California supervisor hopefuls detail plans at candidate forums 

Whoever wins the position will help shape the future of nearly 6 million students in California.

Tuesday’s forum featured San Diego Unified School District Board Member Richard Barrera, former State Sen. Josh Newman and Chino Valley Unified Board President Sonja Shaw.

Wednesday’s forum included State Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Nichelle Henderson, a trustee for the Los Angeles Community College District.

The forums took place in a wide-open race with no clear front-runner.

None of the candidates reached even 10% of support from likely voters in a survey released last week by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The achievement gap

One of the biggest challenges facing the next superintendent will be persistent achievement gaps across racial and ethnic groups, as well as between low-income and affluent students in California schools.

Newman suggested three approaches: reforming curriculum to “make sure that standards are set and maintained in every district,” ensuring that teachers are paid enough to live in the communities where they teach and addressing chronic absenteeism by “bringing kids back into school and making them engaged.”

Muratsuchi touted his role in passing the Local Control Funding Formula, California’s education funding formula designed to give more resources to districts with the highest percentages of low-income students.

He said the funding formula has helped, but acknowledged more needs to be done, especially before students reach kindergarten.

“We need to make sure that we provide more quality child care, quality preschool experiences for all kids, regardless of income, in order to close the achievement gap,” he said.

Barrera pointed to San Diego Unified as a model for improving outcomes at the high school level. He said that when he joined the district’s board, only 45% of all students overall, and 25% of Black and Latino students, were graduating having completed the A-G requirements, the college preparatory courses needed for admission to a California State University or University of California campus.

“We raised the standards for our graduation rates,” he said. “We said we want A-G to be the sequence that all students take and all students have access to. And we got those numbers up to 70% for the entire student body, and also 70% for Latino and Black students.”

Artificial intelligence

Several candidates agreed that artificial intelligence in the classroom presents risks and challenges and called for stricter guardrails.

Shaw said she is concerned that artificial intelligence is eroding students’ critical thinking skills and called for more research, including creating a “group to study” AI.

Henderson said students should be taught “how to utilize AI to enhance their learning” and prepare for future careers, predicting that many jobs they will hold have yet to be created “because of the innovations and the rapid change of AI.”

Rendon pointed to New York as a model, where he said teachers are “front and center” in the discussions around how to use artificial