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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CalMatters

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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.

Big Bear’s famous bald eagles — Jackie and Shadow — appear to be welcoming a new chick into the world.

The first pip, or crack, was spotted in one of the feathered duo’s two eggs around 10 a.m. Friday, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

More than 26,000 people were watching the livestream shortly after the organization confirmed a pip had been spotted, which signals that an eaglet is starting to poke its way out of the egg shell.

“Yesterday afternoon, evening and throughout the night we heard little chirps coming from the chick,” Friends of Big Bear Valley wrote on Facebook to more than a million followers. “This indicates that the chick was able to break the internal membrane and took its first breath of air.”

As of Friday, the first egg is around 38 days old and the second egg is about 35 days old. Jackie and Shadow's usual incubation timeline is around 38 to 40 days, according to the nonprofit.

There’s still time for the second egg to show signs of hatching, and a pip could be confirmed in the coming days.

What we know

Jenny Voisard, the organization’s media manager, told LAist earlier this week that hatching is an arduous process for chicks that takes some time.

For example, last season, the first chick hatched more than a day after the initial pip was confirmed, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley records. The second chick hatched about a day after pipping as well, and the third chick worked its way out into the world about two days after the first crack was confirmed.

The chicks may look like little blobs of gray fluff at first, but they grow quickly, as fans saw with Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets last year. One of last season’s trio of chicks, believed to be the eldest and most dominant sibling, died during a winter storm within weeks of hatching.

In March 2025, Jackie and Shadow welcomed two eaglet chicks with one remaining egg in their nest.

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Jackie and Shadow's three chicks on March 7, 2025. One of the chicks later died, while Sunny and Gizmo successfully fledged a few months later.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Jackie and Shadow's eaglets during a feeding of fish in April 2025.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Sunny and Gizmo in Big Bear's famous bald eagle nest on Friday, April 18, 2025.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Viewers watched as the surviving eaglets, Sunny and Gizmo, grew from a few ounces to several pounds in a matter of months before fledging, or taking their first flight away from the nest, last June.

But any chicks arriving this season will have to learn how to feed before they can fly.

The initial meals may be a bit awkward while the chicks learn to sit up straight. Jackie and Shadow could start feeding the chicks the same day they hatch, typically tearing off pieces of fish or raw meat and holding it up to their beaks.

Bald eagles don’t regurgitate food for their young, unlike other birds. But the feathered parents do pass along a "substantial amount of saliva” full of electrolytes and antibodies to their chicks during feedings, according to the nonprofit.

Voisard said new life coming to the nest is a reminder “why it’s so important to conserve their lands.”

Big Bear fundraiser

Friends of Big Bear Valley is trying to raise $10 million by the end of July to purchase land pegged for a planned housing project that some say would harm rare plants and wildlife in the area, including bald eagles.

You can learn more about the fundraiser here.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta provided guidance this week to childcare providers on new legal requirements to protect children and their families from immigration enforcement activities.

Under a new law that went into effect this year, childcare providers are not allowed to collect information about a child's or family member’s immigration status, unless necessary under state or federal law. Bonta’s office says there currently is no such requirement, though that could change with federal programs like Head Start.

“Childcare and preschool facilities should be safe and secure spaces so children can grow, learn and simply be children,” Bonta said in a statement.

His office says daycare centers also should not keep information about a formerly enrolled child longer than is required by state law.

The new law also requires facilities to inform the attorney general’s office and the state’s licensing agency if they get any requests for information from law enforcement related to immigration enforcement.

Facilities also must ask families to regularly update a child’s emergency contact information to make sure someone can be reached in case a parent is detained by federal immigration officials.

The Santa Ana winds are here to welcome us into the weekend, bringing warmer temperatures.

The winds will reach Point Mugu to the Santa Clarita Valley, down to Orange County and parts of the Inland Empire valleys and foothills east of the 5 Freeway.

Peak gusts are expected to reach 35 to 55 mph. The western San Gabriel Mountains, Highway 14 corridor, Santa Susana Mountains and the western Santa Monica Mountains are under a high wind warning until 6 p.m., when gusts could reach 65 mph.

As for temperatures, highs for L.A. County beaches will reach the upper 70s and up to the low 80s for inland areas.

Parts of Orange County and Coachella Valley will see temperatures in the mid- to upper 80s, with the warmest areas expected to reach 88 degrees.