The Brief

When public officials tasked with holding criminals accountable cheat to win a conviction, it can lead to reduced sentences — even freedom — for other convicted criminals, sometimes dozens of them. It can also give people who were wrongfully convicted a shot at redemption.

A new tally released earlier this month lists criminal cases against 57 Orange County defendants that were tainted as a result of official misconduct uncovered in the trial against the county's deadliest mass shooter, Scott Dekraai, who gunned down eight people at a Seal Beach salon in 2011.

In these cases, which include 35 homicide cases, charges against a defendant were dropped or lessened, or the defendant was granted a new trial. For five defendants, all charges were dismissed.

"Either an innocent person was charged or a guilty person went free, neither of which we like as a society," said Maurice Possley, senior researcher at the National Registry of Exonerations.

The tally was done by Scott Sanders, the O.C. assistant public defender who, nearly a decade ago, was largely responsible for exposing the county’s notorious "snitch scandal." The number of cases tainted by the scandal is much higher than previous, publicly released estimates. And Sanders said there could be many more.

"I'm not saying it's complete by any nature," Sanders said of the list. "It's not."

On top of the cases already impacted by the snitch scandal's long reach, Sanders outlined dozens more cases in a recent court filing that could be revisited because of new evidence of potential misconduct. That misconduct, Sanders alleges, was carried out by O.C. law enforcement officers and a former top prosecutor who is now a superior court judge.

"Whether those cases get justice is very much in question at this moment," Sanders told LAist.

The O.C. District Attorney's Office has yet to file a formal response to Sanders' allegations, which the public defender says justify dropping murder charges against one of his clients. An initial court hearing on the matter is scheduled for Friday in San Diego.

Here's how misconduct uncovered in one case can affect so many other, seemingly unrelated cases.

Assistant public defender Scott Sanders (right) surfaced evidence of a secret, unconstitutional jailhouse informant program while defending Scott Dekraai (left), accused of killing eight people in a Seal Beach beauty salon.

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O.C.'s snitch scandal, a recap

The official misconduct uncovered in the Dekraai murder case, which has been confirmed by courts, internal investigations and the Department of Justice, was twofold: misusing jailhouse informants, commonly known as snitches, and hiding information about it from defendants.

The misconduct happened under the previous O.C. district attorney, Tony Rackauckas, who lost his re-election bid to current district attorney Todd Spitzer in 2018. Spitzer has implemented reforms and pledged not to tolerate cheating among prosecutors and law enforcement.

Rackauckas, who is now in private practice, did not immediately return a voicemail left on his cell phone asking for comment.

Harvard law professor Alexandra Natapoff said jailhouse informants are a common feature of the U.S. criminal justice system. But the way the system works, and its abuses, are often kept quiet.

"Every once in a while there's an enormous debacle … that shines a light not just on an individual jailhouse snitch, but the marketplace within that particular jail," she said.

That's what happened in the Dekraai case.

"Orange County, I think, can fairly be said to now be the poster child for the institution-wide jailhouse snitch scandal model," Natapoff said.

It's not illegal for authorities to use confidential informants — in or out of custody — to collect information. But once someone has been charged with a crime, the Sixth Amendment and subsequent court decisions guarantee them the right to have an attorney present during questioning by a law enforcement representative, including an informant secretly working for law enforcement. This is sometimes called the "Massiah" rule after a Supreme Court case.

Prosecutors must also turn over evidence from, and about, jailhouse informants used in a defendant's criminal case because it could help the defendant question the informant's credibility. Failing to do so violates the 14th Amendment and related court decisions, which require prosecutors to share with defendants any evidence they have that could help them prove their innocence. This is sometimes known as the "Brady" rule after another Supreme Court case.

The origins of the snitch scandal

In 2014, Sanders was defending Dekraai and another man, Daniel Wozniak, who was later convicted of double murder, when he began to uncover evidence of a secret informant program in O.C. jails.

The mass murder case against Dekraai should've been a slam dunk — he confessed to the crime soon after the shooting. But deputies decided to put him in a jail cell with a confidential informant, motivated by the possibility that Dekraai might try to plead insanity, according to a 2020 audit of the misconduct commissioned by Spitzer.

Then, prosecutors hid evidence from Dekraai's defense team about the informant and his work on behalf of law enforcement.

Dekraai pleaded guilty in 2014, but his sentencing was delayed for three years while the court investigated police and prosecutor misconduct in the case. Eventually, courts removed the entire Orange County District Attorney's Office (OCDA) from Dekraai's case and ruled that he couldn't be sentenced to death because of the misconduct.

After that ruling, Paul Wilson, whose wife Christy was among those killed by Dekraai, told LAist: “They’ve taken the largest mass murder in Orange County history and they have completely and utterly screwed that case up.”

News of misconduct spreads

As people in custody and their lawyers found out about the debacle, which was extensively covered by local and national media, some discovered their own cases involved the same methods and actors as the ones behind the misconduct in Dekraai’s case.

"If you're sitting in state prison, you're going to probably know about it, you're going to hear about it," Sanders said about early news of the snitch scandal. "People would write in. People would say, 'Hey, I want to have my case addressed.' All sorts of things like that."

Some realized that police officers or sheriff's deputies who testified in their cases were associated with misconduct in the Dekraai case, giving them grounds to question those officers' testimony.

Others came to suspect there might be evidence about informants used in their case that hadn't been turned over to their defense team.

Ramon Alvarez was among those who successfully challenged his conviction. He had been found guilty in 2012 of shooting a man in the head and then storing the body in a Santa Ana yard in a kiddie pool full of ice.

His murder conviction was dismissed last year after he presented evidence that a known jailhouse informant had lied in his case in exchange for an $11,000 check from the Santa Ana Police Department. An assistant district attorney had told the jury in Alvarez's trial that the informant had not been offered anything for his testimony.

A report last year from the Justice Department confirmed that failing to disclose the police department’s payment violated Alvarez's constitutional rights. Federal investigators also pointed to the prosecutor's motive. "The prosecutor conceded during our interview that he could not have successfully prosecuted Alvarez without [the informant]’s testimony," the DOJ investigators wrote, adding that "the only reason for the jury to believe [the informant], who 'had a rap sheet a mile long,' was that he was getting nothing for his testimony."

Judge Ebrahim Baytieh, who has been accused of misconduct while a prosecutor in the O.C. District Attorney's office, now runs Orange County's CARE Court, a court-mandated mental health treatment program.

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Snitch Scandal 2.0?

In some of the cases revisited because of alleged misconduct, O.C. sheriff's deputies refused to testify about their use of informants in order to protect themselves from self-incrimination. In other words, they pleaded the Fifth Amendment.

That's what led a judge to throw out a murder conviction against Paul Smith in 2021. Smith was convicted in 2010 for allegedly stabbing his childhood friend Robert Haugen to death in 1988 and setting his body on fire in Haugen's Sunset Beach apartment.

But a judge ordered a new trial after deputies refused to testify. Spitzer, O.C.’s district attorney, said at the time that top prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh, who's now an O.C. Superior Court judge, failed to turn over evidence of the informant use to the defense.

Spitzer fired Baytieh in February 2022, but the former prosecutor went on to win election to the O.C. Superior Court a few months later, with endorsements from dozens of current and former judges and law enforcement leaders.

In a lengthy court document filed last month in Smith's case, Sanders now alleges that Baytieh was at the center of an "enormous web of deception" designed to cover up misconduct that helped prosecutors win cases while cheating defendants out of their right to a fair trial.

[Read our story: OC Snitch Case: Former Top Prosecutor, Now Judge, Accused Of Criminal Cover-Up By Public Defender]

"As detailed for the first time in this motion, Baytieh energetically worked to prevent both the informant program from being uncovered and evidence about specific informants being disclosed because he knew that these disclosures would make it more difficult to win particular cases," Sanders wrote.

Sanders also alleges that Baytieh — who had been lauded for his ethics at the district attorney's office and put in charge of determining which evidence prosecutors needed to disclose — was in fact among the worst offenders in the jailhouse snitch scandal.

A spokesperson for Orange County Superior Court has said the court and judicial officers are prohibited by ethical rules from discussing active cases. The district attorney's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.

In the motion, Sanders cites an additional 98 cases — 45 of them involving murder charges — where he said defense attorneys should have been handed evidence that could help their clients' cases.

Sanders argues that the misconduct is so egregious that the murder charges against Smith should be dropped.

How common is this kind of misconduct?

Possley, from the National Registry of Exonerations, said we don't really know how common it is for law enforcement officials and prosecutors to withhold evidence because it's a "hidden crime."

"What we know is that sometimes this stuff comes to light decades later," he said.

The National Registry of Exonerations found in a 2020 report that official misconduct, usually by police officers or prosecutors, contributed to false convictions in 54% of cases where the defendant was later cleared of charges. Black exonerees were more likely than white exonerees to have faced misconduct in their cases, especially when charged with murder or drug crimes.

The report found that hiding evidence that could have helped a defendant prove their innocence was the most common type of misconduct, having been involved in 44% of the cases they examined.

The researchers didn't specifically look at how often the use of jailhouse informants was tied to the misconduct. But a review of the registry's database turns up 164 out of 3,385 cases in which official misconduct and jailhouse informants played a role in a person's exoneration.

The registry, which has been collecting data since 1989, defines exoneration as being completely cleared of charges based on new evidence of innocence.

Not all snitch scandals have such a far reach

Orange County is certainly not the first place to get caught up in scandals over jailhouse informants. The problem goes way back and wide — across the country and right next door in Los Angeles.

L.A.'s own jailhouse informant scandal, which came to light in the late 1980s, blew up when a prolific informant named Leslie White showed authorities how he could fake a murder confession from a defendant in jail by impersonating officials to get information about a case. He would then finagle placement in the same room as the target so he could make a confession look plausible.

"Perjury has been committed," White wrote from jail in a 1988 Los Angeles Times op-ed. "That is a fact, not a possibility."

At the time, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office said it planned to review every case in the preceding decade in which a jailhouse snitch testified to getting a confession.

A few years later, a grand jury investigating the scandal reported there were between 150 and 250 criminal cases in which jailhouse informants had testified over the previous decade. But it's unclear how many of those cases were reopened because of the damning revelations about informants in L.A. jails.

The National Registry of Exonerations includes nine people in L.A. County whose ultimate finding of innocence was at least partially due to official misconduct and the use of a jailhouse informant.

But unlike Sanders' list of cases affected by misconduct in the O.C. snitch scandal, LAist could find no record of the total number of cases impacted by L.A.'s snitch scandal, including cases in which sentences were reduced or a new trial was ordered.

Why the apparent difference? Possley said a big reason is Sanders. In L.A., there was no similarly determined defense attorney working to identify and revisit cases that may have been tainted.

"Sanders has had to swim upstream the whole goddamn time," Possley said.

He said there has historically been resistance among criminal justice officials to make the kinds of misconduct connections that Sanders has among disparate cases. "Because they know that there's a problem and that starting to tug on that string might unravel a pretty big piece of fabric," he said.

Sanders himself credits the O.C. public defender's office for giving him and other colleagues the time and resources to investigate the extent, and effects, of misconduct.

"Our office has encouraged and allowed me and others to do this work now for nearly a decade," Sanders said. "We're going into the second decade here. … And even with that, it's going to be difficult for all of the cases to get addressed in the way they should."

Natapoff, the Harvard scholar who's an expert in snitching, said the O.C. scandal is "both a cautionary tale of what happens when we leave the informant market unregulated and also a sign to us that without public defender offices and attorneys willing to spend the resources to uncover these kinds of scandals, we are likely never to learn about them."

A new conversation about criminal justice

Natapoff says informants are just one aspect of a system that has turned criminal justice into a marketplace.

"The people who run the jails understand that this market is robust, that information can be obtained — fabricated or not, as it were — and prosecutors understand that there is a machinery for producing information in the jails, which comes with its own baggage," she said.

Incarcerated people — and most anyone who's spent time in custody — also understand "that if they can produce information about a cellmate or someone else in the jail, that a reward will be forthcoming," Natapoff added.

One of the reasons the public doesn't hear more about the misuse of jailhouse informants, she said, is because the vast majority of criminal cases — about nine in 10 — end in plea deals, not trials.

"In effect, the informant market is the sort of under-the-table, black market version of our general plea bargaining system, which says we negotiate all cases, we negotiate all guilt," Natapoff said. "We almost never litigate the facts anymore."

In a system that runs on deals, she said, “law enforcement is incentivized, even systemically encouraged, to engage in all kinds of deal-making with suspects and defendants who might be useful to them."

But as informant scandals have emerged over the years, an increasing number of jurisdictions have enacted reforms, which Natapoff chronicles on her website.

Plus, she said, the conversation around criminal justice has changed over the years.

"Twenty years ago, we did not have the so-called bipartisan consensus that mass incarceration is a terrible idea. Twenty years ago, we were not having a conversation about Black Lives Matter or debtors' prison or all the conversations that we now have about the unfairnesses and the dysfunctions of our criminal system," Natapoff said.

Innocence projects have increasingly sprung up to help people who were wrongly convicted challenge their fate. On the institutional side, many district attorneys' offices, including Orange County, have opened "conviction integrity units" to investigate claims of innocence.

But because of the decentralized nature of criminal justice in the U.S., reforms tend to be piecemeal, Natapoff said, and uncovering misconduct is often up to outsiders.

"The criminal system itself does not divulge these facts," Natapoff said, referring to the big informant scandals of recent decades. "It was advocates, it was the innocence movement, it was journalism starting to chip away at the culture of secrecy."

American businesses and shoppers paid the vast majority of the billions of dollars collected for the emergency tariffs that the Supreme Court recently ruled illegal. Companies are now pushing to get their money back. But can shoppers expect their own refund?

Probably not, according to Robert Shapiro, an international trade lawyer and partner at the law firm Thompson Coburn.

"And if you do, it'll be pennies on the dollar," Shapiro said.

The roughly $180 billion collected under the struck-down tariffs, according to an estimate by Goldman Sachs, was typically paid for directly by businesses, and indirectly by consumers through higher prices. Because those companies often paid the actual customs bill, any refund from the federal government would go to them.

Shoppers will have to wait for companies to get their refunds before any potential reimbursements might trickle down to them. And that could take a while. President Donald Trump suggested the question of whether the government has to refund those tariffs could be tied up in lawsuits.

"I guess it has to get litigated over for the next two years," Trump said during a press conference after the Supreme Court's decision.

Shapiro said when and if those businesses get a refund, some will pass along savings to consumers, but others will not. "They'll just take it as a gain," he said.

Several Democratic political leaders have pushed for a more direct resolution: Simply have the government send checks to Americans. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker sent a letter and invoice to Trump demanding that he refund every Illinois family $1,700. California Gov. Gavin Newsom also called on Trump to send out checks.

But there's a logistical issue: The tariff revenue isn't held in its own special account. When collected, it goes into the country's general fund. The U.S. Treasury could send out checks, but companies would still have a claim on their refunds. In that scenario, tariff refunds could be counted twice between customers and companies, drastically increasing the cost to the federal government.

There's another possibility, if companies are slow to pass their refunds along: Shoppers could launch class action lawsuits aimed at forcing companies to offer refunds for tariff surcharges.

Still, that poses a similar accounting challenge. For many products, the tariffed costs often weren't shared by one company and one customer, but across a supply chain. Think of products made of many materials — like a bike or a coffee maker — with parts made by different suppliers, which all contributed to tariff fees. Even a product as simple as a store-shelf-ready stuffed animal shipped from China can pass through multiple hands, from the importer to the wholesaler to the retailer, and finally on to the shopper.

How would the shopper prove what portion of the tariffs they paid and how much they deserved to get back?

"Tracing that through — it may be literally impossible," said Michael Ettlinger, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

But managing refunds could be easier for companies that put their tariff fees right on the receipt.

Erin Vandenberg is a frequent shopper with the athletic wear company Fabletics; she pays $70 a month for a membership and gets back credits to spend on outfits, like vests and fleece-lined leggings. Last year, she noticed a tariff surcharge on items, like $3.95 on top of a $69.95 berry-colored sports bra.

"They're making it very obvious what's happening," Vandenberg said. But she also found it discouraging. She recalls thinking, "Oh, well gosh! Maybe I don't want to buy this."

For her most recent order, before discounts and her credits, the value of the clothes totaled up to about $520, including $30 from tariff costs.

Since she had already paid for the membership credits, she went ahead with the order anyway.

Fabletics is far from the only company to shift some tariff costs to customers. The company was just the rare business to spell it out.

In a statement emailed to NPR, Fabletics said: "We implemented a clearly labeled tariff surcharge at checkout to be transparent with consumers and ensure we can continue providing the highest-quality products at the most competitive prices. The surcharge only partially covers our cost increases but we felt it was important to not pass the full burden of cost on to our consumers. While the Supreme Court ruling is an important development, tariffs remain in place and there are still many outstanding questions regarding implementation and potential refunds that we are closely monitoring."

Vandenberg has no idea how much she paid in tariff fees to other businesses. Now that those tariffs are gone and companies are pursuing refunds, Vandenberg would love to get her money back from them. And she would be willing to join a lawsuit to get it.

"At this point, I feel like those are sometimes the only way you can hold businesses, or companies, or the government accountable," Vanderberg said.
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on Feb. 23, 2026.

Self Help Graphics & Art has long been a creative home for Chicano artists and families in East Los Angeles. Now, a new documentary is inviting the community to help tell its story.

Chicano Gráfica, a documentary about Self Help Graphics & Art, explores how a small group of East Los Angeles artists altered the art world by embracing and celebrating their identity as Chicanos.

To chronicle this history, filmmakers Gloria Westcott and Grace Amemiya are asking community members to share memorabilia from the 1970s and 1990s. This can include VHS tapes, photography, invitations, visual art, postcards, greeting cards, T-shirts, CDs and records, according to an open community call from Self Help Graphics.

A gathering for the memorabilia collection will be held March 7 at Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park. All shared items will be returned.

The film, according to its website, “showcases the legacy of Self Help from its roots in the East Los Angeles barrio to its role as an international force that exported the Chicano art aesthetic and iconography in printmaking.”

A key player of the Chicano movement of the 1970s, Self Help Graphics & Art was founded in the East LA garage of Sister Karen Boccalero, a Franciscan nun and printmaker. It started with a small group of young Latino artists who used their medium to spread social justice messages.

From the onset, these artists involved members of the community in the process of making art and organizing programs, such as a 1972 Day of the Dead event considered to be the first public commemoration in the United States of a tradition rooted in Mexico’s indigenous origins.

This is the latest community call for personal memorabilia. Previous callouts have been held at the East Los Angeles County Library and Avenue 50 Studio, according to the Chicano Gráfica website.

The violence that erupted in Mexico after the death of a powerful drug lord has left many questioning whether the country will be able to co-host the World Cup in just over three months.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino thinks it can.

"Of course, we are monitoring the situation in Mexico these days, but I want to say from the outset that we have complete confidence in Mexico, in its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and in the authorities, and we are convinced that everything will go as smoothly as possible," Infantino said late Tuesday in a press conference in Colombia.

"Mexico is a great country, like in every country in the world, things happen; we don't live on the moon or another planet," Infantino added. "That's why we have governments, police, and authorities who will ensure order and security."

The Mexican army killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, "El Mencho," who led the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, on Sunday, sparking several days of violence. Cartel members burned cars and blocked roads in nearly a dozen Mexican states and authorities report that at least 70 people have died.

Four high-level soccer matches from the local leagues were postponed last Sunday, including one in the central city of Queretaro, where Mexico defeated Iceland 4-0 late Wednesday in a friendly match.

Before the match, a minute of silence was held in the Corregidora stadium in honor of the soldiers who died during the operation to capture Oseguera.

Thirteen World Cup matches are scheduled to be held in Mexico, including the opening game in Mexico City on June 11 between the co-host and South Africa. Guadalajara, the central hub for the Jalisco cartel, is scheduled to host four.

Colombia is set to play one game in Mexico City and one in Guadalajara.

"Our first two matches are in Mexico, but we know they will overcome this and move forward," said Ramón Jesurún, the president of the Colombian Soccer Federation. "I have absolute and total confidence in my geopolitical thinking that this is an issue Mexico will overcome, and overcome very quickly."

Other nations have expressed more concern. The Portuguese soccer federation said Tuesday that it was closely monitoring developments ahead of a planned friendly against Mexico in March. Jamaica is set to play New Caledonia in Guadalajara on March 26 in an intercontinental playoff semifinal, with the winner advancing to face Congo for a World Cup spot.

"The games are at the end of March, so we still have another month to see what happens; but it is making me very nervous, to be honest," said Michael Ricketts, the president of the Jamaican Soccer Federation. "We will be listening out for CONCACAF and FIFA to give us instructions (on) whether they are playing the games or whether they are immediately looking for other options."

Another Mexican city, Monterrey, will host a playoff where Bolivia plays Suriname and the winner faces Iraq for a spot in the tournament.

On Monday, Sheinbaum said there is "every guarantee" that the World Cup matches in Guadalajara will be played as planned and added that there was "no risk."

"We are in regular contact with the presidency and the authorities in Mexico and we are monitoring the situation," Infantino said. "The World Cup is going to be an incredible celebration".
Copyright 2026 NPR

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One windy morning in December 2024, teachers at Orange Vista High School rushed students into a line that stretched to the street. Southern California Edison had cut the power for parts of Riverside County to prevent its equipment from sparking a fire.

Lessons ended. Classrooms went dark. And anxious parents in the Inland Empire city of Perris waited impatiently to greet their children. A month later, the school lost power again, days after the Eaton and Palisades fires to the northwest destroyed entire Los Angeles County neighborhoods.

Orange Vista High was among at least five Riverside County school districts that reported closures during winter high winds in 2024 and 2025. Local school officials say the disruptions hit harder in economically disadvantaged districts, where families rely on critical services such as free meals and child care.

Since 2012, the California Public Utilities Commission has authorized investor-owned utilities such as Edison to cut power during severe weather events to lower the risk of wildfires. The commission reviews every outage. Utilities may pay penalties – as Edison did in this case – if they don’t notify ratepayers properly, or meet other standards.

Edison says shutoffs are necessary to save lives and protect communities. “Our mission really is to keep the power on when it is safe to do so,” said spokesperson Jeff Monford.

After the power shutoffs, the Val Verde Unified School District redirected $500,000 from the school facilities budget to buy battery storage units that could help Orange Vista High keep the lights on during future outages. But Garrick Owen, the district’s assistant superintendent, said the money would be better spent fixing the grid itself.

“If I had a magic wand, would I spend all the money to harden our schools against power outages, or would I spend it to harden the actual infrastructure of the power lines to not have the power outages?” he said.

As climate change drives more extreme weather and more blackouts across California, the cost of adaptation is a growing bill schools say they can't pay alone.

Low-income students lose out on services 

Because state funding to schools is based in part on student attendance, emergency events like power outages bring a financial risk. When a school closes for the day, or when attendance drops, that cuts into attendance numbers. Schools then can file a waiver request with the state Department of Education to protect their funding.

That’s what happened at public schools throughout Riverside County during the 2024-25 school year, when smoke from nearby fires and high winds created problems.

Eight school districts confirmed to CalMatters that they filed waiver requests with the state Department of Education in December 2024 and January 2025. Three districts – Nuview Union, Perris Elementary and Perris Union High – reported closures for at least one day each. Three more – Banning Unified, Beaumont Unified and Jurupa Unified – reported material decreases in attendance on high wind days. Two districts, San Jacinto Unified and Val Verde, reported both closures and low attendance days.

According to the Val Verde district, three schools there lost a total of 13 days of instruction because of the wind events. That’s more than other Riverside County schools that confirmed filing waiver requests to CalMatters. Val Verde schools also reported lower attendance in September 2024, when smoke from the Bridge, Line and Airport fires spread to the region.

After one chaotic day in December, Orange Vista High principal LaKrecia Graham said school administrators bought floodlights to help keep classes in session in case the power went out again. But when the next outage happened, so many worried parents picked up their children that the district decided to close anyway.

“It disrupts a lot of things and it puts people in a panic that I don't think is necessary,” Graham said. “And that's what's gonna keep happening.”

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LaKrecia Graham, principal of Orange Vista High School, in Perris, on Nov. 18, 2025.

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The lack of power isn’t just an inconvenience. It can pose a safety risk for students, said Catalina Chrest, principal of Skyview Elementary School, also in Perris. Children may hurt themselves navigating dark rooms, or they can lose access to essential needs like water, heaters and air conditioning.

Schools serve as community hubs. For low-income families and students with disabilities, losing access to them means more than a missed day of learning — it means losing child supervision, free meals and critical support services.

The meal they eat at school “might be one of their most nutritious meals of the day,” Chrest said.

In the Perris Elementary School District, more than 90% of students are low-income. At Skyview Academy and Clearwater Elementary School, wind whistling through buildings made classrooms frigid. Bathrooms went completely dark. Parents told school staff that their food was spoiling at home.

The outages “impact our families greater than families in a more affluent neighborhood,” said Perris Elementary School District superintendent Bruce Bivins.

Utilities weigh harms and benefits

When investor-owned utilities decide to turn the power off, the California Public Utilities Commission requires that they balance the potential harms against the benefits. Utilities regulated by the CPUC also must give notice before shutoffs and offer resources to make the outage easier on residents and schools.

In Riverside County, school officials and teachers said delayed notice during the winter wind events made it difficult to prepare for the shutoffs. At Orange Vista High, Graham said the school received notice of a potential outage at a certain time, but it came earlier, so staff was unprepared.

Paula Ford, assistant superintendent of business services at Jurupa Unified School District, said “actually, we would receive a notice that the power was down maybe an hour after the power was already down.”

After the January shutoffs that darkened Riverside County schools, the CPUC fined Southern California Edison $7.8 million for violating notification requirements. Terrie Prosper, a CPUC spokesperson, says the commission is still investigating Edison’s handling of the December shutoffs.

She added the utilities commission is closely monitoring Edison’s work to reduce power shutoffs.

“We understand that PSPS events can be disruptive for schools,” she said. “However, these actions are taken out of serious wildfire concerns. California has experienced devastating wildfires in recent years that have destroyed communities, closed schools for extended periods, and placed lives at risk.”

Clearwater Elementary in Perris, on Nov. 18, 2025.

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Southern California Edison did not comment on the penalty.

Edison spokesperson Monford said that, when possible, notifications for public safety power shutoffs take place three days in advance.

“In some instances, we are unable to send advanced notifications due to emergent weather,” Monford said. “This was especially the case last winter, when we had extraordinarily new wind events.”

Monford added the utility offers assistance to help schools become more resilient to the power outages. But not all schools benefit from the help.

The utility lends power generators to schools most affected by the power outages. He added the utility hopes to expand the program to lend battery storage systems. Edison also invited some districts, including the Jurupa Unified School District and San Jacinto School District, to daily emergency coordination calls, Monford said.

Critics said the outages may end up causing more harm than the events they’re responding to.

“They put a lot of time and effort and money, which I do not begrudge at all, into the analytics of fire risk to calculate the risk of a wildfire actually starting in certain weather conditions,” said Melissa Kasnitz, legal director for the Center for Accessible Technology. “What they have not done is put any fraction of effort into evaluating the risk of what happens when you turn people's power off.”

In response, Edison directed CalMatters to tools it uses to analyze shutoff risks, and to reports the utility has filed with regulators after incidents.

Power outages bring a financial toll 

School administrators say it’s unfair for districts to carry the financial burden of a problem they didn’t create. They also have to contend with a state education system that financially punishes districts for low attendance that results from emergencies out of their control.

Districts with fewer resources like Perris Elementary School District can’t afford generators and have to prioritize other needs.

Bivins said the district looked into backup power but couldn’t afford generators or battery storage. The district is smaller – serving only elementary students – so it obtains less funding than Val Verde Unified or other unified districts. Schools serving more low-income students also tend to see lower attendance rates, he said, meaning even less money coming in.

With so many urgent needs competing for limited dollars, a generator that might only be used a few times a year doesn’t make the cut.

“That could be better security on our campuses, more modernized facilities, better access to technology, or other things they can actually utilize right now versus the preparation for the possible one day this year (the power goes out),” Bivins said.

Student teacher Mayela Covarrubias works with first-grade students.

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An emergency generator on loan from Southern California Edison at Peralta Elementary in Riverside, on Nov. 19, 2025.

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But even schools that can afford generators face hidden costs from the outages.

In nearby Jurupa Valley, Peralta Elementary School was able to keep its doors open, the lights on and the heating and cooling systems running.

The Jurupa Unified School District spent more than $364,000 on two generators – each capable of powering an elementary school – and is investing in infrastructure upgrades to make deploying them easier, Ford said.

Because Peralta Elementary is in a high fire risk area surrounded by brush, Southern California Edison also loaned the school another generator through its pilot program. So far this year, the school hasn’t needed to use it.

Still, the outages take a financial toll. Even if schools are open, some parents keep children home – costing the district attendance-based funding.

“Because we stayed open … we're actually impacted more heavily than schools that close,” Ford said.

To obtain a waiver from the state to protect funding from an emergency, schools have to submit paperwork signed by the school board and county superintendent explaining what happened, and certify they have a plan to keep students learning during the disruption. But the process is uncertain: Schools don't know how much funding they'll keep until the state reviews the waiver request and runs its own numbers. Ford said that more leniency on the conditions necessary to qualify for a waiver could help schools during emergency events.

Bivins, the Perris Elementary Unified superintendent, said the state should fund schools based on enrollment, not attendance, so that emergencies don’t threaten budgets.

Michelle Hatfield, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said any changes to rules for how schools handle planned outages – and any proposals to fund schools by enrollment rather than by attendance – would require legislation.

Even districts investing in backup power say they can't fully close the gap on their own.

At Orange Vista High School, newly installed battery storage units will help keep the lights on during the next planned outage. It’s all the Val Verde Unified District could do, said Owen, the assistant superintendent.

But the battery storage systems don’t really solve the broader problem. If a blackout happens at multiple schools over multiple days, “we don't have a plan for that,” he said.

Equipping every school in the district with generators would probably cost millions. "It's one of those numbers I don't need to know, because there's not gonna be that funding," Owen said.

Natasha Uzcátegui-Liggett contributed reporting.

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