The Brief

When Thomas Pace, director of facilities at San Bernardino City Unified, thinks about all the construction that needs to happen at the schools in his district, he struggles to get the math to work.

Many of the existing kindergarten classrooms don’t meet state standards, and now, they’re preparing to layer in another grade for young children: transitional kindergarten.

In 2021, California embarked on a $2.7 billion plan to offer TK to all 4-year-olds by the 2025-2026 school year in what’s poised to be the largest free preschool program in the country.

But school districts across the state, like Pace’s, are struggling to build or modify the facilities most appropriate for these new young learners.

Why the rollout is expensive and hard

San Bernardino City Unified is at the tail end of using $250 million in bond money the city raised over a decade ago for school improvements.

“All of the specialized space is highly expensive, and for those school districts that lack the local resources, we struggle to make those improvements on a grand scale,” Pace said. “So we were already struggling to catch up even in the kinder realm. Now you add in a greater offering for TK, it just puts a larger burden on local school districts.”

State requirements for new TK classrooms (and kindergarten classrooms) are different than those of typical classrooms. Four-year-olds can’t just sit at desks all day. They also need space to play, indoors and outdoors. They also need supervision when going to the bathroom, which means having a restroom inside the classroom, or close by.

In San Bernardino, 150 of the 190 early education classrooms don’t meet those standards, Pace said.

An initial analysis of state data by the Learning Policy Institute, yet to be published, found most districts reported having classroom space for early learners, but a third expressed concerns about adequate facilities, including square footage, bathrooms, and outdoor play areas.

In 2022, California expanded a grant program to help school districts build or renovate TK classrooms. Through two rounds of funding, the state has given out $585.9 million dollars.

But that program requires school districts to be able to provide matching funds at the local level. And districts have asserted that the way funding is structured makes it harder for lower-resourced districts to get money.

“We have lots of classrooms that need to be modified,” Pace said. “We lack the local funding source to match, and we lack the state funding for it. So if the governor doesn't continue to fund TK improvements to facilities, we are going to struggle.”

Last month, the governor in his May revised budget cut more than half a billion dollars for that program. Lawmakers are weighing putting a statewide bond on the ballot in November.

A spokesperson for the Department of General Services said in its last filing round, $1.04 billion worth of requests were not funded.

Why learning environments matter

Children gather around on a large colorful rug in the center of a TK classroom at Will Rogers Elementary in Santa Monica. The classroom has a wooden toddler play loft, puppets and toys, and tiny-sized furniture for 4-year-olds. But it’s only about 900 square feet and doesn’t have a restroom inside.

Space is important for young children, because they learn through play, said Susan Samarge-Powell, director of early learning at Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

“So rather than students sitting at a desk all day long, that's not what our early learning environments are about. It's about moving around, they're moving all day long. And so having that space to afford them that ability is a big deal,” she said.

She said restrooms are also a big deal because 4-year-olds don't have quite the same bladder control as older kids.

The construction site of a new building and field at Will Rogers Elementary School.

(

Ashley Balderrama

/

LAist

)

The construction site of a new building and field at Will Rogers Elementary School.

(

Ashley Balderrama

/

LAist

)

"When you have little bodies, they have to go to the bathroom often. With the older kids, we can say, we're going before recess. But with littles, whenever they're ready, you have to go. So, it's a challenge," she said.

Across the other side of the elementary school, construction is underway to build new early learning classrooms that offer students an ideal environment — with their own play yard and their own bathrooms. District officials hope it’ll be ready by summer of 2025, but the district won’t be finished with most of its other TK construction until 2026 or 2027, said Carey Upton, the district’s chief operations officer.

“We’re playing catchup, and I think all school districts are,” Upton said. But Upton added his district, which includes Malibu, has the benefit of high-assessed property values and bond measures that tend to pass.

“It works OK for school districts that have funding. It works really poorly for school districts that don't, who don't have the money to front the costs,” Upton said.

Should the state wait to expand TK?

When state lawmakers announced the expansion of TK in 2021, officials said it would provide “high quality learning opportunities” for every child.

But Sara Hinkley, a program manager for the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Cities + Schools, says quality may look different based on ZIP code.

Dr. Susan Samarge-Powell, Director of Child Development Services at Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

(

Ashley Balderrama

/

LAist

)

Carey Upton, Chief Operations Officer of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

(

Ashley Balderrama

/

LAist

)

“If you see that as being very uneven, then the idea of TK being a way to make up the difference between kids who have access to nice, expensive preschool experiences and kids whose families can't afford to send them to those kinds of experiences — we've kind of missed the entire goal of the expanded program, and that would be a shame,” Hinkley said.

“I think what we'll also end up seeing is that local districts that can raise money locally, that can issue voter-approved general obligation bonds to retrofit these facilities, will have better educational environments for their very young kids,” she said.

LAist reached out to Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, who authored the expansion of transitional kindergarten. His office said he was unable to comment.

Dale Farran, professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University, said the state should wait to implement TK until schools have the appropriate spaces for it.

Farran worked on a 2022 study in Tennessee that found that students who went to Tennessee’s public pre-K program had more behavior problems and lower test scores.

“[Kids] need to be up, they need to be exploring, they need to be interacting with each other and with the teacher, and they need to have an environment that facilitates all of that happening,” she said.

The garden at Will Rogers Elementary School where students can have classes to maintain it.

(

Ashley Balderrama

/

LAist

)

When bathrooms aren’t in the classroom for instance, or their lunch is in the cafeteria with older students, it leads to more “transition” time, she explained — kids having to line up to go to the bathroom, or walk down the hall. Not only does that lead to less learning time, it leads to teachers having to exert more behavioral control on kids, she said.

“There's a lot of just waiting. And what happens with 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds is they get fidgety during all that wait time, right? And they may even start talking to a friend. And that leads teachers then to start what we call ‘behavior disapproval.’ Like, ‘put a bubble in your mouth,’ or ‘I told you no talking in the hall,’” she said. “And so children are hearing a lot more no's than they are hearing yes's. And that's also not good for children.”

If not done right, she said: “It will solidify the inequity at an earlier age.”

How does the state help besides money?

The California Department of Education says there are ways to make classrooms best suited for children, beyond the actual building. It’s advising local school districts on best practices — on how to arrange child-sized furniture and make classrooms appropriate for 4-year-olds. The department also has a toolkit on helping kids go to the bathroom.

When bathrooms aren't inside the classroom, teachers work with aides and other support staff to make sure they're taking kids to the restrooms in teams and developmentally appropriate ways, said Sarah Neville-Morgan, deputy superintendent at CDE.

“I think it goes far beyond what the school looks like now,” she said.

One of the TK classes at Will Rogers Elementary School working on a project.

(

Ashley Balderrama

/

LAist

)

A study by the American Institutes for Research found children who attended TK in California had stronger literacy and math skills when entering kindergarten than kids who didn’t attend the program.

Neville-Morgan also pointed to touring Boston preschools, where, in one case, children had to go up a floor to use the restroom because they’re in an older building. “But their outcomes, their results from the Boston public schools, universal pre-K are phenomenal,” she said.

She said giving 4-year-olds access to transitional kindergarten will better set them up for success later in life.

“We're investing in [TK]... to give more children, those chances, those opportunities to later go out and have access to home ownership, to higher ed or for pathways that give them, not just a living wage, but a really good salary occupation,” she said.

What do districts without local funds do?

San Bernardino City Unified got some funding from the state grant program to help build an early learning center at the site of a high school, but that would be for just seven classrooms across a large district. Pace said the district didn’t apply for another round because they didn’t have enough local money to put up a match, which the state requires for the grants. There’s an exception for financial hardship, but that adds some limits on how money can be spent.

"That's the inequitable part about the system — if you have the money, you can turn in [the applications],” Pace said.

Fontana Unified School District applied for more than $23 million but hasn’t received any of it, and the district is in the process of putting up a bond in November. Leslie Barnes, an associate superintendent at Fontana Unified, said the district is looking to put TK classrooms in seven schools.

“The fact that they haven't slowed down the TK rollout, but yet aren't providing the funding we need to be available to provide that on our own,” Barnes said.

Alan Reising, business services administrator with Long Beach Unified and chair of the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, said districts will be forced to re-prioritize their local dollars.

“It was disappointing because there's such a demand out there for [the funding],” he said.

“Whether or not we are ready for them, students are coming,” Reising said. “And so we will do what we have done for decades, which is, we will make do with what we have.”

It’s been more than a year now since the Eaton Fire devastated Altadena, destroying more than 9,000 structures and killing 19 people.

A group of about a dozen fire survivors said they were excited to get back to something they’d been doing together for years: a weekly informal pickup soccer game at Loma Alta Park.

But what they found was a ballfield battle they weren’t expecting.

Getting through hard times 

On a recent sweltering Sunday at Loma Alta, the park was abuzz with life: kids playing on a large jungle gym and parents sitting and talking on the grass.

That afternoon, the park was just a bubble of normalcy. All around were the stark reminders of the fire that tore through Altadena — rows and rows of flattened and dusty lots, melted gates and charred trees.

About half of the dozen or so Altadenans who say they’ve been meeting here for the past eight years appeared from different corners of a large grass field at the park, empty save for a few signs that read: "This field is designated for baseball and softball only."

But this group of friends, including several dads, said since 2018, they’ve bonded playing soccer here.

The Loma Alta soccer crew From L-R: Bryce Nicholson; Graham Fortier; Mike Lazzareschi; Alan Matthew Ruiz; Patrick Connor; Nicole Casburn; Gareth Casburn; and Joel Zobrist

(

Robert Garrova / LAist

)

“Finding these guys and this game is really what brought me into the Altadena community in a lot of ways,” said Graham Fortier.

“This is kind of my backyard. I came here with my son... They grew up here,” Patrick Connor recalled.

“It got me through a couple of hard times already, before the fire,” Mike Lazzareschi said.

All three and their families lost homes in the Eaton Fire.

Bryce Nicholson’s family’s home was spared. One of his children was just 2 months old when the family had to evacuate.

“There’s something kind of symbolic and hopeful about coming to your only park left and talking about where people are at with their rebuilds or what’s going on at the local school district,” he said. “Or just to make fart jokes.”

The group said they were excited to get back to their weekly tradition last summer, months after the fire was extinguished. But in December, they said an L.A. County sheriff’s deputy told them they couldn’t play soccer on the field anymore.

They were shocked.

‘I think it’s ridiculous’ 

Fortier said they feel like the goal posts have been moving on them as far as justification from L.A. County staffers goes. They said officials cited reasons including grass mutilation, needing a permit and that the use is ultimately up to the park director’s discretion.

“To tell us that we can’t play a game that we’ve been playing in eight years at our park — our only park that didn’t burn down — I think it’s ridiculous. And I’m gonna keep playing until they kick me off,” Fortier told LAist.

In a statement, L.A. County Parks said designated baseball fields are for the “exclusive use of baseball, softball, and youth sports. They are not soccer fields.”

In “the near future” the county said it will be able to offer a multi-use field at the nearby Charles White Park, where a variety of sports, including soccer, will be allowed.

“Our goal is not exclusion — it is stewardship and safety. We remain committed to working with all park users to ensure safe, fair, and sustainable access for everyone in our communities,” the statement added.

Joshua McGuffie, a longtime member of the soccer crew who grew up in Altadena and saw his parents’ home destroyed in the fire, said the county’s previous requests to obtain a permit and to stop playing with cleats were inappropriate.

“It feels like the county parks coming in and saying, like, ‘Look, A, You need to pay and, B, you need to play unsafely.’ It’s just mystifying to me,” McGuffie said.

He and other players feel the insurance and other costs associated with getting a permit are prohibitive and their informal group of far fewer than 25 players shouldn’t be required to do so.

The group said they have a meeting with Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s office next week to discuss their situation.

In the meantime, they’ve circulated an online petition that has over 1,100 signatures.

Healing through sports

Patrick Connor said it’s painful to be turned away. And he said he feels like it’s intervening in his healing, his recovery from the fire.

“People ask me: ‘How are you doing?’ I’m not doing that great,” Connor said. “I had, like, serious insomnia after the fire... And the thing that was really good for me was exercise and being with fire victims.”

Several in the soccer group were cited by an L.A. County sheriff's deputy on Sunday, March 15.

(

Photo courtesy Graham Fortier

)

Later that afternoon at Loma Alta, Bryce Nicholson said he and several others in the group were cited by the sheriff’s department for playing soccer on the field.

Nicholson said he’s digging his heels in because he wants a better explanation from the county.

“Because this is a good space for people that don’t often have many spaces, and a community that has been through so much,” Nicholson said. “Why can’t they just meet up at a park and play a game like they have for a long time?”

When someone goes through a mental health crisis, their loved ones are thrown into a maze of urgent, high-stakes decisions.

Where to get care? How to deal with insurance? When to call 911?

For those in L.A.’s large Chinese immigrant community with limited English, helping a loved one can be especially challenging and isolating.

Starting Monday, a new Mandarin-language family support group in the San Gabriel Valley aims to provide a much-needed resource, coordinated by the National Alliance on Mental Illness in L.A. County.

Monthly meetings will be at the Holiday Inn in El Monte, held at night to accommodate people’s work schedules, and open to anyone from the region.

“For recent immigrants, but also even long-term residents who just aren't comfortable communicating in English the way they are in their native language, it just made such sense for us to do it,” said Richard Tom, president of the San Gabriel Valley chapter of NAMI.

Years in the making, the support group happens to be rolling out at a time of heightened anxiety for immigrant communities amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Tom said providing support in Mandarin could help lower barriers for those who might hesitate to seek help.

“Obviously, right now, with immigration an issue, there is also a sensitivity to access in-language for folks who might otherwise be frightened of going to places where they're going to perhaps be misunderstood,” he said.

Removing stigma

Tom said the support group not only removes the language hurdles but also recognizes the cultural stigma many participants may be navigating.

“There’s sort of what you expect in a lot of cultures, which is sort of an embarrassment and shame associated with having someone who has a mental health issue,” Tom said.

Organizers say that despite L.A.’s large Chinese-speaking population, no consistent, in-language family support group has existed locally in recent years.

Seven locals were trained by a Bay Area facilitator Elaine Peng to lead a Chinese-language support group in the San Gabriel Valley.

(

NAMI San Gabriel Valley

)

One of the biggest obstacles has been finding Chinese-speaking family members and friends able to go through the two-day-long facilitator training and commit to leading the support group indefinitely — all the while caring for someone struggling with mental illness.

At the same time, the concept of peer support — turning to others with lived experience rather than professionals — is still unfamiliar in many Chinese immigrant communities, said Nancy Eng, a NAMI SGV board member.

But, “one of the reasons that the support group is so great is it gives a visual and also the sense when you're together in the room, the headaches that you’re dealing with — the exhaustion, the frustration — you're not alone,” Eng said.

Trying your best

The Chinese-language program is launching with seven facilitators, all of whom have personal experience supporting a loved one with mental illness.

Support groups can normalize the idea of seeking professional help, coordinators say, acting as a bridge to therapists or psychiatrists for both the person experiencing crisis, as well as for their loved ones.

Fellow members can also share their experiences with painful decisions such as seeking involuntary treatment or watching a loved one enter the criminal justice system.

In a support group, Tom said, families hear something they rarely hear elsewhere: that they are doing the best they can.

“There’s an element of validation that is very powerful for people,” he said.

Mary YanYan Chan, who is coordinating the Chinese language program, said her own experience in a support group has helped her deal with a sister with untreated bipolar disorder.

“I'm just kind of following the steps, and in the interim, I'm going to help others behind me, to bring them forward, because this is really community work,” Chan said.

A grant from Cedars-Sinai is helping to support the initial rollout through the summer. But organizers say its future will depend on participation and securing a long-term space, hopefully with a community organization.

Details

When: Mondays on a monthly basis, from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Where: Holiday Inn, 9920 Valley Blvd., 1st floor, El Monte
Info: mchan@namiglac.org

Organizers behind the No Kings protests are forecasting their biggest showing yet on Saturday against the policies of President Trump, energized by issues including the administration's immigration enforcement tactics and the war in Iran.

"March 28 will be the biggest protest in US history," the group, which comprises a progressive coalition of activists, wrote on its website. "Find your local No Kings event to make it clear that America rejects the regime's brutality at home and abroad."

Organizers have planned more than 3,000 events in cities across the United States, with several more planned abroad, including in Mexico and Canada.

This is the third series of nationwide protests organized by the group, which says Trump's actions in office are more akin to those of a monarch than a democratically-elected leader.

In response to a request for comment about the planned protests, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed them as "Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions" and listed what she said were some of the campaign's g "major leftist" financial backers.

"The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them, said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.

The last round of protests, this past October, saw some 5 million attendees spread across about 2,600 demonstrations in the country, according to No Kings.

Bill McKibben is the Vermont-based founder of Third Act — a No Kings-affiliated group comprising people who are 60 years old and up.

He says intergenerational solidarity is a key part of the movement and that there are many older people willing to take to the streets alongside their younger compatriots.

"If you've been to any of the No Kings protests that have happened so far, you'll see a lot of people with hairlines like mine, which is to say, scant," he joked.

"People of all kinds are outraged by what's happening in the country right now, but older people have a particular role to play here."

He says that for older Americans, who have lived through several presidencies, describe the current one as the closest the country has come to authoritarian rule.

"This is a very weird moment in our political history," he said. "Look, there have been plenty of presidents in my lifetime I didn't much like or didn't agree with politically, but there's never been any that I thought were fascist, and I think that that's very clear what we're now starting to deal with in this country."

President Trump has said repeatedly that he's not a fascist or a king and has previously scorned the protests.

"I think it's a joke," he said last year of the October demonstrations. "I looked at the people. They're not representative of this country."

He simultaneously leaned into the royal comparisons, even while mocking critics, posting an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown.

Visibility Brigade leader Dana Glazer, who is based in the New Jersey suburbs, similarly likened Trump's politics to fascism, which he said thrives when people are isolated from their communities.

Coming together in protest, he said, helps combat that social seclusion. Glazer and other members of his group plan to protest Saturday in Paramus, where the organization was founded.

"We are a force of treating people with individual human dignity and respect, and connection," he said. "And that's what brings us together. That's why this kind of event is powerful, is that people suddenly go, 'Oh wow, we have some power.' "

He said he hopes that people will see events like No Kings and be inspired to peacefully protest even when there aren't huge events planned.

"The reason why we're in this mess is because there has been a lack of civic engagement overall because people have been trained that just by nature of voting every two to four years that they're doing their civic duty," he said.

"We're obviously in a state of crisis right now, but we're in that state of crisis because of this."
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Imagine MacArthur Park without a road running through the middle. That’s what most residents who live around the park say they want.

This is according to preliminary findings from the Reconnecting MacArthur Park project, an effort studying whether the busy roadway between Alvarado Street and Carondelet Street should be closed off permanently. Under this proposal, the park’s north and south sides would be rejoined to form one large green space.

The idea is to turn the major traffic corridor into usable park space in one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Maria Ortiz, 59, who has lived near MacArthur Park for 30 years, welcomes closing off Wilshire, if it improves the area for families like hers. She is a grandmother to three granddaughters.

“Hopefully they can close it so there’s more space for kids to play, more surveillance and fewer homeless people,” Ortiz said. “Right now, the traffic is also bad, it gets really congested. People also don’t respect when the buses are coming.”

For her, the park is important because it’s the only one she has close by. But she added that changes should go beyond closing the road. 

She remembers a different MacArthur Park when she was raising her children, one that felt more welcoming for families.

“There were a lot more events at MacArthur Park before, there were contests, they would give gifts to kids,” she said. 

She joined her neighbors to participate in a public forum to explore the proposal.

The Central City Neighborhood Partners surveyed more than 1,500 people from August to December and asked them to weigh in on five possible options:

• Remove Wilshire entirely through the park and expand green space
  
• Remove Wilshire entirely and keep the short block between Park View Street and Carondelet Street open to cars
  
• Close Wilshire to all cars and turn it into a public space
  
• Close Wilshire only on weekends
  
• Allow only buses through Wilshire Boulevard

More than six in 10 survey respondents supported removing Wilshire and reconnecting the park. Keeping things as they are drew the least support.

The project now moves into the next phase, where the five concepts will go through an environmental review. The city and project partners will also develop design concepts and estimate costs to build.

At this juncture, there is no available funding for any construction.

“What we’ve been able to hear from the community was really that everyone wants to see a change in MacArthur Park,” said Diana Alfaro, associate executive director of Central City Neighborhood Partners. 

“Everyone in this community is excited or wants to be able to see new amenities,” she said, including better lighting and park infrastructure. 

In a February interview, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said the neighborhood doesn’t have enough parks or green space, adding that MacArthur Park alone isn’t enough for a densely populated neighborhood like Westlake.

“And that’s why I’ve been moving with my team and pushing for reconnecting MacArthur Park and closing down Wilshire Boulevard in that area to begin to create more spaces, more pedestrianized spaces, more opportunities for green space,” she said. 

At the same time, the city is moving forward with a separate plan to install fencing around MacArthur Park. The plan would add a wrought-iron fence around both halves of the park.  

Officials say the fence will allow the park to close at night and give them time to clean the space overnight. Their goal is to address safety and quality-of-life concerns.

That fencing project is not part of the reconnection study, but Alfaro said it will affect it. According to a report of the survey findings, any redesign of the park will have to factor in where the fence goes, and whether parts of it would need to be removed or rebuilt if the park is eventually reconnected.

City officials have not decided which option, if any, will move forward.

“At the end of the day, there are a lot of changes coming to MacArthur Park,” Alfaro said, “and I think it testifies why there needs to be some more attention around reconnecting or really just adding more green space for the community.”

Alex Lacayo, 35, supports closing Wilshire if it helps improve conditions at the park.

The lifelong Westlake resident often feels the park is “dirty and filthy” when he passes through. 

“If there’s a way to make the park a better place for more people to come, then I feel like it’s a good project,” Lacayo said. “We get a lot of tourists, so improving the park I think will improve the image of Los Angeles.” 

Because of ongoing concerns around homelessness and drug activity, Lacayo often avoids walking through the park. But if conditions improve, he said that could change and he would visit more often.

Alfaro believes the fencing plan and the reconnection project are both responses to those same concerns.

“The purpose of it is to ensure that the park is being well kept and maintained,” she said of the fence.

“I think all of it kind of adds to the same reason why we are doing this project to begin with,” Alfaro added. “Which is to ensure that the park itself is a park that families could use, youth can use, seniors can use.”