By Bode Oyowele On May 23, 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a new advisory on the impact of social media use on youth mental health. “The most common question parents ask me is, ‘is social media safe for my kids?’ The answer […]
By Angela Asch May is Mental Health Awareness Month, an important reminder to acknowledge and discuss mental health to reduce stigma, increase access, and improve child and adolescent well-being. As evidenced by a recent CSBA survey, student mental health is important to CSBA members, who […]
By Susan Markarian, CSBA President Phyllis McGinley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and poet said, “Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity.” Constitutional law expert Alexander Bickel opined that, “No society, certainly not a large and heterogeneous one, can fail in time to […]
By Susan Markarian, CSBA President Springtime in Washington, D.C., is renowned for cherry blossoms and field trips to national monuments, but CSBA is building its own tradition — an annual lobbying trip on behalf of California public schools. From April 24-26, we’ll be on the […]
By Susan Markarian The author Leo Tolstoy said, “Spring is the time of plans and projects.” That is certainly true at CSBA, where we have spent the first weeks of March planting seeds of advocacy that we hope will blossom into policy and legislation that […]
By Dana Scott As of Jan. 1, 2023, school and county office of education board members are subject to “pay-to-play” campaign contribution restrictions due to the passage of Senate Bill 1439 and the changes it made to the Political Reform Act PRA). Prior to SB […]
By Jeremy Anderson The first spending deadline for the historic federal COVID relief funding known as the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER I) fund and the Governors’ Emergency Education Relief (GEER I) fund was Jan. 30, 2023. These 2020 funding packages were the […]
By Jeremy Anderson and Angela Asch Access to reliable home-to-school transportation for students improves attendance and cuts rates of chronic absenteeism, particularly for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Recent research from the University of Pennsylvania highlights evidence-based strategies to combat chronic absenteeism and found that […]
By Angela Asch The pandemic caused many challenges for educators, but teachers, school administrators, and other staff have forged ahead despite these disruptions, often putting their emotional and mental health needs on hold to take care of their students first. In addition to their regular […]
By Bode Owoyele, CSBA Associate General Counsel Parcel taxes have long been an essential part of school financing in California. Under the state Constitution, a school district may impose a special tax when a ballot measure proposing the tax is supported by two-thirds of qualified […]
