The Brief

When Benikia Kressler, an associate professor of special education at Cal State Fullerton, had her first child in January 2020, she had hoped to take the whole semester off.

The Cal State University system offers 30 days of paid leave, so she tried to put together a plan of using her sick and vacation days.

“It’s just a lot of confusion trying to figure out how I can stretch it to the semester that I need so that I can truly breastfeed and bond and also still pay my bills,” Kressler said.

The combination of leave, sick time, and PTO wasn’t enough to last the 16 weeks of the semester. She couldn’t afford a gap in pay, so she returned to work the last two weeks of the semester, doing department work.

Kressler and other union members of the California Faculty Association are demanding a full semester of parental leave, or 16 weeks, in negotiations with management. The union has voted to authorize a strike if demands, which include higher pay and better access to lactation rooms, are not met.

No legislative solution

The issue has been so high on their list of priorities that they lobbied and got legislation passed the last two years for expanded parental leave for Cal State faculty and employees. But Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed both the measures, emphasizing that changes to the parental leave policy should be part of the collective bargaining process. In an October veto message, he noted the measure would cost the state $20 million, and that he “implore[d] both entities to come together to resolve this issue during this negotiation.”

But the two parties have yet to come to an agreement. In addition to citing the cost estimate, university officials say that their current policy is “more generous” than other institutions because there’s no waiting period to take leave.

“The CSU values family and offers faculty an unparalleled benefit of six weeks of fully paid parental leave, available to them upon hire with no waiting period and no cost to the employee. In addition, CSU faculty may access more paid leave time with disability insurance, vacation, and sick leave,” said Amy Bentley-Smith, a spokesperson for the Cal State University system.

Union members point to other university systems that offer more leave. Faculty at the State University System of New York recently negotiated 12 weeks of leave at full pay. The University of New Mexico offers a paid semester. The University of California system offers eight weeks of paid parental leave.

But leave policies fall across the board at universities across the country.

Avoiding disruption

Nick Henning, a professor of education at Cal State Fullerton, says a paid semester of parental leave is not only “humane,” but also beneficial for students. If a faculty member has to come back mid-semester or find colleagues to fill in for them, it can be disruptive.

Nick Henning and his youngest daughter play piano in their living room together.

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Ashley Balderrama

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“It gets very clumsy in terms of the interruption that that can cause for people's teaching,” he said.

When Henning’s daughter was born two and a half years ago, he didn’t take leave. Instead, he had an option to reduce his teaching load from four courses a semester to two.

“I had all the same demands in terms of what I need to produce in terms of scholarship and service,” he said. “But now I'm putting parenting on that and that leave that we have, it’s just vastly inadequate.”

He also did the two-course semester when he adopted his now-12-year-old daughter in 2013, who he and his wife had fostered for a year.

“For a foster child, the most important thing would be to be there right away, right? And to be fully at home for a long amount of time in order to develop that bonding,” he said. “It’s inadequate.”

Benikia Kressler, a professor at Cal State Fullerton, on leave with her infant daughter.

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Benikia Kressler, the Fullerton professor, is now tenured. She gave birth three months ago to her second child, and said that at the time she had her first child, she was not tenured, and there can be pressure for people to not take the time that they need.

“It’s really competitive to try to hold onto your position. There's a lot that's expected of, of an untenured person. They take on a lot of service, a lot of teaching responsibilities,” she said.

She’s currently at home with her three month old, and is using leave that her husband, who teaches at San Diego State, donated in order to take a full semester.

“I can't imagine trying to go back to work after 30 days,” she said. “It's just unimaginable. My body is wrecked. I am exhausted.”

Inglewood officials are working on a full rewrite of the city map for the first time in nearly 40 years, laying out how they want the city to grow and change for the next two decades.

Along part of Manchester Boulevard, city planners are setting up an option for developers to rebuild rows of small storefronts with a mix of homes and commercial space. On La Brea Avenue, south of Centinela Avenue, they envision the possibility of dense housing and business blocks as high as six stories.

Jerome Johnson, an Inglewood local, said he’s lived through three decades of change in the city. He recalled watching a “raggedy market” at the corner of La Brea and Centinela make way for the two-story shopping center that’s there today. He said the potential developments around the intersection could be a catch-22.

“There’s a shortage of housing,” Johnson said. “But you don’t want it to turn into New York City.”

It’s all part of the ongoing process for Inglewood’s new general plan, the foundational guide that governs things like what kind of buildings can be built where in the city and how they need to look. A draft land-use plan will go before the Inglewood City Council on Tuesday, then go into the environmental impact review process.

“This is really a historic milestone for the city,” Bernard McCrumby, Inglewood development services director, told The LA Local. 

McCrumby said planners are aiming to open up room for new housing and to revitalize some of the city’s flagging business corridors, without changing the city’s existing residential blocks or sacrificing the grocery stores, barbershops and local restaurants that make neighborhoods tick.

“The stadiums and arenas are here, they’re not going anywhere,” McCrumby said. “Now we can plan around those.”

The last time the city did a full update of its general plan was 1987, when horses were still racing at Hollywood Park and the “Showtime” Lakers were winning championships at the Forum. Edward Vincent Jr., the city’s first Black mayor, had only been in office for four years. 

The city has made intermittent updates to its planning guidelines since then — notably remapping a band of Inglewood along the Metro K line before it opened — but city documents indicate planners spent the past couple years working on a comprehensive rewrite. 

The new update to the general plan could set the city’s direction until 2050.

Planners hope to change some of the city’s commercial corridors into mixed-use zones that allow for housing and businesses alongside each other or even stacked on top of each other.

Those zones could go in place along Century Boulevard and Arbor Vitae Street as well as Manchester, Centinela and La Brea.

The rest of the update, McCrumby said, is aimed at lining the city’s zoning regulations up with state law and the city’s current reality on the ground.

City staff held several community meetings over the last year as they put together the draft and still aren’t done gathering feedback. 

The next year will see at least one more community meeting and a 45-day public review period, according to city documents. McCrumby said that, with the anchor of the land-use map in place, planners will continue to work on the rest of the general plan, targeting final City Council approval of the plan and accompanying environmental impact report next spring.

You can get all the details on the general plan at nextlevelinglewood.com and attend the City Council meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to give a public comment.

We also want to know what you think of the proposed changes. Email isaiah@thelalocal.org with your questions or thoughts.

Students within the Los Angeles Unified School District showed improvements on state reading, math and science standardized tests for a third consecutive year, district authorities announced Tuesday.

Superintendent Andrés Chait revealed the preliminary results at the annual opening-of-schools address at East L.A.’s Garfield High School— his first as the district’s leader since the board appointed him to the job in June.

“ These are not just numbers on a page,” Chait said to an audience that included about 1,000 principals, administrators and district supporters. “They are the result of your passion, your persistence, your belief in what students can achieve. These are collective accomplishments.

"They reflect the dedication, skill, and commitment of our entire community,” he said.

Jai Gant-Leau, principal of Eagle Tree Continuation High School, said the “back-to-basics” focus of Chait’s speech was a welcome departure from the tone of recent opening addresses.

“We will continue to rise for the outcomes and expectations for the success of our students. That's the message I got,” Gant-Leau said. “Very different than the others where it was a lot of… bells and whistles.”

Why it matters

Student achievement, as measured by test scores, plummeted during the pandemic. Los Angeles Unified’s growth in 2025 outpaced the state, as test scores exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

This year the percentage of students in all grades who met or exceeded the standard are 39.7% for math, 48.3% for English and 32.1% for science. It’s unclear how this compares to students statewide because those results have yet to be released.

Challenges ahead

Chait also acknowledged the challenges posed by declining enrollment, community fears of immigration enforcement actions and proposed budget cuts.

 “The decisions will be hard, but we cannot lose sight of what defines us,” Chait said. “We are the system that lifts students to opportunity, turns potential into achievement, creates spaces of belonging, healing, growth.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

We hope you’ve gotten used to the hot weather, because it’s going to be here for a while.

The National Weather Service has issued yet another heat advisory for much of Southern California, less than a week after other high-temperature warnings were lifted.

This week’s advisory will be in place from 10 a.m. Wednesday through Monday. Forecasters expect temperatures to climb steadily over the course of Wednesday and Thursday.

The San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and other inland areas in L.A., as well as Riverside and San Bernardino counties, will likely see highs ranging from the mid-90s to about 105 degrees. Areas closer to the coast, including downtown Los Angeles and much of Orange County, will hit the 90s. Beaches will hover mostly in the upper 70s.

Humidity will also add to the discomfort. Even though it’s decreasing slightly, it makes cooling down harder, especially at night.

People who work outdoors or do not have air conditioning are especially at risk from the heat and humidity, along with people over 65, young children and other sensitive populations.

Fire risk

Forecasters are warning that conditions are ripe for fires, driven by a combination of wind and dry vegetation.

Southern California hasn’t seen much rain recently, despite the humidity, leaving plants with little moisture and turning them into the perfect fuel.

“Even though the air feels kind of moist, we're in the time of season where it doesn't matter. The fuels are dry and they're ready to go,” said NWS meteorologist Ryan Kittell.

Kittel said people should take extra care with anything that could create a spark, and residents in fire-prone areas should remain aware of their surroundings in case a fire starts.

The fire risk is likely to be concentrated in a few specific areas that will experience higher winds than others, including parts of the 5 Freeway corridor in northern L.A. County, especially around the Grapevine, and in southern Santa Barbara County.

For most of the region, though, winds should stay fairly mild.

Dangerous beach conditions

Southern Californians also have to contend with some ocean-specific risks this week.

Forecasters expect dangerously large waves and strong rip currents to hit the coastline at a time when the heat may drive more people to the beach. The conditions are expected to persist through the weekend.

If you decide to head to the beach, it’s a good idea to ask a lifeguard for advice on the conditions before entering the water. It’s also recommended to swim only near occupied lifeguard stands, stay off of rock jetties and avoid turning your back to the waves.

South-facing stretches of coastline will bear the brunt of the swell, which is being driven by two tropical storms churning hundreds of miles away in the Pacific Ocean.

“Those two systems generated the winds and the waves locally that are pushing towards us, and so that's creating elevated surf and some stronger currents than normal,” Kittel said.

The swell is not expected to cause significant coastal flooding as high tides remain relatively low.