emailed parents in the hours after the story was published to outline the district’s hiring policies and said that while she could not discuss confidential personnel matters, “To date, I have not had any concerns about this employee related to student safety.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, did not respond to requests for comment about the new complaints after he was removed from the school. Nor did he previously respond to questions sent via email and certified mail to his home about students’ accusations and his job history. He has denied any sexual motivation in touching students, stating during his dismissal hearing from the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District that he touched students’ shoulders to offer them support and encouragement, but that he did not massage them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a dozen parents showed up at Clifford the morning after the story published last week to express concern about Agan’s employment to the principal, according to two parents who were there. Just before noon that same day, Jackson and Baker emailed the Clifford School community saying that the district would “soon be welcoming a substitute teacher to support students in Mr. Agan’s classroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Redwood City school district spokesperson said a substitute was brought in to teach Agan’s classes starting May 13, but declined to comment on his employment status. The spokesperson did not answer a question about the new complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents expressed “profound alarm and outrage” and also demanded Agan’s immediate resignation or removal from any position involving contact with students, according to their letter to the Clifford principal, school board, state lawmakers, California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and the teacher licensing agency. More than 170 people signed the letter, according to a parent involved in organizing the petition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082861\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12082861\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg\" alt=\"A school building with a sign in front of it that reads, “Clifford School”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Agan started teaching at Clifford School in 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We recognize the seriousness of these matters and believe that transparency, accountability, and student safety must take precedence over institutional reputation or liability concerns,” the parents wrote. “Children deserve learning environments where they are safe, respected, and protected. Parents and guardians deserve honesty and accountability from the institutions entrusted with their children’s care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brie Hanni, a parent who signed the letter, said she broke down after learning about Agan’s disciplinary history and pulled her seventh grade daughter, who was in Agan’s class, out of school the day KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> published the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hanni said Agan’s case illustrates a systemic gap in transparency, and the state should specify the reasons educators are disciplined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The licensing bodies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make the reasons that disciplinary actions were imposed easily accessible on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think a statewide, if not nationwide, question is: What do you do with these teachers who are ‘unfit to teach’?” Hanni said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thurmond, who is running for governor, told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that any teacher who “abuses or harasses students should never teach again.” Thurmond said that as governor, he would propose legislation to automatically revoke licenses for educators found by schools or independent panels to have committed sexual harassment. A spokesperson for his campaign said the legislation would be retroactive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. health and human services secretary, former state attorney general and a leading candidate for California governor, “believes California should have a system that acts swiftly, prioritizes the protection of students, and gives parents and schools confidence that serious misconduct is being handled appropriately and transparently,” said Jonathan Underland, Becerra’s campaign spokesperson, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Student safety has to come first,” Underland said. “The allegations described in this reporting are deeply disturbing, and no student or family should ever feel unsafe at school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment on Agan’s case and the state’s disciplinary process for educators. Neither did six other gubernatorial candidates seeking to replace him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents Redwood City, shared \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> and KQED’s investigation on social media and \u003ca href=\"https://www.threads.com/@josh.becker.ca/post/DYSD6aJFGDL\">wrote\u003c/a>: “Completely unacceptable. What is going on here? The legislature needs to dig into this which includes me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for Becker said he was not available for comment this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a Redwood City school board meeting last week, Clifford parent Josh Levinson said he had submitted a Title IX complaint against Agan to the district after reading the article and speaking with his seventh grade son. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I’ve heard from my son is that this pattern hasn’t changed,” Levinson said at the board meeting, referencing Agan’s history of misconduct claims. “When someone’s deemed unfit to teach, that should be a massive red flag, not something brushed aside because the database says they’re technically employable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levinson declined to speak about the specifics of his complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another Clifford parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his child’s identity, told the news outlets that he also filed a complaint against Agan after reading the article and speaking with his child. The parent said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his job application to Redwood City that the district shared with KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>, Agan did not disclose that he had been fired from Rodriguez High; instead, he wrote that he left because he “wanted to explore new challenges and opportunities.” He also checked a “Please don’t contact” box under Rodriguez High.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly, the Redwood City deputy superintendent, said in a previous interview that the district contacts prior employers even when candidates instruct them not to. She also said that school districts trust the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to vet teachers, and those whose credentials are valid are considered employable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his earlier application to teach at Ephraim Williams, Agan did acknowledge that he had been fired from Rodriguez High after being “accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class.” He wrote that he disagreed with the dismissal and explained that he would often place his hands on students’ shoulders while helping them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the state’s teacher licensing agency, Anita Fitzhugh, has emphasized that state law limits what information the agency can share. Only after the agency recommends that educators be disciplined can it release its findings, which include a summary of the case, to prospective employers. But that information is released only if a school requests it within five years of when the discipline was recommended. In Agan’s case, that window passed earlier this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Redwood City did not ask for such findings before hiring Agan in 2022, according to logs of requests made during that time that the teacher licensing agency provided to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly previously confirmed that the school had not requested the findings, saying that she discovered only last year that it could do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan is one of at least 67 educators for whom the state has not revoked professional licenses after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of misconduct of a sexual nature, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\">Share Your Experience\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>***\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon\">ProPublica’s Mollie Simon\u003c/a> contributed research.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was produced for \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/local-reporting-network\">ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network\u003c/a> in partnership with KQED. \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches\">Sign up for Dispatches\u003c/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A San Francisco Bay Area school district has replaced a middle school math teacher for the remainder of the academic year following an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082980/california-fired-teacher-sexual-harassment\">investigation by KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>\u003c/a> that showed he had been accused of inappropriately touching students at two previous jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Redwood City School District has received at least two new complaints against Jason Agan, according to the parents who filed the complaints, as well as emails from the district to the parents saying it is investigating both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news outlets found that the state teacher licensing agency allowed Agan to keep his credentials following his 2019 firing from a high school in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District for what district officials characterized as sexual harassment of female students. At least 11 students and one parent at Angelo Rodriguez High School submitted written complaints about Agan’s behavior to school administrators, drawing at least two warnings to stop, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica’s\u003c/em> investigation found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in that district testified during Agan’s dismissal hearing that he made them uncomfortable by massaging their necks or shoulders as well as commenting on female students’ clothing, prompting an independent panel to deem him “unfit to teach,” according to records obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the agency responsible for educators’ licenses, suspended Agan’s teaching license for seven days in 2021, after he had already gotten another job teaching math at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School in the Fortune network of charter schools in Sacramento, an hour away from his first school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The discipline — along with a red flag icon — is noted in the state’s public database of credentialed educators, but no specific reason is given for the sanction. Anyone searching his name in the database would see he still held credentials indicating he was legally fit to teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Ephraim Williams, Agan’s second school, he drew another complaint of unwanted touching, prompting a written warning from Fortune’s human resources consultant. He left the school in June 2022 and started teaching math at Clifford School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade school in Redwood City, that August. That is where he was teaching when the investigation was published.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Weekly, president of the school board in Redwood City, told KQED and ProPublica on Saturday that the board plans to review the district’s hiring process after Clifford parents, in a \u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEQ0ENCKoPfmKBvr096qhLho3DF2DWW02P2DWu_jnr_InRmQ/viewform\">public letter\u003c/a>, called for such a review and for a third-party investigation into whether district officials were aware of prior complaints against Agan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Parents deserve to know their kids are safe and to know that the district is doing a good job carefully vetting those who will be working closely with their children,” Weekly said in a written statement to the news outlets.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker told the Clifford School community on Thursday that the district has enlisted a third-party investigator to review its hiring practices and procedures, according to a letter that the district spokesperson shared with the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deputy superintendent Wendy Kelly previously told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators. She declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or say whether the school district was aware he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clifford principal Kristy Jackson emailed parents in the hours after the story was published to outline the district’s hiring policies and said that while she could not discuss confidential personnel matters, “To date, I have not had any concerns about this employee related to student safety.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, did not respond to requests for comment about the new complaints after he was removed from the school. Nor did he previously respond to questions sent via email and certified mail to his home about students’ accusations and his job history. He has denied any sexual motivation in touching students, stating during his dismissal hearing from the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District that he touched students’ shoulders to offer them support and encouragement, but that he did not massage them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a dozen parents showed up at Clifford the morning after the story published last week to express concern about Agan’s employment to the principal, according to two parents who were there. Just before noon that same day, Jackson and Baker emailed the Clifford School community saying that the district would “soon be welcoming a substitute teacher to support students in Mr. Agan’s classroom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Redwood City school district spokesperson said a substitute was brought in to teach Agan’s classes starting May 13, but declined to comment on his employment status. The spokesperson did not answer a question about the new complaints.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents expressed “profound alarm and outrage” and also demanded Agan’s immediate resignation or removal from any position involving contact with students, according to their letter to the Clifford principal, school board, state lawmakers, California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and the teacher licensing agency. More than 170 people signed the letter, according to a parent involved in organizing the petition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082861\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12082861\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg\" alt=\"A school building with a sign in front of it that reads, “Clifford School”\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260417-ProPublica-CATeacherDiscipline-02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Agan started teaching at Clifford School in 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We recognize the seriousness of these matters and believe that transparency, accountability, and student safety must take precedence over institutional reputation or liability concerns,” the parents wrote. “Children deserve learning environments where they are safe, respected, and protected. Parents and guardians deserve honesty and accountability from the institutions entrusted with their children’s care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brie Hanni, a parent who signed the letter, said she broke down after learning about Agan’s disciplinary history and pulled her seventh grade daughter, who was in Agan’s class, out of school the day KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> published the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hanni said Agan’s case illustrates a systemic gap in transparency, and the state should specify the reasons educators are disciplined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The licensing bodies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make the reasons that disciplinary actions were imposed easily accessible on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think a statewide, if not nationwide, question is: What do you do with these teachers who are ‘unfit to teach’?” Hanni said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thurmond, who is running for governor, told KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> that any teacher who “abuses or harasses students should never teach again.” Thurmond said that as governor, he would propose legislation to automatically revoke licenses for educators found by schools or independent panels to have committed sexual harassment. A spokesperson for his campaign said the legislation would be retroactive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. health and human services secretary, former state attorney general and a leading candidate for California governor, “believes California should have a system that acts swiftly, prioritizes the protection of students, and gives parents and schools confidence that serious misconduct is being handled appropriately and transparently,” said Jonathan Underland, Becerra’s campaign spokesperson, in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Student safety has to come first,” Underland said. “The allegations described in this reporting are deeply disturbing, and no student or family should ever feel unsafe at school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment on Agan’s case and the state’s disciplinary process for educators. Neither did six other gubernatorial candidates seeking to replace him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents Redwood City, shared \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> and KQED’s investigation on social media and \u003ca href=\"https://www.threads.com/@josh.becker.ca/post/DYSD6aJFGDL\">wrote\u003c/a>: “Completely unacceptable. What is going on here? The legislature needs to dig into this which includes me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for Becker said he was not available for comment this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a Redwood City school board meeting last week, Clifford parent Josh Levinson said he had submitted a Title IX complaint against Agan to the district after reading the article and speaking with his seventh grade son. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I’ve heard from my son is that this pattern hasn’t changed,” Levinson said at the board meeting, referencing Agan’s history of misconduct claims. “When someone’s deemed unfit to teach, that should be a massive red flag, not something brushed aside because the database says they’re technically employable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levinson declined to speak about the specifics of his complaint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another Clifford parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his child’s identity, told the news outlets that he also filed a complaint against Agan after reading the article and speaking with his child. The parent said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his job application to Redwood City that the district shared with KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>, Agan did not disclose that he had been fired from Rodriguez High; instead, he wrote that he left because he “wanted to explore new challenges and opportunities.” He also checked a “Please don’t contact” box under Rodriguez High.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly, the Redwood City deputy superintendent, said in a previous interview that the district contacts prior employers even when candidates instruct them not to. She also said that school districts trust the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to vet teachers, and those whose credentials are valid are considered employable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his earlier application to teach at Ephraim Williams, Agan did acknowledge that he had been fired from Rodriguez High after being “accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class.” He wrote that he disagreed with the dismissal and explained that he would often place his hands on students’ shoulders while helping them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the state’s teacher licensing agency, Anita Fitzhugh, has emphasized that state law limits what information the agency can share. Only after the agency recommends that educators be disciplined can it release its findings, which include a summary of the case, to prospective employers. But that information is released only if a school requests it within five years of when the discipline was recommended. In Agan’s case, that window passed earlier this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Redwood City did not ask for such findings before hiring Agan in 2022, according to logs of requests made during that time that the teacher licensing agency provided to KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly previously confirmed that the school had not requested the findings, saying that she discovered only last year that it could do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agan is one of at least 67 educators for whom the state has not revoked professional licenses after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of misconduct of a sexual nature, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Help us report on teacher misconduct in California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em> want to hear from you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can fill out a brief form or contact KQED reporter Holly McDede on Signal at hollymcdede.68 or via email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:hmcdede@kqed.org\">hmcdede@kqed.org\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://airtable.com/app0AkyDo9b8r1mFR/pagLr7CSAR8lvPhQz/form\">Share Your Experience\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>***\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/people/mollie-simon\">ProPublica’s Mollie Simon\u003c/a> contributed research.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://california-newsroom.beehiiv.com/\">The California Newsroom\u003c/a> is a statewide public media collaboration that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED in San Francisco, LAist and KCRW in Los Angeles, KPBS in San Diego and other partner stations across California.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"order": 9
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"order": 15
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
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"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
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"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
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"meta": {
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"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 11
},
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"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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