The Brief

Outside her home in Riverside County, near the north shore of the Salton Sea, Sara Renteria is struggling to breathe. She has to speak in short sentences, and pauses often to take a breath.

When she was diagnosed with asthma as an adult about five years ago, Renteria said her doctor gave her a choice: Leave her home in the Coachella Valley or take an array of medications to treat her condition. It was the air, he told her, that worsened her asthma.

Although by now Renteria is no stranger to this desert region’s poor air quality, she has noticed this year that dust storms kicking up clouds of particles have been increasing. She points to the horizon — it’s often so hazy that she can’t clearly see the desert mountains nearby.

Some the nation's unhealthiest air

People in the Coachella Valley, especially in Renteria’s low-income, Mexican American community, breathe some of the nation’s unhealthiest concentrations of a pollutant known as PM10 — particles of dust small enough to inhale. The particles exceed federal health limits, mostly when they are stirred up on windy days, and come from a variety of sources, including unpaved roads, construction sites, fallow farm fields and the dried-up Salton Sea.

Renteria’s impression that the pollution has been severe in her community recently is backed up by the data: So far this year, 24 health warnings for windblown dust pollution have been issued in the region, each lasting several days. The latest was this week, along with odor and wildfire smoke warnings that added to the Coachella Valley’s pollution woes.

Unhealthy peak levels of PM10 around Renteria’s community have been recorded on five days so far this year, based on preliminary South Coast Air Quality Management District data. Last year, five days exceeded the health standard and 10 days in 2022; in the decade before that, violations were rare.

During the past two years, some Coachella Valley residents breathed maximum concentrations — usually recorded on high-wind days — two to three times higher than the amount deemed safe. Those are often the days when people, especially those with asthma or allergies, feel sick.

Famous for two music festivals — Coachella and Stagecoach — the region draws hundreds of thousands of people each spring, when winds often stir up dust. Festival-goers and workers breathed high levels of particle pollution for several hours on the two days before the Stagecoach festival, and on its first day, April 26.

Local leaders and residents say more dust is covering cars and driveways, and even surfaces inside their homes. A brown-gray haze lingers after high winds — so bad that it can cause car accidents. Hotels, restaurants and other businesses have expressed concerns that the dust is driving away tourists and raised their cleanup costs.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the air quality has been worse than I’ve certainly ever experienced it in my 28 yrs in the Coachella Valley,” said Tom Kirk, executive director of the Coachella Valley Association of Governments, which represents the area’s cities and tribes.

Officials say the bad air quality isn't “out of the ordinary”

But South Coast air district officials say the data doesn’t indicate there’s anything “out of the ordinary” this year.

“We think dust levels are within the typical year-to-year variation we’d expect to see,” said Scott Epstein, the agency’s planning and rules manager who oversees air quality assessment. “It’s very unsatisfying for us because we want to confirm what the community is saying. But the science says things are within the realm of what we’ve seen in the past.”

But South Coast air district officials say the data doesn’t indicate there’s anything “out of the ordinary” this year.

“We think dust levels are within the typical year-to-year variation we’d expect to see,” said Scott Epstein, the agency’s planning and rules manager who oversees air quality assessment. “It’s very unsatisfying for us because we want to confirm what the community is saying. But the science says things are within the realm of what we’ve seen in the past.”

Desert dust is usually coarse and packed into the ground. But when storm Hilary hit the area last August, the torrent of rain disturbed the dust and brought mud from mountains that turned into a fine, loose silt that raised PM10 levels.

But Epstein said much of the dust that people are now seeing isn’t actually PM10 — it’s larger particles that do not pose a major health threat because they cannot be inhaled.

What people living there are experiencing

Some local leaders and residents disagree, based on the physical symptoms they feel and the fine dust they see.

“Despite assertions to the contrary, air quality has not shown significant improvement,” state Assembly members Greg Wallis and Eduardo Garcia wrote in a letter to the air district. “The spring season, characterized by windy conditions, has exacerbated the issue by stirring up dust and clay deposits left behind in the wake of Tropical Storm Hilary.”

Air pollution, particularly from dust-blown particles, has been a problem in the Coachella Valley for decades. The region was declared a federal PM10 “serious nonattainment” area back in 1993 — making it one of the nation’s worst areas for the pollutant.

Since then, air quality and local officials have been struggling to figure out how to reduce the pollution, and residents have long pushed for more action.

A state plan, mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, outlines state and local efforts to require certain sources, including farms and construction businesses, to control dust. Local leaders already have a decades-old street-sweeping program to collect dust before it’s ground into finer particles, and other local rules have required dust control at construction sites and farm fields.

Despite these efforts, over the past 20 years, PM10 remains a “serious” health problem in the region, according to the EPA. Average annual concentrations have improved in some areas, particularly in Indio, but not enough to meet health standards, air district data shows. The town of Mecca, on the north shore of the Salton Sea, has the worst problem.

“The biggest driver of changes in PM10 is the wind,” said William Porter, an atmospheric physicist at UC Riverside who studies the air pollutant. “We get these big winds that blow very strong from the east. Whenever we have those conditions we see big increases in blow dust.” He added that the pollution also can worsen with “changes in the surface properties of the land.”

The desert, of course, is dusty, with little rainfall and not much vegetation to hold soil in place. But there are human sources, too, that officials are struggling to control. The region is a transportation corridor, with exhaust spewed by trucks, trains and cars driving from Los Angeles. Dust on roadways is ground up into finer pieces that can be picked up and distributed throughout the air. Particles also flies off farm fields and construction sites.

And the receding playa of the Salton Sea generates small particles that are picked up by winds. Created by Colorado River flooding, the shallow, salty lake now is made up mostly of contaminated runoff from Imperial Valley farms that have been draining its water supply.

At risk: Elderly, children and those with lung disease

PM10 — particles that are 10 microns or smaller, a fraction of the diameter of a human hair — is considered a health threat because the particles are small enough to be inhaled. They are larger than another pollutant, PM2.5 or fine particles of soot, which can travel farther into the respiratory system and enter the bloodstream, triggering heart attacks. PM10 is more likely to be trapped in the upper respiratory system — the nose and throat.

Geoffrey Leung, Riverside County’s public health officer, said when PM10 is inhaled, it can worsen symptoms for people with asthma and lung diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Symptoms can range from moderate to severe, from coughing, wheezing and eye irritation to asthma attacks. 

People with lung and heart diseases, the elderly, pregnant people and children are most vulnerable, Leung said. Leung advises people with those conditions to stay indoors and limit physical activity on days with poor air quality.

In the Riverside County portion of the Coachella Valley, about 41,422 adults and 10,675 children have been diagnosed with asthma, according to county data. That’s about 12% of the population, compared with the national average of about 7%.

The Salton Sea is part of the reason that pollutant levels are so dangerous in the region. Porter’s unpublished research indicates that particles blown from the direction of the Salton Sea is linked to a larger increase in hospitalizations for respiratory or cardiovascular problems compared to when wind blows from other directions. The explanation could be the content of its dust, since it picks up metals, pesticides and other hazardous substances.

Many residents living near the Salton Sea know to stay indoors to avoid the dust if winds are blowing from that direction. On two days earlier this week, odor advisories were issued when noxious sulfur fumes, which can cause headaches and nausea, blew in from the inland lake.

“When it’s coming from the sea, we definitely don’t go outside. When it’s coming from L.A. it’s less worrisome,” said Conchita Pozar, who lives just about a mile from the shore of the Salton Sea.

Asthma attacks, allergies and headaches

On a recent evening at her home in North Shore — a tiny desert community of about 2,600 people, 97% of them Hispanic, next to the Salton Sea — Renteria recalled a scary asthma attack she had just a few weeks earlier. On the drive home from visiting her siblings, she started hyperventilating, seemingly out of the blue.

“I felt like there was a rock on my chest,” Renteria said, mimicking the short, quick breaths she felt that day. “And like needle pricks all over my skin.”

She spent a night in the hospital before her breathing stabilized.

Renteria, a farmworker, has to carry her inhaler with her at all times, especially when she’s active and working in date fields part of the year. At home, she has a nebulizer, which is a machine with a mask that delivers medicine to her airways, and vials of medications.

Pozar, recruited by UC Riverside researchers, is one of a handful of “promotoras” or community workers who interview their neighbors about their symptoms. Many report bloody noses, allergies and eye irritation. Some children don’t have an asthma diagnosis but struggle with similar symptoms and are instructed to use inhalers.

Pozar’s teenage daughter suffers from allergies that give her eye irritation so severe that she often keeps her home from school. On windy days with poor air quality, Pozar keeps her daughters home and they wear masks when they go outside.

“Her allergies are so bad that we sometimes can’t turn on the lights or go outside because it irritates her eyes,” Pozar said. “A specialist told me that it was because of the dust that surrounds her.”

Many people have already moved out — North Shore’s population has dropped almost 13% in just one year. But moving isn’t an option for Pozar. She’s lived in the Coachella Valley half of her life after immigrating from Michoacan, Mexico. She wants to stay connected to her indigenous Purepecha friends, neighbors and family members who live there, and she and her husband have made their livelihoods here.

“We’ve adapted, and with housing prices so high, I don’t think we’d be able to find a home that we’d be comfortable in somewhere else,” she said.“The government should make an effort to resolve the problems here.”

Alianza Coachella Valley, a nonprofit that focuses on improving the health of the valley’s vulnerable communities, has trained Renteria and other community members to use air monitors in their homes to provide localized data and help protect themselves from the pollution, said Silvia Paz, the organization’s executive director.

The group has educated residents about air quality, especially in the eastern Coachella Valley where the towns of Mecca, Thermal and North Shore are separated by miles of open desert and farm fields.

“These communities are mostly rural and they’re lacking in infrastructure,” said Silvia Paz, the organization’s executive director. “We have less parks, we have less trees, we have less roads. We can experience the difference in exposure because we have less elements to keep dust down or protect us from the dust blowing.”

In 2017, Alianza deployed air monitors throughout the eastern Coachella Valley that tracked real-time data. This provided evidence that the region should be included in a state program to reduce pollution in communities with the poorest air quality, Paz said.

The program, mandated by a 2017 law, holds meetings with community members and has recently set aside $4.6 million to pave public and private roads in the eastern Coachella Valley, as well as $2.8 million to provide household air filters in communities statewide.

Sweeping streets: Local efforts to fix the problem

The South Coast air district monitors 24-hour average PM10 levels at three stations in Indo, Mecca and Palm Springs, and tracks when levels exceed the federal health standard, which is 150 micrograms of particles per cubic meter of air, as well as a state standard of 50.

Emily Nelson, an environmental consultant for Coachella Valley Association of Governments, was part of a district working group that studied PM10 in the 1990s to develop ways to solve the problem.

In 2003, the agency approved its plan to reach PM10 standards. Under the plan, cities implemented ordinances that directed certain industries, such as construction and agricultural businesses, to reduce dust. That includes such practices as spraying soil stabilizers and nonpotable water on construction sites and implementing certain methods when mowing golf courses.

“There were a lot of implemented appropriate meaningful strategies that in the end saved many of these industries money and made them better neighbors,” Nelson said.

In 2010, the state Air Resources Board and South Coast district asked the U.S. EPA to redesignate the area as in attainment with the health standard based on 2005-2007 data. The request was denied “and we started exceeding it again,” Nelson said.

The Coachella Valley Association of Government spends more than $760,000 a year on street sweeping as part of the state’s plan for cleaning up PM10, according to a 2022 contract effective through 2025. Street sweepers clean 896 miles of roads at least on a biweekly basis.

Kirk, executive director of the association, said street sweepers have recently picked up more dust than they have in the past.

He said the cities need more funding from the South Coast air district and that agency officials should spend time in the Coachella Valley to see the problem themselves.

“We rely on the district’s expertise to not just understand the air quality problem but solve it,” Kirk said. “The air district isn’t in the problem-solving mode because they don’t see there’s a problem.”

In response to community concerns, South Coast air district officials say they are trying to get a better picture of the pollution by deploying a temporary monitor in Indio that can measure total suspended particulates and one in Whitewater Wash. The agency is also analyzing satellite data in collaboration with Colorado State University researchers.

Even if the recent pollution concentrations are mostly larger particles, not smaller, inhalable ones, Nelson said she worries about how it affects the region’s welfare. More research is needed to see how they affect visibility, crops and other industries, like tourism.

“The wind will stop and the valley still looks like we’re in a soup of dust,” Nelson said. “Everything is coated with this very fine dust. I mean the car washes have been doing the best business ever.”

What you can do to protect yourself

Our colleagues at NPR recently had these tips for protecting yourself:

• Check the Air Quality Index at AirNow.gov or PurpleAir.com.
  
  • If the AQI is above 100, avoid outdoor exercise.
  • If it’s above 150, wear a tight-fitting N95 mask when you’re outside.
  • Run your air conditioner with a high-efficiency filter installed — the EPA recommends MERV 13 or above — or use a portable HEPA air purifier. (The EPA provides instructions for making your own HEPA air cleaner with a box fan, here.)Check the Air Quality Index at AirNow.gov or PurpleAir.com to see what the current AQI (air quality index) is near you.

Get more tips on how to cope with poor air quality due to wildfires and other factors:

• How to protect yourself

John Osborn D’Agostino, CalMatters’ data and interactives editor, contributed to the reporting on this article.

We have another pip — the second egg in Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest is showing signs of hatching.

The first pip, or crack, was confirmed in Jackie and Shadow’s egg no. 2 on Saturday morning, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

That’s about a day after the first egg started showing signs of hatching on Friday morning. The egg shell has continued to crack as the chick breaks through, revealing more of the eaglet’s fuzzy gray feathers as time goes on.

More than 38,000 people were watching the livestream shortly after the organization confirmed the second crack, compared with the more than 26,000 viewers who tuned in on Friday.

“The first egg is still in the process of hatching, it is not considered hatched until it is completely free of the egg shell. The chick has popped its head out of the shell to say a happy hatch day to mom and dad!” Friends of Big Bear Valley wrote on Facebook to more than a million followers on Saturday. “It also appears that the second egg has a pip. It is not well defined as of this morning, but we will likely see more progress throughout the day.”

Jackie and Shadow's usual incubation timeline is around 38 to 40 days, according to the nonprofit.

What’s next

With pips in place, it could take the chicks a day or two to complete the hatching process, as seen with last season’s trio.

Friends of Big Bear Valley won’t know for sure if any chicks are male or female, as the organization has said the only way to tell is with a blood test.

But once eaglets are around 9 or 10 weeks old, there should be signs that can help the nonprofit make an educated guess, including the chicks’ size, ankle thickness and vocal pitch.

Generally speaking, female bald eagles are larger than males. Female bald eagles also tend to have larger vocal organs — the syrinx — which leads to deeper, lower-pitched vocalizations, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

What do we call the chicks?

Historically, Jackie and Shadow’s chicks are given temporary nicknames initially, such as Chick 1 and Chick 2, or Bigger Chick and Smaller Chick (which some fans affectionately nicknamed Biggie and Smalls).

The final decision has then been left up to Big Bear Valley elementary school students. Previous chicks have been named Stormy, BBB (for Big Bear Baby), Simba and Cookie through that process.

Last year, Friends of Big Bear Valley crowdsourced more than 50,000 name choices in a week-long fundraiser, with the students voting from 30 finalists on official ballots delivered by the nonprofit.

The feathered parents’ eaglets were named Sunny and Gizmo last April.

One of last season’s three chicks didn’t survive a winter storm within weeks of hatching. Friends of Big Bear Valley named that chick “Misty” in honor of one of their late volunteers who is “still very missed,” the organization previously shared.

When Kekoa Gittens was 3, his preschool teacher told his mother he was a problem. He couldn’t sit still. He didn’t participate. When other kids learned the alphabet, he didn’t pay attention.

The next year, Kekoa’s classroom problems worsened. His mother, Sonia Gittens, took him to his pediatrician, who referred the boy to an eye doctor.

That doctor looked at the back of Kekoa’s eyes and diagnosed him with myopic degeneration, a dramatic form of nearsightedness.

“They are too little. They don’t know how to express themselves and say, ‘I cannot see it, teacher,’” said Sonia Gittens, who lives in the Marin County town of Corte Madera.

Today, Kekoa is a successful high schooler, but too many kids don’t get their eyes checked until they’re far behind in school.

Vision problems, particularly nearsightedness, have grown more common among American children. Roughly one in four school-age kids, or 25%, wear glasses or contacts, a proportion that increases as kids get older, according to 2019 federal survey data.

In California too few children on Medi-Cal like Kekoa are getting their eyes checked, and the problem is growing worse. Just 16% of school-age kids on Medi-Cal saw an eye doctor between 2022 and 2024 for first-time eye exams, continuing vision check ups or glasses, according to a report commissioned by the California Optometric Association. That’s down from 19% eight years earlier. The report, based on two years of Medi-Cal data, suggests that the state is moving in the wrong direction even as eye problems become more prevalent among kids.

Medi-Cal provides insurance for low-income Californians and those with disabilities.

“Every day when I see these children it is always a surprise to me that the kids are not getting the care they need,” said Ida Chung, a pediatric optometrist and an associate dean at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona.

The trend indicated in the report is alarming, Chung said. In her clinic, where about half of children are on Medi-Cal, it’s common for kids with congenital vision problems to visit for the first time when they’re in first grade or later. That indicates to Chung that many kids don’t have enough access to eye care.

Though kids might be getting basic vision screenings at school or from a pediatrician, some eye problems are still overlooked. “It’s something the child had before they were born,” Chung said.

Eye exams decrease statewide

Colusa County, a rural farming region north of Sacramento, saw the sharpest drop in kids’ eye doctor appointments in the state from 20% between 2015-16 to just under 2% between 2022-24.

Nearly all counties — 47 out of 58 — performed worse on vision care than they did in the past, the report shows, with some, like Colusa, declining significantly.

Most of the severe declines happened in rural areas, although urban counties like San Francisco and Los Angeles also saw decreases. Only seven counties improved the rate of children receiving eye exams or glasses. Four counties were excluded for comparison in the report because the numbers were too small.

“The decline in performance here is so widespread that something really needs to happen,” said David Maxwell-Jolly, a health care consultant who authored the report and the former director of the Department of Health Care Services, which oversees Medi-Cal. “These numbers are way lower than what you would expect to be seeing if we’re doing a good job of detecting kids with treatable conditions.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health Care Services said in an email the state could not confirm the accuracy of an external report, noting that vision services can be difficult to track because “not all encounters are captured in a single, comprehensive dataset.”

For example, many initial vision screenings take place in the pediatrician’s office during well-child visits, which include eye and hearing screenings as well as immunizations and developmental checks. State data shows about half of kids with Medi-Cal receive well-child visits.

Still, experts say the low numbers tell a real story: if children were reliably getting follow-up care from initial screenings, the share who get comprehensive eye exams and glasses would be closer to 25-30% — in line with the known prevalence of vision problems among kids — rather than the 16% found in the optometric association’s report.

Maxwell-Jolly said the analysis he conducted replicated an internal, unpublished department report tracking vision services between 2015 and 2016. His analysis, based on data obtained through a public records act request, updated the results for more recent years.

The state’s most recent Preventive Services Report, which measures how well Medi-Cal delivers preventive care to children, shows the rate of comprehensive eye exams for children and young adults ages 6-21 is similar to the optometric association’s analysis at 17%.

Contra Costa County experienced the third largest decline in children’s eye care in the state. A spokesperson for Contra Costa Health Plan said Medi-Cal health plans are not required by the state to track vision benefits and that it would take time to understand the data. The state, however, does track vision services internally, according to the health care services department.

A bill sponsored by the optometric association and authored by Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, a Democrat from Cupertino, aims to require the state to establish vision benefit quality measures and report performance data publicly. The goal of the legislation is to track where kids do not have enough access to vision services and to ensure that Medi-Cal providers are improving services.

Rural challenges

Amy Turnipseed, chief strategy and government affairs officer for Partnership HealthPlan of California, said rural parts of the state struggle to find enough providers. The nonprofit health insurer provides Medi-Cal for 24 northern counties, including Colusa and Modoc.

In Modoc County, which borders Oregon and Nevada, one optometrist serves a 90-mile radius. Partnership has worked closely with that optometrist to ensure they continue accepting Medi-Cal patients, Turnipseed said.

“In rural counties with lower populations, losing even one provider can exponentially impact the access to services to families,” Turnipseed said. “In the past few years we’ve seen vision providers reduce or limit their Medi-Cal, which makes it harder for families to see providers.”

An assortment of glasses at Vision to Learn mobile optometry clinic at Esther Lindstrom Elementary School in Lakewood on March 20, 2026. Photo by Ariana Drehsler for CalMatters Modoc is one of just seven counties where more children have received vision care in recent years, according to the report.

Providers frequently cite low reimbursement rates from the state as a reason for not accepting Medi-Cal patients. The California Optometric Association estimates only about 10% of its members accept Medi-Cal. The reimbursement rate for a comprehensive eye exam is about $47, said Kristine Shultz, association executive director.

“Our reimbursement rates haven’t increased in 25 years. Imagine getting paid what you were paid 25 years ago,” Shultz said.

Schools check kids’ vision, but follow-up is spotty

State law requires schools to periodically check kids’ vision starting in kindergarten. Those screenings are a good bellwether for if a child is struggling to see in class, said Chung with Western University. The problem is getting the kids who fail the screening to an eye doctor.

Chung runs an academic optometry clinic that works with local schools in Pomona. Each year up to 35% of students fail the screening, meaning they likely have a vision problem. But based on conversations with school nurses, Chung said only about 7% of those children then go to an eye doctor and come back to school with glasses.

Chung, who chairs the children’s vision committee for the California Optometric Association, said colleagues who work with school districts around the state report similar experiences.

“If a high number of those children are not getting the follow up care, we may just be fooling ourselves and checking a box,” Chung said. “We’re in compliance with the law in California but are we really helping the children?”

For some families, the answer is no. That’s what happened to Kekoa when he was 3. The school checked his eyes and said he might have vision problems, but his mother, Gittens, waited. Her son was still learning his numbers and letters. How would he be able to read an eye chart, she reasoned. It wasn’t until his problems got worse that Gittens took Kekoa to an eye doctor.

Now, at 15, Kekoa wears contacts and likes athletics. He needs to see to compete in capoeira martial arts competitions and surf on the weekends, his mother said.

First: Dr. Kiyana Kavoussi shows letters on a monitor during Noah Mattison’s, 11, visual acuity test. Last: Optician Maya Ortega looks at Italia Martin’s, 6, eyes before she chooses new glasses inside the Vision to Learn mobile optometry clinic at Esther Lindstrom Elementary School in Lakewood on March 20, 2026. Photos by Ariana Drehsler for CalMatters Many parents lack the resources to take their kids to the doctor, or simply wait. Notes from school nurses flagging that a child failed a vision screening may also get lost in a backpack on the way home, educators say. The California Department of Education does not track the results of school vision screenings.

Vision To Learn, a nonprofit, created a mobile eye clinic to help bridge the gap between kids failing school vision screenings and getting glasses. The group brings an optometrist to campus, meaning kids that need an eye exam can get one the same day and go home having gotten a prescription and ordered glasses.

Damian Carroll, chief of staff and national director, said Vision to Learn’s numbers tell a similar story to Chung’s. About one-third of students screened are unable to read the eye chart, but very few of those kids have adequate glasses.

In the California schools where the program operates, around 70% of kids who have been prescribed glasses did not own a pair. Another 20% had glasses with outdated prescriptions, according to internal data, Carroll said.

And that gap can drastically affect learning outcomes or behavior in school.

“First and second graders who try on glasses the first time are blown away because they just thought that’s how the world looked,” Carroll said. “They can see the leaves on the trees and the math on the board, and it’s shocking to them.”

For the record: This story has been updated to reflect that Maxwell-Jolly’s study replicated the methodology of an earlier one by the Department of Health Care Services, but did not republish department findings.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga of the California Botanic Garden has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds. Each time, she's come home empty handed. But this year, with the desert in the midst of a big bloom, she's trying again.

"It's a little bit of a gamble," she says. "But, you know, the plant's having a really good year. I feel hopeful."

The plant has silvery-green pointy leaves, fuzzy buds and striking deep purple flowers. But it is challenging to study and to sample. Fraga says she often has to hike or scramble up mountainsides, or drive on backroads to find it. Very little is known about the plant's pollinator. And in exceptionally dry years, the Death Valley sage doesn't flower at all – meaning no seeds either.

The sage's habitat is mostly protected, within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. But climate change doesn't respect park boundaries – and could push these plants that are already living on the brink into even more existential peril.

Naomi Fraga says for the first time since 2009, she found the Death Valley sage seeds. Soon, she says, she'll return with a team to make the first big harvest.

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"You can imagine that if conditions were to get more difficult with a changing climate, it's going to be harder and harder to collect seed," Fraga says.

In late March, Fraga headed into the foothills of the Nopah Range, near an abandoned mine, to check on one of the largest populations she knows of. And for the first time since 2009, she found the seeds. Soon, she says, she'll return with a team to attempt the first big harvest of Death Valley sage seeds.

A bee pollinates a Death Valley Sage in the Nopah Range near Death Valley.

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The first day of fall semester for a university freshman is often stressful. Not for Vanessa Menera, an 18-year-old who’s the first in her family to attend college.

Last year, she arrived 15 minutes early to her first fall class with an internship and campus job already in tow, plus a mental map of Cal State University Dominguez Hills, a sprawling, nearly 350-acre institution in the Los Angeles area’s South Bay.

The already confident student possessed even more motivation to make the most of her time on campus because of a program she took last summer: The First-Year Experience Summer Program.

“Everything was so easy to me, and I'm really grateful, because I know it was because of that First Year Experience that I was able to do that,” said Menera.

The summer program is one of several strategies Cal State Dominguez Hills seeks to expand as it combats a half-decade enrollment slide that’s unraveling its finances. But it’s not the only approach to fiscal right-sizing. Nor is Cal State Dominguez Hills alone in combatting large drops in its student population.

That’s because the money that the country’s largest public four-year university system needs to properly educate its students isn’t there. Now, California State University is embarking on a detailed, sweeping plan to enroll more students as part of an all-out push to bring much-needed cash to the workhorse system of 22 campuses that educates 471,000 students.

Ten campuses, including Dominguez Hills, saw double-digit enrollment declines in fall of 2025 compared to fall 2020, when the first full academic year of the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The loss of enrollment is a major driver of the financial struggles many of the system’s campuses face. The Cal State’s chancellor’s office says the system is facing a $2.3 billion budget gap in the current academic year. There’s a bright spot, though: Cal State officials say the system overall is on pace this year to beat state enrollment targets for the first time in four years.

People walk past the exterior of the Innovation & Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Still, a key state lawmaker admonished the system’s under-enrolled campuses for missing its enrollment targets.

“I'm concerned that these campuses may be overfunded,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, at a December legislative hearing about Cal State’s finances. He is chairperson of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education and a key player in deciding how much state money universities receive. His worry? Other campuses with rising enrollments need the money to educate their ever-growing student body by hiring more professors, tutors and other staff to support students.

The state funds campuses based on how many Californians they enroll; by educating fewer students than what the state pays per student, the campuses are technically collecting more revenue than their enrollment levels would permit. That’s because the state pays schools for the number of California students they’re supposed to enroll, not how many they actually enroll.

By that measure, San Francisco State last year collected close to $50 million more in state dollars than its enrollment levels indicate it should receive — the campus enrolled about 5,300 fewer Californians than state goals stipulated in 2024. Cal State Dominguez Hills was taking about $7 million more. Conversely, Cal Poly Pomona was down about $20 million, because they enrolled 2,500 more students than the state’s target.

California is also eyeing multi-billion-dollar budget deficits, putting even more pressure on lawmakers and school systems to use money wisely.

The Legislature last year required Cal State to submit a report by March 1 detailing how campuses with enrollment struggles plan to attract new students and meet their state targets. Campuses sent their turnaround plans to the system’s chancellor’s office by December.

CalMatters conducted a dozen interviews and issued six records requests for this story.

Spotlight on Cal State Dominguez

Cal State Dominguez Hills’ enrollment is down 20% compared to 2020 and its finances have suffered. As a result, campus officials laid off 38 non-faculty staff and managers in 2025.

The school projects it will lose an additional $8 million this year, cutting deeper into its reserves, which have dwindled from $46 million in 2022 to a projected $10 million this summer.

The campus’ graduation rates fall below the systemwide average. And the campus historically has posted lower retention rates, meaning more students quit after one or two years compared to other campuses in the system. Dominguez Hill’s retention rate has grown in the last year, however.

The school enrolls the highest share of undergraduate students in the system who receive the federal Pell grant for low-income students — 69% compared to a Cal State average of 51%. Systemwide, those Pell students graduate at lower levels than students who don’t receive the grant.

Dominguez Hills’ turnaround plan includes a campus goal of enrolling about 800 more students to hit its enrollment target by 2027-28. More students plus planned systemwide tuition hikes and a new student-approved campus fee are projected to generate $25 million in additional money.

To reach its enrollment goals, the campus will lean on approaches that have demonstrated success, including the First Year Experience summer program, which Dominguez Hills started in 2022. Through the program, about a quarter of the freshman class enrolls in up to two free college courses during the summer before fall term. These are all general education courses required for graduation, with an emphasis on teaching students how to study well. The program also engenders a sense of community among students and campus staff.

Other strategies include attracting new students and keeping more of its current students. Another is to re-enroll students who’ve previously dropped out. It’s an approach that’s top of mind for campuses across the state: California is home to about 3.5 million adults with some college credit but no degree. Even a miniscule bump in the students who return to school could eradicate a campus’ enrollment woes.
Another budget-stabilizing effort may mean additional job losses. Campus professors are now meeting regularly to find ways to combine courses and run fewer sections of the same course. This helps the school average more students per course, but it’ll likely mean fewer lecturers — instructors who lack the full-time benefits and job safety of tenured professors.

Systemwide, 63 degree programs were discontinued by the Board of Trustees in 2024.

A student walks up the stairs in the Innovation and Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Dominguez Hills in February reversed course on terminating six majors, including art history and philosophy. Student advocacy spurred the restoration. The school also determined that cutting individual programs made less sense than reviewing all majors to find other ways to integrate academic programs, said Kim Costino, the school’s interim provost, in an interview.

“Everyone is hopeful that we are going to be able to create a more economically efficient curriculum that serves students better,” said Terry McGlynn during an interview. He is a biology professor at Dominguez Hills who is chair of the academic senate, a faculty group that shapes campus academics.

But “there's clearly going to be some pain involved,” he added.

Summer session to keep students longer

The school cited in its report to the system that expanding the The First Year Experience program is one way to increase enrollment.

The campus spends $635,000 annually to run it. Almost 84% of students in the program advanced to their second year of college in fall 2024 — well above the 66% for students who didn’t sign up for the First Year Experience, according to data the campus shared. For a school desperate to undo its enrollment slide, keeping the students it has — and their tuition dollars — is a key strategy.

Any incoming freshman can enroll in the First Year Experience.

One reason Menera knew the campus so well when fall classes began? An extra-credit assignment for her environmental studies course over the summer required her to identify every vending machine on campus.

Student Vanessa Menera, 18, in the Innovation and Instruction Building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters The First Year Experience also features activities that reinforce what students learn, such as a field trip to a museum for an English course led by a guest author whose book the professor assigned to students. For her environmental studies class, Menera said that she carried a trash bag for more than a week to visualize how much waste people accumulate.

The school also awards a $150 scholarship to students who complete a summer-experience course. But for students who work over the summer or help care for family members, that amount alone may not be enough to persuade them to attend the program, said Costino. She ran the summer program until December.

The summer courses are long. Most meet twice weekly for four hours, so a student in two courses is in class for about 16 hours a week. Menera worked anyway that summer, maintaining the job she had during high school at TJ Maxx in Anaheim, some 20 miles from campus. She continues to work now, logging 17 hours a week at a campus convenience store on top of a full academic load. The summer program mentally prepared her for long school and work days, she said.

Costino thinks the program’s growth won’t be in students enrolling the summer before freshman year, but instead in students who earned a D or F in a course their first year and need to make up the class the following summer. While students can presently retake classes, they have to pay for them. Providing free make-up courses that either replace or average out a previous low grade helps the school retain more students who are on academic probation or just lost academic confidence after a bad first year, Costino said.

Re-enrolling students who dropped out

Cal State Dominguez Hills is seeking to expand its efforts to re-enroll students who’ve dropped out. Since 2021 the school has re-enrolled nearly 1,100 such students for fall term through its “Once a Toro, Always a Toro” program, named after the campus mascot.

While these students represent a tiny portion of the campus’ annual enrollment, they lead to instant revenue for the school from tuition and fees. It’s a few extra million dollars for the school, and it costs about $300,000 to $600,000 annually to maintain the re-enrollment program.

Once these students return to Dominguez Hills, most graduate. Data the campus shared with CalMatters show that earlier cohorts of the re-enrolled students have graduation rates of around 50% three years after they return. The numbers grow to about 70% after six years.

The school is now targeting any student who dropped out in the last 15 years or so, said Sabrina Sanders, the program director of Once a Toro.

She maintains a list of 10,000 formerly enrolled students. Annually, about 1,000 apply, around three-quarters are admitted, and roughly 300 to 400 enroll. Some who were admitted don’t enroll for several reasons, including prior low GPAs that make them ineligible for financial aid.

One of the students who returned is Wynette Davis. The 27-year-old is four classes away from finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology after dropping out two years ago.

Davis transferred to the university from community college in 2022. She was on track to earn her bachelor’s in 2024 and even walked the stage during the spring graduation ceremony, needing just a few more classes that summer to finish her degree. But tragedy struck: Her daughter’s father died in spring 2024, and the shock derailed her academics. That spring and summer, she failed four classes. Davis left as a result.

She tried to re-enroll a year later, but learned she owed the university tuition money and couldn’t qualify for financial aid because her failing grades dropped her below the campus’ threshold for aid eligibility. Davis was ready to give up on earning a bachelor’s until an email from Once a Toro entered her inbox.

A staffer with the program helped Davis receive a waiver for her past-due account balance as long as she promised to pass her classes for the year, Davis said. The staffer also worked with the school financial aid office to reinstate her eligibility for financial aid for her spring classes after her grades improved.

Last fall Davis retook the classes she previously failed, passing them all this time. She’s in two classes this spring and will need two more next fall to earn her bachelor’s degree.

“If it wasn't for the Once a Toro, Always a Toro program, I probably would not have been back in school right now,” Davis said.

Another setback is the changing nature of academic requirements. Students who were gone for a decade may have pursued majors that don’t exist or were heavily altered, so the courses they took toward their majors might not satisfy new requirements. Sanders and the school’s advising teams collaborate with academic department deans to convert the re-enrolling students’ old coursework into the updated expectations for existing majors. Or re-enrolled students pursue an interdisciplinary major that combines old coursework with new.

“There's a sense of shame that comes with dropping out of college and having someone there to kind of put those thoughts and put that inner dialogue to rest” was key, said Stephanie Esquivel, a returning student who re-enrolled in 2022 after leaving the campus her freshman year in 2007.

She credited Sanders with helping her transfer her community college units to her university major. To Esquivel, a team like Once a Toro shows that the campus desires returning students and invests in the social infrastructure to help them, she said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.