Education

We believe in a universally well-educated population.  To achieve this, California students must have access to world-class pre-K – 12 public education that will prepare them to live, work, and thrive in a multicultural, multilingual, and highly connected world. We must prepare our students for post-secondary education, career technical education, and active citizenship in the 21st century.  We must fully fund public education to correct years of insufficient allocations, increase funding to put California in the top states in per student spending, and equitably distribute funding to school districts most in need.

To help educate California’s young leaders and to prepare them to compete for challenging jobs, California Democrats will:

Pre-K – 12 

1. Work to ensure that all four-year-old children in California have access to a high-quality preschool as an integral part of the public education system;
2. Encourage stronger coordination between early learning programs and K-12 schools;
3. Advocate for supplemental services for children such as high-quality affordable childcare, preschool and early development centers, and community-based afterschool programs;
4. Strive for full proficiency in English language arts and mathematics, especially for historically low-performing demographic subgroups, such as socioeconomically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities, foster youth, English language learners, Latino, Black or African American, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, and other historically underperforming groups;
5. Provide instruction in social studies, ethnic studies, sciences, literature, art, music, foreign languages, civics, health, physical education, and career technical education;
6. Work to ensure sure that school children have current textbooks and comprehensive library books, including history books that are inclusive and historically accurate, representing diverse historical facts beyond dominant culture narratives, and books that reflect scientific consensus on issues such as climate change, evolution, and the Big Bang theory;
7. Advocate for school policies that prioritize beneficial instruction time, a variety of student engagement techniques, and minimize chronic absenteeism;
8. Support funding by enrollment rather than attendance;
9. Work to close opportunity and achievement gaps experienced by all students of all abilities and backgrounds;
10. Advocate for providing foster youth with the targeted support and services they need to succeed in school and prepare for college and/or career;
11. Advocate for federal and state governments to fully fund special education, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, (IDEA);
12. Support programs teaching life skills, such as financial and debt management, interpersonal relationships, etc. to better prepare students to succeed in life after high school;  
13. Continue supporting building and sustaining proven afterschool programs and summer extended opportunities to keep children safe, improve educational opportunity, and to close achievement gaps;
14. Work to ensure all students have access to school counselors and nurses and increase the capacity of school-based health centers to provide more children with access to physical exams, including contagious disease testing, mental health, vision, hearing, and dental services;
15. Support taking a comprehensive approach to childhood obesity by providing adequate time for exercise, offering nutrition education in schools, and ensuring that school-based meals are healthy and appealing to students;
16. Support the immediate implementation of age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education, which is objective and appropriate for use with students of all races, genders, gender expression, sexual orientations, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds throughout California;
17. Work to ensure all teachers and classified staff receive wages commensurate with their experience and expertise while offering opportunities for professional growth and continuing to honor their right to collective bargaining and all other rights afforded to them by their union;
18. Work to increase access to modern jobs by requiring that all school districts offer STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) subjects and encouraging students, particularly those underrepresented in STEAM, to study these subjects with necessary academic support;
19. Advocate for the replacement of sworn peace officers in schools with qualified non-police personnel who are trained to work with children and teenagers, who understand that the use of force against students is unacceptable, who recognize and address persistent issues of bias, such as institutional racism and ableism in all school systems, and who understand the need for increased empathy over potential atypical reactions from students with physical, intellectual/developmental, and behavioral disabilities;
20. Urge schools to use restorative policies and practices and to engage in regular bias training with regard to student goal setting and disciplinary practices;
21. Support school requirements that provide a safe environment where students are free from bullying and harassment with a reporting procedure that will not risk future harassment for those who experience and report such behavior;
22. Work to ensure that the needs of pregnant and parenting students are met, and that they are fully supported with necessary resources to complete their education through graduation as well as with respect to their parenting responsibilities;
23. Support effective policies and responses from schools and school districts around a student’s civil right of gender expression, including, but not limited to, pronouns, use of restroom facilities and dress, and their privacy to it, and eliminating gender-based violence and sexual harassment and properly addressing it when it occurs;
24. Work to ensure that schools follow state law that all students who menstruate have access to free menstrual hygiene products on campus;
25. Urge schools to recognize and eliminate policies and practices that feed the unjust school-to-prison pipeline: including institutional racism and ableism, zero tolerance policies, criminalizing childhood behavior, use of law enforcement with students of color and students with disabilities, the use of exclusionary punishment such as detentions, suspensions, expulsions, and the use of any type of student restraint procedures and devices;
26. Support making California schools a sanctuary for all children regardless of immigration status or documentation;
27. Support implementation of the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act in public education and advocate for adequate funding to train teachers and develop curriculum that incorporates the history and contributions of LGBTQ people;
28. Support sufficient funding for ethnic studies that requires a public secondary school course with a curriculum that teaches the histories, narratives, and contributions of California’s traditionally marginalized ethnic communities;
29. Advocate for civics as a required public and private secondary school course with a recommended curriculum that covers the basic rights and responsibilities of citizenship, how government works at the local, state, and federal levels, critical analysis of the news and political communications, and what an individual can do to participate in democratic policymaking;
30. Support public, nonsectarian charter schools where operations are directly governed by publicly elected boards; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and supplement, not supplant, public education programs, particularly for students in historically low performing subgroups;
31. Work to ensure that all funds earmarked for local school districts and county boards of education only fund those programs and are not used for unrelated uses;
32. Support public schools that provide additional support for Black or African American, Latino, Latino American,  American Indian and Alaskan Native students by increasing or improving services provided to these targeted communities;
33. Encourage K-12 schools, school districts, and universities to become climate-ready through the creation of Climate Action Plans that detail plans to electrify buses and vehicle fleets, decarbonize buildings, and prepare adaptation strategies for emergencies involving the changing climate, including heat waves, drought, flooding, and food shortages;
34. Oppose K-12 Education Savings Accounts, school vouchers, or any programs that would take away from public school funding;
35. Support educational equity to raise students to the same level of education, without lowering standards;
36. Support at-home computer and internet access for all students to improve educational opportunities, and
37. Advocate to expand the Community Schools model integrating focus on academics, health and social services, youth and community development and engagement.

Higher Education

1. Work to return to tuition-free public college and university systems for all Californians funded through progressive taxation because a college-educated workforce without debt is vital to California’s future;
2. Prioritize higher education to correct years of underfunding, some $1 billion each for UC and CSU, to restore top quality post-secondary education and ensure a place for all qualified in-state students;
3. Support learning environments that include robust Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs and encourage partnerships between school districts and local building and construction trades councils through use of project labor agreements/community workforce agreements in an effort to create pathways to construction careers;
4. Support financial aid programs so that no student pursuing higher education is overburdened by debt and support financial aid for students pursuing an apprenticeship or trade school in a manner that is equitable to students pursuing college or university;
5. Advocate expanding the Cal Grant program within the community college system;
6. Advocate for increased funding for financial aid programs, such as Cal Grant and Pell Grant, to help cover non-tuition costs, such as housing and transportation, to eliminate student homelessness and food instability, and to cover full attendance cost for very low income students;
7. Support access to healthy eating in and out of school through nutrition and cooking classes that address the availability of food choices that do not increase the risk of diabetes and obesity;
8. Support negotiating contracts with local, affordable food vendors for campus food and dining options;
9. Advocate for college and university “adjunct faculty” who do the same work as full-time faculty and meet the same professional standards to receive comparable, livable wages, benefits and opportunities for advancement;
10. Encourage community colleges and other colleges and universities to use full-time faculty as practicable to provide office-hour faculty support to ensure student access to all courses and increase on-time graduation rates;
11. Support Adult Education programs, including Older Adult Education and Community College programs for lifelong learning, a part-time student framework, and access beyond traditional models;
12. Oppose tax bill provisions that would eliminate the exemption of tuition waivers from taxable income or that would repeal the student loan interest deduction or the Lifetime Learning Credit;
13. Support state funding for existing community colleges and online class systems and restrict funding for unaccredited, completely online community colleges;
14. Support the re-establishment and implementation of equitable affirmative action in admissions processes at California’s public universities and colleges;
15. Support medical school debt forgiveness for all professionals, such as teachers and doctors, who agree to work in underserved rural areas;
16. Advocate for childcare services and family resource centers for our student parents at colleges and universities to help increase success and economic security for two generations – student parents and their children;
17. Support the removal of mascots with American Indian or Alaskan Native names to more inclusive mascots;
18. Support affordable campus housing that is more cost-effective than the surrounding community;
19. Support effective policies and responses from all institutions providing post-secondary education to eliminate gender-based violence and sexual harassment and properly address it when it occurs; and,
20. Work to ensure that campus healthcare providers and insurance plans provide a full range of reproductive healthcare, including, but not limited to, access to medication abortion and referrals to external providers as appropriate or needed.