Topline:
Santa Ana Unified School District high schools are serving up more meals made from scratch that are well-balanced and familiar.
What kind of meals are we talking? Staff has so far served up chicken tinga, birria, carnitas, and fettuccine alfredo. New menus are put together every month.
Read on … for why the district has pivoted to homestyle cooking.
Nutrition services workers file into the kitchen at Valley High School in Santa Ana from as early as 6 a.m. to start prepping for the breakfast and lunch hours.
For the last five years, the Santa Ana Unified School District initiated a scratch-cooking program, meaning the kitchens have pivoted from majority individually wrapped lunches to homestyle cooked dishes.
As the program rolls out, the menu has evolved. This school year, Santa Ana Unified high school students are served chilaquiles, birria, carnitas, fettuccine alfredo, and so much more.
“We try to focus initially on the demographic of our community, and we want to give them items that they have heard of or are familiar with, at least to start out,” said Jonathan Park, chef at Santa Ana Unified School District. “That way we can really see whether the scratch cooking is working.”
Park works with nutrition specialists on building out a well-balanced menu each month and gives each school detailed instructions on rolling out those meals.
“A lot of the time our staff isn't used to that type of cooking,” Park said. “Cooking now has really been part of their job. Every day they're prepping something, or they're cooking something from a raw state.”
Valley High School serves more than 1,000 students a day at lunchtime, Visoso said. With youth homelessness and hunger on the rise in Orange County and beyond, Visoso said she wants to make sure students are eating well, but also that they’re eating enough.
Students who don’t want a meal are encouraged to take one anyway and leave it at the share station for someone else to pick up. Food is very rarely left at those share stations, she added.
Josh Goddard, director of nutrition services for the Santa Ana Unified School District, said funding for school nutrition is generally limited.
“We get about $6 per lunch. We get about $4 per breakfast,” Goddard said. “That's got to cover everything from the food that goes into the plate to the people that put that plate together, and then all the other little miscellaneous things that are needed to get the food where it needs to go.”
And the scratch-cooking program is not where he wants it to be, yet, he added.
“We're not going to be satisfied until every single student feels proud of what they pick up; they feel like they're seen on the menus. They feel like their voices matter. Every single student needs to feel that way,” Goddard said. “We have a lot of work to do, and gratefully, the Santa Ana Unified School District has prioritized that, and will continue to do that.”
Designing the menu means trying to give kids what they want to eat with dishes or ingredients they're familiar with, but also incorporating new foods. Each menu includes 20 food options for breakfast and lunch.
“We're able to give them something different, and from there we keep trial and error. We constantly just improve the menu as we go,” Park said. “It's constantly just building off of what the kids like.”
When a new lunch menu drops, Cafeteria Supervisor Janet Visoso told LAist she studies it meticulously.
“I tend to print everything, read it to myself, reread it, rewrite it. That's just the way I learn,” Visoso said. “I don't get bored of my job. I'm excited, and I take it as a challenge.”
Visoso said when she started in nutrition services 12 years ago, the district offered a lot of individually wrapped items.
“Most of the stuff was hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers, and we all love that, but to get scratch cooking and why it counts more is because we feed them a labor of love, and they are actually enjoying what they're eating,” she said.
The quality and health of the school lunches has improved, Alfonso Guttierez, a senior at Valley High, told LAist.
“Honestly, the previous year was different, and it’s been a big difference,” Guittierez added. “I like it very much.”
Edith Marin, a senior at Valley High School, said she feels extra appreciative of school lunches knowing that staff worked hard to cook them from scratch. For her and her group of friends, birria ramen was a big hit even with Southern California’s heat wave.
“Food cooked hot is just better,” Marin said. “Not all refrigerated food is as healthy, I think.”
Officials said it’s sometimes surprising what the students do and don’t enjoy. For example, when fish tacos and chile verde were added to the menu, staff thought they’d be instant hits — they weren’t.
“We had raw fish filets that we battered and we oven-fried until crispy. We had the slaw. We had the pico de gallo on the tortilla, and we thought that would be a hit,” Park said. “It didn't go so well.”
Topline:
California’s district attorneys and the state attorney general will now have the ability to sue individual businesses that they believe are engaging in anticompetitive conduct. But for some of its biggest proponents, it’s a hollow victory.
Why now: Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed Assembly Bill 1776, known as the Compete Act, bringing an end to one of the most hard-fought political battles of the year. Unions and consumer rights groups supported the bill, but the state’s influential Chamber of Commerce fiercely opposed it and won several concessions to water it down.
The backstory: The bill grew out of a three-year review by the California Law Revision Commission, which the Legislature had asked to study changes to the 1907 Cartwright Act. The private right of action was one of the biggest sticking points for CalChamber, which argued it would “expose businesses of all sizes to a wave of frivolous lawsuits.” The group launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign over the summer to push to weaken the proposed law. Tech companies such as Meta and Google also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby legislators on AB 1776 and other issues.
California’s district attorneys and the state attorney general will now have the ability to sue individual businesses that they believe are engaging in anticompetitive conduct.
But for some of its biggest proponents, it’s a hollow victory.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed Assembly Bill 1776, known as the Compete Act, bringing an end to one of the most hard-fought political battles of the year. Unions and consumer rights groups supported the bill, but the state’s influential Chamber of Commerce fiercely opposed it and won several concessions to water it down.
Assemblymember Cecilia-Aguiar Curry, a powerful Davis Democrat, introduced the bill to modernize the century-old Cartwright Act, which regulates only anticompetitive conduct by two or more businesses. Many progressive Democrats, concerned about corporate consolidation of business in industries such as healthcare, ticket sales and retail, signed on as co-authors.
Newsom signed the bill along with six other small business-friendly bills on the constitutional deadline for signing legislation.
“We’re taking on predatory practices that drive up costs and shut entrepreneurs out — making sure California’s economy works for everyone, not just the biggest and best-connected,” he wrote in a release announcing his approval.
However, his signing message on AB 1776 was more circumspect.
“While I align myself with a stated goal of targeting anti-competitive conduct that harms consumers, workers, and businesses alike, we must be careful not to set the bar too low — dragging legitimate, superior business practices and products into the ambit of anti-competitive behavior,” he wrote.
He added that he expects judges and prosecutors to interpret and apply the law “in ways that penalize clear wrongdoing, without creating needless uncertainty.”
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a former sponsor of the bill, wrote in a post on X that Newsom’s signing message made Hepner pessimistic that the law would be effective.
“I foresee politicized antitrust litigation budgets, partisan allegations of weaponized enforcement, novel legal defenses that find new basis in the legislative history of this bill, and public officials caving to the concentrated private power that antitrust laws are supposed to put in check,” he wrote.
The group had helped craft the legislation for years, but changed its position when Aguiar-Curry removed a “private right of action” provision that would have allowed any individual or business to sue a company they allege is harming them through anticompetitive tactics.
Other supporters included the California Federation of Labor Unions and TechEquity Action, a progressive advocacy group that lobbies for regulation of the tech industry.
Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez said in a statement that the new law “gets us one step closer to building a more affordable economy for working people.”
The bill grew out of a three-year review by the California Law Revision Commission, which the Legislature had asked to study changes to the 1907 Cartwright Act.
The private right of action was one of the biggest sticking points for CalChamber, which argued it would “expose businesses of all sizes to a wave of frivolous lawsuits.” The group launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign over the summer to push to weaken the proposed law. Tech companies such as Meta and Google also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby legislators on AB 1776 and other issues.
Although Aguiar-Curry said she was disappointed the private right of action was gutted in the last weeks of the legislative session, she pressed on, and lawmakers passed the bill in the last days.
“California now has stronger tools to protect our small businesses, workers, and consumers and to make sure our markets work for everyone,” she said in Wednesday’s release.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
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What it does: The bill creates "job retention credits" to incentivize newsrooms — including ours — to hire and retain local journalists. Credits start at $20,000 a year for the first five positions, with additional money for other positions and new hires.
Why it matters: Local newsrooms have struggled to keep journalists employed over the last two decades as media companies consolidate, and media consumption habits and advertising models have changed. In his signing message, Newsom said that in the past 20 years, 12,000 newsroom jobs have been eliminated in California.
What's next: The credits will be available to newsrooms starting in 2027.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill intended to free up state funds for homeless housing that requires sobriety after vetoing a similar effort last year.
Why it matters: For years, California has followed “housing first” principles when it comes to homelessness, which means funding low-barrier programs that don’t require people to jump through extra hoops — such as getting sober — before they are allowed a place to live. But while that works for many people who aren’t ready to kick addictions, it leaves behind people who want to be sober and are struggling to stay that way, said Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco. For them, the only option often is to live in housing surrounded by neighbors who use substances, he said.
The backstory: Previously, another bill, AB 255, made it all the way to Newsom’s desk before the governor vetoed it for a surprising reason: According to the governor, Haney’s bill was unnecessary because recent guidelines from the state already allowed state funds to pay for sober housing.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill intended to free up state funds for homeless housing that requires sobriety after vetoing a similar effort last year.
For years, California has followed “housing first” principles when it comes to homelessness, which means funding low-barrier programs that don’t require people to jump through extra hoops — such as getting sober — before they are allowed a place to live. But while that works for many people who aren’t ready to kick addictions, it leaves behind people who want to be sober and are struggling to stay that way, said Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco. For them, the only option often is to live in housing surrounded by neighbors who use substances, he said.
Haney’s legislation, Assembly Bill 1556, clarifies that sober housing providers can qualify for state funds, as long as they follow certain rules.
“People working hard to stay sober deserve the choice to live in a home that supports their recovery,” Haney said in a news release. “I’m incredibly grateful to Governor Newsom for signing AB 1556 and for working with us to get this right. This law will finally give Californians in recovery access to safe, stable, drug-free housing while making sure that if someone relapses, they are supported and stay connected to housing and services.”
Under the new law, sober residences that get state funds must have a written policy dictating what to do if someone relapses. The housing provider must give them the option to move into low-barrier housing. If they decline, they can be evicted.
It’s Haney’s third attempt to get state money for sober housing. His first, AB 2479, died in 2024.
His second, AB 255, made it all the way to Newsom’s desk before the governor vetoed it for a surprising reason: According to the governor, Haney’s bill was unnecessary because recent guidelines from the state already allowed state funds to pay for sober housing.
That was a big surprise to Haney, who had never seen those guidelines before. When CalMatters asked the governor’s office for a copy, we received a link to a 20-page document that was dated July 2025, but wasn’t published online until the day after Newsom’s veto.
After reviewing those guidelines, Haney spent a year working more closely with the governor’s office on a new bill. It’s still important, Haney said, because the existing guidelines are unclear: Housing providers still believe state funds are off-limits for sober housing. The proof, he said, is that housing providers still aren’t using them to fund sober-living projects.
There are several differences between the new sober housing law and last year’s failed bill, cost chief among them. Last year’s bill would have set up a new system for the state’s housing department to regulate sober housing, costing millions of dollars in the first year, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s analysis. By contrast, the new sober housing law comes with an expected price tag of about $200,000 per year to fund one staff position, according to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Even so, some housing organizations opposed the new legislation, arguing it will divert scarce housing funds away from the low-barrier models that are proven to work.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
Taking into account each state’s housing costs, the percentage of Californians living in poverty rockets up to 17.8% — the second-highest rate in the country after Louisiana.
Why it matters: California’s official poverty rate, which currently matches the national average of 10.7%, has always been a misleading stat. Using another official measure that takes into account each state’s housing costs, the percentage of Californians living in poverty rockets up to 17.8% — the second-highest rate in the country after Louisiana.
The backstory: That makes bringing down rents an especially effective anti-poverty program. If the state’s rents fell by 20%, child poverty would decline by roughly a quarter, the report found. Twenty percent may seem impossibly ambitious in a state where rents often only seem to go in one direction (with some noteworthy exceptions), but that’s roughly how much typical rents declined in Austin and Minneapolis between 2021 and 2025. Pew researchers attribute that feat of affordability to local policy changes that have allowed for more housing construction.
The rent, as we all know, is too damn high.
So is California’s poverty rate.
The two things are related.
That’s the not-so-surprising finding of a new analysis published by the Pew Charitable Trusts: If California’s rents dropped to the national average, the state would slash its poverty rate by 30%. The child poverty rate would decline by 36%.
The report is meant to highlight an important, if sometimes overlooked, aspect of poverty: It isn’t just about how much a person makes.
“Anti-poverty programs will be much more effective if we address people’s expenses, and rent is the number-one line item for most Americans,” said Pew researcher Alex Horowitz.
Case in point: CalFresh, the state’s food stamp program, saw an increase of $13.1 billion in benefits between 1989 and 2023. Over that same period, rising rents ate away 78% of that increase, according to the analysis.
California’s official poverty rate, which currently matches the national average of 10.7%, has always been a misleading stat. Using another official measure that takes into account each state’s housing costs, the percentage of Californians living in poverty rockets up to 17.8% — the second highest rate in the country after Louisiana.
That makes bringing down rents an especially effective anti-poverty program. If the state’s rents fell by 20%, child poverty would decline by roughly a quarter, the report found.
Twenty percent may seem impossibly ambitious in a state where rents often only seem to go in one direction (with some noteworthy exceptions), but that’s roughly how much typical rents declined in Austin and Minneapolis between 2021 and 2025. Pew researchers attribute that feat of affordability to local policy changes that have allowed for more housing construction.
Those policies — allowing for denser housing in cities, reducing parking requirements for new developments, encouraging the construction of ADUs — mirror many of the laws adopted at the state level in California. Those laws have yet to result in a major increasein new housing, but proponents are optimistic that a building boom is on the horizon.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
