Right now, at this very moment, California’s public school system is hemorrhaging teachers at a rate not seen in modern state history.

Not because of student behavior, not because of test scores, not even because of the pandemic aftermath, but because the system itself has been financially engineered to fail, and the people holding the blueprints knew exactly what would happen when the money ran out.

Classrooms across the state are being abandoned midyear.

School districts are issuing emergency declarations, and parents are waking up to find their children’s teachers simply gone, replaced by substitutes who themselves quit within weeks because the pay structure makes poverty a job requirement.

I’m Megan Wright, and on this channel, we don’t wait for the mainstream outlets to catch up.

Uh, we follow the money, we read the budget documents, they hope you won’t, and we connect the dots in real time.

If you want investigative journalism that refuses to look away, hit that subscribe button right now.

Smash the like button so this reaches people beyond the algorithms walls.

And here’s your assignment.

Drop a comment below telling me whether you or someone you know has been directly impacted by teacher shortages in your district.

One sentence, real stories.

Let’s build the record they’re trying to bury.

Here’s what’s actually happening.

California’s school districts are collapsing financially, not because of a sudden crisis, but because of a decadel long funding shell game orchestrated at the state level, one that created the illusion of investment while systematically strangling districts ability to retain staff.

The mechanism is coldly mathematical.

Pension costs exploded.

Health care premiums skyrocketed.

Enrollment-based funding formulas locked districts into a death spiral where losing students meant losing money, which meant cutting staff, which made schools less attractive, which lost more students.

Governor Gavin Nuome’s administration inherited this structure, then supercharged it with temporary federal pandemic money that evaporated on a deadline everyone saw coming, leaving districts holding multi-year salary commitments they can no longer afford.

This isn’t about politics.

It’s about fiscal architecture, incentive design, and the cold reality of who gets sacrificed when the math stops working.

We’re going to walk through the timeline, the money trail, the bureaucratic decisions that locked this in, and the human cost being paid right now in real classrooms across the state.

Let’s start with the foundation because you can’t understand the collapse without understanding how the trap was built.

Go back to 2012.

California voters passed Proposition 30, which temporarily raised taxes to fund schools after the Great Recession.

That money flow stabilized districts, but it came with strings.

The state simultaneously shifted to a new funding formula called the local control funding formula or LCFF.

Sounds bureaucratic.

Translation: The state would give districts money based primarily on enrollment numbers with extra dollars for low-income students, English learners, and foster youth.

on paper, progressive, in practice, a ticking time bomb because California’s birth rate had already begun declining.

Enrollment started dropping statewide in 2014 and never stopped.

Fewer students meant less money automatically every single year.

Districts couldn’t adjust fast enough because teacher contracts, pension obligations, and health care costs don’t decline with enrollment.

They rise every year, locked in by union agreements and state mandates.

Then came 2019.

Governor Nuome took office promising historic education investment.

And to his credit, he did push through increases.

The state budget for K through2 education hit nearly $94 billion by the 201920 school year.

Record high.

Newsome celebrated it publicly, calling it a commitment to California’s future.

But here’s what the press releases didn’t emphasize.

Almost none of that new money was flexible.

It was categorically restricted money for specific programs, money that couldn’t be used to raise base teacher salaries or hire permanent staff.

Meanwhile, the California State Teachers Retirement System, Cal Sores, announced that employer contribution rates, the percentage districts had to pay into the pension system for every teacher on payroll, would continue climbing.

In 2019, districts paid 16.

2% of every teacher salary into CalRS.

By 2023, that rate hit 19.

1%.

That’s a three percentage point increase on payroll, which for a midsize district employing a thousand teachers at an average salary of $75,000 means an additional $2.

2 million per year going to pensions alone.

Not teacher paychecks, not classroom resources, just pension fund contributions to cover retirees.

Let that sink in.

Now layer in health care California requires school districts to provide health benefits to employees and the cost of those benefits increased on average 6 to 8% annually throughout this period.

A teacher hired in 2015 might have cost the district $85,000 total when you include salary and benefits.

By 2023, that same teacher, same salary step, now costs the district closer to $15,000 because of pension and healthcare increases.

The teacher sees no raise.

The district pays 20,000 more.

That gap is the silent killer.

Then March 2020 happened.

COVID schools closed.

The federal government flooded states with emergency funding.

California received approximately 27 billion dollars in federal pandemic relief for K through2 schools distributed in waves through 2021 and 2022.

It was a lifeline, but it came with a expiration date.

The money had to be spent by September 2024.

The US Department of Education was explicit.

These were one-time emergency funds, not ongoing revenue.

Use them for temporary needs, tutoring, summer school ventilation upgrades, mental health services.

Do not use them to hire permanent staff or commit to recurring expenses you can’t sustain.

But that’s not what happened.

Across California, district after district, under pressure from unions, parents, and state officials to reduce class sizes and address learning loss, used the federal money to hire teachers.

Permanent teachers, full-time positions with salary schedules that increase automatically each year and benefits that compound.

In plain language, they made long-term commitments using short-term money.

Why? Because the state encouraged it.

In 2021, Newsome signed Assembly Bill 130, which included provisions pressuring districts to maintain or increase staffing levels as a condition of receiving some state funds.

The legislative intent was noble.

Don’t lay off teachers during a crisis, but it created a fiscal trap.

Districts hired, expanded, increased staff counts even as enrollment continued falling.

Between 2020 and 2023, California’s K through2 enrollment dropped by approximately 375,000 students.

375,000.

That’s the equivalent of losing every single student in San Francisco Unified and Oakland Unified combined twice over.

Yet during that same period, many districts added staff because the federal money made it possible in the short term.

By spring 2023, reality began closing in.

The federal funds were running dry.

Districts started projecting their budgets for the 2024-25 school year and realized the gap was catastrophic.

The temporary money that had been paying teacher salaries was disappearing.

Enrollment was still falling, meaning state funding based on attendance was still declining.

Pension costs were still rising.

Healthc care premiums were still increasing.

And California’s state budget itself was suddenly in deficit.

The state’s Department of Finance projected a shortfall of nearly $ 32 billion for the 2425 fiscal year, driven by declining tax revenues, especially capital gains from the tech sector.

The surplus years were over.

Newsome’s administration began signaling there would be no state bailout for districts.

They were on their own.

Let’s talk numbers from real districts because this is where theory becomes devastation.

Oakland Unified School District serves around 35,000 students, down from over 46,000 two decades ago.

In spring 2023, the district projected a budget deficit of $95 million over three years.

95 million.

To close the gap, the board voted to close multiple schools and eliminate hundreds of positions.

Teachers, counselors, librarians gone.

The teachers union called a strike in May 2023.

It lasted 7 days.

The district couldn’t afford the union’s demands.

The strike ended with minimal gains and the layoffs proceeded.

By fall 2024, Oakland Unified had issued pink slips to over 200 certificated staff.

Translation: more than 200 credentialed teachers and support professionals were told their jobs no longer existed.

move south to Los Angeles Unified, the second largest district in the nation, uh, serving around 420,000 students.

Laust’s enrollment has dropped by roughly 200,000 students since its peak in the late 1990s.

Yet, the district employed approximately 26,000 teachers as of 2023, only slightly fewer than at its enrollment peak because staffing cuts lagged decades behind enrollment decline.

In early 2024, LAUSD projected a budget shortfall exceeding half a billion dollars within two years, half a billion.

The district began planning for significant layoffs.

By late 2024, hundreds of teachers received preliminary layoff notices.

Many took early retirement offers.

Others simply left for better paying jobs outside education.

The vacancies that opened couldn’t be filled.

The district’s own data showed more than500 teaching positions vacant or staffed by substitutes as of October 2024.

1,500 classrooms across Los Angeles without a stable permanent teacher.

Think about that for a moment.

San Diego Unified serving around 95,000 students projected a $240 million budget deficit over three years.

The board voted to cut over 500 positions, the majority of them teachers.

Fresno Unified faced an $80 million shortfall and planned cuts to hundreds of jobs.

Sacramento City Unified, a deficit exceeding $100 million.

West Contraosta Unified, catastrophic shortfalls leading to state receiverhip discussions.

The pattern was statewide, universal, and accelerating.

Here’s the first domino effect.

When teachers are laid off or positions go unfilled, class sizes explode.

A classroom that had 22 students now has 35.

A high school that offered five sections of sophomore English now offers three.

So each section balloons.

Teachers who remain are crushed under the load.

Grading doubles.

Planning becomes impossible.

Individualized attention vanishes.

Students who need intervention fall through the cracks.

Test scores drop.

Parent complaints rise.

Um the school’s reputation suffers.

Families who can afford it leave for private schools or move to neighboring districts with better ratios.

Enrollment drops further.

The district loses more funding.

More cuts are required.

Second, domino falls.

The teachers who stayed start looking for the exits.

Why would you stay in a district that’s cutting your colleagues, increasing your workload, freezing your pay, and offering no path forward? You wouldn’t.

You start applying to suburban districts with stable enrollment, or you leave education entirely.

Retail management pays better and doesn’t require you to buy your own supplies.

Third domino falls.

The district can’t recruit replacements.

Word spreads.

New teaching graduates avoid struggling districts.

The vacancy rate climbs.

Long-term substitutes, often unqualified and paid poorly, rotate through classrooms.

Student outcomes crater.

The district enters a death spiral from which there is no bureaucratic escape under the current funding model.

That is precisely where dozens of California districts are right now.

Now, let’s talk about the state’s role in the regulatory framework that locked this in.

California’s education code and various legislative mandates created a rigid structure.

Proposition 98 passed in 1988 guarantees schools a minimum percentage of the state’s general fund, roughly 40%.

Sounds protective, but it doesn’t guarantee adequacy, just a percentage of whatever revenue the state collects.

When state revenues fall, school funding falls automatically.

And because California’s tax base is heavily reliant on capital gains and highincome earners, it’s wildly volatile.

In boom years, the money floods in.

In downturns, it vanishes.

Districts are left riding a roller coaster with multi-year budget commitments that can’t flex.

Then there’s the California School Finance Authority and various oversight bodies that monitor uh district solveny.

When a district approaches insolveny, the county office of education steps in and eventually the state can impose a trustee, taking control from the elected board.

This happened to Oakland Unified.

In June 2023, the state appointed a trustee, stripping the elected board of budget authority after years of deficits.

The trustes job is to balance the books.

Period.

That means cuts, school closures, layoffs, whatever it takes.

There’s no mandate to preserve educational quality, just fiscal solveny.

It’s austerity by legal design.

Newsome’s administration throughout this crisis has offered temporary patches, not solutions.

In 2023, the governor proposed and the legislature approved some one-time funding to help districts manage the federal cliff, but the amount was nowhere near sufficient to cover the gap.

We’re talking a few hundred million statewide when the collective shortfall across districts is measured in billions.

The administration has also promoted declining enrollment mitigation funds which provide some hold harmless money for districts losing students.

But these are temporary and capped.

They don’t solve the structural problem.

They delay the reckoning by a year, maybe two.

Here’s the irony beat that should enrage you.

While districts are cutting teachers, the state of California is simultaneously pushing mandates that increase costs.

In 2021, the state implemented universal transitional kindergarten or UTK, requiring districts to offer prek to all four-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year.

a laudable goal, but it requires hiring thousands of additional credentialed teachers, building or repurposing classrooms, and providing materials, all while districts are hemorrhaging money.

The state provided some implementation funding, but independent analyses, including from the legislative analysts office, found that the funding is insufficient to cover the true costs, especially for smaller and rural districts.

Translation: The state mandated an expansion that cost billions, underfunded it, and left districts holding the bill at the exact moment they’re broke.

You cannot make this up.

It’s fiscal sabotage disguised as progressive policy.

Another example, California’s class- size reduction mandates for K through three, enacted in the 1990s and modified over time, require lower ratios in early grades.

Noble goal, better for kids.

But it requires more teachers and more classrooms.

In a declining enrollment environment with funding cuts, districts can’t meet the mandate.

They apply for waiverss which the state grants rendering the mandate toothless.

But the regulatory burden remains.

Uh the reporting requirements, the compliance paperwork, the justification processes, uh they all consume uh administrative time and money.

It’s a perfect illustration of how bureaucratic idealism collides with fiscal reality.

Let’s connect the dots with the legal dimension.

In California, teacher layoffs must follow a senioritybased process enshrined in the education code known as last in first out or leo.

The newest teachers, often the youngest, most diverse, most energetic, are the first fired regardless of performance.

Senior teachers, some coasting toward retirement, are protected.

The result is that districts lose the very people who might bring innovation and energy and students lose continuity with teachers they’ve just begun to trust.

There have been legal challenges to LEO.

Most notably, the Vgara versus California case in 2014, which argued that seniority based layoffs and other tenure protections violated students constitutional rights to equal education.

A trial court agreed, but the decision was overturned on appeal and the California Supreme Court declined to hear it.

Leo remains the law, which means every round of layoffs disproportionately harm students in struggling schools, which tend to have higher percentages of newer teachers.

The system protects adults, not children.

Now, let’s get to the human impact because behind every budget line is a real person whose life is being upended.

Uh, take the case of a teacher we’ll call Maria, third grade teacher in a Central Valley district, 10 years of experience.

She survived the first round of layoffs in spring 2024 because of seniority, but 15 of her colleagues didn’t.

Her class size went from 24 students to 33.

She has students reading at five different grade levels, three with IEPs requiring individualized support, two English learners, and no aid because the aid positions were cut.

She spends her own money, roughly $800 this school year, on books and supplies the district can’t provide.

Her salary is $68,000, which sounds reasonable until you remember she lives in California, where rent for a two-bedroom apartment averages $2,200 a month in her area.

After taxes, health care premiums, union dues, and pension contributions, her take-home is around 3,800 a month.

She’s a credentialed professional with a master’s degree teaching the state’s children and she qualifies for CalFresh food assistance.

She’s looking for jobs outside education.

Uh she’ll be gone by summer.

Or consider a family in Oakland, two working parents, three kids in public elementary school.

Um last year their oldest daughter had a teacher she loved, someone consistent who knew her strengths and challenges.

This year that teacher took a job in a suburban district with better pay.

The replacement lasted six weeks before quitting.

The current long-term sub is the fourth adult in that classroom since September.

The daughter’s reading progress has stalled.

She comes home anxious.

The parents can’t afford private school, can’t move because of housing costs, and can’t homeschool because they both work full-time.

They are trapped in a system that is visibly failing their child in real time.

And there’s no mechanism for accountability because the district itself is instate receiverhip.

Who do you complain to when the state is already in charge and still can’t fix it? Let’s zoom out to the substitute teacher crisis because it’s the canary in the coal mine.

Substitute teaching has always been undervalued, but it used to be a viable option for retirees, parents re-entering the workforce, or aspiring teachers gaining experience.

California pays substitutes on average between $100 and $200 per day depending on the district and credentials.

Sounds okay for part-time work, except there are no benefits, no job security, no guarantee of consistent days, and you’re walking into chaotic classrooms with no lesson plans, and students who know you have no authority.

It’s brutal work.

As the teacher shortage intensified, districts leaned harder on subs, expecting them to fill long-term vacancies, sometimes for entire semesters.

But the pay didn’t increase to reflect the extended responsibility.

Subs started refusing assignments.

By fall 2024, districts across California reported they couldn’t fill sub requests.

Schools began combining classes, sending students to the library or auditorium for study hall, supervised by administrators, or just sending kids home early.

Parents received roocalls at 7 in the morning.

School is closing early today due to staffing shortages.

This is not a hypothetical.

This happened dozens of times in multiple districts throughout the fall of 2024.

Public schools in California, the fifth largest economy in the world, closing early because they can’t find adults to supervise children.

Let that sink in.

Here’s the policy irony that reveals the dysfunction.

At the same time, districts can’t afford teachers.

California is sitting on budget surpluses in specific restricted funds that can’t be reallocated.

The state’s proposition 98 guarantee means education gets a share of revenues, but much of that money is tied up in categorical programs, special grants, and one-time allocations that expire.

There is money in Sacramento.

It’s just trapped in bureaucratic silos.

The state could in theory pass legislation to provide flexible ongoing funding increases tied to enrollment stabilization or cost of living adjustments for teacher salaries.

But that would require raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere.

And neither is politically popular.

So instead, the governor and legislature issue press releases about record education investment while teachers walk out and classrooms sit empty.

It’s a masterclass in political theater disconnected from ground level reality.

Let’s talk about Gavin Newsome specifically because his name is on this crisis.

Uh Newsome has positioned himself as a education champion, frequently citing California’s education budget as the largest in state history.

Technically true, but raw budget size is meaningless if it doesn’t translate to teacher retention, smaller class sizes, and stable schools.

Under Newsome’s governorship, from 2019 to 2025, California has seen the worst teacher shortage in modern memory in the highest number of school closures in decades and a collapse in public confidence in the state’s education system.

Newsome cannot claim credit for investment without owning the outcomes.

The outcomes are failure.

He inherited a broken funding model.

Yes, but he had six years and unprecedented budget surpluses in the early years of his term to fix it.

and he didn’t.

He chose to spend political capital on homelessness initiatives, highspeed rail, and national political ambitions.

Education reform, the hard, unglamorous work of restructuring school finance was left on autopilot.

Now, the bill is due, and he’s nowhere to be found in the conversation.

The governor’s 2024 budget proposal included cuts to education programs to address the state deficit.

Cuts.

After years of saying education was the priority, the moment revenues declined, education was on the chopping block.

He framed it as necessary fiscal responsibility.

But the message to districts was clear.

You’re on your own.

No bailout.

No structural fix.

Good luck.

Districts received the message and responded with layoffs, which is exactly what we’re seeing now.

Here’s where the domino effect reaches its logical, terrifying conclusion.

If California cannot stabilize school staffing, the long-term economic and social consequences will dwarf the current budget crisis.

Teachers leave, class sizes explode, student outcomes decline, graduation rates fall, college readiness plummets, the pipeline of educated workers dries up.

Businesses can’t find qualified employees.

Companies leave California for states with better education systems.

Tax revenues decline.

The state budget shrinks.

Less money for schools, more cuts.

The spiral accelerates.

We’re not talking about a one-year problem.

We’re talking about a generational collapse in the state’s human capital.

And it’s already in motion.

Then consider the equity disaster.

The districts suffering worst are predominantly those serving low-income students and students of color.

Wealthy suburban districts with stable enrollment and local parcel tax revenues are weathering the storm.

They can pay teachers more, offer smaller classes, maintain programs.

Poor urban and rural districts are being gutted.

The achievement gap, which California has claimed to prioritize closing, is widening into a chasm.

Students in Oakland, Fresno, and San Bernardino are being systematically denied access to qualified teachers, while students in Palo Alto, and Irvine enjoy stability.

This is not accidental.

This is the designed outcome of a funding model that allows wealth to insulate communities from statewide crisis.

It’s segregation by budget structure.

Let’s add another layer.

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently operated, are often exempt from some of the cost pressures hitting traditional districts.

They typically don’t participate in KSTRS using less expensive retirement plans.

They’re not bound by union contracts in the same way.

They can hire and fire more flexibly.

As traditional districts collapse, parents flee to charters.

Enrollment shifts.

The district loses more money.

Charters expand.

This is not an accident.

Charter advocates have long argued that competition and flexibility produce better outcomes.

Critics say charters drain resources from traditional schools and cherrypick students.

Both are partly right, but the result is indisputable.

The public school system, as traditionally understood, is being hollowed out while alternatives grow.

Whether you see that as evolution or destruction depends on your perspective, but the kids stuck in failing traditional schools don’t have the luxury of philosophical debate.

Now, let’s talk about what the state isn’t doing because uh the solutions exist and are being ignored.

Uh California could shift to a funding model that accounts for actual costs, not just enrollment.

waits for teacher experience, regional cost of living, facility age, special education populations.

That would require legislative overhaul of the LCFF.

It’s politically difficult, but possible.

The state could create a teacher salary stabilization fund, a rainy day reserve specifically for education funded during surplus years to cushion districts during downturns.

That would require foresight and discipline.

California has neither.

The state could reform Cal’s TRS either by increasing employee and state contributions or by adjusting benefit formulas for new hires.

That would require confronting the teachers unions.

Politically toxic.

The governor won’t touch it.

The state could implement emergency credentiing pathways faster and more flexible to get qualified professionals into classrooms.

California’s credentiing process is notoriously slow and bureaucratic.

Streamlining it would help.

There’s been minor progress, but nothing close to the scale needed.

Most importantly, California could make a multi-year commitment to predictable, flexible education funding increases that allow districts to plan, invest, and retain staff.

That would require either broad-based tax increases or a complete rep prioritization of state spending.

It’s the third rail of California politics.

Nobody wants to touch it.

So instead, we get press releases, task forces, and incremental patches while the system burns.