Newsom proposes reducing California superintendent role; Thurmond says blindsided

This week’s debate over who should oversee California K-12 education sharpened after Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out a plan to reduce the future scope of the state superintendent’s role. In his State of the State address on Thursday, Newsom proposed moving oversight of the California Department of Education — a state agency with about 2,000 employees — from Tony Thurmond to the State Board of Education, which is appointed by the governor.

Thurmond, California’s elected superintendent of public instruction, said his staff were caught off guard. Elizabeth Sanders, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, said Thurmond was blindsided by the proposal and that the superintendent disagrees with Newsom’s plan.

Sanders said Thurmond’s office had only “a few hints” that an announcement might be coming, but that it otherwise was not part of prior discussions. She also said Thurmond’s staff had not talked with researchers with Policy Analysis for California Education, even though the PACE staff said they reached out to the department before the December report was published.

Thurmond questioned the point of the change, Sanders said, adding that she did not see a clear benefit for students and families. In her remarks, Sanders said the proposal would be “an unnecessary disruption,” and she said California “should be staying focused on creating results for students.”

The governance shift also drew broader skepticism from advocates focused on education policy and the public’s role in oversight. John Affeldt, managing attorney at Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm focused on education, said the plan would take power away from voters and give it to the governor, even if the governor supports public education in the moment.

Affeldt said the proposal could backfire if a governor does not support public education, arguing that while it might improve the governance structure “a bit,” he was not sure it was worth the tradeoff. He characterized it as potentially “a lot of political theater for not much real change.”

Supporters of Newsom’s proposal pointed to arguments that California’s current education leadership is too fragmented. Newsom said the aim was to simplify what is described as a convoluted K-12 governance system in which authority is shared among the governor, the Legislature, the State Board of Education, the superintendent, and the Department of Education — with school boards and county offices of education also holding power at the local level.

A December report by Policy Analysis for California Education, PACE, described that many-headed leadership structure as producing confusion for schools about which policies to follow. The report found that guidance can be contradictory, redundant or incoherent, according to the account described by Newsom’s supporters.

In this framework, Newsom’s proposal would keep the superintendent as an elected position, but with reduced and less-defined duties. Under the plan, more oversight authority over K-12 schools would move toward the governor’s appointees on the State Board of Education.

At issue for Thurmond and his supporters is whether consolidating oversight will help or hinder improvements in education outcomes. Sanders argued that if Newsom wanted to help schools, he should direct additional funding to K-12 education, adding that the department has been underfunded for years and that schools could use more money for initiatives such as tutoring and mandatory kindergarten.