The Collapse of Community College Enrollment: Can California Turn It Around?

GT Staff

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March 21, 2022

The Collapse of Community College Enrollment: Can California Turn It Around?

After community college enrollment collapsed in late 2020, California lawmakers last year gave the system of public two-year colleges $120 million to help stem the tide of departing students and bring them back.

So far, progress has been uneven. Through last fall, just 17 of California’s 116 community colleges have seen the number of students they enroll grow since fall of 2020. At 42 colleges, more students left in the fall of 2021 than in fall of 2020, according to a CalMatters analysis of system enrollment data.

Officials acknowledge that the number of students attending continued to sag systemwide. “Fall 2021 headcount is down approximately 7% from fall 2020 and down 20% overall compared to fall 2019,” a cratering of more than 300,000 students over those two years, said a March memo from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

While $120 million may be a rounding error in the state’s $47 billion commitment to higher education for the current budget year, it’s still a large chunk of change.

Gov. Gavin Newsom now wants to send another $150 million to community colleges to further bolster their re-enrollment efforts.

The expected return on investment is unclear.

While colleges received $20 million to stimulate re-enrollment in March of last year — well before fall term began — the remaining $100 million only reached colleges in the middle of September at the earliest, several weeks after nearly all colleges started their fall semesters. While most state higher education financial support is annual, this money was one-time.

That means the bulk of the money’s impact can’t be measured yet. The full package’s effect on student enrollment for the spring is also unknown because colleges don’t report their student population numbers until around July.

Nor will the public ever truly know how colleges spend this money: Lawmakers and the governor last year didn’t include any reporting requirements for colleges to show how they are using the re-enrollment dollars.

The chancellor’s office of the community colleges supports Newsom’s plan for re-enrollment money but in its budget request last year sought $20 million in annual support, not $150 million one-time.

Enrollment Big Picture

Early signs suggest the $120 million for re-enrollment has made a difference in stabilizing campus student populations, but other factors are also responsible for bringing more students back or keeping them from leaving. Offering more courses in-person played a role, several college administrators said, as did billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief aid for students and colleges.

Much of the enrollment loss is outside the control of colleges. The labor market is sizzling now, with rampant labor shortages leading employers to pay well above minimum wage for positions that typically don’t require a college education. Historically, community college enrollment swells during economic downturns when employers are more selective, prizing applicants with college degrees. But enrollment dips when the economy is hot because adults don’t view education as an immediate ticket toward gainful employment.

The whole California community college system isn’t likely to return to its fall 2019 enrollment levels until two or three years from now, said John Hetts, a visiting executive for the chancellor’s office who oversees enrollment.

Colleges will have to work harder to keep their student populations steady. The public K-12 system is projected to shrink by nearly 600,000 students in eight years. California’s overall population has been either stagnant or in slight decline. Enrollment growth will have to come from more adults who aren’t recent high-school graduates — including the roughly 3 million 25-to-54-year-olds who already have some college but no degree — and from college efforts to retain a greater share of their existing students, Hetts said.

Financial Aid Helpers

Rio Hondo College, in a suburban pocket of eastern LA County, saw its number of students inch up from 16,292 to 16,370 since fall 2020. That’s still well short of the more than 21,000 enrolled in fall 2019, but makes it one of the very few community colleges that managed to actually grow in the past year.

Signing up students for financial aid has been key, Rio Hondo officials said.

The college used $200,000 of its $1.2 million in re-enrollment money to hire 10 part-time staffers who coached students through applying for federal and state financial aid. All that money came from last year’s smaller March allotment of re-enrollment funding.

The goal at the start of last fall was to increase the number of new and current students applying for financial aid by 5%, a target the school hit, said Earic Dixon-Peters, vice president of student services at the college. With state or federal dollars in hand, more students remain in school.

Rio Hondo is also setting aside $4 million in federal COVID-19 relief to pardon students’ campus debt, such as from unpaid tuition bills. Before the pandemic, if a student owed the campus any amount of money, that student could not register for classes. Now, registration is open to students with outstanding balances. So far 4,000 students took up the college on that offer, leading to $1.7 million in fee forgiveness, said Stephen Kibui, vice president of finance at Rio Hondo.

Shift to In-person Helping

At Santa Barbara City College, enrollment inched up to 13,855 students in fall 2021 compared to 13,664 the previous year, which is still short of the 14,874 enrolled in fall 2019.

But the college’s $1.2 million share of the state re-enrollment money had nothing to do with it. The college moved the first installment in March to this fiscal year. As for the remaining $1 million? “We didn’t even know about it till October,” said Kindred Murillo, the college’s interim president. Fall classes at Santa Barbara began Aug 23.

Helping to fuel the enrollment uptick? More in-person classes, Murillo said. In fall 2021, about 70% of classes were online compared to around 88% in fall 2020. Pre-pandemic, about 17% of the college’s classes were online.

The lost students were “the students that really do well in in-person classes and were struggling in the online program,” said Murillo. The college’s push for more in-person classes included a focus on non-credit courses, such as English language courses, Murillo said. Students in those courses are less likely to be able to take classes online, either because of insufficient internet and computer access or language barriers.

State re-enrollment funds are helping to boost spring enrollment, Murillo said. The college used some of the money for a re-enrollment event in December that brought back 150 students for spring. Students appreciate that 50% of the college’s courses will be in person, Murillo said. The college is also using part of the state funds to dole out $500 to select students to cover books and other school supplies.

Isolated Idyll, a Rural College Perspective

College of the Siskiyous, the state’s northernmost community college located an hour from the Oregon border, also saw a modest rebound in the number of students attending last fall. Among students in credit-bearing classes, enrollment increased from around 1,300 to 1,400, a campus administrator said. That’s still below the 1,800 enrolled in credit-bearing courses in fall 2019.

The college has so far used about $36,000 of its re-enrollment money to print schedules and mail them out to its service area — roughly the size of Rhode Island. Administrators figured sending out physical copies of the course schedule would reach potential students in the rural north who either lacked reliable internet or were unaccustomed to online content. “That could have contributed to some of our enrollment growth,” said Char Perlas, interim superintendent/president of the college.

It also plans to use much of its roughly $400,000 in re-enrollment and retention money as a down payment for an outreach department with three staffers, though the college will have to find other, ongoing sources of money to foot the bill.

But because the college is so isolated, it struggles to hire instructors, an ongoing problem that likely prevents the campus from enrolling more students. For instance, the college has an engineering degree, but there are semesters in which it offers no engineering courses, administrators said.

Re-enrollment Success

More than just printed schedules or outreach, though, it’s likely just a consistent return to in-person learning that will boost enrollment.

Expanded in-person learning and COVID-19 safeguards lured back Selena Johnson, a musical theater student. Before the pandemic cut the spring term short in 2020, Johnson was taking courses full-time. But the next 18 months of online instruction were a struggle.

“It was really hard to go from being excited about going on tour across the state — and being able to have that energy when we would meet up and learn together — to being completely isolated,” Johnson said.

She quit school last fall to work, unsure if she’d ever earn a degree. But the college’s commitment to COVID-19 safety precautions and the return of in-person choir classes brought her back to school this spring on a part-time basis.

It’s a pace that works for her, and if she takes two classes next fall and two more the spring after, she’ll be able to graduate before summer of 2023.

Late Entrant Joins Race for Santa Cruz County’s 4th District Supervisorial Seat

Tony Nuñez

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March 18, 2022

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Late Entrant Joins Race for Santa Cruz County’s 4th District Supervisorial Seat

A third candidate jumped into the race for the 4th District seat on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors set to be vacated by current supervisor Greg Caput in November.

Ed Acosta, a member of the County Office of Education’s Board of Trustees and the Watsonville Planning Commission, joined Felipe Hernandez and Jimmy Dutra in vying for the key political seat that oversees much of South Santa Cruz County.

Acosta was a late entrant, filing his papers on Monday and meeting the Wednesday deadline when all candidates had to turn in signatures to officially get their name on the ballot.

Acosta is not far removed from his upset victory over longtime COE trustee Dana Sales in the November 2020 election. Acosta won in a landslide—scoring 75% of the vote—over Sales.

If elected to the Board of Supervisors, Acosta would have to vacate his seat on the COE Board of Trustees. His term on the latter runs through 2024.

He will battle with Hernandez and Dutra come June for the right to lead the agriculture-rich communities in South County. The top two vote-getters would move to the November election.

Hernandez is a current Cabrillo College Governing Board Trustee who served as Watsonville’s mayor in 2016. He also ran for supervisor in 2018 but finished third in the primary behind Caput and Dutra.

Dutra serves as the 6th District representative on the Watsonville City Council. It will be the third time that Dutra, who is fresh off his stint as Watsonville’s mayor in 2021, has run for the seat.

He finished as a distant runner-up in 2018—trailing Caput by 1,000 votes—and placed third in the June 2014 primary behind Caput and former Watsonville Police Chief Terry Medina.

He was elected to the city council in the November 2020 election.

In the race to replace supervisor Ryan Coonerty as the 3rd District representative, Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, Justin Cummings and Ami Chen Mills have stepped forward.

Kalantari-Johnson was the first person to jump into the race after Coonerty told GT last year that he would not seek reelection. Cummings declared his candidacy shortly after. Both are on the Santa Cruz City Council, and the latter served as mayor in 2020—a tumultuous year that saw the pandemic, calls for social justice, devastating wildfires, rising homelessness and the death of Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller wreak havoc on the coastal city and the greater Santa Cruz County community.

According to her campaign website, Chen Mills is an award-winning investigative journalist who also founded and directed a nonprofit before launching the “National Community Resiliency Project with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in multiple sites across the United States.” She also worked for six years with the county’s health and hospital systems, her website states.

For a complete list of candidates vying for elected leadership roles in the upcoming primary, click here.

Eco Farm Keynote Addresses Food Sovereignty for Indigenous Communities

Johanna Miller

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March 18, 2022

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Eco Farm Keynote Addresses Food Sovereignty for Indigenous Communities

In 2014 Elizabeth Hoover, associate professor in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, set out on a road trip across the U.S.

Hoover covered 20,000 miles over four months, visiting 29 different Indigenous communities and asking everyone she met one question: How do they define food sovereignty?

Food sovereignty is a growing movement that takes the ideas of food justice and food security to a new level. In general terms, it is “The right of peoples to healthy, culturally-appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and the right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”

Hoover’s long-running project, “From Garden Warriors to Good Seeds: The Native American Fight for Food & Seed Sovereignty” has set out to research and address food sovereignty and environmental justice for Native American communities. She explained her work in her March 14 keynote speech at the Ecological Farming Association’s annual conference (Eco Farm), which has been taking place this week via Zoom.

“With food sovereignty … We don’t just want equality within the current system, we want our own system,” Hoover said. “We don’t want an equal piece of the pie, we want our own pie. How can communities be better at deciding for themselves how they’re procuring and producing food? Indigenous communities insist on recognizing the social, cultural and economic relationships that underline food sharing, which needs to be nurtured.”

Hoover explained how, over the course of the past 500 years, Indigenous communities across the country have had their food systems stripped away. From scorched earth military tactics and intentional destruction of buffalo herds, to land theft and relocation. She touched upon the Dawes Act of 1887, which regulated land rights on tribal communities, as well as the boarding schools that remained in use through the 1950s, where native youth were taken from their families and distanced from their own cultures.

“And the Bureau of Indian Affairs really promoted Western farming methods and seeds, even among communities where people had already been farming for thousands of years,” Hoover said. “All of this interrupted traditional food systems.”

The modern food sovereignty movement addresses how communities can take back these aspects of their culture, but it also contends with modern challenges such as climate change, cross-pollination with GMO crops, lack of access to seeds, land and tools, a hemorrhaging economy and growing health inequalities.

“Diabetes is now the seventh leading cause of death for native people,” Hoover reported. “That is a 249% greater rate than other Americans.”

The ongoing pandemic has also thrown a wrench into native health and food systems, including the decline of many feeding programs on reservations across the country.

“[Covid] highlighted a lot of the challenges that native people were already facing around food,” Hoover said.

Seed sovereignty, in particular, is a large part of Hoover’s work—that is, “The rights of farmers to save, exchange and use farm-raised seeds, and having that be valued over plant breeders, chemical farms and intellectual property rights.”

“These seeds are such an important part of this movement,” Hoover said. “Some seeds are passed down through families, some come from seed banks … It establishes this cultural connection to planting that you don’t really have when you’re just planting cucumbers or tomatoes out of a catalog. There’s also a ceremonial context … there are ceremonies that are associated specifically with planting seeds.”

During her presentation, Hoover highlighted a number of native chefs and their restaurants in the Bay Area.

“You can grow food, but how do you get people excited about eating it? Native chefs have dedicated their lives to educating people about food, and getting them excited about native history and culture through preparing it,” Hoover said. “These people are proud of their cultures and communities, and want to preserve these foods and techniques.”

The fight for food sovereignty has gained traction over the years, growing from local and regional into national and even international movements. Anti-oil pipeline activists have dovetailed off of it, teaming up with farmers and landowners to plant native seeds along proposed pipeline routes.

“You can’t have access to safe, healthy food if you have a leaky pipeline going through your territory,” Hoover stated.

There is plenty of work to be done within the food sovereignty movement, Hoover admitted, and advocates hope that others will join in to help address all of the issues it brings forth.

“How do you grow healthy food to improve health statistics, but also the kind of food that nurtures spiritual and cultural health?” Hoover postulated. “To what extent do individuals have agency over what they are eating … [and] how do you ensure the whole community has access to enough food? And what can tribal governments be doing to support this? We need to be thinking of food sovereignty as an ongoing process, a method, and not a final destination.”

Learn more about Hoover’s work at gardenwarriorsgoodseeds.com. EcoFarm’s virtual conference wraps up this weekend, but in-person field days will be held in April and June.

Overdue: State Owes Community Clinics Millions For COVID Vaccinations

GT Staff

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March 18, 2022

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Overdue: State Owes Community Clinics Millions For COVID Vaccinations

By KRISTEN HWANG, CalMatters

Community clinics in California that have been waiting for more than a year to be reimbursed for COVID-19 vaccinations may soon be flooding state officials with tens of millions of dollars in bills.

The clinics, which serve California’s poorest and most vulnerable residents, may be owed as much as $408 million for the 6.1 million vaccinations they have administered to patients.

Now many clinics say they’re teetering on the edge of a financial cliff and desperately need the money from the state Department of Health Care Services. Some say they have already been forced to cut back patient services by reducing their hours or postponing doctor’s visits.

Without funds from the state, CEO Jim Mangia said St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in South Los Angeles will have to shut down vaccination efforts by April 1.

The largest community health clinic in Los Angeles, St. John’s has administered more than 441,000 COVID-19 shots, mostly to low-income people of color. The clinic is awaiting state payment for at least a third of them, costing $7 million; the rest have been reimbursed under private insurance.

“It’s frustrating because the state says they’re committed to vaccine equity, but they’re not paying the vaccine equity providers,” Mangia said.

California’s 1,300 community health centers are mandated to provide free or reduced-cost care to people with no or inadequate insurance. They’ve been integral to the state’s efforts to reduce vaccination inequities. About 80% of vaccines provided at California’s community clinics have gone to people of color, according to federal data.

The clinics were told not to submit claims to the state until now — a year after they spent millions ramping up to vaccinate patients — because the state and federal government had to figure out how to pay for vaccinations.

Last month, the federal government agreed to pay California $67 for each COVID-19 vaccination.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it had run out of money to pay for free COVID-19 vaccinations, tests and treatment. State officials said this will not affect reimbursement for vaccines already administered.

Health department officials said in a statement to CalMatters that they have no idea how much money they owe the clinics. The agency has yet to issue guidance on how exactly to submit their claims, and clinics don’t know how long it will take to get paid after sending the state their bills.

“It’s so painful that it’s been delayed,” said Andie Martinez Patterson, senior vice president of the California Primary Care Association, which represents community clinics. “Health centers have been holding millions of dollars of claims for over a year. We are desperate that it comes as soon as possible.”

Several clinics told CalMatters that services to their patients are suffering because of the payment delays, since they’ve been forced to use their federal emergency funds to cover the cost of vaccines instead of salaries and other primary care services.

Patterson said she hasn’t heard of any clinics closing, but many have cut back. That means fewer providers and longer wait times for patients who need medical care.

Where is the money?

Before the pandemic, there was no system in place to pay community clinics for a single service like a vaccine. Typically, shots or scans are billed as part of a provider visit, but that requires being seen by a doctor, which doesn’t happen at walk-up clinics or mass vaccine drives.

Instead, state officials told community clinics to hold onto their receipts while the Department of Health Care Services and federal government worked out the payment system.

The health department blames the federal government for the delay in payments. California’s initial request for alternative payment was submitted to the federal government in March 2021, but it wasn’t approved until the end of February, nearly a year later.

“The request for reimbursement for these ‘vaccine only’ visits required additional guidance from (the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and modifications to the original proposal,” a spokesperson said in a statement. Also, the state agency said it “needed to work collaboratively with clinics to obtain data to support the modified proposal of $67 per administration.”

Community clinics say they felt a responsibility to administer vaccinations to their patients rapidly, even if payment wasn’t guaranteed.

“I don’t think there is anyone who lives in South LA who hasn’t lost a loved one, lost a job, lost a home because of COVID,” Mangia said. “In the midst of that incredible suffering, we decided to mobilize.”

St. John’s had considerable expenses, reaching millions of dollars: It purchased freezers to store 80,000 vaccines, opened 26 vaccination sites in Los Angeles and hired nearly 600 people to run the clinics six days a week.

The clinic received nearly $20 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, which was supposed to subsidize primary care efforts. But Mangia said most of those funds were used to pay for vaccination efforts. The $7 million the state owes St. John’s is a drop in the bucket compared to its total costs, but it would still help, Mangia said.

Now, just as St. John’s is focusing its efforts on vaccinating children under 5, it will have to close its vaccination sites within two weeks without the funds.

“It’s not like we have the capacity to float that kind of money for an extended amount of time,” Mangia said.

In Orange County, the Families Together health center has consistently been among the top 10 vaccine providers, administering 56,000 shots in the past year. Between COVID-19 tests and vaccines, about 28,000 patient visits have not been reimbursed, CEO Alexander Rossel said. The clinic is owed at least $1 million for those services, Rossel said.

Last year the center’s board allocated general funds toward vaccination efforts despite not knowing whether they’d be reimbursed.

“We were struggling for a while. We used a lot of money to deliver these 56,000 vaccines,” Rossel said. “The emergency funds got to the state and the cities and not to the clinics. We’re still waiting for the money.”

Rossel said the clinic has worked hard to meet the community’s needs, vaccinating more than 80% of local teachers and sending a mobile clinic to restaurants and shopping centers to serve essential workers.

He said he’s disappointed in the lack of support and confidence from the state and local health department, which opted to first open mass vaccination drives at places like Disneyland. Rossel said low-wage workers couldn’t afford to wait hours in line or get the information needed to convince them the vaccine was safe.

Community clinics are still upset that the state health department didn’t prioritize them and get them vaccines quickly last year to help their low-income patients.

“We had to literally fight to get a hold of those vaccines. The federal government started giving us vaccines directly but that took six to eight months,” Rossel said.

Mangia said St. John’s also had to fight for vaccines, sending a letter to the state signed by 100 community organizations demanding the vaccine be sent to South Los Angeles after it had first been sent to UCLA and Cedars Sinai instead.

The delayed payment is yet another blow to the fragile, but essential, health care system.

“I’m not a politician. I don’t pretend to be, but I’m disappointed,” Rossel said. “I’m hoping and praying that the state and the county look back and learn what was the best way to deliver vaccines and resources, and I’m hoping they have learned that the community clinics were one of the top tier responders and they don’t forget about us again.”

The fallout at community clinics

Complicating matters, health centers are struggling with the same employee burnout that hospitals and private clinics have seen during the pandemic — but their margins are even thinner now.

“There’s a lot of fear around not having enough money to make it,” said Dori Rose Inda, CEO of Salud Para La Gente in Watsonville, which serves about 30,000 low-income patients.

Salud Para La Gente saw precipitous drops in revenue during the first six months of the pandemic when patients were told to avoid non-emergency care. They were only able to survive the past year with a $5 million American Rescue Plan Act grant, Inda said, but that money is all but gone.

“We literally pivoted everything to work differently during COVID,” Inda said. “Now as the grants are ending, we’re faced with…figuring out how to go full steam into primary and preventative care again and engage with people who are behind in the care that they need who may be sicker because of that.”

In Redding, at the Shasta Community Health Center, staff turnover has been high, with workers getting sick or burnt out. About 10% left when the state vaccine mandate for health care workers took effect, CEO Dean Germano said. He has five times more job openings than normal.

“When you don’t have a supportive workforce, it really does impact your clinical efficiency and patient happiness, too, if they can’t get through the phone quickly or get an appointment when they want it,” Germano said.

Revenues haven’t bounced back with patient visits still below pre-pandemic levels, particularly on the dental side, where the clinic sees only about half as many patients as before.

Shasta Community used some of its $5.6 million rescue grant to increase salaries to try and stay competitive, but most of it went toward breaking even on vaccine distribution, Germano said.

In Modesto County, Angela Millan said staff turnover is so high and funding so limited that some clinics at Golden Valley Health Centers have not reopened.

“They told us there was not enough staff or providers. They’re saying there’s not enough funds for these clinics to reopen,” Millan said.

Millan, who handles patient scheduling, said every few months she’s told to remove a doctor from the schedule because they’ve left, leading to long wait lists.

Long-term solutions needed for clinics

A bill introduced by state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Democrat from Van Nuys, aims to help alleviate some of the financial burden exacerbated by the pandemic by investing $400 million annually in community health centers to be spent on wages, workforce training and improved care.

He said the delayed COVID-19 vaccine payments are just one symptom of a long-standing funding gap for community clinics.

“Health care for millions of Californians is on the line if we fail to support our state’s community health clinics,” Hertzberg told CalMatters. About a third of the state’s 12 million Medi-Cal enrollees rely on community clinics for health care.

Employees at health centers make between 5% and 25% less than hospital workers, according to the Service Employees International Union, co-sponsors of Hertzberg’s bill. SEIU California represents roughly 14,000 health center workers.

“The wage gap is pretty significant,” said Joseph Bryant, president of SEIU 1021 in Northern California. “One of our clinics that we were recently able to get some substantial wage increases for, they were hovering just above minimum wage for many of the physician assistants, in the ballpark of $17 to low $20s.”

The state health center association has also made a budget request, asking for changes to be made in the way health centers are reimbursed, focusing on the value of services provided rather than volume.

Should either effort pass, workers say it could make a big difference.

Brisa Barrera, SEIU member and lead medical assistant at Santa Rosa Community Health, said two new medical assistants quit after three weeks because the workload was too much.

The churn is affecting patients too. Some referrals for specialty care are four months old, and specialists have told the clinic they can’t take any more patients.

“There are patients telling me ‘I don’t even bother calling the clinic anymore because the wait time for a live person to answer is over an hour.’ So treatments get delayed,” Barrera said.

She thinks about leaving herself sometimes, but as a former Medi-Cal patient, she knows it makes a big difference when patients see a face they recognize.

“My parents struggled because of translation, because of culture, because of their financial issues,” Barrera said. “These are patients that need access to care that don’t get the best care elsewhere. If I’m not here for my patients, who is going to take care of them?”

This story was updated to reflect that a source intended to say that physician assistants earn a certain wage, not physicians.

CalMatters health coverage is supported by grants from the Blue Shield of California Foundation, the California Health Care Foundation and the California Wellness Foundation.

Gig Workers Say High Gas Prices May Be a Breaking Point

The New York Times and GT Staff

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March 18, 2022

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Gig Workers Say High Gas Prices May Be a Breaking Point

By Kellen Browning, The New York Times

When Adam Potash started driving for Lyft six months ago to help make ends meet, he was happy with the pay. The business was far from lucrative, but he was making about $200 a day before paying for costs like gas and car maintenance.

But as gas prices have risen in recent weeks, Potash has barely been breaking even. To compensate, he has focused on driving during peak customer hours and tried to fill up at cheaper gas stations in the area around San Francisco where he works. He has also reduced his driving time from about 45 hours each week to roughly 20 hours.

“It hurts. I don’t have money coming in,” Potash, 48, said of his reduced hours. “But I’m not willing to operate at a loss.”

Gig workers who drive for ride-hailing and delivery companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have been hit hard by rising gas prices because their ability to earn money is tied directly to driving hundreds of miles each week. And because the drivers are contract workers, the companies do not reimburse them for the cost of fueling up.

Some drivers say that they have had enough and that the added cost of gas is making an already difficult financial equation untenable. The national average price of a gallon of gas peaked at a record $4.33 last week, according to AAA. In California, where Potash lives, gas now averages $5.77 a gallon.

“High gas prices are the final nail in the coffin,” said Harry Campbell, who writes a blog called the Rideshare Guy and produces a podcast aimed at helping ride-hailing drivers. “Rising gas prices make a tough situation even tougher, and for a lot of drivers, it’s sort of the final straw that pushes them over the edge.”

In a survey last week of 325 drivers who follow his content, Campbell found that 38% were driving less because of high gas prices and 15% had quit driving altogether.

Some drivers around the country staged a boycott of ride-hailing apps Thursday, though it was difficult to say for certain how many participated. The effort, initially organized to raise awareness about driver safety, gave way to an outpouring of frustration about how high gas prices were making a tough business even tougher.

“We started organizing months ago about the poor safety, and when gas prices went through the roof, many drivers said, ‘We need to stand up and make the companies get involved in both,’” said Torsten Kunert, who gives advice to drivers on his YouTube channel, Rideshare Professor.

Uber, Lyft and DoorDash say overall driver numbers are not down. Uber said it has more active drivers now than it did in January. Both Uber and Lyft added small fees to the price of rides in most places for the next two months, a change they say will help compensate drivers.

“We know drivers and couriers are feeling the sting of record-high prices at the pump,” Liza Winship, Uber’s head of driver operations in the U.S. and Canada, said in a statement announcing the gas surcharge. Lyft echoed that sentiment in a blog post Monday.

DoorDash announced a gas rewards program Tuesday. Those who use a prepaid debit card designed for DoorDash workers will get 10% cash back at gas stations, the company said, and DoorDash is adding bonus payments depending on miles driven. Grubhub also said it would boost driver pay.

Both Uber and Lyft say that drivers have been making more money since lockdowns lifted than they did earlier in the pandemic or even pre-pandemic, even when accounting for rising gas prices. And both companies are touting a partnership with an app called GetUpside that offers some cash back rewards for getting gas.

Gridwise, an app that helps drivers track their earnings and tallies data, found that drivers’ earnings have risen nationally in recent months, from an average of $308 per week in early January to $426 in early March. But gas costs for ride-hailing drivers have also gone up, from $31 per transaction to nearly $39 in the same period.

Uber and Lyft say the entirety of their new gas fees — $0.35 to $0.55 per trip for Uber and $0.55 for Lyft — will go to the drivers. But some drivers say the action is inadequate. Gas prices, on average, have increased by 49% in the past year, according to AAA.

“That literally insulted every driver, and that was their first communication since gas prices were going up,” said Philippe Jean, an Uber and Lyft driver in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania.

Jennifer Montgomery, an UberEats driver in Las Vegas, where gas costs $5 per gallon, agreed that the gas fee “doesn’t even put a dent” in the cost of fuel, which for her has been at least $30 more each day since prices began to increase.

Montgomery, 40, said she was becoming disillusioned with the job and had begun looking for other work that did not require her to drive. She has cut her six-hour daily shifts in half because “it’s really not a profit anymore.”

“I don’t want to deliver anymore,” she said. “Especially when you have bills to pay and rising cost of rent and mortgage, groceries — it affects everything.”

Jean mostly drives for Uber and Lyft during the winter and spring, when his work as a handyman tends to slow down. He said he enjoys interacting with passengers and usually makes $300 to $400 per week, with about $60 of that going to filling his tank.

Lately, though, Jean has been paying twice that amount for gas and has had to cut back elsewhere to compensate — including by reducing his car insurance coverage.

“I’m driving Uber now hoping not to get in an accident, because if I do, I’m going to lose my car completely,” he said.

The gas price woes have actually caused Jean to drive more in the short term, because people with cars that get poor gas mileage have told him they have stopped driving. With his hybrid Toyota Prius, he figured he would be able to snap up some of their business and still be able to make some money. But Jean said he would likely give up Uber altogether later in the spring when his handyman work picks up again, because of the high gas prices.

He questioned whether he or other drivers were even profiting from the ride-sharing business at all, after all of the costs involved.

“I think personally if I sat down and did the numbers, it would be break-even,” Jean said. “I don’t think we’re making money on it anymore. I think I’m afraid to admit it to myself, because then I would definitely stop doing it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Refugee Crisis Will Test a European Economy Under Pressure

The New York Times and GT Staff

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March 17, 2022

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Refugee Crisis Will Test a European Economy Under Pressure

By Patricia Cohen, The New York Times

Nearly everyone who crossed the Danube on the open-air ferry from Ukraine and landed in the frostbitten Romanian port city of Isaccea on a recent morning had a roller bag and a stopgap plan. One woman planned to join her husband in Istanbul. Another was headed to Munich, where her company has its headquarters. Others were meeting brothers, cousins, in-laws and friends in Madrid or Amsterdam, Paris or Sofia, Bulgaria.

And then, they hoped to go back to Ukraine.

“I need to return,” said Lisa Slavachevskaya, who traveled with her 10-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter from Odesa, Ukraine. “My husband, my mother and my grandmother are there.” She said she planned to go home in a month.

Whether such quick turnabouts are possible is one of the many uncertainties hanging over Europe’s fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II. No matter how the catastrophe in Ukraine ends, the costs of helping the millions of Ukrainians fleeing Russian bombs will be staggering. Some early estimates put the bill for housing, transporting, feeding and processing the flood of humanity at $30 billion in the first year alone.

“This is a humanitarian and medical emergency in the next weeks,” said Giovanni Peri, director of the Global Migration Center at the University of California, Davis.

What happens over the next few months will determine if Europe will face the additional costs of a massive resettlement that has the potential to reshape the economic landscape.

European economies are still recovering from the pandemic and coping with stubborn supply chain shortages and high inflation. As costly as it will be to provide short-term relief to families temporarily displaced by the war, over the long term the expense of integrating millions of people would be much greater and put immense strain on housing, education and health care systems. While a giant influx of workers, particularly skilled ones, is likely to increase a nation’s output over time, it could intensify competition in the job market. About 13 million people were unemployed in the European Union in January.

“It is uncertainty that now dominates the economic calculation,” Peri said.

More than 3 million refugees fled Ukraine in less than three weeks, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, and millions more are likely to follow as the war rages on.

Officials, migration experts and economists say it is too early to say whether most displaced Ukrainians will end up staying.

That is a stark contrast to 2015, when 1.3 million migrants from the Middle East and North Africa escaped to Europe after years of war and terror, seeking asylum because they feared persecution. Return was not an option.

So far, officials say, relatively few have asked for such protection. Of the 431,000 Ukrainians who have crossed into Romania, for example, only 3,800 have asked for asylum. Indeed, many winced at the “refugee” label.

“I don’t consider myself a refugee,” Evgeniy Serheev, a lawyer, said through an interpreter as he waited to cross into the northeastern Romanian town of Siret. But with his wife, three children and their bags crammed into one of hundreds of cars inching toward the border, he acknowledged that he looked the part.

The urgent humanitarian and moral case is compelling on its face; the economic argument can be harder to make. Most research, though, shows that over the long term working refugees can help economies grow, expanding a nation’s productive capacity, paying taxes and generating more business for grocery stores, hair salons, and clothing and electronics stores. That was what happened in Germany after 2015 when it took in more than 1 million refugees, most of them from Syria.

“Economically speaking, it was a net positive,” said Ángel Talavera, head of European economics at Oxford Economics.

But countries face significant initial costs.

The European Union last week pledged 500 million euros, or $550 million, in humanitarian support, but it will have to put up more. “European governments are going to blow the budget,” said Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics. This latest drain comes on top of an extraordinary amount of public spending over the last two years to battle the coronavirus pandemic.

The sudden need for more housing, fuel, food, health care services and more is going to further exacerbate supply shortages. “Inflation is going to go up, up, up,” Vistesen said.

In the eurozone, inflation is running at 5.8%, and Vistesen said he expects it to rise to 7% this year given soaring energy prices. Those are up by nearly one-third since last year. For the European Central Bank, he added, it will make the delicate task of balancing the risk of inflation with the risk of recession all the more difficult.

For those living and working in Europe, it will mean less spending power in the short run. If wages don’t rise, they will be poorer.

For now, Ukrainians, with strong kinship, cultural and religious ties in other European countries, have mostly been met with care packages and offers of free shelter, transportation and food.

At the border in Siret, Ukrainian families trudging up the road were met by volunteers offering cups of hot tea and 5 euro cellphone SIM cards. Organizations, businesses and individuals jockeyed for a spot closest to the checkpoint to be the first to give chicken soup, kebabs, blankets, toothbrushes, stuffed animals and hats.

The government in Bucharest, Romania, has so far allocated $49 million to cover the costs. The prime minister, Nicolae Ciuca, said he expects the European Union to reimburse a big chunk of that.

The EU has granted Ukrainians immediate permission to stay for up to three years, get a job and go to school — access that migrants from other parts of the globe could only dream of. And some countries, including Romania and Poland, have agreed to allow refugees to receive the same social and health services available to their own citizens.

Yet past experience with refugee crises shows that such good will often sours as an influx stretches government finances and social services like education and health care.

There has been an outpouring of sympathy and contributions, but the burden of actually hosting the refugees is lopsided in the extreme. Poland alone has had roughly 1.7 million Ukrainians stream in, and Warsaw’s population has swelled by 15%.

“We’re getting overwhelmed,” Rafal Trzaskowski, the city’s mayor, said. “We can’t improvise anymore.”

Clemence Landers, a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, said a handful of nations were taking on what should be an international responsibility and needed financial help to do so.

Global institutions like the World Bank are an important source of cheap loans, particularly for the poorest European countries, which are hosting the most Ukrainians, argued Landers, a co-author of an analysis of the refugee crisis’ costs.

International financial support can help tamp down the political and social backlash that often follows refugee crisis, she added.

If many of the Ukrainian refugees end up staying longer than they expect, there are reasons to believe that they can be integrated into the economy relatively quickly. Many have a network of friends and family. Their level of education is not that different from some of the host countries. (In Ukraine, the average number of years of school was 11.3 in 2017, according to the United Nations.) And they have a record of employment.

Peri said Ukrainian immigrants already in Europe were working in hotels and restaurants and as home assistants for seniors and disabled people, jobs that have been hard to fill in some places.

Despite the widening devastation inflicted by the Russians on Ukraine, few of the people interviewed at the border were ready to start contemplating a long future far from home.

Iryna Karpenko, who was crossing into Siret with her three children, two sisters-in-law and her father-in-law in a blue Toyota van, said they were headed to Bulgaria. They had budgeted about 1,500 euros per person for a one-month stay. In Ukraine, she said, “we have houses, husbands and jobs there.”

Asked what they planned to do once they crossed the border, Karpenko was about to respond when her sister-in-law Karina Bohatynska piped up from the back seat: “Go back home.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Several Local Projects Included in Omnibus Bill

Johanna Miller and Drew Penner

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March 17, 2022

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Several Local Projects Included in Omnibus Bill

Congressman Jimmy Panetta recently announced that eight projects across California’s 20th District totaling $5.9 million have been included in the $1.5 trillion omnibus bill signed by President Joe Biden Tuesday.

The funding includes $1 million for the Watsonville Lee Road Trail, a project headed up by the City of Watsonville that would create a 12-foot wide, 1.4-mile bicycle and pedestrian trail linking Lee and Harkins Slough roads. The trail would connect Pajaro Valley High School (PVHS) to downtown Watsonville, and various slough networks to the proposed Coastal Rail Trail.

The funds will help pay for the construction of the first phase of the project, which will extend from the main driveway at PVHS to Watsonville Slough Farm, which is owned by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. The Land Trust, which is developing its own new trail system surrounding the farm, has provided $700,000 in construction costs for the overall project.

“Once the entire trail is developed, it will provide a secondary access to PV High,” said Watsonville Principal Engineer Murray Fontes. “Currently the only way to get there is on Harkins Slough Road. Once the trail is made and the bridge across Struve Slough constructed, bikes and pedestrians will have an alternative access. For those who are willing to use it, it will be quieter and more pleasant, because it will only be limited to bikes and pedestrians. We hope people will take advantage of a different way to travel.”

Construction could take place during the 2023-24 fiscal year, Fontes said.

“These kinds of projects are often built in phases,” he explained, “because of the costs, and the need to identify funding sources that support these types of facilities.”

The $5.9 million package will also help fund other projects in Santa Cruz County, including the replacement of over 27,000 aging water meters in the City of Santa Cruz water service area with smart meters, which help customers track their water usage.

“The City’s water meter replacement program will help our water customers ultimately save money and water while also providing employable skills to willing residents,” Santa Cruz Mayor Sonja Brunner said in a press release. “We are grateful that Congressman Panetta could assist us in addressing two of the Santa Cruz City Council’s most significant goals, addressing climate change and growing our local workforce.”

Also included is $1 million for the new health and housing campus that is currently under construction at 1500 Capitola Road in Live Oak. The project, headed up by Santa Cruz Community Health, Dientes Community Dental Care and MidPen Housing, in partnership with Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, announced this week that the funds have helped them reach a major fundraising milestone.

“We are extremely grateful to Representative Panetta for his work to secure this critical infrastructure support,” said Dientes CEO Laura Marcus. “This is a significant step in addressing the urgent need for access to health care for our most vulnerable.”

In a press release, Panetta thanked local municipalities and stakeholders for their support, highlighting the myriad of ways in which the funds will help communities in Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties.

“I appreciate the bipartisan work in Congress to secure this federal funding,” Panetta stated. “The funding for the projects will help bolster our water resources, revitalize our infrastructure, create jobs, and strengthen our local economies and communities.”

A $1.4 million allocation to replace a Scotts Valley childcare facility that’s in such bad shape it’s a danger zone was also included in the omnibus bill.

Scotts Valley Vice Mayor Jim Reed remembers the time his own child was set to play George Washington in a work of student theater, and he got a first-hand look at the shape the Vine Hill Elementary School building was in.

“I almost kicked over a bucket of water that was catching rain,” he said, adding City of Scotts Valley and school authorities did what they could to keep it open as long as they could. “We put lipstick on a pig.”

The allocation is part of a $12.5 million package for 10 projects in California’s 18th Congressional District overseen by Rep. Anna G. Eshoo.

Since the school doesn’t have a gymnasium, money to replace the childcare building carries extra significance, Reed added.

“It’s like manna from heaven,” he said. “There are few public services that are more important to our community.”

When Children Suffer: California to Funnel Billions Into Mental Health Overhaul

GT Staff

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March 17, 2022

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When Children Suffer: California to Funnel Billions Into Mental Health Overhaul

By JOCELYN WIENER, CalMatters

Amanda Arellano felt a heavy weight pressing down on her chest. It was May of 2021, and the teenager struggled to breathe.

Maria Arellano rushed her 17-year-old daughter to the pulmonologist. Amanda has cerebral palsy, autism, epilepsy, asthma and a heart murmur. With COVID on the prowl, they couldn’t be too careful.

This wasn’t an asthma flare-up, the doctor told them. This was anxiety.

Sitting in a Jack in the Box near their home in Boyle Heights last month, Maria’s eyes filled with tears as she searched for the words to describe watching her normally gregarious daughter struggle.

“It makes you feel very powerless,” she said.

Many California parents know this feeling well. Two years into the pandemic, our children are in pain. Rates of anxiety and depression have shot up so quickly that several national leaders— including the U.S Surgeon General — have issued urgent public health advisories. School-based therapists report long waiting lists and an increase in fighting and behavior issues. Emergency room doctors say they are overwhelmed by the number of children coming in after trying to harm themselves.

On top of all this, the state is facing a shortage of mental health providers.

State officials know they have a serious problem and have vowed to address it. Along with county public health departments, school districts and other agencies that serve children, the state is grappling with a complicated challenge: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration plans to build a brand new system to solve these problems in the coming years. But pressure is mounting to help children like Amanda — now.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, a pediatrician who serves as the state’s secretary of Health and Human Services, told CalMatters he feels “concerned but hopeful” about the state’s ability to meet the growing need, though he’s also “very aware that even the most short, short-term interventions are not as immediate as I think we would like.”

Last year, Newsom’s administration allocated $4.4 billion in one-time funds to create a statewide Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. The proposed sweeping transformation of the children’s mental health system will be funded by a sum many describe as “unprecedented.” The bulk of the money has yet to be distributed, but efforts to develop a vision and work with stakeholders are underway.

Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction, recently told CalMatters he has visited 45 schools since July. Staff tell him that they don’t have the resources to help struggling students.

“We know that this is job number one, to help our students address the trauma that they have experienced and are experiencing during the coronavirus pandemic,” he said. “That’s got to be our priority.”

Children’s advocates are enthusiastic about the state’s commitment to the issue, but also worry that help won’t come soon enough.

A crisis was brewing before the pandemic; COVID set it to a boil.

Suicide rates among Black youth doubled between 2014 and 2020, according to state data.
Incidents of youth deliberately causing self-harm increased 50 percent in California between 2009 and 2018, the state auditor reported. Children’s hospital officials told CalMatters last fall that mental health emergency room visits spiked dramaticallyduring the pandemic.
Between 2019 and 2020, opioid-related overdoses among 15- to 19-year-olds in the state nearly tripled, according to a CalMatters analysis of state data.

Lishaun Francis, director of behavioral health for the advocacy group Children Now, appreciates the state’s long-term planning, but she wants action now.

“I think what people are looking for is an emergency response,” she said. “That has never been the state of California’s plan.”

On March 7, her organization joined a coalition of children’s advocates and health providers in sending a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, calling on him to formally declare the status of child and adolescent mental health in California a public health emergency. The challenges facing young people in the state, they said, are “dire and widespread.”

For a moment, in March 2020, Amanda felt excited. Her school planned to close briefly; two weeks at home sounded like an unexpected vacation.

But school didn’t reopen that spring, or all the next school year. And many supports Amanda depended on – social therapy, music therapy, physical therapy – moved online or fell away completely.

Terrified of the virus, Amanda refused for months to venture out of the small blue house in Boyle Heights where she and her mother rent a room from another family.

Always a strong student, Amanda grew increasingly frustrated during virtual learning. Sometimes a shaky internet connection booted her out of Zoom class. Other times, teachers were hard to understand.

“I don’t know what I can do to calm myself down,” Amanda told her mother.

Maria would see tears in the long-lashed brown eyes of the daughter she’d always known to be creative, happy and resilient. She’d pull out photos they’d taken on pre-pandemic outings.

“It won’t be this way forever,” she’d tell Amanda. “One day this will end.”

Amanda tried meditation and exercise. She lost herself in video games, playing Roblox until her hands hurt.

As the months wore on, Maria saw the toll on her daughter’s self-esteem.

On Dec. 18, 2020, Amanda sent an email to a teacher, apologizing for missing certain assignments: “I am very embarrassed,” she began.

For months, she explained, “I have felt constant headaches and I have felt very dizzy; I have been extremely fatigued. Never, since I started school, have I left assignments without finishing them. I have always been a good student. But in this moment with the pandemic, my life has been impacted in many ways, especially with Distance Learning.”

Her teacher reassured her: “You are an amazing student that inspires everyone you meet.”

But the anxiety continued. In February 2021, Maria wrote to the school psychologist, asking for help.

‘It’s getting worse’

Young people’s suffering has been widespread, as revealed in a January report on the state of student wellness. Based on surveys of 1,200 California middle and high school students between April 2020 and March 2021, 63% of the students reported having had an emotional meltdown; 43% said they had a panic or anxiety attack; and 19% described suicidal thoughts, according to the report published by American Civil Liberties Union California Action, California State University, Long Beach and the California Association of School Counselors.

“We know from the numbers it’s getting worse,” said Amir Whitaker, senior policy counsel for ACLU Southern California, who is the report’s lead author. “We’re not done yet.”

Whitaker leads the Youth Liberty Squad, a group of high school students around the state who are advocating for better school-based mental health care. Many have experienced their own anxieties and traumas these past two years. As life edges closer to normal, they find details of their lives changed in unsettling ways.

Lizbeth Zambrano-Sanchez, a Los Angeles senior, notices the painful silence in math class after her teacher asks a question that once might have prompted conversation.

Sonia Banker, a San Francisco 12th grader, describes a new awkwardness in social interactions: “There’s this feeling that when you talk with someone, it feels harder.”

Joel Salas, a Los Angeles senior, spent a month isolated in his bedroom after the rest of his family contracted COVID-19. His mother fell extremely ill, and he ended up caring for her while studying and working five or six hours a day at his parents’ taco stand.

One of the biggest challenges for him now is the unrelenting uncertainty.

“You don’t know what’s happening next,” he said. “You don’t want to get your hopes up, because another wave might come.”

Another challenge is what’s left unsaid. Many of his classmates lost family members, he said. People rarely talk about it.

Amanda, who is also a leader within the Youth Liberty Squad, felt terrified when school resumed in person last August. What would happen if she was exposed to the virus? To protect herself physically, she distanced herself from her classmates.

Amanda’s mother, Maria, understands these fears. She also knows a teenage girl needs friends.

Workforce shortage means long waits for care

The trauma of the pandemic — the grief, fear, loneliness and boredom — has layered upon concerns about food and housing insecurity, gun violence, climate change, political polarization, racism, transphobia, deportation and, now, the war in Ukraine.

One in 330 California children has lost a parent or caregiver to the pandemic, according to a report released in December by COVID Collaborative.

Counselors who work in schools say more students are acting out. Some children struggle to get out of bed at all.

Josh Leonard, executive director of the East Bay Agency for Children, which provides mental health services for children, calls this “a natural predictable response to the stress and anxiety at the moment.”

“Kids are struggling profoundly,” he said.

But big systems are not nimble enough to address the building emergency, he said. As waiting lists grow, workers at overwhelmed schools and mental health agencies like his are not always proactively reaching out to children and families, he said. Why bring children into the system when no one is available to serve them?

Alyssa Hurtado, a social worker with Leonard’s agency who works at a Newark elementary school, did her best to stay connected with families during the school closure. After more than a year of remote learning, many of her young clients now struggle with separation anxiety. Others have difficulties with motivation and concentration.

“Kind of like, ‘What’s the point?’” she said.

Hurtado herself is stretched thin. Five children are on a waitlist to get services at her school. In the meantime, she’s also been helping to cover a vacancy at another school.

Across the agency, Leonard says 10 therapy positions remain unfilled out of a total of 50. Each of those positions would allow the organization to see 18 to 20 additional children. He and other nonprofit leaders say it’s difficult to compete with counties, school districts and big fish like Kaiser. Telehealth companies that sprang up during the pandemic have lured some clinicians away. Others are opting for the flexibility of working for themselves, avoiding onerous paperwork requirements by seeing patients who can pay out of pocket. Still others are moving to places with lower costs of living.

Those who remain often carry the extra load and face burnout.

“Every applicant has 20 different job opportunities right now,” said Stacey Katz, CEO of WestCoast Children’s Clinic in Alameda County, who is also trying to fill 15 to 20 openings.

“No one likes you to say you have a ‘waiting list,’” she said, describing pressure she and others say they receive from counties to avoid using that term. “I don’t know what you call it when there are 176 people waiting for services.”

The clinic’s public policy director, Jodie Langs, chimed in: “If we’re calling this a crisis in mental health, let’s respond to it like a crisis.”

Hope on the horizon?

Advocates recognize the tension of this moment. They commend the Newsom administration’s leadership and its willingness to invest the state’s budget surplus in solutions. But they also say the state is playing catch-up, having failed for years to address the spiraling need.

For many of these advocates — and for the families and children they serve — the state’s promises are only as good as the change they see on the ground.

Alex Briscoe, head of California Children’s Trust, an initiative to reform the state’s children’s mental health system, calls current state leaders “extraordinary” and their investment ‘“unprecedented.” But he also notes that California has “among the worst track records in the nation” when it comes to children’s mental health.

A 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund put the state at 48th out of 50 in terms of the percentage of children ages 3 to 17 who received needed mental health care. A 2020 progress report published by Children Now right before the first shutdown gave the state a D grade for children’s behavioral health, noting that mental illness was the leading reason kids here were being hospitalized. The 2022 report gave the state a D-plus.

“I don’t want to suggest nothing’s happening, but it’s unclear yet what it will signify,” Briscoe said.

Ghaly and others in the administration say they are working hard to develop a strategy. They aim to create an integrated system that focuses on prevention and equity and brings together public, commercial and private systems that often are siloed and highly fragmented – “something with a lot of entry points, a lot of front doors,” he said.

“The truth is we don’t really have a cohesive children’s behavioral health system,” Ghaly said. “I see a lot of opportunity to stitch something together.”

The administration is still mainly in the first phase of a three-phase plan it expects to roll out over five years. State leaders are gathering stakeholders, setting goals and figuring out big-picture issues. In the coming years, they plan to translate that into major initiatives — including a virtual mental health platform that would be available to all young people. They also envision a public awareness campaign to address stigma, a school-based treatment model that will be available regardless of insurance status and the training of a bigger, more diverse workforce.

Ghaly is aware of the urgency and says some initiatives are already underway. The state has rolled out CalHOPE, an online platform that offers mental health support. It has formed a partnership with the Child Mind Institute to provide educational materials about mental health. It has allocated new funding to support partnerships between schools and counties. As part of a statewide effort to transform Medi-Cal, the health insurance program for low-income Californians, state officials recently announced that children and youth do not need a diagnosis in order to access specialty mental health services.

“Is it enough? Does it touch as many kids as we would like? No. But it is certainly trying to move the needle quickly,” Ghaly said.

Thurmond, the state schools superintendent, is supporting a legislative proposal to use loan forgiveness and deferrals to attract 10,000 new clinicians into schools and community-based organizations in the next few years.

Thurmond said his commitment derives from losing his own mother when he was 6 years old.

“I’m a believer that when there’s trauma, you must acknowledge it,” he said. “You must have an available workforce to address it.”

As these big initiatives roll out, though, what can be done now?

Some believe the answer lies, in part, with kids themselves. Students can be trained to act as peer counselors, and to be on alert for signs of suicide, many experts say. That can serve a double benefit – providing real-time support now, and helping build a pipeline of mental health providers from diverse communities.

“Students are not being tapped into enough,” said Whitaker of the ACLU.

That is beginning to change. In the past few years, Cal-HOSA, an organization focused on training students for careers in health, has piloted student mental health programs in 25 schools around the state. Students receive training to provide peer counseling support. The experience also allows them to consider careers in mental health.

‘My life is so bright’

In the pandemic’s early months, Maria Arellano found herself in a situation familiar to many parents: She was Amanda’s principal, teacher, nurse, tutor, playmate and advocate.

Maria knew how important it was for her daughter to use her own voice.

She suggested Amanda join some youth advocacy organizations, and also start making music videos, to “take out everything she was carrying within.”

In August 2020, Amanda posted one of these videos, “My Pandemic Song,” to her YouTube channel. Images of distraught medical workers and patients on ventilators scroll across the screen while she sings.

“You gotta calm yourself now, everything’s going to be alright (how?)

“The pandemic is on. Everyone’s anxious now.”

A year and a half later, much has changed in Amanda’s life. She is vaccinated. The final months of senior year are upon her: Prom. Senior trip. Graduation.

As mask mandates fall away, Amanda feels frightened. But, with the help of her mother, her therapist, and the strength she is discovering through her own advocacy, she is working to find peace within the new reality.

This past December, Amanda put up another video on her YouTube channel, with a new original song:

“I feel alive with all my might,”

“My life is so bright. My life is so bright.”

Behavioral health coverage is supported by a grant from the California Health Care Foundation.

Driscoll’s Matching Contributions for Health Care District

Todd Guild

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March 17, 2022

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Driscoll’s Matching Contributions for Health Care District

Efforts by a local nonprofit to purchase and run Watsonville Community Hospital have gained momentum, with several jurisdictions and organizations pledging money.

Now, Driscoll’s berry company has stepped forward, offering $1.75 million to match all donations through May 1 to the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District Project (PVHDP).

Driscoll’s Chair and CEO Miles Reiter says he recognizes the role that PVHDP could play in bringing health care services to the community.

“After an already tumultuous past two years, the last thing we want to see is disruption to our community’s public health services when people need access to quality care most,” Reiter stated in a press release. “We hope the community will join PVHDP’s fundraising challenge.”

A federal judge on Feb. 23 approved the sale, for which PVHDP will need from $50-60 million.

But money has been rolling in, showing the level of support for the purchase that exists in the community.

The state is expected to contribute up to $20 million, and an additional $25 million has been committed through local governments, nonprofits and local health care partners.

The County of Santa Cruz has offered $5 million, the County of Monterey $3 million and the Pajaro Valley Community Health Trust has kicked in $6 million.

Other donations include:

Central California Alliance for Health: $3 million
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan: $3 million
Stanford Children’s Hospital: $1.084 million
Dominican Hospital/Common Spirit: $300,000
The City of Watsonville: $130,000

Anyone wanting to make a donation can contact the Community Foundation at 831-662-2000 or visit cfscc.org/PajaroValleyHealth. Donations can also be made through PVHDP’s website at PVHDP.org. All donations are tax-deductible.

Sheriff’s Office Outlines Military Equipment Policy

Todd Guild

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March 17, 2022

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Sheriff’s Office Outlines Military Equipment Policy

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office has at its disposal several pieces of military-grade equipment to use during the myriad emergency incidents that occur throughout the year.

This ranges from armored vehicles to pepper-ball launchers to drones.

And now, all of that equipment is subject to Assembly Bill 481, which became law on Jan. 1. Under the law, law enforcement agencies must get approval from their governing bodies before acquiring military equipment.

In addition, police departments must create a military equipment use policy—subject to approval by the governing body—and publish the policy on its website. To see the policy, click here and scroll to page 512.

The County Board of Supervisors will hear a first reading of the new policy later this month, and consider it for final approval on April 12. If approved, it is expected to go into effect on May 1.

The new policy also allows for a complaint process and requires that all use-of-force incidents be reviewed by a sergeant.

In addition, the SCSO will report annually to the supervisors about the use of equipment, complaints, violations of the policy and the cost of their use.

The law does not preclude counties and cities from adding their own rules.

AB 481, authored by Assemblyman David Chiu, governs law enforcement agencies that take part in the federal Law Enforcement Support Program—formerly known as the 1033 Program—which allows the Department of Defense to transfer excess property such as decommissioned military weapons to local jurisdictions.

Chiu said the law was intended to curb the militarization of police agencies.

“Our streets in California are not war zones, and our citizens are not enemy combatants,” Chiu said in a statement. “Law enforcement in California are our partners in public safety, and the weapons and equipment they carry should reflect that reality.”

During the public meeting on Monday, Sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Robbins stressed that the department has not gotten any equipment from the 1033 program.

“We will not take part in this program,” he said. “Sheriff Hart has made a pledge not to take part in this.”

Instead, the Sheriff’s Department gets its military-grade supplies from law enforcement vendors and other sources, Robbins said.

Robbins says the department agrees with the new rules.

“It provides us another opportunity as a sheriff’s office to look at this and really break down the effectiveness of the tools we’re using, and if something is not working then maybe we need to look at some new ones,” he said.

Robbins stressed that using the equipment provides a vital tool for law enforcement officers.

“It increases the safety of the community, our law enforcement personnel and the persons involved in the calls,” he said. “We’re constantly encountering things that are dynamic, unusual, that we haven’t dealt with before.”

Sheriff’s Office Military-Grade Equipment

Robots

One used by the county’s SWAT team in situations when someone is barricaded and they need to get a layout. The device is also equipped with a microphone and a speaker to communicate with suspects during crisis negotiations.
Two robots are used by the county’s bomb team.

Drones

The Sheriff’s Office has 26 of them. They are used for search and rescue, crime scene documentation, investigating suspicious or explosive devices and during natural disasters.

Armored vehicles

A Bearcat, owned by Santa Cruz Police Department, is a “regional asset,” Robbins said, that other agencies can use during high-risk operations. Using this requires approval of the Sheriff’s executive staff, especially for pre-planned operations, Robbins said.
An armored van for operations involving violent suspects and officer rescue

Command and Control Vehicles

Two drone patrol vehicles
Two patrol SUVs, which have a command center in trunk
A mobile substation van for crisis negotiations and disaster response
Two incident command vehicles used for search and rescue
A bomb squad truck

Weapons

Three AR10 precision rifles, used for covering personnel from a distance. These are only used by SWAT team members and require twice-monthly training. Use must be approved by an executive staff member. These rifles come with three different rounds: training, standard and for use in shooting through glass
A chemical agent launching cup for SWAT missions, must be approved by executive staff
40mm launcher used for chemical agent projectiles or with foam-tipped rounds to “port windows”

Diversionary devices

Sting Balls: Rubber balls, typically used in jail and only used with team commander approval
Chemical agents such as CS gas and projectiles
White smoke
Less-lethal rounds such as bean bags
Bola wrap, fired from a gun, this device sends a cord that encircles suspects’ ankles and immobilizes them.
Pepperball launchers, which work like paintball guns.

Robbins says these devices are used in hostage rescue and when suspects are barricaded. The county does not use these during protests.

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