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Dawn Payne, a science and music teacher at Buttonwillow Union Elementary, teaches the kindergarten class a lesson about shapes on March 27, 2023.The past few years, California has been all about the ABCs, 1-2-3s and the wheels on the bus, investing more than $5 billion in early childhood education.
But kindergarten, a staple of elementary schools for more than a century, remains optional.That might change next year. Legislators plan to introduce a new bill to require kindergarten and they’re confident that it will meet a better fate than its predecessors, which either died in committee or were vetoed, largely due to the cost.The past few years, California has been all about the ABCs, 1-2-3s and the wheels on the bus, investing more than $5 billion in early childhood education. But kindergarten, a staple of elementary schools for more than a century, remains optional. Despite nearly a half dozen legislative attempts to require it, California is one of 32 states that doesn’t mandate that all 5-year-olds attend school. That might change next year. Legislators plan to introduce a new bill to require kindergarten and they’re confident that it will meet a better fate than its predecessors, which either died in committee or were vetoed, largely due to the cost. “Kids need to be around other kids, they need to be learning. It matters,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, which advocates for early childhood education. “I don’t see why California can’t make this happen.”Children who attend kindergarten have higher test scores in math and reading in third grade and beyond and higher high school graduation rates. They’re also less likely to be suspended or drop out later in their school careers.While California requires all school districts to offer kindergarten, it doesn’t require families to enroll their children. Most do, but about 5% a year opt out. The reasons vary: some families believe their children aren’t ready for the rigors of school, and others are happy with their children’s current arrangement, whether it’s a preschool, day care or staying home with family.to send their children to kindergarten, data shows. Lozano said there’s a variety of reasons for this: they either don’t know about it due to a language barrier; they’re afraid to register their children in school due to immigration concerns; parents are working so hard they’ve missed notices from the school district; or some combination of all three. Regardless, schools need to improve their outreach to that community, she said. Cecelia Kiss, a bilingual kindergarten teacher in the Sacramento City Unified School District, said she recently had a student whose mother was deported, and the child was unable to attend school because there was no one available to drive her. Even though the child loved school and the family placed a high value on education, it was logistically impossible to get the child to school. It took several weeks for the school and family to make transportation arrangements. “For Latinos, education is so important. We want to give our kids the best we can,” said Kiss, who is also the parent of a kindergartner. “But sometimes we can’t do everything. We rely on kind teachers to care for our children, to help them learn, to help them be prepared for first grade.”said that the fact that kindergarten isn’t mandatory discourages already disadvantaged families from enrolling their children. In her experience, Latino families have tremendous respect for the public school system and if the system tells them kindergarten is optional, and therefore not a priority, “they listen to that.” That’s why she’s proposed two previous bills to make kindergarten mandatory. The state should be unequivocal in its message to families that early childhood education is essential for students’ success in school and life, she said. The state’s alreadyto all 4-year-olds, expanded state-funded preschool and added more slots to its subsidized child care program. Bolstering kindergarten should be next, she said.for 2026, and he pledged to support any bill that addresses it. Several legislators said they’d consider sponsoring one.when Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it. In his veto note, he said he supports early education generally but the state hadn’t budgeted the cost, estimated to be $268 million annually. “While the author's intent is laudable … it is important to remain disciplined when it comes to spending, particularly spending that is ongoing,” Newsom wrote. Plenty of groups supported the bills, including the California Teachers Association — the state’s largest teachers union — and a slew of school districts. But it had a few opponents, namely the Homeschool Association of California. The group’s opposition was not based on the merits of kindergarten itself, but on the state’s ability to strip rights from parents. “Most kids are already going to kindergarten. But some parents have good reasons for keeping their kids at home,” said Jamie Heston, a member of the group’s board. “Parents want the choice to decide what’s best for their individual child.” The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association hasn’t taken a position on the issue, but generally opposes new initiatives that cost money -- including mandatory kindergarten. That stance isn’t likely to change if a kindergarten bill resurfaces, the group’s vice president Susan Shelley said this week. “From a budgetary point of view, there’s a lot of pressure this year to keep spending under control,” Shelley said. “This would not be a one-time cost. It would be ongoing. And there’s not an urgent need to expand kindergarten, compared to other more pressing needs facing the state right now.” Bruce Fuller, an education professor at UC Berkeley who studies early childhood education, said the Legislature should focus on more pressing needs facing the under-6 crowd. Those include how the rollout of transitional kindergarten has led to the closure of many preschools, leaving many 3-year-olds without a place to go. Also, Head Start is struggling with funding and other obstacles imposed by the Trump administration, including attempts to bar families who are not citizens. And even though California has expanded access to state-funded preschool, not enough families know they’re eligible. “Not that many families opt out of kindergarten, so it’s not a huge need,” Fuller said. “There are more immediate concerns.”Still, Rubio is confident that a kindergarten bill has a good chance of passing this year, largely because the Legislature has seensince it last voted on a kindergarten bill in 2024. Twenty-seven new senators and Assembly members were elected last fall. For Rubio, whose parents immigrated from Mexico, the issue is personal. Although she did well in school, her twin brother did not. At an early age, he was wrongly placed in special education, fell behind and struggled throughout his time in school, eventually dropping out. Rubio believes he would have fared better if he had a high-quality early childhood education. She’s also an elementary school teacher who’s seen the gap between students who’ve been to preschool, TK and kindergarten, versus those who had never enrolled in school at all until first grade. Children who’ve been to kindergarten know how to hold a pencil, write their names, count to 20, take turns and maybe even read or do basic math, she said. Those who haven’t lag far behind their peers and some never catch up, she said. “I have very vivid memories of my students just breaking down crying at the end of the year because they couldn't do a test. They didn't know the answers, and that's so heartbreaking to see,” said Rubio, who’s on leave from her job teaching at Monrovia Unified in Los Angeles County. “It’s hard on them, and it’s hard on the teachers because those children need a lot of extra help.” Lozano said she thinks the bill will pass eventually. The initiative would cost money, but the state would save money in the long run if more students succeeded in school and graduated. “It took us 20 years to get TK. It takes time to change minds, change policies,” Lozano said. “There are so many benefits to kindergarten, especially for the kids who need it the most. We believe the benefits outweigh the costs.”Earlier this year, as the political battle over Congressional redistricting brought California into the national spotlight, Facebook users were shown a curious series of ads from a straightforward-looking news site called the California Courier.At a glance, the Courier does not necessarily look right-leaning. A handful of stories seem like straight news echoing press releases, such as one announcing new affordable housing units. But even those that seem relatively neutral may have a right-leaning spin, like one describing speeding fines tied to income as a potential “woke penalty loophole.” The outlet also shares a name with a 67-year-old California-based publication serving the Armenian diaspora.Critics say the California outlet is part of a growing, nationwide ecosystem of innocuous-looking, cheaply-produced news publications that publish and advertise biased articles in an attempt to surreptitiously influence elections. They worry the practice could mislead voters and corrode trust in nonpartisan news providers. According to a review of the ad library maintained by Facebook’s owner, Meta, the outlet has spent more than $80,000 since 2021 promoting its stories on social issues and politics, potentially reaching tens of thousands of users on the platform each week.Earlier this year, as the political battle over Congressional redistricting brought California into the national spotlight, Facebook users were shown a curious series of ads. The ads, from a straightforward-looking news site called the California Courier, often felt a lot like campaign commercials, linking to articles hammering Democrats in the state, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. Few punched in the other direction, toward Republicans. One said “California Democrats just rewrote their gerrymandering plan so voters will see their partisan map on the ballot this November.” Another called Proposition 50, whichA reader who clicked through to the Courier’s website would find stories that largely align with a conservative view of the news, likeWhat a reader would not find is any disclosure of the Courier’s ownership or funding, including what appear to be ties to a network of conservative organizations in California that, according to one researcher, scaled up a series of right-leaning news sites in three other states just ahead of the 2024 election. The Courier has money to spend. According to a review of the ad library maintained by Facebook’s owner, Meta, the outlet has spent more than $80,000 since 2021 promoting its stories on social issues and politics, potentially reaching tens of thousands of users on the platform each week. Critics say the California outlet is part of a growing, nationwide ecosystem of innocuous-looking, cheaply-produced news publications that publish and advertise biased articles in an attempt to surreptitiously influence elections. They worry the practice could mislead voters and corrode trust in nonpartisan news providers. “I think we are in an era where people are consuming so much content online without knowing the source of it,” said Max Read, who has studied the network apparently behind the Courier at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that works to counter political polarization. “And for well-funded organizations to contribute to that by disguising what they're doing online just helps exacerbate that problem of people not trusting what they come across.” At a glance, the Courier does not necessarily look right-leaning. A handful of stories seem like straight news echoing press releases, such asThe outlet also shares a name with a 67-year-old California-based publication serving the Armenian diaspora. One of that Courier’s founders won When The Markup and CalMatters contacted the publisher of the Armenian Courier, he said he was unaware of the other site. He told a reporter he was opening it for the first time. “I'm definitely not conservative,” said Harut Sassounian, who owns the Courier, where his regular editorials appear online and formerly in print. “The two publications have nothing in common. Neither politically nor ethnically nor anything like that.”Although it lacks the pedigree of its Armenian twin, the right-leaning Courier has shown it is well-immersed in today’s social media. AThe publication also shares some of the murky citation practices of contemporary social media. Almost all of the stories on the site are unattributed, or simply attributed to “the California Courier.” A few, however, include author names. One of the named writers describes himself on social media as a “content creator” for the Lincoln Media Foundation, a conservative group, and links to Courier articles. Another shares a name with a Republican strategist based in Orange County, and a third lists a resume with conservative organizations in a short bio.is tied to the Lincoln Club, a group based in Orange County that bills itself as “the oldest and largest conservative major donor organization in the state of California.” The club funnels anonymously-donated money torecently said it was “proud to present” a new documentary purporting to reveal “the untold truth about the Pacific Palisades fire,” the natural disaster that tore through the state this year and increased political pressure on Newsom.Neither the Lincoln Club, Lincoln Media, the California Courier, or the Courier writers responded to multiple requests for comment about the origins of the site, either through email, phone, or social media messages. That silence, and the lack of information about ownership on the Courier’s website, comes despite the outlet’s chief goal, as outlined on its Facebook page. “California Courier offers statewide and local news,” the page’s description reads. “Our mission is transparency.” The Lincoln Club has previously been linked to “local” websites around the country, spreading stories with a distinctly conservative tint.that noted deep in their privacy policies that they were projects from Lincoln Media. Those outlets had names like The Angeleno and the Keystone Courier, and stretched from California to Pennsylvania, although a resulting report didn’t name the Courier. Many of the sites used Facebook and other social media tools to press a conservative agenda, the report found. Meta has rules against “coordinated inauthentic behavior” but it’s not clear whether Lincoln Media’s websites would cross that line.after a meat-industry additive. These sites don’t produce outright false news, like others, but they do not meet basic journalistic standards. That often means low-quality content and failing to disclose associations with outside organizations. The sites generally aren’t designed to generate revenue, but to sway public opinion. The majority, according to researchers, lean toward a conservative agenda, and if the site’s stories gain traction on social media, they can travel widely. “If they place an ad well or if they just get the right pickup from the right influencer, these things don't really have a limit on how far they can go,” Read said. While it’s not clear how many sites the Lincoln Club might fund, it isn’t the only group that has used the strategy.on Metric Media, a group that created nearly 1,300 sites around the country with names like Maine Business Daily and the Ann Arbor Times. At a glance, these could pass for simple local news operations. But the Times report found they took money from public relations firms and Republican operatives to produce stories beneficial to those groups, a massive journalistic red flag. Ethical or not, the strategy can be effective for lending credibility to a particular viewpoint. Kevin DeLuca, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University who has researched pink slime websites, conducted an experiment that showed subjects both real unbiased news sites and others produced by Metric Media. Some subjects in the study were given a tip sheet that asked them to examine the sites closely, looking at whether they included information like credible mission pages and other details. But even with the tip sheet, the study subjects said in interviews that they didn’t strongly prefer the truly local over the manufactured sites. DeLuca says these sites are now in place around the United States, and news consumers have little idea when they’re running into them. The problem may only get worse with the spread of generative AI, since that technology further reduces the cost of creating such sites. Researchers who study these sites say it’s never been easier to produce them. Local news, for one, has faced a years-long financial crisis that’s wiped many once-robust operations off the map. While it can’t be said whether any one publication uses AI-generated content, the wide availability of tools like ChatGPT, capable of producing at least a semblance of a passable news story, have also made it easier to build up such sites. “It’s going to make these pink slime sites even harder for people to know that what they're reading is not from a human source and not really local investigative journalism.” DeLuca said. Sassounian, for his part, doesn’t think there’s any risk the two California Couriers would ever be confused with each other. He took over the paper in the 1980s, and his columns, which he describes as “hard-hitting editorials that defend the rights of the Armenian people worldwide,” have been translated into languages around the world. “It's not pleasant to have our name used by someone else,” Sassounian said. “I prefer that they don't, but I don't know what I can do about it.”New coins begin to circulate today, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States' founding. The coins feature pilgrims and early presidents — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. But other coins honoring civil rights figures and suffragettes won't be minted.a few weeks ago, the Frederick Douglass, Ruby Bridges and suffragette quarters had been scrapped, replaced by coins featuring pilgrims, the Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address.In a break with tradition, the U.S. Mint is also considering issuing a $1 coin with the face of the current president, Donald Trump, a move usually shunned as a symbol of monarchy.New coins begin to circulate today, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States' founding. The coins feature pilgrims and early presidents — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. But other coins honoring civil rights figures and suffragettes won't be minted. In a break with tradition, the U.S. Mint is also considering issuing a $1 coin with the face of the current president, Donald Trump, a move usually shunned as a symbol of monarchy. That has sparked pushback from some lawmakers and members of an advisory committee whose design recommendations were overruled. The special coins were authorized back in 2021 in anticipation of this year's big semiquincentennial celebration. That launched a lengthy design process that involved lots of focus groups and public outreach. "In a democracy and a country as vast as this, the only way to do this is exactly the way Congress decided it should be done, which is to form a committee of people from different regions of the country, different perspectives, and let them talk it through," says Donald Scarinci, who has served on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee for two decades. The committee ultimately recommended five commemorative quarters to roll out during the year. One would feature Frederick Douglass, to mark the abolition of slavery. Another would highlight the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. A third coin would have shown 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, to celebrate school desegregation and the civil rights movement. The idea of the series was to honor not only the 250-year-old Declaration of Independence but also some of the battles fought in the centuries that followed to help realize that founding creed. "We struggled as a nation with civil rights," Scarinci says."We struggled as a nation with women's suffrage. But we persevered and we've made, at least in some situations, some progress."a few weeks ago, the Frederick Douglass, Ruby Bridges and suffragette quarters had been scrapped, replaced by coins featuring pilgrims, the Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address. The first of the new anniversary quarters features the Mayflower Compact. The Treasury secretary rejected designs featuring Frederick Douglass, Ruby Bridges and women's suffrage.A spokeswoman for the Mint says the new designs were selected by the Treasury Secretary, but that all had been reviewed at some point either by the citizens advisory committee or the Commission of Fine Arts.The U.S. Mint has proposed issuing a commemorative coin featuring President Trump. That would be a break from tradition in the U.S., which has generally resisted putting living presidents on money."It's an absolute break from tradition," says Douglas Mudd, curator and director of the Money Museum, run by the American Numismatic Association."This would be a first to have a sitting president on a coin that's intended for circulation." George Washington's face didn't appear on a coin until 1932, more than a century after his death. The nation's first president was strongly opposed to that kind of personal aggrandizement. "He expressly said, I, George Washington, will not have my portrait on United States coins. We are done with kings," Scarinci says."And for 250 years, around the world, the only nations that placed images of their rulers on coins are monarchs and dictatorships.""This is not just a coin," Scarinci says."It is American history that will last for an eternity. These coins that we produce reflect the values of a nation."If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.Gov. Gavin Newsom leaves the stage after addressing attendees at his inauguration for a second term at the Plaza de California in Sacramento on Jan. 6, 2023.Under Newsom’s tenure, health care has been expanded, but his housing goals and homelessness pledges remain unfinished. Can he deliver before eyeing the White House?The governor, who will address the Legislature and present his budget proposal this week, has spent the past seven years pushing an ambitious agenda. Now in his final year, numerous interest groups will clamor for him to pass their preferred policies, nix the regulations they fear and protect the programs they favor. How he responds will follow him into his expected presidential primary run.“This really is a pivotal year for him,” Democratic political consultant Kelly Calkin said. “What do voters in the rest of the country want to see? They’re feeling the pinch of affordability. … He’s probably going to look through that lens on what helps shape his agenda for the next year.”It’s Gavin Newsom’s final year in office as California governor — and his last chance to use his role as governor to audition for the national stage. The governor, who will address the Legislature and present his budget proposal this week, has spent the past seven years pushing an ambitious agenda. Now in his final year, numerous interest groups will clamor for him to pass their preferred policies, nix the regulations they fear and protect the programs they favor. How he responds will follow him into his expected presidential primary run. Will he, with his recent focus on affordability, make a dent in Californians’ housing and health care costs? Will he make progress on reducing homelessness? Will he continue pushing green energy as voters demand cheaper gas? Will he weather another dismal budget deficit without punishing cuts that would alienate the progressives whose programs he has championed? “This really is a pivotal year for him,” Democratic political consultant Kelly Calkin said. “What do voters in the rest of the country want to see? They’re feeling the pinch of affordability. … He’s probably going to look through that lens on what helps shape his agenda for the next year.” It’s also his final opportunity to make headway on some of the lofty goals Newsom made when he ran for governor in 2018 that he hasn’t always met.his administration has poured into it. He started off his term with an initial, headline-grabbing proposal to grant new parents six months of paid leave, but quickly pared it back to a two-week increase, for a total of eight weeks, and gradual boosts in how much the program pays. In 2021 he said the state would add 200,000 new subsidized child care slots by this year, but the plan been delayed for two years and remains tens of thousand of slots short; he has since promised to resume the expansion this year. He campaigned on establishing a single-payer public health care system, even calling out “politicians saying they support single-payer but that it’s too soon, too expensive or someone else’s problem.” Then he pivoted to “universal coverage,” with the state slowly expanding coverage for low-income Californians, including undocumented immigrants, but abruptly halted that amid a budget deficit last year. He spoke, like so many before him, of evening out the state’s boom-and-bust tax system that over-relies on stock market returns, but has largely quashed other proposals to raise revenue as the state stares down a deficit.Newsom’s penchant for big promises and first-in-the-nation ideas has been both a blessing and a curse for the ambitious politician. Advocates of those policies say the lofty goals have made a difference, even if the state ultimately falls short of achieving all of them.“I don’t think there was a lot of stuff lacking,” said Anthony Rendon, the former Assembly speaker who led the chamber during Newsom’s first five years in office, of policy issues the governor has yet to address. After years of working with Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown, who was focused mostly on fiscal restraint and building up the state’s reserves, Rendon and former Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins recalled Newsom starting off his first term in 2019 pleasing the mostly Democratic Legislature with a long list of progressive ideas and a willingness to spend on them.Coral Street in Santa Cruz has become a prominent hangout for the unhoused community, who find resources at the Housing Matters shelter during the day.Transitional kindergarten instructional assistant Nancy Espino reads a book about crickets to children at Silverwood Elementary School in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District in Concord on Aug. 11, 2025.Case in point: housing. It’s perhaps the most visible measure by which Newsom will be judged after he leaves office and it comprises a bulk of the recent national Democratic platform focused on lowering the cost of living. About 40% of California households are “burdened” by their rent or mortgage,Newsom ran on lowering those costs by boosting production and said it was “achievable” for the state to build an ambitious 3.5 million new homes by 2025. In 2024, the state added just under 120,000 new units, about a fifth of the annual rate needed to meet that goal. In media appearances the governor now downplays his original figure as a “stretch goal.” Yet those who favor building more say he’s still accomplished more than any other governor on housing. They blame local resistance to housing density, high interest rates and the persistently high cost of building as reasons for the slow progress. “You can’t solve a systemic problem overnight or even in seven years, but what you can do is change the trajectory of the issue,” said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, a nonprofit that advocates for building affordable housing.“Leadership sets the tone,” he said. “It’s changed the focus and the conversation to where the state of California has finally gotten serious in planning for and producing affordable housing.”Newsom acknowledges California has yet to see his promised building boom, and last month expressed interest in alternative forms of construction, such as modular housing, as another solution. On The Ezra Klein Show,at an upcoming legislative debate over how the state can promote modular housing, a cheaper way to build in which houses are assembled in factories then shipped to sites to be installed. An Assembly committee chaired by one of Newsom’s allies on housing, Democratic Oakland Assemblymember“This holds a lot of promise. It holds a lot of political peril, in the context of the politics within labor. And that has to be accommodated and dealt with,” Newsom said. “By the way, if there’s a big preview for California in my last year, it’s in this space legislatively to take it to the next level.” It’s the closest Newsom has come in recent weeks to stating a new policy goal or proposal. Izzy Gardon, Newsom’s spokesperson, would not provide any details on his housing or any other agenda, telling CalMatters only to “stay tuned.” Gardon refused interview requests to discuss the governor’s policy goals for his final year. Newsom is expected to deliver his State of the State address on Thursday.Already, advocates for the comprehensive safety-net services that Newsom has championed — another hallmark of his tenure — are urging him to maintain those programs as he stares down another tough budget deficit. The agency overseeing those services accounts for nearly 40% of the state’s general fund spending and many of its programs are projected to lose significant federal funds through President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill. Gov. Gavin Newsom marches with a group of supporters towards the state Capitol for his second inauguration on Jan. 6, 2023.During Newsom’s two terms, he added subsidized child care slots, boosted cash assistance for the poor, installed a state surgeon general who has focused on childhood trauma and the racial health gap and most significantly, incrementally expanded health care coverage to different groups of undocumented immigrants. The latter, a controversial and costly policy, has allowed the governor to pivot from his original promise of a universal, state-paid health care system that was the pie-in-the-sky dream of progressives and still say he was achieving “universal access.” After passage of the Affordable Care Act, more than 90% of Californians were insured by the time Newsom took office. His expansions, first for immigrant young adults and then for older ones, Policy allies generally don’t fault Newsom for shifting away from a single-payer system, which would have required billions more in state funds and complex agreements with an increasingly un-aligned federal administration. They are particularly satisfied that his administration has laid some of the groundwork for such a proposal by attempting to rein in the growth of health care costs through price limits imposed by the Office of Health Care Affordability. But now, they’re worried he’ll walk away from his expansive coverage goals altogether. Last year, facing higher than expected costs in the Medi-Cal program and needing to close a $12 billion deficit, Newsomfor the last group of undocumented residents to become eligible: working-age adults. A freeze on new enrollment of adults took effect Jan. 1. Later this year, undocumented immigrant adults will lose Medi-Cal dental coverage and next year most will face monthly premiums that are expected to force some off coverage, to the disappointment of health advocates who are urging Newsom to reverse the cuts. Amanda McAllister-Wallner, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California, said she’s worried the administration will consider further cuts this year, after Newsom has come out heavily against other proposals to raise revenue for the health system, like a nurses’ union. She doesn’t like that the governor appeared willing to back down on coverage at the same time the state’s provision of social services for immigrants became an increasing “The hope was that the Health for All expansion would be considered the baseline, that that would be something we budget for long term because it’s just something that’s part of who we are as a state,” said McAllister-Wallner. “Health care has been an area where the governor has really made a name for himself in a way that I think he can and should be very proud of, and to see … a backing-off of those commitments would be the biggest disappointment for me.”is a general assignment reporter. She covers the news that shapes Los Angeles and how people change the city in return.Morgan Whirledge and Anton Anderson wait to be sworn in as new members of the Altadena Town Council in December.The year of the Eaton Fire, the election for Altadena Town Council saw more participation than ever before in its 50 years.It's a small number for the community of around 41,000 people. Yet, for those involved in public service, the surge in participation reflects a bittersweet side effect of the devastation in Altadena.As the region marks the first anniversary of the Eaton Fire, local representatives and activists say their community is stronger and more engaged than ever.The election for Altadena's town council takes place in person: pencil on paper, no mail-ins. That didn't change last year, despite the mass displacement caused by the Eaton Fire. Voting happened in November at library branches, the Grocery Outlet and a local pizza joint. It was a small dose of normalcy for a community still scattered with empty lots. The results were surprising. The small-town election saw more participation than ever before in its 50 years. Nearly 900 people cast their ballots — almost double the normal turnout. The Altadena town council holiday party and last meeting of the year in December was held in a large room at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.It's a small number for the community of around 41,000 people. Yet, for those involved in public service, the surge in participation reflects a bittersweet side effect of the devastation in Altadena. As the region marks the first anniversary of the Eaton Fire, local representatives and activists say their community is stronger and more engaged than ever. " The majority of Altadena is displaced," said Morgan Whirledge, a newly elected town councilmember whose home was destroyed last January."That still almost double the amount of people came and voted was a testament to how much Altadenans want to return home." Altadena is in unincorporated L.A. County. It has no mayor or city council. Instead, County Supervisor Kathryn Barger represents the community. The town council is its smallest and most direct form of government. The council doesn't write legislation. It weighs in on county decisions and provides a forum for neighborly debates. Victoria Knapp, who was chair of the town council in 2025, said that before Eaton, council meetings were full of the types of disputes you'd imagine in a small but animated community: tree removal, speed bumps and sidewalks. Then came the fire and, with it, a whole new role for the small council for a town largely without its own governmental structures to face the fire with. " The Eaton Fire changed everything," Knapp said at the council's holiday party and last meeting of the year in December, which was held in a large room at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena."It changed the scale of the work, the urgency of our decisions and the meaning of public service itself.""I have watched residents become organizers, strangers become collaborators and survivors become the heartbeat of our recovery," she said. Anton Anderson is another new town councilmember in Altadena. He told LAist he decided to run to make sure his community in West Altadena would have a greater voice. " The rebuild is going to change and impact Altadena forever," he said."The opportunity that presents us is to really make sure that what's actually happening in Altadena can go up to the people who make decisions." That spirit was on display at the town council's holiday party, which Supervisor Barger attended. The first thing she noticed when she walked in was that the crowd was double the size, compared to last year. " Even though they may not reside in Altadena as we speak, as they rebuild, they're coming back," she said."They're coming back even without the bricks and mortar."
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