The Brief

California students, including those in elementary school, will have better access to mental health care, free menstrual products and information about climate change this school year. The expansion of transitional kindergarten also means there will be more 4-year-old students on elementary school campuses.

These and other new pieces of education legislation will go into effect this school year, including a bill that bans schools from suspending students for willful defiance and another that offers college students more transparency around the cost of their courses and the materials they will need to purchase for them.

Here are a few new laws that may impact students in the 2024-25 school year.

Climate change instruction required

Science instruction in all grades — first through 12th — must include an emphasis on the causes and effects of climate change, and methods to mitigate it and adapt to it. Although many schools are already teaching students about climate change, all schools must incorporate the topic into instruction beginning this school year.

Content related to climate change appears in some of the state curriculum frameworks, according to an analysis of Assembly Bill 285, the legislation that created the requirement.

Assemblymember Luz Rivas, D-Arieta, the author of the bill, said the legislation will give the next generation the tools needed to prepare for the future and will cultivate a new generation of climate policy leaders in California.

“Climate change is no longer a future problem waiting for us to act upon — it is already here,” Rivas said in a statement. “Extreme climate events are wreaking havoc across the globe and escalating in severity each year.”

Menstrual products in elementary bathrooms

A new law in effect this year adds elementary schools to the public schools that must offer a free and adequate supply of menstruation products — in order to help younger menstruating students.

Last school year, the Menstruation Equity for All Act went into effect, requiring public schools serving sixth- through 12th-grade students to provide menstruation products. It affected over 2,000 schools.

The new law expands the requirement to public schools that serve third- through fifth-grade students. A Senate analysis of the legislation notes that 10% of menstruation periods begin by age 10, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

The new law requires affected schools to offer free menstrual products in all-gender bathrooms, women’s bathrooms and at least one men’s bathroom on each campus. The legislation, authored by Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes,D-San Bernardino, includes one men’s bathroom on each campus to offer access to transgender boys who menstruate.

Supporters of the bill note that menstruation isn’t always predictable and can strike at inopportune times, such as during a test. Menstruation products can also be pricey — especially for students who might also be struggling with food insecurity.

Girl Scout Troop 76 in the Inland Empire advocated for the bill. Scout Ava Firnkoess said that menstruation access is important to young girls, like her, who started menstruating early.

“I have another friend who also started at a young age. She had to use toilet paper and paper towels because she did not have access to menstrual products,” Firnkoess said in a statement. “We think young students who start their periods need to have access to products, not just those who start in sixth grade or later.”

Younger students on campus

Elementary students may seem to be getting a little smaller this year, as transitional kindergarten classes are expanded to children who will turn age 5 between Sept. 2 and June 2.

Transitional kindergarten, an additional grade before kindergarten, was created for 4-year-old children who turn 5 before Dec. 2. It has been expanded each year since 2022 to include more children aged 4. All 4-year-old students will be eligible in the fall of 2025.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond have celebrated the expansion of transitional kindergarten, pointing to numbers that show enrollment doubled over the past two years, from 75,000 in 2021-22, to 151,000 in 2023-24. However, a recent analysis by CalMatters found that the percentage of children eligible for transitional kindergarten who actually enrolled had gone down 4 to 7 percentage points.

Colleges must disclose costs

The typical California college student is expected to spend $1,062 on books and supplies in the 2024-25 academic year, according to the California Student Aid Commission.

The exact costs can be hard for students to predict, leaving them uncertain about how much money to budget for a given class. Assembly Bill 607, which Newsom signed last year, requires California State University campuses and community colleges to disclose upfront the estimated costs of course materials and fees for some of their courses this school year. The bill asks University of California campuses to do the same, but does not make it a requirement.

The schools must provide information for at least 40% of courses by Jan. 1 of next year, increasing that percentage each year until there are cost disclosures for 75% of courses by 2028. This year, campuses should also highlight courses that use free digital course materials and low-cost print materials, according to the legislation.

Proponents of the law, which was co-authored by Assemblymembers Ash Kalra, D-San Jose; Isaac Bryan, D-Los Angeles; and Sabrina Cervantes, D-Inland Empire, said it will promote price transparency. The bill covers digital and physical textbooks as well as software subscriptions and devices like calculators.

A student speaking in support of AB 607 in May 2023 said she felt “helplessly exposed and vulnerable” when she had to appeal to a professor for help covering the surprise costs of a textbook’s online course content.

“If I would have known that a month ahead of time, I could have organized and evaluated my budget in an effective manner for the entire semester,” said Rashal Azar. “This would have prevented my financial anxiety and not triggered my mental health as well.”

TK exempt from English language test

Students enrolled in transitional kindergarten, also known as TK, are no longer required to take the initial English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC). The test, which measures proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing in English, is required to be taken within 30 days of enrollment in kindergarten through 12th grade, if parents indicate in a survey that their children speak another language at home.

Previously, transitional kindergartners also had to take the ELPAC when enrolling. But many school district staff and advocates for English learners said the test was not designed for 4-year-old children and that it was not identifying English learners accurately, because the children were too young to answer questions correctly.

The California Department of Education has directed school districts to mark children’s English language acquisition status as “to be determined” in the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, if their parents indicate on the home language survey that their primary or native language is a language other than English. These students will take the initial ELPAC when they begin kindergarten the following year.

Californians Together, which advocates for English learners, and Early Edge California, which advocates for quality early education for all children, were among the organizations that celebrated the bill.

“As the parent of bilingual children and a dual language learner myself, I deeply appreciate Governor Newsom, Assemblymember (Al) Muratsuchi, and California’s legislators for supporting our young multilingual learners by championing AB 2268,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California in a news release. “This bill will create more support tailored to their needs and strengths, so they can learn and thrive from the early years onward.”

Kids can consent to mental health care

A new law that took effect in July makes it easier for children on Medi-Cal who are 12 or older to consent to mental health treatment inside and outside of schools. Children older than 12 on private insurance can already consent to mental health care without parental consent.

Previously, students in this age group could only consent to mental health treatment without parental approval under a limited number of circumstances: incest, child abuse or serious danger, such as suicidal ideation.

“From mass shootings in public spaces and, in particular, school shootings, as well as fentanyl overdoses and social media bullying, young people are experiencing a new reality,” said Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, D-Los Angeles, author of the bill. “The new law is about “making sure all young people, regardless if they have private health insurance or are Medi-Cal recipients, have access to mental health resources.”

Children who need mental health care but do not have consent from their parents could potentially seek help from social media and other online resources of sometimes dubious quality, according to the legislation.

The legislation allows mental health professionals to determine whether parental involvement is “inappropriate” and also whether the child in question is mature enough to consent.

California Capitol Connection, a Baptist advocacy group, opposed the bill, stating, “In most cases, a parent knows what is best for their child.”

This is not strictly an education bill, but it does affect schools. The law notes that school-based providers, such as a credentialed school psychologist, find that some students who want to avail themselves of mental health resources are not able to get parental consent.

No willful defiance suspensions

Beginning this school year, and for the next five years, California students across all grade levels cannot be suspended for willful defiance.

Acts of willful defiance, according to Senate Bill 274, include instances where a student is intentionally disruptive or defies school authorities. Instead of being suspended, these students will be referred to school administrators for intervention and support.

SB 274 builds on previous California legislation that had already banned willful defiance suspensions among first-through-eighth-grade students, and had banned expulsions for willful defiance across the board.

Studies show that willful defiance suspensions disproportionately impact Black male students and increase the likelihood of students dropping out of school.

Los Angeles Unified, Oakland Unified, San Francisco Unified and other school districts have already banned the practice.

SB 274 would apply to all grades TK through 12 in both traditional public schools and charters. The bill would also prohibit schools from suspending or expelling students for being tardy or truant.

Schools can’t ‘out’ students

After Jan. 1, California schools boards will not be permitted to pass resolutions requiring teachers and staff to notify parents if they believe a child is transgender.

Newsom signed the Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth, or SAFETY Act, in July in response to the more than a dozen California school boards that proposed or passed parental notification policies in just over a year. At least seven California school districts passed the policies, often after heated public debate.

The policies require school staff to inform parents if a child asks to use a name or pronoun different from the one assigned at birth, or if they engage in activities and use facilities designed for the opposite sex.

The new law protects school staff from retaliation if they refuse to notify parents of a child’s gender preference. The legislation also provides additional resources and support for LGBTQ+ students at junior high and high schools.

“Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety and dignity of transgender, nonbinary and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California,” said Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, who introduced the legislation along with the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus.

After California lawmakers passed a state housing law that allows taller apartment buildings near train lines, Los Angeles leaders are facing a tradeoff: If they want to delay full implementation of the law, they’ll have to choose some parts of the city to upzone.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 79 into law last year. Starting July 1, the law is set to allow apartment buildings up to nine stories tall to be built next to subway stations and smaller buildings within a half-mile of light rail and rapid bus stops.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and a slim majority of the L.A. City Council had expressed opposition to SB 79, in keeping with the long-standing preference of many city leaders to leave untouched the three-quarters of L.A.’s residential land zoned for single-family homes.

Now, some L.A. leaders are scrambling to pull a delay lever that was built into SB 79. The provision allows cities to put off the law’s broadest effects until 2030, as long as they agree to allow more housing development in certain neighborhoods in the interim.

“If we don't do this, what happens is SB 79 goes into effect full-on,” said Bob Blumenfield, chair of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, during a meeting on Tuesday. “I really want to avoid that happening.”

Options for delay

The state law lets cities delay implementation in neighborhoods deemed to be “low resource,” in areas at high risk of fires or sea level rise or are designated as historically significant. Even with those carve-outs, some higher-income neighborhoods near train stops will still be subject to upzoning.

The city’s Planning Department produced a report last week laying out three different approaches for the City Council to delay SB 79. All of them involve local incentive programs that would allow developers to build apartment buildings in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family homes.

The first option would allow buildings up to four stories tall, while the second and third options would permit buildings up to eight stories.

During the committee meeting Tuesday, homeowners spoke against the changes the new law would bring and the city’s upzoning plans.

“Single-family neighborhoods are where families put down roots — they are the beating heart of Los Angeles and SB 79 runs a stake right through that heart,” said Shelley Wagers with the Beverly Grove Neighborhood Association. “We must use every tool to prevent irreversible harm and buy time.”

Advocates for increased housing development said they favored the report’s third option, which would allow mid-sized apartment buildings within a half-mile of existing train stops, as well as planned stations and rapid bus stops.

Scott Epstein, policy director for Abundant Housing L.A., said that approach “offers the best opportunity to meet our housing targets and ensure that neighborhoods rich in transit services and high-quality schools are doing their part.”

What happens next

The Planning and Land Use Committee could not get a three-person majority to agree on the best path forward, so the decision will now go to the full City Council for further debate.

Blumenfield said his recommendation as committee chair was to allow mid-rise apartment buildings in many neighborhoods, but only near existing train stops, not planned stations or rapid bus stops. He also recommended more exemptions for certain historic preservation zones.

Nithya Raman, a committee member who is also running for L.A. Mayor, said she found the report’s recommendations difficult to follow. Passing a delayed implementation plan could stave off changes in some neighborhoods, but only for a while, she said.

“Eventually we will have to do something,” Raman said. “So the question is just what do we do now and what do we do later.”

But council members have little time to figure out which approach they prefer. City planners told the committee that in order to have a delay ordinance in place by July 1, the council would need to decide what direction to take by early March.

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Feb. 25, 2026.

As federal immigration enforcement raids continue across Los Angeles, a broader demographic of people is stepping up to volunteer their time to monitor and document immigration raids in their neighborhoods, according to Ron Gochez, organizer with the rapid‑response network Unión del Barrio.

“We have senior citizen retirees showing up saying, ‘I’m an old white woman — how can I help?’ We have students from community colleges and universities. We have people who look like longtime activists and people who look like they’ve never done this before,” he said. “It’s solidarity being shown by Angelenos of all shapes, sizes, colors and ages.”

While longtime Latino organizers have led the patrols, their numbers are growing thanks to the new volunteers who aren’t necessarily Latino.

Unión del Barrio has outgrown their usual meeting space at the United Teachers union building in Koreatown, which used to draw a few dozen people.

Along with their patrols, the group supports families impacted by immigration raids and issues real-time alerts over social media.

In late January, the day after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, about 400 people showed up for a training session, Unión del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said.

“The very next day, we had 1,000 people on a Zoom training for educators — and we couldn’t have more because the Zoom limit was 1,000,” Gochez said.

Organizers in Pasadena expected a few dozen volunteers at All Saints Episcopal Church and were surprised when nearly 800 showed up for the training session, according to Pasadena Now.

For the first time, the majority of volunteers at a recent training session were white, Gochez said.

“I think the administration and ICE thought that by killing Alex (Pretti), that people would be scared and intimidated and would stop participating,” he said.

Instead, it has had the opposite effect.

Other immigrant advocacy groups say they’re seeing a similar surge in support. Representatives at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center report a spike in volunteers, donations, and attendance at “Know Your Rights” workshops.

The legal advocacy group says they’re going to continue sustaining deportation defense, managed information hotlines, and expect that engagement to remain strong as federal immigration enforcement intensifies.

Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio, speaks to volunteers in South Los Angeles in February 2025.

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Andrew Lopez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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Residents living near Koreatown and Pico Union have seen a sharp increase in immigration raids in recent months. Unión del Barrio volunteer, Oscar, who provided only his first name out of concerns over retaliation from the federal government, has seen firsthand the effects of the raids.

“This part of Los Angeles — Pico Union, K-town, MacArthur Park, Westlake — has been hit incredibly hard throughout the last year,” Oscar said, pointing to raids along the El Salvador Community Corridor in Pico Union. “They’ve gone up and down Pico multiple times.”

Westlake, a dense immigrant neighborhood predominantly made up of renters and noncitizen workers, has also been identified as one of the most vulnerable areas in L.A. to ICE raids, according to a county-sponsored study.

Oscar leads patrol training sessions, but before joining Union del Barrio, he patrolled his neighborhood with a friend to report on immigration enforcement. “It just didn’t feel like enough,” he said. “I wanted to be part of a space of dedicated organizers.”

Overall, he’s seen more people working together across racial and gender lines, with a common goal of protecting their communities, helping deliver groceries to impacted famlies, monitor their neighborhoods and feel like they have something to do in the face of the ongoing immigration raids.

Immigration agents detain a man selling flowers in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.

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Courtesy of Verita Topete

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Centro CSO

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“People are coming in angry, determined,” he said. “but ultimately I think people feel empowered during the training.”

Unión del Barrio has expanded beyond its usual territory in South Los Angeles and the group now patrols in Boyle Heights, Long Beach, the San Fernando Valley, Beverly Hills and Brentwood, Gochez said.

“We have eyes and ears everywhere,” Gochez said. “I’m very comfortable saying there are thousands of people patrolling in the greater L.A. area.”

Although the group rarely solicits donations, Gochez said they have seen an uptick in funding, which helps cover costs from patrolling and printing “Know Your Rights” flyers and other materials.

Despite the heightened attention, Unión del Barrio has not altered its training curriculum, making sure that volunteers are following the law, but also aware that their safety is not guaranteed when they head out to monitor the immigration raids.

Organizers strongly discourage undocumented individuals or those on probation or parole from participating in community patrols, instead encouraging them to contribute in other ways.

“We’re not trying to become martyrs,” Gochez said. “We don’t want to be arrested, beaten or killed. But there is risk involved.”

The L.A. City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to make permanent a city pilot program that diverts police away from some mental health crisis calls.

Since launching in 2024, clinicians with the city’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response have handled more than 17,000 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. According to city reports, about 96% of those calls were resolved without police.

“We can’t keep deploying armed officers to handle mental health crisis calls because the outcome is Angelenos paying with loss of life and millions of their tax dollars for legal settlements,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who co-authored the motion to enshrine the program, said at Tuesday’s meeting.

According to Hernandez, in 2023, more than a third of LAPD shootings involved someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the data from city reports was "incontrovertible and unassailable," showing the program’s success at diverting police and fire first responders away from mental health crisis situations.

Council members said the move to make the unarmed model permanent was also a matter of fiscal responsibility. According to a news release from the offices of Hernandez and Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, on average it costs the city roughly $85 per hour to dispatch LAPD officers, while a response from a UMCR team costs roughly $35 per hour.

Last fall, progressive policy advocacy group LA Forward, convened a summit of local and state officials with the goal of making UMCR permanent and expanding it.

Godfrey Plata, deputy director of LA Forward, told LAist his group was “incredibly excited” to see the city make the pilot program permanent.

Plata said he sees enshrining the program as a first step in expanding the program citywide, which his group hopes to do by the 2028 Olympics.

How the program works

In 2024, the city partnered with three nonprofit organizations — Exodus Recovery, Alcott Center and Penny Lane Centers — to provide teams of trained clinicians in service areas spread across L.A. The teams are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week within the Police Department’s Devonshire, Wilshire, Southeast, West LA, Olympic and West Valley divisions.

Crisis response workers are trained in de-escalation techniques, mental health, substance use, conflict resolution and more, according to a report on the program from the Office of City Administrative Officer. The teams don’t have the authority to order psychiatric holds for people in crisis, but they can work with them to find help locally, and spend more time on follow up than law enforcement can.

In its first year, Los Angeles’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response sent teams of unarmed clinicians to  more than 6,700 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. Only about 4% were redirected to the LAPD. Average response times have been under 30 minutes.

Examples of these interactions include members of the teams taking food to a woman who was crying and hungry, working with a business owner to engage with someone sleeping in a parking lot and sitting with a family for nearly three hours to help resolve a conflict involving a relative.

What’s next

The motion approved Tuesday also directs city officials to form a working group made up of the LAPD, the L.A. Fire Department and other agencies to address inefficiencies in the dispatch system. The goal of the working group will be to centralize unarmed crisis response dispatch and improve response times.