The Brief

Nearly four months after an already delayed start, L.A.’s Charter Reform Commission is “still at square one,” according to one commissioner.

With six months remaining before the commission’s recommendations are due, several commissioners, city officials and good government advocates told LAist they have concerns about transparency and independence. Some say they doubt the commission is in a position to accomplish a fraction of what it first set out to do.

The commission was formed after a series of scandals in City Hall and has been given the enormous task of crafting revisions to the city charter — the city’s version of a constitution — that could eventually make their way to voters and have far-reaching effects.

City officials have recommended the commission weigh in on topics like expanding the City Council, switching to a ranked-choice voting system for city elections, setting standards for the removal of city officials indicted on criminal charges and allowing the mayor to submit a budget that covers two years instead of the current one-year budget cycle.

Some worry city officials will use the commission as either a “rubber stamp” to forward Mayor Karen Bass’ political agenda or an excuse to kick reforms further down the road.

Raymond Meza, who chairs the commission, told LAist the commissioners are “ extremely independent.” He acknowledged the abbreviated timeline may force the commission to make hard choices about the topics it covers.

“ I just want to be honest with the public,” Meza told LAist. “I think they would understand that considering the amount of time that we have, I know that we are going to absolutely do our best.”

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A late start

When the commission was first approved by the City Council and Bass in July 2024, city officials decided the mayor would appoint four members and both the president and president pro tempore of the City Council would appoint two members each.

Those eight appointees then would nominate another five members themselves through an open application process.

According to a schedule drafted by city analysts in 2024, all 13 commissioners were expected to be appointed by the end of last year. That would mean at most 15 months to debate, draft and send their recommendations to the City Council.

Two members now sitting on the commission were appointed by former Council President Paul Krekorian in September 2024, but the commission couldn’t begin its work until eight months later, when Mayor Bass appointed her four commissioners in May 2025.

In the time between, one commissioner resigned and left a vacancy to be filled by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, as Council president pro tempore. That position still is empty after Blumenfield’s recommended appointee, Dennis Zine, withdrew his nomination.

Zine was vice chair of the previous Charter Reform Commission in the 1990s and represented the West San Fernando Valley on the City Council from 2001 to 2013.

He wrote in August that he “would not be able to work or communicate with such a hostile and anti-LAPD body of elected officials” in the City Council. Two city hall insiders have told LAist the Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee would not schedule Zine’s confirmation vote.

Committee chair Marqueece Harris-Dawson did not reply to LAist’s requests for comments about Zine’s nomination process.

The first commission meeting was held June 10 with the initial seven confirmed members. Some commissioners already were concerned about how much they could hope to accomplish in less than a year, they told LAist.

By the end of June, the commission had added five more members from an open application process and were one step closer to beginning to look at the charter.

'Still at square one'

LAist reached out to all 12 members of the Charter Reform Commission, and five talked with us about their experiences so far. Most commissioners who spoke with LAist requested we not share their names due to concerns they would be removed from their positions or excluded from commission work for speaking plainly with the media.

One commissioner told LAist they were told by commission staff not to speak with the press and that all media requests were to go through the chairperson, Meza. Meza and Justin Ramirez, the commission’s executive director, denied that staff told any commissioners not to talk with the press and said it is their right to do so.

A common concern shared by most commissioners who talked with LAist was a lack of real progress so far.

For example, one commissioner questioned how far the group has gone toward addressing the size of the city council.

“I say nowhere — still gathering data,” the commissioner told LAist.

The commissioner said the same was true for addressing corruption, another top priority of the commission.

Instead, much of their time has gone to discussions of ranked-choice voting, the commissioner said, which the commission member considered a far lower priority than ensuring accountability for the mayor’s office.

“ I want to get to the things that will help the city run better,” the commissioner said, “and I don't think ranked-choice voting is any panacea.”

While the commissioner expressed hope that they would pick up speed, they said there is a long way to go to get to meaningful charter recommendations.

“Basically, we're still at square one,” the commissioner said.

Commission chair Meza told LAist that the amount of time left poses a challenge, and there will likely be some hard choices on which topics the commission will be able to cover.

“The committee structure that was voted on and approved by the commission already narrows the subject areas,” Meza told LAist.  ”Over the next few months, the commission may have to narrow that even more.”

Meza said he is proud of the work the commission has done so far and expects that the recommendations will still be somewhat expansive.

The mayor’s office told LAist in an email that “Mayor Bass’ nominations were a result of careful consideration and the Commission is on track to submit their recommendations to the City Council in early 2026.”

Calls for greater transparency

Some commissioners, city council members and good government advocates have raised red flags about the perceived independence and a lack of transparency around the commission.

Aside from one commissioner telling LAist that staff had told them not to speak with the press, other commission members say they also have been limited from speaking publicly.

The Rev. James Thomas is on the commission and is a pastor, political science professor at Cal State L.A. and the president of the San Fernando Valley branch of the NAACP.

Thomas repeatedly has called attention to what he sees as a lack of consideration of Black Angelenos from city government.

“ I don't see anybody speaking, really, directly to our issues,” Thomas told LAist in an interview. “The fastest growing Black population in Los Angeles is in Skid Row, and nobody is saying anything.”

Thomas told LAist that he began to have concerns he was being silenced after he was told about a press conference held by the commission chair only after the fact, making him wonder why he wasn’t given a chance to weigh in.

Then, a virtual town hall was held for the commission, and he was told he could not join the meeting or listen to the live stream. Meza and Ramirez told LAist that there needed to be fewer than half of all members at the town hall for it not to be governed by the Brown Act, which they said would have limited the commission’s ability to have two-way conversations with the public.

Thomas said he was never asked to participate and wasn’t given a clear answer when he tried to find out why.

“ They want me to shut up,” Thomas told LAist, “and I'm not going to shut up.”

In response to questions about transparency concerns around the commission, Bass’ office told LAist the mayor “believes in transparency and absolutely encourages commissioners to engage with the public in order to make accurate recommendations for charter reform.”

Who gets to represent Angelenos?

Thomas said he has growing concerns that the public will not be able to see the commission as independent.

“ The bottom line is that the three people who are in leadership of the commission, the chair and the vice chair and the second vice chair ... they're all mayoral appointees,” Thomas said. “ We cannot look like an arm of the mayor because we get nowhere if we do that.”

Thomas said he is not accusing the mayor of wrongdoing, but when LAist asked whether he sees bias on the commission toward any individual government officials, he said in his eyes, it doesn’t look good.

“ They say that they're not [acting on behalf of the mayor],” Thomas told LAist, “but there's nothing that I am seeing that doesn't suggest that to me.”

Staff members Justin Ramirez and Max Podemski, the executive director and deputy director of the commission, also were appointed by Bass and Harris-Dawson. Ramirez told LAist the role of the staff is to help the commission execute the outreach and engagement plan, schedule presentations for the commissioners on potential reforms and conduct research to provide the commission.

Ramirez said staff also reviewed and narrowed the pool of over 200 commissioner applicants before sending 20 applications for the initial commissioners to make their appointments, leading some commissioners who talked with LAist to wonder who was left out and why.

Rob Quan, a good government advocate with Unrig LA, said transparency has been a “huge issue” and pointed to the relationship between commissioners and staff as especially troubling.

“ The biggest flaw in this commission and this process is that the mayor and council president chose the staff,” he told LAist. “The commission ultimately doesn't have real authority over the staff that is supporting them.”

One commissioner echoed this concern to LAist, saying staff “ calls me periodically to tell me what to do, which is actually highly inappropriate.”

Meza, who placed commissioners in their committees and was one of Bass’ appointees, told LAist that the commission is organized to provide “ a very high level of transparency for the public.”

He said that most commissions in the city are made up entirely of appointees nominated by elected officials, and the rare ability to have commissioners select some of the members themselves provided more independence. The initial commissioners also were able to carefully consider gaps in diversity, Meza said, making sure the commission represented  a “broad cross section of Los Angeles.”

City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has a more skeptical view of the commission’s structure, saying that even though the commission selected some of its own members, five of those seven initial commissioners were appointed by either the mayor or Council president. She said she is concerned that in effect, this concentrated the commission’s power under the direction of just two people.

“I've asked people, 'How would you feel if the president of the United States and the speaker of the House of Representatives decided to appoint a handful of folks to propose amendments to the Constitution?' Well, that's the equivalency of what we are living with today,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez and Councilmember Imelda Padilla introduced a motion in the City Council in August to require disclosure of all communications between commissioners and elected officials and their staff that happen outside public meetings.

So far, the motion has been sent to the rules committee and has not been scheduled for a vote. Harris-Dawson, who chairs that committee and schedules its votes, has not responded to LAist’s questions asking why there has been no action.

Meza said he has not spoken to the mayor since before he was appointed and welcomes city officials to come and speak to the commission.

“ If they have any thoughts on any of the recommendations, they are welcome to come before the commission to express those thoughts in public because that's where they should be shared,” he told LAist.

Meza also has expressed some disagreement with Bass and the City Attorney about the powers of the city controller, which are now under the consideration of the commission.

Bass told federal Judge David O. Carter at a March court hearing that she would not agree voluntarily to an audit of city homeless services under her Inside Safe program.

“I do not agree to it because it is not consistent with the charter,” Bass told the court, “and because I fundamentally don’t think it is right for one elected official to audit another.”

Meza told LAist that he believes the controller does have that authority after the commission heard from leaders of the last charter reform process in 1999 who said they intended to give the controller that power.

It is an issue Meza says the commission should “clarify.”

What’s next?

Meza outlined the path forward.

The commissioners now are hearing from stakeholders, academics, experts, and city department heads about the issues in committee meetings, then the full commission will start taking votes on charter change recommendations toward the end of the year.

The first quarter of next year will be used finalizing the language of those recommendations, which need to be sent to the City Council no later than April 2, 2026.

Once they are sent to the City Council, the Council will then consider the recommendations before deciding what proposed charter changes they will send to voters on the November 2026 ballot.

Meza emphasized the importance of the commission and public participation in the coming months.

“ The charter may seem like some esoteric document, but it's not,” he said. “It is related to how fast your pothole gets filled or how fast your  street light gets repaired to how clean and safe your parks are, and so these are issues that matter to every single Angeleno.”

Meza said that if people want to get involved, they can join the commission’s social media channels, sign up for their newsletter or go to their website.

If you want to attend a meeting in person or online, you can find the meeting schedule here.

We have another pip — the second egg in Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest is showing signs of hatching.

The first pip, or crack, was confirmed in Jackie and Shadow’s egg no. 2 on Saturday morning, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

That’s about a day after the first egg started showing signs of hatching on Friday morning. The egg shell has continued to crack as the chick breaks through, revealing more of the eaglet’s fuzzy gray feathers as time goes on.

More than 38,000 people were watching the livestream shortly after the organization confirmed the second crack, compared with the more than 26,000 viewers who tuned in on Friday.

“The first egg is still in the process of hatching, it is not considered hatched until it is completely free of the egg shell. The chick has popped its head out of the shell to say a happy hatch day to mom and dad!” Friends of Big Bear Valley wrote on Facebook to more than a million followers on Saturday. “It also appears that the second egg has a pip. It is not well defined as of this morning, but we will likely see more progress throughout the day.”

Jackie and Shadow's usual incubation timeline is around 38 to 40 days, according to the nonprofit.

What’s next

With pips in place, it could take the chicks a day or two to complete the hatching process, as seen with last season’s trio.

Friends of Big Bear Valley won’t know for sure if any chicks are male or female, as the organization has said the only way to tell is with a blood test.

But once eaglets are around 9 or 10 weeks old, there should be signs that can help the nonprofit make an educated guess, including the chicks’ size, ankle thickness and vocal pitch.

Generally speaking, female bald eagles are larger than males. Female bald eagles also tend to have larger vocal organs — the syrinx — which leads to deeper, lower-pitched vocalizations, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

What do we call the chicks?

Historically, Jackie and Shadow’s chicks are given temporary nicknames initially, such as Chick 1 and Chick 2, or Bigger Chick and Smaller Chick (which some fans affectionately nicknamed Biggie and Smalls).

The final decision has then been left up to Big Bear Valley elementary school students. Previous chicks have been named Stormy, BBB (for Big Bear Baby), Simba and Cookie through that process.

Last year, Friends of Big Bear Valley crowdsourced more than 50,000 name choices in a week-long fundraiser, with the students voting from 30 finalists on official ballots delivered by the nonprofit.

The feathered parents’ eaglets were named Sunny and Gizmo last April.

One of last season’s three chicks didn’t survive a winter storm within weeks of hatching. Friends of Big Bear Valley named that chick “Misty” in honor of one of their late volunteers who is “still very missed,” the organization previously shared.

When Kekoa Gittens was 3, his preschool teacher told his mother he was a problem. He couldn’t sit still. He didn’t participate. When other kids learned the alphabet, he didn’t pay attention.

The next year, Kekoa’s classroom problems worsened. His mother, Sonia Gittens, took him to his pediatrician, who referred the boy to an eye doctor.

That doctor looked at the back of Kekoa’s eyes and diagnosed him with myopic degeneration, a dramatic form of nearsightedness.

“They are too little. They don’t know how to express themselves and say, ‘I cannot see it, teacher,’” said Sonia Gittens, who lives in the Marin County town of Corte Madera.

Today, Kekoa is a successful high schooler, but too many kids don’t get their eyes checked until they’re far behind in school.

Vision problems, particularly nearsightedness, have grown more common among American children. Roughly one in four school-age kids, or 25%, wear glasses or contacts, a proportion that increases as kids get older, according to 2019 federal survey data.

In California too few children on Medi-Cal like Kekoa are getting their eyes checked, and the problem is growing worse. Just 16% of school-age kids on Medi-Cal saw an eye doctor between 2022 and 2024 for first-time eye exams, continuing vision check ups or glasses, according to a report commissioned by the California Optometric Association. That’s down from 19% eight years earlier. The report, based on two years of Medi-Cal data, suggests that the state is moving in the wrong direction even as eye problems become more prevalent among kids.

Medi-Cal provides insurance for low-income Californians and those with disabilities.

“Every day when I see these children it is always a surprise to me that the kids are not getting the care they need,” said Ida Chung, a pediatric optometrist and an associate dean at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona.

The trend indicated in the report is alarming, Chung said. In her clinic, where about half of children are on Medi-Cal, it’s common for kids with congenital vision problems to visit for the first time when they’re in first grade or later. That indicates to Chung that many kids don’t have enough access to eye care.

Though kids might be getting basic vision screenings at school or from a pediatrician, some eye problems are still overlooked. “It’s something the child had before they were born,” Chung said.

Eye exams decrease statewide

Colusa County, a rural farming region north of Sacramento, saw the sharpest drop in kids’ eye doctor appointments in the state from 20% between 2015-16 to just under 2% between 2022-24.

Nearly all counties — 47 out of 58 — performed worse on vision care than they did in the past, the report shows, with some, like Colusa, declining significantly.

Most of the severe declines happened in rural areas, although urban counties like San Francisco and Los Angeles also saw decreases. Only seven counties improved the rate of children receiving eye exams or glasses. Four counties were excluded for comparison in the report because the numbers were too small.

“The decline in performance here is so widespread that something really needs to happen,” said David Maxwell-Jolly, a health care consultant who authored the report and the former director of the Department of Health Care Services, which oversees Medi-Cal. “These numbers are way lower than what you would expect to be seeing if we’re doing a good job of detecting kids with treatable conditions.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health Care Services said in an email the state could not confirm the accuracy of an external report, noting that vision services can be difficult to track because “not all encounters are captured in a single, comprehensive dataset.”

For example, many initial vision screenings take place in the pediatrician’s office during well-child visits, which include eye and hearing screenings as well as immunizations and developmental checks. State data shows about half of kids with Medi-Cal receive well-child visits.

Still, experts say the low numbers tell a real story: if children were reliably getting follow-up care from initial screenings, the share who get comprehensive eye exams and glasses would be closer to 25-30% — in line with the known prevalence of vision problems among kids — rather than the 16% found in the optometric association’s report.

Maxwell-Jolly said the analysis he conducted replicated an internal, unpublished department report tracking vision services between 2015 and 2016. His analysis, based on data obtained through a public records act request, updated the results for more recent years.

The state’s most recent Preventive Services Report, which measures how well Medi-Cal delivers preventive care to children, shows the rate of comprehensive eye exams for children and young adults ages 6-21 is similar to the optometric association’s analysis at 17%.

Contra Costa County experienced the third largest decline in children’s eye care in the state. A spokesperson for Contra Costa Health Plan said Medi-Cal health plans are not required by the state to track vision benefits and that it would take time to understand the data. The state, however, does track vision services internally, according to the health care services department.

A bill sponsored by the optometric association and authored by Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, a Democrat from Cupertino, aims to require the state to establish vision benefit quality measures and report performance data publicly. The goal of the legislation is to track where kids do not have enough access to vision services and to ensure that Medi-Cal providers are improving services.

Rural challenges

Amy Turnipseed, chief strategy and government affairs officer for Partnership HealthPlan of California, said rural parts of the state struggle to find enough providers. The nonprofit health insurer provides Medi-Cal for 24 northern counties, including Colusa and Modoc.

In Modoc County, which borders Oregon and Nevada, one optometrist serves a 90-mile radius. Partnership has worked closely with that optometrist to ensure they continue accepting Medi-Cal patients, Turnipseed said.

“In rural counties with lower populations, losing even one provider can exponentially impact the access to services to families,” Turnipseed said. “In the past few years we’ve seen vision providers reduce or limit their Medi-Cal, which makes it harder for families to see providers.”

An assortment of glasses at Vision to Learn mobile optometry clinic at Esther Lindstrom Elementary School in Lakewood on March 20, 2026. Photo by Ariana Drehsler for CalMatters Modoc is one of just seven counties where more children have received vision care in recent years, according to the report.

Providers frequently cite low reimbursement rates from the state as a reason for not accepting Medi-Cal patients. The California Optometric Association estimates only about 10% of its members accept Medi-Cal. The reimbursement rate for a comprehensive eye exam is about $47, said Kristine Shultz, association executive director.

“Our reimbursement rates haven’t increased in 25 years. Imagine getting paid what you were paid 25 years ago,” Shultz said.

Schools check kids’ vision, but follow-up is spotty

State law requires schools to periodically check kids’ vision starting in kindergarten. Those screenings are a good bellwether for if a child is struggling to see in class, said Chung with Western University. The problem is getting the kids who fail the screening to an eye doctor.

Chung runs an academic optometry clinic that works with local schools in Pomona. Each year up to 35% of students fail the screening, meaning they likely have a vision problem. But based on conversations with school nurses, Chung said only about 7% of those children then go to an eye doctor and come back to school with glasses.

Chung, who chairs the children’s vision committee for the California Optometric Association, said colleagues who work with school districts around the state report similar experiences.

“If a high number of those children are not getting the follow up care, we may just be fooling ourselves and checking a box,” Chung said. “We’re in compliance with the law in California but are we really helping the children?”

For some families, the answer is no. That’s what happened to Kekoa when he was 3. The school checked his eyes and said he might have vision problems, but his mother, Gittens, waited. Her son was still learning his numbers and letters. How would he be able to read an eye chart, she reasoned. It wasn’t until his problems got worse that Gittens took Kekoa to an eye doctor.

Now, at 15, Kekoa wears contacts and likes athletics. He needs to see to compete in capoeira martial arts competitions and surf on the weekends, his mother said.

First: Dr. Kiyana Kavoussi shows letters on a monitor during Noah Mattison’s, 11, visual acuity test. Last: Optician Maya Ortega looks at Italia Martin’s, 6, eyes before she chooses new glasses inside the Vision to Learn mobile optometry clinic at Esther Lindstrom Elementary School in Lakewood on March 20, 2026. Photos by Ariana Drehsler for CalMatters Many parents lack the resources to take their kids to the doctor, or simply wait. Notes from school nurses flagging that a child failed a vision screening may also get lost in a backpack on the way home, educators say. The California Department of Education does not track the results of school vision screenings.

Vision To Learn, a nonprofit, created a mobile eye clinic to help bridge the gap between kids failing school vision screenings and getting glasses. The group brings an optometrist to campus, meaning kids that need an eye exam can get one the same day and go home having gotten a prescription and ordered glasses.

Damian Carroll, chief of staff and national director, said Vision to Learn’s numbers tell a similar story to Chung’s. About one-third of students screened are unable to read the eye chart, but very few of those kids have adequate glasses.

In the California schools where the program operates, around 70% of kids who have been prescribed glasses did not own a pair. Another 20% had glasses with outdated prescriptions, according to internal data, Carroll said.

And that gap can drastically affect learning outcomes or behavior in school.

“First and second graders who try on glasses the first time are blown away because they just thought that’s how the world looked,” Carroll said. “They can see the leaves on the trees and the math on the board, and it’s shocking to them.”

For the record: This story has been updated to reflect that Maxwell-Jolly’s study replicated the methodology of an earlier one by the Department of Health Care Services, but did not republish department findings.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

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

For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga of the California Botanic Garden has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds. Each time, she's come home empty handed. But this year, with the desert in the midst of a big bloom, she's trying again.

"It's a little bit of a gamble," she says. "But, you know, the plant's having a really good year. I feel hopeful."

The plant has silvery-green pointy leaves, fuzzy buds and striking deep purple flowers. But it is challenging to study and to sample. Fraga says she often has to hike or scramble up mountainsides, or drive on backroads to find it. Very little is known about the plant's pollinator. And in exceptionally dry years, the Death Valley sage doesn't flower at all – meaning no seeds either.

The sage's habitat is mostly protected, within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. But climate change doesn't respect park boundaries – and could push these plants that are already living on the brink into even more existential peril.

Naomi Fraga says for the first time since 2009, she found the Death Valley sage seeds. Soon, she says, she'll return with a team to make the first big harvest.

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"You can imagine that if conditions were to get more difficult with a changing climate, it's going to be harder and harder to collect seed," Fraga says.

In late March, Fraga headed into the foothills of the Nopah Range, near an abandoned mine, to check on one of the largest populations she knows of. And for the first time since 2009, she found the seeds. Soon, she says, she'll return with a team to attempt the first big harvest of Death Valley sage seeds.

A bee pollinates a Death Valley Sage in the Nopah Range near Death Valley.

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The first day of fall semester for a university freshman is often stressful. Not for Vanessa Menera, an 18-year-old who’s the first in her family to attend college.

Last year, she arrived 15 minutes early to her first fall class with an internship and campus job already in tow, plus a mental map of Cal State University Dominguez Hills, a sprawling, nearly 350-acre institution in the Los Angeles area’s South Bay.

The already confident student possessed even more motivation to make the most of her time on campus because of a program she took last summer: The First-Year Experience Summer Program.

“Everything was so easy to me, and I'm really grateful, because I know it was because of that First Year Experience that I was able to do that,” said Menera.

The summer program is one of several strategies Cal State Dominguez Hills seeks to expand as it combats a half-decade enrollment slide that’s unraveling its finances. But it’s not the only approach to fiscal right-sizing. Nor is Cal State Dominguez Hills alone in combatting large drops in its student population.

That’s because the money that the country’s largest public four-year university system needs to properly educate its students isn’t there. Now, California State University is embarking on a detailed, sweeping plan to enroll more students as part of an all-out push to bring much-needed cash to the workhorse system of 22 campuses that educates 471,000 students.

Ten campuses, including Dominguez Hills, saw double-digit enrollment declines in fall of 2025 compared to fall 2020, when the first full academic year of the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The loss of enrollment is a major driver of the financial struggles many of the system’s campuses face. The Cal State’s chancellor’s office says the system is facing a $2.3 billion budget gap in the current academic year. There’s a bright spot, though: Cal State officials say the system overall is on pace this year to beat state enrollment targets for the first time in four years.

People walk past the exterior of the Innovation & Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Still, a key state lawmaker admonished the system’s under-enrolled campuses for missing its enrollment targets.

“I'm concerned that these campuses may be overfunded,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, at a December legislative hearing about Cal State’s finances. He is chairperson of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education and a key player in deciding how much state money universities receive. His worry? Other campuses with rising enrollments need the money to educate their ever-growing student body by hiring more professors, tutors and other staff to support students.

The state funds campuses based on how many Californians they enroll; by educating fewer students than what the state pays per student, the campuses are technically collecting more revenue than their enrollment levels would permit. That’s because the state pays schools for the number of California students they’re supposed to enroll, not how many they actually enroll.

By that measure, San Francisco State last year collected close to $50 million more in state dollars than its enrollment levels indicate it should receive — the campus enrolled about 5,300 fewer Californians than state goals stipulated in 2024. Cal State Dominguez Hills was taking about $7 million more. Conversely, Cal Poly Pomona was down about $20 million, because they enrolled 2,500 more students than the state’s target.

California is also eyeing multi-billion-dollar budget deficits, putting even more pressure on lawmakers and school systems to use money wisely.

The Legislature last year required Cal State to submit a report by March 1 detailing how campuses with enrollment struggles plan to attract new students and meet their state targets. Campuses sent their turnaround plans to the system’s chancellor’s office by December.

CalMatters conducted a dozen interviews and issued six records requests for this story.

Spotlight on Cal State Dominguez

Cal State Dominguez Hills’ enrollment is down 20% compared to 2020 and its finances have suffered. As a result, campus officials laid off 38 non-faculty staff and managers in 2025.

The school projects it will lose an additional $8 million this year, cutting deeper into its reserves, which have dwindled from $46 million in 2022 to a projected $10 million this summer.

The campus’ graduation rates fall below the systemwide average. And the campus historically has posted lower retention rates, meaning more students quit after one or two years compared to other campuses in the system. Dominguez Hill’s retention rate has grown in the last year, however.

The school enrolls the highest share of undergraduate students in the system who receive the federal Pell grant for low-income students — 69% compared to a Cal State average of 51%. Systemwide, those Pell students graduate at lower levels than students who don’t receive the grant.

Dominguez Hills’ turnaround plan includes a campus goal of enrolling about 800 more students to hit its enrollment target by 2027-28. More students plus planned systemwide tuition hikes and a new student-approved campus fee are projected to generate $25 million in additional money.

To reach its enrollment goals, the campus will lean on approaches that have demonstrated success, including the First Year Experience summer program, which Dominguez Hills started in 2022. Through the program, about a quarter of the freshman class enrolls in up to two free college courses during the summer before fall term. These are all general education courses required for graduation, with an emphasis on teaching students how to study well. The program also engenders a sense of community among students and campus staff.

Other strategies include attracting new students and keeping more of its current students. Another is to re-enroll students who’ve previously dropped out. It’s an approach that’s top of mind for campuses across the state: California is home to about 3.5 million adults with some college credit but no degree. Even a miniscule bump in the students who return to school could eradicate a campus’ enrollment woes.
Another budget-stabilizing effort may mean additional job losses. Campus professors are now meeting regularly to find ways to combine courses and run fewer sections of the same course. This helps the school average more students per course, but it’ll likely mean fewer lecturers — instructors who lack the full-time benefits and job safety of tenured professors.

Systemwide, 63 degree programs were discontinued by the Board of Trustees in 2024.

A student walks up the stairs in the Innovation and Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Dominguez Hills in February reversed course on terminating six majors, including art history and philosophy. Student advocacy spurred the restoration. The school also determined that cutting individual programs made less sense than reviewing all majors to find other ways to integrate academic programs, said Kim Costino, the school’s interim provost, in an interview.

“Everyone is hopeful that we are going to be able to create a more economically efficient curriculum that serves students better,” said Terry McGlynn during an interview. He is a biology professor at Dominguez Hills who is chair of the academic senate, a faculty group that shapes campus academics.

But “there's clearly going to be some pain involved,” he added.

Summer session to keep students longer

The school cited in its report to the system that expanding the The First Year Experience program is one way to increase enrollment.

The campus spends $635,000 annually to run it. Almost 84% of students in the program advanced to their second year of college in fall 2024 — well above the 66% for students who didn’t sign up for the First Year Experience, according to data the campus shared. For a school desperate to undo its enrollment slide, keeping the students it has — and their tuition dollars — is a key strategy.

Any incoming freshman can enroll in the First Year Experience.

One reason Menera knew the campus so well when fall classes began? An extra-credit assignment for her environmental studies course over the summer required her to identify every vending machine on campus.

Student Vanessa Menera, 18, in the Innovation and Instruction Building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters The First Year Experience also features activities that reinforce what students learn, such as a field trip to a museum for an English course led by a guest author whose book the professor assigned to students. For her environmental studies class, Menera said that she carried a trash bag for more than a week to visualize how much waste people accumulate.

The school also awards a $150 scholarship to students who complete a summer-experience course. But for students who work over the summer or help care for family members, that amount alone may not be enough to persuade them to attend the program, said Costino. She ran the summer program until December.

The summer courses are long. Most meet twice weekly for four hours, so a student in two courses is in class for about 16 hours a week. Menera worked anyway that summer, maintaining the job she had during high school at TJ Maxx in Anaheim, some 20 miles from campus. She continues to work now, logging 17 hours a week at a campus convenience store on top of a full academic load. The summer program mentally prepared her for long school and work days, she said.

Costino thinks the program’s growth won’t be in students enrolling the summer before freshman year, but instead in students who earned a D or F in a course their first year and need to make up the class the following summer. While students can presently retake classes, they have to pay for them. Providing free make-up courses that either replace or average out a previous low grade helps the school retain more students who are on academic probation or just lost academic confidence after a bad first year, Costino said.

Re-enrolling students who dropped out

Cal State Dominguez Hills is seeking to expand its efforts to re-enroll students who’ve dropped out. Since 2021 the school has re-enrolled nearly 1,100 such students for fall term through its “Once a Toro, Always a Toro” program, named after the campus mascot.

While these students represent a tiny portion of the campus’ annual enrollment, they lead to instant revenue for the school from tuition and fees. It’s a few extra million dollars for the school, and it costs about $300,000 to $600,000 annually to maintain the re-enrollment program.

Once these students return to Dominguez Hills, most graduate. Data the campus shared with CalMatters show that earlier cohorts of the re-enrolled students have graduation rates of around 50% three years after they return. The numbers grow to about 70% after six years.

The school is now targeting any student who dropped out in the last 15 years or so, said Sabrina Sanders, the program director of Once a Toro.

She maintains a list of 10,000 formerly enrolled students. Annually, about 1,000 apply, around three-quarters are admitted, and roughly 300 to 400 enroll. Some who were admitted don’t enroll for several reasons, including prior low GPAs that make them ineligible for financial aid.

One of the students who returned is Wynette Davis. The 27-year-old is four classes away from finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology after dropping out two years ago.

Davis transferred to the university from community college in 2022. She was on track to earn her bachelor’s in 2024 and even walked the stage during the spring graduation ceremony, needing just a few more classes that summer to finish her degree. But tragedy struck: Her daughter’s father died in spring 2024, and the shock derailed her academics. That spring and summer, she failed four classes. Davis left as a result.

She tried to re-enroll a year later, but learned she owed the university tuition money and couldn’t qualify for financial aid because her failing grades dropped her below the campus’ threshold for aid eligibility. Davis was ready to give up on earning a bachelor’s until an email from Once a Toro entered her inbox.

A staffer with the program helped Davis receive a waiver for her past-due account balance as long as she promised to pass her classes for the year, Davis said. The staffer also worked with the school financial aid office to reinstate her eligibility for financial aid for her spring classes after her grades improved.

Last fall Davis retook the classes she previously failed, passing them all this time. She’s in two classes this spring and will need two more next fall to earn her bachelor’s degree.

“If it wasn't for the Once a Toro, Always a Toro program, I probably would not have been back in school right now,” Davis said.

Another setback is the changing nature of academic requirements. Students who were gone for a decade may have pursued majors that don’t exist or were heavily altered, so the courses they took toward their majors might not satisfy new requirements. Sanders and the school’s advising teams collaborate with academic department deans to convert the re-enrolling students’ old coursework into the updated expectations for existing majors. Or re-enrolled students pursue an interdisciplinary major that combines old coursework with new.

“There's a sense of shame that comes with dropping out of college and having someone there to kind of put those thoughts and put that inner dialogue to rest” was key, said Stephanie Esquivel, a returning student who re-enrolled in 2022 after leaving the campus her freshman year in 2007.

She credited Sanders with helping her transfer her community college units to her university major. To Esquivel, a team like Once a Toro shows that the campus desires returning students and invests in the social infrastructure to help them, she said.

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