The Brief

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In December, fourth graders in a class at Delevan Drive Elementary School in Los Angeles were given a homework assignment: Write a book report about Pippi Longstocking, then draw or use artificial intelligence to make a book cover.

When Jody Hughes’ daughter asked Adobe Express for Education, graphic design software provided by her teacher, to generate an image of “long stockings a red headed girl with braids sticking straight out,” it produced nothing resembling the Swedish children’s book character she had accurately described. Instead, using recently-added artificial intelligence, it generated sexualized imagery of women in lingerie and bikinis. Hughes quickly contacted other parents, who said they were able to reproduce similar results on their own school-issued Chromebook computers. Days later, the parent group Schools Beyond Screens told the L.A. school board they were opposed to further use of the Adobe software.

The incident raised questions not only about the L.A. school district’s use of a particular AI product but also about guidelines state administrators provide to schools throughout California on how to safely adopt the technology. A few weeks after the incident, the state Department of Education published a new edition of the guidelines, which it had been working on for several months with help from a group of 50 teachers, administrators, and experts. The revision came in response to instructions from the Legislature, which passed two laws in 2024 telling the department, essentially, to get a handle on AI’s rapid spread among students, teachers and administrators.

Critics wonder if the guidelines would have helped avoid what parents referred to as Pippigate; the controversy, they say, provides evidence that districts, schools, and parents, who often lack the time or resources to ensure that software tools don’t produce harmful output, need more support from the state. The guidelines, they add, are also too vague in places and don’t do enough to define guardrails for how teachers use AI in the classroom.

The issues with the guidelines call into question whether the department can effectively respond to instructions from elected officials on how to safeguard a technology that, according to the guidelines themselves, can leave children isolated and with narrowed perspectives.

With AI rapidly becoming more prevalent in society, effectively managing the technology has become an urgent issue. Though OpenAI’s ChatGPT popularized generative AI just three years ago, polls show that a majority of teachers and students nationwide now use the technology in some capacity.

While AI can help save teachers time, personalize learning, and support students who do not speak English or who have disabilities, it can also inaccurately grade their papers and generate images that perpetuate or intensify stereotypes or sexualized imagery of women, particularly women of color. The majority of California K-12 students are people of color. Since the rapid expansion of generative AI adoption started, teachers who spoke with CalMatters have felt both a need to prepare their students for a future where AI is ubiquitous and a fear that AI tools can enable cheating on tests and lead to deficiencies in reasoning, logic, and critical thinking.

“Educators have a narrow window to set norms before they harden,” said LaShawn Chatmon, CEO of the National Equity Project, an Oakland group that helps teachers produce more equitable outcomes. “Local education agencies that take advantage of this opportunity to co-design learning and policy with students and families can help shift who gets to decide AI’s role in our learning and lives.”

A district spokesperson told CalMatters that images generated by the AI model don’t align with district standards and “we are collaborating with Adobe to address the issue.” Adobe VP of Education Charlie Miller said the company rolled out changes to address the issue within 24 hours of hearing about the incident. Miller did not respond to questions about how the tool was vetted before deployment.

As a result of what his child experienced, Hughes thinks students shouldn’t be told to use text-to-image generators for homework assignments. But he sees no attempt to place such limits on use of the technology in the Department of Education guidance.

“These tech companies are making things marketed to kids that are not fully tested,” he said. “I don't know where to draw the line but elementary school is too young because it can get real nasty real fast as we’ve seen with the Grok stuff,” he added, referring to recent abuse of the Grok AI system to nonconsensually remove clothing in images of women and children.

Issues with AI guidance

The guidance supplies a list of unacceptable uses of AI by students, such as plagiarism, and urges educators to integrate real-world scenarios and case studies into discussions to help students apply ethical principles to practical situations. It also says students should be taught to “think critically and creatively” about AI tools’ “benefits and challenges.”

Julie Flapan, director of the Computer Science Equity Project at UCLA’s Center X, said that the Pippi Longstocking incident called to mind a 2024 study that found young Black and Latino people are more likely to use generative AI than young white people. That data, in tandem with the historical disparity in access to computer science education, means, she said, that some parents and students will need help to think critically about AI.

“We often think about technological advances as ways to level the playing field,” she said. “But the reality is we know that they exacerbate inequalities.”

Flapan said it makes sense that the guidelines urge critical thinking and vetting of AI tools before use and encourage education leaders to engage communities in decisionmaking. But, she added, the guidance doesn’t detail how to do that.

Charles Logan, a former teacher now at a responsible tech laboratory at Northwestern University, said that the guidelines fall short by not offering teachers and parents clear guidance on how they can opt out of using the technology. A Brookings Institution study released in January, based on interviews with students, teachers and administrators in 50 countries, concluded that the risks of AI in classrooms currently outweigh the benefits and can “undermine children's foundational development."

Mark Johnson, head of government affairs at Code.org, praised the guidelines, but said the state should offer more AI education support to educators and make proficiency in AI and computer science requirements for graduation. A recent report by Johnson found four states adopted such graduation requirements after releasing AI guidance.

Katherine Goyette, who served as computer science coordinator for the Department of Education until January, when asked about the Longstocking incident, pointed to parts of the guidance emphasizing the importance of engaging families, communities and school board members when evaluating AI tools. She also said critical thinking is important in preventing such outcomes, pointing to guidance that pushes administrators to consider potential harms before use.

Additional direction is on the way for how to put the recently released guidance into practice: the department’s AI working group will introduce specific policy recommendations based on the guidance by July.

The pressure of the AI inevitability narrative 

The latest version of California Department of Education AI guidelines come as local educational agencies move away from blanket AI bans considered after the 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Instead, districts are moving toward deciding when and how students and teachers can use the technology. Those local decisions will be critical to how the technology is actually used in schools, since the state cannot require school districts adopt its guidance.

Even the largest school districts in California can encounter serious issues when deploying AI. In June 2024, Los Angeles Unified’s superintendent promised the best AI tutor in the world but had to pull it from use weeks later. A week later, news emerged that a majority of members on the San Diego Unified School District board, the second-largest district in the state, signed a contract for curriculum that they didn’t know included an AI grading tool.

The move toward state and district AI guidance, rather than bans, reflects a broader sense of inevitability in the state around adoption of the technology. In his October veto of a bill that would have prevented use of some chatbots by minors, Gov. Gavin Newsom said AI is already shaping the world and that “We cannot prepare our youth for a future where AI is ubiquitous by preventing their use of these tools altogether.”

Logan, who recently advised San Diego parents about how to resist and refuse AI use in classrooms, pushes back against this idea. He says the California Department of Education guidance should address situations in which parents might want to avoid having their children use AI at all.

“It’s surprising that the guidance wants to make proficient AI users of kindergartners and there wasn’t space to say no or opt out,” he said in a phone call.

The statewide AI guidance joins a series of efforts to protect kids from AI, including bills now before the Legislature that seeks to place a moratorium on toys with companion chatbots and protect student privacy in the age of AI. Common Sense Media and OpenAI are working on getting a kids online safety initiative on the ballot for the election in November.

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

California’s first-in-the-nation fast food council — created to give workers a voice on wages, safety and working conditions — has not met in over a year and has no chairperson.

Now the workers the council was built to protect, organized by the Service Employees International Union, are taking their concerns directly to the state, demanding that Gov. Gavin Newsom appoint a chairperson so the council can do its work, as required by law.

Luna Mondragon, who works at a Carl’s Jr. in Milpitas, told CalMatters through a translator that she started out as a cook but has done many other duties in her five years there. After she joined the fast food workers union, she said she began speaking up, especially when she started to experience aches and pains from her job. Since then, she said she has been retaliated against, including with fewer shifts.

“If we don’t have our health we can’t accomplish anything,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “It’s so important for them to appoint a chair. We need the council.”

The council was created as part of a 2023 compromise that also set a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. It has the power to set standards on wages, health, safety and working conditions — and to raise the minimum wage annually for hundreds of thousands of fast food workers at chains with 60 or more locations nationwide.

The council — composed of four members representing the businesses, four members representing labor and a chairperson who’s an “unaffiliated” member of the public — must, under state law, hold at least two meetings a year, though the law does not specify who should enforce this provision.

The council only held those meetings in 2024; last year it held two subcommittee meetings, the latest in February 2025. Shortly after, the council’s chairperson, Nick Hardeman, resigned when Newsom appointed him to a different state position. When reached by CalMatters, Hardeman said he did not want to speak on the record about a council he has not chaired in a while.

In 2022, the Legislature raised fast food workers’ minimum wage to $22 an hour. The industry fought back, gathering signatures to repeal the law. Workers across the state went on strike. In late 2023, the SEIU and the industry reached a last-minute compromise: Workers dropped a ballot fight in exchange for a $20 minimum wage and the establishment of the council. The SEIU-affiliated California Fast Food Workers Union launched the following year — lacking the collective bargaining rights of a traditional union but acting as an advocacy and membership group for workers.

Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor, would not answer questions about the council, instead referring CalMatters to the state’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency. Crystal Young, a spokesperson for the agency, confirmed that there is no chairperson and the council’s meetings are on hold. The council’s four-person staff continues to respond to inquiries and prepare for future meetings, she said.

On April 16, marking about two years since the council’s first meeting, workers delivered a 96-page book to the governor’s office, describing more than 100 complaints filed with CalOSHA, the state labor department and different city agencies since the council’s formation, alleging wage theft and poor working conditions. The union estimates there are about 630,000 fast food workers in the state, about 75% of whom are people of color and 20% of whom are immigrants.

“Employers feel newly empowered to threaten us with calling ICE when we ask questions about paid sick leave or [workers’ compensation] or report health and safety hazards,” Angelica Hernandez, a McDonald’s worker who is a member of the fast food council, said in the book.

Rich Reinis, a member of the council who represents employers and is a former franchise owner, said he has no knowledge of when meetings will resume and is waiting. In his view, the council should have been discussing “fire and ICE.” The phrase refers to the effects of last year’s L.A. County fires on the fast food industry and its workers, some of whom lost their homes, and what businesses and workers need to know about immigration enforcement.

Reinis also wants the council to order a study of the wage increase’s effects on prices and employment. Competing studies by UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz have reached opposite conclusions, and the question of affordability remains unresolved, he said.

A Los Angeles Times columnist who analyzed the competing studies concluded the debate over the wage's effects is likely to continue. Hernandez, the councilmember, rejected the industry's claims the wage increase has hurt business. “The sky didn’t fall on the California fast food industry,” she said.

The council is also required to submit a performance review to the Legislature every three years — a deadline approaching without a single full meeting in the past year. Before he resigned, Hardeman, the former chairperson, said it was hard for the council to reach decisions.

“The staff will have to write a report without having any meetings,” Reinis said. “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

Chris Holden, the former California assemblymember who authored the law that raised the workers’ wages and created the council, told CalMatters the council was “groundbreaking” and “needs to address the challenges that were the genesis of the council in the first place.” He said he hopes the governor is doing his due diligence to identify a new chairperson.

“I want to tell [the governor] to finish the job he started,” Julieta Garcia, a cook at a Pizza Hut in Los Angeles, told CalMatters through a translator. “Leave a good legacy for this generation and the future generation, so you can be recognized as a leader who gave fast food workers a chance.”

Young, the Labor & Workforce Development Agency spokesperson who was speaking on the governor’s behalf, confirmed that Newsom’s office received the workers’ book.

The governor's office has not said when — or whether — Newsom plans to appoint a chairperson to the council.

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

Nearly 20 years after founding a successful environmental and safety consulting services company, Robin Thorne said she still gets checked for being a Black woman in the construction industry.

“I've had situations where people, they don't even make eye contact, and then the male has to step back to say, 'She's running the show,'" she said.

Robin Thorne (in pink jacket) founded DemoChicks to help women of color land jobs in construction industries.

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Courtesy DemoChicks

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Thorne runs CTI Environmental, a multi-million dollar company that was contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers to do debris removal after the L.A. fires.

She’s been an engineer for decades and knows fewer than one of four workers in architecture, construction and engineering industries who are women — and much fewer are women of color.

That proportion is low considering 47% of the U.S. labor force are women.

That's why she’s organized a “Women in STEM Signing Day” at Long Beach City College on Saturday, May 30. The event’s meant to create the type of excitement normally associated with young people signing up for college sports teams.

She wants younger women to tap into their drive to succeed

There were far fewer women in these jobs when Thorne was growing up in Philadelphia, but she didn’t let roadblocks, including those in her personal life — like being a single mom on public assistance — stop her.

DemoChicks helps give young women of color exposure to construction-related jobs.

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Courtesy DemoChicks

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“When I thought about being an engineer, I didn't think about it being male-dominated. I just knew I wanted to be an engineer,” she said.

She added that some women do give up on similar dreams or fail to find the spark that allows them to see themselves doing these jobs. That’s why Thorne started DemoChicks seven years ago. She wants young women to see her and think “engineer,” as well as connect with women who are already working in these industries.

Mentorship, examples, and money

The organization is called DemoChicks because demolition is one of the jobs that keeps Thorne’s company busy. More women are entering architecture, construction and engineering jobs than before, but the percentage of women in each industry is still low:

15% in engineering
26% in architecture
11% in construction

These are mostly stable jobs with good entry-level wages, jobs such as safety coordinators, project managers, project engineers and construction managers.

Beyond giving teen girls IRL examples of women in construction industry jobs, DemoChicks supports their academic efforts, which often means helping them out meet college expenses. DemoChicks gave out $1,000 scholarships to eight women last year (35 applied).

A third generation Latina truck driver from South LA

One of those scholarship recipients in 2024 was Ana Terrazas. She recalled growing up in South L.A., not as a latch key kid, but as a truck cab kid.

Ana Terrazas as a teen at her mother's construction job. Terrazas now works for a large construction company as a project engineer.

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Courtesy Ana Terrazas

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 ”My mother… was a truck driver,” Terrazas said, driving belly dump trailers on construction sites. Terrazas would help her mother change tires and lend a hand with any mechanical repairs. Her grandfather was a truck driver too.

“Since then I've always been obsessed with job sites, and also the superintendent, the one that would tell everybody where to go, how to do their job, and organize everything,” Terrazas said.

Two years ago she was working hard to finish her two majors — civil engineering and construction management — to earn her bachelor’s degree from Cal Poly Pomona. She applied for and was awarded a $1,500 scholarship from DemoChicks. That help, she said, had a big effect.

DemoChicks founder Robin Thorne, right, presents Ana Terrazas with a scholarship.

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Courtesy Ana Terrazas

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“I didn't have to take as many hours of work to be able to focus more on my studies and also in my internship during that time,” Terrazas said.

The internship, at Swinerton, a nationwide construction company that's more than 100 years old, turned into full time work as a project engineer.

Terrazas paid it forward earlier this year, inviting Thorne and a dozen DemoChicks to a Swinerton work site during Women in Construction Week. She urged the women to tap into their drive to succeed and lean on people like her for help.

“As long as they're driven and this is what they want, there shouldn't be a reason for them to not be able to get a job here,” Terrazas said.

With LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries just steps away, it may be easy to forget that we have the richest Ice Age fossil site on Earth right here with the La Brea Tar Pits.

But the museum and research facilities at the tar pits are also scheduled for a multimillion dollar renovation.

Built in 1977, the George C. Page Museum at the tar pits has a special place in the hearts of Angelenos who’ve ever taken a field trip to see its massive mastodon skeletons or dire wolf skulls. Or have maybe shed a tear at the sculptures of the mammoth family in distress in the Lake Pit out front.

All that stuff is staying, museum educator Kay Lai told LAist, but new interactive exhibits will allow visitors to better understand the science that’s happening in their own backyard.

A rendering of the new outdoor amphitheater at the La Brea Tar Pits.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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The transformation

“This museum, as beloved as it is, definitely needs that refresh,” Lai said. “And I’m really excited for the next generation of kids that gets to grow up and make new memories here with this new space.”

Lai said the museum refresh will include a new focus on Zed — the 80% complete Columbian mammoth found here — and other notable animals they’ve unearthed over the decades. The mammoth’s bones will be reassembled and Zed will “stand tall for the first time since the Ice Age,” according to the museum’s website.

“We’re able to focus on the very first saber-toothed cat fossils that we’ve ever discovered ... As well as some of our Ice Age survivors ... like Pebbles the Puma ... Pebbles would have been the ancestor of some of the mountain lions that still live in Los Angeles today, including P-22 that passed away a couple years ago,” Lai said.

Then there’s the fish bowl: you know, the fossil lab with windows where you can watch researchers at work?

An even better fish bowl

“So we’ll still have the fish bowl, but it’s going to be much more interactive and there’ll be much more discussion of what’s going on inside the fossil lab,” said Regan Dunn, assistant deputy director and curator at the new Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research.

A digital rendering of the new fish bowl at the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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Dunn explained that the area where they store their collections of fossils and other specimens is getting major updates too.

“Super valuable, millions of specimens, will be in upgraded systems where there’s climate control. There’ll be enclosed cabinets and be under much better maintenance. And also allow for much more research to happen,” she said.

The La Brea Tar Pits are still very much an active paleontological research site. Dunn said any time a hole goes in the ground in the Hancock Park area, a new discovery is made.

With new outdoor classrooms and a 1-kilometer pedestrian pathway that will take visitors past excavation sites, the idea is to make the research going on here more visible to the public.

Your last chance to visit the tar pits before its two-year transformation is July 6.

A digital rendering showing the aerial view of the updated La Brea Tar Pits grounds.

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Courtesy the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

In the face of the nation's highest gas prices, California lawmakers approved a bill to ease restrictions on E85 conversion kits — devices that let conventional gasoline cars run on a cheaper, mostly ethanol fuel blend.

Assembly Bill 2046, dubbed the “Access to Affordable Gas Act” by its author, Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Stockton Democrat, advanced through the Assembly on a 59-0 vote with no debate or opposition.

The measure is the latest example of Sacramento lawmakers scrambling to respond to gas costs that have soared amid the Iran-Israel war, which has rattled global oil markets and pushed California pump prices above $6 a gallon. It now heads to the California state Senate and would need Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval before it becomes law.

“Californians consistently pay more at the pump than drivers from other states, and gas prices are once again climbing across the state,” Ransom said on the Assembly floor Thursday. “For commuters and working families, [the proposal] offers a practical way to save money.”

If approved in its current form, the measure would exempt manufacturers of E85 converter kits from an approval process by the state’s primary climate regulator, the California Air Resources Board, which requires companies to demonstrate the devices do not increase a vehicle's emissions. The bill would leave in place a separate federal certification process run by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Members in Sacramento are looking for ways to try to reduce costs — or appear to reduce costs of driving — and so this is a way to do that,” said Aaron Smith, a UC Berkeley economist and fuels expert.

The converter kits, which cost between $800 to $1,250, according to a legislative analysis of the bill, would let drivers convert their cars to run on both gasoline and E85 fuel.

E85 is a blend of up to 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline; the share of ethanol typically is between 55% and 85%, said Smith, the Berkeley expert.

Jeff Wilkerson, government affairs manager for Pearson Fuels, the largest E85 fuel provider in the state and a bill supporter, said E85 — much of which is made from Midwest corn — is largely insulated from overseas oil shocks that drive California gas prices. The ethanol blend has sold for $2 or more less per gallon than gasoline during recent price spikes.

While E85 is typically priced lower than gasoline and can reduce petroleum dependence and carbon emissions, it delivers 20% to 30% fewer miles per gallon, according to the air board, meaning drivers only save money when E85 is priced at least 20% to 30% below gasoline.

About 1.3 million vehicles in California can currently use the fuel, which is sold at about 640 stations statewide — just 3% of the state’s more than 15,000 fuel pumps, according to the bill analysis.

Ransom said more E85 pumps would be built if the state loosened restrictions and encouraged demand for the fuel blend. She stressed that her bill would present E85 as an alternative.

“For some people, it may not be a wise choice, but at least now it’s going to be a choice,” she said.

Environmentally, the fuel is rated cleaner than regular gasoline by California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. But that rating has critics. Smith, the Berkeley economist, said the benefits of ethanol are likely overstated. Official numbers likely understate emissions from land use as rising corn demand for ethanol pushes farmers to clear forested land.

The state’s own certification record offers a cautionary tale. Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the board, said the agency has received only five applications from companies for E85 conversion kits since 2008 and that none has cleared the certification process, which is designed to ensure modified vehicles still meet their original emissions standards. Supporters of the proposal argue the board moves slowly and its regulations are burdensome.

But loosening that standard carries its own risk, cautioned Aaron Kurz, senior consultant on the Assembly Transportation Committee, especially now.

As the federal government has stripped scientific expertise from regulatory decisions, he wrote in his analysis, “this committee should consider if the state should cede authority over an inherently scientific process and set a precedent for transferring approval authority to the federal government.”