The Brief

Laylah Rivers had already been a paratrooper in the U.S. Army and worked at various tech companies across the West Coast. But when she enrolled at a Los Angeles community college at 31, she was just another freshman — alongside students nearly half her age.

Luckily, West Los Angeles College has a program that acknowledges students’ prior work experience. The college gave her seven credits, the equivalent of about two classes, after she provided a copy of her military transcript and evidence of computer courses she took while working at Amazon. “Of course, with 13 years of experience, I should get more credit for what I’m doing,” she said. “But I’m grateful.”

Since 2017, California’s community colleges have slowly expanded the number of ways that students can get school credit for their prior work experience, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has made it a priority, in part by approving over $34 million in related state funding in recent years. By 2030, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office wants at least 250,000 students to have earned college credit for their work or other “prior learning" experience, and in January, Newsom proposed putting an additional $37 million toward it.

But many colleges use their own internal methods to track the credits they award, so there’s no authoritative system showing how many students across the state have actually been served. The chancellor’s office operates a public dashboard, which says that over 40,000 students in California have received at least one credit for pre-college work or education in the past few years. Samuel Lee, a senior adviser to the community college chancellor who oversees the dashboard, said the real total is roughly twice that, though he couldn’t provide any exact figures.

Laylah Rivers at West Los Angeles College in Culver City, on Jan. 29, 2026.

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Ariana Drehsler

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Among the students who count toward this 2030 goal are those who gain credit by taking Advanced Placement, or AP, exams — which have existed for decades. What’s new is awarding students credit for work experience, such as computer courses or military training. Because it’s so new, “it’s taking the colleges a while,” Lee said. “Some are nowhere and some are really down the road.”

Historically, veterans have benefited the most from these credits, but students with professional experience in plumbing, first aid, foreign languages and hundreds of other skills can also qualify, either by showing an industry certification or taking an exam. At Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, for instance, students can get college credit for wine courses if they can prove sufficient knowledge in French, Italian or Spanish wines.

Just a few additional credits can save students over $14,000, according to one California study. These students are more likely to graduate, too.

Because she’s a veteran, Rivers’ education and living costs are supported by the federal government, including through the GI Bill. These benefits only last a few years so every class she can skip saves her time — and ultimately money that she can put toward her future education.

Want to get ahead in tech? Get a degree

Even without a college degree, Rivers was doing well in tech, making over $70,000 a year, first at Amazon Web Services and later as a support engineer at a startup.

California’s tech industry has been vocal about dropping degree requirements for jobs, but research by the Burning Glass Institute shows that employers still prefer college graduates, even when college education isn’t a requirement.

“Computer science is really male-dominated, white-dominated,” said Rivers. “I’m a Black woman, but it’s hard to get my foot in the door. Even though I have 13 years of experience, they move the goalpost.” When the startup she was working at was sold to another company in 2024, she enrolled at West Los Angeles College, hoping to eventually transfer to a four-year institution, get a degree and land a management job in the tech industry.

But Rivers didn’t know that any of her prior work could translate into college credits until months after enrolling, when a college dean noticed her military and computer science experience.

“I think it should just be built into the registration process instead of people having to find out about it,” she said. “It took me a whole semester to figure it out.”

Laylah Rivers at West Los Angeles College in Culver City, on Jan. 29, 2026.

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Ariana Drehsler

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CalMatters

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The Technology Learning Center building at West Los Angeles College in Culver City, where Laylah Rivers has taken computer and IT courses.

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Ariana Drehsler

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CalMatters

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Starting last fall, West Los Angeles College made it a requirement that all transfer-oriented students learn about opportunities to get credit for prior work experience, either during meetings with a college counselor in the first semester or at orientation, said Allison Tom-Miura, the dean of academic affairs and workforce development for the campus. “This is a big equity issue,” she said. “How can we help students from repeating courses that they do not need?”

In 2018, the state Legislature passed a law that would eventually mandate that every college adopt a policy for awarding students credit for prior learning or work experience, but colleges received little or no funding to implement it. They scrambled to create systems to assess students’ work experience and streamline the process of petitioning for credit, according to interviews with community college leaders across the state.

Administratively, the process is still tricky today. Students need to submit evidence of their work experience, which faculty then evaluate and translate into an equivalent course at the college. Most students gain credit by showing a military transcript, a certification or by taking a test, but sometimes, in more subjective fields such as photography, faculty assess a student’s portfolio.

Lee’s statewide system lists the skills and certifications that community colleges already recognize so that students can petition for credit more easily. But he said that only about half the state’s 116 community colleges are actively participating in the effort.

Getting all colleges on the same system

Often, Lee is on tour, visiting colleges across the state, sometimes meeting with a school six or seven times in an effort to promote his credit tracking system or otherwise improve the way they log students’ credits.

Last month, he sat on stage at a conference in Sacramento to present about the benefits of a shared tracking system alongside the interim president of Palomar College, Tina Recalde. Like many schools in the San Diego metro area, Palomar College has a high number of enrolled veterans and was an early advocate for awarding additional credit to them. In their joint presentation, Recalde said her college has given over 3,600 students credit for work or other prior learning experiences.

But that data doesn’t appear on Lee’s platform or any other public dashboard. Palomar College has its own system for processing the additional credits, which it created before Lee’s platform existed, said Nichol Roe, the college’s dean of career technical and extended education.

Soon, nearly all schools will have to begin logging information on the same platform. The Legislature approved a budget last year that guarantees $50,000 to every community college campus that wants it. In return, the colleges that receive the money agree to use certain aspects of Lee’s data system and to screen all veterans and incoming students for potential additional credits.

College of the Sequoias in Visalia said it doesn’t need the money and chose not to apply, according to its president, Brent Calvin.

Lee said that every other college applied for the funding by the deadline and that he would “gladly” make an exception for College of the Sequoias. “Our goal is not for them to meet the deadline,” he said. “Our goal is to get people funding and support.”

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

Putting together a school meal isn't easy.

"It is a puzzle essentially," said Lori Nelson of the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes scratch cooking in schools.

"When you think about the guidelines, there's so many different pieces that you have to meet. You have to meet calorie minimums and maximums for the day and for the week. You have to meet vegetable subgroup categories."

Districts that receive federal funding for school meals — through, for example, the National School Lunch Program — must follow rules set by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

And those rules may be changing soon.

In early January, the Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA unveiled new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, along with a new food pyramid.

The USDA sets school nutrition standards based on those dietary guidelines, which now place an emphasis on protein and encourage Americans to consume full-fat dairy products and limit highly processed foods.

Here's what to know about how the new food pyramid could impact schools:

Cutting back on ready-to-eat school meals won't be easy

Highly processed and ready-to-eat foods often contain added sugars and salt. Think mac and cheese, pizza, french fries and individually packaged peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

These foods are also a big part of many school meals, said Nelson. That's because schools often lack adequate kitchen infrastructure to prepare meals from scratch.

"Many schools were built 40-plus years ago, and they were built to reheat food. So they weren't built as commercial cooking kitchens," said Nelson.

Even so, schools have been able to bring sodium and sugar levels down in recent years.

"They've been working with food companies to find a middle ground, to find recipes that meet [the current] standards and appeal to students and that schools can serve given the equipment that they have," said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.

Bringing sugar and salt levels down further would likely require that food companies adapt their recipes and that schools prepare more meals from scratch, Pratt-Heavner said.

But leaning into scratch cooking won't be easy. A recent survey of school nutrition directors by the School Nutrition Association found that most programs would need better equipment and infrastructure as well as more trained staff — and nearly all respondents said they would also need more money. "You cannot go from serving heavily processed, heat-and-serve items to scratch cooking immediately," said Nelson. "It is a transition."

Protein-rich school meals will come at a higher cost

At the top of the new food pyramid are animal products such as meat and cheese. The new guidelines prioritize consuming protein as a part of every meal and incorporating healthy fats.

"That could cause a change in school breakfast standards," said Pratt-Heavner. "Right now, there's no mandate that breakfasts include a protein."

A typical school breakfast today might include fruit, milk and a cereal cup or muffin; some schools may serve breakfast burritos or sandwiches.

She said schools would "absolutely need more funding," should they be required to provide protein under the USDA's School Breakfast Program.

Current standards allow for schools to serve either grains or meats/meat alternates for breakfast, and Pratt-Heavner said, "Protein options … are more expensive than grain options."

She said it's unclear whether the USDA would require protein under its own category or whether the agency would consider milk to be sufficient to meet any new protein requirements.

Whole milk is getting a lot of attention

Schools that participate in federal school meal programs are required to offer milk with every meal, though students don't have to take it. Up until recently, an Obama-era rule allowed for only low-fat and nonfat milk in schools.

But the new food pyramid emphasizes whole fat dairy, like whole milk. At the same time, recent federal legislation reversed that Obama-era rule and now allows schools to serve reduced-fat and full-fat milk.

One more thing to know about milk: Federal law also limits saturated fats in school meals — and whole milk has more of those than low-fat and nonfat varieties. But the recent federal legislation now exempts milk fat from those limits.

What does all this mean for schools? They're now able to start serving whole milk, and they won't have to worry about whole milk pushing them past the limits on saturated fats.

It'll be a while before these changes trickle down to schools

While the USDA sets regulations for schools based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it takes time to draft and implement new rules after new guidelines are released.

"The current school nutrition standards that we're operating under were proposed in February 2023, finalized in April 2024," said Pratt-Heavner. "The first menu changes in school cafeterias were not required until July 2025." Other changes are still rolling out.

Which is to say: The new dietary guidelines won't bring immediate changes to school cafeterias. They're only the first step in a regulatory process that will take time.

"We're going to have to see what USDA proposes," said Pratt-Heavner.

Then, she said, "the public will comment on those regulations, and then final rules will be drafted and issued."

The USDA then gives schools and school food companies time to update recipes and implement the new nutrition standards.
Copyright 2026 NPR

For Angelenos who love animals but can’t commit to adopting a dog, Pasadena Humane is opening a pair of short-term fostering programs to the public.

You can now sign-up to “check-out” a dog from the shelter for a hike in the forest, a visit to your favorite neighborhood coffee shop or a cozy weekend sleepover at home.

Officials said time away from the shelter can reduce stress in animals, while providing important insight into their personalities that can help the dogs get adopted.

Kevin McManus, a spokesperson for the organization, told LAist that Pasadena Humane provides all the supplies for anything from a 15-minute Foster Field Trip to a three-day Doggy Sleepover.

“This is a fun thing for the dog,” McManus said. “But it's also an opportunity for people who may not see the dog in the shelter to get an opportunity to see that dog out in the world doing what they do best.”

How it works

You can sign up for Pasadena Humane’s Doggy Field Trip and Doggy Sleepover programs here.

You’ll be asked to choose a date and time for the trip, as well as the activities you have planned for the dog and your experience handling animals.

You can ask to take a specific dog from the shelter, but it’s ultimately up to the organization’s foster team to match you based on need, availability and comfort level.

Previously, the programs were available only for trained volunteers, including Kayla James, who’s been hosting field trips and sleepovers for more than a year.

Kayla James, a Pasadena Humane volunteer, taking Logan for a Foster Field Trip in Pasadena.

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James, who has done about 30 short-term trips through Pasadena Humane, told LAist that some people may be sad to bring the dog back to the shelter at the end of the day, but that short-term feeling is worth the long-term benefits.

“Having them in a different setting helps them so much,” she said. “Because sometimes they shine way better outside the kennels.”

For example, you may learn the dog hates dry treats but loves hot dogs, that they do great on stairs or can be calm hanging out at home, she said.

Taking a dog for its first pup patty from In-N-Out has been “priceless,” James said. She especially enjoys taking shy dogs to her house for a quiet day away from the scents and sounds of the shelter.

Kayla's wearing a Foster Field Trip backpack that reads: "We are on a field trip. You can adopt this dog. (It's okay to be excited)"

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“One thing that I loved being able to do, too, is finding out that a dog that was actually really reactive in a shelter, wasn't so reactive outside and was able to calm down,” she said. “That was really gratifying.”

McManus said the short-term fostering opportunities are perfect for people who love dogs but may not be able to adopt, possibly because of housing restrictions or long hours at work.

How can it help them get adopted?

Any details you learn about the dog and cute photos you snap can be shared with Pasadena Humane and may be added to the pup’s adoption profile.

James has posted social media videos of the dogs she takes on trips, which she said can help Pasadena Humane boost the animals' visibility for potential adopters.

Cinco enjoying a snooze on a Doggy Sleepover.

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Brodie was welcome to relax on furniture during a Doggy Sleepover.

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Some factors about an animal may be revealed during their time away, like can the dog sleep through the night? Is it crate trained? How about house trained?

“Having that real knowledge [is] really helpful in finding the forever home,” McManus said.

A dog's day out on the town

On Tuesday, I was matched with a dog named Lady Trixie, a 2-year-old female Plott Hound mix. We were equipped with a backpack full of treats, water, bowls, toys, poop bags, emergency information and a map of nearby places we could check out.

Lady Trixie on a Foster Field Trip to Lacy Park in San Marino. Lady Trixie is available for adoption at Pasadena Humane.

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The foster team told me upon pick-up that Lady Trixie has been sweet with staff and volunteers, but Pasadena Humane didn’t have much other information for potential adopters.

So we hopped in my car and headed to Lacy Park in San Marino with the hope of gathering some important info for Lady's Trixie's adoption profile.

She walked politely on the leash next to me and didn’t pull us through the park. She seemed a little shy at first, but kept calm and didn’t react around young children and the small dogs that ran by us.

We sprinted through the park a few times to get her wiggles out. Lady Trixie also snacked on some grass and stopped to sniff anything and everything she wanted.

Lady Trixie was a sweet, affectionate companion during LAist's Foster Field Trip on Tuesday.

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Lady Trixie seemed to be more interested in sitting on me than playing with toys or tennis balls. She even rested her head on my shoulder for a minute when we stopped for a water break.

It was hard to bring her back to Pasadena Humane Tuesday afternoon. But I'm the kind of person the programs are designed for — I’d love to add another dog to our family, but it isn’t the right time.

I was sad to say goodbye, but I was grateful to spend a calming few hours with her.

LAist gave Pasadena Humane notes about Lady Trixie after the Foster Field Trip, including that she did well in the car and was calm around children and dogs in the park.

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Makenna Sievertson

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Yosemite. Yellowstone. The Grand Canyon.

RAT Beach in Torrance?

Maybe. An announcement from the National Park Service on Thursday — that beaches from San Pedro to Santa Monica are being studied to someday become a national park — is making the rounds and raising lots of questions.

Chief among them: Huh?

The proposal appears to come from Biden-era appropriations legislation.

The Park Service website sets out four criteria for studying whether an area should be recommended to become a national park. It must:

1. Contain nationally significant natural and/or cultural resources.
2. Represent a natural or cultural resource that is not already adequately represented in the national park system or is not comparably represented and protected for public enjoyment by another land-managing entity.
3. Be of sufficient size and appropriate configuration to ensure long-term protection of the resources and visitor enjoyment and capable of efficient administration by the National Park Service at a reasonable cost; important feasibility factors include landownership, acquisition costs, life cycle maintenance costs, access, threats to the resource, and staff or development requirements.
4. Require direct NPS management that is clearly superior to other management approaches.

We’ll let you decide whether the Venice Boardwalk, say, meets the brief.

The Park Service is holding two virtual meetings, the first of which is next week:

Feb. 11, 1 p.m to 2:30 p.m. PT

• Webinar link: https://bit.ly/4t8oWXW
• Join by phone: 1-202-640-1187, Conference ID: 990571600#

March 11, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. PT

• Webinar link: https://bit.ly/4akUPVE 

• Join by phone: 1-202-640-1187, Conference ID: 362420885#

LAist will dig deeper into this idea in the coming weeks. Until then, just imagine park rangers … playing volleyball in Manhattan Beach.

The coming Olympic Games in Los Angeles have been under a harsh spotlight, as LA28 head Casey Wasserman faces calls to resign over his recently released racy emails with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and chatter around ICE agents operating at the Winter Games.

Now, a community organization is reiterating calls on Los Angeles elected officials to seriously consider canceling the Olympics altogether.

Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, or SAJE, issued a report Thursday focused on L.A.'s financial exposure as host city. The city and state of California are the financial guarantors for the Olympics, meaning if they go into the red, L.A. taxpayers will foot the bill.

"L.A. city leaders must put the option of cancellation on the table now," Chris Tyler with SAJE wrote in the report. "They must urgently take up the work electeds failed to do in 2017, when they committed L.A. to hosting the Games without first having an informed, public conversation to weigh costs and benefits."

Calls to cancel the Olympics in Los Angeles go back as far as L.A.'s Olympic contract, which was inked in 2017. The group NOlympics LA launched that year, arguing that hosting the Olympics was a bad deal for the city. After the fires of 2025 and ongoing immigration raids, calls to halt L.A.'s Olympics plans have gained steam in public discourse.

But the cause has had little traction with public officials. If the city pulled out now, it could face billions of dollars in legal fees. None of the 15 City Council members have backed the idea, and plans for the Olympics continue full steam ahead.

As several City Council members and other prominent L.A. politicians call for Wasserman to step down, the report urges public officials to put cancellation on the table — even if only as a bargaining chip to win concessions for the city of L.A.

How likely is it that the L.A. Olympics wouldn’t go forward?

It’s extremely rare for host cities to pull out of the Olympics. Denver is the only city to withdraw from the International Olympic Committee after being chosen to host the 1976 Winter Games. Colorado voters rejected using public money for the mega-event, forcing the I.O.C. to relocate the Olympics to Innsbruck, Austria.

Even when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, the Olympic Games moved forward in Japan, although they were delayed a year. The Games went on despite massive public discontent due to the ongoing public health crisis.

“Does the IOC have the power to decide that the games will go ahead?" one Japanese businessman tweeted ahead of the 2021 Games, according to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations. "There’s talk about huge penalties [if the games are canceled] but if one hundred thousand people from two hundred countries descend on vaccine-laggard Japan and the mutant variant spreads, I think we could lose a lot more.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, Japanese taxpayers ended up spending $7.1 billion on the Games.

Canceling the Olympics would come with high costs to the city of L.A. Like in Tokyo, only the International Olympic Committee has the legal authority to pull out of a host location, according to its contract with L.A. The legal fees for L.A. canceling could be billions of dollars.

But the SAJE report questions if L.A. risks even greater exposure playing host than pulling out of its contract with the I.O.C.

"L.A. is looking at a potential fiscal disaster either way, and the decision on whether to try to cancel or renegotiate the terms of Olympic hosting depends on which you prefer to risk: billions of dollars in losses on hosting the Games, or billions in penalties for not hosting them," Neil deMause, the report's lead author, wrote.

What are some of the expenses tied to the Games?

LA28 currently has a $7.1 billion projected budget. The federal government has agreed to chip in $1 billion to pay for security and is being asked to contribute another $2 billion to pay for Games-specific transit plans.

The Olympics are intended to be mostly privately financed and "no cost" for Los Angeles. But the city of L.A.'s financial exposure is essentially unlimited. The city is on the hook for the first $270 million in losses, if they occur. The California Legislature has agreed to make statewide taxpayers pick up the next $270 million. After that, any additional financial burden will fall on Los Angeles taxpayers.

SAJE is calling on L.A. leaders to compile a list of all Olympics expenses that won't be covered by private organizing committee LA28, demand that LA28 provide detailed spending and revenue projections, and strategize over how to cancel the Games if necessary.

The report points to potential security expenses that could fall on the city of L.A. Details on how federal funds will be allocated for security aren't yet clear — leaving the city exposed to potential unexpected expenses. A contract between LA28 and the city also states that the Olympics organizers, not L.A., will pay for extra costs for public services in support of the Games, including policing. The details of that agreement are also still up in the air, though.

Negotiations between the city and the Olympic committee have dragged on more than four months past deadline. And some are concerned that if that deal isn't comprehensive, the city will be left with unexpected costs.

How can the city raise issues with LA28?

The city has little legal leverage to force new negotiations with LA28, but it does have the bully pulpit. The main public forum for the city to raise issues with the Olympics organizers is the ad-hoc City Council committee meetings on the Olympics.

That committee has seven members. At recent meetings, City Council members have demanded details on President Donald Trump's security task force for the Olympics and asked organizers to increase the contingency fund for the city as its budget grows. Three members of that committee have now called for Wasserman's resignation.

LA28 leadership are currently in Italy for the 2026 Winter Games. The next L.A. City Olympic Committee meeting has not been scheduled.