The Brief

If your child’s teacher hasn’t threatened to go on strike recently, they probably will soon.

Thousands of California K-12 teachers have walked off their jobs or voted to strike in the past few months, as part of a strategic, statewide effort by the California Teachers Association to boost salaries and benefits — and get the public’s attention.

“All these districts going out on strike — it’s not a coincidence at all,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union. “Everywhere in the state there are people with unmet needs. The conditions have been ripe for a long time.”

San Francisco teachers went on strike for four days this month. West Contra Costa teachers went on strike in December. San Diego, Woodland, Apple Valley, Duarte and Madera teachers planned to strike in the past few months but reached a settlement at the last minute. Teachers in Los Angeles, Oakland, Dublin, West Sacramento, Twin Rivers and Natomas have voted overwhelmingly to strike. In Berkeley, Soquel and other districts, teachers are holding rallies and appear headed for strike votes.

Ten local teachers unions under the umbrella of the California Teachers Association worked for years to align their contracts so they’d expire at the same time: June 30, 2025. The idea, Goldberg said, was to trigger a wave of negotiations and potential strikes to garner public attention and flex political muscle. Teachers unions from at least a dozen other districts have also joined the effort, even though they weren’t part of the original cohort.

“We’re a strong union with a lot of resources, and we’re taking advantage of that,” Goldberg said, whose union represents about 310,000 teachers. “Teachers are learning from each other, and getting some clarity on how to win resources for public schools.”

Public and political priorities

Teacher contracts vary by district, but the demands are similar: higher salaries, better benefits and amenities that affect student well-being, such as sanctuary protection for immigrants.

Considering the ever-escalating cost of living in California, the demands are not a surprise, said Julia Koppich, an education consultant who specializes in labor-management relations.

Teachers in expensive cities like San Francisco often can’t afford to live near their jobs, she said, noting that starting teachers in San Francisco Unified earn about $80,000. San Francisco’s starting police officers, by comparison, make about $120,000.

It’s been a frustration for the teaching profession for decades, she said. But districts don’t have much control over their revenues and substantial increases in spending would have to come from the state, she said.

“To be sure, the issue of marshaling sufficient resources is a district conversation about teacher worth,” Koppich said. “But, ultimately, it’s a state discussion about public and political priorities."

District financial hardships

At the same time that teachers are demanding more money, school districts are facing financial hardships. Declining enrollment, especially in urban districts, has meant half-empty classrooms and less money from the state, which funds schools based on how many students show up every day. Closing schools is the obvious answer, but that’s proven to be deeply unpopular and few school boards appear willing to take that step.

Another financial challenge has been the end of pandemic relief money. California schools received more than $23.4 billion in one-time grants intended to help students recover from pandemic-related learning loss. State and federal authorities advised schools to spend the money on temporary tutors, after-school and summer programs and other short-term expenses. But some districts, including Los Angeles Unified, San Diego Unified and San Francisco Unified, used some of their funds to increase teacher pay or hire permanent staff, which they’re now struggling to pay for after the grant money ended.

So even though the state has increased K-12 school funding the past few years, some districts are financially strapped. It’s unclear whether they can afford teachers’ demands for higher salaries or more generous benefits, said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

Los Angeles Unified, for example, gave its teachers 5% raises plus a $2,000 one-time stipend and a $500 bonus. The district’s nurses, who are also represented by the union, got $5,000 stipends.

“The unions are saying, ‘We know you have an ATM back there. If you were nice, you’d push the buttons,’” Roza said. But districts’ money is tight, she said, “so we’re at a stand off.”

If districts agree to teachers’ demands, cuts will have to come from somewhere — most likely from programs considered non-essential, such as sports, electives, advanced placement classes and other offerings, she said.

It could also mean staff layoffs. Tutors, classroom aides and newer teachers would be the most vulnerable.

Those cuts would harm low-income students the most, Roza said, because they’re more likely to rely on special school programs and attend schools with newer teachers. Low-income students are also more likely to be affected by a strike, she said, because families typically have fewer options for child care and those students are more likely to suffer from academic disruptions.

School boards need to stand up for those students, she said, and do a better job negotiating with teachers unions. That entails more transparency about finances and a willingness to close under-used schools.

“It’s so irresponsible to erode services for vulnerable students because you don’t have a spine,” Roza said.

‘Kids as leverage’

Lance Christensen, vice president of education policy at the California Policy Center, said California should get rid of teachers unions altogether. Teachers deserve higher salaries, he said, but the teachers union does not always act in the interests of students.

The union devotes too much time to defending incompetent teachers, he said, and strikes are harmful to students and families. He also said the California Teachers Association has a political stranglehold on Sacramento that “overshadows every conversation in the Legislature, even if it’s not about education.”

He noted that charter schools and private schools are rarely unionized, and sometimes have better outcomes than traditional public schools. A handful of other states don’t allow teachers to collectively bargain, and at least 35 don’t allow teachers unions to strike.

“The union uses kids as leverage,” said Christensen, who ran for state superintendent of public instruction in 2022. “Right now, CTA is the biggest evil in California education.”

Next steps in San Francisco

In San Francisco, parent Meredith Dodson said she’s relieved the strike is over. Although most parents support teachers and believe they deserve better compensation, the strike was stressful for families and disrupted learning for thousands of students.

The $183 million settlement includes raises and improved benefits for teachers, which the district plans to pay for by draining its reserve funds.

Parents now are bracing for the inevitable cuts. The district’s finances remain shaky, and aren’t likely to improve any time soon.

“What comes next? Layoffs? Increased class sizes? State intervention?” said Dodson, who is executive director of the San Francisco Parents Coalition, a parent advocacy group. “There’s going to be some hard questions for the board, and they’re going to have to ask themselves, what’s best for kids?”

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

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he is directing state agencies to develop artificial intelligence safety recommendations, some of which were part of a bill he vetoed two years ago.

His change of tune on those measures, including requiring AI developers to include a “kill switch” to shut off certain programs in emergencies, comes in response to growing public alarm over the fast-developing technology’s potential “catastrophic” harms such as AI creating a bioweapon or bringing down the power grid.

Newsom is seeking recommendations from the Government Operations Agency and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services by Nov. 16, meaning they could form the basis of a special legislative session on the issue. He floated the possibility of calling one in Politico on Thursday.

Newsom has sought in recent weeks to respond to several incidents in which AI agents from leading developers OpenAI and Anthropic broke away from testing environments, gained access to the open internet and carried out cyberattacks on other websites and companies. Earlier this month, a researcher set off a panic when he resigned from Anthropic while warning the technology could “kill all humans;” the researcher’s former colleagues were quick to agree.

The hackings have captivated the public and seem to confirm AI researchers’ fears that the fast-developing technology is improving its own capabilities beyond human control. Several industry leaders last week endorsed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for a slowdown in development.

Newsom’s Friday executive order directs the state agencies to recommend changes in state law to implement an external evaluation requirement, as well as requirements that AI companies’ safety frameworks required under the newest law be independently verified. He’s also seeking recommendations on how to require a kill switch, and how to expand the safety incidents companies must report to include “a range of loss-of-control incidents” such as the recent reported hackings.

Regulation is unlikely from the federal government; President Donald Trump remains all-in on speeding up AI development in the face of competition from China and said the calls for a slowdown are a “conspiracy.”

Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, said Friday in a press release that should “alarm every American.”

“We’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it's too late,” he said.

California under Newsom has enacted several first-in-the-nation laws to curb the potentially existential risks of AI. In 2025 he signed Senate Bill 53, which requires large AI model developers to publish frameworks on how they manage safety incidents and assess catastrophic risk — defined as incidents involving 50 or more deaths, chemical or biological weapons or more than $1 billion of theft or damage. They also must report critical safety incidents to the state. Illinois and New York have similar laws.

But the measure was a compromise — a requirement for transparency rather than regulatory control — after Newsom in 2024 vetoed Senate Bill 1047.

Both bills were authored by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, whose San Francisco district is home to the most prominent AI companies.

The vetoed measure would have required the largest AI developers to receive safety auditing from third-party, external monitors, develop a kill switch and be subject to clearer legal liability if their technology causes harm. The measure divided Silicon Valley and received fierce opposition from several, but not all, of the largest AI developers.

Newsom wrote then in a veto letter that while he agreed with the need to require safety protocols, the bill could restrict AI development at large companies “at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”

“I agree with the author — we cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public,” he added.

Since then, more in the industry have embraced third-party evaluations. This year, Newsom signed two laws to verify and set standards for those external monitors. But the new laws did not require companies to use them.

In a recent call for a slowdown in AI development that was endorsed by several other industry leaders, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also called for third-party monitoring; both that company and OpenAI say they will commit to the practice.

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

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a series of measures that halt the rebuilding of the burned Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights and that steer funding toward fire recovery efforts.

In a unanimous vote, the City Council barred the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) from issuing any rebuild permits until after the Los Angeles Fire Department completes its investigation.

The council also directed the Department of City Planning, the city attorney and the LADBS to present an interim control ordinance prohibiting permits or certificates of occupancy for large cold-storage warehousing and distribution near residential neighborhoods and sensitive areas like parks, schools, day care centers and libraries in Boyle Heights. 

The ordinance, if approved, would be in effect for 45 days, with an option to extend by 10 months and 15 days. It could be extended by an additional year, or until the “appropriate land use regulatory controls have been prepared,” according to a city staff report. 

“This Lineage fire exposed the cost of systems that have concentrated industrial risk in working-class communities of color for generations,” said Councilmember Ysabel Jurado during the council meeting. 

“A facility should not be able to request a like-for-like rebuild while the fire investigation remains active and the surrounding community is still living with the consequences,” she added. 

Jurado pushed forward the measures, noting that “recovery doesn’t finish when the site is cleaned up.”

“Our responsibility is also to demand accountability and strengthen protections so residents do not experience a disaster like this again,” she said. 

Jurado said the measures will ensure Boyle Heights residents “aren’t left to navigate recovery alone or bear the financial burden of an emergency they did not create.”

The council also directed city staff to explore the feasibility of establishing a fund of up to $10 million to support the affected Lineage community. 

It also called for the reallocation of up to $940,000 in Los Angeles County Fire Assistance Grant Funds to the Boyle Heights WorkSource Center for Lineage Fire Recovery to support impacted workers and businesses. 

Additionally, council members instructed the LADBS and the city attorney to provide recommendations for increasing penalties for notices of violations “on projects that impose a significant impact to the community,” as seen in the Lineage fire. Recommendations should include a fee and fine structure that ranges from $25,000 to $1 million per fine, according to a city staff report.

“Was it like this during the Great Depression?”

It’s a question that prop house owner Pam Elyea says she’s asked herself in recent years, as the film and TV industry has weathered multiple hits — the pandemic, the dual industry strikes of 2023, the 2025 fires — and a loss of production jobs to other states and countries that began decades ago.

Elyea, along with her husband Jim, opened History for Hire, a prop house in North Hollywood, in 1985. Before the pandemic, they had a staff of 20 people, but now employ only nine full-time employees.

“As an employer and a business owner, the feeling you're always trying to overcome is that feeling of weariness,” Elyea says. “ That it was just dragging on and on, and there's really no big hope in sight.”

‘It got everybody excited’

Elyea says she was heartened by the boost to California’s film and TV tax incentive program in July of 2025 — from $330 million to $750 million: “It got everybody excited."

Elyea says she started to see positive effects sooner than she expected, about three months in, first with new TV productions that were tax credit recipients coming to History for Hire for props, and more recently feature films.

Members of the Set Decorators Society of America in Washington, D.C., lobbying for a federal film and TV tax incentive on September 16, 2026.

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Courtesy of Pam Elyea

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She’s also now lobbying for a new federal film and TV tax incentive, which President Donald Trump recently said he’d support.

“Are we at where we were before? No,” she says. “But we certainly are so much better, and so it kind of gives you hope moving forward.”

‘Flickering back to life’

Elyea’s experience is reflective of some of the data on film and TV productions in Los Angeles over the last year.

On the LAist podcast Imperfect Paradise, entertainment journalist Dawn Chmielewski notes that Film LA, which tracks permitting for on-location shoots in and around Los Angeles, showed that when it comes to television production, there was a 51% increase in the second quarter over the first.

“Overall, the numbers are still down year over year,” Chmielewski says. “But it's showing that the industry is sort of flickering back to life.”

Another promising data point Chmielewski points out: ProdPro, which tracks productions around the world, “showed that both the number of films being shot and overall production spend are both up in California for the second quarter of this year.”

But there are also statistics that point to a less rosy picture.

Film LA research that shows the number of shoot days in Los Angeles has decreased by nearly 50 percent since 2017. And it’s estimated that since the peak of the streaming era in 2022, nearly 50 thousand production jobs have been lost in Los Angeles.

‘It feels incredibly uncertain’

Costumer Andrea Wheeler describes the current climate in the industry as one where “everybody is on eggshells,” with so many people she knows who’ve had to pivot to other careers that “you feel like you’re in a dying industry right now.”

Andrea Wheeler is a costumer who has worked on TV shows like "Lopez v. Lopez" and movies like Marvel's "Eternals."

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Courtesy of Andrea Wheeler

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While Wheeler was recently able to find work on a show that moved from Vancouver to California because of the tax credit boost here, she says the pay and working conditions didn’t match up to the kind of work she was able to find in the past.

From around 2016 to 2019, she says, “if you were in a job that was really atrocious, just like really bad working conditions ... You could just leave and find another job the next day. There was a lot of security there, [but] not now.”

Chineza Ezinkwo is a production coordinator based in Los Angeles. She most recently worked on "Tyrant," a Charlize Theron film that shot in LA.

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Courtesy of Chineza Ezinkwo

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Chineza Ezinkwo, a production coordinator who’s worked in the film and TV industry in Los Angeles since 2011, echoes Wheeler.

“ Yes, there's more work happening, but also it's hard to find,” Ezinkwo says. “You can't really plan to build a life in the way that you felt like you used to even a few years ago.”

Still, she says there is also a bit of a renewed sense of optimism in the industry right now.

“It feels incredibly uncertain, but I will say there's more hope these past two years than there was certainly [in] the past three or four years.”

Years after generative artificial intelligence software became widely accessible, the University of California system still does not have a consistent approach to how AI is used in classrooms, according to its faculty and students.

“The situation is contradictory and also extraordinarily fluid,” professor Rita Raley told the university system’s Board of Regents on Wednesday. “In one class, students are permitted to use AI, in another, they're cautioned against it, and in a third, they're told it's prohibited.”

Raley, a professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, heads the breakout group that will define what AI literacy means for UC, and will make recommendations on how to cultivate AI in classrooms across the UCs. The big question the working group is grappling with, Raley said: What every student needs to know about artificial intelligence.

“If we are indeed moving toward automated education, then we have to ask what a UC degree will mean. It will have to mean more than skills because these too can be automated,” she said. “... [W]e must now give students the critical judgment to ask what this technology is, who needs to be accountable for it, how to use it, when to refuse it, and what it could be instead.”

Jayha Buhs-Jackson, UCLA’s undergraduate student body president, says she does not like AI, so she does not use it.

She agreed that the university does not have a “succinct” AI policy. Some of her professors, Buhs-Jackson said, strictly do not allow AI in the classroom; others allow it for research and coding.

She said UCLA has its own internal AI committee, which she was just appointed to.

“ I'm curious to see … how I could use my voice as president to discuss and uplift the undergraduate student voice related to AI at UCLA,” she said.

UC vs CSU approach

The UC system currently does not have a single systemwide AI product or mandatory AI protocols in place.

Instead, “eligible employees have access to frontier AI tools from a variety of vendors including OpenAI, Microsoft and Google. Access is intended to support activities such as analysis, research, learning, and operational efficiency,” a University of California spokesperson said.

The university system also has a Master Service Agreement in place with OpenAI, but it does not include a minimum spend commitment or prepurchased licenses. Schools under the UC umbrella can purchase OpenAI products through the agreement.

UC’s approach stands in contrast to the one California State University took.

In 2025, the nation’s largest public university system signed a nearly $17 million contract with OpenAI and made a suite of ChatGPT tools available to all its faculty and students.

At the time, CSU spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith told LAist, the goal was for all students to have “the same access to the tools and learning opportunities that will prepare them for the future,” regardless of which campus they attend.

Still, the rollout was heavily criticized as students and faculty were left on their own to figure out how to use AI. And in a 2025 survey of CSU students, over 60% said AI has negatively affected their learning experience.

What's the best approach for schools?

The different approaches taken by California’s public university systems demonstrate that higher education is still grappling with how to confront — or embrace — this technology.

Universities across the nation have to find ways to work with AI, said Justin Reich, a professor of digital media and the director of the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT.

But we also do not have a framework for what to do or how to implement AI in higher education, he added.

 ”The right strategy is to come up with a systematic series of experiments, where you're testing hypotheses, in particular, by looking at student learning experiences and student learning outcomes,” Reich said.

The University of California’s AI steering committee overall is tasked with “developing a coordinated approach that allows UC to use its systemwide scale while recognizing the distinct needs of its campuses, medical centers, laboratories, faculty, researchers, staff, and students,” according to a University of California spokesperson.

Reich said it is great that the University of California has multiple voices involved in the steering committee.

“I  would encourage any university system to have students play a central role in directing their AI response pretty much at all levels,” he said. “Especially in a system as complex as UC, where you have so many students that have so many different kinds of expertise.”

The UC AI steering committee has one student voice on it. Stephanie Valadez, an ethnomusicology graduate student at UCLA and president of the UC graduate and professional student council, says she would like to see more. She’s concerned about the environmental impact of AI and the negative impact on “underrepresented communities that are living near these data centers,” she said.

In the classroom, she hasn’t had to use AI.

“ All of my professors say, ‘Don't use AI. Just don't use ChatGPT, don't use Claude, don't use any of that stuff,’ for multiple reasons,” she said. “Being in the music department, as an artist, we also are very conscious of having our work stolen, having what we produce then go on to train AI.”

The training a Ph.D. student is seeking, Valadez said, you would not get from AI.

“ We don't want our brains to atrophy while we're trying to get better at what we're doing,” she said.

What comes next for UC

UC San Diego and UC Irvine, Valadez said, have rolled out TritonGPT and ZotGPT, but she’s heard from other board members that students aren’t using  the AI tools as much as the university would like them to, adding that there has been “a lot of pushback from students.”

James Milliken, the University of California president, said the committee’s guiding principle is AI “for humans and for humanity” and how it “ can advance human potential, not diminish it.”

The committee had its first meeting in June, where five working groups were created to explore how to use AI in clinical research, curriculum development and “public benefit” among other things.

Come October 2027, the committee will come to Milliken with a proposal for a UC sovereign AI cloud. This means UC could have its own hardware and processing power to build, run and train AI models.