The Brief

Whoever is elected this fall as governor and state superintendent of public instruction will face a new reality for California education.

The changing of the guard after the eight-year term limits for Gov. Gavin Newsom and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond will likely coincide with a belt-tightening period for the state budget, forcing tough choices for the next governor.

A consolation prize, however, could be more authority over the California Department of Education. Newsom is proposing to shift control of the department’s operations to a new education commissioner appointed by the next governor — an arrangement common among states. The shift would diminish the power of the state superintendent, who’d be relieved of managing the education bureaucracy while remaining the state’s elected advocate-in-chief of education.

Over the past six years, amid a burst of state revenue, Newsom and the Legislature enacted multibillion-dollar programs that redefined TK-12. They expanded TK-12 with transitional kindergarten for 4-year-olds and lengthened the school day through expanded learning. Money for apprenticeships and career pathways created post-high school opportunities, and community schools broadened connections with parents and neighborhood health services.

But the era of large-scale programs will be Newsom’s legacy, not his successor’s. Circumstances beyond the next governor’s control — continuing declines in enrollment and revenues, probably retreating to historical levels, forcing additional school closures, with a recession looming — will temper ambitions of what more can be done for California’s students.

And then there are sounds of frustration, growing louder from the picket line to the school boardroom to the hallways of Sacramento. Districts are complaining that the rollout of ambitious programs, with accompanying reporting requirements and regulations, has diverted their attention and strained their budgets.

David Roth, superintendent of Buckeye Union School District, which serves 4,200 TK-8 students in El Dorado County, was emphatic. “We don’t need new programs,” he said. Adding more, he said, would result in continued labor strife over pay raises that many districts argue they can’t afford, and “an inability to maintain the programs we have.”

Roth’s message, reiterated by others, is that schools should get back to basics, as in base funding — the portion of the state’s funding formula intended to cover general operating expenses. They want the Legislature and the next governor to make raising base funding the number one priority.

Roth established Raise the Base Coalition, a website that lays out the challenge of rising costs. Forty districts have signed up so far; they are primarily suburban districts with fewer-than-average high-needs students, and therefore receive less “supplemental” and “concentration” funding under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula and other programs with similar distributions.

Opposition to equity is not the issue, Roth said. “Even districts with above-median funding are struggling to keep pace with rising costs.” When there is more money to cover basic expenses, he added, all districts benefit.

Last month, school board presidents and members from 10 districts, mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area, made the same point while calling for, among other things, adjustments to the funding formula to reflect regional costs.

“As those entrusted with ensuring the long-term financial viability and educational success of our public schools, we write to sound the alarm about the profound, widespread fiscal challenges districts across the state are facing,” they wrote.

At first glance, their complaints may invoke little sympathy. From 2018-19, the year preceding Covid-19, through 2024-25, funding rose 53% through Proposition 98, the formula that sets the minimum share of state revenue for TK-12 and community colleges. Per student funding from the state will rise to more than $20,000, a record.

But several factors squeezing districts’ spending will likely escalate in the coming years, demanding the next governor’s attention.

Declining enrollment

The California Department of Finance projects the nearly decade-long statewide decline in enrollment to accelerate, with an additional 10% drop by 2033-34, bringing the total to 5.2 million students. Most districts will feel it, with enrollment losses of up to 20% in some Los Angeles County districts.

Districts receive funding based on the average number of students who attend school daily over the course of a year. Adding transitional kindergarten has propped up attendance, but now that TK is fully phased in, the average daily attendance decline will bite harder in many districts.

Special education

The percentage of students with disabilities has risen from 13% in 2018-19 to 15% in 2023-24, even as overall enrollment has declined. Newsom is proposing to add $500 million next year to equalize state special education funding among districts, but the overall trend has not favored districts. The federal share of total special education funding in California, never close to the 40% share that Congress envisioned 50 years ago when passing the federal special education mandate, has fallen steadily over the past decade, as has the state’s share of dedicated funding.

Districts will continue to be responsible for the shortfall. Districts’ share of special education costs has risen from 51% in 2014 to 63% last year, according to School Services of California, a statewide consulting company, and higher in some small districts.

Placer County Office of Education Superintendent Gayle Garbolino-Mojica said that unexpected special education costs have forced three of her districts onto the state’s financial watch list. Preschoolers are coming to school with serious special needs — autism, multiple disabilities, behavioral problems — “in numbers not seen before,” she said.

Inadequate cost-of-living adjustments

A 3% decline in a district’s attendance may not appear dramatic, but losing 3% of funding will be larger than the 2.41% cost-of-living adjustment that districts are projected to receive in 2026-27. And it’s larger than the 2.30% COLA they got this year and the 1.07% COLA in 2024-25. The state’s COLA is tied to a national formula of a basket of goods that doesn’t reflect the sharp rise in health insurance and the need to raise staff pay to retain teachers.

The state cushions the impact of a steadily declining enrollment by allowing districts to claim attendance over a three-year period. Without it, “we would be toast,” said Roth. But that’s not a long-term answer, he said. “We cannot adjust costs as quickly as we will lose revenue.”

‘Declining enrollment dividend’

Because of Proposition 98’s funding guarantee, TK-12 and community colleges will continue to receive 40% of the state’s general revenue, yet districts collectively will receive fewer dollars as their enrollments drop. The unallotted difference, euphemistically called a “declining enrollment dividend,” could grow to $7.5 billion annually, providing a pot of discretionary funding for the Legislature and governor. How to spend it could prove one of the more contentious decisions in the coming years. Among the options:

• Switching from funding by attendance to funding by annual enrollment, a method favored especially by districts hardest hit by chronic absences.
• Adding a regional cost factor to the Local Control Funding Formula — a much-discussed idea over the years, but never adopted;
• Increasing the state’s share of special education expenses, benefiting all districts;
• Building in a permanent 4% annual COLA;
• Making permanent what has been sporadic among districts: funding professional development, starting with evidence-based instruction in early literacy and the new math framework.

Other issues

Plenty of important decisions won’t require more money. While it’s a fool’s errand to predict what future events will determine, what could crowd its way to the top of the list includes:

Restructuring the California Department of Education 

If the Legislature approves Newsom’s plan as part of the next state budget, the department will fall under the authority of Newsom’s successor. That will be only the first step to untangling the current fractured system of school improvement and accountability. Like it or not, the next governor will take credit or blame for implementing programs the state superintendent of instruction had managed.

Resolving Miliani Rodriguez v. State of California 

That’s the lawsuit the public interest law firm Public Advocates filed on behalf of 14 students, parents, and teachers in six school districts, challenging the first-come, first-served state formula for distributing billions of dollars to repair school facilities. If Newsom doesn’t settle what he has acknowledged favors wealthy districts, then the decision to defend or negotiate an end to an inequitable system falls to his successor.

Taking the lead on artificial intelligence 

AI is a big, amorphous subject, enticing and forbidding, that has been left to districts to decipher and deal with vendors. The next California governor can call for all students to be AI literate, said Chris Agnew, director of Generative AI for Education Hub at Stanford University, and ask fundamental questions like, “What are the core capacities we want to build in California students, and what are the research-backed learning experiences that build these capacities?”

Redesigning high schools

High schools face a challenge. Only 55% of California students report feeling connected to high school. In 2025, the Legislature budgeted $10 million for a Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program to establish 14 networks for high schools and middle schools in 57 districts. Some have been experimenting for years, while others are launching different models with team teaching, small-group learning to strengthen student relationships, and nontraditional scheduling to accommodate apprenticeships.

A seven-period day, driven by college course requirements and seat time regulations, is hard to change. But if, as State Board President Linda Darling-Hammond hopes, the results show “what it takes for students to be engaged and purposeful in a rapidly changing world,” the next governor should scale up the project, she said.

Getting serious about the achievement gap

Newsom’s big bets on improving students’ well-being and academic progress may bear fruit long term. But the California School Boards Association is demanding full attention now to narrowing persistent disparities in achievement between low-income and well-off students, and among racial and ethnic groups.

CSBA is pushing bills that would hold state agencies accountable for providing the annual metrics that they use to track how they are closing the achievement gap. A separate commission would weed out regulations and duplicate programs, and give a thumbs-down on new programs that would divert resources and energy from addressing the achievement gap.

The bills may not pass, at least as written, but the message is clear: A governor with a different agenda may be out of sync with the times.

Most California voters cast their ballots by mail, but two big federal changes are in the pipeline that could impact how those ballots are handled and counted in the November election.

One could come from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that’s expected soon, and another through the United States Postal service, which is working to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order that would give the agency the final say over who receives a mail-in ballot.

The efforts come as Trump and his allies have scrutinized mail-in ballots for years, claiming without evidence that states with longer count times and universal mail-in voting are allowing widespread cheating. Research shows fraud rates remain extremely small.

A major ruling could end mail-in grace periods

Fourteen states, including California, count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by then and show up within a certain window. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could end that kind of grace period.

The case in question is Watson v. Republican National Committee, which centers on whether Mississippi’s five-day grace period for late-arriving ballots is constitutional under federal law. In California, that period is seven days.

Geoffrey Skelley,  chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ, told LAist the RNC’s argument centers on a federal law enacted in 1845 that set Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and that’s why votes shouldn’t be accepted after it.

A decision on that is expected to come within the next month, according to Wren Orey, who directs the elections project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. The Washington D.C.-based think tank works with both sides of the political aisle to craft policy suggestions.

Orey told LAist it’s looking like the justices will side with the RNC and overturn Mississippi’s law. However, it’s not known how broad the ruling could be. The Purcell principle, a legal doctrine that discourages last-minute changes to election procedures, could also be invoked.

“ It’s possible that the Supreme Court rules that this specific statute is unconstitutional, but their judgment doesn’t go into effect until after the election,” they said.

Some critics say the Supreme Court has unevenly applied this principle, pointing to how a ruling affected Alabama’s primary when voters had already begun casting ballots.

How it could affect California

Just over 400,000 ballots arrived during California’s grace period in 2024 — that’s 2.5% of voter turnout. Orey said these usually come from areas that take more time for mail carriers to deliver, so it could disadvantage rural residents, for example. It’s unclear if there would be a carve out for service members and overseas voters under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which get rejected at higher rates.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s research shows about the same rate of late ballot rejections between states with a grace period and those without, Orey said, suggesting that voters adapt to their state’s deadline.

“What isn’t clear, though, is how long it takes for voters to adjust,” they said, adding that they’ve seen some evidence of rejections going up immediately after a grace period goes away.

Workers count Los Angeles County ballots in the City of Industry on June 3.

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Skelley said a lot of voters would likely become aware and adjust in part because of how publicized the decision would be, but it wouldn’t solve everything.

“Now, does that mean some would be affected and might miss out on a chance to vote?” he said. “Yes, that’s perfectly plausible.”

California is also notoriously criticized for how long it takes to count ballots, even though that’s a feature, not a bug, of our election process. If the justices decide to end grace periods, don’t expect big changes to that.

That’s mostly because our slowness stems from the volume of mail-in ballots received on Election Day, Orey said. Those need to be verified, opened and flattened to be processed, which takes more time than if you voted in person.

Changes to universal mail-in ballots

Another looming change comes from Trump’s March executive order which, among many things, tasks the U.S. Postal Service with being a gatekeeper for who gets a mail-in ballot.

This is happening in the name of preventing noncitizens from voting, which is already rare and gets prosecuted.

USPS released its proposed rules earlier this month. Under the proposal, states would be required to send names of eligible mail-in voters to USPS, who would add them to a centralized list. If your name isn’t on that list for some reason, the Postal Service won’t mail your ballot.

This also depends on whether states agree to share voter information with the federal government, which California has so far refused to do in other situations.

“ Let’s say California and some states like it don’t give the federal government the information that they want,” Skelley said. “Presumably, that would mean that some people who have been voting by mail would not be able to get their mail ballots, and so they would have to figure out alternate ways to vote.”

Under federal law, states and Congress can determine how elections are run, so Trump’s executive order is seen by some as unconstitutional. It’s being challenged in court in multiple cases — one of which California is part of.

Among the concerns, it’s unclear what recourse voters would have to resolve errors, how accurate the data will be and what would happen if a voter requested a mail-in ballot after USPS’s deadline to add voters to the list.

The U.S. Postal Service may soon decide who to send mail-in ballots to.

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Orey said they have talked to state election officials who don’t have a lot of trust in the Postal Service to handle ingesting and updating lists from every state, based on how the agency manages current operations and deadlines.

“We have no evidence to indicate that the infrastructure exists to begin with, or is at all functional,” they said.

Under Trump’s executive order, the final rule is due by the end of July — that is, of course, if it’s not delayed by the courts.

These rules would apply to federal elections, but not to primaries or ballots under the UOCAVA (the act for service members and overseas voters), according to the proposal. If you want to have your say, USPS is accepting public comment through July 2.

To commemorate the city’s participation in the 2026 men’s World Cup, the L.A. Department of Recreation and Parks has commissioned a local artist to create a piece with the help of young soccer fans. Now through mid-July, artist-in-residence Liseth Amaya is collecting at least 1,000 wooden hexagons, decorated by youths at parks throughout the city.

Soccer balls, she noted, are typically made up of black pentagons and white hexagons. For this project, however, the hexagons will be covered in art. Ultimately, they will be part of a large-scale installation at City Hall.

Amaya, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, is an L.A. native who earned her degree at Central Saint Martins college of art in London. To gather the hexagons, she will be hosting workshops across the city.

“In school, art education often takes a backseat to other subjects,” Amaya lamented. “I want to make sure I can run workshops where kids can use different material and learn about what it is to create art with their hands, not just on an iPad.”

In addition to the installation, Liseth Amaya will paint murals inspired by L.A.'s participation in the World Cup.

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Watch parties and art 

At MacArthur Park in L.A.’s historic Westlake neighborhood this week, Amaya hosted a workshop during one of the city’s “Kick It In The Park” World Cup watch parties. There, she guided students on break from school, encouraging them to think about their background, their neighborhood and anything that brings them joy. Then, she asked them to use the paint markers she provided to bring those images and feelings to life.

Some students filled the hexagons with the flags of Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, in honor of their parents. Some painted placid lakes underneath bright blue skies. Others decorated their pieces with small things they love: an iced matcha, a slice of watermelon, their favorite animal.

One student named Daniella added a label to her piece: “I am 11 years old,” it read. “The re[a]son I play soccer is because I [want] to be like my dad[,] and I want to become a soccer player.”

To join the project, Angelenos solely need to gather at Amaya’s work station at “Kick It In The Park” events. All materials are provided at no cost.

All materials are provided at no cost.

At the end of each workshop, students have the choice of taking the piece home with them or donating it to Amaya for the art installation.

The artist has been heartened to find that collecting 1,000 hexagons will be a challenge. After poring over their work, many students have opted not to let them go.

Although thousands have flocked to SoFi stadium for the World Cup, soccer wasn’t always a fan-favorite sport in the United States.

The sport’s rise to popularity began when the U.S. hosted its first World Cup in 1994. At that time, the men’s soccer team was virtually unknown.

Summer of ’94, a new documentary directed by Chad N. Walker and Dave LaMattina, chronicles the U.S. team’s unlikely run during their first home World Cup.

At a screening in LAist’s Crawford Family Forum Room, viewers got an early look at the film. LAist’s Libby Rainey later moderated a talkback with Alan Rothberg, the president of U.S. Soccer in the 1990s, and Chris Leggett and Amanda Farrand, both producers of the film.

LAist's Libby Rainey moderates a talkback with Alan Rothberg, Chris Leggett, and Amanda Farrand.

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An unlikely team and a wild-card coach

Rothberg recalled several of the team’s challenges, and also pointed to soccer’s low popularity as a spectator and player sport at the time of the World Cup.

He said that factored into his decision when choosing a wild-card coach, Velibor “Bora” Milutinović, to lead the 1994 team.

The Starting IX for the United States before a 1994 FIFA World Cup Round of 16 game between the United States and Brazil at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto on July 4, 1994.

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Ernie Stewart celebrates with his team after the US scores the second goal during the USA match against Colombia in the 1994 World Cup.

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Rothberg said “there was a lot of pressure to hire an American coach” for the home team. But he said he “felt there was a necessity to have a coach with international experience.”

Milutinović also emerged as a centerpiece of the documentary, which the producers said they didn’t expect.

“We just started falling in love with Bora, and after one interview with him, where he started [...] coaching the directors, we were like, this guy is magic,” Farrand said.

Leggett said that players were able to better understand Milutinović’s strategy through the documentary. He said that during the interview process, “what was very obvious was [the players] were really digesting and getting to understand Bora as well.”

What happened to U.S. soccer after 1994? 

Rothberg said that since that World Cup, funding for U.S. soccer took off. The team’s performance, “enabled us to immediately follow up and create Major League Soccer,” he said.

At that time, the organization had a $50 million surplus, which Rothberg said they used to create a nonprofit for “underserved communities.”

In 1999, the U.S. hosted the Women’s World Cup in major stadiums.

Libby Rainey (L) and Alan Rothberg (R) speak at a screening in LAist’s Crawford Family Forum.

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“[FIFA] had so little confidence in the women's game at that time that they wanted us to play in small stadiums in the Northeast, and we persuaded them,” Rothberg recalled.

Now, Major League Soccer has invested over $11 billion in facilities and stadiums, and the U.S. is hosting the World Cup this summer, including eight matches in L.A.

Rothberg said that since that World Cup, public interest in soccer has only increased. Now, we might even be underselling how popular the sport is.

“Soccer has been underestimated to this day. It's still the number one participant sport in the country,” he said.

Farrand said the film sought to inspire not just future players, but also volunteer coaches.

“If we could use this moment and this movie to inspire former players and parents to lean into coaching, we could really make a difference,” she said.

She added that volunteer coaching is “an act of civic participation,” which she encouraged attendees to consider ahead of the U.S.’s 250th anniversary of independence.

Both Rothberg and Farrand pointed to the Women’s World Cup, which will be hosted by the U.S. in 2031, as the next landmark event.

You can find where to stream on the documentary's website.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Mexico took advantage of a defensive blunder by South Korea to win 1-0 and become the first team to advance to the knockout stage of the World Cup on Thursday.

It marks a major triumph for a team that failed to get out of the group stage in 2022 and now has won twice on home soil in front of jubilant crowds.

Luis Romo scored in the 50th minute after South Korea goalkeeper Kim Seung-gyu collided with defender Lee Gi-hyuk and dropped the ball inside the area. Romo easily found the open net after picking up the loose ball.

The South Koreans nearly equalized in the 87th minute when Mexico goalkeeper Raúl Rangel stopped a header from close range by Cho Gue-sung, then made an even better save on the rebound, extending his right arm to keep the ball from crossing the line.

Mexico has six points from two Group A matches, three more than South Korea and five more than the Czech Republic and South Africa, who drew 1-1 earlier Thursday in Atlanta.

The top two teams from each group move on to the knockout stage, along with the best eight third-place teams. A round of 32 is being played for the first time at the World Cup after the tournament was expanded to 48 teams.