California schools full of students struggling to recover from pandemic-related learning loss will receive billions of dollars in state grants over several years, thanks to a settlement announced Thursday by public-interest law firm Public Counsel and San Francisco law firm Morrison Foerster.
The settlement marks the conclusion of Cayla J. vs. The State of California, a 2020 lawsuit filed on behalf of 15 low-income students of color who attended schools in Los Angeles and Oakland at the time.
In their original complaint, attorneys representing those students accused the state of mishandling remote learning, causing pre-existing gaps in achievement to widen, and violating children’s right to an equal opportunity for education under the California constitution.
“The objective here is not just to recoup the losses,” lead attorney for Public Counsel Mark Rosenbaum told KCRW. “It's to end these unconscionable, unnecessary, unacceptable opportunity gaps that have existed for generations, so that no other student – pandemic or not – ever has to suffer a loss of educational opportunity.”
In agreeing to the settlement, the state did not admit wrongdoing.
“We look forward to engaging with the Legislature and stakeholders over the coming weeks and months to advance this proposal and focus learning recovery dollars on serving the students with the greatest needs,” state Board of Education spokesman Alex Traverso told KCRW in a statement.
As part of the settlement agreement, the state has agreed to propose legislation directing $2 billion in grant funding to the students most impacted by pandemic learning loss.
The funding was already approved to help California schools with pandemic recovery as part of the 2023-2024 state budget. But with the settlement come new accountability standards. Schools must prove they are using it on evidence-based learning recovery strategies. They must track their progress and make the data available to the public, and parents and watchdogs unhappy with that progress can file a formal complaint.
Pending approval by the Legislature, the funds will be allocated to students with the lowest academic performance and the highest rates of absenteeism – both outcomes education experts ascribe to the pandemic. Districts and schools with more students in those categories will qualify for more of the funds.
Rosenbaum says evidence-based learning loss interventions could range from one-on-one tutoring to extended school days and mental health supports. Schools have four years to spend the money.
About half of the student plaintiffs in the lawsuit attended the LAUSD when schools shut down. The others attended campuses in the Oakland Unified School District.
Attorneys for those students argued that when the state shifted to remote learning, it failed to ensure low-income students had the laptops or devices and internet connections necessary to access school. Many didn’t.
One plaintiff, Megan O., was a kindergartner in an LAUSD magnet school in 2020. According to the complaint, when her school shut down, she was provided with a laptop that didn’t work. Another plaintiff, Tamara I., was a 15-year-old student in an LAUSD special education program. She wasn’t given an internet hotspot.
While state education officials did distribute “more than 45,000 laptops and more than 73,000 computing devices” to California students during the remote learning period, “between 800,000 and 1 million students remained without access, or without sufficient access, to online classes,” according to court documents filed by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman, who oversaw the case.
“What we saw in those initial weeks and months following the closure of schools, in some ways hearkens back to a day of separate and unequal educational opportunities that we had in this country,” said Tyrone Howard, a UCLA education professor who provided an expert report in the case.
Attorneys also claimed that the state did not ensure teachers – who were “not immune to the digital divide” – had the equipment, training and support they needed to administer remote learning.
The responsibility for education was then thrust on parents and other caretakers, who attorneys complained were also not trained or supported by the state. Several student plaintiffs turned to community organizations to access learning devices and academic support.
Further, the attorneys argued the state failed to ensure that students received enough instructional time to meet the state’s own mandates.
Several plaintiffs, including Alex R., received an education that did not meet state minimums for instructional time, said the lawyers. Alex R., then in fourth grade in LAUSD, “only had 30 to 40 minutes of lessons a couple of times each week” because “her teachers’ internet did not work reliably.”
Ana Gonzalez was a freshman at Augustus Hawkins High School in South LA when schools shut down. She says that once her school closed in March of 2020, she wasn’t offered any education – online or otherwise – for the remainder of that school year.
“I wasn't told by any teacher that we had to be on Zoom,” said Gonzalez, who is not a plaintiff in the case. “I haven't met a single person that went to an online Zoom class that was during my freshman year.”
LA Unified officials did not comment on the individual school’s educational offerings. The district spent at least $100 million on laptops and offered all students internet connection. In a statement to KCRW, a district spokesperson said its transition to remote learning was “seamless.”
Gonzalez says her grades fell from As and Bs to Cs and Ds by the end of her freshman year, and she struggled to stay engaged in school.
Several education experts filed reports on behalf of the student plaintiffs showing opportunity and achievement gaps between white students and Black and Hispanic students, and between wealthy and poor students, widened over the course of the pandemic.
One report shows that learning loss was greater in districts serving more students of color and low-income students. Another report showed Black and Latino students saw disproportionate drops in school enrollment following the pandemic.
Attorneys in the case argued the state’s response widened the gaps between low-income students of color and their more privileged counterparts, “a gap that they will struggle to overcome for the rest of their lives.”
Student plaintiffs in the lawsuit will not receive a payout, though the state has agreed to cover $2.5 million in legal fees, according to the settlement.
“When kids go through two years of, often, no education whatsoever – or far from the sorts of education that they would have otherwise received – there's no fully making up for that,” said Rosenbaum.
But, he added, a majority of the students in the suit still attend public schools, and those schools will now get programs that will help them directly.
“Does that get them all the way back to where they should have been?” Rosenbaum added. “No.”