January 17, 2021
School segregation between Black and white students has returned to 1968 levels, even as the nation grows more diverse. Black and white school segregation has deepened toward pre-Civil Rights Movement-era numbers despite decades of strides. This places Black students into school districts with fewer resources than white students — but in more diverse settings than…
January 17, 2021
Private institutions are attracting wealthy families who are frustrated with public schools’ flip-flopping on remote and in-person learning. The trend is weakening public schools, which will lose funding as they lose students, and deepening the divide between how rich and poor kids are educated. In districts across America, public schools have had to follow local…
Our traditional K-12 students are begging out of attendance at record numbers, often with no notification whatsoever. It’s a trend that began years ago but has accelerated at blinding speed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, 27 percent of America’s learners chose alternatives to traditional public schooling including charter schools (6 percent),…
January 16, 2021
Part 2 of 3 – Cost/Benefit Analysis of furniture replacement or removal. As seen in Part 1, each of the disposition options has two or more associated costs. In this section, we look at two sample analyses calculated with industry standard costs and revenue. Project management costs are roughly equivalent for each option and will…
Special education admins and teachers are burdened with more paperwork requirements and seek more guidance on replicating in-person services to distance learning formats. When schools closed to in-person learning in the spring, some individualized supports for students with disabilities were easily transitioned to remote or virtual learning. But other services were harder to adapt to…
January 16, 2021
Along with the proposed Budget that Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled recently, his Administration also released proposed language to amend the statutory deadlines for use of the federal Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) that helped to pay for the state’s Learning Loss Mitigation Fund included in the 2020–21 Enacted Budget. The proposal amends state statute to incorporate…
Upgrading ventilation systems is a key way schools can reduce the spread of the coronavirus when campuses reopen, but some districts in California are finding the cost of those upgrades to be insurmountable. Some districts have recently been able to upgrade their HVAC systems using local bond money. Some hope that the Legislature will place…
January 16, 2021
School districts say they now have another reason to be skittish about planning to reopen schools in the spring: new statewide emergency temporary regulations on protecting workers from exposure to Covid-19. New Cal/OSHA temporary emergency requirements went into effect Nov. 30. School officials are complaining that the new rules, which went into effect Nov. 30…
Minimum wage workers across California saw another increase in their hourly rate. Wages rose to $14 on Jan. 1 for employees of companies with 26 or more employees. The minimum hourly wage for employees at workplaces with 25 people or fewer climbed to $13. This annual wage hike marks another consecutive year of minimum wage…
CA lawmakers and regulatory agencies spent the greater part of 2020 responding to the coronavirus pandemic, passing legislation, creating regulations and issuing mandates and executive orders impacting both public and private employers. In Part 1 of this annual Labor & Employment Legal Alert series, Best Best & Krieger LLP provides CA employers updated information on…