The Brief

The use of education technology in schools, such as artificial intelligence, digital surveillance and content filters, poses a threat to the civil rights of students with disabilities, LGBTQ students and students of color, a new report released Wednesday warns.

Some technology used in schools to block explicit adult content and flag students at risk of self-harm or harming others have also created serious problems for already vulnerable students, cautions the report by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that advocates for civil rights in the digital world.

The report is based on a wide-ranging online national survey about the technology used by schools, students and teachers. This summer, the Center for Democracy and Technology polled 1,029 ninth- through 12th-grade students, 1,018 parents of sixth through 12th grade students and 1,005 teachers of sixth through 12th grade students in a sample the organization said was weighted to be “nationally representative.”

According to the Center for Democracy and Technology, the surveys also indicate widespread confusion about the role of artificial intelligence in the classroom, with a majority of parents, students and teachers saying they want more information and training about how to properly use it.

The risks to students

The report outlines how school technology can, often inadvertently, harm students. The Center for Democracy and Technology says these harms are felt most acutely by vulnerable students.

Students reported incidents of LGBTQ classmates being outed by digital surveillance, a potentially traumatizing event of sharing their sexual identity or orientation without their consent.

Students with disabilities said they were most likely to use artificial intelligence — and they were more likely to report facing disciplinary action for using it.

One-third of teachers said content related to race or the LGBTQ community is more likely to be restricted by filters. The center said this “amounts to a digital book ban.”

Some schools have faced pushback for the way they deployed technology. After the American Civil Liberties Union sued a school district in Texas, the district loosened a filter that had blocked the website of the Trevor Project, a website aimed at LGBTQ youth.

“There are certain groups of students who should already be protected by existing civil rights laws, and yet they are still experiencing disproportionate and negative consequences because of the use of this education data and technology,” said Elizabeth Laird, director of equity in civic technology for the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Although schools often have dedicated staff and other practices set up to ensure that students’ civil rights are being protected, Laird said its survey indicates that schools have not fully wrestled with how education technology is affecting the promise of an equitable education, resulting in civil rights and technology being treated as separate issues.

“I think they’ve been kept separate, and the time is now to bring those together,” Laird said.

More federal guidance needed

While schools have been conducting more outreach than in previous years, the survey shows an increase in student and parent concerns about data and privacy over the past year. Survey data collected in previous years shows both parents and students need more outreach and engagement on how schools are selecting and using technology.

Last October, the White House released a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, but civil rights groups — including the ACLU, the American Association of School Librarians, American Library Association, Disability Rights in Education Defense Fund and the Electronic Frontier Foundation — signed a letter accompanying the Center for Democracy and Technology’s report, petitioning the federal Department of Education for more guidance.

“In the year since the release of the Blueprint, the need for education-related protections remains and, if anything, is even more urgent with the explosive emergence of generative AI,” according to the letter.

Fifty-seven percent of teachers in the survey stated they haven’t had any substantive training in AI, while 24% say they have received training in how to detect inappropriate use of AI.

The survey also found that 58% of students have used ChatGPT or other generative AI programs, and 19% said they have submitted a paper written using AI. Students report using AI both for school assignments and for dealing with mental health issues or personal problems with family and friends.

Students with disabilities are more likely to use generative AI: 72% said they’ve used the technology. Parents of students with disabilities are more likely to say that their students have been disciplined for their use of artificial intelligence. The report calls higher rates of discipline among vulnerable communities “particularly worrisome.”

These students and their parents — 71% of students with disabilities and 79% of their parents — express more concern than others about the privacy and security of the data collected and stored by the school.

Licensed special education teachers are more likely to have conversations with students and their parents about student privacy and equity issues in technology, a “promising practice that could be extended to the rest of the school population,” the Center for Democracy and Technology recommends.

School surveillance

The civil rights issues can go beyond the walls of the school. Some students, particularly students of color and those from lower-income communities are more likely to rely on school-issued devices when they are at home. Monitoring and tracking can therefore follow them home.

“Their learning environment for those students is quite different than those who can essentially opt out of some of this tracking,” Laird said.

Students who use technology devices to charge their personal phones may also find that this technology will scan and monitor these personal devices as well. Among students who have used their school device for charging, 51% said school software began syncing with and downloading content from their personal device.

Monitoring technology became prevalent in the pandemic-era remote learning, but it has persisted, with 88% of teachers reporting their schools use the technology. The White House named preventing the unchecked monitoring of students a priority in its blueprint. The Center for Democracy and Technology says that the use of surveillance technology can cause a host of problems for students.

Students with disabilities and LGBTQ students are more likely to report being disciplined as a result of technology that monitors them. Laird said that sometimes students are disciplined for something the technology flagged, but other times, they are disciplined because of their reaction to being flagged.

Schools sometimes share data directly with law enforcement — even after school hours. Fifty-three percent of special education teachers and 46% of teachers in Title I schools said data was shared with law enforcement after hours. During an interview with the Center for Democracy and Technology, the parent of a ninth grader said that law enforcement was contacted even before she was notified when something on her child’s device was flagged by the school’s monitoring technology. Her son was questioned for an hour without her consent.

“All of those things can result in students being removed from the classroom and losing instructional time,” said Laird. “And so if those students are being disproportionately flagged and being intervened in a disproportionate way, this could also be a potential violation of [a student’s right to a free and appropriate public education], which is specific to preventing discrimination on the basis of disability.”

Biking on river trails, going on picnics and surfing in the ocean are activities California residents cherish every summer. But headlines about the use of toxic chemicals in flood control channels around Orange County have created anxiety for those looking forward to their favorite activities this summer.

Dozens of environmental activists and Orange County residents packed the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting this week to urge the county to halt the routine use of toxins they say poison waterways and wash out into the ocean.

But several supervisors said it wasn’t that simple. The chemical prevents overgrowth in flood control channels, and that overgrowth could lead to backups and flooding, affecting neighborhoods and businesses during heavy rains.

Controversy over the chemical use led to an announcement last month by Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley, declaring that chemical usage would be halted for the moment. The issue then came before the board this week for further discussion.

Supervisors decided to study the issue and revisit it in the months ahead, and directed the OC Public Works department to evaluate methods for clearing overgrowth of vegetation that crowd flood channels, and look for alternate methods of doing so.

Brent Linas, founder of the Orange County Creek Team, which has succeeded in bringing the environmental issue to the public’s attention through salty Instagram posts and other social media tactics, blasted what he described as the board’s inaction.

He feels that the board is “deeply dysfunctional” and plans on using the meeting as momentum to spread awareness about the chemicals' negative effects on the environment. “There’s palpable outrage in Orange County right now around this and we fully intend to tap into that,” Linas said.

Foley also plans to reintroduce public noticing requirements at the next meeting June 23. The notices would alert residents to the planned use of any pesticides and herbicides. “Orange County residents deserve transparency to help make informed decisions about where their families recreate,” Foley said in a statement released the after the meeting. “I remain encouraged by the overwhelming public support in exploring nontoxic solutions for our waterways.”

How to watchdog your local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention. Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The Orange County Board of Supervisors meets on alternating Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. at 400 W. Civic Center Drive, Santa Ana. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

A program dedicated to providing low-income California residents with extra money for fruits and vegetables is likely to go under this summer if additional funds are not allocated in this year’s state budget, according to concerned food justice advocates.

The CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program provides CalFresh recipients with up to $60 a month of free produce each month, in addition to their benefits. In May alone, the program disbursed over $5 million and “served 95,520 California households,” said Grecia Marquez-Nieblas, senior manager at food policy nonprofit Fullwell, which has backed the program.

“Overwhelmingly, folks have been telling us that they want it to continue, that it’s made a really positive impact on them,” Marquez-Nieblas said. “Their diabetes is better managed; their high blood pressure is better managed.”

Those people are now at risk of losing access to that support as funds whittle down. The state budget is set to be finalized on June 15, and “as far as we know, there is no continued funding that has been proposed,” Marquez-Nieblas said.

“When this program ends, we’ll have less money to spend, [at] a time when groceries are incredibly more expensive. Gas is more expensive. Everything is more expensive,” she said. “It’s just, unfortunately, a compounding effect. There’s lots of stuff that’s impacting the same people.”

The program is simple to use: When customers purchase food at participating markets, like Arteaga’s Food Center in San José, they just swipe their EBT (electronic benefit transfer) card.

For every purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables with that card, customers receive an instant rebate each month, applied to their card. The rebate money can be spent on any food or goods covered by CalFresh, like meat, eggs and dairy — it is not limited to fruits and vegetables.

Marquez-Nieblas explained that the pilot program has been implemented in three phases — the latest of which received a limited, one-time allocation of $36 million from the state budget. That seems like a large number, “until we realize that there are hundreds of thousands of individuals across the state using the program.”

“It’s been proven many times that CalFresh — and programs like this that support people having more money for food — are incredibly impactful for lifting children out of poverty, for supporting seniors with limited incomes, for anybody,” Marquez-Nieblas said. “Foundationally, these programs are good. They’re good for public health.”

Food policy advocates said they are hoping for $100 million for the program to continue to operate year-round. Instead, it was reappropriated around $4.8 million — the remaining funds from last year’s budget cycle, in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “May Revise” proposal, according to H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for the California Department of Finance.

“The program will operate until funds are fully utilized,” Palmer said in an email to KQED.

The program’s end would come at a particularly stressful time for CalFresh recipients. This month, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, California has begun enforcing new and expanded federal guidelines that require some CalFresh recipients to work 20 hours a week, or an average of 80 hours a month — with a stark reduction in food benefits for those who don’t.

The changes were prompted by the passing of President Donald Trump’s H.R.1 last year.

“Not only does it add in the onerous work requirement — a lot of people who are already receiving CalFresh are working — but now they have this bureaucratic paperwork to provide,” said Kathy Saile, California director of national nonprofit No Kid Hungry. “There’s some real concern that people could lose benefits just because they couldn’t figure out the paperwork.”

H.R. 1’s impact, which also cuts food benefits for some refugees and asylum seekers, is apparent, according to federal data analyzed by the nonpartisan research group Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The center estimated that nationwide, SNAP participation fell by almost 9% — more than 3.5 million people — between H.R.1’s start in July 2025 and February 2026.

Palmer said the state was taking proactive steps to maintain residents’ enrollment in the program.

“This includes leveraging existing data to determine possible exemptions from the new SNAP work requirements, implementing automation, and conducting client outreach,” he said.

He added that the latest budget revision has “a total of $38 million for the CalFood program — which funds food banks for the purchase, storage, and transportation of food grown and/or produced in California.”

In a time of rising bureaucratic barriers implemented by H.R. 1, Marquez-Nieblas said the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program is part of the state’s food safety net.

“This is not just about backfill,” she said. “It’s not just about responding to the impacts (of H.R. 1), which are incredibly awful. It’s also about setting ourselves up for success in the future, knowing we have to invest proactively.”

Marquez-Nieblas said CalFresh recipients should keep their eyes on the California Department of Social Services website for any possible updates and changes in the future.

While implementation of California’s high school ethnic studies mandate has stalled, districts across the state are rolling out classes that encourage students to explore the lesser-told histories of their communities.

Freshmen at Duarte High School this year unearthed the history of a San Gabriel Valley community that was all but erased by commercial development and the construction of the 210 and 605 freeways.

Newspaper headlines often focused on incidents of violence and segregation in the majority Black and Mexican American community of Rocktown, but when the students interviewed former residents, they heard a different story.

“It was a great community for us,” said Alfred Hernandez Zamora. “We just don't want to be forgotten.”

The study of Rocktown was a central theme in the school's first ethnic studies course.

“Ethnic studies is providing space to hear from communities and from points of view that are not traditionally covered in our history classes,” said Casey Ramirez, who teaches the class at Duarte High in addition to government, economics, world and U.S. history.

California legislators passed a law in 2021 that required all schools to offer the course by the 2025-26 school year, but have yet to provide the funding needed to enact the mandate. Duarte Unified, like many other districts, passed its own one-semester ethnic studies graduation requirement ahead of the expected state deadline.

Duarte High School’s curriculum is the result of a collaboration between educators, research into the region’s history and the students’ own interests.

“I've only seen one part of Duarte, and that's the Duarte that I was raised in,” said Leslie Martinez, a rising sophomore. “There's a lot of things that Ms. Ramirez is teaching me, and that's making me more curious to dig deeper [into] my city and where I grew up.”

An opportunity to create an ‘engaging class’

California’s model ethnic studies curriculum describes the field as an “interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, with an emphasis on the experiences of people of color in the United States.” Districts could develop their course based on this framework or from scratch.

“It was our opportunity to create a really engaging class that really speaks to our student body,” said Luis Haro, Duarte High’s principal for the last eight years.

The majority of Duarte High School’s population is Latino, but there are also Filipino, Asian, white, Black and multiracial students. Most students qualify for free-and reduced price lunches, a proxy for being low-income in public schools.

“In my experience, our students don't know our history, and they don't really have a true understanding of their own identity,” Haro said.

Haro joined a committee of administrators and teachers, including Ramirez, that collaborated with the UCLA History-Geography Project to develop the new course.

UCLA staff guided Duarte educators through reams of local history research and helped the team develop goals for the class, including a student-led civics project.

“Getting to learn and feel like a college student again,” Ramirez said. “It really did make me excited to teach the class.”

They also developed units on students’ personal identity, Indigenous, Latino, Black and Asian American Pacific Islander history. The committee also met with parents and presented their work to the district’s board.

“[Ethnic studies] gave us a path to this project to see people in our community that aren't really talked about,” Ramirez said.

Uncovering the history of the ‘Davis Addition’

The region is the original home of the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation. The then-governor of Alta California granted former soldier Andres Avelino Duarte nearly 7,000 acres in 1841, including what became the city that shared his name. The area was eventually subdivided into farms and eventually, homes.

From the late 19th century through the 1970s, Black and Mexican American families settled in the “Davis Addition,” a subdivision of the land grant that became better known as Rocktown.

Ramirez first read about Rocktown in the research UCLA gathered for the curriculum development process, but couldn’t find much else about the community online.

She started downloading news articles from Newspapers.com and sharing them with the class. Many of the stories often focused on crime and violence in the community, from police raids on drinking and gambling establishments, to fires.

The articles also alluded to the segregation of the early 20th century.

A 1928 article from the Monrovia Daily News described the schedule for a new municipal pool. Mondays were “reserved for the use of colored people.”

“ Why are we not allowing people to do things simply because of the color of their skin or like their origin?” said Khloe Carter, a rising sophomore who took the ethnic studies class.

Carter said it felt important to her, as a person of color, to learn about people’s experiences with discrimination in the past.

“I'd say that has made me smarter and more aware of other people's struggles and what other people have to deal with and other people's cultures and other people's traditions,” Carter said.

The first wave of Rocktown displacement preceded the construction of the 210 and 605 freeways in the 1960s. The last several dozen families were moved to make way for a business complex in the 1970s. Stories referred to the area as blighted and “depressed.”

“ We took it as our job to dig further, deeper, to find out if it was true or not,” Martinez said.

With Ramirez’s help — and several volunteers from the Facebook group Rocktown Oldies Club — the students started to schedule interviews with former residents. The school’s film class volunteered to record the conversations.

The students heard stories about everyday life that were absent from the news coverage of time — Sunday barbecues, roller skating, fishing, picnicking and swimming near the Santa Fe Dam.

Zamora, who was born in Rocktown in 1949, offered a first-person history that isn’t available elsewhere — down to the community’s name: “ You could not even dig a, a foot into the ground without running into rocks,” he said. “ You could throw water on the ground and a rock would grow, you know?”

Many of the residents raised goats, pigs, pigeons and chickens in their backyards. Zamora said a routine car repair could quickly become a community gathering with neighbors joining in to help.

“That made it … so great to live there, 'cause everybody was like family,” Zamora said. “Even people that weren't related to you, it was really close friendships there.”

A typical gathering of Alfred Hernandez Zamora's family in an undated photo from their Rocktown days. Everyone gathered for Sunday dinners at his grandmother's house.

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Courtesy Alfred Hernandez Zamora

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Zamora's relatives Rayno Hernandez and Christina Hernandez Padilla as kids riding their bikes through Rocktown.

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Courtesy Alfred Hernandez Zamora

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Zamora said Rocktown offered a reprieve from the discrimination against Black and Latino residents in other parts of the San Gabriel Valley at the time.

“We played ball together. We swam together. We ate together,” Zamora said. “Even though there was different cultures there, we still were able to get along with everybody.”

These interviews gave the students new perspectives to consider.

“ People make a lot of stereotypes and a lot of guesses … like, ‘Oh, this community can be so ghetto,’" Martinez said. “But honestly, like I think if you haven't been in the community, you can't really say anything.”

Remembering Rocktown

The Duarte Historical Museum hosted a pop-up exhibition of the students’ capstone project.

“I was very impressed with the job that they did, being able to get all this history and the information and the interviews with people,” said Liz Reilly, president of the Duarte Historical Society and Museum and former mayor. "I thought that was really fabulous.”

Reilly, who moved to Duarte in 1987, had heard of Rocktown, but knew little about the neighborhood.

Izzy Guzman, another student who took ethnic studies at Duarte High, said the account she heard from the three women she interviewed differed from these Rocktown headlines.   "They've all seemed really nice and really genuine," Guzman said. "I just feel like people should understand, even if they don't know what Rocktown is, they should understand that, it was just a basic community, and that they should be treated with the same respect as everyone else."

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Mariana Dale

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LAist

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The exhibition included a map of Rocktown (still the subject of some debate) and dozens of historical photos, often provided by the people they interviewed.

“ I found it so amazing how much people showed up for our project and how much the community of Rocktown has shown up for our project,” Carter said.

Former residents, including Zamora, were among the dozens of people who attended the exhibition’s grand opening in mid-May.

“For them to recognize places that were forgotten, that meant a lot,” Zamora said. “ Nobody seems to remember it. I mean, except the people that lived there.”

Ethnic studies faces growing challenges

While the school’s principal, students and former Rocktown residents have embraced the ethnic studies class, Ramirez said she’s also heard criticism.

During Duarte High’s open house, Ramirez said a parent voiced her disagreement with the class and threatened to file a grievance even though her child had yet to enroll at the school.

“ I'm a parent, so I understand, especially if it's something that you're not familiar with and your kids are learning something different from what you learned, it can be scary,” Ramirez said. “My approach is never to impose my viewpoints. It's to provide alternative perspectives.”

Some lawmakers have also criticized school offerings that intersect with race and ethnicity.

In the last five years, 20 states have banned or restricted teaching critical race theory, an academic concept that race is a social construct and that racism is embedded in specific societal structures.

Teacher Casey Ramirez said teaching students to view history from multiple points of view and form their own opinions is a key feature of the ethnic studies class.

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Courtesy Oscar Ramirez

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California school districts from Los Alamitos to San Francisco have faced pushback over their ethnic studies curriculum despite passage of the state mandate.

State lawmakers’ decision to withhold money for teacher training and materials has delayed the ethnic studies graduation requirement.

Daniel Diaz, director of the UCLA History-Geography Project, said there was a flood of interest when the ethnic studies mandate was first passed, but now fewer districts are paying for related professional development.

“Which in turn then impacts what happens to our project and … who we're able to support in terms of staffing,” Diaz said.

In June, UCLA laid off one of the educators instrumental in helping Duarte develop its ethnic studies curriculum.

In a statement, John McDonald, director of media relations at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, said the History-Geography Project has laid off four staff members total after funded projects ended in the last year.

“UCLA Center X is committed to the work and actively seeking new funding for similar efforts,” McDonald said.

What that means for other districts looking for assistance with ethnic studies programs remains to be seen.

Ramirez said her UCLA collaborator was “phenomenal” and continued to support the project even after the contract with the district formally ended.

“ I don't think that this year and this project would've been what it was without having that support,” Ramirez said.

A business center now stands south of the 210 and west of the 605 where part of Rocktown once was. Some of the street names, including Evergreen and Flower, remain the same.

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Mariana Dale

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LAist

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The Rocktown Project’s future

Duarte High School will continue the ethnic studies class.

More former residents have already contacted Ramirez hoping to be interviewed by next year’s students. She also plans to publish the students’ work on a website and a future goal is to memorialize Rocktown with a physical marker in Duarte.

“You need to know whose land you're on and who was there,” said Sylvia Gonzales Youngblood, who was born in Duarte in 1967 and grew up visiting the home her maternal grandfather built in Rocktown.

She said when she was a student there wasn’t an opportunity to learn about her family’s  Ohlone Mission Indian and Mexican heritage and she was discouraged from speaking Spanish.

“Now as I'm older, I realize just how much history and of ourselves we lose,” Youngblood said.

Carter, the rising sophomore, said after taking ethnic studies, she feels more connected to the city she moved to about a year ago.

“It's important that we know this side of history so a community like Rocktown doesn't get lost again,” Carter said. “Every voice should be heard, including Rocktown's.”