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Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, March 11, 2026
- About one in ten K-12 students in the US attend a California public school. And those schools are seeing a lot of turmoil this year. San Francisco educators went on strike in February. Teachers in Oakland and San Diego narrowly avoided a strike themselves. And now, their colleagues in Dublin — in the Bay Area — have also been on strike this week.
- San Diego County has followed through on its ultimatum to the Department of Homeland Security, by suing the agency over access to the Otay Mesa Detention Center.
School labor challenges continue to roil districts across the state
Thousands of California K-12 teachers have walked off their jobs or voted to strike in the past few months. Some are ongoing, like in Dublin. And two school districts in the Sacramento area, Twin Rivers and and Natomas, had teachers walk out in the past week.
California limits how much local governments can charge for property taxes. That means the majority of school funding comes from the state. But with declining enrollment in most districts, state funding – which is tied to student attendance – isn’t keeping up with costs. “This is one of the challenges with education. It is very expensive,” said Iwunze Ugo, an education researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California. “You have this kind of ironic dual problem where we’re spending a lot of money, but then also it’s not enough.
California is one of the most expensive states to live in. And school district officials are in a tight spot. They have little control over how much state money they get, and are wary of committing to higher wages and benefits without knowing how they’ll pay for it…