The Brief

California librarians were stunned when a last-minute budget change stripped K-12 schools of a trove of research materials, potentially leaving thousands of students without resources to do reports, projects or homework assignments.

Without notice to schools or librarians, the Legislature last week canceled $5.5 million that pays online fees for the Encyclopedia Britannica, New York Times, PBS videos such as Ken Burns documentaries, scientific journals and thousands of other online materials used by students and teachers. The cut goes into effect on July 1, 2027.

“We had no idea this was coming,” said Greg Lucas, head of the California State Library, which helps oversee the program for California’s 10,000 public schools. “This will have a huge impact on California students.”

The program, called Compass, is an online database of research and curriculum materials that have been vetted by teachers and librarians. Compass is also available through public libraries, but the vast majority of users are at K-12 schools. Since the program launched in 2018, it’s received nearly 1 billion hits.

Students use Compass for classroom assignments as well as for recreation. Many of the materials are available in multiple languages. Among the more popular features are National Geographic Kids; Pebble Go Science, which includes hundreds of science activities for pre-kindergarten through second grade; and Alexander Street, which offers videos of cultural performances such as the Joffrey Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Compass is especially important at a time when fewer schools have libraries — and librarians — to help students with research. Although nearly 90% of schools have physical space on campus for books, magazines and other research materials, only about a quarter of those spaces are staffed by librarians. The rest are staffed by volunteers, classified employees or not at all. California ranks 49th nationwide in school librarian staffing, with nearly 10,000 students for each librarian, according to research by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Compass is available free to all schools in California. If schools were to subscribe individually to Compass materials, they’d spend more than $216 million annually, according to a State Library report. A typical medium-sized school district might pay $100,000 or more for the services, an expense lower-income districts are less likely to have money for.

Losing the service raises concerns about internet access

Without access to Compass materials, students would likely rely on free resources online. But those materials tend to contain advertisements or track user data, a violation of state student privacy laws. They also are less likely to be vetted for accuracy, a particular danger in the age of artificial intelligence.

“Losing Compass is catastrophic for the state of California,” said Kate MacMillan, library services coordinator for Napa Valley Unified. “This service is a lifeline. I can’t believe the Legislature would let this happen.”

Funding for Compass was in earlier versions of the budget the Legislature debated over the past few months. But the final version eliminated Compass funding after July 1, 2027. Instead, it directs $5 million of the funding toward the state’s new dyslexia screener, and $60,000 for technical support of an online lesson-sharing platform called California Educators Together.

Legislators and staff members on the budget education committees contacted by CalMatters did not comment on why the money was cut.

Meanwhile, librarians are launching an aggressive campaign to save the program. They’re emailing Newsom and the Legislature, and trying to bring attention to the issue.

Connie Williams, a retired school librarian and former head of the California School Library Association, said that losing Compass will exacerbate disparities in the state’s education system. Lower-income schools will lose crucial learning resources, while higher-income schools will be able to pay the subscription costs themselves, without state assistance.

“The disparity will be overwhelmingly glaring,” Williams said. “We’re leaving students at the mercy of whatever is free on the internet.”

It’s especially galling, she said, that this move comes as the state is promoting media and digital literacy in schools. In 2023 California enacted a law requiring schools to teach media literacy in all subjects, with a focus on teaching students to recognize fake news, determine if an information source is trustworthy and generally think critically about what they view and read online.

“We want students to think critically, put away their phones, know how to do research,” Williams said. “And we’re grabbing away some of the best learning tools we have.”

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

California’s district attorneys and the state attorney general will now have the ability to sue individual businesses that they believe are engaging in anticompetitive conduct.

But for some of its biggest proponents, it’s a hollow victory.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed Assembly Bill 1776, known as the Compete Act, bringing an end to one of the most hard-fought political battles of the year. Unions and consumer rights groups supported the bill, but the state’s influential Chamber of Commerce fiercely opposed it and won several concessions to water it down.

Assemblymember Cecilia-Aguiar Curry, a powerful Davis Democrat, introduced the bill to modernize the century-old Cartwright Act, which regulates only anticompetitive conduct by two or more businesses. Many progressive Democrats, concerned about corporate consolidation of business in industries such as healthcare, ticket sales and retail, signed on as co-authors.

Newsom signed the bill along with six other small business-friendly bills on the constitutional deadline for signing legislation.

“We’re taking on predatory practices that drive up costs and shut entrepreneurs out — making sure California’s economy works for everyone, not just the biggest and best-connected,” he wrote in a release announcing his approval.

However, his signing message on AB 1776 was more circumspect.

“While I align myself with a stated goal of targeting anti-competitive conduct that harms consumers, workers, and businesses alike, we must be careful not to set the bar too low — dragging legitimate, superior business practices and products into the ambit of anti-competitive behavior,” he wrote.

He added that he expects judges and prosecutors to interpret and apply the law “in ways that penalize clear wrongdoing, without creating needless uncertainty.”

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a former sponsor of the bill, wrote in a post on X that Newsom’s signing message made Hepner pessimistic that the law would be effective.

“I foresee politicized antitrust litigation budgets, partisan allegations of weaponized enforcement, novel legal defenses that find new basis in the legislative history of this bill, and public officials caving to the concentrated private power that antitrust laws are supposed to put in check,” he wrote.

The group had helped craft the legislation for years, but changed its position when Aguiar-Curry removed a “private right of action” provision that would have allowed any individual or business to sue a company they allege is harming them through anticompetitive tactics.

Other supporters included the California Federation of Labor Unions and TechEquity Action, a progressive advocacy group that lobbies for regulation of the tech industry.

Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez said in a statement that the new law “gets us one step closer to building a more affordable economy for working people.”

The bill grew out of a three-year review by the California Law Revision Commission, which the Legislature had asked to study changes to the 1907 Cartwright Act.

The private right of action was one of the biggest sticking points for CalChamber, which argued it would “expose businesses of all sizes to a wave of frivolous lawsuits.” The group launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign over the summer to push to weaken the proposed law. Tech companies such as Meta and Google also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby legislators on AB 1776 and other issues.

Although Aguiar-Curry said she was disappointed the private right of action was gutted in the last weeks of the legislative session, she pressed on, and lawmakers passed the bill in the last days.

“California now has stronger tools to protect our small businesses, workers, and consumers and to make sure our markets work for everyone,” she said in Wednesday’s release.

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

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill intended to free up state funds for homeless housing that requires sobriety after vetoing a similar effort last year.

For years, California has followed “housing first” principles when it comes to homelessness, which means funding low-barrier programs that don’t require people to jump through extra hoops — such as getting sober — before they are allowed a place to live. But while that works for many people who aren’t ready to kick addictions, it leaves behind people who want to be sober and are struggling to stay that way, said Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco. For them, the only option often is to live in housing surrounded by neighbors who use substances, he said.

Haney’s legislation, Assembly Bill 1556, clarifies that sober housing providers can qualify for state funds, as long as they follow certain rules.

“People working hard to stay sober deserve the choice to live in a home that supports their recovery,” Haney said in a news release. “I’m incredibly grateful to Governor Newsom for signing AB 1556 and for working with us to get this right. This law will finally give Californians in recovery access to safe, stable, drug-free housing while making sure that if someone relapses, they are supported and stay connected to housing and services.”

Under the new law, sober residences that get state funds must have a written policy dictating what to do if someone relapses. The housing provider must give them the option to move into low-barrier housing. If they decline, they can be evicted.

It’s Haney’s third attempt to get state money for sober housing. His first, AB 2479, died in 2024.

His second, AB 255, made it all the way to Newsom’s desk before the governor vetoed it for a surprising reason: According to the governor, Haney’s bill was unnecessary because recent guidelines from the state already allowed state funds to pay for sober housing.

That was a big surprise to Haney, who had never seen those guidelines before. When CalMatters asked the governor’s office for a copy, we received a link to a 20-page document that was dated July 2025, but wasn’t published online until the day after Newsom’s veto.

After reviewing those guidelines, Haney spent a year working more closely with the governor’s office on a new bill. It’s still important, Haney said, because the existing guidelines are unclear: Housing providers still believe state funds are off-limits for sober housing. The proof, he said, is that housing providers still aren’t using them to fund sober-living projects.

There are several differences between the new sober housing law and last year’s failed bill, cost chief among them. Last year’s bill would have set up a new system for the state’s housing department to regulate sober housing, costing millions of dollars in the first year, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s analysis. By contrast, the new sober housing law comes with an expected price tag of about $200,000 per year to fund one staff position, according to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Even so, some housing organizations opposed the new legislation, arguing it will divert scarce housing funds away from the low-barrier models that are proven to work.

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

The rent, as we all know, is too damn high.

So is California’s poverty rate.

The two things are related.

That’s the not-so-surprising finding of a new analysis published by the Pew Charitable Trusts: If California’s rents dropped to the national average, the state would slash its poverty rate by 30%. The child poverty rate would decline by 36%.

The report is meant to highlight an important, if sometimes overlooked, aspect of poverty: It isn’t just about how much a person makes.

“Anti-poverty programs will be much more effective if we address people’s expenses, and rent is the number-one line item for most Americans,” said Pew researcher Alex Horowitz.

Case in point: CalFresh, the state’s food stamp program, saw an increase of $13.1 billion in benefits between 1989 and 2023. Over that same period, rising rents ate away 78% of that increase, according to the analysis.

California’s official poverty rate, which currently matches the national average of 10.7%, has always been a misleading stat. Using another official measure that takes into account each state’s housing costs, the percentage of Californians living in poverty rockets up to 17.8% — the second highest rate in the country after Louisiana.

That makes bringing down rents an especially effective anti-poverty program. If the state’s rents fell by 20%, child poverty would decline by roughly a quarter, the report found.

Twenty percent may seem impossibly ambitious in a state where rents often only seem to go in one direction (with some noteworthy exceptions), but that’s roughly how much typical rents declined in Austin and Minneapolis between 2021 and 2025. Pew researchers attribute that feat of affordability to local policy changes that have allowed for more housing construction.

Those policies — allowing for denser housing in cities, reducing parking requirements for new developments, encouraging the construction of ADUs — mirror many of the laws adopted at the state level in California. Those laws have yet to result in a major increasein new housing, but proponents are optimistic that a building boom is on the horizon.

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