The Brief

This October at Santa Ana College, about a dozen people gathered in a newsroom that’s not much bigger than a studio apartment.

For hours, they pored over layouts and stories, analyzing every word and punctuation mark on their computer screens. Some printed out drafts and took to editing with a pen.

The photo adviser floated around, helping students edit images, making sure they had the proper color and exposure. As the evening progressed, two alumni, now students at Cal State Dominguez Hills and Cal State Long Beach, also showed up to help.

The reporters, editors, advisers, and alumni were hard at work on the print edition of el Don, the college’s storied newsmagazine. Soon after, they would submit that edition to compete for the National Pacemaker Awards, largely considered to be the highest of honors.

For decades, el Don has been a routine recipient of these awards. And so, on that night, everything had to be perfect. Santa Ana College had a record to keep.

Covers of recent el Don issues, on display at Santa Ana College.

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Beyond that newsroom’s four walls, the journalism world is less bright. Across the country, journalists are grappling with everything from mass layoffs to the threat of AI, all this on top of an erosion in public trust. One media executive told New York Magazine: “I think you’d have to be crazy to begin a career in journalism right now.”

When Talan Garcia, el Don’s views editor, heard this, she let out a laugh.

“It’s true,” they said. “It is a dying medium.”

“But,” she added, “I also feel like we need it now more than ever.”

This December, el Don is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Ahead of the newsmagazine’s centennial, LAist spoke with those who’ve brought it to life in recent decades. They reflected on how they got their start and the importance of student journalism. They also shared what this newsroom means to them; what inspires them; what scares them; and how to prepare for whatever comes next.

Ash Mojica

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Chris Treble

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How did you end up in journalism?

“I just got out of working for the last 10 plus years and decided to take a semester of, like, personal reflection, personal development time. So, I'm taking this journalism class because it's completely different than what I have been doing — I used to work in aviation manufacturing. And I'm also taking American Sign Language and guitar.”

— Chris Treble, el Don staff writer, returning student

“I was 30 when I first joined, and I had just come back to college for, I think, the third or fourth time. I've got ADHD and have a really hard time focusing on things that are not interesting to me ... My dad was in an art class with one of the [el Don] editors ... And she mentioned to him that the el Don was looking for photographers. So, I was, like, ‘Hey, photojournalism! Sounds great!’ ... And then I saw a small blurb pop up on a local news app about a sexual assault that had taken place on our campus. I came in [the newsroom] and was, like, ‘Hey, so is this a thing you cover, or is this, like, too heavy?’ And they were, like, ‘Oh, we absolutely cover that. Write it up.’ And I'm, like, ‘No, no. I'm a photographer.’ And they were like, ‘Write it.’ So that was the first byline.”

— Carrie Graham, former el Don EIC, freelance reporter in Orange County

“I did a story on a professor that had just passed . . . And it was, honestly, it was an honor to get to write about someone that had affected my life and to get to share that news and get to talk to people who were also affected by her. I feel like that was a perfect story for me to, you know, really like cement that, like, I think I found what I want to do.”

— Ash Mojica, el Don staff writer, earned a B.A. in English at Cal State Fullerton

Inside the el Don newsroom.

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What makes the newsroom special? 

“It's being confined in a small space, working together, and just wanting to do better.”

— Geovanni Esparza, el Don news editor

“I just want to get one percent better every single day. And with the advisors that are in the newsroom, I feel like they have created a great place for us to do so, because they help us through every step of the way without being very controlling. Like, it's still very much our work, with their guidance.”

— Ryla Manalang, el Don lifestyle editor

Ryla Manalang

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Carrie Graham

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“Being in that newsroom is probably the first time in my life that I felt like I fit in somewhere. I've always kind of been the outsider in groups, where, like, everyone got along with me, but I wasn't really part of things or it was easy to forget about me when people were planning stuff . . . That was the first time that I felt like I could be me, in all of my dorky quirkiness, and nobody was looking down on me for it.”

— Carrie Graham 

“[The newsroom] is full of people who want to see you succeed and know the challenges that you're facing. So I just feel like I'll be a part of el Don forever, you know? I don't see any of those people ever leaving my life.”

— Kate Bustamante, former el Don EIC, Cal State Dominguez Hills undergrad majoring in psychology

What it means to be the 'first rough draft of history'

“We have students that are reporting on things that they're living, and maybe major news outlets might not think of them as being able to be ‘objective’ about that. But we're working with the community members, and I'm training community members to cover and inform their own community . . . So what we really emphasize more is fairness: Did you get enough reporting? Are you talking to all these different types of sources? ”

— Sarah Bennett, el Don adviser and journalism department chair at Santa Ana College, former el Don editor, co-founder of community print studio PLACE Long Beach

“Our publication does a lot for Santa Ana, especially because we're in a community that doesn't get a lot of representation. And, also, we're a community that is poorer than the rest of Orange County.”

— Talan Garcia, el Don views editor

“There's so many beautiful cultural traditions that are taking place here and just people taking care of each other, loving each other, and living their lives together. And this space and time in Santa Ana won't exist again. So, I have been really proud of seeing the way the students have preserved all of this information and their experiences and these people.”

— Jacqueline Schlossman, el Don adviser, associate professor of photography at Santa Ana College and co-chair of the art/photography department

What it takes to be an award-winning publication

“I would say 99% of the students that I got, over my 36 years there, almost all of them had zero journalism experience.”

— Charles Little, taught journalism at Santa Ana College for more than three decades

“The legacy is not guaranteed. There's a lot that goes into keeping [el Don] afloat and keeping it funded and recruiting students and training them. It's, you know, it's just constant . . . I think, because the publication has won for so many years, people sort of expect it . . . And I keep on having to say, like, this is an entirely different group of students that did this. You have no idea what these students went through.”

— Sarah Bennett 

“We have people at all different levels. We have news junkies who have been working here for three semesters, we also have people that are like, ‘Hey, I just want to make content for TikTok’ and kind of learn about journalism in the process.’”

— Ajay Orona, el Don adviser, assistant journalism professor, associate editor of Alta Journal

“We feel like we need to meet that standard and uphold it.”

— Geovanni Esparza 

Geo Esparaza

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Talan Garcia

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“I'm constantly trying to balance between working with people on their stories for print, working with people on their stories for web, and working with people on their stories for social media. Even with a whole day's work, going in at 10 a.m. and leaving around six or seven for el Don, there's still so much that has to be done before the end of the night, before I go to bed. Which is a lot, right? Because there's three different moving cycles all the time. But I'm addicted to it.”

— Talan Garcia 

Is it ethical to encourage people to pursue journalism?

“We are trying to remain positive, but without, you know, blinders on to the reality. I'm thinking a lot about how we approach this. Every semester it's, like, how do we start the conversation? What is happening in the media industry, and how do we frame the work that we're doing here at our school?”

— Sarah Bennett 

“If you can do storytelling — whether it's through writing or photography or making videos or doing social media — then there's going to be a career choice for you. The amount of work, though, that you will have to put in if you want to pursue journalism or photography or photojournalism, it's abundant.”

— Jacqueline Schlossman

“We need entrepreneurship in our field, because we have so many people who are being trained to go expect a job somewhere. And, as we know, those jobs are not waiting for journalism students to graduate. But that doesn't mean that your community doesn't need news and information . . .We're always talking about innovation and community impact, and I'm totally willing to rip up what we've done before and do something different.”

— Sarah Bennett 

“We want our students to be prepared to talk about money, to really clarify what the goals are, what the scope of the job is, what the expectations are, and, also, what the pay is, so they can make a living . . . I also teach them that, sometimes, we educate the industry by turning down work.”

— Jacqueline Schlossman

“There's a definite and desperate need for us to maintain media and make it important and valuable to society. Because, without that, what are we?”

— Charles Little 

Back issues of el Don, piled up on the newsroom floor. Staff members distribute the publication themselves.

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OK, but what’s the point of print? 

“My students, especially the ones who went through high school during the pandemic, they're at a point where being online isn’t necessarily fun, it's just a part of work, just a part of getting things done . . . And I think print is something that's novel and fun and exciting to them.”

— Ajay Orona

“My students love zines. They're kind of, like, TikToks in your hand.”

— Sarah Bennett

“I feel like Gen Z is kind of a new opportunity to see whether or not print will really flourish in the future . . . I think that we will see a comeback. I mean, even just with zines in Orange County, I have noticed a lot of young people gravitating towards that . . . Sure, statistically, in the last 15, 20 years, there’s been a major decline in people subscribing to the New York Times's print edition and things like that. But, also, post-COVID, we want to experience things and hold it in our hands.”

— Talan Garcia 

How journalism transformed me . . . 

“One piece that I'm really proud of is an interview with a man by the name of Barry Asher. I was scrolling through the Wikipedia of notable alumni from Santa Ana College and one just caught my eye. He was a [professional bowler] . . . And then I learned he's a hall of famer . . . . When we finally finished the print, we went to his bowling alley. I handed him the paper, and what really stood out to me is, as he was reading it, he was getting kind of choked up. And, like, by the end, he was on the verge of tears. And that really just hit me emotionally, that as a journalist, I can have this impact on people.”

— Brandon Rowley, el Don sports editor

“People are gonna hate me for this, but when I had to write [my college papers], I would always just send the first draft. And I would still get A's. It kind of made me a little bit cocky. And that just does not fly in journalism. The first draft is not it. You're gonna have editors ripping apart your pages, ripping up your babies. And you know what? I love it. I love having my work dissected. It's stepping on your pride a bit, but that needs to happen. You need that in order to grow.”

— Ash Mojica 

“I didn't think this was possible, like, journalism was never an option for me . . . My first day in the newsroom last fall, I told [my professors], ‘Hey, I've never taken a journalism class before in my life. I don't know what I'm doing.’ And they helped me get where I needed to be. And then, by the end of that semester, they were like, ‘He's gonna be the next lifestyle editor.’”

— Geovanni Esparza

“[Being editor in chief during the pandemic] was definitely chaotic . . . My youngest [kid] was about three or four, and all three of my kids have special needs. So there was a lot of trying to balance out being at school meetings versus being able to cover what I needed to cover and get edits done. And a lot of it was honestly doing edits at eleven o'clock at night after the kids had gone to bed . . . But it really gave me a chance to have some sense of self again, because I had been a stay-at-home mom for, like, 10 years . . . And I had gotten to a point where I didn't really know anything about myself anymore. I didn't exist outside of my role as mom. Like, if someone asked me what my favorite band was, I wouldn't have been able to tell you. My favorite food: chicken dinos, whatever my kids left behind. It wasn't healthy . . . So, even though it was a lot of work, it was really rewarding, because it was something that I was doing entirely for myself, so that I had some sense of me again.”

— Carrie Graham 

“It was kind of love at first assignment . . . Seeing my name in print made me feel like it was a stepping stone to what my future could be.”

— Ryla Manalang 

Jakki Padilla

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Jarely Olmos

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Is journalism in your future? What is the future of journalism?

“I like writing, and I love to read articles. I think some are very engaging and they inspire me and make me want to pursue this kind of work. But becoming a journalist? I need to see if I do want to do this later on.”

— Paola Cabrera, el Don staff writer

“[It’s] not that I don't love to write, I do. I just get a little insecure about my writing, and — I don't know if this is good or not — but, like, when it comes to video editing, I trust myself more.”

— Lizett Gallo, el Don staff writer

“I think a community college foundation in journalism is great because we can teach [students] how to be good reporters and be responsible and learn AP style and all the rest. But in terms of having a skill set, I think it's very important that they have a skill set outside of journalism, so they can make themselves more valuable and more useful. So, major in economics or business or science or anything that'll give you a step ahead.”

— Charles Little 

The newsmagazine's advisers: Ajay Orona, Sarah Bennett, and Jacqueline Schlossman.

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“No matter what, I'm always going to be a writer . . . I'm always going to be in this field that is tough, this field that is constantly shifting and underappreciated and undervalued, especially with the rise in AI. And it's scary, it's so scary. But I am such a firm believer in doing what you love, doing what's important. And I think, at the end of the day, I'm gonna be out there, fighting . . . I'd rather live struggling with what I love, than to, you know, not be able to even touch it or attempt it. I'm never gonna know unless I try, and I think I was always scared to try before. And now — maybe because I'm getting older — I just don't want to wait anymore.”

— Ash Mojica

“I'm dipping my toes everywhere, but I still feel like my heart is in journalism . . . I'm doing public relations so I can buy a house for my family. Like, I want to be able to survive, and my parents came from Mexico for a reason . . . It's hard for me to be selfish and just want to do journalism.”

— Jakki Padilla, former el Don editor, Cal State Long Beach undergrad

“Misinformation is a plague that is sweeping not only America, but the world . . . I'm studying it because, to some extent, I feel like an activist, and I want to see change in this world. And if that's only through a small part of the media, then that's enough for me. I want to learn how to master it so that I can effect change in media and create things that lead people to trusting their own local news organizations once again . . . I don't know how far I'll be able to take that, but I think it's a risk worth taking. And I think it's worth getting my degree in it because, you know, I'm sure I'm gonna get laid off. I'm sure I'm gonna take a lot of jobs that don't pay. But also, this is a humongous passion for me, not only to write, but to deliver things that are important and that affect local people.”

— Talan Garcia 

“Now we’re starting to worry about AI taking over jobs like mine. And I think that in order to survive, instead of complaining and lamenting about it, you have to accept the reality and figure out how you will fit into that new puzzle.”

— Vera Jimenez, KTLA meteorologist, former el Don editor, winner of two Emmys, three Golden Mikes, and three Golden Pylons

“We need to be transparent about where our values stand.”

— Jakki Padilla 

"It's up in the air. But I feel like we need to take advantage of now and really focus on what we still have left."

— Jarely Olmos, el Don staff writer

“Is it scary? Sure it is but, you know, we can do hard things, and we can overcome these challenges . . . The only way that we become the best versions of ourselves is by confronting things that are challenging and scary.”

— Vera Jimenez

Top image: Row 1 (left to right): Kate Bustamante, Brandon Rowley, Paola Cabrera; Row 2: Ajay Orona, Sarah Bennett,  Jacqueline Schlossman. Photos by Brian Feinzimer/LAist. Composite photo by Samanta Helou Hernandez/LAist.

We have another pip — the second egg in Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest is showing signs of hatching.

The first pip, or crack, was confirmed in Jackie and Shadow’s egg no. 2 on Saturday morning, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

That’s about a day after the first egg started showing signs of hatching on Friday morning. The egg shell has continued to crack as the chick breaks through, revealing more of the eaglet’s fuzzy gray feathers as time goes on.

More than 38,000 people were watching the livestream shortly after the organization confirmed the second crack, compared with the more than 26,000 viewers who tuned in on Friday.

“The first egg is still in the process of hatching, it is not considered hatched until it is completely free of the egg shell. The chick has popped its head out of the shell to say a happy hatch day to mom and dad!” Friends of Big Bear Valley wrote on Facebook to more than a million followers on Saturday. “It also appears that the second egg has a pip. It is not well defined as of this morning, but we will likely see more progress throughout the day.”

Jackie and Shadow's usual incubation timeline is around 38 to 40 days, according to the nonprofit.

What’s next

With pips in place, it could take the chicks a day or two to complete the hatching process, as seen with last season’s trio.

Friends of Big Bear Valley won’t know for sure if any chicks are male or female, as the organization has said the only way to tell is with a blood test.

But once eaglets are around 9 or 10 weeks old, there should be signs that can help the nonprofit make an educated guess, including the chicks’ size, ankle thickness and vocal pitch.

Generally speaking, female bald eagles are larger than males. Female bald eagles also tend to have larger vocal organs — the syrinx — which leads to deeper, lower-pitched vocalizations, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

What do we call the chicks?

Historically, Jackie and Shadow’s chicks are given temporary nicknames initially, such as Chick 1 and Chick 2, or Bigger Chick and Smaller Chick (which some fans affectionately nicknamed Biggie and Smalls).

The final decision has then been left up to Big Bear Valley elementary school students. Previous chicks have been named Stormy, BBB (for Big Bear Baby), Simba and Cookie through that process.

Last year, Friends of Big Bear Valley crowdsourced more than 50,000 name choices in a week-long fundraiser, with the students voting from 30 finalists on official ballots delivered by the nonprofit.

The feathered parents’ eaglets were named Sunny and Gizmo last April.

One of last season’s three chicks didn’t survive a winter storm within weeks of hatching. Friends of Big Bear Valley named that chick “Misty” in honor of one of their late volunteers who is “still very missed,” the organization previously shared.

When Kekoa Gittens was 3, his preschool teacher told his mother he was a problem. He couldn’t sit still. He didn’t participate. When other kids learned the alphabet, he didn’t pay attention.

The next year, Kekoa’s classroom problems worsened. His mother, Sonia Gittens, took him to his pediatrician, who referred the boy to an eye doctor.

That doctor looked at the back of Kekoa’s eyes and diagnosed him with myopic degeneration, a dramatic form of nearsightedness.

“They are too little. They don’t know how to express themselves and say, ‘I cannot see it, teacher,’” said Sonia Gittens, who lives in the Marin County town of Corte Madera.

Today, Kekoa is a successful high schooler, but too many kids don’t get their eyes checked until they’re far behind in school.

Vision problems, particularly nearsightedness, have grown more common among American children. Roughly one in four school-age kids, or 25%, wear glasses or contacts, a proportion that increases as kids get older, according to 2019 federal survey data.

In California too few children on Medi-Cal like Kekoa are getting their eyes checked, and the problem is growing worse. Just 16% of school-age kids on Medi-Cal saw an eye doctor between 2022 and 2024 for first-time eye exams, continuing vision check ups or glasses, according to a report commissioned by the California Optometric Association. That’s down from 19% eight years earlier. The report, based on two years of Medi-Cal data, suggests that the state is moving in the wrong direction even as eye problems become more prevalent among kids.

Medi-Cal provides insurance for low-income Californians and those with disabilities.

“Every day when I see these children it is always a surprise to me that the kids are not getting the care they need,” said Ida Chung, a pediatric optometrist and an associate dean at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona.

The trend indicated in the report is alarming, Chung said. In her clinic, where about half of children are on Medi-Cal, it’s common for kids with congenital vision problems to visit for the first time when they’re in first grade or later. That indicates to Chung that many kids don’t have enough access to eye care.

Though kids might be getting basic vision screenings at school or from a pediatrician, some eye problems are still overlooked. “It’s something the child had before they were born,” Chung said.

Eye exams decrease statewide

Colusa County, a rural farming region north of Sacramento, saw the sharpest drop in kids’ eye doctor appointments in the state from 20% between 2015-16 to just under 2% between 2022-24.

Nearly all counties — 47 out of 58 — performed worse on vision care than they did in the past, the report shows, with some, like Colusa, declining significantly.

Most of the severe declines happened in rural areas, although urban counties like San Francisco and Los Angeles also saw decreases. Only seven counties improved the rate of children receiving eye exams or glasses. Four counties were excluded for comparison in the report because the numbers were too small.

“The decline in performance here is so widespread that something really needs to happen,” said David Maxwell-Jolly, a health care consultant who authored the report and the former director of the Department of Health Care Services, which oversees Medi-Cal. “These numbers are way lower than what you would expect to be seeing if we’re doing a good job of detecting kids with treatable conditions.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health Care Services said in an email the state could not confirm the accuracy of an external report, noting that vision services can be difficult to track because “not all encounters are captured in a single, comprehensive dataset.”

For example, many initial vision screenings take place in the pediatrician’s office during well-child visits, which include eye and hearing screenings as well as immunizations and developmental checks. State data shows about half of kids with Medi-Cal receive well-child visits.

Still, experts say the low numbers tell a real story: if children were reliably getting follow-up care from initial screenings, the share who get comprehensive eye exams and glasses would be closer to 25-30% — in line with the known prevalence of vision problems among kids — rather than the 16% found in the optometric association’s report.

Maxwell-Jolly said the analysis he conducted replicated an internal, unpublished department report tracking vision services between 2015 and 2016. His analysis, based on data obtained through a public records act request, updated the results for more recent years.

The state’s most recent Preventive Services Report, which measures how well Medi-Cal delivers preventive care to children, shows the rate of comprehensive eye exams for children and young adults ages 6-21 is similar to the optometric association’s analysis at 17%.

Contra Costa County experienced the third largest decline in children’s eye care in the state. A spokesperson for Contra Costa Health Plan said Medi-Cal health plans are not required by the state to track vision benefits and that it would take time to understand the data. The state, however, does track vision services internally, according to the health care services department.

A bill sponsored by the optometric association and authored by Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, a Democrat from Cupertino, aims to require the state to establish vision benefit quality measures and report performance data publicly. The goal of the legislation is to track where kids do not have enough access to vision services and to ensure that Medi-Cal providers are improving services.

Rural challenges

Amy Turnipseed, chief strategy and government affairs officer for Partnership HealthPlan of California, said rural parts of the state struggle to find enough providers. The nonprofit health insurer provides Medi-Cal for 24 northern counties, including Colusa and Modoc.

In Modoc County, which borders Oregon and Nevada, one optometrist serves a 90-mile radius. Partnership has worked closely with that optometrist to ensure they continue accepting Medi-Cal patients, Turnipseed said.

“In rural counties with lower populations, losing even one provider can exponentially impact the access to services to families,” Turnipseed said. “In the past few years we’ve seen vision providers reduce or limit their Medi-Cal, which makes it harder for families to see providers.”

An assortment of glasses at Vision to Learn mobile optometry clinic at Esther Lindstrom Elementary School in Lakewood on March 20, 2026. Photo by Ariana Drehsler for CalMatters Modoc is one of just seven counties where more children have received vision care in recent years, according to the report.

Providers frequently cite low reimbursement rates from the state as a reason for not accepting Medi-Cal patients. The California Optometric Association estimates only about 10% of its members accept Medi-Cal. The reimbursement rate for a comprehensive eye exam is about $47, said Kristine Shultz, association executive director.

“Our reimbursement rates haven’t increased in 25 years. Imagine getting paid what you were paid 25 years ago,” Shultz said.

Schools check kids’ vision, but follow-up is spotty

State law requires schools to periodically check kids’ vision starting in kindergarten. Those screenings are a good bellwether for if a child is struggling to see in class, said Chung with Western University. The problem is getting the kids who fail the screening to an eye doctor.

Chung runs an academic optometry clinic that works with local schools in Pomona. Each year up to 35% of students fail the screening, meaning they likely have a vision problem. But based on conversations with school nurses, Chung said only about 7% of those children then go to an eye doctor and come back to school with glasses.

Chung, who chairs the children’s vision committee for the California Optometric Association, said colleagues who work with school districts around the state report similar experiences.

“If a high number of those children are not getting the follow up care, we may just be fooling ourselves and checking a box,” Chung said. “We’re in compliance with the law in California but are we really helping the children?”

For some families, the answer is no. That’s what happened to Kekoa when he was 3. The school checked his eyes and said he might have vision problems, but his mother, Gittens, waited. Her son was still learning his numbers and letters. How would he be able to read an eye chart, she reasoned. It wasn’t until his problems got worse that Gittens took Kekoa to an eye doctor.

Now, at 15, Kekoa wears contacts and likes athletics. He needs to see to compete in capoeira martial arts competitions and surf on the weekends, his mother said.

First: Dr. Kiyana Kavoussi shows letters on a monitor during Noah Mattison’s, 11, visual acuity test. Last: Optician Maya Ortega looks at Italia Martin’s, 6, eyes before she chooses new glasses inside the Vision to Learn mobile optometry clinic at Esther Lindstrom Elementary School in Lakewood on March 20, 2026. Photos by Ariana Drehsler for CalMatters Many parents lack the resources to take their kids to the doctor, or simply wait. Notes from school nurses flagging that a child failed a vision screening may also get lost in a backpack on the way home, educators say. The California Department of Education does not track the results of school vision screenings.

Vision To Learn, a nonprofit, created a mobile eye clinic to help bridge the gap between kids failing school vision screenings and getting glasses. The group brings an optometrist to campus, meaning kids that need an eye exam can get one the same day and go home having gotten a prescription and ordered glasses.

Damian Carroll, chief of staff and national director, said Vision to Learn’s numbers tell a similar story to Chung’s. About one-third of students screened are unable to read the eye chart, but very few of those kids have adequate glasses.

In the California schools where the program operates, around 70% of kids who have been prescribed glasses did not own a pair. Another 20% had glasses with outdated prescriptions, according to internal data, Carroll said.

And that gap can drastically affect learning outcomes or behavior in school.

“First and second graders who try on glasses the first time are blown away because they just thought that’s how the world looked,” Carroll said. “They can see the leaves on the trees and the math on the board, and it’s shocking to them.”

For the record: This story has been updated to reflect that Maxwell-Jolly’s study replicated the methodology of an earlier one by the Department of Health Care Services, but did not republish department findings.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

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

For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga of the California Botanic Garden has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds. Each time, she's come home empty handed. But this year, with the desert in the midst of a big bloom, she's trying again.

"It's a little bit of a gamble," she says. "But, you know, the plant's having a really good year. I feel hopeful."

The plant has silvery-green pointy leaves, fuzzy buds and striking deep purple flowers. But it is challenging to study and to sample. Fraga says she often has to hike or scramble up mountainsides, or drive on backroads to find it. Very little is known about the plant's pollinator. And in exceptionally dry years, the Death Valley sage doesn't flower at all – meaning no seeds either.

The sage's habitat is mostly protected, within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. But climate change doesn't respect park boundaries – and could push these plants that are already living on the brink into even more existential peril.

Naomi Fraga says for the first time since 2009, she found the Death Valley sage seeds. Soon, she says, she'll return with a team to make the first big harvest.

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"You can imagine that if conditions were to get more difficult with a changing climate, it's going to be harder and harder to collect seed," Fraga says.

In late March, Fraga headed into the foothills of the Nopah Range, near an abandoned mine, to check on one of the largest populations she knows of. And for the first time since 2009, she found the seeds. Soon, she says, she'll return with a team to attempt the first big harvest of Death Valley sage seeds.

A bee pollinates a Death Valley Sage in the Nopah Range near Death Valley.

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The first day of fall semester for a university freshman is often stressful. Not for Vanessa Menera, an 18-year-old who’s the first in her family to attend college.

Last year, she arrived 15 minutes early to her first fall class with an internship and campus job already in tow, plus a mental map of Cal State University Dominguez Hills, a sprawling, nearly 350-acre institution in the Los Angeles area’s South Bay.

The already confident student possessed even more motivation to make the most of her time on campus because of a program she took last summer: The First-Year Experience Summer Program.

“Everything was so easy to me, and I'm really grateful, because I know it was because of that First Year Experience that I was able to do that,” said Menera.

The summer program is one of several strategies Cal State Dominguez Hills seeks to expand as it combats a half-decade enrollment slide that’s unraveling its finances. But it’s not the only approach to fiscal right-sizing. Nor is Cal State Dominguez Hills alone in combatting large drops in its student population.

That’s because the money that the country’s largest public four-year university system needs to properly educate its students isn’t there. Now, California State University is embarking on a detailed, sweeping plan to enroll more students as part of an all-out push to bring much-needed cash to the workhorse system of 22 campuses that educates 471,000 students.

Ten campuses, including Dominguez Hills, saw double-digit enrollment declines in fall of 2025 compared to fall 2020, when the first full academic year of the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The loss of enrollment is a major driver of the financial struggles many of the system’s campuses face. The Cal State’s chancellor’s office says the system is facing a $2.3 billion budget gap in the current academic year. There’s a bright spot, though: Cal State officials say the system overall is on pace this year to beat state enrollment targets for the first time in four years.

People walk past the exterior of the Innovation & Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Still, a key state lawmaker admonished the system’s under-enrolled campuses for missing its enrollment targets.

“I'm concerned that these campuses may be overfunded,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, at a December legislative hearing about Cal State’s finances. He is chairperson of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education and a key player in deciding how much state money universities receive. His worry? Other campuses with rising enrollments need the money to educate their ever-growing student body by hiring more professors, tutors and other staff to support students.

The state funds campuses based on how many Californians they enroll; by educating fewer students than what the state pays per student, the campuses are technically collecting more revenue than their enrollment levels would permit. That’s because the state pays schools for the number of California students they’re supposed to enroll, not how many they actually enroll.

By that measure, San Francisco State last year collected close to $50 million more in state dollars than its enrollment levels indicate it should receive — the campus enrolled about 5,300 fewer Californians than state goals stipulated in 2024. Cal State Dominguez Hills was taking about $7 million more. Conversely, Cal Poly Pomona was down about $20 million, because they enrolled 2,500 more students than the state’s target.

California is also eyeing multi-billion-dollar budget deficits, putting even more pressure on lawmakers and school systems to use money wisely.

The Legislature last year required Cal State to submit a report by March 1 detailing how campuses with enrollment struggles plan to attract new students and meet their state targets. Campuses sent their turnaround plans to the system’s chancellor’s office by December.

CalMatters conducted a dozen interviews and issued six records requests for this story.

Spotlight on Cal State Dominguez

Cal State Dominguez Hills’ enrollment is down 20% compared to 2020 and its finances have suffered. As a result, campus officials laid off 38 non-faculty staff and managers in 2025.

The school projects it will lose an additional $8 million this year, cutting deeper into its reserves, which have dwindled from $46 million in 2022 to a projected $10 million this summer.

The campus’ graduation rates fall below the systemwide average. And the campus historically has posted lower retention rates, meaning more students quit after one or two years compared to other campuses in the system. Dominguez Hill’s retention rate has grown in the last year, however.

The school enrolls the highest share of undergraduate students in the system who receive the federal Pell grant for low-income students — 69% compared to a Cal State average of 51%. Systemwide, those Pell students graduate at lower levels than students who don’t receive the grant.

Dominguez Hills’ turnaround plan includes a campus goal of enrolling about 800 more students to hit its enrollment target by 2027-28. More students plus planned systemwide tuition hikes and a new student-approved campus fee are projected to generate $25 million in additional money.

To reach its enrollment goals, the campus will lean on approaches that have demonstrated success, including the First Year Experience summer program, which Dominguez Hills started in 2022. Through the program, about a quarter of the freshman class enrolls in up to two free college courses during the summer before fall term. These are all general education courses required for graduation, with an emphasis on teaching students how to study well. The program also engenders a sense of community among students and campus staff.

Other strategies include attracting new students and keeping more of its current students. Another is to re-enroll students who’ve previously dropped out. It’s an approach that’s top of mind for campuses across the state: California is home to about 3.5 million adults with some college credit but no degree. Even a miniscule bump in the students who return to school could eradicate a campus’ enrollment woes.
Another budget-stabilizing effort may mean additional job losses. Campus professors are now meeting regularly to find ways to combine courses and run fewer sections of the same course. This helps the school average more students per course, but it’ll likely mean fewer lecturers — instructors who lack the full-time benefits and job safety of tenured professors.

Systemwide, 63 degree programs were discontinued by the Board of Trustees in 2024.

A student walks up the stairs in the Innovation and Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Dominguez Hills in February reversed course on terminating six majors, including art history and philosophy. Student advocacy spurred the restoration. The school also determined that cutting individual programs made less sense than reviewing all majors to find other ways to integrate academic programs, said Kim Costino, the school’s interim provost, in an interview.

“Everyone is hopeful that we are going to be able to create a more economically efficient curriculum that serves students better,” said Terry McGlynn during an interview. He is a biology professor at Dominguez Hills who is chair of the academic senate, a faculty group that shapes campus academics.

But “there's clearly going to be some pain involved,” he added.

Summer session to keep students longer

The school cited in its report to the system that expanding the The First Year Experience program is one way to increase enrollment.

The campus spends $635,000 annually to run it. Almost 84% of students in the program advanced to their second year of college in fall 2024 — well above the 66% for students who didn’t sign up for the First Year Experience, according to data the campus shared. For a school desperate to undo its enrollment slide, keeping the students it has — and their tuition dollars — is a key strategy.

Any incoming freshman can enroll in the First Year Experience.

One reason Menera knew the campus so well when fall classes began? An extra-credit assignment for her environmental studies course over the summer required her to identify every vending machine on campus.

Student Vanessa Menera, 18, in the Innovation and Instruction Building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters The First Year Experience also features activities that reinforce what students learn, such as a field trip to a museum for an English course led by a guest author whose book the professor assigned to students. For her environmental studies class, Menera said that she carried a trash bag for more than a week to visualize how much waste people accumulate.

The school also awards a $150 scholarship to students who complete a summer-experience course. But for students who work over the summer or help care for family members, that amount alone may not be enough to persuade them to attend the program, said Costino. She ran the summer program until December.

The summer courses are long. Most meet twice weekly for four hours, so a student in two courses is in class for about 16 hours a week. Menera worked anyway that summer, maintaining the job she had during high school at TJ Maxx in Anaheim, some 20 miles from campus. She continues to work now, logging 17 hours a week at a campus convenience store on top of a full academic load. The summer program mentally prepared her for long school and work days, she said.

Costino thinks the program’s growth won’t be in students enrolling the summer before freshman year, but instead in students who earned a D or F in a course their first year and need to make up the class the following summer. While students can presently retake classes, they have to pay for them. Providing free make-up courses that either replace or average out a previous low grade helps the school retain more students who are on academic probation or just lost academic confidence after a bad first year, Costino said.

Re-enrolling students who dropped out

Cal State Dominguez Hills is seeking to expand its efforts to re-enroll students who’ve dropped out. Since 2021 the school has re-enrolled nearly 1,100 such students for fall term through its “Once a Toro, Always a Toro” program, named after the campus mascot.

While these students represent a tiny portion of the campus’ annual enrollment, they lead to instant revenue for the school from tuition and fees. It’s a few extra million dollars for the school, and it costs about $300,000 to $600,000 annually to maintain the re-enrollment program.

Once these students return to Dominguez Hills, most graduate. Data the campus shared with CalMatters show that earlier cohorts of the re-enrolled students have graduation rates of around 50% three years after they return. The numbers grow to about 70% after six years.

The school is now targeting any student who dropped out in the last 15 years or so, said Sabrina Sanders, the program director of Once a Toro.

She maintains a list of 10,000 formerly enrolled students. Annually, about 1,000 apply, around three-quarters are admitted, and roughly 300 to 400 enroll. Some who were admitted don’t enroll for several reasons, including prior low GPAs that make them ineligible for financial aid.

One of the students who returned is Wynette Davis. The 27-year-old is four classes away from finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology after dropping out two years ago.

Davis transferred to the university from community college in 2022. She was on track to earn her bachelor’s in 2024 and even walked the stage during the spring graduation ceremony, needing just a few more classes that summer to finish her degree. But tragedy struck: Her daughter’s father died in spring 2024, and the shock derailed her academics. That spring and summer, she failed four classes. Davis left as a result.

She tried to re-enroll a year later, but learned she owed the university tuition money and couldn’t qualify for financial aid because her failing grades dropped her below the campus’ threshold for aid eligibility. Davis was ready to give up on earning a bachelor’s until an email from Once a Toro entered her inbox.

A staffer with the program helped Davis receive a waiver for her past-due account balance as long as she promised to pass her classes for the year, Davis said. The staffer also worked with the school financial aid office to reinstate her eligibility for financial aid for her spring classes after her grades improved.

Last fall Davis retook the classes she previously failed, passing them all this time. She’s in two classes this spring and will need two more next fall to earn her bachelor’s degree.

“If it wasn't for the Once a Toro, Always a Toro program, I probably would not have been back in school right now,” Davis said.

Another setback is the changing nature of academic requirements. Students who were gone for a decade may have pursued majors that don’t exist or were heavily altered, so the courses they took toward their majors might not satisfy new requirements. Sanders and the school’s advising teams collaborate with academic department deans to convert the re-enrolling students’ old coursework into the updated expectations for existing majors. Or re-enrolled students pursue an interdisciplinary major that combines old coursework with new.

“There's a sense of shame that comes with dropping out of college and having someone there to kind of put those thoughts and put that inner dialogue to rest” was key, said Stephanie Esquivel, a returning student who re-enrolled in 2022 after leaving the campus her freshman year in 2007.

She credited Sanders with helping her transfer her community college units to her university major. To Esquivel, a team like Once a Toro shows that the campus desires returning students and invests in the social infrastructure to help them, she said.

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