The Brief

This isn’t a story of stylish renovations, or of celebrity filmmaker intervention. This is the story of one family who fell in love with a movie theater and did (and even lost) everything to keep it up and running.

The single-screen Gardena Cinema has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and has always figured out ways to serve its community — even through some very difficult financial times.

After struggling through a pandemic and ill-fated efforts to bring people back through its doors, Gardena Cinema finally hit some success after it stopped dealing with first-run releases and pivoted to repertory films. Many nights at this South Bay theater, you can catch a newish — or oldish — classics like La La Land and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The Kim family

The Gardena Cinema has always been a movie theater. It opened in 1946 as the Park Theatre, and operated consistently through the years showing first and second run feature films until it went up for sale in the 1970s.

That’s where the Kim family comes in. John and Nancy Kim immigrated from South Korea and had the goal of operating their own business. They dabbled in a few different industries when Nancy found the theater.

“My mom fell in love with it as soon as she came and saw it,” says current Gardena Cinema owner Judy Kim.

It's an incredible space, tucked between a gym and a Superior Grocers on Crenshaw Boulevard. It’s way bigger inside than it looks — at 800 seats, it’s easily one of the biggest theaters in the city. For comparison, The Chinese in Hollywood seats 932.

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#250: As we continue our series "Revival House," How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro is taking us to the South Bay of LA and the Gardena Cinema. The theater has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and is now a non-profit run by Judy Kim and a team of 40 volunteers. Kim has saved the cinema from closures a handful of times now, and has recently pivoted to showing repertory films at the theater.

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#250: As we continue our series "Revival House," How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro is taking us to the South Bay of LA and the Gardena Cinema. The theater has been owned by the Kim family since 1976, and is now a non-profit run by Judy Kim and a team of 40 volunteers. Kim has saved the cinema from closures a handful of times now, and has recently pivoted to showing repertory films at the theater.

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There are still fireproof window covers in the projection room, a holdover from old film screening safety practices. And there are “cry rooms” upstairs from the 1940s, balcony seating with speakers and a glass window where patrons could sit with a crying baby and not interrupt their viewing experience.

Kim reminisces about her father using a pole hand to change the letters on the marquee. However, she admits that she lacks the arm strength for such a technique, which led her to invest in a scissor lift.

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Kim updates the marquee letters approximately once a week to reflect the upcoming movies that will be showing at the theater.

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Now it's got that vintage hue.

“Now it's cool! It's really cool!,” says Kim. “Now that I have dreams of trying to raise money to make changes, people are like, don't change anything!”

The early days

When the Kims bought the theater, they saw an underserved audience in Gardena. There was a drive-in theater nearby in Torrance called the Roadium that played Spanish-language movies every Wednesday, and the place would be packed.

One day, Judy Kim says, her parents decided to change the format of the theater from English speaking second-run movies from Hollywood to second-run Spanish language movies. In the 1970s and the 80s, the Kims named the theater Teatro Variedades — “variety theater” in Spanish — and focused on Spanish-language films and live events with Latino filmmakers and actors. If the Torrance drive-in was ever rained out, or if folks wanted to catch a movie in Spanish on another day of the week, they’d head to the Gardena.

“It was meant to be like a neighborhood theater that was typical in the post-war era,” says Kim. “There was always a neighborhood movie theater that you could walk to from your home, just a few blocks away … all of those theaters are now gone.”

The Kims held on to their theater and in 1995 renamed it the Gardena Cinema. Judy Kim and her brother helped run the theater and neighborhood kids showed up too, offering to clean or help out in other ways in exchange for a movie ticket.

It served as a community hub.

“We were almost kind of like a Boys and Girls Club,” recalls Kim. After the movie, kids “would hang out in the lobby, and we would play video games, or talk about what was cool and what was not and, as an adult at that time, I made sure that all the kids that were here did their homework.”

“I tutored them,” she adds. “I made sure that they were doing OK in school.”

Kim always expected them to go to college.

Trouble sets in

Despite the joy found in the theater, like most teens, Judy Kim wanted to get away from her parents and spread her wings, so to speak. She left for college out east and had dreams of moving to New York and becoming a Broadway producer.

Then the calls started coming — a lot of calls from her parents. Sometimes twice a day, begging her to return to L.A. She didn’t really understand what the urgency was all about, but she came home and found her parents — and the theater’s — finances in disarray.

“I realized that they were under extreme financial hardship, and they were embroiled in lots of legal problems,” she says.

Kim explains that her parents had been defrauded multiple times. The Kims lost their house, their car. To help, Judy Kim went to law school, became a lawyer and dug in to help untangle them. It took almost 15 years to get everything sorted. “We were basically surviving off of, like, 99 cent hamburgers,” she says.

The upside in all of this — and the part of this story that might be the reason Gardena Cinema is still around — is that about five years ago, Kim negotiated the purchase of a parking lot.

It was a big-time play. Gardena is one of very few independent theaters in L.A. with its own parking and, says Kim, “it saved our butt when the pandemic came.”

“Nobody was open and I had this big parking lot that I could show movies outdoors where people could sit in their car, safely, away from other people and watch a movie,” she says. “All they had to do was tune into the FM station that I told them to tune into.”

A bumpy road to recovery

As theaters in the city started welcoming folks back inside, the Kim family then had to navigate another major loss. “That time period is when my mom was fighting cancer,” says Kim. Nancy Kim died in 2022.

An altar of Kim's mother, Nancy Soo Myoung Kim, is placed in the lobby of the theater in remembrance of her beloved mother.

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John and Judy Kim closed the theater and took a few months to grieve. Judy Kim sold her condo and moved in with her father, putting that money towards the cinema.

“And then I said to my dad, we’re running out of money.”

The Gardena Cinema reopened with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, expecting it to be a huge hit. But only 10 people showed up to the first screening. Reopening the cinema with first-run movies meant that Kim was actually losing money.

New releases are “loss leaders” for movie theaters. Most of the ticket price is going straight back to the film’s distributor, and contracts mean that new films have to be shown for a certain number of weeks. If a theater isn’t bringing in enough audience members to turn a profit on concessions, theater owners are spending more than they’re making by running a first run film.

“So 2023, I’m running out of money,” says Kim. She says her father was ready to retire and use his “senior citizen card for all the national parks.” Why not sell the theater? Neither Kim nor her brother have children, so “there’s nobody to leave the theater to,” she says.

The theater hit the market, but didn’t sell.

Judy Kim made another last ditch pivot and came up with another plan: “I’m going to set up a nonprofit organization.”

With her father’s blessing, Kim began the process in April of 2023. The theater got official recognition as a nonprofit in July. Between that and the success of summer films like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie, the Gardena Cinema had a future.

Volunteer 'grandchildren'

Judy Kim was now running a theater and a nonprofit entirely on her own. But, as she learned years earlier, you can’t underestimate the number of people willing to trade work for a free movie. It took months, but Kim now has a team of 40 volunteers who help her run the theater.

“I’ve got a really good core group of people that are very supportive.”

It’s those volunteers who convinced Kim to move away from first-run movies and start programming repertory screenings. Without the strict scheduling and tiny profit margins of a first-run movie, Kim suddenly had a lot more flexibility. If she needed to step away and take care of her father, or just close the theater on a slow night, those options were now on the table.

Movie posters adorn the lobby walls of the Gardena Cinema.

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The Gardena Cinema volunteers are invaluable to the space. They run concessions, clean the theater, sell tickets, run the projector — and this past November, Kim left the theater in their hands entirely to take a trip with her father. “They did a fantastic job … it’s still standing,” she says.

Cifen, a local filmmaker, helps organize events in the theater. He put together a singles’ night and a screening of his independent film, Age of Embellished Relic, this past February. He calls the theater a “safe haven.”

Conor Holt makes the drive to Gardena from East Hollywood. A former ArcLight Cinemas employee, he says he cares about making sure cinemas stay open. “If you care about something, you gotta go the extra mile.”

Adela Tobon used to manage a single-screen movie theater in Northern California. A friend told her about the Gardena Cinema and she says, “I just lost it. I’m like, this is exactly where I belong.”

And Bill DeFrance has taken over a lot of John Kim’s duties in the cinema — cutting trailers, ripping tickets at the box office, building the show in the projector.

It’s a family affair for DeFrance too. On Valentine’s Day, he programmed Wild at Heart — his and his wife’s favorite movie. “I programmed it for Valentine’s Day so I could be at the theater and on a date at the same time.”

A sign his daughter made hangs on the side of the ticket booth, and boldly states in red crayon: “NO PRANK CALLS!”

“For a long time, my dad was like, well, we don’t need to leave a legacy. There’s no grandkids,” says Kim. But the volunteers pipe up with a chorus: “We can be your grandchildren!”

Gardena Cinema owner Judy Kim.

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Judy Kim is now planning on leaving an endowment for the theater, so it can continue after she and her family have moved on. And intentional or not, the Gardena Cinema now has a legacy of community building and a fighting spirit.

Keep an eye on the Gardena Cinema’s calendar. You can catch anything from a karaoke party screening of La La Land to Dawn of the Dead in 3D to film festivals featuring shorts from local filmmakers.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stand on Tuesday to defend himself against accusations from co-founder-turned-adversary Elon Musk that he "stole a charity" by converting the maker of ChatGPT into a for-profit juggernaut.

The trial, now in its third week, pits two of the tech world's biggest personalities against one another in a high-stakes clash that could usher in major changes for one of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies and potentially alter the AI landscape.

Musk's lawyers made the case that OpenAI, Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, with the help of investments from Microsoft, jettisoned OpenAI's founding mission of being a non-profit focused on creating advanced AI for the benefit of humanity. Instead, the Musk team argues that they enriched themselves by creating a for-profit subsidiary that now effectively controls the nonprofit.

OpenAI's legal team has argued that Musk is motivated by sour grapes and is out to damage a competitor. And on the stand Tuesday, Altman pushed back against the notion that Musk actually cares about OpenAI.

"Mr. Musk did try to kill it," he said, adding that Musk launched a competitor called xAI, tried to poach its talent, and alleged that he engaged in "business interference."

The dispute goes back nearly a decade to when the founders of OpenAI — including Musk — decided they needed to create a for-profit entity in order to attract top talent and raise big money to develop competitive AI technology.

Musk, who donated $38 million to OpenAI early on, wanted control of the for-profit; the other founders were against it.

On the stand, Altman testified that the co-founders felt no single person should control AGI, or artificial general intelligence, and that Musk was not a good fit for the company.

Musk left the board in 2018, and Altman called that a morale boost for employees who did not like his "hardcore" approach.

The trial has opened a rare window into the machinations of some of Silicon Valley's most ambitious tech entrepreneurs as they debated the future of AI and wrangled over investment plans and control of OpenAI. It would go on to become a global leader in AI thanks to the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

OpenAI's lawyers have drawn on once-private text messages and emails to try to paint Musk as power-hungry and initially supportive of plans for the for-profit to attract huge investments. The OpenAI team also tried to undermine Musk's credibility by highlighting messages that appeared to show that he tried to poach talent from OpenAI before he left the company's board, and was kept appraised of its decisions after leaving by then-board member Shivon Zilis, who is the mother of four of Musk's children.

Musk's lawyers, meanwhile, have tried to make the case that Altman and Brockman were intent on reaping personal profits from OpenAI despite its original nonprofit mission. OpenAI's nonprofit still exists, and owns the for-profit entity, now valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But Musk argues that it has been sidelined.

While cross examining Altman, Musk's attorney Steven Molo tried to undercut his credibility, asking if he was trustworthy. "I believe so," said Altman. When Molo asked Altman if he always told the truth, Altman replied: "I'm sure there are some times in my life when I did not." Asked if he had been called a liar by business associates, Altman said: "I have heard people say that."

If the United States District Court for the Northern District of California finds Altman, Brockman and Microsoft liable for Musk's two civil claims — "breach of charitable trust" and "unjust enrichment" — Musk has asked for them to "disgorge" up to $150 billion to the nonprofit entity.

He is also seeking the unwinding of the for-profit and wants Altman and Brockman removed from their leadership roles. That could radically reshape OpenAI and potentially undercut its AI development efforts.

Closing arguments are on Thursday, and a decision from an advisory jury and the judge overseeing the case, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, are possible next week.

Rachael Myrow, Senior Editor of KQED's Silicon Valley News Desk, contributed to this story from Oakland, Calif.

Microsoft is a financial supporter of NPR.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated May 13, 2026 at 08:19 AM ET

President Trump has arrived in China, a state visit that was initially delayed by the war with Iran.

But the war is not in the rear view mirror as he had hoped. The ceasefire with Iran is "on massive life support," as Trump put it Monday and the conflict is in an unsteady and uncertain holding pattern.

"It is remarkable that President Trump is prepared to go to China under these circumstances," said Kurt Campbell, chairman of The Asia Group and a top Biden administration adviser on China. "But may I also say that it's also deeply unusual that China is prepared to host him."

China and Iran are close allies and trading partners, and the U.S. has just spent weeks bombing Iran and is now blockading all ships connected to Iran. Meanwhile, there are questions about whether China has assisted Iran. And yet, the state visit is moving ahead as planned.

"It suggests that both believe they have interests in meeting," said Campbell. "And I think part of that is a desire to keep a relationship that is fraught and challenging with a degree at least of equilibrium."

A senior U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly said a better question would be "why would [Trump] not continue" with this trip and all the other duties that he has as president.

Grand ceremonies and grand gestures are on the agenda along with trade talks and the possibility of creating a "U.S.-China Board of Trade" to manage what has been a challenging relationship between the two countries. They may also discuss AI technology, the official said, at least to establish "some channels of deconfliction."

When Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping last fall in South Korea, the two leaders turned down the temperature on what had been an escalating trade war.

"From zero to 10 with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12," Trump said on Air Force One after the meeting, where plans were made for this state visit.

"I said but 'we have to put on the biggest display you've ever had in the history of China,'" Trump said at a meeting of world leaders in Washington earlier this year. He was building hype for this visit. "You know the last time I went to China, President Xi, he treated me so well."

Trump's schedule includes a welcome ceremony, two bilateral meetings with Xi, a state banquet, a tour of the Temple of Heaven and a tea in a whirlwind less than 48 hours on the ground.

More than a dozen big name U.S. corporate executives, including Apple's Tim Cook and Tesla's Elon Musk, are traveling as part of the delegation.

"The American people can expect the president to deliver more good deals on behalf of our country," said Anna Kelly, the White House deputy press secretary, on a call previewing the trip. "These agreements will further rebalance trade with China while putting American workers, farmers and families first and safeguarding U.S. economic strength and national security."

Iran war's influence

When this visit was put on the books last fall, the focus was on keeping the trade truce between the two countries going. And that is still on the agenda, but now there's this pressing new global challenge.

"I do think that this war will dominate the summit," said Lyle Goldstein, director of the China Initiative at Brown University. "Let's face it, it will push a lot of other things off the agenda. I mean, if for no other reason … Trump is focused on it because he wants it off his desk as it were."

Iran's foreign minister recently went to China and met with his counterpart there. And China is credited with helping to push Iran to accept the initial ceasefire, the one Trump said is now on life support. Lyle says he could imagine Trump asking Xi to help pressure Iran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz and make a deal to end the war.

This inevitably changes the dynamic between Trump and Xi headed into this high stakes visit.

"The war in Iran has given President Xi sources of leverage that he would not have anticipated having at the beginning of this year," said Ali Wyne with the International Crisis Group.

For instance, he said the U.S. will need rare earth minerals from China to rebuild its supply of missile interceptors depleted by the war.

To hear Trump tell it, the war with Iran hasn't affected his friendly relationship with Xi. And when there have been questions about China possibly assisting Iran in the war, Trump has downplayed those concerns.

"He's somebody I get along with very well. Just wrote me a beautiful letter," Trump told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in a recent interview.

Trump said he had prompted the correspondence with his own letter to Xi asking him not to supply weapons to Iran after there had been reports of China doing just that.

"And he wrote me a letter saying that essentially, he's not doing that," Trump said.

Although China is a major customer of oil from Iran, it has been somewhat insulated from the economic shock from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Potential deals

While other presidents scolded Xi about human rights and warned him to leave Taiwan alone, Trump has long expressed an admiration for Xi and the power he wields within China.

"It's not just hyperbole but the president is his own China officer," said Dennis Wilder,a professor at Georgetown University who was a top adviser to President George W. Bush on China policy. "And he believes he understands Xi Jinping, he believes he can negotiate good deals with China."

There are widespread expectations that China will announce plans to purchase additional soybeans and other farm goods as well as Boeing airplanes. There's also talk of a process to formalize the trade truce between the two nations.

But Melanie Hart, the senior director of the Global China Hub at the Atlantic Council says there are still meetings happening this week to lay the groundwork for Trump's trip.

"Everything is still in flux, at this point, normally at least the economic deliverables would be nailed in. That is not the case," she said. "So this is going to be evolving up until the last minute."

The White House has said a U.S.-China Board of Trade, even if agreed to, couldn't be finalized immediately. It would require both countries to do more work to establish such a body.

And Wilder points out, this is just the first of four potential meetings between Trump and Xi this year, including a planned state visit for Xi to the U.S. in the fall.

"What we're seeing here is the setup for a year of intense dialogue to try and reset to a certain degree, the U.S.-China relationship," said Wilder.

That relationship is now vastly different than it was when Trump first visited China as president nearly a decade ago. Back then, the International Crisis Group's Wyne said China put on a big display to convince Trump and the U.S. that it should be seen as America's confident and capable competitor.

"This time around in the run up to the meeting between President Trump and President Xi, the Chinese side doesn't have to make that case because U.S. officials are making that case themselves, beginning with President Trump," said Wyne.

The White House national security strategy document, released late last year, describes China as a "near peer," while the two nations remain locked in a long-term competition for global dominance.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Solar developers say they’re facing crippling losses and potential bankruptcy amid a stall in a state-funded solar power program.

California’s “self-generation incentive program,” or SGIP, was reworked in 2024 to help low-income households install solar and battery-storage systems for free.

But SGIP has been plagued by delays, bureaucracy, poor communication and stalled payments, according to five developers LAist spoke with. Small developers say they’ve been hit especially hard by a lottery system that they argue favors larger developers.

And customers who stood to benefit the most from free installation of solar and battery storage — low-income households in the hottest and most fire-prone areas of the state — are in limbo, waiting months for the bill savings and energy reliability they were promised ahead of what is expected to be a record-hot summer.

The issue highlights the challenges to expanding access to clean energy as fossil fuel pollution continues to accelerate climate change and is another hit to an industry that has faced significant setbacks in recent years from changes to state-level rooftop solar programs and the Trump administration’s cuts to clean energy incentives.

How we got here 

The state has offered incentives to large electric customers to install battery-storage systems since the energy crisis of the early 2000s. The latest version of the SGIP program aims to prioritize qualifying low-income residents.

In 2024, the state allocated $280 million in state funds to install solar and batteries for free on qualifying homes and apartments. The program is administered through the state’s investor-owned utilities and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. It officially launched last summer.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Developers identify projects they can take on, then apply for funding via a first-come-first-served reservation system. If requested funds exceed the total funding, then a lottery is triggered. If their project is approved, the developer does the work and covers the upfront costs of the installation with the understanding they’ll get paid back through SGIP within a year.

What’s happening in LADWP territory?

Solar panels dot the parking area at the DWP building in downtown Los Angeles.

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As soon as the SGIP program launched last June, large developers quickly flooded the application system.

Sunrun, one of the nation’s largest solar developers, submitted applications requesting as much as 97% of the total funds available in Los Angeles Department of Water and Power territory, according to public data reviewed by LAist. (Sunrun declined to be interviewed for this story. LADWP didn’t agree to be interviewed about the breakdown of applications.)

LADWP said it is in the process of reviewing the 451 applications it received. So far, DWP officials have approved one: $28,000 for a single-family home project, the utility told LAist.

Smaller developers told LAist they’re concerned that there is no cap on how much any single developer can receive through the program. General market versions of SGIP not targeted for low-income properties have developer caps of 20% of the incentive funds, according to the program’s handbook.

“The purpose of the program, I believe, is not to just enrich the biggest players or to allow them to have free project financing,” said Aaron Eriksson, owner of Escondido-based Solar Symphony Construction, which applied for projects in LADWP territory. “We all got kind of left out in the cold on that one.”

Robert Cudd, a research analyst with UCLA who has studied SGIP, said the program does incentivize developers lining up as many projects as possible ahead of time to “claim the largest possible share of that rebate pool.”

That’s often the case for similar programs that aim to serve low-income customers.

The state “is agnostic about who is doing this work,” Cudd said. “They just want to accelerate the energy transition.”

Only a few large companies — including Sunrun and GRID Alternatives, as well as growing startup Haven Energy — have developed specialized expertise in these kinds of complex programs that have higher upfront costs.

Small companies on the brink 

Delayed reimbursements have developers worried about projects in the works and about new paperwork requirements.

In February, the California Public Utilities Commission — five governor-appointed regulators who oversee the program — abruptly paused SGIP. In their ruling, they said that projects submitted varied widely in costs, with many exceeding incentives “significantly.”

The ruling flagged discrepancies such as the same wall battery reportedly costing as low as $8,600 and as high as $21,000. So the CPUC decided to require developers to submit additional receipts and documentation of their costs.

But developers LAist spoke with said only a fraction of applications were at the state’s predicted costs. The developers argue costs have gone up due to inflation, tariffs and cuts to clean energy tax credits. Projects serving low-income households also often require upgrades because of the buildings’ age.

Joshua Buswell-Charkow, deputy director of California Solar and Storage Association, a trade organization that represents more than 70 companies that participate in the SGIP program, said work is already underway in some cases.

“Some of our contractors are out literally millions of dollars right now,” he said. “ I'm worried that we're going to have folks go out of business because of this.”

That could be the case for Eriksson’s company, Solar Symphony. More than 100 of the company’s applications to install solar and battery systems at no cost to qualifying customers were approved by Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. Now, Eriksson said, they don’t know if they’ll be paid for projects they’ve already installed.

“We were very excited by the potential to deliver truly no-cost, home-sited solar and batteries to California ratepayers,” Eriksson wrote in a statement to the public utilities commission. “The regulators effectively induced us to commit under one set of rules; we accepted and delivered — and now the terms are changing.”

Eriksson told LAist he could be out of business by June if the state doesn’t release the payments.

Other companies have indefinitely paused installing systems approved by program administrators.

“We've signed contracts with hundreds of low-income families. We've purchased the equipment,” said Vinnie Campo, co-founder of Haven Energy, one of the state’s largest SGIP installers, at a Public Utilities Commission meeting in late April. “Our crews are ready to install, but systems sold in good faith to customers … are sitting in warehouses instead of on homes.”

Seven representatives of solar companies, including a lawyer representing multiple companies in Southern California, expressed their concerns at that meeting.

Lionel Rodriguez of Glendale-based Solar Optimum was one.

“Many people are hurting,” Rodriguez said, “and it's destroying the integrity of our company and also the customer's trust.”

In early May, in response to such concerns, the Public Utilities Commission released another ruling saying administrators can start paying developers when certain documentation has been submitted but that they still could audit any company that receives funds. Meanwhile, utilities have until the end of June 2028 to spend the funds, or else they’ll be returned to the state’s general fund.

When Eduardo Mira started his senior year at Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School, he thought politics was a “fool’s game.”

“All I saw from the media was just negativity and division and, like, political violence,” Mira said. “Nothing good, but now I do see the beauty in it.”

Mira credits government and economics teacher Joel Snyder with helping connect the problems he sees in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood surrounding the school, including pollution and sidewalks littered with dog feces, to potential solutions in local government.

“We focus on some of the nitty-gritty work of democracy that's not as election-focused,” Snyder said of his curriculum. “Then hopefully we are able to turn those skills into an argument for why their legislators matter, which translates to voting in the future.”

For example, Snyder asks local elected officials and their representatives to visit his class and his students have traveled to the State Capitol. Last school year, his classes participated in a program where community members 16-and-up got to vote on how Los Angeles County spent $500,000.

However, research on civics education indicates classes like Snyder’s are the exception, not the norm at many schools.

Researchers who study youth civic engagement, including Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at USC, point to a lack of related education as one factor in persistently low youth voter turnout.

“[Students] turn 18, and all of a sudden we magically expect them to not only know how to vote, but to think it's important and want to vote,” Romero said.

Schools struggle to teach civics

American schools are struggling to teach the basics of democracy.

One indication is that students' proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress civics test is dropping— only 1 in 5 eighth-graders met the standard in 2022, the most recent results available. Students’ civics understanding is also declining globally.

California requires students to take a one-semester American government and civics course to graduate, but the quality of the class and student engagement varies. For example, schools that enroll low-income students are less likely to offer related extracurricular activities, including student media and government.

In 2020, the California State Board of Education created an award for students who “demonstrate excellence in civic learning,” in response to legislation signed in 2017.

In L.A. County, about 3.7% of graduating seniors earned the State Seal of Civic Engagement in the 2024-2025 school year compared to about 5% of graduates across California.

“We somewhere along the line disconnected the notion of high schools and K through 12 schools as like, bedrocks of teaching democracy and democratic practice,” said Snyder, the social studies teacher in South L.A. “I think a lot of that nationally is a real fear of folks looking or feeling like they're being partisan.”

More than a third of teachers who responded to a recent survey by nonprofit iCivics reported changing or removing lesson plans because of the current political climate and 1 in 5 have considered leaving their job.

“Whatever we can do to support teachers to feel comfortable and safe to prioritize talking about civics period … I think is really important,” said Romero, of USC.

Even Snyder, who's been a teacher for more than two decades and written publicly about his approach to civics education, paused during our interview to consider whether to share that as part of his class, students register to vote. He estimated about 1,000 students have registered to vote in his class since California started allowing students as young as 16 to sign up to be automatically added to the voter rolls at 18. An LAist review of the state’s preregistration program found relatively few eligible teens participate.

School as a ‘primary connector of American democracy’

Snyder said the 2016 election marked a shift in his approach to teaching civics.

“The last decade has been a lot of thinking of myself as the primary connector of American democracy to not only my students, but to their families in our broader community,” Snyder said.

Residents of the Florence-Firestone neighborhood are primarily Latino and Black and about 40% were born outside the United States. More than half of adults have not graduated from high school, according to data compiled by L.A. County.

Eduardo Mira, 17, said Snyder's class changed how he viewed politics. "Now's my chance to intertwine with politics because eventually politics will intertwine with your life,” Mira said. “I know that every single choice really does matter and can affect your life.”

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Jacky Hernandez, 18, said homelessness and rent are top of mind as she thinks about voting for the first time this year. “We have all these houses, but people can't afford to rent or buy a house in this economy right now.” Hernandez said.

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About five times a year Snyder asks students to start conversations with family members about class topics from the principles of democracy to the three branches of government and the legal immigration process.

Mira, the graduating senior, said as a result he’s talked about politics with both conservative and liberal members of his family.

 ”You'll be surprised by how much Democrats want the economy to get better and how much Republicans want to increase education too,” Mira said. “It's really engaging. It shows that we really do care for the same issues, but we're just divided. We're not united.”

Mira, and another senior Jacky Hernandez, said discussions about current events are part of what makes Snyder’s classes so interesting.

“ I feel like sometimes in certain classes, we just get, like, packets or books and just told, ’Oh, just read it and look over it,’” said Hernandez, who’s taking AP government. “But we're not getting told about, like, what's actually happening in the current times that does affect our future.”

Both remembered talking about the No Kings protests and Charlie Kirk’s killing in class. The latter topic contributed to the investigation of hundreds of educators nationwide, including in California.

“It really did get me engaged and really made me realize, like, ‘wow, politics really is everywhere,’” Mira said.

He and Hernandez also signed up as student poll workers for the upcoming election.

“Honestly, I didn't care about voting [before],” Hernandez said. “I didn't see the importance of it. I just thought it was like, ‘oh, you find a candidate, you pick what you like, and that's what you do.’”

Now she feels differently. Hernandez said homelessness and expensive rent will be top of mind when she votes for the first time in June’s primary.

“We do make a difference,” Hernandez said. “Eventually we are gonna take the role of the older people and our voice does matter.”