Sacramento Report: Assemblymember Takes Over Education Committee

This week, Assemblymember Darshana Patel started her new role as chair of the Assembly Education Committee. It’s a powerful position she’s succeeding from Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi who is running for schools chief.

We spoke with Patel last year at the start of her first term in the Legislature. She has since made supporting students with disabilities one of her priorities.

Patel takes over the committee at a key moment amid reforms for changing the state’s education governing structure.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently called for limiting the scope of school superintendent, California’s top schools job, to help streamline what’s currently a confusing power structure between the governor, Legislature, State Board of Education and Department of Education.

The governor’s proposal would remove the superintendent’s oversight of the Department of Education, a state agency, to the State Board of Education, which is an 11-member board elected by the governor.

There isn’t total agreement about this approach, including from current Superintendent Tony Thurmond. 

We talk more about this and how Patel’s plans to navigate the gig in our conversation below, edited for clarity and brevity.

How do you see your role, and the Legislature more broadly, working in tandem with the governor and state superintendent?

Patel: “There’s certainly a lot of transition right now, and I look forward to strengthening the relationships between our office and the governor’s office. And through my role as chair of the education committee, I will have a seat at the table where some of these important conversations will happen.

I don’t think it’s a secret in California anywhere that there are significant coherence issues with our public education system. It’s not a new challenge. There have been attempts in the past to change the superintendent’s role.

I fully agree with the problem statement, and I’m very open to hearing what the solution looks like. I think we do need to create more efficiency and accountability in how education is delivered in California.

There’s also the State Board of Education where all the positions are appointed by the governor. So there’s this robust conversation happening right now around if we could dream of a better governance structure, what would that look like? And is this the right time to make that shift?”

How do you plan to approach your duties as committee chair? 

Patel: “I specifically requested the Speaker when I started to be on all three education committees because I wanted that holistic approach. So I was the first assemblymember in living memory to have asked for and received all three education committees. And I think now having the honor and privilege to serve as the assembly chair, what I bring is that holistic view, that passion for public education, and really the scientific mindset to making sure that we look at data when we support programs, we scrutinize budgets.”

Did you know from the beginning you wanted the job?

Patel: “I had laid that out to the speaker very early that that would be a long term goal of mine was to grow into a chairship position.

I didn’t know that it would happen this soon, but it became apparent to me that it’s tradition that when you’re running for a statewide office, it’s not unexpected that there’s a change in that chair seat. So the opportunity came sooner than expected. But the speaker’s very confident based on what I’ve demonstrated in the past year.”

What are your thoughts on the recent Supreme Court ruling blocking school districts from prohibiting teachers telling parents’ about trans’ students identities?

Patel: “My initial reaction is of course I have concerns around this being done on what we call the shadow docket. There wasn’t a full public hearing on it. So it’s been pushed down back to the lower court. So we’ll see there’s many interpretations.

But my number one priority is to make sure our kids are safe.

I don’t think it’s fair to ask teachers to out their pupils when they may not even really know what’s going on. So it creates a new risk for our education workforce to have to now talk about their student’s identity. 

I just wonder how does this even work in the classroom? I don’t know how it even comes up.”

In Other News

Calls from Democratic Party leaders for low-polling candidates to drop out of the governor’s race by Friday’s filing deadline mostly failed. Just one, Ian Calderon, out of the nine candidates running for the job backed out.

With no clear front-runner, this has Democrats worried the Republican candidates in the race — former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — could be the top two winning candidates and advance to the November election.

What I’m Reading Now

• San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond moves to run for the 48th Congressional District, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
• School boards throughout San Diego County are taking advantage of a new law that gives them a pay bump, but not without pushback, from KPBS.
• And, lastly, inewsource reports on the county’s supervisors push to inspect the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

Thanks for reading the Sacramento Report! Please reach out for any story ideas or neat tidbits at nadia@voiceofsandiego.org.

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