The two-year 2023–24 state legislative session ended Aug. 31, which means state Senators and Assemblymembers across the state have headed home for a few months in their districts. This provides a great opportunity for local education leaders to connect with their representatives and build relationships that will strengthen their advocacy year-round.

School board members are critical spokespersons for public education, offering a vital connection to how state and federal policies play out in the real world. It may seem daunting, but remember, school board members are uniquely suited to advocate for public education, as their elected office gives them a full-spectrum view of how local educational agencies operate, the challenges students face and the short- and long-term priorities of LEAs.

As school board trustees, it’s important we stay grounded and remain in touch with what’s happening at our school sites. Given the myriad responsibilities school board members have, this isn’t always easy. The combination of our day jobs, family lives and the demands of our policy, governance and advocacy duties restrict the amount of time available for firsthand contact with school communities. Yet, it’s critical that we find the time to tour and become acquainted with our school sites, taking note of their conditions, cultures and programs. And if the opportunity permits, you should leap at the chance to visit and learn from schools in other districts or county offices of education. In my role as CSBA President, I’ve visited several local educational agencies in recent weeks and the experience has been both illuminating and inspiring.

On Aug. 14, CSBA led a breakout session at the California Department of Education’s (CDE) Housing Summit: Policy Solutions to Address the Affordability Crisis, where leaders in the building trades and commerce sectors joined with education leaders to discuss opportunities and barriers to creating education workforce housing.

Contributing to the larger initiative to create more affordable housing in California, the CDE referenced research released by CSBA and conducted by UCLA’s cityLAB and UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities + Schools (CC+S) and Terner Center for Housing Innovation. That report, Education Workforce Housing in California: Developing the 21st-Century Campus, found there are 75,000 acres of developable land on local educational agency properties statewide. The CDE translates that into the possibility of 2.3 million units of housing.

With election season in full swing, elected board members, especially those running for re-election, should be aware of laws that affect campaign activities and contributions, including the pay-to-play provisions of Senate Bill 1439 (2022). Specifically, SB 1439 widened the scope of Government Code Section 84308, which originally only applied pay-to-play rules to boards made up of appointed officials. As of Jan. 1, 2023, the pay-to-play rules apply to elected school district and county board members, and candidates for such offices, who should be aware of and comply with Government Code Section 84308’s requirements. This rule will restrict the ability of board members to solicit or receive campaign contributions from individuals and companies with business before the board. Below is a refresher on this law and how it might affect campaigns in the current election season.

A landmark partnership between the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Attendance Works and the Education Trust is elevating the issue of chronic absenteeism at the national level by encouraging state leaders to set the goal of reducing chronic absence rates in their states by 50 percent in five years.

“Pandemic learning loss is a gigantic, and still unfinished, problem,” said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at AEI, which hosted a forum in July to launch the initiative. “The reason I think chronic absenteeism is the most urgent and top priority is that I don’t see any route to pandemic learning loss being fixed that doesn’t go through fixing this chronic absenteeism rate.”

A diverse workforce in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) not only provides more potential for innovation by leveraging different backgrounds, experiences and points of view, but students who enter these fields are likely to experience higher median earnings and lower rates of unemployment compared with non-STEM workers.

However, recent research from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and Pew Research Center shows that Hispanic workers only represent about 15 percent of the total STEM workforce, and Hispanic students remain underrepresented in STEM degree programs, relative to all college graduates.

With chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” and athletes’ beaming faces framed by the red, white and blue of the American flag, the joyful energy of the summer Olympics was undeniable. Between the summer and winter games, every two years, people all over the world, young and old, catch the Olympic spirit and cheer on athletes in a variety of sports. It’s no wonder that the Olympics are correlated with an increase in youth sports enrollment.

Participating in sports positively impacts physical health and benefits mental health and personal development. Athletics provides students with the opportunity to compete, create lasting friendships, develop leadership skills and build resilience. School athletics also foster a community of connection between students and their school, and engagement in the school’s programs and activities.

For the first time in the nation’s history, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory declaring firearm violence a public health crisis. The advisory outlines the urgent threat firearm violence poses to the health and well-being of Americans.

The Surgeon General’s advisory lays out the approach the country can take to address firearm violence as a public health crisis. This includes implementing community violence prevention programs and firearm risk reduction strategies, improving access to mental health care for those exposed to or at risk for firearm violence, and expanding research funding to inform and evaluate our prevention strategies.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines bullying as any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another individual or group that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated or is highly likely to be repeated.

Bullying occurs in person and involves physical, psychological, social and educational harm; social isolation; rumor spreading and shaming behavior.

The Legislature’s passage of Assembly Bill 218 in 2019 marked a significant and, for some local educational agencies, existential increase in financial exposure. AB 218 created a three-year “lookback period” — from Jan. 1, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2022 — in which claims for childhood sexual assault were no longer subject to any statute of limitations or the claims-presentation requirements of the Government Claims Act (GCA). As a result, LEAs were suddenly exposed to lawsuits based on incidents of childhood sexual assault alleged to have occurred decades before. Understandably, allegations that old are extremely difficult to defend, since key witnesses and evidence are often unavailable. And, successful or not, litigating such allegations is expensive, and, in many cases, has to be funded directly by LEAs due to the unavailability of insurance.

Many LEAs have chosen to challenge these lawsuits based on the constitutionality of AB 218. In doing so, those LEAs typically argued that, by waiving the GCA’s claims-presentation requirements, AB 218 created an unconstitutional “gift of public funds.” Among other circumstances, an unconstitutional gift of public funds occurs when the Legislature creates a new, retroactive liability for public agencies.

The San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools (SBCSS) office has made significant strides in recent years overhauling the ways in which the county presents data and resources to district leaders, educators, families and other stakeholders vital to supporting the SBCSS’s Cradle to Career Roadmap initiative.

Originally, the county office, which supports 33 school districts serving nearly 400,000 students, attempted to create a one stop shop. However, a single platform that encompassed public data, secure student-level data and a repository of resources was hindered by technical limitations.