The case of Cayla J: Judge to decide if California failed low-income students during Covid

This fall, in a courtroom in Oakland, lawyers will reexamine the pandemic’s impact on K-12 schools in California – a subject many people might prefer to forget about — but can’t because, like Covid itself, the effects are inescapable.

The state of California defends itself over accusations that it mishandled remote learning during Covid, starting in the spring of 2020, and then failed to alleviate the harm its most vulnerable children experienced then and still experience.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman denied the state’s request to dismiss the case outright earlier this month. There’s no dispute that particularly low-income students of color had less access to remote learning during the nine-plus months they learned from home, Seligman wrote in a 12-page ruling. The question that needs answering, he said, is whether the state’s level of response is so insufficient that it violated the children’s right to an equal opportunity for an education under California’s constitution.

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