The State Superintendent of Public Instruction is a very important position up for election, but outside of a few outlets like Edsource, there’s no spotlight on the State Superintendent’s race — even though Californians have big opinions when it comes to education.

This is an elected position with voters choosing who gets the job every four years, with this year’s deadline being June 2nd. Like the current race for governor, it’s a very crowded field, with a large percentage of undecided voters. In terms of what they actually do, the State Superintendent oversees educational policy for all California K-12 public schools through the Department of Education. The role also includes seats on both the UC Board of Regents and the CSU Board of Trustees.

The current State Superintendent is Tony Thurmond, one of the candidates running for California governor. Ten candidates are currently running to replace him — and out of them, six agreed to attend a public forum with EdSource to share their vision, views on education, and what they see as the main issues facing California schools. They were (in alphabetical order) Richard Barrera, Nichelle Henderson, Al Muratsuchi, Josh Newman, Anthony Rendon, and Sonja Shaw.

Shaw is among the more controversial candidates, as she is running on keeping transgender girls out of women’s sports. While she didn’t say it out loud during the forum itself, EdSource’s profile piece on her also says getting rid of age-appropriate materials that mention LGBTQ+ people is a large of her campaign.

All six candidates were asked to discuss a wide array of topics, from how they would deal with the increasing presence of AI in the modern world, to how they would deal with California’s low literacy and math proficiency rates. They also discussed the possibility that the role might be stripped of a great deal of power thanks to a proposal by Governor Newsom to shift their responsibilities towards the governor’s office.

One of the more interesting topics of discussion was how each of the candidates would deal with the growing role of AI would play in schools.

Most candidates expressed skepticism, with Barrera, Shaw, and Muratsuchi being the most critical of AI. Muratsuchi in particular changed how he did exams because of AI.

“When I taught my my introduction to American government class at El Camino community college last fall, I made them write out their their exams on blue books, or the equivalent of blue books, and that’s because I didn’t want them to just take exams home and just put the questions in into the AI and spit out the answers,” Muratsuchi said.

Newman took a more moderate position. He expressed concern for the social, emotional and cognitive impact AI would have on children — Newman, in particular, mentioned “cognitive offloading” which he described as students using AI so much it keeps them from thinking for themselves.

Even so, he felt it was better to integrate AI into the classroom.

“It is massively changing American culture, American industry,” Newman said. “I think it’s really important to give districts the clarity and the guardrails that they need to use AI safely, legally and in ways that actually benefit students and educators. “

Rendon was in favor of integrating AI into education; however, he added the caveat that teacher input was required and essential to keep California from making mistakes with it. He pointed to New York as an example of a state that did this well.

Only Henderson had a positive view of AI, arguing that critics focus too much on jobs lost rather than jobs created. Henderson said that, “We are at a time where we should be thinking about the next 20 years. So, I have a six year old granddaughter. She’ll be working in a field that has not been created yet because of the innovations and the rapid change of AI.”

Any integration of AI would likely require a large sum of money, and though the state currently spends $142 billion dollars on education, California schools are still struggling to keep afloat. Another question given to the candidates centered on just this problem — how would they raise money for our schools?

Two of the candidates, Muratsuchi and Rendon, focused on revising the current formula that determines school funding. First, Muratsuchi and Rendon wanted to raise the base grant given to all schools (guaranteed by Prop 98). Second, they wanted to shift another funding metric to total school enrollment — right now it’s based on average daily attendance instead. Lastly, they wanted to use various propositions to increase the funds schools had to work with.

In terms of specifics, Muratsuchi pointed to extending Prop 55, which called for a raised income tax on those who make $250,000 or above per year. It’s important to note this wouldn’t just apply to K-12 schools — Prop 55 explicitly says 11% must be allocated for community colleges. Rendon, on the other hand, proposed altering Prop 13 so that commercial property taxes could be taxed by current standards while leaving residential taxes alone.

While Newman also proposed changing this setup by altering these propositions, he and Shaw both pointed to mismanaged funds as part of the problem. Shaw in particular emphasized better management, saying, “Our good teachers deserve good pay, and I’ll make sure I fight to make that happen, but we first have to get our house in order. We keep throwing money and burning money at a problem when there’s waste, fraud and abuse.”

Henderson had a multipronged take: while she also wanted to change the formula from student attendance to school enrollment and have better oversight of fund management, she also wanted to explore why enrollment was declining in the first place, which she believed was largely tied to the affordability crisis in California, and saw the solution to this as working with local school districts and meeting their individual needs.

Yet another topic of discussion that came up was how to close racial and socio-economic disparities within state education.

Barrera was unique in that he had hands-on experience dealing with such disparities. As a sitting school board president in San Diego, one of the accomplishments he touted was pushing for schools in the San Diego Unified School District to make classes fitting the A – G requirements (courses required in order to get into a 4-year college) accessible to all students. This was a major issue because, when he first joined the school board in 2009, only 25% of students of color within that district were eligible to attend a 4-year college. But thanks in part to Barrera’s push, that number had gone up to 70% by 2019. Barrera added, “There are examples like that all over our state, and the state needs to spend time listening to people who are making it happen rather than dictating to them.”

Muratsuchi and Rendon were once again aligned, arguing that the best way to close these gaps was to increase funding and resources for programs centered around children aged 0 – 5, where they saw those gaps forming in the first place. They strongly advocated in favor of Head Start, Head Start provides comprehensive services to low-income families with children ages 0-5.

Newman saw three different problems contributing to wider gaps within education — chronic absenteeism, the lack of qualified teachers (especially teachers of color) and instructional difficulties. By focusing on these three problems, students of color, or those living in low-income areas, could catch up.

Meanwhile, Shaw and Henderson both said they wanted more data to see exactly where the biggest problems were before targeting resources to narrow those gaps.

Why does this particular race matter?

The State Superintendent of Public Instruction is an important role thanks to the sheer breadth of its duties. Furthermore, the issues the candidates discussed are very relevant to Contra Costa. The discussion on how to fund schools is a particularly important topic for West Contra Costa Unified School District, which has a severe funding crisis, experienced a long-lasting teachers’ strike at the end of last year, and went to court over using substitutes over qualified teachers.

Because so few people are paying attention to this position and its candidates, your vote could be much more consequential. Also remember that whoever becomes State Superintendent will be overseeing all state policy, running the California Department of Education, and figuring out what to do with that $142 billion dollars our state spends on education. If you think education is getting worse — which about 51% of voters seem to believe right now — you won’t be able to change it again until 2030. So you do intend to vote in the primary, don’t look away from this race. This is a major opportunity to change every facet of California’s education policy — and you have real power here.