Is California becoming a neofeudal society?

As government-driven education restrictions pile up for the upcoming school year, the poor, middle class, and minorities may be suffering the most. Christopher Bedford reports for The Federalist.

Since New Years Day, 2020 Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic supermajorities in the state’s legislature have enacted laws increasing union and state control over education. When they closed the public schools for Covid-19, it all came crashing down, leaving it nearly impossible for poor, working and even many middle-class parents to afford to have their children taught by anything other than a flickering screen.

Los Angeles, which education news site EdSource called “ground zero for the interpretation” of the new law, voted Tuesday on its implementation. The city has 118,000 charter students, with LAist reporting it’s home to more charter schools than any other American city. Because California attaches tax money to each student, any one leaving a public school district means less money for that district, ginning up strong school-board incentives against their private competition.

A week after the state enacted the charter school power-grab, the governor declared that no schools — public, charter, private, religious — can reopen in any of California’s counties on his list for rising Covid-19 levels. The governor’s list is, of course, massive, with ABC reporting that the 32 (of 58) districts forced to close include “the vast majority of the state’s population and its biggest cities, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.”

AB 5 Causing Confusion For Tutors, Parents,” an Aug. 5 ABC 10 San Diego headline reads. “It will open parents to penalties if they have a tutor or a teacher they hire to help out their children while the schools close,” California Republican activist and radio host Carl DeMaio charged at a press conference that same day. “The idea that the governor has been silent on this enforcement problem is shocking because many parents are scrambling right now to find out how do they help their children keep pace.”

Upper-class parents with the know-how and resources have the option, still, to start a corporation for their household schooling or join with other homes to start “a pod,” bringing on teachers as employees. In California, thanks to AB5, this is more difficult than even pricey states like New York, where one tutor who usually charges $100 an hour for one-on-one study suggested to a local cable channel that a group of three or four students for four hours of math instruction might work out around $200 per student.

For years, the public school system and the unions that control it have increased their dominion over all types of education in California. While religious, charter and home-schoolers have been burdened with bureaucracy and entangling regulation, with the schools eventually being shut down by coronavirus restrictions in the majority of the state the failing public system has grown even more powerful.

“If people want to talk about systemic racism and the marginalization of minorities,” the mother told The Federalist, “this is it.”