Strikes, cuts, state superintendent race: Our 2026 California education predictions. What are yours?

Children play during recess at Cuyama Elementary School in New Cuyama, Calif.

Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Photo

You can never lose money by catastrophizing about what President Donald Trump might do. My last year’s predictions about his impact on education, treating the Department of Education like Venezuela with shock and awe, were, within a fenster or so, spot-on (go here for last year’s predictions).

This year will be much the same: More cuts, more threats of withholding money, more executive orders lacking authority and often ignored or overturned in court, more immigration raids. This week, Trump added child care, threatening to cut $10 billion in federal child-care and social services funding for California and four other Democratic-led states, alleging fraud without substantiation.

As a reminder, I wager in fensters, a play on my name, yes. You can, too, on a scale of 1 fenster — no way it’ll happen — to 5  — it’s bird-brain obvious (at least to you) that it will happen. Fensters are redeemable only in Melania Meme coins, currently trading at about 12 cents. Predict right, and you’ll make as much money as the First Family has after a year in office.

More of the same out of Washington

Here are a few federal predictions before focusing on California, which, after all, funds about 94% of its TK-12 education and decides how it’s spent. With the state staring at what the Legislative Analyst’s Office projects to be an $18 billion state budget deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom has indicated California won’t be able to fill in gaps from additional federal budget cuts.

Labor unrest

Per-student funding has never been higher, and so, too, have union demands for higher pay. Combine them, and the odds of strikes have never been greater. But the timing for them … probably not so great.

An impetus, as reporter Diana Lambert reported, is the collective action of about 30 California Teachers Association’s local unions, including some in big districts — Oakland, Los Angeles and San Francisco — in CTA’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign. They’ve synchronized contract expiration dates, with 18 declaring an impasse, and a half-dozen voting or indicating they’re ready to walk. United Teachers of Los Angeles will vote this month on whether to strike; it would be its third strike in a decade.

Los Angeles Unified School District teachers are taking heart from a four-day strike last month in West Contra Costa Unified that led to an 8% raise over two years, with 5% this year, plus 100% health care benefits. Never mind that district leaders have given no hint as to how they will come up with the $100-plus million to cover the costs; the district’s budget was already flashing red before the deal was reached.  

Other districts should keep close watch on how — or if — the district can resolve the discrepancy.

Districts in financial distress

Double-digit pay raises are just one reason that more districts will be in financial trouble. Key factors include sharply dropping enrollments with a reluctance to close schools, overhiring during Covid with one-time money, high chronic absences, superintendent turnover, and the big one — 2% to 3% cost-of-living adjustments that cannot keep up with districts’ rising expenses. While there will likely be only a few districts declaring insolvency, there will be plenty in the danger zones.

Last spring, only four districts, including San Francisco Unified, were certified as negative by the state, meaning they may run out of money sometime in the following year and a half. 

In the spring 2024-25 report, 20 districts were certified as “qualified,” meaning they, too, may be unable to pay their bills in a few years.  

Those numbers will rise if voters in November fail to pass a permanent extension of the income tax increase on the wealthiest 2% of California earners. First passed as Proposition 30 in 2012 and due to expire in 2030-31, it raises as much as $15 billion annually, 40% of which goes to TK-12 schools and community colleges. 

Ethnic studies

The 2021 legislative mandate to teach a half-semester high school course in ethnic studies starting in 2025-26 came and went with little discussion and no funding. The Newsom administration blamed a shortage of money in tight times, but the truth is more complex. Some popular ethnic studies curricula have included lessons and materials attacking Israeli colonialism and Zionism, leading to dozens of complaints of antisemitism and leaving the mandate’s future in doubt.

Making CDE effective

Only a handful of states still elect a state superintendent of public instruction, and a report by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) that is getting buzz at the Capitol explains why it makes sense for the governor to appoint an experienced executive to run the Department of Education. Instead, for decades, state superintendents, mostly former legislators, have buffaloed voters into believing their main job is to speak out and appoint task forces on issues, instead of overseeing a bureaucracy they mostly lack the skills to run. 

The report’s authors suggest modifying the duties of the state schools superintendent by shifting management and oversight responsibilities through statutes to avoid the contentious route of amending the Constitution to eliminate the state schools chief position. Voters have rejected that idea four times already in the past century. The report suggests that the state superintendent might become an independent evaluator or ombudsman instead. 

The opportunity to realign the CDE comes at most only once every eight years, when both a governor and a state superintendent are termed out, so they can’t argue it’s a power grab. For Gov. Gavin Newsom, a realignment would provide reassurance that the landmark programs he created — community schools, transitional kindergarten, early literacy reforms, teacher residencies — will be managed well after he leaves office.

The state schools superintendent’s race

Speaking of the state schools superintendent, it’s technically a nonpartisan office, but California Republicans, who are likely to lose five congressional seats due to the passage of Proposition 50 in November, are counting on one of their own to survive the primary election in June, if not top a crowded field of Democrats, in the race for state superintendent. They may get their wish in Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified school board and a conservative firebrand challenging transgender rights and the Sacramento status quo.

Two unresolved issues

Charter school fraud: A few cases of spectacular fraud by virtual charter school chains prompted multiple task forces to call for greater oversight and accountability for both charter schools and the school districts that authorize them. But a year of infighting between charter school advocates and school districts backed by the California Teachers Association yielded two competing bills, one of which passed only to be vetoed without a clear explanation.

With a moratorium on new virtual charter schools having expired Jan. 1, there’s pressure to get something done. 

Sexual assault liability: In 2019, the Legislature removed the statute of limitations for child sexual assaults in schools and other public institutions. Victims of assaults, some of whom are in their 60s, have come forward with sordid accusations, and the cost of settling or fighting the lawsuits is way beyond what legislators assumed. 

One projected $3 billion cost to school districts will likely prove low. Los Angeles Unified approved issuing $500 million in bonds to pay for projected settlements — money that will reduce spending on schools for 15 years. Montecito Union School District’s $7.5 million settlement for sexual abuse in the 1970s by a principal who died 30 years ago equates to nearly $23,000 per student. 

Liability insurance premiums for some school districts have risen 700% in the past decade.

How much of the price of compensating victims of crimes decades ago should today’s students bear? It’s a tough question.

School districts are pleading for help, victims’ advocates are standing firm; plaintiffs’ attorneys, earning big money from settlements, are threatening to attack lawmakers who modify the law as pedophile appeasers.

Worth watching: Tutoring

High-impact or “high-dose” tutoring emerged post-Covid as one of the most effective means of accelerating learning if done consistently, with multiple sessions of up to 30 minutes in groups of three to five students, taught by the same well-trained tutor.

Unlike other states, California has been slow to embrace it. Last fall, however, 50 districts expressed interest, and 28 participated in an eight-week “sprint” on how to set up a high-impact program. All plan to move ahead.   

The biggest commitment is by Los Angeles Unified, which agreed to provide tutoring to 100,000 academically behind students for three years in a settlement of a lawsuit over the district’s inadequate remote learning during Covid. It’s too soon to predict whether the district will adhere to the settlement. I have doubts. 

High-impact tutoring is catching on. Yes, I wrote this last year, too, more as a wish than a wager. If I’m wrong again, I’ll double down in 2027. 

See you next year, when, with a pocketful of fensters, the coffee will be on you.