student

Tens of thousands of civil servants, including teachers, firefighters and healthcare workers, have marched in cities across France to demand higher pay, as students clashed with the police in separate protests over conditions at their schools.

Unions said some 300,000 people took part in the one-day strike action nationwide, while police on Tuesday estimated a turnout of 30,000 in the capital, Paris. The workers also demanded better working conditions and expressed anger at the government’s planned budget cuts.

Protests also took place at more than 400 schools, about 40 of which were blockaded and 44 of which faced attempted blockades.

Ten people, both students and staff members, were wounded, and at least 440 were detained, officials said.

The strikes and the student unrest came two days before the government is to unveil its draft budget and seven months before the presidential election. According to unions, the government proposes freezing base salaries for state employees in 2027 to save 2 billion euros ($2.3bn).

It would be the fourth consecutive annual freeze and the eighth during President Emmanuel Macron’s tenure. Unions say the freezes have cost workers a double-digit share of their purchasing power, and they are demanding a 6 percent raise.

‘Red alert’

Sophie Binet, general secretary of the General Confederation of Labor, called the protests “a red alert”.

“This anger is not going away. The government must look again at the budget,” she told Al Jazeera. She gave the government 48 hours to reverse the planned cuts before her union decides on further strike action.

The Education Ministry said just more than 11 percent of teachers and other school staff went on strike. French teachers are paid less on average than their counterparts in other European countries.

Fewer than 1 in 10 other civil servants took part, and fewer still in hospitals, with the loss of a day’s pay a likely factor in the turnout. France’s civil aviation regulator had warned of flight disruptions at some airports.

Professional firefighters, who say this summer’s huge wildfires exposed a lack of resources, were among those marching.

The government has already unveiled measures to help households cope with a spike in energy prices driven by the United States and Israel’s war on Iran, but it has failed to quell the discontent with Macron and his administration.

Student unrest

Students, meanwhile, have been protesting outside hundreds of schools over timetables, class sizes, teacher shortages and overheated classrooms during this year’s heatwaves. The demonstrations began in the Ile-de-France region around Paris and spread to other cities.

In addition to the 10 students and staff members who were hurt, 48 law enforcement officials were injured, authorities said, as students in some places set fire to rubbish bins and hurled projectiles, and officers responded with batons and tear gas.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told BFMTV that 440 people had been detained.

“We don’t have the final tally yet, but I’m told two thirds led to police custody,” he said. “Violence is never legitimate. There is nothing that justifies violence.”

Education Minister Edouard Geffray condemned the clashes on social media.

“This violence is unspeakable,” he wrote, adding that legal proceedings had begun. “To legitimize it or… call for an expansion of the blockades is to endanger both our students and public officials. It is irresponsible.”

‘Fewer cops, more money’

In Seine-Saint-Denis, a low-income suburb of Paris, Bally Bagayoko, the district’s mayor and a member of the hard-left France Unbowed party, joined hundreds of students protesting at the Lycee Paul-Eluard.

He led them in singing the national anthem and called the protests “completely legitimate”, saying poorer areas received fewer resources than wealthier ones.

Outside the Arago school in Paris, students, some with their faces covered, sat on dumpsters to block the entrance beneath a placard reading “Macron explosion”. A banner at the Helene-Boucher school read “Fewer cops, more money”.

“We want fewer police because we think there is a huge amount of police repression, both against high school student movements and social movements more generally,” said Mael Breton, a final-year student there. “This is a real problem, especially when there is such a lack of funding… here at our school and in the national education system more broadly.”

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu on Monday condemned the high school protests as irresponsible but acknowledged that the “difficulties of high schools must be heard and addressed”.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, a hard-left presidential contender, accused the government of steadily dismantling public services as he addressed protesters in Paris and urged his supporters to mobilise against the draft budget.

A Toluna Harris poll on Monday suggested that Melenchon and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, would advance to next year’s presidential run-off, with Le Pen best placed to win.

For weeks, the streets of Serbia were teeming with young people rallying against the government. At the height of the protests in March 2025, more than 100,000 took to the streets.

The student movement had called for early elections for nearly two years, and President Aleksandar Vucic, who resigned on Sunday, finally heeded their call earlier this month. He announced snap parliamentary elections for October 25.

With the elections originally not due until December 2027, the early vote is seen as an attempt by governing populists to cling to power despite widespread discontent.

Vucic is vying for the prime minister’s post, a role he has held before, appearing to yield to protesters’ demands not out of goodwill but in the hopes of ushering in a result that keeps him in office, analysts say.

But experts warn that elections will hardly solve the underlying political tensions gripping the country, triggered after 16 people were killed in 2024 when a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station. Student protesters blamed the disaster on government negligence and alleged corruption.

The move “is essentially about reducing political risk”, Viktor Stamenkovic, a researcher at Belgrade’s Institute for Political Studies, told Al Jazeera.

“Given the circumstances, the ruling camp is choosing the electoral sequence it considers least dangerous,” he said, referring to Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

Saving his skin: Elections a cling to power

Vucic could stall no more – both the presidential and parliamentary vote would have had to be held next year.

“Vucic has, for some time, been aware that further delay is unlikely to work in his favour,” Stamenkovic said.

Vucic’s presidential term expires before the mandate of the current parliament, said Stamenkovic. Serbia’s recent political history explains the order of the elections – the parliamentary before the presidential, the analyst added.

Presidential elections can fundamentally alter the parliamentary dynamics that follow – which is how Vucic’s party came to power, Stamenkovic explained.

Vucic cannot run for a third term under Serbia’s constitution, and no other SNS figure is as popular as him.

“In 2012, the presidential victory of the SNS candidate Tomislav Nikolic changed the political momentum so dramatically that the bloc, which had previously appeared capable of forming a parliamentary majority, was ultimately unable to do so,” said Stamenkovic. “The presidential result altered the calculations of the parliamentary parties and paved the way for a government led by SNS.”

Vucic, therefore, has good reason to fear the same scenario being repeated.

Vucic has built a personalised political system centred on himself rather than his party or any successor, said Stamenkovic.

“He therefore has to find a way of transferring his own political strength from the presidency into the parliamentary arena … effectively staking his political future on the parliamentary election.”

For Milica Vojinovic, an investigative reporter at the Serbian outlet KRIK, the goal of the governing party is to stay in power at any cost.

“They [want to] continue their corruption projects, which usually means finding new ways and public procurements through which they can take money… [including from] public budgets,” Vojinovic told Al Jazeera.

She cited irregularities in past elections, such as vote buying by the SNS, documented by election observers and human rights organisations, and feared that the next elections will see an “escalation of these tactics, now that the student movement is actually threatening to win the election and take power from Vucic’s party”.

The vote will not resolve country’s discord

Since 2024, the governing party has lost a sense of political legitimacy, said Stamenkovic.

“Even if – and this is a big if – SNS wins another parliamentary majority, it is difficult to envisage a return to a situation in which it can govern normally and claim the kind of broad social legitimacy it once enjoyed,” he said. “Virtually all polling shows that a majority of the country believes Serbia is heading in the wrong direction and that the time has come for change.”

Mass demonstrations have not taken place in Serbia for some time, as the student movement has shifted from organising large rallies to election campaigning.

The youth movement recently submitted their election list to state election authorities after a jubilant march through the capital of Belgrade, formally entering the race.

Polls show that this vote could bring representatives of the student movement into parliament and state institutions, said the Serbia-based Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA).

“This is important for Serbia’s democracy … [They] will definitely improve the legitimacy of the parliament as the representative body,” the group said.

Transparency and anticorruption are priorities for most citizens, with the social and political reality in the country having changed in the two years since the railway station incident, the organisation added.

Vojinovic, however, predicted that if Vucic’s party continues to hold power, “we are to expect the most repressive measures seen so far against everyone who has been criticising, or in any way opposing, the government”.

Criminal cases have already been brought against some activists in the student movement, as well as a political analyst, she said.

According to Human Rights Watch, foreign agent laws, first introduced by Russia and seen being picked up by other nations, have been used to brand independent civil society, media and other dissenting voices as illegitimate and acting on behalf of foreign interests. Such a law was proposed in Serbia in 2024.

“Recent smear campaigns against my newsroom, as well as other independent media outlets and NGOs, lead us to believe that they may be a precursor to the introduction of a ‘foreign agents law’ in the near future, should Vucic’s party remain in power,” Vojinovic added.

EU rift no matter

Meanwhile, Serbia is no closer to joining the European Union, but that is not a real priority for Vucic, the experts said.

“It is widely understood that Serbia cannot make meaningful progress towards EU membership under the current system of government,” said Stamenkovic. “What matters much more to Vucic is avoiding serious political pressure and criticism from Brussels.”

Ratko Mladic’s funeral illustrates this balancing act: Serbia hosted the semi-official honouring of the former Bosnian Serb army general – who died while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia – but Vucic did not attend, he said.

“In some ways, the relationship between Vucic’s government and the EU resembles a couple trapped in a disastrous marriage who nevertheless do not divorce because both sides continue to benefit from the relationship.

“Vucic cooperates with the EU on issues that matter to Brussels, while the EU has for years been willing to overlook a great deal about the increasingly authoritarian nature of his rule,” he added.

The two are also at odds over Russia, which Serbia has ties with.

A public opinion poll in June by the CRTA and Stanford University’s Democracy Action Lab showed that among SNS voters, 15 percent wanted closer ties with the EU while 60 percent favoured relations with Russia.

“There is every reason to expect election day itself to be highly contentious,” said Stamenkovic.

For months, current and former high school coaches have been asked to respond to my simple question:

“What’s the best lesson a player taught you?”

It’s so hard to come up with an answer that many can’t do it immediately. They’re forced to think, which means the question is very good.

Stories are always written about lessons learned by students in the classroom and on the field, but what do coaches, most of them teachers, learn from their students?

Here are some answers.

Weeks before he died last March, Venice football coach Angelo Gasca told me the story of a player who wanted to quit and what he learned. That player later became one of his assistant coaches.

“I’m not accepting your resignation today,” Gasca told him. “You need to go home and think about it.”

Venice coach Angelo Gasca showing off the City Division I title trophy in 2021.

(Cliff Kensinger)

“He said he went home and thought about it and stayed on the team and was our starting center. He taught me the best thing we can teach is come to school and you never know what connections you’ll make at the school you grew up at. He taught me there’s more to coaching than winning games and scoring touchdowns. In our lives as teachers and coaches, we do learn from players. When we stop learning from our players, it’s time to stop coaching.”

Former Edison football coach Dave White remembers suspending his team’s best player before a trip to Hawaii for a team rule violation. He had to stay home even though his parents had paid money for the trip.

Dave White speaks to a crowd, including the football team, during the official naming of the Belcher White Strength Training Facility at Edison High School in 2022.

(Scott Smeltzer / Los Angeles Times)

“He taught me that I made the right decision and it was best for the team and in the long run best for him,” White said. “I was proud how he handled things. There are consequences for bad decisions. I really enjoyed and respected him more after that.”

Granada Hills girls volleyball coach Tom Harp said he had a player with a disability. She lost sight in an eye during an accident.

“She taught me how to overcome a difficult situation with a positive attitude,” he said. “She was a shining example of how to overcome adversity. It showed me my little problems aren’t as bad as they seem if she can overcome that.”

Lorenzo Hernandez, the football coach and athletic director at Whittier and former head football coach at Garfield, said a comment from a player made him realize to change tactics.

Former Garfield coach Lorenzo Hernandez runs onto the field with his players and assistant coaches.

(Hernandez family)

“You grow up in a certain era and have to adapt,” he said. “These kids want to enjoy themselves. They taught me to keep it as fun as possible. We worked on discipline. A kid said, ‘That’s great coach, but I don’t think we’re having fun.’ It made me take a step back. We have to understand it’s a different era of athletes and they require different ways to handle things. That’s helped me build better relationships. I’ll meet you halfway.”

Former Crenshaw football coach Robert Garrett said he learned to talk to students about their personal lives to understand why they are behaving in certain ways. He discovered one of his players had nowhere to wash his clothes.

Longtime Crenshaw football coach Robert Garrett talks to De’Anthony Thomas, one of his best former players, in 2011.

(Robert S. Helfman)

“Some don’t have a stable household,” he said. “You don’t learn that until you talk to them. I knew he was intelligent and studious but until I found out his hygiene wasn’t good, I realized the environment he was up against. It wasn’t until he shared with me what he was going through I offered assistance to wash his clothes.

“He didn’t need tough love. He needed kid gloves. Every day I try to find at least one child I didn’t know and have a personal conversation, ‘What middle school he went to, where does he live, are his studies OK.’ I try to learn the child before I learn the body. Adults never talk to kids. We just assume a kid is a certain way until you have a conversation and know their background and what they are going through.”

Former Hart baseball coach Jim Ozella, retired and watching his grandson play sports, told the story of his former player, Jack Ralston, reaching the major leagues this year taught him about perseverance.

“Everyone wants instant gratification,” Ozella said. “Here’s a kid who didn’t make the major leagues until he was 29. For us, he was an outstanding pitcher. We made it to the CIF final. Then he walked into UCLA, didn’t pitch as a freshman or sophomore, pitched a little as junior, then boom as a senior. He got drafted. His lesson has been off the charts for me.

Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow with Hart coach Jim Ozella, who coached him in high school.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

“You can’t expect results immediately. You’re talented, put in all the work and effort. In this case, it didn’t work. He kept plugging along. His lesson is everyone is different. His was keep plugging away and it will happen. I called him after he gave up a home run. He said, ‘Today I woke up and it’s a new day.’ What a role model. Don’t expect everything overnight. It takes time. Be patient.”

Then Ozella quoted a famous line, “The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit.”

Hall of Fame football coach Paul Knox had a situation early in his coaching days at Dorsey dealing with two brothers and figuring out what you’re supposed to do when they’re different.

“They were very close in age,” he said. “I learned by trying to coach them you can’t coach everyone the same. Whatever I tried, one was very coachable and his younger brother all the things I tried never worked with him. We went back and forth.

Dorsey coach Paul Knox celebrates a miracle win in the 2001 City championship game at the Coliseum.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“I found out I had to find a whole other way to reach him. I learned you can say how you treat everyone the same, but you approach some kids differently. You never really know precisely who’s listening to you and sometimes the satisfaction of being a teacher or mentor is delayed and you don’t know until years later.”

In the second week of the college football season, in a clash of titans, the University of Texas scored 21 unanswered points to surge past Ohio State in the fourth quarter and win, 24-23.

The comeback, Gov. Greg Abbott decreed, was the greatest home victory in more than 130 years of Longhorn football.

A screen grab of one celebratory moment showed a group of students ecstatic beyond belief. They were clad in the university’s signature burnt orange. Two wore cowboy hats. One flashed “Hook ‘em Horns,” the university’s proud hand signal.

To see the picture earlier this month was to witness pure, untempered joy.

But Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas Railroad Commission, saw something different.

Most of the students were darkly complected and apparently of South Asian heritage. French posted the photo and wrote on X, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

He followed with a second post, doubling down on the racist “Great Replacement” theory.

“Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners,” French spewed. “It’s everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine.”

In many places, French’s unapologetic, unvarnished bigotry would be disqualifying. But given Texas’ strong Republican leaning he stands a better-than-even chance of being elected in November to the state Railroad Commission, which, despite its name, oversees Texas’ vast oil and gas industry.

The hateful gibe was perfectly in character. “In some ways in Texas this is old news,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, who teaches political science at the University of Houston.

Last year, as chairman of the Tarrant County GOP, French posted an online poll asking, “Who is a bigger threat to America?” The choice on offer: Muslims or Jews.

Speaking in March at a political conference, he urged President Trump to round up and deport every Muslim in the country, calling the Islamic faith subversive and a clear and present danger to America.

“The Republican Party is used to Bo French making these kinds of outrageous statements,” Rottinghaus said.

Still, the response to French’s latest acrid emission was telling, not least for what it says about reflexive partisanship and today’s political reward structure.

As you’d expect, his Democratic opponent, state Rep. Jon Rosenthal, was scathing. “I spent 25 years as an oil and gas engineer,” he wrote on social media. “Bo French spent Sunday morning sorting our student section by skin color … A man who can’t tell a Longhorn from a foreigner has no business regulating anything in TX.”

The state’s outgoing U.S. senator, Republican John Cornyn, was also quick to denounce French. “This is the Republican nominee for statewide office,” Cornyn said in a post. “Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized.”

For Abbott and for Ken Paxton, who beat Cornyn in an eye-gouging, rabbit-punching Republican Senate primary, the answer was, for all intents, the latter.

“That is not my message,” Abbott said in a written statement, summoning the moral clarity and political courage of a puff pastry. “We all support our college football teams. The way we win the state is the same way we win football games. We unite under the brand of Texas.”

Then, just to have it both ways, Abbott suggested “that doesn’t mean that Texas cannot also lead in having the toughest immigration laws of any state in America and freezing H1B visas at our universities.” (The overwhelming majority of those holding H1B visas are Asian nationals from India and China.)

Paxton responded by attacking his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, for saluting Cornyn for taking a stand against French’s prejudice. “I condemn racism in all its forms,” Paxton wrote on X, adding, “Only one person in this race has a history of dividing Texans by race, and it’s James Talarico.”

A simple, straightforward condemnation shouldn’t have been hard. Lacey Hull, a Republican state representative from Houston, was among those in the GOP who showed how.

“Please delete this,” she urged French on X. “This post breaks my heart. I see college kids cheering on their football team. I see Texans.”

But Abbott, bidding for an unprecedented fourth term, is facing a tougher than expected race against Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.

Paxton, whose unsavory resume includes impeachment, indictment, petty theft and charges of adultery, has managed the rare feat of turning his race against Talarico into a nail-biter. (It’s been more than three decades since a Democrat won statewide office in Texas.)

Both need a robust GOP turnout to win in November and neither wants to risk alienating too many within the party’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant wing.

“They’re concerned about turnout,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. “Texas is a red state, but one thing that Republicans are concerned about is that the base may not turn out in as large a number as they need.”

Given French’s loathsome history, Abbott and others in the party establishment worked hard to keep him from winning the Republican nomination, Rice noted. But not Paxton. He headlined the kickoff to French’s campaign and has good reason to be glad he won and is now part of the GOP ticket.

His presence means that Paxton is only the second most odious figure seeking statewide office in Texas in November.

It remains illegal in California for a school district to force teachers and other staff to alert parents about their child’s gender identity, but parents must be told when they ask about it, a judge ruled Tuesday in a widely watched case dealing with parental rights.

San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs, weighing both state law and a Supreme Court order, rejected an attempt by the Chino Valley Unified School District to reinstate its mandatory parent-notification policy.

“There is no requirement that the school district, on its own, after learning of transgender issues, contact parents and let the parents know of them,” Sachs said in court. At the same time, “in the event a parent makes an affirmative inquiry of a minor child regarding their status, whether transgender or not, that will trigger an obligation by the school district to respond.”

Under the Chino Valley policy, approved in July 2023, a school would have to notify parents of any request by a student “to use pronouns that do not align with the student’s biological sex or gender listed on the student’s birth certificate or other official records.” The same notification rules applied to the use of bathrooms or participation in sports.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately challenged that policy in court and it was put on hold. In October 2024, Sachs had ruled that most of the policy was discriminatory — and therefore illegal — because it singled out a group of students for treatment that was different than the treatment of other students.

As an example, he cited the possibility that a student would come out confidentially to a school counselor — and then that counselor would immediately be required to alert the parents, even against the student’s wishes.

A policy that could result in mandated actions by a school employee continues to conflict with the intent of a 2025 California law that barred a school system from forcing teachers to tell parents about a student’s gender, Sachs concluded.

“That’s inappropriate and it’s still inappropriate,” Sachs said Tuesday.

New rules, new rulings

What has changed in the legal landscape, he added, is what happens when a parent requests information about their child’s gender status or sexual orientation or any number of other issues affecting that child.

Trial court rulings — affirmed by a Supreme Court majority in March — said that parents have the right to demand information about their child’s gender identity at school. School staff cannot lie to parents — including matters that a student wishes to conceal from their parents.

Attorney Emily Rae, representing Chino Valley, said Sachs was correct to acknowledge that parents had the right to information about their child, but that his ruling did not go nearly far enough — and that parent notification should be mandatory statewide.

Chino Valley also has a separate pending court challenge to the 2025 California law, contending it is at odds with the direction of the Supreme Court, which should take precedence.

Dept. Attorney General Delbert Tran, representing the state, declined to be interviewed Tuesday, but in his exchanges with Sachs, it was clear that he saw the ruling as about as much of a win as would be possible, given the Supreme Court’s recent directives.

He also said that supporters of parent-notification policies misstate or misunderstand the parent-teacher relationship that exists in practice and under state law. Parents, he said, have the legal right to observe classes and meet with teachers, and the expectation is that teachers will communicate freely and often with parents about a child’s needs and progress.

Chino Valley champions its view of parent rights

Chino Valley, a school district of 26,000 students in San Bernardino County, has adopted and defended a series of policies favored by parent activists, religious conservatives and President Trump under the leadership of school board President Sonja Shaw, a Republican currently running for the office of state superintendent of public instruction.

Under her leadership, the school system has taken a stand for a flag-ban policy in schools and classrooms, widely viewed as targeting gay pride flags; for removing school library books with passages deemed to be sexually obscene, and for working to ban trans athletes from girls sports and girls locker rooms.

Shaw attended Tuesday’s hearing and criticized Sachs’ reasoning.

“When he talks about a parent has a right to know now only if they ask, how do you know you’re being lied to or secrets being kept?,” Shaw said after the hearing. “That absolutely makes no sense.”

Shaw said the judge should have done “what’s right: Upheld parents’ constitutional right to the upbringing of their own child.”

In anticipation of Sachs’ ruling against the original policy, the Chino Valley school board revised the policy, expanding it to all students. Under the current policy, if any student “requests a change to their official or unofficial records, parents/guardians shall be notified to ensure that parents/guardians are informed and involved in all aspects of their child’s education.”

In other words, if a straight male student named William suddenly decided he wanted to be referred to as Robert on the class roll sheet — an official record — his parents would be notified.

In 2024, Sachs accepted this version of notification because students were not singled out for different treatment on the basis of their gender.

That form of the policy remains in effect.

Since that time, Shaw said, the district has been “transparent” with parents regarding important issues in the lives of their children. And Tuesday’s ruling would not change that.

Moving forward, she added, the district could assertively ask parents if they want to be informed about their child’s gender issues and that permission — if given — would continue to apply as the student proceeds through grade school.

The race for California’s next superintendent of public instruction is meant to be nonpartisan. Still, the two candidates — both school board presidents — are pushing decidedly political campaigns, one aligning with liberal Democrats and the other with pro-Trump Republicans as they present dueling visions for how the state’s children should be taught.

Democrat Richard Barrera, the favorite, beat out six other Democrats with his background in union organizing and liberal politics — and with more than $5 million from the California Teachers Assn. Republican Sonja Shaw rode a wave of support from a conservative education movement she helped build alongside MAGA organizations, Christian nationalists and anti-LGBTQ+ groups, while also consolidating mainstream Republicans behind her.

Although Democratic state lawmakers recently stripped many of the powers from the superintendent, the race remains a bellwether for how Californians feel about the public education of about 5.7 million children — as the Trump administration aggressively targets the state over its progressive policies.

Candidates’ disparate visions

Taking the California Democratic Party convention stage in February, Barrera, president of the San Diego Unified Board of Education, gave a quick shout-out to the California Teachers Assn. for backing his bid.

He then promoted his work in San Diego to improve student performance, raise teacher salaries and construct “environmentally sustainable schools built by union workers.” He blasted “downtown Republican business interests” for trying to privatize schools, and President Trump’s immigration policies, which he said terrify many California students who fear losing their undocumented parents.

“It’s time for us to organize, stand up to Trump, abolish ICE and create the schools our students are worthy of,” Barrera said.

Two months later, Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education, introduced herself at an event as a mom and a “fighter” who isn’t afraid to “look the enemy in the eye” because God protects her.

She described her opponents as California liberals who pushed school closures and mask policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and now advocate for the rights of transgender students at the expense of other students.

Shaw said she entered politics inspired by the MAGA-aligned group Moms for Liberty, which campaigns against teaching about ongoing systemic racism, opposes diversity programs as discriminatory and has fought against classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Shaw also described being called a year prior and encouraged to run for superintendent by then-state Assemblymember Bill Essayli, who is now the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and one of Trump’s strongest local allies.

“And I kind of laughed,” she said. “Ha ha. Me? The soccer mom? Really?” She said she told Essayli that she had to talk to God and her family. Essayli urged her to decide quickly.

Despite her humble, “who, me?” persona on the campaign trail, Shaw argues that her message resonates with parents in both parties. Shaw said she would use the superintendent position as a bully pulpit to expand that base beyond party lines and fight what she sees as the state’s failed liberal schooling policies from within. She also would challenge in court the new state law that transferred most of the post’s authority to an appointee of the governor.

Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor, said that to win, Shaw would have to “dramatically broaden her base, inviting people who aren’t animated primarily by anti-LGBTQ animus to vote for her.”

Barrera, meanwhile, a senior aide to current state Supt. Tony Thurmond, represented the California Department of Education at a recent event held by the statewide LGBTQ+ group Equality California, where school districts were rated on their LGBTQ+ policies and resources. San Diego Unified received a high rating, while Chino Valley did not participate in the voluntary analysis.

Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, has described Shaw as a threat to LGBTQ+ students and endorsed Barrera as a candidate who has spent his career “advancing policies that make schools safer and more inclusive.”

Lance Christensen, of the conservative California Policy Center, disagreed. He said Barrera “will continue to be the servant and mouthpiece of the CTA,” while Shaw “represents a return to common sense, or better yet, good sense — because she’s speaking to basic issues of education policy that have been ignored for far too long.”

Barrera acknowledged his primary win over the other Democratic challengers was largely thanks to the CTA, which he said “made all the difference.” But he also credited a “long partnership” with San Diego educators and a record of believing in public education.

Shaw consolidated conservative Republican support in the primary, in which she finished first, with her campaign raising $399,000.

Barrera’s campaign collected $274,000 in primary contributions. Since the primary, Barrera’s campaign has raised at least $340,000, compared with $104,000 for Shaw.

However, it is in independent expenditures — spending by outside groups on behalf of political candidates — that Barrera has the financial leg up on Shaw. Already considered the likely fall winner because he no longer will be splitting the state’s sizable liberal vote with other Democratic candidates, Barrera also has benefited from the CTA’s massive spending covering the cost of mailers, text message campaigns and TV, radio, newspaper and digital ads, among other things.

Shaw: Soccer mom to MAGA warrior

Shaw, a 44-year-old Chino native and mother who has worked in fitness training and photography, said pandemic school closures and mask and vaccine mandates she opposed prompted her to show up to school board meetings, confront officials and challenge school policies in court. “I’m relentless. I don’t let go,” she said.

In November 2022, she was elected to the Chino Valley Unified school board, part of a small wave of evangelical Christians and far-right candidates to win seats across the state that cycle, and quickly became a go-to conservative voice on education issues.

Shaw has sidestepped concerns about immigration agents targeting schools as an issue outside of a school district’s jurisdiction. She also has derided the influence of unions in the education sector. And she lambasted efforts by California Democrats to oppose “school choice,” calling charter schools, homeschooling and other “alternative learning models” critical “lifelines” for families.

Shaw also became laser-focused on LGBTQ+ issues, challenging state laws that allow transgender students to participate in athletics and use school facilities in line with their gender identity. She also fought a state privacy policy that dissuaded school administrators from informing the parents of children who change their gender presentation or pronouns at school, and backed bans on library books with passages deemed sexually obscene. Critics have said the policy targets LGBTQ+ books, which Shaw denied.

Separately, Shaw has rallied her followers online to protest transgender teen athletes, including Jurupa Valley High School track star AB Hernandez. Shaw has showed up at track meets to protest Hernandez’s participation — which Hernandez’s mother has called threatening.

Shaw also has filed federal civil rights complaints on behalf of and helped draft complaints for cisgender high school athletes — including some of Hernandez’s teammates — who, she said, told her they were unhappy with sharing races, podiums and athletic facilities with transgender peers.

Shaw said she did not consult with Essayli on his recent unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the state’s transgender sports policies, which was based on the participation of some of the same high school athletes Shaw has protested. However, she said she would be in touch with federal authorities about such issues were she to win.

“You don’t think I’ll be calling, in my position, to the federal government?” she said. Essayli did not respond to a request for comment.

Barrera: Built by labor

Barrera, a 59-year-old father of grown children and member of the San Diego Unified school board since 2008, has been a union organizer for decades.

He never has been a teacher — nor has Shaw — but said his organizing experience makes him a natural fit as the chosen candidate of the teachers union and other labor groups, where he said he believes “the educator voice comes out most powerfully.”

“For me, the unions are a partner and will always be a core … voice in influencing the way that I make decisions,” he said.

In the 2000s, Barrera served as a regional organizer for the United Domestic Workers and United Healthcare Workers, then helped start the Chula Vista chapter of ACORN, a liberal pro-labor group.

Barrera rejects the assertion that California’s public schools are failing and wants to help “create a different narrative,” that students are “capable of anything” and educators are “capable of bringing out the best in our young people.”

Barrera helped turn the San Diego school board from a conservative-dominated body to a liberal, union-allied one. He once joined a five-day hunger strike in support of hotel workers.

Barrera has long subsidized his school board pay — a stipend of about $20,000 a year plus health benefits — with outside union work. In 2013, he was appointed secretary-treasurer of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, earning about $110,000 per year. The council includes the San Diego Unified employee unions, which critics considered a clear conflict of interest because as a school board member, Barrera was on the opposite side of the negotiation table from unions that were helping pay his Labor Council salary.

In 2016, Barrera switched to a lower-profile role as secretary-treasurer of UFCW Local 135, holding the No. 2 position in the San Diego area’s largest private-sector union representing grocery, pharmacy, casino and factory workers but not school employees.

During that period, Barrera’s direct supervisor, Mickey Kasparian, was accused of sexual harassment, which Kasparian denied. Three accusers were paid settlements with no admission of wrongdoing. Barrera was not accused of sexual misconduct but was swept out of office alongside Kasparian in 2018.

The subsequent union leadership, which is still in place, opposes Barrera for superintendent, arguing that he should have taken a stand against Kasparian. Barrera dismissed these criticisms as part of a “decade-old internal union leadership fight.”

In 2021, as officials debated when and how to reopen campuses closed during the pandemic, Barrera was aligned with the local teachers union, and his school board approved a vaccine mandate for all district employees and conditioned the return to in-person instruction on educators having the opportunity to be fully vaccinated.

Today, Barrera is in near lock-step with the CTA when it comes to policy. His only critique is that CTA lobbying in Sacramento should be better connected to ground-level demands, a goal that CTA leadership has been working toward, he said.

In just under three months, 30-year-old Abhijeet Dipke – the founder and face of India’s Gen Z “cockroach” protests – has acquired the kind of celebrity status normally reserved for a breakout actor or cricketer.

In politics or activism, unless you come from an influential family, such recognition can take years – if it comes at all.

“It’s been a rollercoaster ride. Two-three months ago, nobody knew me. I was just in my room in Boston watching documentaries or attending lectures,” said Dipke, who recently completed a master’s in public relations at Boston University.

“Now I’m here surrounded by hundreds of people, by cameras. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

In and around his hometown of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar in the western state of Maharashtra, Dipke is routinely thronged by people wanting to shake his hand or take a photo.

If the attention bothers him, it doesn’t show. Perhaps because politics isn’t entirely new to him: before moving to the US, Dipke had worked with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), an opposition party that grew out of an anti-corruption movement, for three years.

Then, on 16 May, Dipke wrote a post on X that would change his life: “What if all cockroaches come together?”

It was a response to a remark by India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant, who had likened jobless youngsters to cockroaches. Kant later said his comments had been misinterpreted and were directed specifically at young people using fake degrees, rather than the country’s youth more broadly.

But the clarification did little to quell the outrage.

Dipke said he wrote his post while playing a video game. “It was totally spontaneous. I had no idea it would become such a big movement,” he said.

Encouraged by tens of thousands of responses, he joined a handful of former colleagues and activists to launch the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), its name playing on both the chief justice’s remark and that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Alongside the support, Dipke and the campaign were fiercely trolled by government supporters. Their website and X account was briefly taken down in India.

Dipke says that when he wrote to X and to India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asking why the account had been taken down, he received a notice saying it had been withheld under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act which allows the government to block online information ‘in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State’.

The ministry did not reply to the BBC’s questions about the issue, but The Indian Express and other media reported government officials as saying the sites had been blocked because of ‘national security concerns’. Dipke says he decided to return to India in response to this.

“I took the decision to come back to India when I was called a national security threat by my own government. That really hurt me. Isn’t my government supposed to stand by me when I’m abroad?” he said.

“I decided I need to go back to my country to show I’m not a national security threat. I love my country, just not in the way that you [the government] want.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would strip private schools and colleges of their tax-exempt status if they provide targeted help to students based on their race, a significant escalation in the White House’s campaign to eradicate diversity programs directed at Black, Latino and other minority students.

The Treasury Department proposed the change Thursday in a new regulation that, if made final, would take effect after May 2027. The rule is broadly aimed at ending any policies or programs that help students because of their race, and it specifically says such benefits in admissions, scholarships and facilities “would be incompatible” with the rule.

It’s the latest attempt by the Trump administration to pressure schools and colleges to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies that had become common before President Trump returned to the White House with a promise to eliminate them. Trump officials have used Civil Rights-era laws to unwind the policies, saying they discriminate against white and Asian American students.

Scores of universities have shut down or rebranded their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices and ended scholarships and clubs designed for minority students under pressure from the White House. In a statement announcing the proposal, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that even policies that are no longer under the banner of DEI could be targeted.

“Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature,” Bessent said.

The Treasury Department and IRS estimate that up to 18,000 private schools, colleges and other education institutions could be affected by the proposal.

America’s private universities have been exempt from many taxes for more than a century because they provide a public good. The benefit saves many universities millions of dollars every year.

Trump has seen the tax-exempt status as a lever to pull in his pressure campaign against colleges that he describes as bastions of “wokeness.” He threatened to cut the benefit for Harvard University last year during his battle with the nation’s oldest college. In a response, Harvard officials said there was no legal basis for doing so and argued it would force cuts to financial aid and crucial medical research.

It’s incredibly rare for the federal government to go after a college’s tax-exempt status, but there’s one notable precedent. Bob Jones University, a small Christian school in South Carolina, lost the benefit in the 1970s over a ban on interracial dating and marriage on campus. The Supreme Court upheld the IRS’s decision to deny the school its exemption. The school has since ended the ban and regained tax-exempt status in 2017.

Laws forbid the IRS from targeting individuals and organizations for ideological reasons, and federal officials are not allowed to direct IRS investigations.

To maintain nonprofit status, which allows donations to be tax-deductible, organizations must follow IRS rules on lobbying, political campaign activity and annual reporting requirements, as well as other obligations.

The Trump administration describes the new proposal as a move toward restoring merit in the nation’s education systems.

The Justice Department has separately opened investigations into several medical schools that it accuses of favoring Black and Hispanic students in admissions. Trump officials say any such favoritism violates Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law that forbids discrimination in education and was created to fight segregation and its impact.

A statement from IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano said private schools that promote discriminatory practices will no longer be exempt from taxes.

“Today’s proposed regulations put institutions on notice and schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination should expect to lose that status,” he said.

Binkley writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press Education Writer Annie Ma contributed to this report.