The Brief

When Humberto Estratalán’s daughter started transitional kindergarten last fall in the Coachella Valley city of La Quinta, he was surprised to hear she’d be in a combination class with kindergartners — with only one teacher.

He said the classroom held about 30 kids, but no dedicated aide to help the teacher manage them. His daughter would come home, deflated.

“She was struggling emotionally. We could tell she was just a little, not herself, not as happy to be at school,” Estratalán said. “She said, ‘Who do I go to when [the teacher] is busy?’”

The most upsetting moment was when he picked her up from school one day and noticed her sweatpants were inside out. He said when he asked the school about it, he was told his daughter had an accident and was sent to an office to change by herself.

“Here we have a 4-year-old in the office restroom, sitting on the floor, naked, changing herself,” he said. “That was the last straw.”

Estratalán, who is an education policy advocate for the nonprofit UNITE-LA, said he knew state rules require an adult for every 12 transitional kindergarten students. He complained to the Desert Sands Unified School District, and within two months the school reassigned teachers from other grades and hired more staff to open up a new transitional kindergarten class with a teacher and aide where he said his daughter is thriving.

The rough start of the year, however, highlights the staffing challenges some school districts face as they try to keep up with California’s rapid expansion of transitional kindergarten. The state needs a lot more teachers and aides to fill TK classrooms, but advocates say early childhood educators who have the experience and desire to step into those jobs are being deterred by the state’s credentialing system.

What is the teacher labor market for transitional kindergarten?

Starting this fall, any child who turns 4 by Sept. 1 can enroll in TK, marking the final phase of California’s four-year rollout of the new grade. There’s a lot riding on the success of universal TK: supporters hope that a year of learning through play will help give a boost to young kids who may not otherwise have access to preschool. Districts facing declining enrollment hope that a surge of new students will improve their financial outlook.

Angelica Cardenas of Hayward poses for a portrait on the Cal State University East Bay campus in Hayward. Cardenas received her master's degree in early childhood education from Cal State East Bay.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom, who made universal TK a focus of his education policy, is proposing to spend $3.9 billion in the 2025-26 budget to fully implement the program. Part of that money would go toward lowering the student to teacher staffing ratio from from 12-to-1 to 10-to-1. School districts that don’t comply could face a fine or risk losing funding.

Researchers estimate that California schools will need 11,900 teachers and at least 16,000 aides to keep TK expansion on track. But amid a shortage of teachers at all levels of public education, some school districts struggle to hire or retain those who have the skills to support the physical, social-emotional and cognitive development of 4-year-olds, said Naj Alikhan, a spokesman for the Association of California School Administrators.

Rural or smaller school districts have a hard time finding a qualified teacher from their local pool of candidates.

Desert Sands Unified, where Estratalán’s daughter is enrolled, has hosted job fairs and offered financial incentives to entice teachers.

“We don't have, you know, five universities like the Bay Area right around all these school districts, and it's difficult,” said Dennis Zink, senior director of certificated personnel at the district.

Why aren't teachers getting the needed credentials?

To grow the workforce, the state introduced a new credential for teachers who want to specialize in TK through third grade.

But Alikhan says he’s hearing anecdotally that not enough people are pursuing the credential, and one reason may be its stringent requirements.

“Teachers may want to do it, but it’s the investment of time and investment of money that’s preventing some from moving forward with it,” he said. 

Assistant professor Yoonjin Esther Nam-Huh teaches early literacy and language trainings at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

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Candidates must hold a bachelor’s degree, complete coursework in child development or early childhood education, pass the state’s teacher performance assessment and undergo up to 600 hours of training in classrooms — typically without pay.

Critics say those are tough barriers for at least 17,000 early educators who already teach young kids and have a bachelor’s degree, but aren’t part of the state’s K-12 school system.

Angelica Cardenas, who has a master’s degree in early childhood education and 13 years of experience teaching 2- to 5-year-olds in Head Start and state preschool programs in the Bay Area, would still need a credential to teach TK.

“People tell me ‘I think you'd be a really good TK teacher,’ and I would love to, but right now I don't know if I have the energy to go back to school,” Cardenas said.

What if you're already a K-12 teacher?

The state’s credentialing program would also require her to jump through more hoops than a K-12 teacher at a private or public school with no experience teaching 4-year-olds.

For example, a preschool teacher with a bachelor’s degree and five years of work experience would still have to undergo classroom training to earn the credential. Those 600 hours amount to at least $10,000 in lost wages, according to researchers at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley and at the California Budget and Policy Center.

By comparison, private school teachers, who are not required to hold a state-issued credential, can shift to TK without additional training or any experience teaching 4-year-olds. State law only requires them and K-12 public school teachers to complete six to eight classes of early childhood education or development.

Lea Austin, executive director of the CSCCE, argues that the separate pathways are inequitable for early educators, the majority of whom are women of color. A preschool teacher earns on average $17.66 per hour, which is less than half the salary of an elementary school teacher, according to an analysis of the most recent labor data for California workers.

“You can't use your existing experience and education as evidence that you are a qualified teacher in the same way that anybody teaching kindergarten or older has the opportunity to do that,” Austin said.

Students in the early education credential program make mini-lesson plans during their lecture at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

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Austin and other advocates have called on the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing to offer early educators the same pathway to teaching TK as private school teachers. She said if the state doesn’t improve access, it risks losing a valuable workforce.

“It just feels sad and wrong to be losing such experienced educators when there's a clear need for them and when there should be opportunities for them,” Austin said.

Mary Vixie Sandy, director of the commission, said that policy for private school teachers existed long before the PK-3 credential came along. She urged patience as teacher preparation programs train the first cohorts of PK-3 credential candidates to figure out what worked, what didn’t and consider changes in the future.

“We're not trying to keep a workforce out, not at all. We most certainly want the workforce in,” she said.

What can teacher education programs do?

The CTC allows teacher training programs to waive up to 400 hours of training depending on a person’s preschool classroom experience, but requires 200 hours to prepare candidates to teach all the way up to third grade.

“The knowledge of someone whose complete experience has been with 3- and 4-year-olds may not be sufficient to be assigned to a third-grade classroom,” she said. “And if they have a credential that authorizes them to serve in those places, we have a fundamental obligation to the public to make sure the people we credential are prepared to do so.”

Cardenas, 38, considers herself a lifelong learner and said she would be willing to undergo more professional training, but she can’t afford to take time off work to pursue a credential, at least not without a scholarship or grant.

It takes one to two years to complete a teacher preparation program, and the CTC is giving these programs some leeway to waive prior coursework in child development or early childhood education.

The state has awarded millions of dollars in grants to support aspiring TK teachers willing to work in classrooms as they earn their credential. California State University, Dominguez Hills is offering up to $15,000 grants to students pursuing the credential as part of an effort to increase the early childhood education workforce. It’s also trying to make returning to school easier for preschool teachers who have an associate’s degree by giving them three years to complete their bachelor’s degree and PK-3 credential if they attend full-time.

San Jose State University offered to cover the full cost of tuition for up to 28 early educators who enrolled in its PK-3 credentialing program by April 1st, according to Maria Fusaro, a child and adolescent development professor at the university.

Fusaro said going through the program takes “a big commitment,” but it’s up to early educators to decide whether the effort is worth the reward of working in a K-12 setting.

A single mom of two boys, Cardenas said she’s attracted to the good salary, benefits and summer breaks that come with teaching in public schools. She also said she was excited by the prospect of teaching TK when the state began expanding the grade.

She knows she has what it takes to teach 4-year-olds — the patience to see them through the potty training and other foundational skills so they’re ready for the next stage of learning.

“It saddens me that after all the years of education that I have, all the years of experience, I wouldn't be able to teach TK even though that's my jam,” she said.

Democrats' big wins in these midterm elections couldn't have happened without some massive voter shifts.

Young voters, Latinos and Asian Americans, urban and suburban voters, men and independents all moved heavily to the left.

One of the sharpest turns in this election was by Latinos. And Democrats had their best performance with white voters in years

In 2024, President Trump won a record share of Latino votes for a Republican presidential candidate. But they took a sharp left turn in this election after Trump's promises of lower prices never came to fruition and his administration's harsh deportation tactics backfired.

Latinos swung 21 points toward Democratic House candidates, compared to two years ago.

Asian Americans also sharply diverged from 2024, also going 21 points more in Democrats' favor, from a 22-point advantage to a whopping 43.

Democrats even tied with white voters. To put that in perspective, Democrats haven't won white voters in a presidential election since 1964. Since then, they came closest in 1992 and 1996 when former President Bill Clinton lost them by 2 points both times and then in the 2006 midterms when Republicans won them by just 4.

By age, it was a sharp boomerang, particularly with voters 18 to 29

Democrats won this group of young voters by 48 points, a 34-point swing from two years ago.

To put in context just how dramatic of a margin that is — it's wider than for former President Barack Obama in 2008 when he won the youngest voters by 34 points. The difference in 2008 is they were 18% of the electorate, compared to 11% in this midterm.

Young voters traditionally have the biggest turnout drop from presidential to midterm elections of any group, so there are likely many Republican-leaning 18- to 29-year-olds who simply stayed home.

Democrats also won by huge margins with urban and suburban voters

Urban voters swung by 25 points in their favor, while voters in the suburbs, who had voted narrowly for Trump in 2024, went for Democrats by 19 points.

But Democrats can't win in red states without minimizing losses in small towns and rural areas. Democrats lost them by 16 points this year, a 16-point shift in their favor, compared with 2024, when they lost them by 32.

Democrats won men for the first time since 2008

Women were the fuel for Democrats' wins in these elections. They broke by 19 points for Democrats, 13 points wider than in 2024 and the best mark for the party since Trump's first midterm.

But the shift with men was notable. Democrats won men by 2 points, a 16-point shift from 2024 and the first time the party has won men since 2008. It's only the third time in 34 years that Democrats have won men.

The other time was in 1992 when Bill Clinton won them by 3 points, and that was with a third-party candidate in the race, Ross Perot, who won 19% of the national popular vote.

Republicans saw their worst performance with independents since at least 1998

The number to watch heading into Tuesday night for Republicans was 46%. That was the mark they needed with independents in order to do well. When they have hit that threshold in the Trump era, they have done well, winning the presidency in 2016 and 2024 and making gains in the House in 2022.

But when they were below it, they didn't do well, losing more than 40 seats in the House in 2018 and the presidency in 2020.

In these midterms, they didn't even get close. They only won 38% of independents, their worst mark since at least 1998 when independents viewed the impeachment investigation against Clinton as politically motivated and an overreach.

The only other time that comes close was in 2006 when they only won 39% of independents, and Democrats, like this year, won both the House and Senate.

More graphics from the voter poll

Methodology

2026 data comes from a poll of tens of thousands of voters, conducted by the firm SSRS for a number of news outlets, including the Associated Press. The full sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.6 percentage points. Data may shift as votes and exit poll analysis are finalized.

2018-2024 data comes from exit polls conducted by Edison Research (now Edison Research at SSRS) for a number of news outlets. NPR accessed all data via results posted by CNN and ABC News.

2026 data combines results from in-person exit poll responses and a pre-election survey of voters, while 2018-2024 data combines results from in-person exit poll responses and responses from early and absentee voters.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Chemical manufacturer 3M will pay up to $7.35 billion to settle lawsuits by people who say they were sickened by groundwater contamination from compounds used in firefighting foam and other consumer products.

The St. Paul, Minnesota-based company announced the settlement Tuesday. It will pay the money over nine years to as many as 120,000 people who say they were harmed by exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known collectively as PFAS. The chemicals contaminated groundwater near military bases, airports and other locations where the foam was used to extinguish fires.

3M did not admit liability for the contamination under the agreement.

Called “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade naturally in the environment, PFAS have been linked to health problems including liver and immune system damage and some cancers. The chemicals are also used in nonstick, water- and grease-resistant products, including clothing and cookware.

3M chairman William Brown called the settlement a “significant milestone” that substantially reduces uncertainty from the litigation. The company previously reached settlements in other PFAS-related lawsuits, including a $450 million agreement with the state of New Jersey to settle claims of natural resource contamination and a deal to pay more than $10 billion to many U.S. public drinking water systems.

Other manufacturers, including DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc., have agreed to settlements totaling more than $1 billion to resolve PFAS claims.

Fred Thompson, an attorney with the Motley Rice law firm that helped negotiate the 3M settlement for the plaintiffs, called it welcome news for “the thousands of victims who have sought answers and accountability for nearly a decade.”

He said in a news release that the plaintiffs urgently need help covering mounting medical bills and other costs.

Under the terms of the settlement, the payouts will begin with $50 million this year, followed by yearly payments of more than $1 billion each year from 2028 to 2033.

3M could make additional payments if enough plaintiffs participate. If too few sign on, 3M has the option to cancel the settlement and continue fighting the lawsuit.

Environmental activists say PFAS manufacturers knew about the chemicals’ health risks long before they became public. They noted that the same attributes that make the chemicals so valuable in many uses — resistance to breakdown — also make them hazardous to people.

The Environmental Protection Agency has set strict limits on PFAS in drinking water from public utilities and requires testing, but those rules do not apply to private wells.

A study that would help federal regulators understand which industries dump the forever chemicals with their wastewater has been stalled for two years, awaiting review by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Longer wait times for graffiti removal and streetlight repair. Fewer police officers per shift. Completely eliminating school crossing guards.

Those are just some of the service cuts the city of South Gate made earlier this year as it stared down a $9.4 million annual budget deficit and a looming fiscal emergency.

But none of that was enough to convince South Gate voters to approve an 8% utility user tax that would have been tacked onto a wide range of utility bills, including electricity, water, cable and phone service. Now, the city is gearing up for more cuts, including closing sports fields and the city pool for the winter months.

South Gate’s utility tax was just one of the many ways Southern California cities asked their residents to give them more money via local tax initiatives this November, with proposed taxes on everything from hotel stays to cannabis businesses.

And those early results suggest South Gate is an outlier: Of the 32 total local tax measures on the ballot in Los Angeles and Orange counties, all but six appear poised to pass, according to early results. (There are still several more days of vote counting to come.)

Eleven transient occupancy tax measures, which tax overnight stays in hotels or short-term rentals, passed in cities from Burbank to Los Alamitos. Most cities sought to increase their existing hotel taxes by anywhere from 1 to 5 percentage points, while Lynwood residents voted to establish a hotel tax for the first time.

Business-related taxes, such as taxes on business licenses or on certain businesses, also mostly passed, as did most parcel taxes in cities including Pasadena and Culver City.

But sales taxes saw more mixed results. Cudahy, San Gabriel, Orange, Santa Ana and Los Angeles all approved sales tax measures, while voters in Diamond Bar, Hermosa Beach and San Clemente all voted down their local sales tax proposals.

Most of those sales taxes focused on maintaining basic city services in communities facing big budget deficits, driven by the rising costs of insurance, maintenance and infrastructure projects, and employee pensions, among other factors. But in San Clemente, the proposed 1% sales tax would have specifically funded sand replenishment and other beach projects, along with wildfire prevention work. That measure appeared to be headed for failure, with just 36% of voters in support as of Wednesday afternoon.

Voters in San Marino approved an extension of their utility tax, and increased it from 5% to 6%. Last year, the tax provided almost $2.2 million in revenue.

City officials in South Gate had hoped for a similar boon, and projected the utility tax would bring in an estimated $10.4 million per year in general fund revenue, while raising total utility costs by about $39 per month for a typical household.

Leading up to the election, the city of South Gate pointed to other neighboring cities that have their own utility taxes, including Downey, Lakewood and Norwalk, where the tax mostly hovers around 5%. “South Gate is the exception, not the rule,” noted one city presentation that pointed to these other taxes in a bid to coax voters to go along.

Voters weren’t convinced. “I’m extremely frustrated that you now want to do electricity, water, sewer, cable, cell phone, gas. ... That hurts us. You’re passing that on to us and that is absolutely not acceptable,” said one resident at a City Council meeting on the measure earlier this year.

LAist has reached out to the city of South Gate about what’s next for the city.

The city of West Hollywood has approved an ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry for people in polyamorous relationships.

The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood and some tenant protections. The registry doesn’t replace the state’s marriage or the state’s domestic partnership laws.

“It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Council member. “I think that's a real joy that we can bring to people — that they can live in a greater sense of being seen and understood.”

How it works

To file, people in a multi-partner relationship will submit a form in person that will be provided by the City Clerk’s office — all members of the relationship will have to provide identification to the clerk.

The ordinance also offers an option by mail, if the signatures are notarized.

The ordinance builds on historical precedent

In 1985, the city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples. Similar to that registry, people outside the city can also register.

“This new law not only gives polyamorous unions legal recognition, it also gives people permission to imagine a future together and to plan their lives openly,” said Christina Fialho, president and founder of Rewrite the BiLine, an advocacy group for bisexual people and nonnuclear families, who advocated for the ordinance.

Several cities in Massachusetts have also passed multipartner domestic partnership laws.