During the pandemic, California community colleges lost 19% of their enrollment, but as a new report found, a handful of schools bucked the trend.

Researchers with the Campaign for College Opportunity found some schools had smaller losses or even added students by focusing on equity and expanding outreach.

Colleen Moore, higher-education research and policy consultant who interviewed dozens of college administrators for the study, explained financial support was helpful.

"All the colleges I spoke with talked about expanding financial supports in some way," Moore recounted. "Through things like transportation and book vouchers as a means of helping low-income students stay enrolled."

Schools also relied on data analytics to see where students were stopping out and refine course schedules, curriculum, programs and institutional policies to better meet student needs. They also increased partnerships with local employers to offer students a path to a job after graduation, and tried to create a more supportive campus culture.

Moore added many of the schools expanded their efforts to reach out to current, former and prospective students.

"Some people talked about explicit efforts to divide up their list of students to contact based on race or ethnicity," Moore noted. "And assigning the lists of staff that share that background as one aspect of their efforts to make their campus more welcoming to all students."

The nine schools with either smaller enrollment losses or adding students include community colleges in Barstow, Berkeley, Clovis, Folsom Lake, Moorpark, Sacramento, San Diego, Visalia and West Hills.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.

Some students, parents and educators plan to rally to send a message to Gov. Ron DeSantis on April Fools' Day.

The group of unions, parents and community leaders are planning a Miami rally using the hashtag #NotFoolingUs. It's all in protest of what they see as DeSantis' "extreme" agenda, on issues from health care to education.

Touri White, a parent leader at P.S. 305 with two kids in high school and elementary school, said his biggest concerns are censorship and what he sees as attacks against marginalized groups. White said he's a big proponent of getting parents to volunteer and read to students in schools, but lately that's been restricted.

"Parents can no longer bring in books from home - from a home library, children's book - they have to be pre-approved books," he said. "That was mandated by the governor's office, to be able to read to the students. And I have a big problem with that."

The governor has rebutted claims of book bans, stating it's "a false narrative in terms of using schools for indoctrination, rather than education." However, he continues to back proposals and laws against teaching about race, sexual orientation and gender, which has led to book bans in some districts.

The #NotFoolingUs rally is to kick off at 10 a.m. Saturday outside the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in Miami.

Organizers have said they're struggling to keep politics out of the classroom, and to focus on teaching math, science, reading and honest history - but they say the governor is only pretending to be in support of those issues, while attacking teachers and passing laws to criminalize them. White said he'd like to see fairness.

"You know, I firmly believe that we all have a right to exist and coexist, and be treated fairly and equitably," he said, "and that's definitely not happening in this current administration with the governor."

The groups are encouraging people to speak up across the state on issues that concern them regarding actions in the Florida Legislature - from abortion bans and permitless guns to what they see as attempts to silence teachers.

Labor leaders in various industries recently celebrated the 85th anniversary of a federal law that laid the groundwork for registered apprenticeship programs in Pennsylvania and across the country. However, a new report says not everyone gets a fair shot at these opportunities.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that Black apprentices are underpaid and underrepresented in registered apprenticeship programs. Dewitt Walton, vice president and program director for the Pittsburgh chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, said the key to changing this is for more people to know what's available.

"The opportunities for life-changing careers in the construction and building trades, we have to increase the awareness of those opportunities," he said, "and promote them in a more comprehensive and successful manner than we have in the past."

Walton said the Institute has been approved as the city's first Black-owned, state-certified pre-apprentice program for the skilled trades. He noted that they received a PA Smart Initiative grant of $400,000, and added that Pennsylvania is seeking additional grant dollars to boost diversity in apprenticeship programs.

Walton said 80% of people in the "Breaking the Chains of Poverty" workforce development program are African American, and from underserved, underrepresented or previously incarcerated communities.

"As a result, built real relationships with manufacturing, which the steelworkers' union has a huge impact in, and particularly in Western PA," he said. "We build out relationships with the construction and building trades."

Justin Nalley, the center's senior analyst for workforce policy, said apprenticeships have long served as a great "earn-as-you-learn" model in carving out a career. However, he added, there are some big gaps in opportunities for Black workers, including enrollment.

"Black apprentices only make up 9% of registered apprenticeship programs," he said, "but we make up 12% of the workforce."

Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor issued grants aimed at modernizing apprenticeships and boosting the representation of workers of color in registered programs. Currently, about 600,000 people are enrolled in apprenticeship programs across the country.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.

New findings confirm suspicions about the top reasons many students considered dropping out of college over the last six months.

The Gallup and Lumina Foundation report, "Stressed Out and Stopping Out: The Mental Health Crisis in Higher Education," reveals about three in five undergraduates say emotional stress and mental health are the biggest reasons they've considered quitting.

Both far exceed such other factors as cost and course difficulty. Dr. Zainab Okolo - strategy officer at Lumina Foundation - said a growing mental-health crisis is making it difficult to keep pace with students requesting assistance.

"Counseling professionals were overwhelmed, where they had to create waitlists for students that were brave enough to finally reach out for help," said Okolo. "On average now, the waitlists are about eight months. This is a resource demand issue, and the data has made it clear that our students need these mental health resources."

Okolo said isolation exacerbated during the COVID-19 restrictions is waning, but warns students in a two or four year program are just as likely to drop out today than they were during the once-in-a-generation pandemic.

One of the glaring data points for Okolo is that 73% of young adults who decided to forgo higher education entirely, say mental health issues are a significant reason - ranking higher than their need to work.

She said it's an "all hands" on deck situation, with every sector having to make significant adjustments to re-center, and reconsider mental health.

"One example of that - the National Governors Association - their winter meeting was centered on how to equip and inform governors around their investments," said Okolo. "And then, we're seeing - in North Carolina, California, Kentucky and Louisana - these governors coming together and going, 'Yes, we hear you, and let's put some funding towards that work.'"

Okolo added that in states like Indiana, with a high concentration of rural communities, students who have challenges accessing in-person services would benefit from online services.

The survey says seven in 10 college students rate their on-campus mental health resources positively, although those who actually face mental-health issues rate them lower.

Lumina Foundation Vice President of Impact and Planning Courtney Brown said schools can learn from these results.

"There's a way to help students, so this isn't a doom and gloom," said Brown. "We can actually use this and move forward. And we did see in the data that that students who felt like they were were supported by faculty and students experienced much less stress."

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.




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