Tag: News

  • IU Alumni Pull Donations Over Student Newspaper Censorship

    IU Alumni Pull Donations Over Student Newspaper Censorship

    Indiana University’s decision to suspend the print publication of its student newspaper is costing the institution: Alumni are pulling donations in protest. The university ended the Indiana Daily Student’s print edition after firing the paper’s adviser, who refused to comply with administrators’ request to remove news coverage from a homecoming edition of the paper.

    University leaders insist they’re not censoring the student paper but moving it to a digital platform in line with a business plan adopted last year to address the paper’s deficits. But alumni aren’t buying it, IndyStar reported. Some are asking what came of donations they made to a fund dedicated to the student publication after the newspaper reported students faced hurdles to spending the money. Other alumni are pulling their donations altogether.

    Former journalism student Patricia Esgate canceled $1.5 million in bequests she planned to leave to the university. Alum Ryan Gunterman, executive director of the Indiana High School Press Association and the faculty adviser of Franklin College’s student newspaper, posted on Facebook that he and his wife were ceasing all future donations after giving money to the university and newsroom for over two decades. Toby Cole, a fourth-generation alum of the institution, told IndyStar in an email that his family was ending its monthly contributions and a $300,000 planned gift for scholarships.

    “If IU can pay our [football] coach almost $100mm we can fund our IDS,” Cole said in the email. “Problem is ‘they’ don’t want an independent free speaking print newspaper because students actually wield power with it.”

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  • Misogyny and “Hoeflation” at the Nat’l Assoc. of Scholars

    Misogyny and “Hoeflation” at the Nat’l Assoc. of Scholars

    In an essay for Minding the Campus titled, “College Students in a Romance Recession, Boys Blame ‘Hoeflation,’” Jared Gould blames women for these imagined problems on campus, part of “a broad feminization of our institutions, which, to say the least, is not a good thing.”

    Gould uses the term “hoeflation” in his title to explain the problem of women being more selective than men on dating apps: “This imbalance has led young men to coin the term ‘hoeflation,’ the grind of chasing women they might barely fancy, but will date just to escape loneliness.” Oh, the poor lonely men, forced to work so hard to get laid by women they don’t like and call a “ho.” Why do all of these women—sorry, “hoes”—reject these obviously wonderful and respectful men?

    But ultimately the real problem, Gould says, is “leftist professors, who, bent on fueling radicalization, are largely to blame for the chasm between the sexes.” Those feminist faculty, Gould says, must be eliminated from universities to allow beautiful romances to blossom between the real men and their “hoes.”

    Why is Minding the Campus publishing this misogynist nonsense? Minding the Campus is a leading conservative voice about academia, owned by the National Association of Scholars, with Peter Wood as its executive editor.

    For a moment, I wondered if perhaps the NAS had been fooled by a left-wing hoax, publishing a work of such gross misogyny that had been planted to humiliate them. But no, Gould is not some random idiot. This idiot is the managing editor of Minding the Campus, following positions as a research fellow at Speech First and a senior editor at Campus Reform. He’s an influential voice and editor within the conservative movement.

    Beyond his open embrace of misogyny, Gould suffers from a lack of fact-checking skills.

    Gould wrote, “This August, a University of Tennessee professor canceled class to celebrate Taylor Swift’s engagement. Rather than using the moment to critique Swift’s portrayal of marriage as the ultimate career capstone, his canceling class quietly reinforced the idea that dating and partnership are secondary to education, career, and financial goals.”

    In reality, Tennessee communications professor Matthew Pittman was teaching his social media class and recorded a skit with his students pretending to cancel class despite the “biochem midterm” (in August!) he claimed was planned that day. It was a test of how misinformation spreads online and persists even after the truth is revealed, and Gould failed the test miserably.

    Gould got fooled multiple times by the hoax after being informed that it was a hoax, initially writing in August that the cancellation of class was “staged” but still somehow thinking it was real, both in his own article and another essay by Samuel Abrams at Minding the Campus. Just two months later, Gould is still repeating the fake story.

    Of course, even if a professor had canceled class to celebrate Swift’s upcoming marriage, that would be precisely the opposite of showing how “dating and partnership are secondary” to other goals. Gould managed to repeatedly fall for a hoax and still draw all the wrong conclusions from the fake news.

    But let’s not allow Gould’s misogyny and incompetence to distract us from how incredibly stupid his essay truly is. Gould began his article with a remarkably broad generalization based on one strange anecdote: “Love seems to be over for college students. That’s at least what I gathered from a recent conversation with a student in Texas.” Gould reported that this man is “not scoring dates” even though he took a dance class, which, it turned out was “a giant sausage fest” full of men seeking to find that most elusive creature, the single woman on a college campus. Assuming that this student is real, it’s still difficult to connect Gould’s bizarre conclusions from this pointless story with a data set of precisely one dude.

    According to Gould, “College girls have stopped looking for dates, and the men—well, they’ve learned to keep their eyes glued to the ground, lest they star in a viral TikTok captioned, ‘Guy looked at me—send help.’” Ah, yes, the poor men, unable to even look at anyone on campus because the feminazis will call 911 if they can see a man’s eyes. No wonder men are so rare on college campuses, when even their eyes are oppressed and they must pay the terrible price of “hoeflation.”

    Although it may be tempting to laugh at Gould’s embarrassing attempt at cultural analysis, his solution is ominous: “reforming higher education. We should dismantle the careerist catechism that emanates from it and shutter its sex fairs that peddle pleasure as a proxy for partnership.”

    Beyond banning “sex fairs,” Gould wants massive repression to “de-trench institutions of leftist professors.” We’ve seen a lot of awful excuses on the right for silencing speech on campus, from pretending to care about antisemitism to defending white people from the crime of diversity. But helping men get dates and sparing them the costs of “hoeflation” may be the worst reasons yet offered by conservatives for their campaign of campus censorship.

    John K. Wilson was a 2019–20 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Routledge, 2008), and his forthcoming book The Attack on Academia. He can be reached at [email protected], or letters to the editor can be sent to [email protected].

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  • $1.2B Fine, Nix Trans Athlete Wins, More

    $1.2B Fine, Nix Trans Athlete Wins, More

    The Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay $1.2 billion and restrict student freedoms.

    Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

    The details of the Trump administration’s demands on the University of California, Los Angeles—in addition to the previously reported $1.2 billion payout the federal government asked for—have finally been revealed. A lawsuit by UC faculty unions forced the higher ed system to release a copy of a draft resolution agreement, shedding light on the terms UC was first faced with nearly three months ago.

    The Trump administration has demanded, among other things, that UCLA not enroll “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment.” In the same paragraph, the proposed resolution agreement says UCLA would have to “socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.”

    The federal government also demanded that UCLA ban overnight campus demonstrations and mandate that masked campus protesters reveal their identities when asked.

    Multiple provisions aim to limit transgender individuals’ rights. The document demands that UCLA’s medical school and affiliated hospitals stop “performing hormonal interventions and ‘transgender’ surgeries” on anyone under 18; stop allowing transgender women to play on women’s sports teams; strip records, awards and other recognition from transgender women athletes; and send personal apologies to the cisgender women who placed lower than trans athletes.

    California voters banned affirmative action in public education nearly 30 years ago, but the demand letter suggests the Trump administration doesn’t think UCLA has complied. It would require UCLA to bar providing “information about candidates’ race, sex, ethnicity, or other protected characteristics to faculty or other UCLA personnel with decision-making authority over hiring, retention, promotion or tenure.”

    Other provisions target affirmative action in hiring and student admissions, including a line that says, “UCLA shall discontinue race- and ethnicity-based scholarships.” The proposed agreement says “proxies used to effectuate race-based or sex-based outcomes” aren’t allowed in selecting for fellowship programs and also bans the use of such undefined proxies in hiring and admissions.

    The document’s release comes after UC said in early August that it would negotiate with the federal government, citing the estimated $584 million in funding that at least three different federal agencies had announced they were suspending. That funding freeze followed a July 29 letter to UC from the Department of Justice, which said its months-long investigations across the system had so far concluded that in its response to a pro-Palestinian protest encampment in spring 2024, UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

    It was yet another example of the Trump administration accusing a selective university of tolerating antisemitism and cutting off hundreds of millions of federal dollars. But, unlike Harvard and Columbia Universities, UCLA is a public institution, and its targeting by the federal government represents an expansion of the administration’s campaign to overhaul higher ed.

    Last week, the University of Virginia became the first known public institution to settle with the administration over discrimination allegations. That settlement didn’t require a payout, but among other things, UVA committed to not use proxies for race; to end all diversity, equity and inclusion programming; and to prohibit trans athletes from participating in sports.

    Media earlier reported some of the administration’s demands on UCLA, but university officials didn’t make the details public until Friday, when a lawsuit by the UCLA Faculty Association and Council of UC Faculty Associations forced them to.

    “Accession to these demands would be to undermine everything that has made the UC the successful engine of social mobility and economic might that it has been for our state,” Anna Markowitz, president of the UCLA Faculty Association, wrote in an email. “It will harm undergraduate learning opportunities, and hamper UC’s ability to be a scholarly leader on the international stage. It enshrines ideology at the heart of the institution rather than decades of empirical and scholarly understanding. We stand against this extortion effort.”

    Markowitz said the “UCLA FA and CUCFA have stood with our union colleagues in calling for no negotiations since the beginning.” The university administration “is under intense federal pressure,” she said, and she urged them to resist—“particularly because other faculty legal action has resulted in the restoration of nearly all of the temporarily suspended federal grants.”

    Indeed, Stett Holbrook, a UC spokesperson, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed Monday that “as for terminated federal research funds, that figure is in the tens of millions”—a far cry from the August estimate of $584 million.

    He provided a statement saying, “UC has been clear it must evaluate its response to the administration’s settlement proposal that, like all settlement communications, is confidential. As stated previously, the proposed $1.2 billion settlement payment alone would derail work that saves lives, grows our economy, and fortifies our national security. UC remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the University.”

    White House and DOJ officials didn’t respond to requests for interviews Monday or answer written questions.

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  • Students Share Feelings of Belonging on Campuses

    Students Share Feelings of Belonging on Campuses

    Seven in 10 college students say most or nearly all students on their college campus feel welcomed, valued and supported, according to a July 2025 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab.

    The data, collected from over 260 two- and four-year colleges across the country, paints a relatively rosy picture of students’ sentiments on campus this fall against the backdrop of free speech restrictions, tense protests and cutbacks to programs that serve students from racial minorities.

    While respondents indicated the average student is welcome at their institution, they were less confident about whether they themselves fit in academically or socially.

    Fewer than one-third of respondents said they have an “excellent” or “above average” sense of social belonging on campus; 42 percent reported “average” feelings of belonging. Additionally, 38 percent of students said they had an “excellent” or “above average” sense of academic fit at their institution, while just under half said they had an average sense of academic fit.

    Survey data also pointed to positive sentiments about personal and academic inquiry. When asked how encouraged and supported they felt to explore different perspectives and challenge their beliefs, a majority of students indicated they feel “somewhat” (45 percent) or “very” supported (35 percent) on campus.

    A Warm Welcome

    Campus climate, or the perception of how much respect and inclusion students feel on campus, is tied to learning; research shows that students who face discrimination are less likely to succeed academically. Research has also found that students of color are less likely than their white peers to report feeling at home at college.

    Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice survey found minor variance among racial groups in reporting a generally positive campus climate. White students (75 percent) and Asian American or Pacific Islander students (73 percent) were most likely to indicate “most” or “nearly all” students are welcome on campus, compared to Hispanic (71 percent) or Black (68 percent) respondents. Seventy percent of “other” students, which Generation Lab classifies as students of two or more races or who come from outside the U.S., had positive reviews on campus climate.

    Adult and two-year students were more likely to say nearly all students are welcome on campus (24 percent) than the average respondent (20 percent), which could reflect the diverse student bodies at two-year institutions and the preferences of adult learners to enroll in two-year or online institutions.

    By comparison, students who had considered leaving college were less likely to say “most” or “nearly all” students are welcomed (64 percent) compared to all respondents (73 percent) or students who had never considered dropping out (77 percent).

    Three percent of survey respondents wrote in other responses, indicating they completed their classes online and therefore could not speak to the campus climate.

    Academic Success and Belonging

    The survey also asked students to rank their own sense of social belonging and academic fit on a scale of poor to excellent.

    Across racial demographics, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students were most likely to rate their social belonging as high (33 percent), followed by white and international students (30 percent each), Black students (25 percent), and Latinos (22 percent).

    On academic fit, white students had the highest ratings; 43 percent of respondents said their fit was “excellent” or “above average,” followed by AAPI (42 percent), Black students (33 percent) and Latino students (30 percent).

    Students who had considered leaving college were much more likely than their peers to report they had a “poor” sense of belonging (15 percent versus 6 percent).

    First-generation students were more likely to rate their sense of academic fit and social belonging as “below average” or “poor” (17 percent and 37 percent, respectively) compared to their continuing-generation peers (13 percent and 28 percent).

    DEI Cutbacks

    Inside Higher Ed’s survey also asked students whether federal actions to limit diversity, equity and inclusion have impacted their experiences. The most popular response was “no real impact on my experience” (37 percent), and a handful of students wrote in that they anticipated greater impact after returning to campus this fall. This view held across racial groups, with the greatest share of respondents saying it hasn’t impacted their experience.

    About 20 percent of students said the changes to DEI on campus have “somewhat negatively impacted my experience” and 16 percent indicated “I don’t feel impacted, but my peers have been negatively impacted.”

    Nonbinary students were most likely to say it’s severely negatively impacting their experience (39 percent).

    Ten percent of respondents said they are somewhat or significantly impacted in a positive manner by the changes.

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  • National Institute on Transfer Prepares to Close

    National Institute on Transfer Prepares to Close

    For over two decades, the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students has bridged two worlds—the researchers who study transfer students and the campus staff who work with them. Located at the University of North Georgia, NISTS has gathered these groups for annual conferences, disseminated resources and research, and doled out awards for groundbreaking work.

    Now, university leaders say they can no longer afford to fund NISTS. At the end of October, NISTS, at least in its current form, will shutter.

    The institute “has made a lasting impact in improving transfer policy and practice nationwide,” and “its research has informed how colleges and universities support transfer student success,” university officials said in a statement.

    But “unfortunately, due to ongoing budget constraints and a realignment of institutional priorities, the university is no longer able to financially support the Institute,” the statement read. “We are proud of the Institute’s legacy and the many partnerships it has built, and we remain committed to serving transfer students through our academic programs and student success initiatives.”

    Janet Marling, NISTS’s executive director, said that over the past year, institute staff tried but ultimately couldn’t find a new permanent home for their work—at least for now. She hopes that other organizations will carry on parts of the institute’s work, including its conferences and programs, and house its research and resources so transfer professionals can continue to benefit from them.

    “We have heard, time and time again, there just isn’t anyone else providing the resources, the community, the networking, the translation of research to practice in the transfer sphere in the way that NISTS is doing it,” Marling said.

    ‘A Terrible Loss’

    NISTS prides itself on taking a unique approach, connecting staff who span the transfer student experience—from admissions professionals to advisers to faculty members—in an effort to holistically improve transfer student success. Transfer practitioners and researchers worry NISTS’s closure will have ripple effects across the field.

    Alexandra Logue, professor emerita at the CUNY Graduate Center, said the transfer process inherently involves multiple institutions working together, including, in some cases, across state lines; about a quarter of transfer students choose to go to a four-year college or university in another state.

    Logue appreciated that NISTS conferences offered a rare “chance for people from all the different states in the country to come together” to coordinate and swap best practices. Such programs also allowed transfer researchers like her to share their findings with staff working directly with transfer students on campuses.

    “The research that we do is pointless if it isn’t put into practice,” Logue said.

    While other organizations are doing powerful work to improve transfer student outcomes, NISTS played a major role in bringing new visibility to transfer students’ needs by making them a singular focus, said Stephen Handel, a NISTS advisory board member.

    The institute “added a legitimacy to a constituency of students that often got forgotten,” Handel said. “NISTS was completely focused on that constituency alone, and that’s what made it unique.”

    Eileen Strempel, also on the advisory board, said she got involved with NISTS when she served as an administrator at Syracuse University and sought to create a strategic plan to improve transfer outcomes—an area she hadn’t done much work in before.

    “I felt like, oh, wow, there’s a brain trust already for me, the neophyte, the learner who doesn’t know very much about transfer at all,” she said. She called the closure “a terrible loss.”

    She said NISTS leaders often asked conference participants how many of them had never attended a convention focused on transfer students before; Each year, most hands went up.

    “To me, what that moment always crystallized was the important role that NISTS had” in helping practitioners figure out “how they could learn from other colleagues, that they didn’t need to recreate the wheel,” Strempel said.

    Those lessons have had downstream effects on students.

    Each practitioner came out better equipped “to help hundreds, if not thousands of students,” Strempel said.

    Marling said one of the most exciting parts of the work was seeing its impact on students across the country. For example, she watched graduates of NISTS’s post-master’s certificate program in transfer leadership and practice go on to make meaningful changes on their campuses, such as establishing new transfer partnerships with other institutions or revamping training for advisers to improve transfer students’ experiences.

    She said she feels “profoundly sad” about NISTS shuttering at University of North Georgia, but she also believes NISTS will live on in some form because of the “tremendous outpouring of support and concern” that followed the announcement of its closure.

    “I’m very hopeful that the spirit of NISTS will continue,” whether that’s as an institute elsewhere or “within the many, many transfer champions that are working in higher education across the country. I’m really excited to see how individuals and institutions take what they’ve learned from NISTS and continue to grow their focus on transfer students and continue to provide equitable opportunities for these students.”

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  • 3 Arrests Made at University of Michigan Protest

    3 Arrests Made at University of Michigan Protest

    The arrests were made on the campus in Ann Arbor on Wednesday evening.

    Courtesy of the University of Michigan.

    Three pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested on the University of Michigan campus Wednesday, MLive Media Group, a local news organization, reported.

    The TAHRIR Coalition, a campus student group, led the protest in response to an event held by the university’s Students Supporting Israel chapter, which featured several Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

    Melissa Overton, the university’s deputy chief of public safety and security, told MLive that the individuals arrested were not affiliated with the university. She said the protesters blocked the exit to an underground parking garage and refused to move when ordered to. 

    They were charged with resisting and obstructing police, attempting to disarm an officer, disorderly conduct, and outstanding warrants, Overton said. The case has been forwarded to a prosecutor, she noted.

    Erek Mirque, a member of TAHRIR, told MLive that the arrests came as a surprise and that he was unaware of any confrontation with officers before the arrests.

    “We did not expect the situation to escalate the way that it did,” he said.

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  • Fake News Brings Me to an Unusual Topic for this Blog – Teaching in Higher Ed

    Fake News Brings Me to an Unusual Topic for this Blog – Teaching in Higher Ed

    This post is one of many, related to my participation in  Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery workshop.

    The topic for this lesson is fake news. Jarche instructs us that there are four primary types of fake news and he asks us to find an example of each type. I don’t normally post overtly political content here on my blog, but when it comes to the topic of fake news, it seemed easier to focus on politics than teaching and learning.

    The closest I could come off the top of my head in my normal topics was the Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning podcast, and the many podcasts I’ve done about grading and assessment. But I’m still going to stick with politics for now. Stop reading if you aren’t prepared to read examples of the current US presidential administration lying.

    Four Types of Fake News

    1. Propaganda – Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause.” – Merriam WebsterExample – Snopes shares 12 times AI generated or doctored content was shared by Trump or the White House. These examples seem to fit under propaganda, since they attempt to influencing people’s attitudes and beliefs. Though that also sounds like disinformation to me and I’m still not clear I know the difference.
    2. Disinformation – “False information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.” – Merriam WebsterExample – Trump states that there is no inflation in the US. There are some who say that Trump’s specific type of lying falls under the category of bullshit, as defined by Harry Frankfurt in his book, On Bullshit. Either way, it feels like shooting fish in a barrel to find examples of disinformation from this administration.
    3. Conspiracy theory – “Persist for a long time even when there is no decisive evidence for them… Based on a variety of thinking patterns that are known to be unreliable tools for tracking reality.” – The Conspiracy Theory Handbook, by Lewandowski + CookExample – Ok. So this isn’t a genuine conspiracy, rather it was satirical from the start. But given how I feel after finding those examples of propaganda and disinformation, I needed a little break. The “birds aren’t real” satirical conspiracy scratches a certain itch for me, as someone who enjoys learning about birds.
    4. Clickbait – “Text or a thumbnail that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow (“click”) that link and view, read, stream or listen to the linked piece of online content, being typically deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading… A defining characteristic of clickbait is misrepresentation in the enticement presented to the user to manipulate them to click onto a link.” – WikipediaExample – Bryan Tyler Cohen is rather notorious for using clickbait YouTube video titles on his main channel. I saw a video of him explaining that he knows they are frustrating to people, but that they really generate far more views, in his testing. He even created an alternate channel (Bryan Tyler Cohen News) with more toned down titles, which he suggests can be better to send to people who may be on a different side of the issues than him, politically.

    My Muddiest Point

    I’m having a hard time distinguishing between disinformation and propaganda. Jarche shared a quote from researcher Renée DiResta, who would prefer our focus be on the word propaganda, as it is more descriptive of the problem at hand.

    El Pais: The problem is not misinformation

    Q. Why do you prefer the word “propaganda” to “misinformation”?

    A. Misinformation implies that the problem is one of facts, and it’s never been a problem of facts. It’s a problem of people wanting to receive information that makes them feel comfortable and happy. Anti-vaccine messages don’t appeal to facts, but to the identity of the recipient. They’re saying: “If you are a person on the right, you should not trust these vaccines.” It’s very much tied to political identity. Misinformation implies that if you were to say that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an absolute clown who knows absolutely nothing about vaccines or their relationship to autism, and that this has been researched to ad nauseam by scientists, if it were a problem of misinformation, you would assume that people would say, “Oh, here’s the accurate information, so I’m going to change my mind.” But that’s not the case. It’s a topic of identity, of beliefs, and that’s why propaganda is a more appropriate term.

    But I’m still not entirely clear I can distinguish propaganda from disinformation at this time.

    Handling Conspiracy Theories with Students

    I have such a hard time navigating conspiracy theories with students who take business ethics with me. We have a whole section of the class where they learn how to use Mike Caulfield’s SIFT framework to fact check the articles they read about business ethics related news stories throughout our semester together. I’ve found it is practically useless to ask them the question from Mike’s mini course about if they or someone they’re close to has ever believed in a conspiracy theory before.

    There’s so much of one’s identity that gets wrapped up in what we believe. Generally, they don’t view these beliefs as conspiracies if they or their loved ones believe in them.

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  • What to Know about NYC School Bus Companies’ Shutdown Threats – The 74

    What to Know about NYC School Bus Companies’ Shutdown Threats – The 74


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    New York City’s troubled yellow school bus system is in the spotlight once again, with threats of a service disruption and looming mass layoffs due to a contract dispute with the city.

    The city’s largest school bus companies notified the state Department of Labor that they are preparing to shut down operations and lay off employees on Nov. 1 if they don’t receive a contract extension, the New York Post first reported Monday.

    Lawmakers, advocates, and city officials immediately condemned the bus companies’ threat, with schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos calling the move “deeply upsetting and an act of bad faith.”

    The timing of the bus company’s push, just before November’s mayoral election, for a five-year extension that would outlast the incoming mayor’s first term, “effectively bypassed the oversight of voters and elected officials who manage these vital services,” Aviles-Ramos said.

    Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani agreed, telling reporters at an unrelated Tuesday press conference that the oversight panel in charge of approving the contract “is right to not give in to the threats.”

    The bus companies argue they have no choice because their temporary contract is expiring and they can no longer operate without a longer-term agreement.

    The episode is the latest in a long history of conflicts over how to manage the sprawling yellow bus system, which relies on a patchwork of largely for-profit companies to ferry some 150,000 students across nearly 19,000 routes each day. All told, the city spent nearly $2 billion on school busing last year.

    Parents and advocates hope this clash can draw renewed attention to problems in a system notorious for delayed and no-show buses, long rides without sufficient AC, and a lack of transparency.

    “There’s this tug of war over the money,” said Sara Catalinotto, the executive director of the advocacy group Parents for Improving School Transportation. “But this is a service, and without it these kids are discriminated against.”

    What’s the history behind these bus contracts?

    The current dispute springs from a disagreement over how to handle the city’s “legacy” school bus contracts, which date back to the 1970s and are typically renewed every five years. They most recently expired in June.

    In the months before the contracts expired, city Education Department officials signaled they were interested in rebidding the contracts, or soliciting offers from a new set of companies to more efficiently modernize buses, increase service, and strengthen sanctions for contract violations.

    Simply renewing the existing contracts gives the city “far less negotiating ability … because we have to continue with this same set of vendors,” Emma Vadehra, the Education Department’s former deputy chancellor, told the City Council in May.

    But city officials say they can’t move forward with rebidding without the option to offer something called the “Employee Protection Provision,” or EPP.

    That protection — built into the legacy contracts for decades — ensures unionized bus workers laid off by one company are prioritized for hiring by other companies, at their existing wages. Drivers and union officials consider the provision a dealbreaker — and would almost certainly strike without it.

    But city officials say a 2011 state court decision prohibits them from inserting EPP into new contracts if they rebid — and only allows them to keep EPP if they extend existing contracts. The only fix, city officials say, is changing state law — an effort that has so far stalled in Albany.

    Without that state legislation, city officials faced a choice: inking another five-year extension or pushing for a shorter-term contract in the hopes state lawmakers quickly clear the way for a rebid.

    Who is opposed to a five-year contract renewal?

    While the city moved ahead with negotiations for a five-year extension, a growing number of advocates, parents, and lawmakers flooded meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP — the body that approves Education Department contracts — to push for a shorter-term contract.

    “Do not vote yes to extend for some long period of time,” said Christi Angel, a parent leader in District 75, which serves students with significant disabilities who disproportionately rely on busing, at the September PEP meeting. Roughly 43% of students who ride school buses have disabilities. “Don’t reward bad behavior,” Angel said. “This is a broken system.”

    Their arguments quickly gained traction in the PEP, where multiple members expressed their opposition to a five-year extension at September’s meeting.

    The panel is expected to vote on the five-year extension next month, after the mayoral election, said PEP Chair Greg Faulkner, though he would prefer to wait until the new mayor takes office in January.

    “Shouldn’t the mayor-elect have some say in a billion dollar contract?” said Faulkner. “I just think that’s sound governance.”

    Why are the city and bus companies at odds right now?

    Over the summer, the city and bus companies agreed to two emergency extensions to keep service running, the second of which expires on Oct. 31.

    Without a guarantee of an active contract after that date — since the PEP is not voting this month — the bus companies claim they have no choice but to consider layoffs.

    The city, however, had “long planned” to offer an emergency extension for November and December, and officials delivered the agreement to the bus companies on Monday, Aviles-Ramos said.

    The PEP only votes on those extensions after they’ve already taken effect, Faulkner noted.

    The bus companies, he said, are attempting to “create confusion in order to hold us hostage for a longer term agreement.”

    The bus companies reject that assertion and say they simply cannot survive any longer on emergency extensions, which don’t allow them the kind of long-term certainty they need to operate their businesses.

    “Banks will not finance 30-day extensions, buses can’t be bought, payroll cannot be paid,” said Sean Crowley, a lawyer representing several companies. “Enough is enough!”

    The companies claim that they have already worked out the contours of a new five-year contract extension with the city and are just awaiting the PEP’s approval, though Faulkner said the Education Department hasn’t yet presented the PEP with the contract.

    What happens from here?

    A spokesperson confirmed that several bus companies had received the city’s offer for another emergency contract extension and were reviewing the documents.

    Aviles-Ramos said the city is working to get “alternative transportation services” in place if that falls through.

    But even if the bus companies and city do manage to avoid a service shutdown Nov. 1, the episode raises larger questions about how to make lasting improvements in the troubled system. Ongoing driver shortages make that task even harder.

    The bus companies argue that the five-year contract agreement they sketched out with the city would achieve many of those goals, including stricter accountability to ensure drivers use GPS tracking, more staffing to field parent complaints, and monetary penalties for companies that underperform, according to testimony submitted to the PEP in September.

    But critics continue to push for a shorter-term extension to give the state legislature time to pass EPP legislation, and clear the way for a rebid.

    Mamdani has not offered specifics about how he would manage the school bus system, but said Tuesday that given the many concerns about yellow bus service, any contract extension deserves a “hard look.”

    Some reformers point to changes already underway. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city bought out the largest bus company and turned it over to a nonprofit overseen by the city.

    Matt Berlin, the CEO of that nonprofit, called NYCSBUS, and former director of the city’s Office of Pupil Transportation, believes the nonprofit model has “a lot to offer the city” and could expand.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.


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  • Minneapolis School Board Signals Potential School Closures – The 74

    Minneapolis School Board Signals Potential School Closures – The 74


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    The Minneapolis school board has formally asked Superintendent Dr. Lisa Sayles-Adams for information that could lead to school closures. They passed a resolution to the effect at a recent meeting.

    The board first drafted the directive —which asks for an initial report to the board by April 2026 — at two day-long meetings in June and August. The planning follows years of discussion about closing schools in a district with 29,000 students but the capacity for 42,000 and thus a bevy of half-empty schools.

    Even as enrollment declines at a school building, the fixed expenses for building staff — like principals, secretaries, nurses, librarians, culinary workers, custodians and social workers — stay the same or go up. With so many buildings below capacity, a big portion of each Minneapolis student’s funding has to go toward covering these fixed building-level costs, draining money away from instruction and extracurricular activities.

    The board resolution comprises topics for district administrators to investigate, including efficient use of current buildings, potential changes to magnet programs, and ways to increase enrollment in the district.

    Years-long discussion about the financial burden of operating small enrollment schools

    The process for downsizing the district’s footprint has been long and circuitous.

    In October 2022, the district prepared a comprehensive financial assessment forecasting that without significant cost cutting, the district would end up draining its reserves, while expenses would exceed revenues by the end of fiscal year 2026. The district has avoided that fate by cutting services and raising class sizes, but it is still unable to balance its budget without relying on reserves and other one-time funds.

    The 2022 memo did not prescribe closing schools, but it did present an analysis showing enrollment growth alone could not overcome the district’s structural inefficiencies resulting from operating many schools with small enrollments. At the time of the analysis, Anoka-Hennepin was operating 37 school buildings while enrolling about 37,000 students. Minneapolis was operating 61 buildings while enrolling about 29,000 students. Minneapolis had about half as many students per building as Anoka-Hennepin.

    The board first publicly discussed reducing the number of schools in March 2023, when then-board Chair Sharon El-Amin asked Rochelle Cox, the then-interim superintendent, to develop a draft plan for “school transformation.” Neither Cox nor the board took action.

    Two months before current Superintendent Dr. Lisa Sayles-Adams started at the district in early 2024, the School Board passed a “transformation resolution” that directed the district to do an accounting of physical space but stopped short of calling for a timeline on school closures.

    Sayle-Adams promised to tackle “right-sizing” the district after passing a budget in June 2024, because, she said, the community asked her to address the issue.

    Low enrollment schools require more funding per student for building-level staff

    The district is contending with rising costs and operating a significant number of small buildings, as well as buildings operating below capacity. Given the rising fixed costs of operating these buildings, that leaves less money for everything else, from class size reduction to teacher pay and programs commonly found in most school districts like world languages, art, music and athletics.

    Across the district, as building-level enrollment has declined, students have lost access to services like academic support if they’re struggling; staff to address student behavior; and community liaisons to help parents connect with schools. Small elementary schools have difficulty funding full-time positions for electives like art, music and gym, while hiring part-time staff for these positions is challenging. Some elementary students have gone without these electives, or only have music or art for part of the school year.

    Enrollment declines at middle and high schools have meant fewer elective options, like world languages, dance, theater and orchestra, as well as extracurriculars. Students also lose access to advanced coursework — like AP or IB classes — when there are too few students in the school who want to enroll. Many of the district’s high schools are now sharing athletic teams because individual schools lack enough students and funding to support a robust athletics program.

    The decline in services drives some families to schools outside the district that have the services and programs they desire, compounding the enrollment declines.

    Declines in enrollment mitigated by new-to-country students

    Minneapolis Public Schools lost about 15% of its enrollment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to a combination of factors including implementing a controversial plan redrawing school boundaries, and keeping its schools closed longer during the pandemic than any other Minnesota district, which was followed in March 2022 by a three week educator strike.

    The district has enjoyed a small enrollment increase both last year and this year. Although the district does not track the immigration status of students, the increase has been attributed almost entirely to students newly arrived to the United States from Central America. Since the 2021-22 school year, English learner students have increased from 17% of the district’s students to 23% in the 2024-25 school year, according to Minnesota Department of Education data.

    This year, the district expects to spend at least $17 million more on English learner services than it receives in funding from state and federal sources. Although the Legislature increased state aid for English learners during the 2023 legislative session, the district’s funding is insufficient to cover the cost of providing the intensive services needed by students with the lowest levels of English proficiency.

    Many of the newcomer students are also unhoused, which has led to growing costs for the district to transport students from shelters outside district boundaries, as required under the federal McKinney-Vento law. The state has started to pay the cost of this transportation under a law passed in 2023.

    It is not clear whether changes to federal immigration policy will impact the district’s ability to continue to rely on newcomers to stabilize or grow enrollment in the future.

    Future enrollment expected to decline, limiting district’s funding

    Hazel Reinhardt, a demographer hired by the district, says enrollment is likely to continue to decline in the coming years because of lower birth rates, fewer families choosing to raise children in the city, and the state’s favorable laws around charter schools and open enrollment, allowing parents to send their children to St. Paul or suburban schools.

    Reinhardt told the board in June that once parents leave for charter and private schools or open enrollment options, “precious few” districts are able to bring them back.

    Most of the district’s funding is based on enrollment, so declining enrollment has created a ballooning fiscal crisis. Growing costs for both labor and services have outpaced increases in state and local funding.

    The district continues to cut services, increase class sizes and pull from its dwindling reserve funds to balance its annual budget. The district is expected to use $25 million from its reserves this school year after using $85 million from reserves last school year.

    The district’s enrollment woes and related financial distress are not unique to Minneapolis, with similar challenges facing large urban districts like Oakland, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle and Portland. Denver and Oakland have closed a small number of schools in recent years, but not enough to stabilize district finances. And school boards in Seattle and San Francisco have walked away from closure plans after significant public pressure, leaving both districts with growing budget deficits.

    Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: [email protected].


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  • Nevada Funding for Dolly Parton Book Program in Clark County Dries Up – The 74

    Nevada Funding for Dolly Parton Book Program in Clark County Dries Up – The 74


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    Over the past two years, upwards of 18,000 young children in the Las Vegas metro area have received free monthly books in the mail as part of an early literacy program started by country icon Dolly Parton. But that ends this month.

    Storied Inc., the Clark County-based nonprofit partner for Parton’s Imagination Library, last week announced to parents and guardians that its October books would be the last until additional funding for the program is secured. The program, when funded, provides a free, age-appropriate monthly book to children 0 to 5 years old.

    According to Meredith Helmick, executive director of Storied, the nonprofit sought funding from the Nevada State Legislature earlier this year to keep the program going after an initial two-years of state grant funding ended, but they came up empty handed.

    Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager sponsored a bill to appropriate $3.9 million to the United Way of Northern Nevada and the Sierra, which currently runs the Imagination Library for Washoe County residents, to expand the program statewide. The bill was referred to the Assembly Committee on Ways & Means, where it languished until the end of the regular session without a hearing or even a mention, according to the legislature’s website.

    Helmick also hoped the nonprofit program might be able to secure funding through Senate Bill 460, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro’s omnibus education legislation.

    An early version of that bill appropriated $50 million for early childhood literacy readiness programs, but an amendment reduced that to $0 for the fiscal year beginning July 2025 and $12 million for the fiscal year beginning July 2026. Helmick says lawmakers chose to prioritize expansion of preschool seats, a Cannizzaro priority.

    SB460 was heavily negotiated and amended to include many of Gov. Joe Lombardo’s education priorities. Those priorities included setting aside $7 million in grant funding for charter school transportation.

    It appears those other priorities came at the expense of existing innovative programs that were working.

    Helmick says a survey of her families last year found 62% of them had fewer than 20 children’s books in their homes before enrolling their children in the program.

    “This program is such a low cost, high reward program,” she added.

    Helmick is hopeful the program can return to the Las Vegas area. She says Storied is having conversations with large companies and other nonprofits, reaching out to elected officials at all levels of government, and urging their supporters to do the same.

    “We’ve heard rumors of a special session,” she adds. “Can we rewrite SB460 to include the language that it took out? Are there other funds that we could add or tap into that we could fit under? Maybe that’s an avenue.”

    ‘It isn’t just about the books’

    Meredith Helmick and her husband, Kyle, were inspired to start Storied Inc. after attempting to sign up their daughter for Imagination Library only to learn the nationwide program didn’t serve their area.

    Dolly Parton launched Imagination Library in 1995 and the program has since given out more than 250 million free books to children in the United States and four other countries.

    Storied Inc. is one of several partners running the program in Nevada. According to Helmick, the other partners have managed to continue their programs, either in whole or by scaling down the number of kids served.

    The sheer size of Clark County’s population makes that a tougher task for Storied. According to the Imagination Library’s website, nearly 29,000 Nevada children are enrolled, the vast majority through Storied.

    Helmick says that before they even had a chance to market the program or figure out stable funding, an intrepid stranger found the sign up form and shared it on a social media group for parents in Las Vegas.

    “In 48 hours, we had 3,500 kids registered,” she recalls. “It was, like, ‘I guess we’re doing it now.’ But it all worked out beautifully.”

    From there, the program quickly grew just by word of mouth. It was funded from June 2023 to July 2025 by a grant from the state’s Early Childhood Innovative Literacy Program. Participation fluctuates each month as kids are signed up or age out at 5 years old, but Helmick says it stays in the range of 18,000 or 19,000 thousand children spanning most of Clark County.

    (Boulder City residents have a dedicated partner, Reading to Z, which currently serves fewer than 200 kids. Rural Clark County residents who live in Valley Electric Association’s service area can sign up for a program run by the energy cooperative’s charitable foundation.)

    Over the summer, with the funding drying up, Storied stopped accepting new kids into the program.

    “We didn’t want to disappoint families” by starting to send them books only to stop sending them a few months later, said Helmick. “One thing that sets (Imagination Library) apart is these books are sent directly to their home. I am a huge proponent of libraries. I’m there practically every week. But not everybody is able to do that. That is a barrier.”

    Additionally, the books arrive addressed to the child.

    “Getting it in the mail, the label with their name, it gives them ownership of the book,” says Helmick. “It makes a huge difference. I didn’t realize it until I heard it from families.”

    On the inside of each book cover is a note from Imagination Library with tips for parents on conversations they can have with their child about the book, or questions they can ask to boost critical thinking and early reading skills.

    “It isn’t just about the books and the words and the stories you’re reading with your kids,” said Helmick. “It’s sitting together side by side. It’s having conversations with them.”

    Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: [email protected].


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