The Brief

For the record: We have updated the headline of this article to better reflect what happened to displaced participants in the HOPICS rapid rehousing program. We use the terms “eviction” and “evicted” in the article and a Dec. 12, 2023 newsletter based on the common understanding of the word. However, HOPICS’ middlemen were those legally evicted. The clients were displaced from their homes as a result of the evictions. We regret if that was not clear to readers. 

HOPICS used middlemen to help facilitate the program. The middlemen rented from property owners, becoming the property owners’ tenants. The middlemen then subleased to HOPICS participants. HOPICS subsidized participants’ rent through payment to the middlemen, who were then to pay property owners. As the article describes, when rent was not paid on a timely basis, property owners began eviction proceedings against middlemen. Participants then faced imminent displacement, which we refer to as “eviction.” Legal eviction proceedings were against the middlemen, not the HOPICS clients. As the article also describes, HOPICS arranged for new permanent housing or shelters for most of the tenants facing imminent displacement, however HOPICS could not account for dozens more.

Jesus Mares got a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to rental support from one of Los Angeles’ leading homelessness agencies, he had a roof over his head.

He had been bouncing between sleeping in his car and hotel rooms. The taxpayer-subsidized room in a South L.A. duplex provided stability until he could get back on his feet, he’d hoped.

It went well for a while, he said. Then Mares quickly noticed things were amiss with the nonprofit, known as HOPICS. He went through several case managers who Mares said didn’t come to see him.

Then came the eviction notice. HOPICS, which has received about $140 million in Los Angeles city, county, state and federal funding over the last three years for a program known as rapid re-housing, was months behind on paying his rent, according to Mares and his former landlord.

“They basically told us to get out of the building and they locked the building up,” Mares said.

All together 306 people lost taxpayer-funded homes in South Los Angeles as a result of HOPICS’ failure to pay rent on time, the nonprofit said. While more than half were then placed in permanent housing or sent to temporary sites, HOPICS and Los Angeles housing authorities did not say what happened to 119 people.

A CalMatters review of the program, based on hundreds of pages of documents and dozens of interviews, shows that the prominent Los Angeles nonprofit repeatedly ignored explicit eviction warnings from some landlords, did little to vet the middlemen it entrusted to execute the program, and took on far more clients than its case managers could serve.

CalMatters interviewed three participants who landlords said were evicted from HOPICS-funded houses, and they reported ending up back on the streets or living in their cars.

Brenda Wyatt outside of her temporary housing location in Los Angeles on Oct. 4, 2023.

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Julie A. Hotz

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The eviction mess underscores weaknesses in California’s strategy for addressing its biggest crisis, homelessness. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has allocated more than $20 billion to fight homelessness, but the state’s homeless population surpassed 170,000 people in 2022. Like HOPICS, many government-funded services provide only temporary housing, depend on too few case workers and must compete for units in an already-tight rental market.

Leaders of the nonprofit, whose formal name is Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System, say they were overwhelmed by the sudden influx of emergency COVID money during the pandemic to run what’s known as rapid re-housing, a popular local rental assistance program.

To execute the program, HOPICS used middlemen – many of which were newly created nonprofits – to rent out rooms to the unhoused. However, HOPICS’ leaders often didn’t pay those brokers on time, they say, because they needed to review and approve rent bills sent by the very landlords they had chosen to work with. Some of the invoices, they say, had questionable charges.

“We didn’t have the habit of Google searching everybody’s names, and probably that’s a simple fix,” said HOPICS deputy director and former U.S. Rep. Katie Hill. “This is a lot of money that has gone towards a program that has shown that it can house a lot of people. It’s not perfect in any way, shape, or form, and it’s evolving, and we’re learning as we go.”

The federal government sent $100 million in emergency aid to Los Angeles County to address the homelessness crisis during the pandemic, along with another $220 million to six cities in the region including L.A. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority then turned to organizations like HOPICS, which is a division of a larger LA nonprofit, Special Service for Groups, to carry out the programs. Between 2019 and 2023, HOPICS placed 3,100 homeless people into permanent housing through rapid rehousing programs, according to the nonprofit.

Annual revenues at Special Service for Groups surged from $84 million in 2018 before the pandemic to $149.1 million in 2022. It also gets rapid re-housing funding from Measure H, the 2017 Los Angeles County sales tax and a mix of federal, state and city funds.

While the rush of COVID funding has ended, HOPICS continues to deal with the fallout of the evictions. It still hasn’t paid all of the rent the landlords claim they are owed, it acknowledges. And, separately, three Los Angeles motels sued HOPICS and its parent late last year, alleging it stopped paying rent for clients who were living at the motels. The nonprofit settled the case early this year, though the terms weren’t disclosed.

HOPICS Director Veronica Lewis said her organization can be late with payments because of its efforts to verify that its clients are actually living in the units.

“The notion that we just don’t pay, it’s just absurd,” she said. “We want to be good stewards of public funds.”

CalMatters sent the Los Angeles homeless authority questions about how it funds and oversees HOPICS. The homeless services agency’s spokesperson issued a statement that didn’t answer several questions, including how many clients got into rapid rehousing programs as a result of pandemic funding and how many have returned to homelessness after leaving rapid rehousing programs. The agency also did not comment on whether it’s a common practice for homeless services nonprofits to pay rent late.

The authority’s “role is to ensure service providers receive the funds necessary to bring our unhoused neighbors home … ensure the program is performing efficiently, and work with the provider to identify any performance concerns,” the spokesperson said.

“It’s about time somebody stepped up and exposed what HOPICS is doing,” said Demario Swait, a 59-year-old who was evicted. The nonprofit gets a grant “to make sure that people are housed, and people are not being housed. And I’m one of them.”

Swait and Mares said they are still trying to pick up the pieces from the HOPICS evictions. Swait is now in temporary housing with a different agency, looking for permanent housing, he said.

Demario Swait at Leimert Park in Los Angeles on Sept. 28, 2023. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

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Mares packed his things and went back to living in his car, he said. “Right now, I’m at my family’s house trying to get it together, trying to find a new spot.”

Why HOPICS turned to middlemen

A Vietnam veteran who had slept on Skid Row founded HOPICS in the 1980s as a one-man operation working to find housing and services for homeless people.

Today it’s one of the county’s largest homeless services organizations with a contract from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority to coordinate shelter placements and other services in South L.A. To lead the organization, Lewis was paid $261,000 last year, according to the organization’s tax records. She also sits on the state council on homelessness, which Gov. Newsom has charged with developing policies to prevent and end homelessness in California.

HOPICS is supposed to help unhoused people find a place to live, pay a portion of the rent for up to two years and provide a wide range of social services, like employment training and assistance applying for public benefits, according to its contract with Los Angeles County.

Ideally, clients gradually contribute more toward rent until they’re able to stay housed on their own, according to the Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority.

Landlords are often reluctant to rent their properties to people receiving government rental assistance, whether due to bias or an aversion to red tape.

Property owners who wanted to help house the homeless “don’t necessarily want to be landlords to our population,” Lewis said, and many didn’t want to handle multiple leases for clients sharing one house.

So, instead, HOPICS turned to middlemen. These brokers would rent properties and then sublease rooms in those properties to participants.

Housing 1BY1 Co-Founders Dejon Dixon and Norris Jones in Los Angeles on Sept. 28, 2023. Dixon and Jones say a Los Angeles-based nonprofit owes them hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent for formerly homeless people.

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CalMatters interviewed five brokers who got into business with HOPICS by renting homes from a large property management group called Ocean Properties, Inc. Ocean Properties describes itself as a development company that flips “small inadequate homes” into larger duplexes. It sells the multi-unit houses to investors and often remains as property manager, renting out more than 2,000 affordable housing units across South L.A.

HOPICS does not lease houses from Ocean Properties directly.

Instead, it goes through people like Norris Jones. He created the nonprofit Housing 1By1 in August 2020, to help with Los Angeles’ housing and homelessness crisis, he said. A month later he welcomed his first HOPICS tenant. Jones and his partner, Dejon Dixon, sublet more than a dozen units, housing more than 80 people for about $950 a month for a private room. They charged $2,800 as a security deposit, according to several signed lease agreements.

Jones and three other brokers said HOPICS would go months without paying rent, causing them to fall behind on paying the property owners. As a result, he says he owes Ocean Properties more than $200,000 in rent and fees. He said he doesn’t understand how a company getting paid by the government “got us in a position where we can’t pay the rent for the people they house in our homes.”

HOPICS officials say Jones has overstated how much it owes him and, in some cases, said he’s submitted invoices far too late to get reimbursed. Still, in a February email to Jones, HOPICS acknowledged owing him $135,000 for 2022 and “upwards of $90k” for 2023.

Now, Jones said HOPICS has paid him some of the unpaid rent. He’s in talks to settle with the agency over the rest of the money he says he’s owed.

“I spent all my money to do this,” Jones said.

In the rush of new funding, HOPICS acknowledged it went into business with some brokers without doing so much as a Google search. For instance, the agency leased 24 locations from Donye Mitchell of LA Supportive Housing. CalMatters found that Mitchell left federal prison in 2014 after serving a sentence for defrauding California’s Employment Development Department.

A property owner in June filed a lawsuit against Mitchell and his business partner in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging they owe more than $77,000 in back rent for a site his nonprofit used to house homeless people, court records show. Neither party has responded to the suit.

One of several properties managed by Norris Jones and Dejon Dixon, co-founders of Housing 1BY1, in Los Angeles on Sept. 28, 2023. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

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Mitchell did not respond to voice messages left with his business partner or emails from CalMatters for this story.

HOPICS officials said some landlords shuffled residents around the units against program rules, and failed to tell the agency about impending evictions until the last minute.

Herbert Hatanaka, executive director of Special Service for Groups, Inc., is personally investigating some of the claims from the brokers.

“There’s missing information,” he said. “We have evidence, for example, clear evidence that there were individuals that were not living in some of those facilities for the time that (the landlords are) billing us for. ”

Overwhelmed L.A. homeless caseworkers

Vetting and paying rent invoices wasn’t the only holdup for HOPICS clients. A persistent shortage of caseworkers contributed as well, former employees told CalMatters.

To have rent paid, rapid rehousing clients must meet with their case managers at least once a month. HOPICS tenants, landlords and former employees told CalMatters that just didn’t happen.

One employee said the agency was badly understaffed because of high turnover and unable to keep up with the number of tenants it was supposed to serve. Los Angeles County requires each case manager to work with up to 25 clients.

“When I signed my acceptance letter, it was for 20 clients, and within 30 days, I had 60,” said Neal Glasgow, a former caseworker for HOPICS who said he left in 2022 after about a year. “I was playing catch-up every month.”

The caseworkers verify that tenants are still living in the units, set tenants’ rent contributions and connect tenants with services.

Glasgow said landlords called him so often about unpaid invoices that some of them became his friends. HOPICS’ leaders acknowledged they didn’t meet the caseworker ratio, citing understaffing in the social services industry.

Several former tenants said they went months without contact from a caseworker, leaving them feeling stranded in temporary placements. Brokers who visited the homes also said their tenants didn’t receive visits from case workers and complained that instead of getting help to become financially stable or get treatment, the clients languished in the houses, sometimes using drugs and having mental breakdowns.

In Los Angeles Superior Court claims, three tenants have said they’d seen 15 or 20 different caseworkers in the two years they were allotted in the rapid rehousing program and still hadn’t gotten permanent housing. A judge ruled in May and June that the agency did not owe them any money for emotional distress and dismissed the case.

The current rapid rehousing system of cost-sharing rent for a couple of years doesn’t make sense to some of the people who once ran it.

“It’s setting (the unhoused) up for failure,” Glasgow said. “You put them in a room that they can’t afford and after the program, they’re gonna end up back homeless, and that’s a lot of money wasted.”

HOPICS officials say they now lease some houses directly from property owners. That practice, known as master-leasing, is a strategy agencies including the L.A. Homeless Services Agency, are increasingly considering.

“It’s basically eliminating that middleman that has too much opportunity for problems,” said Hill, the HOPICS deputy director.

An eviction letter posted in one of the residences where Vincent Osby housed formerly homeless people in Los Angeles on Sept. 28, 2023.

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But they also still house clients in units run by brokers. The nonprofit’s officials said they’re doing more to vet landlords before placing clients in their units, including requiring all future and current landlords to sign stricter, clearer program requirements and asking for references.

“We’re asking more questions now,” Lewis said.

Brenda Wyatt, 58, was kicked out of her room on Sept. 4, she said. Her landlord, Vincent Osby, hadn’t been paying the property owner. He confirmed he couldn’t keep up with the rent but declined further comment.

Osby, who played two seasons of professional football for the San Diego Chargers in the 1980s, leased more than a dozen units to HOPICS clients, HOPICS officials said.

The landlord moved Wyatt to another shared house after he fell behind on rent. She said it was unclear whether HOPICS or Osby was at fault for the late rent payments.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on, excuse my French,” Wyatt said. “That leaves us in limbo. We don’t know what to do. We worry about getting kicked back out on the streets.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Serving Spoon has been an Inglewood cornerstone for four decades, dishing up grilled corn bread and fried turkey chops. 

Now, though, the whole country is in on the secret. 

The breakfast and lunch spot on Centinela Avenue was announced Wednesday by the James Beard Foundation as one of six winners of the America’s Classics Award, an honor the foundation says goes to “timeless” local institutions. The foundation is also responsible for the James Beard Award, one of the nation’s top culinary honors. 

The Serving Spoon joins a pantheon of other L.A.-area eateries to win the classics award including Guelaguetza, Langer’s Deli and Philippe the Original. 

Jessica Bane, part of the third generation to run the family-owned restaurant, said the honor is still sinking in, but that it validates decades of work. “It’s being done out of love,” Bane said.

The Serving Spoon has been an Inglewood cornerstone for four decades, dishing up grilled corn bread and fried turkey chops.

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Isaiah Murtaugh

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The award announcement hailed The Serving Spoon as an “anchor” of L.A.’s Black community, run by staff who genuinely care for their customers.“The restaurant is cherished for its joyful hospitality and as a place where all can gather and feel at home,” the announcement read. 

The Serving Spoon didn’t exactly need Beard recognition — the diner is often packed and already has  pedigree as Snoop Dogg and Raphael Saadiq’s breakfast spot of choice in the 2000 Lucy Pearl song “You” — but Bane said the award takes the diner’s reputation national.“The recognition is beyond appreciated,” Bane said. 

The Serving Spoon was founded in 1983 by Bane’s grandfather, Harold E. Sparks. He passed the restaurant down to Bane and her brother, Justin Johnson, through their parents. 

The menu looks much the same as it did four decades ago, Bane said, though some of the dishes have been renamed for regulars. 

During the Thursday lunch rush a day after the announcement, The Serving Spoon’s vinyl booths were packed, as usual. Bane oversaw the dining room while Johnson marshaled plates of fried catfish through the kitchen. 

Tina and Kevin Jenkins waited for a table outside. The L.A. natives each have been coming to The Serving Spoon since childhood. They live in Lancaster now, but make sure to come back to the diner whenever they’re in town. 

“It’s the atmosphere, our people, our music,” Tina Jenkins said.

Despite taxes on imports at levels not seen in a century, Long Beach’s seaport had a good year in 2025. And a decent January.

Port officials said Wednesday they started the new year by leading the nation in trade, responsible for moving more than 847,000 shipping containers in January — 51% of the total cargo at the San Pedro Bay Complex, which it shares with neighboring Port of Los Angeles.

In a call with reporters, Port CEO Noel Hacegaba said that despite a “fair share of doom and gloom” at the time, the seaport finished 2025 as its busiest year on record.

This comes days after President Donald Trump signed new, across-the-board tariffs on U.S. trading partners, and later added he would raise the tariffs to 15%. It’s a direct response to a recent Supreme Court decision that found his tariffs announced last April were unconstitutional.

The new tariffs would operate under a law that restricts them to 150 days, unless approved by Congress.

Asked to measure how much this will affect the seaport, traders, logistics companies and consumers, Hacegaba reiterated a word he has evoked heavily in the past 10 months: uncertainty.

“Our strong cargo volumes do not suggest we are not being affected by tariffs,” Hacegaba said, adding the Port saw a 13% decline in imports driven by major reductions in iron, steel, synthetic fibers, salt, sulfur and cement.

Economists are somewhat more confident, saying it would take nothing short of a national economic crisis to reverse the seaport’s fortunes. “Even if the market is affected, our standing at the Port of Long Beach, even compared to other ports, is strong,” said Laura Gonzalez, an economics professor at Cal State Long Beach.

But experts caution that the ruling will heap the most damage on businesses, especially smaller enterprises, as well as the average consumer who already bore the tariff’s costs last year.

Noel Hacegaba, CEO of the Port of Long Beach, held his first State of the Port in Long Beach on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026.

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Long Beach Post

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Tariffs added $1,700 in costs to the average U.S. household, as importers raised prices to offset higher import taxes — especially on clothes, shoes and electronics from China and other Southeast Asian nations.

Consumers, Gonzalez said, should budget over the next six months “for essentials.”

Priyaranjan Jha, an economics professor at UC Irvine, said historically trade policies since 2018 have shown that for every dollar of duty imposed, consumer prices rose by about 90 cents.

Even if tariffs are reduced or reversed, and pressure is relieved on importers, consumers shouldn’t expect lower sticker prices right away, he said. “Firms do not always reduce prices as quickly as they raise them, especially if contracts or inventories are involved.”

Richer San, a former banker and business owner in Long Beach, said he’s in regular talks with shops across the city’s historic Cambodia Town that have been crushed by the increased prices of imported ingredients.

“Most of these are family-owned businesses operating on very small profit margins,” he said, adding there is little to no margin to “absorb higher costs.”

Many companies managed to avoid price increases last year in part by stockpiling inventory in the first half of the year to be sold through Christmas and the start of the year. As stock dwindles, many businesses might be less willing to eat the cost of a new set of tariffs.

Marc Sullivan, president of Long Beach-based Global Trade and Customs, said his logistics company saw a brief boom last year in ordered goods, mostly medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.

But by June, orders dropped 35%, a trend that continues today. It’s forced him to freeze any new hiring in the past year and at least through the next six months as he waits for federal officials to settle on tariffs that will determine the cost of shipped goods.

“For the companies that I work with that are importing into the state here, it’s just ‘hold on and let’s see what happens,’” he said.

“I’d like to hire a salesperson to go out and chase new business, … but it’s just a bleak outlook,” he added.

In the interim, he’s received a steady flow of calls (that started “within minutes” of the ruling) from importers looking to claim refunds or recoup their tariff expenses. The U.S. Treasury had collected more than $140 billion from tariffs enacted under emergency powers, and the Supreme Court left the decision of how to appropriate the refund proceedings to lower courts.

His response: They might be stuck waiting for a while. “Customs doesn’t pay anything back quickly,” he said. “It could be a year before you ever see anything back to you.”

Sullivan said he knows of companies that spent upwards of $20,000 per shipment for months.

“They’re going to want that money to be able to reinvest it,” Sullivan said.

But some experts say that consumers, as well as small businesses, deserve a share of refunds.

“The importer may receive a refund even though consumers bore much of the cost,” Jha said. “Courts generally refund the statutory payer, not downstream buyers, but that opens the possibility of follow-on litigation. Small businesses that directly imported goods and paid tariffs should qualify for refunds.”

Topline:

A long turtle lineage: Dubbed “Porkchop” by aquarium staff due to her hefty appetite, the young female green sea turtle represents one of seven sea turtle species worldwide (six of which occur in U.S. waters). These animals have called our oceans home since at least the time of the dinosaurs — about 110 million years ago, according to NOAA. All species of sea turtles found in the U.S. are listed as either endangered or threatened and are protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Porkchop’s healing journey: Aquarium vets had to amputate Porkchop’s right front flipper after tangled fishing lines severely cut off her blood flow. She also had a fishing hook removed from her throat. First rescued after being spotted in the San Gabriel River by volunteers with the aquarium’s sea turtle monitoring program last March, her healing journey took nearly a year. She now swims and eats as well as her four-flippered kin and after a final physical exam, blood sample and X-ray, vets determined she was ready to return to her wild roots. She also now has a microchip, so if she ends up stranded again, scientists will know it’s her.

An ambassador for conservation: Porkchop became the aquarium’s first public-facing ambassador for its expanded green sea turtle rescue efforts. A new holding tank, viewable by the public, doubles the aquarium’s capacity to rescue green sea turtles and provides firsthand education about their conservation efforts. The aquarium is currently caring for another larger and older female green sea turtle — she weighs more than 200 pounds — rescued from the San Gabriel River in January. She’ll be in the public viewing tank in the coming months when she’s recovered a bit more.

How to help local green sea turtles: Green sea turtle populations are actually doing quite well in the San Gabriel River, but trash, debris and pollution remains a big threat. If you fish the San Gabriel River, never litter fishing lines or hooks. If you see a stranded sea turtle in the San Gabriel River or elsewhere, call the West Coast Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Stranding Network’s hotline at (562) 506-4315. You can also donate to the aquarium’s rescue program.

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.