Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

2 days ago

California schools push early retirements to balance budgets, but students may pay price
www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/california-school-districts-push-early-20173644.php
By Diana Lambert
Feb 18, 2025

San Francisco Unified School District leaders, with the help of state-appointed advisers, are trying to reduce the district’s deficit by $113 million. District officials estimate they will have to cut 535 positions, with about 300 coming from early retirements.
San Francisco Unified School District leaders, with the help of state-appointed advisers, are trying to reduce the district’s deficit by $113 million. District officials estimate they will have to cut 535 positions, with about 300 coming from early retirements.
Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle 2024

California school districts that are at risk of falling off the fiscal cliff are increasingly turning to early retirement incentives as a humane way to balance their budgets, but students could be the ones who lose.
Many California school districts are facing large budget deficits brought on by continuing declining student enrollment and lower cost-of-living increases in state funding, said Michael Fine, chief executive officer of the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. Districts also have expanded their staffing in recent years, using federal COVID-19 funding that has since gone away.
The state’s schools spend about 80% of their funding on staff salaries and benefits, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. This leaves districts to choose between unpopular options such as layoffs, school closures and early retirement incentives if budget cuts are needed.

Early retirements often leave school districts with more inexperienced and underprepared teachers, which research has shown can have a negative impact on student performance, particularly in high-needs schools.
San Diego Unified and San Francisco Unified, among two of the largest districts in the state, are offering this school year to pay older, veteran teachers and staff to retire early. Santa Ana Unified and Paso Robles Joint Unified offered an early retirement incentive to their staff earlier this school year.
“Part of the cost savings that come with a SERP (supplemental early retirement plan) is, because school districts have a step and column salary schedule, that you realize savings by having teachers that are higher on the salary schedule retire,” said Amy Baer, associate superintendent of human resources for San Francisco Unified School District.
“They’re replaced with teachers who are lower on the salary schedule, so it would bring down the number of experienced teachers that you are going to have,” she said.
In hard-to-fill areas, such as special education, math, science and bilingual education, districts sometimes have to hire underprepared teachers who have not completed teacher training to fill vacant jobs.

“We are concerned that the early retirement incentive could exacerbate the existing vacancies for special education we have continued to experience for the last five school years,” said San Diego Education Association President Kyle Weinberg.
The districts are not excluding teachers in hard-to-fill jobs from retirement incentives.
“I think it would be difficult, if challenged legally, that you won’t honor a math credential, but you will honor an English credential (for the incentive),” Fine said.
Deficits mean staff cuts
San Francisco Unified leaders, with the help of state-appointed advisers, are trying to reduce the district’s deficit by $113 million. District officials estimate it will have to cut 535 positions, with about 300 coming from early retirements, according to district officials.
To help meet that goal, San Francisco Unified is offering an early retirement incentive to all staff aged 55 or older, who have more than five years of consecutive service. In return, the district will pay them the equivalent of 60% of their current salary, according to documents from Keenan & Associates, the company administering the plan. The deadline to apply for the supplemental early retirement plan is Feb. 21.
San Francisco Unified officials have indicated layoffs will still be needed to bridge the district’s budget deficit.
San Diego Unified offered an early retirement incentive earlier this school year as part of an effort to eliminate a $112 million projected deficit. The district had 965 employees, including 478 teachers, apply for the incentive — 27% more than expected by the Jan. 15 deadline. The district hasn’t announced how much they expect the retirements will save.
The supplemental early retirement plan was open to employees eligible to retire under the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, aka CalSTRS, or CalPERS, a public pension service for state workers, by June 30. The district is offering staff 70% of their pay, capped at $124,000 — the top step in the teacher salary schedule. The money will be put in an annuity and paid out over five years.
District officials at San Diego Unified also have not ruled out layoffs but expect them to be minimal.
“The higher number of people taking early retirement is another positive step toward our goal of delivering a balanced budget in June,” said Fabi Bagula, San Diego Unified School District interim superintendent, in a statement. “The increased number of retirees provides us an opportunity to work with site administrators to assess the way we have been doing things and reimagine our staffing approach to better serve our students and families.”
Santa Ana Unified offered teachers and other certificated members of the teachers union an early retirement incentive in October, in an effort to reduce a $180 million structural deficit. Although 160 teachers accepted the deal, the district still expects to lay off at least 100 more certificated employees before the end of the year, said Ron Hacker, associate superintendent and chief business official.
The school board recently voted to reopen the window for early retirement applications and to extend it until May, according to LAist.
More underprepared teachers
Schools in San Francisco and San Diego counties made some of the most requests for emergency-style teaching permits and waivers during the 2022-23 school year, according to California Commission on Teacher Credentialing data.
Districts request emergency-style permits to allow teachers who have not completed testing, coursework and student teaching, to work on provisional intern permits, intern credentials and short-term staff permits when they can’t find enough credentialed teachers. Waivers and limited-assignment permits allow credentialed teachers to teach classes on subjects outside their credential.
San Diego County is among the top 10 counties to request intern credentials, short-term staff permits and limited assignment teaching permits in 2022-23, according to the CTC. San Diego Unified serves 114,000 students — just under a quarter of the students in San Diego County.
That year, San Diego Unified had 55 teachers working on intern credentials, 68 on short-term staffing permits, two on provisional intern permits, 98 on limited assignment permits and three on waivers, according to state data.
The district, the second largest in the state, had 5,051 teachers in 2022-23, the most recent year state data is available.
San Francisco Unified, which serves 55,452 students, currently has 59 intern teachers and about 230 teachers on various other emergency-style permits, according to the district.
The district, which serves all but about 1,000 students in San Francisco County, has 3,364 TK-12 teachers and 128 early childhood educators. The county was listed among the top 10 counties to request district intern credentials and waivers during the 2022-23 school year, according to commission data.
Teacher shortage persists
At a Dec. 10 San Francisco Unified school board meeting, parents and community members complained about long-term substitute teachers teaching in classrooms where there is no credentialed teacher.
Parent Cheryl Thornton urged the board not to eliminate 500 positions, saying the district already is struggling with empty positions. “We should prioritize central office positions and look for extra funding,” she said.
Another parent complained that her autistic son, who attends James Lick Middle School, has substitutes instead of a regular teacher. “We need a teacher as soon as possible,” she said.
San Francisco Unified, like most districts, has a shortage of teachers in special education and other high-needs areas. District leaders say they don’t know yet whether losing veteran teachers in these subjects could result in more underprepared teachers working on emergency-style permits.
“It’s really too soon to say what the impact would be next year, but we are committed to making sure that our students do continue to get rigorous and enriching programs in our schools,” said Laura Dudnick, spokesperson for the district.
The San Diego solution
In San Diego Unified, 57 special education teachers are taking the early retirement incentive, San Diego Education Association President Weinberg said. That means more classrooms being taught by long-term substitutes, he said.
Concern from the teachers union resulted in a program that will retrain district teachers to be special education teachers while they work in those positions next school year. In a deal bargained with the union, the district will pay all the costs associated with earning a special education credential, he said.
The union will propose making this program a permanent part of its contract, and is working with unions in other large districts throughout the state to make similar agreements, Weinberg said.
“We are optimistic that this will become the template for how we address the staffing crisis around special education moving forward, and provide a path for educators within our unit who are in more precarious contracts like temporary contracts or who would be potentially laid off or who are visiting (long-term substitute) teachers to be able to get a special education credential and make the commitment to teach in one of these vital special education roles,” Weinberg said.
San Francisco is contracting with Keenan & Associates and San Diego with Pacific Life Insurance company to administer their early retirement programs.
“I have never seen an early retirement that actually saves the money that the vendor tells you it’s going to save,” Fine said.
Despite that, Fine supports the use of early retirement incentives.
“I think we have to treat people with absolute dignity, and layoffs just destroy morale,” Fine said. “And when morale is destroyed, instruction is destroyed. So, when the morale of our teachers in the classroom is low, instruction is not as good as it should be. And you can’t harm kids that way. So, I guess it’s a fine balance.”
Diana Lambert is based in Sacramento and writes about teachers and teaching in California for EdSource, where this story first appeared. Email: dlambert@edsource.org; X: @dianalambert. … See MoreSee Less

California schools push early retirements to balance budgets, but students may pay price

www.sfchronicle.com

School districts that are at risk of falling off the fiscal cliff are increasingly turning to early retirement incentives as a humane way to balance budgets.

Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

4 days ago

clarksvillenow.com/local/books-mentioning-slavery-civil-rights-removed-from-shelves-at-fort-campb… … See MoreSee Less

Books mentioning slavery, civil rights removed from shelves at Fort Campbell schools – ClarksvilleNow.com

clarksvillenow.com

At an elementary school at Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne Division, librarians are hard at work scrubbing the shelves for books that contain references to slavery, the civil rights movement…

Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

4 days ago

www.cedarcityutah.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-with-hb-265-utah-students-will-lose-the-abilit… … See MoreSee Less

Letter to the Editor: With HB 265, Utah students will lose the ability to choose fields of study

www.cedarcityutah.com

HB 265, known as the Higher Education Strategic Reinvestment bill, is currently moving through Utah’s legislature. This bill calls for Utah’s public colleges and universities to “strategically r…

Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

5 days ago

CSU says its ‘AI-powered university’ is good for higher education. But is it?
www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/csu-ai-university-education-20158671.php
By Martha Lincoln, Martha KenneyFeb 13, 2025

The California State University system plans to integrate artificial intelligence technology into training, teaching and learning at Cal State East Bay in Hayward and its 22 other campuses.
Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle 2024
Last week, the California State University system announced a landmark initiative to make it “the nation’s first and largest AI-powered public university system.”
The undertaking — a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership between the university system, the governor’s office and a roster of influential tech companies, including Alphabet, Nvidia and OpenAI — aims to integrate artificial intelligence technology into training, teaching and learning at all 23 CSU campuses.
Public university students are certainly deserving of innovative opportunities in their education. But as professors in the CSU system — and researchers on a National Scientific Foundation grant that includes funds for the study of AI in society— we have misgivings about this initiative.

The details of the AI university are murky. It is not clear how artificial intelligence will be integrated into classrooms, monitored or evaluated. The mission of CSU’s new AI Workforce Acceleration Board is also thinly described: Though the program aims to create “a pipeline of AI-skilled graduates” and provide internship opportunities to CSU students, no specific metrics or benchmarks are stated. The board is composed solely of officers at technology corporations; it does not, thus far, include roles for students or faculty to provide input.
Another unknown is how much the CSU administration will spend on this program. A recent report suggests that the 18-month contract to provide ChatGPT to faculty, staff and students will cost almost $17 million. Yet the system also faces proposed budget cuts of almost $400 million and has laid off faculty and staff on multiple campuses this year. At this moment of crisis in the CSU system, it is important to ask whether investment in AI is more important than investment in people. It is conceivable that AI will replace faculty and staff — including advisers, tutors and counselors who provide critical services to CSU students.
Even in the absence of these details, it is not clear that generative AI tools will benefit CSU students significantly or help faculty serve them more effectively. The abilities of generative artificial intelligence are routinely overstated — a phenomenon that computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor describe as “AI snake oil.” While generative AI can create what one group of authors has dubbed “reliable sounding language,” it is not capable of independently evaluating the truth or ethical content of a claim.
Beyond being overhyped, artificial intelligence applications can also be prone to errors. AI tools predictably “hallucinate”— generating outputs that are untrue and fabricated and even, in some cases, violent or racist. Further, generative AI is widely associated with dishonesty, cheating and fraud. Its model for text generation, dependent on web scraping, is intrinsically disrespectful of intellectual property rights. OpenAI — one of the companies participating in the CSU partnership — was sued by the New York Times over the unauthorized use of news articles as training data. A new report shows that Meta pirated millions of books to train its large language model Llama. (Meta has claimed this was fair use.)
Generative AI is a particularly poor fit for university settings, where we teach students foundational skills like reading, writing and critical thinking. Outsourcing assignments to generative AI is intellectual dishonesty and robs students of the opportunity to learn these skills themselves. The extensive provision of AI tools will result in asking less of CSU students — de-emphasizing authentic learning and preparing them for less demanding, de-skilled roles in the workforce.

We already know that AI has been used in applications that inflict social harm, especially when adopted without regulation. For example, as ProPublica recently reported, AI is implemented in the health insurance industry — where proprietary algorithms have been used to deny subscribers coverage for life-saving medical procedures. (Notably, this practice was recently banned in California.)
There are also myriad privacy concerns surrounding artificial intelligence, as recent reports on the new Chinese AI product DeepSeek suggest. It is not clear how the data that students generate in CSU’s AI university will be used or how their privacy will be protected.
The introduction of AI in higher education is essentially an unregulated experiment. Why should our students be the guinea pigs?

The CSU administration has claimed that using AI will prepare students to join the AI workforce. This could be a positive outcome for some graduates. Yet university education is not just job training. A university education should provide students with the skills they need to confront a complex and rapidly changing world — one in which, given our murky information ecosystem, the truth can be hard to discern. Artificial intelligence products have already shown their capacity to spread misinformation and disinformation, mislead the public and undermine democratic processes. Recent research suggests that the use of generative AI is associated with weaker critical thinking skills.
We see the AI university undertaking, at least in its present form, as antithetical to CSU’s mission — one pillar of which is “to prepare significant numbers of ​educated, responsible people to contribute to California’s schools, economy, culture, and future.” CSU students need to develop the skills of critical thinking, independent thought and respect for difference. Even amid austerity, this requires a well-funded, well-staffed university that invests in people and capitalizes on its existing strengths. For better or for worse, the work of creating educated, responsible people at CSU cannot be automated.
Martha Lincoln is an associate professor of cultural and medical anthropology at San Francisco State University. Martha Kenney is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University. … See MoreSee Less

CSU says its ‘AI-powered university’ is good for higher education. But is it?

www.sfchronicle.com

The integration of AI into higher education is essentially an unregulated experiment. Why should our students be the guinea pigs?

Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

5 days ago

California officials detail Trump funding freeze ‘chaos,’ warn another could cripple state
www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-02-16/california-officials-detail-trump-funding-freeze-chaos-…
President Trump walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday.
President Trump walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
By Kevin Rector
Staff Writer
Feb. 16, 2025 3 AM PT

In court filings, California state and local officials have described “chaos” erupting after the Trump administration initiated a federal funding freeze.
While funding has largely resumed amid ongoing litigation, officials say they fear future freezes, undertaken without careful planning through Congress, will be devastating.
Maricela Ramirez was at an education conference in Washington, D.C., at the end of January when she and other attendees heard the startling news: Federal funding for Head Start programs, which provide early-learning and nutritional support for low-income children nationwide, had been frozen.

Ramirez, chief education officer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, quickly contacted colleagues and realized it was true. They had tried to make a routine withdrawal of millions of dollars in funding the day prior, but it hadn’t arrived overnight as expected.

Ramirez said “stress and panic” quickly began to set in, both in her office and among the conference attendees all around her.

“Our team had to assess whether LACOE would have to shut down its programs and to determine where LACOE could find funding to pay its employees if the system continued to be down,” Ramirez recently wrote in a legal filing. Pauses in federal funding could disrupt mental health services, counseling, health screening and nutritional support for up to 8,000 children, she added.

Ramirez’s account of the fallout and ongoing fear caused by the Trump administration’s sudden decision to halt billions of dollars in federal financial aid last month was one of more than 125 declarations of harm filed as part of a multi-state lawsuit challenging the freeze in U.S. District Court. At least 16 declarations came from California.

Long Beach, CA – March 20: Students and teachers play with slime at Educare Los Angeles at Long Beach, a very high-quality child care center in Long Beach on Wednesday, March 20, 2024 in Long Beach, CA. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
CALIFORNIA

Head Start child-care centers face pay delays after Trump’s federal funding freeze

Together, the declarations paint a picture of alarm and chaos in the hours and days after the White House budget office announced the freeze in a Jan. 27 memo, and of lingering fear and uncertainty as the Trump administration continues to fight for such budget authority in court.

While the administration rescinded the Office of Management and Budget memo two days after it was issued amid substantial public uproar, some funds remained frozen in the days that followed. And in response to the states’ lawsuit, the Trump administration argued that Trump and OMB “plainly have authority to direct agencies to fully implement the President’s agenda.”

U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. ordered Jan. 31 that the freeze be temporarily lifted while the litigation plays out. He further blocked it on Feb. 10, in part on the strength of the declarations — writing that the administration’s “categorical and sweeping freeze” was “likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.”

The Trump administration accused McConnell of “intolerable judicial overreach,” but has backed off an appeal as the litigation continues.

In one declaration, Mary Halterman, an assistant program budget manager at the California Department of Finance, wrote that federal funding “typically comprises about a third” of the state’s budget. In fiscal 2024-25, the state’s $500-billion budget anticipates $168 billion in federal funds, not including funding for the state’s public college and university system.

The largest chunk, some $107.5 billion, is for payments under Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, which provides healthcare to nearly 15 million low-income Californians, or more than a third of the state’s population, Halterman wrote.

That includes about 5 million children — more than half of the kids in the state.

Congress also has allocated California $63 billion under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, and nearly $5 billion under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, “for programs related to public transportation, roads and bridges, water infrastructure, and broadband infrastructure, among others,” Halterman wrote.

The Office of Management and Budget’s funding freeze memo immediately created “confusion and doubt” as to California’s ability to continue providing such services, Halterman wrote. And that uncertainty was “ongoing,” she wrote.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) protests against the policies of President Trump and Elon Musk at the U.S. Capitol.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) protests against the policies of President Trump and Elon Musk at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. (Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
“Without knowing whether and when federal dollars will be disbursed, state agencies may not be able to outlay those funds, causing immediate pause or potential termination of government services in some sectors,” Halterman wrote.

The freeze set off similar alarm bells among state officials overseeing Medi-Cal and other federally funded health programs, especially after they realized Jan. 28 that a $200-million payment hadn’t been received, wrote Lindy Harrington, an assistant state Medicaid director.

The department “managed to continue operations” that day, but “did not have sufficient funds to meet future financial obligations,” she wrote, and she now fears the “budgetary chaos” of a longer disruption — under which “health care services could be drastically curtailed or even cease altogether.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks about mental health crisis before signing off on two major pieces of legislation to transform the state's mental health system and to address the state's worsening homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, on Oct. 12, 2023. Roughly 100 petitions to fast-track people with untreated schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders into housing and medical care under an alternative mental health court program created by Newsom have been submitted in seven California counties as of Dec. 1, 2023. Photo by Damian Dovarganes, AP Photo
CALIFORNIA

Healthcare is Newsom’s biggest unfinished project. Trump complicates the task

California officials overseeing other public health and safety programs raised similar fears after being locked out of funding for a range of environmental and infrastructure projects, including to clean up contaminated industrial sites, monitor air quality in low-income and disadvantaged communities and reduce dangerous and potentially deadly pollution along the busy freight corridor between Los Angeles and the Inland Empire.

Eric Lau, acting deputy director of the division of administrative services at the California State Water Resources Control Board, said his agency since 2021 has received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for projects related to safe drinking water and overflow and stormwater management.

About 8 a.m. on Jan. 28, Lau staff found only 31 of the board’s 45 grants were visible in its federal payment system, and searches for the 14 others produced an alarming message: “ERROR 839: No accounts found matching criteria.”

It took days for some of the accounts to come back online, Lau wrote, warning that longer disruptions could be catastrophic.

“The design, construction, and maintenance of critical water facilities will be stalled, risking continued water contamination, supply disruptions and severe threats to public health and the environment,” he wrote. “Ultimately, Californians’ right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water will be threatened.”

Federal funding also was temporarily blocked for researchers at California State University and University of California campuses, homeowners and contractors retrofitting homes to be more energy efficient, regulators overseeing workplace safety violations and job search assistance, career services, and training programs at dozens of local workforce development centers statewide.

NIH cuts put medical research at risk, scientists say, raising concerns at UC and elsewhere

Both state and local officials warned that any cuts to federal funding that aren’t carefully considered by Congress and articulated in advance — giving localities time to draft new budgets of their own — are deeply unwise and potentially dangerous.

California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond wrote that the state receives $7.9 billion in annual funding from the U.S. Department of Education, which supports 5.8 million students. The temporary freeze on funding last month did not disrupt school programs, in part because the state did not have any major draw on federal funds scheduled.

However, any interference to those funds moving forward would “do immeasurable harm” to educators and students, particularly low-income students and students with disabilities, he wrote.

For the current school year, the state is receiving $1.5 billion in direct funding for special education students, Thurmond wrote. In addition, public schools draw heavily on Medi-Cal — to the tune of millions of dollars per school per year — to provide additional therapies and mental and physical health services, Thurmond wrote.

California schools also receive huge amounts of federal funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act. This fiscal year, California was allocated $2 billion in ESSA funds to “meet the needs of some of its most vulnerable students,” and to ensure that they meet certain proficiency standards, Thurmond wrote. Among other things, it was allocated $120 million for the education of “migratory children,” $232 million to strengthen the quality and effectiveness of school staff, $157 million for English language acquisition and enhancement programs, and $152 million for improving school conditions and technology, Thurmond wrote.

California schools also spend $40 million to $50 million in federal funds per week to feed students through nutrition programs.

Another freeze “could cause layoffs, suspension of services to needy students and disruption of student learning supports,” Thurmond wrote.

State programs completely unrelated to education would also be put at risk, he wrote, given that many education programs are mandatory under state and federal law and the state would be forced to shuffle its resources around to provide them no matter what.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta discusses the California Department of Justice's efforts to protect rights of the state's immigrant communities at a news conference at the San Francisco Public Library's Bernal Heights branch in San Francisco, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
POLITICS

Bonta says Trump is ‘spitting in the face of our democracy’ as federal funds remain frozen

Mason Matthews, chief budget and financial officer in L.A. County Chief Executive Fesia Davenport’s office, shared those wider budget concerns. The county is the most populated in the nation with about 10 million residents and a budget of about $49 billion, with an estimated $5.3 billion in federal funding.

Matthews wrote that the “exact ramifications” of the recent pause on federal funding “remain unknown,” but the risks posed by another freeze are high — threatening “a range of vital commitments to [county] residents including, but not limited to, healthcare, public safety operations, public benefits, workforce development, foster care, child support, housing and emergency management.”

One affected group would be needy families who receive cash assistance, employment services and child care through the state’s CalWORKS program, through which the county receives more than $2 billion in federal funds annually, Matthews wrote. Also at risk would be abused children, he wrote, as the county’s Department of Children and Family Services relies on $604.5 million in federal funding annually to investigate abuse and neglect and provide “supportive and therapeutic services” for such children.

More broadly, because federal funding amounts to about 10% of the county budget, another freeze would cause “significant budget and administrative burdens” for the county and “irreparably harm the day-to-day lives” of all county residents, Matthews wrote. That’s especially true given the budget strain already being felt from the devastating wildfires that incinerated parts of the county last month.

“The withholding of federal funding, coupled with the ambiguity and uncertainty regarding which funds will be withheld and for how long, will cause irreparable harm and jeopardize critical response and recovery efforts,” Matthews wrote. “Though the County will take appropriate actions to respond to the LA County Fires, without reimbursement from federal funding, other County crucial programs may be impacted such as housing options for homeless families and veterans.” … See MoreSee Less

California officials detail Trump funding freeze 'chaos,' warn another could cripple state

www.latimes.com

In the hours and days after the Trump administration’s funding freeze, California leaders saw chaos and confusion. They fear more devastating effects if the courts don’t permanently block such action.

Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

6 days ago

www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/parenting/un-christian-student-nearly-ruined-by-evangelical-education… … See MoreSee Less

'Un-Christian': Student 'nearly ruined' by evangelical education sounds alarm on public school trend

www.msn.com

The religious right is pushing Christianity into schools, and that can have serious repercussions — journalist Josiah Hesse knows firsthand. In a piece at the Guardian published Wednesday, Hesse writ…

Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

7 days ago

www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-high-students-walk-out-class-protest-ice?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_me… … See MoreSee Less

Oakland High students walk out of class to protest ICE

www.ktvu.com

Dozens of Oakland High students on Thursday walked out of school to protest ICE.

Voices Against Privatizing Public Education

1 week ago

CSU says its ‘AI-powered university’ is good for higher education. But is it?
www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/csu-ai-university-education-20158671.php
By Martha Lincoln, Martha Kenney
Feb 13, 2025

California State University system plans to integrate artificial intelligence technology into training, teaching and learning at Cal State East Bay in Hayward and its 22 other campuses.
The California State University system plans to integrate artificial intelligence technology into training, teaching and learning at Cal State East Bay in Hayward and its 22 other campuses.
Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle 2024

Last week, the California State University system announced a landmark initiative to make it “the nation’s first and largest AI-powered public university system.”
The undertaking — a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership between the university system, the governor’s office and a roster of influential tech companies, including Alphabet, Nvidia and OpenAI — aims to integrate artificial intelligence technology into training, teaching and learning at all 23 CSU campuses.
Public university students are certainly deserving of innovative opportunities in their education. But as professors in the CSU system — and researchers on a National Scientific Foundation grant that includes funds for the study of AI in society— we have misgivings about this initiative.

The details of the AI university are murky. It is not clear how artificial intelligence will be integrated into classrooms, monitored or evaluated. The mission of CSU’s new AI Workforce Acceleration Board is also thinly described: Though the program aims to create “a pipeline of AI-skilled graduates” and provide internship opportunities to CSU students, no specific metrics or benchmarks are stated. The board is composed solely of officers at technology corporations; it does not, thus far, include roles for students or faculty to provide input.
Another unknown is how much the CSU administration will spend on this program. A recent report suggests that the 18-month contract to provide ChatGPT to faculty, staff and students will cost almost $17 million. Yet the system also faces proposed budget cuts of almost $400 million and has laid off faculty and staff on multiple campuses this year. At this moment of crisis in the CSU system, it is important to ask whether investment in AI is more important than investment in people. It is conceivable that AI will replace faculty and staff — including advisers, tutors and counselors who provide critical services to CSU students.
Even in the absence of these details, it is not clear that generative AI tools will benefit CSU students significantly or help faculty serve them more effectively. The abilities of generative artificial intelligence are routinely overstated — a phenomenon that computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor describe as “AI snake oil.” While generative AI can create what one group of authors has dubbed “reliable sounding language,” it is not capable of independently evaluating the truth or ethical content of a claim.
Beyond being overhyped, artificial intelligence applications can also be prone to errors. AI tools predictably “hallucinate”— generating outputs that are untrue and fabricated and even, in some cases, violent or racist. Further, generative AI is widely associated with dishonesty, cheating and fraud. Its model for text generation, dependent on web scraping, is intrinsically disrespectful of intellectual property rights. OpenAI — one of the companies participating in the CSU partnership — was sued by the New York Times over the unauthorized use of news articles as training data. A new report shows that Meta pirated millions of books to train its large language model Llama. (Meta has claimed this was fair use.)
Generative AI is a particularly poor fit for university settings, where we teach students foundational skills like reading, writing and critical thinking. Outsourcing assignments to generative AI is intellectual dishonesty and robs students of the opportunity to learn these skills themselves. The extensive provision of AI tools will result in asking less of CSU students — de-emphasizing authentic learning and preparing them for less demanding, de-skilled roles in the workforce.

We already know that AI has been used in applications that inflict social harm, especially when adopted without regulation. For example, as ProPublica recently reported, AI is implemented in the health insurance industry — where proprietary algorithms have been used to deny subscribers coverage for life-saving medical procedures. (Notably, this practice was recently banned in California.)
There are also myriad privacy concerns surrounding artificial intelligence, as recent reports on the new Chinese AI product DeepSeek suggest. It is not clear how the data that students generate in CSU’s AI university will be used or how their privacy will be protected.
The introduction of AI in higher education is essentially an unregulated experiment. Why should our students be the guinea pigs?
Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.
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The CSU administration has claimed that using AI will prepare students to join the AI workforce. This could be a positive outcome for some graduates. Yet university education is not just job training. A university education should provide students with the skills they need to confront a complex and rapidly changing world — one in which, given our murky information ecosystem, the truth can be hard to discern. Artificial intelligence products have already shown their capacity to spread misinformation and disinformation, mislead the public and undermine democratic processes. Recent research suggests that the use of generative AI is associated with weaker critical thinking skills.
We see the AI university undertaking, at least in its present form, as antithetical to CSU’s mission — one pillar of which is “to prepare significant numbers of ​educated, responsible people to contribute to California’s schools, economy, culture, and future.” CSU students need to develop the skills of critical thinking, independent thought and respect for difference. Even amid austerity, this requires a well-funded, well-staffed university that invests in people and capitalizes on its existing strengths. For better or for worse, the work of creating educated, responsible people at CSU cannot be automated.
Martha Lincoln is an associate professor of cultural and medical anthropology at San Francisco State University. Martha Kenney is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University. … See MoreSee Less

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