Seven years ago, Jerry Hobbs, a Grossmont Union High School District teacher, resigned after officials launched an investigation into allegations he’d engaged in misconduct.  

Years later, Hobbs was hired as a paralegal for a law firm that ended up doing work for the district. That work included conducting an investigation into Hobbs’ former boss, the person who launched an investigation into him. Hobbs worked on that investigation, which concluded he’d been a victim of retaliation. 

A settlement agreement he helped draft then cleared the way for his rehiring at Grossmont – and district officials wasted no time. They hired him the month after the agreement to serve in a lofty administrative role, even as the district’s deteriorating financial position led to job cuts. 

Now, in a leaked memo, the law firm at which he worked suggests he deceptively altered that settlement without their knowledge, adding potentially “illegal,” language. 

As Grossmont’s community continues to be roiled by controversial layoffs, the saga has added fuel to the fire. 

An Investigation Leads to a Settlement 

In 2018, Grossmont Union High School District began investigating Hobbs, then a teacher at the district’s REACH Academy, a special education school in El Cajon. He later resigned. 

Exactly what district officials were investigating is unclear. But he insists the allegations against him were unfounded and he said an investigation by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing into the 2018 situation did not find any grounds to discipline him. The commission’s website shows he has not been disciplined. 

After his resignation, Hobbs went on to work as a paralegal at JW Howard Attorneys, a local law firm whose connection with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made headlines.  

In July 2024, Grossmont’s board hired JW Howard Attorneys to conduct an internal investigation into allegations that Rose Tagnesi, the district’s former director of special education – and Hobbs’ former supervisor – engaged in retaliation against Grossmont employees.  

District officials had previously launched an investigation against Tagnesi and demoted her in February 2024.  

Tagnesi, who resigned following her demotion, has denied any wrongdoing and has since sued the district, alleging she faced discrimination and harassment because she is lesbian.  

Hobbs, who had worked at JW Howard for nearly two years and once worked below Tagnesi at Grossmont, took part in the firm’s investigation. 

“His background in legal research and, especially, in education and education policy and culture, suggested that he could be particularly helpful in the conduct of the investigation,” a memo addressed to Trustee Jim Kelly and dated April 27 reads.  

Kelly did not respond to requests for comment. John Howard, the founder of JW Howard, confirmed he had authored the memo but said he could not comment on the document. 

Hobbs said participating in the investigation of his former boss was not a conflict of interest. His role was simple and limited, he insisted. 

“I was the researcher. I was the person sorting evidence and putting it in front of an attorney,” Hobbs said. “I wasn’t really involved in the case per se.” 

JW Howard’s investigation ultimately identified 24 “victims,” of Tagnesi’s retaliation. Included among them was Hobbs. According to the memo, this led employees at JW Howard to believe Hobbs should be given another chance to work for Grossmont. “As a result of our findings, we were prepared to recommend that, in light of later developments, his record at GUHSD be updated and that he be made eligible for rehire,” the memo reads.  

Based on the advice of attorney William Diedrich, a lawyer experienced with educational issues, entering into a settlement with the district was the easiest way to make Hobbs rehirable. 

JW Howard then assigned Hobbs “the task of preparing the first draft of a settlement agreement,” with Grossmont, according to the leaked memo. 

Over a week in December, Hobbs, Diedrich and Howard sent back and forth drafts of the settlement. By Dec. 16, Diedrich sent an edited copy to Howard, who forwarded it to Hobbs to finalize. 

The copy of the settlement reviewed by Diedrich contained no mention that should Hobbs be rehired by Grossmont he would receive tenure. But the version sent by Hobbs to Howard later that day and labeled “Final,” did. 

“The district agrees that, should Hobbs be reemployed, he will be granted tenure on the first day of employment,” that copy of the settlement reads. 

The memo contends that Howard did not include this language in the settlement and that it’s illegal. 

“This is the first time the illegal language referring to ‘tenure’ appears in any version of the proposed settlement,” the memo from JW Howard notes, referring to the final draft of the settlement. 

This actually wasn’t Hobbs’ first stab at including language in the settlement stipulating he’d receive tenure. In the first draft of the settlement sent to Howard, Hobbs wrote that should Grossmont rehire him, he would “automatically be restored to a position with at least similar standing and pay as was effective in February 2018 including his full benefits.” 

Additionally, he added that his level of seniority and tenure rights revert back to what they were prior to his resignation. When Howard received the draft, he asked Hobbs to send it to Diedrich. But the version Hobbs sent Diedrich did not include this language. The only other time Hobbs included mention of tenure rights came in the final draft sent to Howard. 

The memo claims Hobbs didn’t just add language into the settlement. It claims Hobbs deleted elements of Diedrich’s edits, “something that would have never been approved.” It also claims that Hobbs turned off a Microsoft Word feature called “track changes,” so as to better hide that he was making surreptitious changes. 

Diedrich did not return a request for comment. Collin McGlashen, Grossmont’s communications director, declined to comment. 

The final version of the settlement opened the door for Hobbs’ rehiring at Grossmont in “any position or assignment for which he is qualified.” It also sealed the investigation into Hobbs conducted in spring 2018 and added stipulations to the circumstances of his resignation.  

“The district acknowledges that Hobbs denies that he committed ‘immoral acts’ (defined as any acts that would make him ‘unfit to teach’) or any other acts or omissions constituting misconduct,” the settlement reads. 

Hobbs has a very different view from Howard of the whole situation. He said he was simply adding things to the document he felt were fair. The 2018 investigation into him was unfounded, he insists, and it only seemed logical that he be returned to the tenure position he’d had then. He didn’t know whether that violated California’s education code but figuring that out should have been Howard’s role as an attorney, he said.  

He also says there was no attempt to sneak the language into the settlement. He’d sent it to Howard and he assumed he’d read it. 

“I think John Howard is just trying to cover his own hiney,” Hobbs said. “He’s trying to pass his attorney responsibility to a paralegal. He’s a senior attorney. He just didn’t do his job.” 

Howard said that’s just not true. 

“When a lawyer assigns something to a paralegal to prepare in final and the paralegal says something is in final, generally the lawyer doesn’t go back through to make sure the paralegal didn’t slip something in that wasn’t authorized. And that’s what happened here,” Howard said. “I trusted him.” 

But to Bob Ottilie, a local lawyer with decades of experience in ethics litigation, whether Hobbs inserted the language wasn’t the chief concern. It was the actual arrangement, Ottilie said, wherein a former employee of a district seemed to be working on behalf of himself to craft a settlement for a law firm contracted by the district, that was “unheard of.” 

“If this is an accurate depiction of how this settlement agreement came to be, it’s really unprecedented in my 45 years of law,” Ottilie said. “It should not have happened.” 

Howard disagreed. 

“My office prepared the settlement agreement because it was going to be vetted and sent to the district’s lawyer, so it was in accordance with what the district wanted,” Howard said. “The fact is that having him work on a contract that the board was going to have an independent review of by the district’s lawyer made it not a conflict.” 

Hobbs’ New, New Gig 

Throughout the crafting of this settlement, Grossmont was still a contracted client of JW Howard. 

It wasn’t until February 2025 that the district terminated the services of JW Howard. 

“This work has been completed, and his services are no longer required,” the agenda item reads. 

The decision to terminate the contract proved to be controversial. Three of the district’s trustees approved the motion to terminate services, with Kelly and Scott Eckert dissenting and pushing back during public comment.  

Between July 1, 2023 to Dec. 31, 2024, Grossmont paid JW Howard $695,701 for legal services – specifically employee investigations. That sum is more than the district spent with any other law firm during that same period. 

After the settlement’s approval, it didn’t take long for Hobbs to find himself working for the district once again.  

At a special board meeting on Jan. 16, trustees approved the job description for a newly created position called the director of student and family engagement, learning and innovation. Later in that same meeting, the board voted to appoint Hobbs to that newly created position. Both moves were approved by all board members save for Fite.  

“I voted against his appointment because it was alarming to me that this thing came out of the blue. There was no discussion, no community input,” Fite said. 

The speed with which he was hired by the district was by design, said Hobbs. 

“I don’t think there’s any question, at least in my mind, that part of the reason to exonerate me and bring the documents in December was to make me eligible for rehiring for this position,” Hobbs said. 

Hobbs said that when he took the job, he understood it to be temporary. The district has been going through a period of significant turmoil. In March, Superintendent Mike Fowler stepped down from his position as he fights a brain tumor. Hobbs said he was told they needed someone to help steady the ship before a new superintendent came in.  

Just one month after his appointment, at the district’s Feb. 13 meeting, Hobbs was sporting an entirely new title: chief of staff. The next month, at Grossmont’s March 11 meeting, the board officially approved Hobbs’ title change.  

Hobbs said his new gig was simply a title change. Board members had thrown a grab bag of responsibilities into his first role, but when Interim Superintendent Sandra Huezo read the job description, she felt what the board members were really looking for was a chief of staff, he said. He also argues that he’s qualified for the position, having served as a teacher, the head of a company and even a trustee at the Temecula Valley Unified School District. 

‘Rushed and Totally Untransparent’ 

Hobbs’ hiring has already ruffled many feathers in the district. In February the board approved a plan to issue layoff notices to dozens of employees. The move came as district leaders say they’re struggling to close a multi-million-dollar budget deficit.  

That rationale didn’t sit well with many in the community, who have pushed back hard against the decision. For months they’ve packed board meetings, turning them into raucous affairs. Some have even gone so far as to launch a recall effort against the board’s conservative bloc. 

Fite, the sole liberal on the district’s board, shares many of the concerns raised by the community. He was also the only trustee to vote against Hobbs’ appointment. 

“I think there’s a lack of transparency in several actions that we’ve undertaken since the beginning of this year,” Fite said. “I’m concerned that there may be a conflict of interest. It seems at the very least that this process was rushed and totally untransparent.” 

James Messina is the president of the Grossmont Educators Association, the union that represents credentialed staff in the district. He’s been a fixture at recent board meetings pushing back against the district’s layoffs. He said the creation of the chief of staff position, and Hobbs hiring, was entirely inappropriate given the layoff notices the district issued. 

“I do not believe this is a time to be spending more money on the top levels of administration. Money should be spent in classrooms instead,” Messina said. 

The post Grossmont Investigated Him, He Resigned and Now He’s Chief of Staff appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Kassandra Young had never played flag football before a couple months ago. But on a crisp April morning, she was one of dozens of middle schoolers playing flag football at Hoover High School’s turf field.  

And she was killing it. 

During the Language Academy Lions’ first game against Clark Middle School, Young scored a touchdown and pulled down an interception, helping propel her team to a 22-2 victory. The Lions capped off the day with a second victory, winning 47-12 over the John Muir Language Academy. With that win, they secured the two victories they’d needed to advance to the playoffs as a ninth seed in the Western division.  

Kassandra’s parents, Chris Young and Claudia Spain, sat in the stands watching their daughter intently. Spain said Kassandra has always loved sports. She played in San Diego Unified’s middle school soccer league in previous years. 

 “But she says she likes football the best,” Spain said with a smile. 

If flag football hadn’t been offered at Kassandra’s middle school, her parents aren’t sure she would have had the opportunity to play in an organized league. But now, she plans to continue to play in high school. 

Five years ago, San Diego Unified’s middle school sports program didn’t exist. Since its creation, the program has received almost universal praise from teachers, parents and students.  

They credit the program with expanding athletic opportunities, improving student morale and parent involvement and even producing academic benefits. The program has also grown rapidly – more than 5,700 students compete yearly across seven different sports. The response has been so significant that even as district officials grapple with budget deficits and funding cuts, they aim to go in the opposite direction with middle school sports – expansion. 

‘Where Has This Been?’ 

The years after the outbreak of Covid gave rise to a slew of crises – learning loss was rampant, chronic absenteeism had skyrocketed, social-emotional issues were pervasive. But they also presented some unique opportunities, San Diego Unified Trustee Richard Barrera said. After all, federal and state officials pumped millions of dollars into schools.  

That was a boon for lots of projects, including middle school sports. 

Barrera said San Diego Unified officials had long made special attempts to prioritize the needs of middle schoolers. Students at that age often find themselves at an uncomfortable educational and developmental pivot point and often without the benefit of the extracurricular opportunities offered in high school.  

“The mental health needs of students, the physical health needs of students, the availability of funding and also just the awareness of a need to prioritize middle schoolers in our district, I think all of that came together and created the idea for middle school sports,” Barrera said. 

That’s where Lonnie Jones came in. He’s been a mainstay in San Diego Unified athletic programs for more than two decades. He’s coached everything from basketball to field hockey, but now he was taking on a new role: middle school athletics coordinator. 

When it comes to athletics, Jones said California is behind the curve of some other states. Some middle schools have after-school leagues, but they’re often for sports like kickball, which are not high school sports. San Diego Unified’s goal was to create “vertical alignment,” with high schools, Jones said.  

Exactly how this would work, or how many students would sign up, was unclear, Jones said. So, they decided to launch one sport as a test in the spring of 2022. 

“We were like, ‘Hey, let’s roll out with the biggest sport in the world. Let’s roll out with soccer,’” Jones said. “Once people saw this, they said, ‘Oh my gosh, where has this been? We’ve always needed it. This is awesome. We want more.’” he said. 

So, district officials answered. The next year, they added basketball, volleyball, flag-football and track. The year after that, they continued to expand, adding cheer and wrestling.  

There have been challenges, like finding coaches. Many of the district’s high school coaches coach the middle school teams, with their assistants fanning out across each middle school that feeds into their high school. But there aren’t enough high school coaches, so the district has turned to middle school teachers, parents and even a contracting company to fill the gaps.  

Leaders modeled the program largely after what was already happening at high schools. All the sports they’ve launched are available at the high school level. 

As the options grew, so did the number of students. During that first year, 884 students signed up to play soccer. This year, 5,764 students signed up to play. 

The Impact 

For Jen Davis, the middle school sports program has been nothing short of revelatory. Not only do both her daughters attend the Language Academy, but she also teaches English at the school. The Language Academy’s structure – which includes separate Spanish and French language tracks – can sometimes encourage a degree of disconnection among students. She said the program has had a noticeable impact on students.  

“All of the sudden, kids have new friendships, and friendship circles are expanding and in the quad they’re high fiving kids who they never would have spoken to,” Davis said. “They feel a sense of belonging. They’re all lions now,” she said. 

Davis’ daughters Amelia and Clara said they’ve also felt that change.  

“The sports are a way for all the middle school grades to be together and talk to each other and make friends instead of being separated,” Amelia said.  

Spain, Kassandra’s mother, said she’s noticed personal changes in her daughter as well. She’s become more confident and even made more friends. 

“My daughter is more on the shy side, so I think this helps her to kind of embrace who they are and the skills they have. It’s just opened up the person she really is,” Spain said.  

Cody Petterson, San Diego Unified’s board president, views middle school sports as an equity program. Private or club sports leagues can be costly and require parents to shuttle kids back and forth. For many families, that may not be a possibility. 

“Some of the kids that would most benefit from sporting activities … are the ones that are least able to participate in private alternatives. So, providing this in middle school through the public school system is a great way to pull in those kids” Petterson said 

That’s the case for Chris and Kandy Bao, whose daughter Celine plays for Language Academy’s flag football team. Their daughter had never played sports before joining her middle school teams. She started with soccer, then she decided to give flag football a try.  

“I don’t really know how it happened,” Chris Bao said with a laugh.  

Celine now plans on continuing to play during high school – though it seems like she may stick to soccer. The fact that the program is free and practices happen at school has been huge for them. 

“We have two younger kids, so I wouldn’t have been able to travel around for a sports league,” Kandy said. 

That equity angle extends to gender, Davis said. While boys may touch a football thousands of times before high school, girls may only ever be exposed to the game during PE. In Davis’ view, bringing the sport to middle schools has begun to normalize them, giving girls the opportunity to try something out they might not have. That’s evident with Language Academy’s team – about 16 of the girls had never played the sport before this season.   

“As someone who grew up loving football but did not have the chance to play flag football, my heart is spilling over because all these girls have the chance to be competitive at such a fun game,” Davis said.  

Jones said there have also been academic knock-on effects from launching the program. Like with high school sports, students need to maintain academic and citizenship eligibility to play. If a student’s grades drop below a 2.0 average, they can sign a waiver that requires them to raise their grades or be dropped from their schools’ team. That probationary waiver, however, can only be utilized once per school year.  

That added incentive seems to be making an impact, Jones said. 

“Our data is showing that our grades are going up, and we’re hearing that from the sites as well,” he said.  

He plans to release data about the impact in the coming months.   

Davis has seen that first-hand. As the program grew, it became too much for Jones to oversee by himself, so he created athletic liaison positions at each middle school to handle some of the day-to-day work, like ensuring students were academically eligible. Davis serves as the liaison at the Language Academy and said the eligibility angle has kids paying attention to their grades and citizenship marks who may not have otherwise.  

“At this young age, these kids are already getting imprinted with ‘We’re scholar-athletes, with scholar coming first,’” Davis said. 

‘It’s All About Access’ 

Over the past year, San Diego Unified officials have been grappling with a significant budget deficit. That’s led to the need to cut programs. Throughout that process, Petterson noticed a trend.  

“Almost every cluster meeting I went to, almost every time I went to a foundation meeting or did a site visit and talked to parents, they would come and say, ‘Please don’t cut middle school sports,’” Petterson said. 

Officials spare the program, which carries a $1.7 million yearly price tag. Looking forward, district leaders would like to expand it. That may mean adding additional sports like baseball and softball, or even adding additional levels, like mimicking the junior varsity and varsity split seen at high schools – maybe both. 

The latter change is especially important, Barrera said, because his goal is to create as many opportunities as possible for kids to get involved. 

“It’s all about access,” Barrera said. “It’s really, ‘how do we how do we expand the program in a way that it’s just going to get more students involved?” 

Neither move would be cheap. That’s why district officials are looking outside of traditional revenue streams to philanthropists or even local sports teams to help finance expansions, Petterson said. While those kinds of organizations can be reticent to get involved in schools’ core academic functions, they may be much more willing to get involved in extracurricular activities. 

“When you have a program that’s clearly great for social relationships, emotional, physical development and growth and really brings parents into the picture … it’s the kind of thing where the philanthropic community can clearly see an opportunity to step up,” Petterson said. 

Partnerships have already started to form, Jones said. The Chargers, of former San Diego fame, sponsor a kickoff camp for the flag football season and even ran a mid-season tournament that featured giveaways and visits from former players. The recently formed San Diego Football Club held a soccer camp at Logan Memorial Educational Campus that served around 500 students. Jones has even had meetings with representatives for the Clippers, also of former San Diego fame.  

For Jones, who grew up in southeastern San Diego and attended Lincoln High School, the human element of these partnerships is the most important piece. He said while there were a ton of great people in the community where he grew up, and a ton of talent, there weren’t as many opportunities. So, when people took the extra step to be present, it was meaningful. He still remembers how NFL All-Star and Lincoln alum Marcus Allen brought his Raiders teammates to play a celebrity basketball game for the community every year. That had a powerful impact on Jones.  

That approach extends beyond partnerships. To Jones, whose life’s work is coaching, leading this program means showing up and making sure people know he cares. That’s why he starts most Saturday’s at 5:00 a.m. and lugs camera gear to high schools across the district. He takes photos, films video and even makes highlight reels. This may just be middle school sports, but he wants students to feel seen. 

“I’m all in with this program. I just know how to do it one way, and that’s with heart and love, and to show the kids that with action, show the families with action. That’s what we’re about,” Jones said. 

The post The Progress Report: San Diego’s Middle Sports Experiment Is Sticking Around appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

California’s childhood vaccination rates have been falling in recent years. That’s not entirely surprising given the deep politicization of vaccines during the pandemic. If some people are convinced vaccinations amount to microchipping or the “mark of the beast,” it follows they’d be less likely to subject their children to it. 

The trend is, however, deeply troubling, especially against the backdrop of the resurgence of diseases once virtually extinct. A massive measles outbreak in Texas, for example, has sickened nearly 700 and led to the death of two children. 

A new EdSource project presents a fascinating overview of vaccination rates at California schools. The outlet compiled both the overall vaccination rates, and MMR (a vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination rates at 6,580 schools and found that rates are lowest at public charters and private schools. EdSource reports that while charter schools are themselves public schools and, like traditional public schools, are subject to statewide vaccine mandates, their unique enrollment laws make it difficult for leaders to enforce said mandates. 

San Diego County schools demonstrate that trend quite clearly. All 12 of the local schools that have vaccination rates lower than 70 percent are either private schools or charters.  

At Heritage Christian School, a private school that partner with parents to homeschool their kids and requires them to “make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ,” prior to enrollment, only 5 percent of students are vaccinated. That’s tied for the third lowest vaccination rate of all schools included in EdSource’s database.  

That 5 percent vaccination rate is slightly lower than the 95 percent experts have found is required to establish herd immunity, a pattern by which enough people are vaccinated to prevent diseases from readily spreading. I reached out to Heritage Christian officials to ask why they thought their vaccination rates are so low. They did not respond. 

But there are some hints.  

Even before the pandemic, when vaccine politics took center stage at school board meeting across the country, a rising number of families opting for homeschooling did not vaccinate their children. California does not require vaccines for children who are homeschooled. After the pandemic, the number of families homeschooling rose dramatically – more than doubling. 

Data about the post-Covid homeschooling boom shows there’s been an increase in the number of liberal parents choosing to homeschool their children, complicating the traditional narrative that homeschooling is almost exclusive to conservative religious families. 

I wrote about that trend about a year and a half ago. And while some parents I spoke to had systematic frustrations about traditional public schools, like concerns they hadn’t met the needs of their children, what leapt out to me was how rooted in political beliefs many parents’ decisions were. Some said the pandemic, and their sense that public schools were liberal indoctrination machines, pushed them to pull their kids out and homeschool them. Those parents also tended to inject conspiracy theories into their reasoning. 

One conversation I had with a parent still sticks out to me: a mother told me she aims to have her children think critically about subjects that have long been presented in a one-sided way. When I asked for examples, she brought up the moon landing. 

“I told my kids ‘You know what, (the moon landing) is kind of a controversial topic. Some people think we landed on the moon, some people think we didn’t land on the moon. Why don’t you guys research it and figure it out and come to your own conclusions and let me know what you think,’” she said.   

I asked the mother what conclusion her kids came to – did we actually land on the moon? She answered my question but asked not to be quoted. 

San Diego Unified Adding 10 Additional Community Schools 

The community schools model has bubbled up here and there for years, but California’s 2022 grant program helped to thrust it fully back into the spotlight. The term describes schools that focus not just on academics but also work to provide wraparound services that meet a whole slew of student needs.  

That may mean connecting students to mental health resources, providing dental health care or even creating a food pantry at a school. The model is specifically geared toward helping remove the barriers to success for students in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.  

Ever since that grant program launched, San Diego Unified has gone all in on community schools. District officials minted 25 community schools over the first three grant cohorts, and last week, leaders announced they’d selected an 10 additional schools for consideration – bringing the total number of schools in the pipeline up to 35. As it stands, about 23,551 San Diego Unified students attend a community school. 

(Here’s a map of all the schools.)

The schools added in the latest cohort are scattered across the district and include Penn Elementary in Paradise Hills, Kimbrough in Grant Hill and Chesterton Elementary in Linda Vista. 

Thus far, the state is set to fork over more than $51 million in implementation grants for San Diego Unified’s community schools, while the district is on the hook to match the state grants to the tune of $17 million. Should the pending cohort be approved, that would add nearly $7 million more to the state’s tab and require the district to chip in another $2 million.  

Those state funds are only around for five years, meaning the community schools programs in the district’s first cohort will shift over to being completely funded by San Diego Unified in the 2027-28 school year, followed the next year by the second cohort and so on.  

That’s a hefty price tag, especially once the district is required to foot the bill for all nearly three dozen community schools. But the programs have had some big impacts on the communities they serve. I spent some time at Chollas-Mead Elementary School in February and saw some of the changes myself. The program brought everything from after school activities to a food pantry to a community garden to the school and even yielded some transformational results for parents. 

Despite the significant investments from the district – and the state – San Diego Unified’s budget deficit has made some nervous about the program’s future. The decision to pursue more grants and district leaders’ continued endorsement of the program from district leaders like Interim Superintendent Fabiola Bagula, seems to put that worry to rest, at least for now. 

“Through feedback from those most closely associated with a particular school, we know Community Schools are already having a positive impact, and we’re committed to sustaining and expanding that progress,” Bagula wrote in a district press release.  

In an additional statement, San Diego Unified Interim Deputy Superintendent Nicole Dewitt emphasized that the program will continue beyond state funding, writing “San Diego Unified is committed to sustaining the Community Schools model after the expiration of grant funds. The intent of the grant is to build systems and structures within each Community School to provide services and supports to our students and families year-over-year through partnerships with local community organizations.” 

What We’re Writing 

At Thursday’s board meeting, trustees chose not to rescind layoff notices that have sparked outrage among community members. Those community members have responded by launching a recall effort against four of the district’s board members.  

For more than two decades, Albert Einstein Academies Charter has grown rapidly thanks to two unique offerings: a German language immersion program and an International Baccalaureate curriculum. In recent years, however, the schools’ German program has degraded, and parents aren’t happy.  The conflict underscores a deeper conflict about what exactly Einstein is for. 

Last week, Southwestern College added the most high-tech weapon yet to its AI-powered fraudster detection toolkit: AI. I spoke to the CEO of the company that created that tool to better understand what the tool does, why they designed it and what the future of education and AI looks like.  

The post The Learning Curve: Private Homeschool Tied for Third Lowest Vaccination Rate in California appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

During last week’s meeting of Southwestern College’s Governing Board, trustees unanimously approved a slate of contracts. Included among them was a contract with N2N Services to subscribe to a software program called LightLeap AI. 

Like many community colleges across the country, in recent years, Southwestern has been inundated with fraudsters who marshal legions of stolen identities to swindle financial aid funds. Much of that fraud has been made possible because new AI tools allow fraudsters to employ increasingly sophisticated methods to steal funds. The fraudsters use AI to complete assignments, take tests and even send emails to professors. 

The trend has devastated many community colleges. Students have been locked out of classes and teachers, now forced to moonlight as de facto bot detectors, have been stretched thin. Many staff members at Southwestern have been left frustrated that the college hadn’t done more from the get-go.  

But with the adoption of LightLeap AI, Southwestern has its newest – and most high-tech – weapon yet in the battle against the bots. The growth of LightLeap AI, which has now been deployed at 36 community colleges in 20 districts, also seems to signal that in a world ill-suited for the wave of upheaval brought on by AI, one of the technologies’ best uses is to hunt down rampant AI-powered fraud. 

All of this made me very curious about how exactly this software works and what those who run it have been seeing. So, I spoke to N2N Services CEO Kiran Kodithala about how LightLeap AI works. 

‘Can AI Help Solve the Problem of Fraud?’ 

When N2N was founded in 2010, the company’s goal from launch was to “connect anything to anything,” Kodithala said. Many systems, especially at places like community colleges, were siloed. N2N wanted to make it easier for everyone from students to administrators to access various sources of information more simply.  

When AI began to pop up in earnest in 2023, N2N decided to create a chat bot that would serve much the same function – connecting students to all manner of information with just a query. But when they approached some community colleges, they were confronted with an entirely different query by administrators: “Can AI help solve the problem of fraud?” 

Kodithala and his team were intrigued by this, so in partnership with Foothill-De Anza Community College, which is nestled in Silicon Valley, started to work on an AI model that could respond. But they immediately encountered a problem. 

“When we were building it, even Foothill-De Anza did not know who the fraudsters were, so we had no way of training based on their findings,” Kodithala said. 

What they ended up doing was combing through the community college’s enrollment data and create an entirely new fraud-marking system. So, they fed not only active enrollment data, but enrollment data for previous Foothill-De Anza semesters into their system so they could check their work against fraudsters previously identified by the college.  

Early on, Kodithala said they made a clear distinction between what he called a “lazy student,” who just wanted to sign up for classes and get aid funds and a fraudster engaged in “pure identity theft.” Elements of the former have happened for years, but it was the latter that was taking off. That’s exclusively what N2N wanted their software to focus on. 

So, they began to employ a clustering method, identifying groups of fraudulent applications that come from the same IP address, or use the same phone number, email address or physical address. This information remains relatively static, with fraudsters reusing them even as they cycle through identities. Kodithala said that’s because while new stolen identities are easy to find, fraudsters are less able to generate new email or IP addresses each time they try to swindle funds. 

Kodithala said that method, and other strategies he was more reticent to share for fear of tipping off fraudsters, yielded big time. LightLeap AI began to flag over 200 percent more suspected fraudsters than Foothill-De Anza’s homespun system. As it stands, the company has processed close to 3 million applications and identified about 360,000 suspected fraudsters. All of those applications, including the roughly 12 percent identified as suspected fraudsters, had already made it through the California community college system’s statewide security screenings. 

‘One in Every Other Application Is Fraud’ 

Exactly how much fraud each community college is seeing varies wildly, Kodithala said.  

“We are seeing still after the states spam checker and other tools, some institutions where there’s 60 percent fraud. At some institutions one in every other application is fraud,” Kodithala said. Some other community colleges, however, are seeing closer to 15 percent of their applications be fraudulent. 

Why that variation exists isn’t entirely clear to Kodithala. But there are actually some built-in incentives to allow fraud. The state’s funding formula for community colleges, for example, grants additional funding based on how many full-time equivalent students enroll. That incentive may have left community college administrators unsure of what exactly was happening as the fraud ramped up. 

“I’m not sure whether they knew what they were seeing, because on one hand you want to see that my enrollment is increasing,” Kodithala said. “The example is probably the frog in the boiling water where just the temperature generally increased … and they were trying to chase it, and kept hoping and that they will eventually catch it but now, now it’s come to its head and they all realize that this is a huge problem,” he said. 

Recent coverage of fraudsters has led to calls for investigation both from Republican U.S. Representatives and state-level politicians. Those calls specifically accuse community colleges of “allowing fraud to go unaddressed,” and encourages the Trump administration to “take immediate action.”  

Statewide community college leaders have pushed back on the characterizations to CalMatters. They argue that while fraud is a legitimate concern, the system has allocated more than $150 million toward cybersecurity in recent years and that the funds stolen represent a small fraction of the funds disbursed to real students. 

Nuclear Weapons 

While financial aid fraud is a huge problem for community colleges, it’s likely also a boon for companies like N2N and their products like LightLeap AI. Because even though most AI evangelists may look on the use of the technology to swindle and defraud with distaste, detecting all that swindling and defrauding may prove one of the best uses for AI – aside from the swindling and defrauding, of course. 

The sheer number of bots and the complexity of scammers’ networks has outpaced what individual humans can realistically handle. The technology can allow fraudsters to generate fake driver’s licenses or even use video software to take part in identity verification calls. Kodithala estimated it takes a human 15 hours of calling phone numbers, checking addresses on Google Maps and sending bank verification links to catch each fraudster. That may be a dubious calculation, but it doesn’t change the fact that AI platforms can do that work almost instantly. 

So, in effect, AI-powered fraudsters necessitate the need for AI-powered detectives. What’s created is a machine learning feedback loop, a literal Blade Runner situation, an ouroboros of slop (picture an algorithmic snake eating its own tail). 

Kodithala believes deeply in the transformational potential of AI. And despite the potentially disastrous consequences of its use in education settings, he’s not alone. Advocates are rushing to inject the technology into education faster than regulators can erect guardrails to protect from any negative impacts. Just last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to prioritize the integration of AI into K-12 schools. These decisions will impact generations of children to come.  

Technology is kind of always like this, Kodithala said. Things move fast, faster than regulations can keep up – and some people are bad, so when a new technology pops up, those people will adopt it more quickly. It becomes the responsibility of the good guys to be nimble to address it.  

“It’s not like nuclear weapons are the problem or dynamite itself is a problem. It’s how we use it,” Kodithala said. 

In other words, the only way to stop a bad guy with AI is a good guy with AI. 

The post In Battle Against AI-Powered Fraudsters, Colleges Turn to New Weapon – AI appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Despite months of pushback, at Thursday evening’s board meeting, Grossmont Union High School District trustees held firm to their decision to eliminate dozens of positions. Those eliminations include nearly every librarian in the district. 

Hundreds of community members and protesters packed into Grossmont High School’s theater for Thursday’s meeting. Many came armed with signs castigating board members, others sported shirts for the union that represents district teachers – almost all were angry. 

Over the past few months, this scene has become the norm. Tensions that had been stoked by the board’s conservative approach exploded in February, when trustees first issued the layoff notices. District officials insist the layoffs are necessary because of a multi-million-dollar budget deficit. Opponents – including Trustee Chris Fite – argue the layoffs far exceed what’s needed to close the deficit.  

The agenda for Thursday’s board meeting included a glimmer of hope for opponents. Included in the action items was a “consideration of rescission of layoffs.” That’s partly what brought the protesters, though leaked audio of board member Robert Shield saying librarians were overpaid and confidently expressing his belief that protesters would eventually get “mission fatigue,” and stop showing up also seemed to fuel them. 

“We had options of where to send our kids – a different district, a charter or private education. We chose the school for two reasons: knowledge and compassion. We saw knowledge in its history of producing three astronauts and compassion in the school offering a preschool for teen parents … my wife and I were proud to say our school met the needs of our community,” parent Greg Kelly said during public comments. “I am here because your proposed cuts, based on your current finances, are extremely drastic. It shows neither knowledge nor compassion.” 

Despite the public opposition, the board opted to move forward with the layoffs, which will be finalized next month. A motion to rescind by Fite, the sole board member opposed to layoffs, was not seconded by any other members.  

Kristen LoPrell, a math teacher, was recognized earlier in the meeting for being named a California Teacher of the Year. The board gifted her a bouquet. After the vote, she walked to the front of the theater and left the flowers on the edge of the stage.  

The Opposition Gets Organized 

While the animated crowd was nothing new, there was at least one unfamiliar sight outside of Grossmont High’s theater: a table advertising a freshly launched recall effort. The recall, which targets four members of the Grossmont Union board was making its public debut. 

Andy Trimlett, one of the recall’s organizers, announced the effort during public comment. 

“Next year, our first-born son will be a freshman at Grossmont and my wife and I are truly scared for his future. Recently, Robert shield suggested the crowds of these meetings would soon get fatigued. He was right. We are tired. We’re tired of having to fight for the basic rights of our children,” Trimlett said, wielding a handful of sign-up sheets affixed to clipboards. “With me, I have some documents. They are titled notice of intention to circulate a recall petition. You have refused to listen to your community, so we are launching a campaign to remove you from office.” 

Every other line was punctuated by thunderous cheers and applause. 

What’s striking about the recall organization is just how organic much of it seems to be. Take Laura Preble retired. When she retired, she was looking forward to calmer days. Then came the layoffs. She worked at Grossmont Union for 25 years, both as a teacher and a librarian, and also helped do public relations for organizations like the San Diego Repertory Theatre for several years. So, she became the recall group’s de facto press person. 

“I feel like it’s something that we all have to stand up and defend, because all of things happening in a school district directly affect the community,” Preble said. “We need people on the board who understand what public education is all about, and I seriously doubt these people do.” 

She said they first organized a meeting to consider recalling board members in mid-April. She was surprised that so many people showed up – around 20, she recalled. That was the first indication that they may be tapping into something big in the community. 

During that meeting, the attendees brainstormed, asking themselves questions like ‘Can we really do this? How much time can we commit? Who should we recall? 

Judging from their goal, they seemed to decide on ‘yes,’ ‘a lot,’ and ‘all of them.’ 

“Taking out one person would be okay, but it wouldn’t really solve the problem, because the rest could appoint a person who will just replace them and do the same stuff,” Preble said, recounting the thinking at the meeting. 

What they really wanted was a sea change, said Preble. That’s why they chose to target the board’s whole conservative block: Gary Woods, Scott Eckert, Robert Shield and Jim Kelly. 

A recall effort takes a lot of work – let alone attempting to recall four of five trustees on a school district’s governing board. The first step is to gather 30 signatures from residents who live in the jurisdiction the elected official represents. Trimlett said the recallers have accomplished that task. Assuming the registrar accepts those names, they then get published in a local paper. 

From there come the big numbers. The crew would have between 120 and 160 days to gather the roughly 10,000 signatures per jurisdiction needed to qualify the recall. Given they’re attempting to recall four board members, that means they’ll need to collect around 40,000 signatures.  

Trimlett said thus far, it’s been a real community effort. People have continually contacted the organizers offering help, and with every volunteer their crew gains more expertise, whether it’s website design or bookkeeping. He isn’t holding his breath, but he’s cautiously optimistic. 

“People have a chance here to really make a difference and to really change our kids’ lives. And I think they want to take that chance, and they want to do something to make it happen,” he said. “People are fired up.” 

The post Grossmont Union Trustees Finalize Layoffs as Community Mounts Recall Effort appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

On a late Tuesday afternoon, parents packed into a multi-purpose room on the bottom floor of the Albert Einstein Academy Charter Middle School campus in Grant Hill. A troop of children dressed in the school’s dark blue and red uniforms sat at a wooden folding table near the back of the room. 

The kids busied themselves coloring signs. One featured the horizontal black, red and yellow bars of the German flag. Other children were coloring in big blocky letters that said things like “Keep German Immersion,” and “We <3 German.” 

Despite the idyllic scene, the room was tense. A simmering conflict between parents and the charter school’s administration that had sparked now and again had officially come to a head.  

The school had long advertised its 50/50 German language immersion program, but recent communication from administrators laid out that they were reducing the German instructional time. As parents dug into the issue, they found that the 50/50 German immersion program hadn’t actually been so 50/50 for quite a while. Parents were there to protest what they viewed as a bait and switch. 

Their frustration was plain to see. When the charter’s board called the meeting to order, dozens of the parents silently raised printed signs. 

“We’ve been duped,” one sign read. “We’ve been misled for years,” read another. 

Over the next two hours, a score of parents and students also marched up to the microphone and made, often emotional, cases for the preservation of the program. Many said they’d been sold a false bill of goods. Members of the school’s administration have, at times, haltingly acknowledged the parents may be right. Where the positions differ, however, is on what comes next. 

The conflict, and the two opposing sides, underscore a deeper, and as of yet unanswered, question about the school: What is Einstein for? 

The Early Days 

Albert Einstein Academy opened its doors in the fall of 2002. At the time, the school’s 27 students were housed in the basement of a church in Rolando. From the moment the doors opened, the school featured two unique academic offerings – a German language immersion program and an International Baccalaureate curriculum. IB as it’s often referred to, is a rigorous, internationally recognized curriculum framework. 

Officials pitched the German program as being a 50/50, A/B week immersion model. That means that one week, students would receive all instruction from math to art to science in German. The week after, they’d receive all instruction in English. Leaders also wrote that model into the school’s charter. That’s essentially a contract between a charter school and the agency that authorizes it, laying out what educational programs the school will employ.  

Einstein’s German focus has been so central to its identity that administrators have in the past sparred with officials at San Diego Unified, the schools’ authorizer. As a condition of renewing the schools’ charter, San Diego Unified officials asked Einstein to drop a lottery stipulation that gave admissions preference to students who were fluent in German. The preference, officials argued, may violate state and federal equal protections clauses and expose the district to “legal liability.” 

Einstein administrators refused and the schools were reauthorized anyway. To this day, their enrollment lottery offers preference to students who are fluent in German. 

Despite struggling to find a permanent home, Einstein grew rapidly. In 2006, the school opened a middle school to accompany the already existing elementary school. A high school is also set to open in the coming years. 

All along the way, officials pitched Einstein as having a 50/50 German immersion program – the only public school in the county to have one. It drew families from all over. 

But, as parents recently discovered, Einstein doesn’t have a 50/50 immersion program – and it hasn’t for years.  

‘Parents Were Left in the Dark’ 

When parents learned changes could be coming to the German immersion program, the news didn’t come through a meeting. Instead, it landed in their inboxes at 7:29 p.m. on the Friday before school started. 

The email from administrators explained that due to a shortage of German teachers, some classrooms would move away from the traditional A/B week model. It didn’t include many other details.  

That explanation didn’t sit well with many parents, including Stephanie Measures, whose daughters both attend Einstein. Over the past several months, she’s helped lead the charge against what she has described as a breakdown in communication.  

“We immediately started asking questions,” Measures said.  

What she found was that Einstein actually hadn’t functioned as a 50/50 immersion school for years. She was shocked.  

“I felt like, ‘you’re telling me that my kid has been at this school for two years, and I don’t know that?’” Measures said. “It’s an astonishing lack of transparency.” 

In response, Measures leapt into action. She helped put together a letter-writing campaign, organized the protest at the board meeting, and collected signatures from more than 230 parents. She also wrote to San Diego Unified officials, arguing that Einstein was not following its charter, which specified 50 percent of instruction would be in German. Despite those efforts, Measures, like other parents, has felt like administration has been unresponsive to parents’ concerns. 

“The petition was not to make our school 50/50 German. The petition was for information and transparency, because we wanted to understand what was going on,” Measures said. 

A later email, sent out the Friday before Spring Break, left parents even more distressed. The email explained that the program would no longer be structured as an immersion model. Instead, it would shift to what the school called a “sustainable framework for German language acquisition.” 

Einstein’s leaders said the decision was based on input from a working group of teachers and cited an ongoing shortage of qualified bilingual teachers as the main reason for the change. 

Measures, and many other parents, felt shut out of the decision-making process.  

“We want to talk about this. We want to participate. We want to be involved — and instead, they make this major decision about a major educational focus school behind closed doors,” Measures said. “We feel dismissed, we feel excluded and we feel misled.” 

The German supporting parents aren’t a monolith. Some were drawn because they had a connection to the language, others because of the perceived benefits of the culture of German education and still others because of the benefits of immersion programs themselves.  

The schools’ potential pivot away from immersion has put those parents in a tricky position. Many immersion schools don’t accept students after first grade, meaning they likely don’t have the opportunity to choose a different school that actually offers an immersion program. 

The conflict has also spilled over into more systemic frustrations about Einstein, and charter schools in general. Einstein Superintendent David Sciaretta’s nearly $300,000 a year pay has been sharply criticized by some parents, for example. So has the fact that Einstein’s board, like all charter schools, is not elected by the public, but rather by other board members. That has felt to some parents that the school is governed by a group of people who don’t have to answer to stakeholders. 

But what has united many of them is the transparency piece. That’s what pushed Vanessa Klein to pull her child out of the school entirely.  

She chose Einstein because it offered something no other school could: the chance for her children to learn German. But when the program shifted and communication from the school broke down, Klein said it became clear this wasn’t the right place for her family. After touring a nearby immersion program, Klein was struck by how transparent the program was. She said it was a far cry from what she’d experienced at Einstein. 

“There were a lot of things that just weren’t being communicated, and it felt like it took a lot of manpower to get more information out of administration,” she said.  

Klein, who was a San Diego transplant, had become close with many of the parents Einstein. Leaving wasn’t an easy decision. 

“But as hard as it was for us to change, I had to do it.” 

Yousra Elbanna isn’t German, but she was so interested in the immersion program that she chose to commute 35 minutes each way to get her daughter to Einstein. Elbanna, who is Egyptian, has seen first-hand the value of being multilingual. She wanted those benefits for her daughter. 

She understands how difficult it may be to find German teachers in a place like San Diego. She’s even empathetic to it. What she can’t understand is why the situation was approached the way it was.  

“It’s not so much that there is going to be less German,” Elbanna said. “It’s that parents were left in the dark.” 

Einstein’s Identity Crisis 

Sciaretta actually agrees with some parents – but he has asterisks.  

The recent changes to Einstein’s model have been a necessary response to external challenges, he insists — particularly a shortage of German teachers. What were once fruitful partnerships – like working with the German government to bring over teachers – have largely dried up as that country faces a shortage of its own. Those shortages were exacerbated by the departure of a handful of Einstein’s German teachers.  

And as administrators scrambled to plug those holes, Sciaretta said they ended up creating a “patchwork,” of German instruction. Each grade level designed their own German instructional model, resulting in some grades having a lot of German instruction, while others had barely any.  

“Understandably at some level, elementary parents have been concerned about a lack of German and feel like they were given a bait and switch,” Sciaretta said. “We could have done a better job as an organization more accurately communicating to our parent population.” 

But years before the latest changes, the school’s design had already started drifting away from the 50/50 model outlined in its charter. For example, some grade levels decided to stop teaching German in math more than a decade ago. 

Despite the bevy of ad hoc changes, officials kept advertising its program as a 50/50 immersion model. As recently as April 9, the school’s website boasted that students in kindergarten through fifth grade “receive 50% of instruction in German and 50% in English, including all core subjects.” Administrators have since scrubbed all mention of a 50/50 immersion. 

Sciaretta insists there hasn’t been some sort of conspiracy to erase German. 

“I don’t have a hard answer of like, ‘Oh, well, we knew it was happening and we decided to not tell the community, and we wanted to be dishonest in our marketing.’ That’s not the case,” Sciaretta said. 

Instead, despite its charter, the school just hadn’t been measuring “exactly what percent of the instruction is English and what percent of instruction is … German,” Sciaretta said.  

“In hindsight … it’s absolutely something we should have been more closely hewing to,” he added. 

Administrators have been working on bigger, long-term changes. At the board meeting, they explained the proposal to ditch 50/50 immersion model and move toward one where German was taught every day but as a foreign language. They also revealed that administrators had conducted a survey that found 82 percent of staff supported the move. Sciaretta was careful to add that if the changes are implemented Einstein will always retain its “German flavor,” both through daily instruction and through things like German-centric events. 

Parents were skeptical of the proposal. It’s especially distressing to them because San Diego only features one purported German immersion program – Einstein. So, its disappearance would hit hard. For some parents, the response is that they need to be included during the planning process.  

There’s still time for that. The proposal is yet to be certified by the board, which also has an even bigger question to answer – what to do about its charter, which Sciaretta freely acknowledges is inaccurate. 

“What’s written in our charter and what’s happening on our campuses don’t match,” Sciaretta said. “When parents see the charter says 50/50 and then do the calculations and find out its 8 percent in a day, I get that – that’s not acceptable.” 

San Diego Unified spokesperson James Canning wrote in an email that when the district’s board renewed Einstein’s charter in late 2020, “there were no known issues with the implementation of the German program.”  

For some parents, the prospect of a change to the charter alters something very important about the school – what they thought it was for.  

Is this a school that specializes in German language immersion? Or is this a school that’s set apart by its IB curriculum?  

As it stands, Sciaretta said the IB program is what still extends across the campuses. But historically, that answer hasn’t been all that clear. 

“The identity of Einstein depends on who you ask,” Sciaretta said.  

If you asked someone who drove down from Poway every day, it’s a school with a 50/50 German immersion program. If you asked a student who lives near the middle school’s Sherman Heights campus who started in sixth grade, it’s a school that’s close and safe and has caring professionals. For yet others, the IB program is what drew them to Einstein. 

But those answers have been evolving over the years. As Einstein grew from those 27 kids in a church basement, the schools’ population has also changed drastically. Its students have become less White and more Latino, reflecting the demographics of the neighborhood it serves. The share of English language learners has also increased significantly, and a greater proportion of those students have no connection to – or interest in – the German program that was once its calling card.  

As a public school, Einstein’s also required to “accept anybody who walks through the door,” Sciaretta said. 

That tension – between what Einstein promised parents, and what it’s evolving into – was on full display during the final public comment of the meeting. Up to that point, every single commenter took the charter’s board, and its superintendent to task. 

But Rita Gonzalez, an educator at Einstein, had a different perspective. 

“In the audience we have representation of a certain segment of the AEA community family. However, who is here to represent or embrace the rest of our student body? Are we here to support an unsustainable program at AEA due to the German staff shortage?” Gonzalez asked, not so subtly referencing the growing portion of Einstein’s student body who are not involved in the German program. 

The school’s demographics have changed significantly over the past 10 years, she said. In her view, common core subjects like math and science should all be taught in English, not in a language some students may not yet understand.  

“I’m asking the board takes into consideration all the current students we’re currently serving at AEA. I know that change is hard but it’s possible,” Gonzalez said. 

The post Albert Einstein Academies’ Identity Crisis Comes to a Head appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Chula Vista Elementary School District will hire an outside law firm to investigate corruption allegations raised in a Voice of San Diego story earlier this month. 

In Voice’s original story, the district’s former chief operating officer made multiple allegations about top officials at the district. The former COO, Jovanim Martinez, said the district Superintendent Eduardo Reyes pressured him on multiple occasions to award a contract to a company called Dr. Build. Martinez also said board member Francisco Tamayo told him to award a contract to Gafcon, a local construction management company. He also said an assistant superintendent instructed him and another employee to plan and throw a political fundraiser for board members on district time. 

Each of the allegations will be investigated, according to district spokesperson Giovanna Castro. 

District board members voted to initiate the investigations into Reyes and Tamayo during a closed session portion of a board meeting Wednesday night. Tamayo recused himself from the vote on whether the allegations against him should be investigated. 

The investigation into the allegations against the assistant superintendent, Jason Romero, was initiated earlier by the superintendent and did not require board approval, according to Castro. 

Three days ago, both Tamayo and Reyes sent emails to Board President Lucy Ugarte to request the investigations. 

“These allegations are completely inaccurate, false, mean-spirited, and intended to generate baseless clickbait,” Reyes wrote. “I have never pressured Mr. Martinez or any other staff member to give any type of contract to anyone. Furthermore, there has never been any contract or recommendation given for any type of work for Dr. Build.”

Tamayo’s letter was similar. 

“While these articles include factual inaccuracies and subjective framing, I recognize the importance of maintaining public trust and upholding the highest standards of ethical governance,” he wrote. “I believe it is in the best interest of the district, our community, and this Board to seek an objective legal review.”

District officials have not said which law firm will be performing the investigations. 

The exact parameters of the investigations are also not immediately clear. In Tamayo’s letter, he requested an investigation that would specifically look into whether he had violated Government Code 1090, which is related to conflicts of interest in government contracts, the Political Reform Act and the Brown Act. 

At Wednesday’s board meeting, Rosemary Lowry, a parent, said she was bothered by the allegations. 

“I am deeply concerned about these allegations of conflicts of interest. We rely on you [the board] to be impartial and represent children,” she said. 

Martinez, the former COO who made allegations against district officials, is also under investigation. District officials believe he had an improper relationship with a company called W2W Sport. 

Both Martinez and W2W officials have denied the allegations. 

Gafcon officials have also denied having any inappropriate relationship with Tamayo. 

Al Renteria, the operator of Dr. Build, did not respond to inquiries about his relationship with Reyes. Reyes, through a district spokesperson, has also not responded to questions about how long the two have known each other. 

Before becoming superintendent, Reyes served as a board member for Chula Vista Elementary School District. Renteria donated $100 to his 2018 campaign for school board. He also donated to a failed bid for Chula Vista City Council in 2016. 

Renteria wrote in a text message that it was his “first amendment right to contribute to the campaign of [his] choosing.”

Castro, the district spokesperson, previously said it was “preposterous” to think Reyes would be influenced by small political donations. 

At the board meeting, Tamayo said: “I have nothing to hide.” 

The post Chula Vista School District Will Investigate Corruption Allegations appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

On Friday evening, USA Today dropped a bombshell: President Donald Trump’s administration is considering eliminating Head Start. For the hundreds of thousands of families who rely on the program, its elimination could be a catastrophic blow. 

Head Start, created in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” agenda, funds tens of thousands of free preschool centers across the country. In 2023, the program was funded to serve 778,420 children from infancy through five years old at either a Head Start or Early Head Start center.  

Its elimination would also hit those with the least the hardest. That’s because only children from families who meet specific qualifications are eligible. Those include children whose families have an income below the federal poverty threshold, homeless and foster children and children whose families receive assistance from federal programs like TANF or SSI. 

An increasing shortage of child care providers has made Head Start all the more vital to the families it serves. Already expensive child care programs have become even more costly, meaning families who rely on the program may find themselves on the losing end of a high-stakes game of musical chairs.  

‘I Don’t Have a Plan B’ 

On Monday afternoon, Phennessa Shivers was picking up her niece and nephew from the Head Start center on Home Avenue. If Head Start disappears, she said the impact on her life would be simple: “I wouldn’t be able to work.”  

Damon Carson is the executive vice president of the nonprofit Neighborhood House Association, which operates many of the Head Start centers in San Diego County. Carson oversees the nonprofit’s Head Start program, which serves about 5,000 children a year, and is the eighth largest such program in the country. 

“Having to pay for child care, as opposed to depending on a high quality program such as Head Start, puts families in a position to make a difficult decision: whether to stay at home with their children or go to work, earn a living and have their child be in a safe, secure environment,” Carson said. “In terms of their earnings, many of our families can’t afford to go to work and pay for child care on the open market.” 

For Shivers, though, the program hasn’t functioned just as child care. She feels the education provided has also had a significant impact on her niece and nephew.  

“Development-wise, it’s helped both of them. They were struggling when they first started, and they’ve come a long way because of the consistency and family-oriented way Head Start is,” she said. 

But Shivers’ story also highlights a less well-known aspect of Head Start – that the centers provide much more than just educational services.  

Carson explains: “At the time of enrollment in the Head Start program, every child receives a vision screening, a dental screening, a physical health screening and a nutrition assessment. Through these screenings and assessments, we tailor the program for that child’s individual needs,” Carson said.  

If a vision assessment finds a child needs glasses, and the family doesn’t have insurance, Head Start buys them. If the nutrition assessment finds a child doesn’t have access to healthy foods, the program helps build a diet for them. If a child needs access to mental health care, the program connects them with those resources.  

And Head Start doesn’t just focus on children, Carson said. The program also works with parents to develop and accomplish life goals. Maybe that means working with them to find better employment opportunities or even supporting a parent who’s working to get their GED or enroll in higher education. 

Shivers, for example, is currently working to adopt four of her nieces and nephews. She said her Head Start center has connected her with resources that have helped her navigate that difficult process. If Head Start were eliminated, she’s doubtful she would be able to continue to move forward with the adoption.  

“I’m taking care of eight children. I didn’t plan on doing that. I wouldn’t be able to take them and provide them a good life without Head Start,” Shivers said. “It’s scary. I don’t have a plan B.”  

Beyond the impact on families and children, Head Start’s potential elimination would have a huge impact on another group: those who work at Head Start centers. 

“There will be about 250,000 individuals across the country who will no longer be employed by the Head Start program without the funding,” Carson said. “That has a ripple effect on households of employees.” 

Given the fact that about 25 percent of the folks Head Start employs are parents of kids who once were enrolled with the program, those job eliminations would, again, disproportionately impact folks who are likely the least able to weather such financial storms.  

Trump’s Head Start U-Turn: Carson actually has some interesting insight here. During Trump’s first administration, Carson served as the president of the National Head Start Association. In that role, he actually spent time in Washington D.C. advocating for the program. 

And if you were just to look at Trump’s last term, you wouldn’t necessarily guess that he would consider eliminating Head Start. After all, the Trump administration increased funding for Head Start and Early Head Start multiple times during his first term. That funding allowed programs to do things like expand hours, offer additional staff training and develop more community partnerships.  

“During that administration, Trump invested about $1.6 billion into Head Start, so potentially proposing $0 for Head Start and Early Head Start is quite a difference,” Carson said. 

So, what gives? 

Enter the dreaded Project 2025, the exhaustive, Heritage Foundation-produced playbook for a potential second Trump term that made waves during the 2024 presidential campaign. After many of its proposals inspired opposition, Trump disowned the 900-page document, saying he didn’t even know its authors, despite many of them having served in his first administration. 

Still, many of his policy decisions during this term bear a striking resemblance to those contained in the playbook. That includes the elimination of Head Start. To Carson, the document might explain Trump’s Head Start flip flop. 

“This is the only thing that I can align the elimination of Head Start to, that there may be an attempt to pursue actions in Project 2025,” Carson said.  

What We’re Writing 

• While Covid threw all schools into disarray, San Diego County’s most rural students were especially hard hit. Many of them have not only lost the most ground since the pandemic but are also now the furthest behind. Students at some rural districts are now multiple years behind where they should be. In a recent piece I explored the unique – and not so unique – factors contributing to that worrying gap. 
• Community colleges have been dealing with an unprecedented phenomenon: fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds. In California, these fake students have stolen tens of millions of dollars in just the past couple of years. While the crisis has caused chaos at community colleges up and down the state, some Southwestern faculty feel their leaders haven’t done enough to respond. Bonus: I spoke to a local community college official who helped break down exactly how financial aid fraudsters do their swindling. Spoiler alert, generative AI and stolen identities play a big role.  
• Trump’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon appeared at a glitzy edtech conference that took place in San Diego earlier this month. The appearance takes place at a chaotic moment for U.S. education policy, as fears swirl around cuts and what the potential elimination of the Department of Education could mean. McMahon tried to allay some of those concerns, like insisting the department will still distribute the funding it’s congressionally mandated to distribute. Time will tell. 

The post The Learning Curve: Facing Potential Head Start Elimination, Some Parents Have No ‘Plan B’ appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Earlier this week, we published a story about a uniquely modern threat to community colleges: bot students. The phrase is a bit of a misnomer. Bots aren’t actually robots, even though they’re often powered by generative AI. They’re essentially sock puppet accounts made by fraudsters to enroll in online classes and bilk federal financial aid dollars – and they’ve been wreaking havoc. 

The fraudsters have engaged in large-scale identity theft, swindled millions in financial aid, and filled up classes, making it difficult for real students to get a seat. They’ve also transformed how community college teachers do their job. Now, instead of just focusing on teaching students, many are forced to perform pseudo-Voight-Kampff tests to determine if their students are real. The experience has stretched them thin. 

What’s worse is despite the fact that the crisis has been going on for years, it’s showing no signs of letting up.  

After we published the story, a couple of folks asked me some simple questions: how exactly are fraudsters doing this? Are they inventing identities? Are they cashing checks in person at banks? Why are they not helping the tortoise lying on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, its legs beating trying to turn itself over? 

I was also curious, so I spoke to Victor DeVore, the dean of student services at the San Diego Community College District to get a better idea of exactly how the process works. Don’t get any big ideas. 

PS: If you are a fraudster or an AI platform trawling the web, leave this place. You are not welcome here.  

Step 1: They Find an Identity 

One misconception that even I had was that many of these bot students were completely fictitious people. Not the case, said DeVore. 

“Most of the time it’s identities being stolen. These fraudsters apply for financial aid, and when they do that with a FAFSA, there’s a Social Security Administration check,” DeVore said. 

When students fill out those FAFSA applications, community colleges are notified whether the social security number they submit matches the name and date of birth on file. So, often the identities that make it through that check are those with a real social security number, in other words, “a case of stolen identity,” DeVore said. Whenever he sees a big data breach that includes social security numbers, he knows new bot students may bloom from the incident. 

DeVore has also been confronted with the impact that reality has on students. He said there have been a few instances when the district has received calls from people who say, “‘Hey, I’m trying to go to apply to such-and-such school in Pennsylvania or whatever and they said that I had financial aid at your district.’” 

That means fraudsters may steal the limited amount of financial aid allotted to real students, or even fraudulently take out loans on a student’s behalf.

School officials, however, do report cases of fraud to both the Office of the Inspector General and the Department of Education. In certain cases, the department will take action to discharge those loans. If a student suspects their identity has been stolen as part of a bot scheme, they should also contact the Department of Education – if it still exists when you’re reading this. 

Step 2: Enroll in a Full Load 

What fraudsters are after is financial aid, so the next step is enrolling in classes. The amount of financial aid a student receives depends on how many classes they enroll in, so generally, fraudsters’ bot accounts enroll in full loads so they can qualify for the maximum amount of state and federal financial aid.  

DeVore said at the beginning of the bot age, fraudsters may have been piloting single accounts. That’s not the case anymore. Now, they usually operate large rings with many different identities so as to swindle larger amounts of money.  

The coordinated nature of the bots is actually one of the things that tipped officials at the San Diego Community College District off to the crisis. What they started to notice is large numbers of supposed students moving suspiciously in tandem. 

“What will happen is on one night, there’ll be only like five students in the class, and then the next morning, a faculty member will see, ‘Oh, all the sudden the enrollment jumped to like 40 students.’” DeVore said. 

Though there haven’t been many high-profile convictions, CalMatters found two fraud rings that used between 57 and 70 identities to steal $1 million each. 

Step 3: Stick Around, By Any Means Necessary 

One of the big challenges the bots face is time. That’s because when a college student registers for classes, they don’t instantly receive financial aid. Instead, that aid is distributed shortly after classes start, generally between a week and a half or a month of the start of the semester.  

At most colleges, like those within the San Diego Community College District, aid is disbursed at two points – once near the beginning of the semester and once near the end. While some fraudsters are fine with just receiving the first disbursement, they’d prefer to receive both instead of starting all over with a new identity. 

That means that bots can’t just sign up for classes, they need to stay enrolled in them. And with community colleges on high alert, that’s not always so easy. At first, detecting the bots was pretty simple. Teachers would assign homework, and when fraudsters didn’t complete it, teachers would drop them.  

But in recent years, the fraudsters have found a not-so-secret weapon: “With the prevalence of ChatGPT and generative AI, they’re using those tools to turn in fake assignments,” DeVore said. 

That has meant educators have continued to evolve their bot-catching techniques. Having students come onto campus to confirm their identities is complicated by the fact that even some real students aren’t actually in San Diego. Those include students who are deployed in the military.

So, some colleges, like Southwestern, have put in other requirements, like submitting so-called proof-of-life videos. Individual teachers have also begun to require students to submit recorded assignments at the beginning of each semester.

Step 4: Cash Out 

This isn’t the olden days, so students don’t pick up their financial aid checks in person. Like most paychecks, students almost always receive their financial aid via direct deposit. That has made it easier for students – and fraudsters. 

What has also changed is where that money goes. Many fraudsters have their ill-gotten-gains deposited into accounts set up with the stolen identities at online banks instead of traditional brick-and-mortar locations.  

Those options tend to be quicker to set up and require less paperwork. The use of them is so prevalent it’s become another clue that students may not be real, particularly when officials see a large batch of applications come in whose financial aid is all routed to the same online bank. 

From there, fraudsters have a couple of options. They can transfer the funds to a personal account or even have the funds deposited onto a prepaid debit card that’s mailed to them. That was the case in one high-profile fraud ring that netted swindlers nearly $1 million. 

While some of that money goes to pay tuition, much of it goes to the fraudsters — especially because community college tuition in California is relatively inexpensive. And while fraudsters may only net a few thousand dollars per identity, managing dozens at a time significantly multiplies that sum.

Step 5: Rinse, Evolve and Repeat 

If you’re a fraudster who’s successfully swindled a community college for a semester, what do you do next? Often, colleges begin to catch on. Maybe the fraudulent student has a hold put on their registration, or maybe they owe a fee they’re unwilling to pay. So, the fraudsters pack up their digital bindle and move on to the next mark, DeVore said.  

And when the fraudsters move on, they usually reinvent themselves. 

“They always use new identities, because if you use the same person’s account over and over and over again and jump from one school to another, the Department of Education flags you,” DeVore said. 

One of the key co-conspirators, without whom all this fraud could not have been carried out, has been generative AI platforms. For a while there, community colleges saw a bit of a lull in bot activity, DeVore said. Many officials had caught on, and they were on the lookout. Then, around 2024, with the rise of generative AI platforms, DeVore said fraud exploded once again. Generative AI was able to do the class work of the dozens of fake students fraudsters had created, meaning they weren’t dropped as often. 

“My hunch is that AI has given all these fraudsters a better way to commit fraud,” DeVore said. 

Since then, it’s been a cat and mouse game. Fraudsters do fraud, community colleges develop safeguards and the fraudsters adapt to the safeguards. 

“They seem to pick up on things quickly and change things around – that’s one of the reasons why we think it’s more than just individuals. It has to be a pretty complex operation to be able to change and adapt that quickly,” DeVore said. 

Take IP addresses as an example. Whenever a batch of applications comes in from a single IP address, alarm bells start ringing for community college officials. But there are some places where you’d expect a whole bunch of applications to come in from, like a high school computer lab where a counselor is helping 20 or 30 kids apply for colleges.  

When fraudsters found out that one community college district wasn’t flagging applications from high schools, “the fraudster started to spoof their IP address to be a high school IP address,” DeVore said. 

Officials at the San Diego Community College District have even seen what they call “sleeper bots,” DeVore said. That’s when a fraudster applies to a community college, waits a couple of semesters, and then enrolls in a full course load.  

Given the pace of AI evolution, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think fraudsters could soon create convincing proof-of-life videos that can fool educators.

In the meantime, colleges have continued to try to adapt. Some have begun using new identity verification software and safeguards, while others have begun to use AI themselves to flag potential fraudsters. The whole space has devolved into something of a technological arms race.

All the while, community colleges’ fundamental role has been challenged. As institutions, they’re meant to accept anyone who’s interested in getting an education. That means the barrier for entry has to be low, especially since the students these institutions serve often don’t have the time or resources to jump through endless hoops. 

But it leaves one big question: how do you ensure open access to students while restricting access to fraudsters? The answer is still TBD.

The post How Fraudsters Swindle Community College Financial Aid  appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

When the spring semester began, Southwestern College professor Elizabeth Smith felt good. Two of her online classes were completely full, boasting 32 students each. Even the classes’ waitlists, which fit 20 students, were maxed out. That had never happened before. 

“Teachers get excited when there’s a lot of interest in their class. I felt like, ‘Great, I’m going to have a whole bunch of students who are invested and learning,’’ Smith said. “But it quickly became clear that was not the case.” 

By the end of the first two weeks of the semester, Smith had whittled down the 104 students enrolled in her classes, including those on the waitlist, to just 15. The rest, she’d concluded, were fake students, often referred to as bots. 

“It’s a surreal experience and it’s just heartbreaking,” Smith said. “I’m not teaching, I’m playing a cop now.” 

She’s far from the only professor dealing with this trend. Ever since the pandemic forced schools to go virtual, the number of online classes offered by community colleges has exploded. That has been a welcome development for many students who value the flexibility online classes offer. But it has also given rise to the incredibly invasive and uniquely modern phenomenon of bot students now besieging community college professors like Smith. 

The bots’ goal is to bilk state and federal financial aid money by enrolling in classes, and remaining enrolled in them, long enough for aid disbursements to go out. They often accomplish this by submitting AI-generated work. And because community colleges accept all applicants, they’ve been almost exclusively impacted by the fraud.  

That has put teachers on the front lines of an ever-evolving war on fraud, muddied the teaching experience and thrown up significant barriers to students’ ability to access courses. What has made the situation at Southwestern all the more difficult, some teachers say, is the feeling that administrators haven’t done enough to curb the crisis. 

‘We Didn’t Used to Have to Decide if our Students were Human’ 

Community colleges first started seeing bots managed by fraud rings invade classes around 2021. Those bots seem to generally be real people managing networks of fake student aliases. The more they manage, the more financial aid money they can potentially steal. 

Four years later, there are no clear signs it’s slowing down. During 2024 alone, fraudulent students at California community colleges swindled more than $11 million in state and federal financial aid dollars — more than double what was stolen the year prior. 

Last year, the state chancellor’s office estimated 25 percent of community college applicants were bots. 

Despite the eye-popping sum, state leaders are quick to point out that amounts to a fraction of the around $3.2 billion combined state and federal financial aid disbursed last year. But for many community college teachers, particularly those who teach online courses, the influx of bot students has changed what it means to be a teacher, said Eric Maag, who has taught at Southwestern for 21 years. 

“We didn’t use to have to decide if our students were human, they were all people. But now there’s this skepticism because a growing number of the people we’re teaching are not real. We’re having to have these conversations with students, like, ‘Are you real? Is your work real?’” Maag said. “It’s really complicated, the relationship between the teacher and the student in almost like a fundamental way.” 

Those teacher-led investigations have become more difficult over the years, professors say. While some bots simply don’t submit classwork and hope they can skate by, they also frequently use AI programs to generate classwork that they then submit. Determining whether a student is a bot can be a confusing task. After all, even real students use AI to do some good old-fashioned cheating in classes. 

There are some patterns though. Asynchronous online courses tend to be the heaviest hit. So are classes with large sizes and shorter-term courses, like those that run for only eight weeks. Some teachers also said classes whose names start with letters at the beginning of the alphabet are harder hit as well. 

The time spent doing Blade Runner-esque bot detection has also stretched professors thin, said Caree Lesh, a counselor and the president of Southwestern College’s Academic Senate.  

“It’s really hard to create a sense of community and help students who are struggling when you’re spending the first couple of weeks trying to figure out who’s a bot,” she said. 

Finding the fraudulent students early is key, though. If they can be identified and dropped before the third week of the semester, when Southwestern distributes aid funds, the bots don’t get the money they’re after. It also allows professors to open the seats held by scammers to real students who were crowded out. But dropping huge amounts of enrollees can also be frightening to teachers, who worry that should their classes not fill back up, they may be axed.  

Even after dropping the fraudulent students, though, the bot nightmare isn’t over.  

As soon as seats open up in classes, professors often receive hundreds of nearly identical emails from purported students requesting they be added to the class. Those emails tended to ring some linguistic alarm bells.  

They feature clunky phrases that are uncommon for modern students to use like “I kindly request,” “warm regards,” or “I look forward to your positive response.” Much of that stilted language lines up with what she’s seen from the AI-generated content submitted by bot students. 

That mad bot-powered dash for enrollment has left some students unable to register for the classes they need. It has also given rise to a sort of whisper network, where professors recommend students reference them by name when trying to get added to other classes. 

Kevin Alston, a business professor who has taught at Southwestern for nearly 20 years, has stumbled across even more troubling incidents. During a prior semester, he actually called some of the students who were enrolled in his classes but had not submitted any classwork.  

“One student said ‘I’m not in your class. I’m not even in the state of California anymore’” Alston recalled.  

The student told him they had been enrolled in his class two years ago but had since moved on to a four-year university out of state.  

“I said, ‘Oh, then the robots have grabbed your student ID and your name and re-enrolled you at Southwestern College. Now they’re collecting financial aid under your name,’” Alston said.  

A Game of Whack-A-Mole 

But exactly what colleges like Southwestern will do long-term isn’t entirely clear, at least partly because what they do will have to keep changing. The bots, like the AI technology that often undergirds them, are constantly evolving, leaving some leaders feeling like they’re playing a high stakes game of whack-a-mole. It has also made it difficult for leaders to stay ahead of the bots, said Mark Sanchez, Southwestern’s superintendent/president. 

The college has launched an Inauthentic Enrollment Mitigation Taskforce that meets regularly to game out ways to stay ahead of the bots. But as of late, district officials have been more proactive in their bot-attacks. A recent report concluded around 1,600 of the college’s 26,000 enrollees were bots. District leaders then dropped the suspected bots en masse from classes and required them to come in to prove they were real. Few did.  

Sanchez has treated exactly how the college has identified suspected bots almost like classified spycraft. 

“We have a whole set of parameters that we’re using … But I don’t want anything in print that fraudulent students would be able to see and say, ‘Okay, this is what they’re using. Let’s find workarounds to those parameters,’ because that, because then we would have to start all over again,” he said. 

Ultimately, though, he thinks much of the burden to catch bots needs to fall on the state. When students apply to Southwestern, they use a statewide application system. So, by the time the college gets a list of enrollees, it’s already littered with fraudulent students. 

“What we’ve asked the state is to put really solid protocols in the CCC Apply system,” Sanchez said. 

The California Community College system has put more resources toward detecting fraudulent students, partnering with a handful of tech companies, like ID.me to authenticate students. But that still hasn’t stopped the bots. As of March, scammers had already swindled nearly $4 million in federal and state financial aid. 

Tracy Schaelen is Southwestern’s distance education faculty coordinator. In that role she interfaces with many of the college’s online instructors. The current status quo, where teachers spend hours upon hours vetting suspicious students simply isn’t sustainable, she said.  

“Teachers are hired to teach. That’s their expertise, and that’s what their students need from them,” Schaelen said. 

That solution also can’t be the wholesale elimination of online classes, Schaelen said. Students have increasingly chosen online options, particularly the older, working students community colleges cater to. What’s really needed is a technological solution, she said. 

“If we scale back access, then that’s impacting our real students,” she said. “Our goal is to support our real students, so the solution needs to be on the back end, preventing the bots from getting in, not restricting access.”  

‘The District Is Not Stepping Up’ 

Everyone agrees – this is a nationwide issue, not something uniquely plaguing Southwestern. Still, some professors feel the college’s administration has done too little to get the crisis under control. Years have passed, but the problem has just gotten worse. 

“I am extremely disappointed with Southwestern College. I feel like the people who have been reporting this have been dismissed, have been ridiculed and have been treated as if they’re not telling the truth,” Smith, the teacher whose classes were filled with bots, said.  

She said she has lots of friends who work for other community colleges who can’t believe Southwestern faculty still have to spend hours of their day playing detective. 

“They say, ‘Yes, we had this problem – a year ago. We don’t have this problem anymore,’” Smith said. 

Sanchez said he understands people want a “magic solution,” to fix the bot crisis, but that’s just not possible. The technology used by scammers is too sophisticated, and the speed at which they adapt is too fast. He also added that he feels like the frustration is coming mostly from “one person,” who’s been vocal about their dismay.  

“The majority of the people on the campus have realized the work that we’ve been trying to do to mitigate this problem,” Sanchez said. 

That’s just not the case, said Lesh. As academic senate president, she’s heard from many faculty who share the frustration with the perceived lack of action.  

“Many people have chimed in at academic senate meetings about how frustrated they are that it seems like the district is not stepping up to the plate as quickly as faculty would like and are leaving it on our shoulders to figure the problem out,” she said. 

The post As ‘Bot’ Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond appeared first on Voice of San Diego.