The Brief

UCLA’s winter quarter started Monday — and the first full week for Julio Frenk as the school's new chancellor.

Frenk brings experience as a university and health administrator as well as multinational experience after serving in the cabinet of Mexican President Vicente Fox in 2000. That background will be put to work against a growing to-do list.

On the one hand, UCLA is an economic engine in Southern California, one of the flagship campuses of the UC system. It conferred 15,000 degrees in 2024.

On the other, it’s faced several high-profile problems over the past year, including a scathing audit of how it handled protests last spring related to the war in Gaza.

Internal problems

Some students say the university’s decision to call on police to clear an encampment last spring of people protesting the war in Gaza still looms over the campus.

“That caused a really huge rift in trust,” said fourth-year undergraduate Javier Nuñez-Verdugo, who says they’ve seen more police and security guards on campus since then.

“Especially a lot of non-white students, especially Black students, especially Indigenous students, do not feel safe with heightened police presence here on campus,” Nuñez-Verdugo said.

One of Frenk’s first tasks: input on who will fill the job of UCLA police chief.

Nuñez-Verdugo, who is external vice president for UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Association, would like Frenk to hold regular, in-person town halls with students in order to hear first hand concerns about campus life.

External problems

Others say the new Trump administration may harm students at UCLA and other campuses.

“Chancellor Frenk's main priority should be protecting our undocumented students and our trans students from the coming attacks from the incoming Republican administration,” said UCLA political science professor Michael Chwe via email.

A UCLA spokesperson said Frenk was not available for comment on Monday. But in a video released online on Tuesday, Frenk said “We must renew our commitment to fostering a welcoming and inclusive academic environment that safeguards free expression."

Frenk said he’s been visiting the UCLA campus monthly since his appointment in order to meet with various members of UCLA communities.

The University of California Office of the President gives campus chancellors wide powers over the direction of each university. Frenk said he needs to meet with more UCLA constituencies to shape a plan.

“The insights I gather from each of you will be central to shaping a collective vision for UCLA’s future. I will share this vision at my inauguration in the spring,” Frenk said in the video.

Lost funding, new funding

This fiscal year’s state budget led to a $134 million net cut in funding for the University of California campuses. The system's chancellors are deciding how to carry out those and likely future cuts.

UCLA is also trying to be designated as a Hispanic-serving institution. The university’s Hispanic student population was just under 20% in the fall of 2023. It rose about 1% in each of the previous years.

The designation would allow UCLA to access new federal funds, but would also require administrators to offer Hispanic students more support, including financial aid.

A new labor contract

Labor negotiations are set for later this year for the union that represents nearly 50,000 UC academic workers. Frenk will have input.

“We're looking forward to working with Chancellor Frenk and to resetting the relationship between the administration and our members who do the bulk of teaching and research at UCLA,” said UCLA doctoral student Rafael Jaime, who’s also president of UAW Local 4811, the UC-wide union that represents nearly 50,000 academic workers at the 10 campuses.

His union went on strike in 2022 during the academic term and upended education for thousands of students.

High hopes in the Big Ten

Sports have recently become an even bigger part of UCLA’s budget and identity with UCLA's entry into the Big Ten sports conference. Now, can the university compete on that level and can it bring in the money that leaders expect?

UCLA football ended 14th out of 18 teams in its first season in the Big Ten. Frenk knows about college sports: In his last job as president of University of Miami, he managed high expectations of the legendary Hurricanes’ football program.

In some states that kind of record by a university football program could lead to pressure on a university’s president from as high up as the governor’s office.

“I don't see Gavin Newsom applying pressure on the chancellor at UCLA to get their athletic program to be more successful,” said Dennis Farrell, commissioner of the Big West Conference for 28 years until 2019.

But that doesn’t mean Frenk won’t step in to hold athletic administrators accountable, Farrell said, if UCLA football continues to have losing seasons like this inaugural one.

“The pressure upon a chancellor at a University of California system school probably comes from alumni and boosters. Certainly the media plays a factor in that as well,” Farrell said.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is blaming Boeing and his own agency for botching a test flight of the Starliner spacecraft, designed to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

A 311-page report details the issues that led to the failure of Starliner's first crewed test flight, which in June 2024 launched NASA astronauts Butch Willmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

The duo's launch was initially a success — but as their Starliner spacecraft approached the station, multiple thrusters failed, hampering the crew's ability to steer toward the station and dock.

After months of deliberation, NASA and Boeing made the decision to send Starliner back to Earth without Wilmore and Williams on board. Instead, the astronauts remained on the space station and returned home nine months later — in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.

In a news conference Thursday, Isaacman said the report classified the failure as a Type A Mishap — the highest classification for a mission failure. The Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia accidents, along with the Apollo 1 fire, were also classified as a Type A Mishap. While those accidents resulted in the deaths of crewmembers, the Starliner mission was "ultimately successful in preserving crew safety," according to the report.

The report identifies the thrusters as a key technical issue leading to the failure, although an investigation is still ongoing and a root cause has not yet been found.

"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected," said Isaacman. "But the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It's decision making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight."

He said those organizational and leadership problems were seen at both Boeing and NASA, Isaacman's own agency.

The report identified an erosion of trust between the two organizations and leadership that was "overly risk-tolerant."

Isaacman said that the more than 30 launch attempts for this mission led to "cumulative schedule pressure and decision fatigue." When discussing whether to return Wilmore and Williams in Starliner, Isaacman said the "disagreements over crew return options deteriorated into unprofessional conduct while the crew remained on orbit."

Isaacman said there would be "leadership accountability," but didn't offer any details.

"These are very complex programs, and complex programs like this fail in complex ways," said Don Platt, department head of aerospace engineering, physics and space science at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. "Those organizational issues are oftentimes, maybe even more important than the technical problems that they're facing."

Such a public scolding of NASA and one of its contractors by its own leader is uncommon, says Platt, who worked on the construction of the space station.

"I think it's really setting the stage for sort of the new way that NASA plans to do business here in his administration," says Platt.

He says that could mean greater transparency and oversight over NASA's contractors

Despite NASA's plans to decommission the space station by the end of the decade, Isaacman says he is still committed to flying Starliner. That would leave NASA with two options, Boeing and SpaceX, to fly astronauts to the station — something SpaceX already does with regularity.

The report offered 61 formal recommendations ahead of the next crewed Starliner mission.

"We're grateful to NASA for its thorough investigation and the opportunity to contribute to it," Boeing said in an emailed statement. "We're working closely with NASA to ensure readiness for future Starliner missions and remain committed to NASA's vision for two commercial crew providers."

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The Long Beach Unified Board of Trustees on Wednesday authorized the school district to end the employment of close to 600 employees, a move the LBUSD says is necessary to stabilize its ballooning deficit.

Board members approved two separate resolutions, the first of which does not renew the contracts of 515 certificated employees, who are on temporary contracts that must be re-upped annually. Though it is common for the district to choose not to renew some temporary contracts, the non-renewal of hundreds of TK-12 teachers, early childhood education teachers and social workers represents a massive change for the next school year from the current workforce of 10,000 total employees. While schools across the district will feel the cuts, Poly and Jordan high schools may be especially hard hit; 14 and 12 teachers at each site are listed on the district’s document of non-renewals.

The second resolution authorized the district to formally lay off 54 classified district positions: non-teaching staff members ranging from office support staff to instructional and recreation aides to library media assistants to parent liaisons.

The board votes come after months of warnings from the district that costs and spending have outpaced the district’s funding, saddling LBUSD with a $70 million deficit. The district is now attempting to shrink that deficit through a fiscal stabilization plan that “has prioritized preserving core instructional, wellness, and student support services,” the district wrote in an agenda item related to the cuts.

Prior to the vote, Superintendent Jill Baker framed the proposed cuts with the historical context of significant enrollment declines, the expiration of funds following the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic that had allowed the district to develop a healthy reserve, uncertain federal and state dollars and low attendance numbers, for which the district is penalized — “a really grave situation, fiscally,” she said, one that many districts across California are grappling with.

Baker walked board members through the significant efforts the district has made to manage costs, saving more than $47 million, including through significant central office reductions. Despite these efforts, it’s still not enough, Baker said.

“The release of temporary certificated contracts is one way of reducing the number of employees without impacting permanent certificated employees,” the district wrote in the agenda item.

For those 515 certificated employees who will be notified that their contracts will end, it’s a way that “the district can get away with letting teachers go without calling it a layoff,” said Peder Larsen, vice president of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, which represents certificated employees in LBUSD.

Some of them could be rehired, especially if their positions are in high demand, like science, math and special education teachers, Larsen said. Yet, it throws hundreds into a tailspin of uncertainty and fear, unsure if their jobs have definitively ended and how long they will have health coverage, he added.

While he said the district has not officially announced that no permanent certificated employees will be cut (they have until March 15 to do so), he said he is “reading the tea leaves” and predicting those permanent positions will be safe this year.

In his comment to the board during public testimony, Larsen advocated for examining the money spent annually on consultants and contracts and urged the board and district to re-examine their priorities and “choose to protect the people who serve students every single day.”

On both votes, School Board Member Maria Isabel López was the lone vote against the resolutions, voicing her opinion that some of these positions could have been saved if fiscal priorities had been different and major contracts had not been approved.

Other board members acknowledged that the votes will change lives. “There’s not one of us in this room that takes this lightly,” said Board President Diana Craighead before voting in favor of the cuts. Board Member Doug Otto said he was voting to adopt the resolutions “sadly, reluctantly and necessarily.”