…the curious thing about [The Matrix] was that everybody could grasp the basic setup instantly…We’re not strangers to the feeling that, for much of our lives, we might just as well be brains-in-vats, floating in an amniotic fluid of simulations. It doesn’t just strike us as plausibly weird. It strikes us as weirdly plausible…one can even start to wonder whether the language we hear constantly on television and talk radio (“the war on terror,” “homeland security,” etc.) is a sort of vat-English—a language from which all earthly reference has been bled away.

— Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, May 19, 2003

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The Matrix, that unrivalled cyberpunk movie that blew our minds 25 years ago (It’s all a simulation!), came to mind recently after a bout of Vat-English emails. The movie, you remember, has us all living in vats while believing we’re living full and eventful lives. (It was never completely clear why, exactly, the machines had us in vats, something about tapping our bodies for energy — best not to question too much, unless you’re into downing Red Pills). Our world, the simulated world, the one with the dainty green cast over everything, is The Matrix of the title, brought to life by the Wachowski brothers (now sisters).

So, Vat-English. “If there’s anything at all we can do to make your flight more enjoyable, we’ll be more than happy to help.” Thanks, United, maybe if you gave us a little more legroom back here in cattle-class, could you do that? No? Oh, that’s for First Class passengers, sorry I asked.

I’ve been having this ongoing battle with Eddie Bauer, who sold me a down vest last year with what turned out to be a defective zipper (after several months of wear). What galls me (I know, Buddhist serenity and all that) is their boilerplate response: “I wanted to personally reach out to you…Rest assured, we are committed to resolving this matter promptly and efficiently. Your satisfaction is our top priority, and we appreciate your patience as we work towards a resolution. Should you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We are here to help and support you every step of the way.” This after over 15 to and fro emails! (Still no replacement, five months later.)

Or this, in response to my wife Louisa complaining that a reply to her query (about a pedestrian bridge on the Yurok Loop, in Redwoods National and State Parks) came back unsigned (and with her name misspelled). “The lack of personal closing in emails is standard for responses coming from a NPS office, rather than a person…The closing of the email aligns appropriately with correspondence from a Superintendent’s Office. I can, however, assure you that your concerns have been seen and weighed in on by both the Superintendent and the appropriate Supervisor.” Dontcha love that passive voice?

Or look no farther than my spam folder. Here’s a recent sampling:

• Expiring Soon: hurry up! Rewards have arrived!
• I need your honest cooperation to partner with me to invest in your company…
• Greetings, I’m contacting you through email because I feel it’s more convenient for me to explain the reasons to which I’m contacting you.
• I am the reverend father Tony Elumelu J. Shedrack, director cash processing unit, united bank for Africa…
• YES! Send Me The TRUMP 2024 SAVE AMERICA Automatic Knife Now for 70% OFF!
• Attn dear: Your names, address and direct phone number is needed so we can process your payment immediately.
• Is your loved one experiencing memory loss?
• I am the only biological Daughter of the late Libyan President (Late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi) I have funds worth $27.500.000.00 US Dollars which I want to entrust to you for investment project assistance in your country.
• CONGRATULATIONS! CONGRATULATIONS!! CONGRATULATIONS!!! your email was selected among the FIVE lucky winners…

As I say, Vat-English, lacking any trace of actual meaning. Is this our future Brave New World, with ChatGPT and its many rivals writing us in lieu of a person? No human actually communicating, just vague platitudes and come-ons?

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State Sen. Mike McGuire joined local officials and trail stewards at the 2024 Humboldt Trails Summit in Eureka today to talk about progress being made on the Great Redwood Trail. The ambitious project would transform the defunct railway between Humboldt Bay and San Francisco Bay into a 307-mile hiking and biking trail.

“I think building the Great Redwood Trail is the opportunity of a lifetime to share one of the most beautiful spaces on planet Earth: the North Coast,” McGuire told the crowd. “On the Great Redwood Trail, visitors and locals alike will experience the tallest trees on the planet, remote, fog-shrouded beaches, oak-studded golden hills, wild rivers, vineyards and some of the most welcoming folks in the United States. The Great Redwood Trail is all about opportunity.”

The rail-to-trail project would provide a much-needed shot in the arm for rural communities along the trail, McGuire said. An economic benefits analysis published in 2023 estimated that the proposed trail system could generate over $102.5 million annually, nearly half of which would directly benefit Humboldt County.

“The conservative estimate suggests that there will be between 5.3 and 7.9 million new walking or hiking trips on the trail on an annual basis,” McGuire continued. “The average trail user will spend about $64 in food meals each day. They’re going to spend about $60 in retail each day and about $93 per day in lodging. Outdoor recreation is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the entire state of California, generating an estimated $93 billion a year.”

How much will it cost to build the trail? A 2020 study by the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA)estimated design and construction costs to clock in at approximately $1 billion, which amounts to roughly $3 million per mile. 

McGuire did not mention that figure during today’s summit but told the Press Democrat in a 2020 interview that the estimate was “complete hogwash” and “not based in reality.” McGuire said most of the trail would cost between $15,000 and $20,000 per mile.

“Approximately 90 percent of the trail – from the southern Mendocino County line all the way up to Samoa – would be backcountry, and that would be the least expensive portion of construction,” he said. “We can put in dirt and/or gravel between railroad ties and between rails. … The more expensive areas [that] will require longer-term maintenance will be within our community centers. … That will [cost] approximately $100,000 to several $100,000 a mile because we also have to take into account underground facilities, water and sewer.”

The good news is that some of the trail has already been built. Elaine Hogan, the Great Redwood Trail Agency’s executive director, said 22 percent of the trail is either complete, under construction, in planning and design, or soon to begin planning. “I was actually really surprised when I did the numbers and thought, ‘Okay, you know, we’re doing it! It’s happening!’” she said.

One of the Great Redwood Trail Agency’s top priorities is addressing environmental and safety concerns in Eel River Canyon, the “heart and crown jewel” of the Great Redwood Trail. The agency is also working with landowners from Island Mountain to Alderpoint to Fort Seward and the Wildlands Conservancy to address local concerns about the trail.

“[W]e are really working at the grassroots level,” Hogan said. “There’s a group of community members in Alderpoint that are looking to get a planning grant. [There are] really excited neighbors who are looking forward to the economic revitalization of that area that has been really affected [by] the downfall of cannabis.”

The Great Redwood Trail Agency has extended the public comment period for its Draft Master Plan. The new deadline to submit written comments is July 3. Online comments can be submitted at this link or emailed to info@greatredwoodtrailplan.org.

Several local officials provided updates about new and ongoing local trail projects earlier in the summit. Some of the trail projects will eventually become a segment of the Great Redwood Trail; others will connect to the trail.

Just a few days ago, the county announced that the Humboldt Bay Trail is on track to be finished by the end of the year, possibly as early as October, according to Hank Seemann, the county’s deputy director of environmental services. Once the Humboldt Bay Trail South project is complete, you’ll be able to walk and bike all the way from Arcata to Eureka. If you deviate slightly from the trail, you can make it all the way up to Clam Beach by taking the Hammond Trail.

Emily Sinkhorn, the City of Arcata’s director of environmental services, said the city is expected to begin construction on the Annie and Mary Connectivity Trail next year. The trail will enhance connectivity between Arcata and the Valley West area.

The City of Eureka has also made significant progress on the Bay-to-Zoo Trail. The preliminary design and environmental documents for the trail should be wrapped up by the end of the year, according to city engineer Jesse Willor. If everything goes according to plan, construction could begin as early as 2026.

This week on the EcoNews Report, our host Alicia Hamann from Friends of the Eel River discusses the opportunities and challenges presented by the Great Redwood Trail. The project, proposed to be the longest rail-trail in the nation, is the state’s opportunity to fulfill their responsibility to remediate the environmental harms caused by the old railroad. These harms include fish passage barriers, toxic waste, and hazardous debris left in the river. The trail also provides opportunities for safe active transportation, enhanced public access to the Wild and Scenic Eel River, and a boost to the tourism economy. But of course a grand vision like this has significant challenges too. Top of the list are protecting cultural sites abused by the railroad, navigating fragile geology, and of course funding this whole thing.

Join us to hear from guests Ross Taylor, fisheries biologist and principle at Ross Taylor and Associates, Colin Fiske, executive director for the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, and Scott Greacen, conservation director for Friends of the Eel River.

LINKS:

• Ross Taylor’s fish passage report
• Great Redwood Trail Master Plan
• Friends of the Eel info about the railroad

Every day during the late spring semester of 1945 I checked the bulletin board at Humboldt State College for a summer job. One morning, among the usual babysitting jobs and truck drivers’ positions, a help wanted notice appeared for waitresses and bellboys at the Benbow Inn near Garberville. My sister, Betty, and I were hired — with no interviews. The fact that I was a student satisfied any reference requirements.

The inn was designed for the Benbow family by Albert Farr, the architect who created author Jack London’s “Wolf House” in Glen Ellen. California. The nine Benbow brothers and sisters constructed a dam to form Benbow Lake and built a power company to provide electricity. Benbow Inn opened in 1926 and became a vacation land for movie stars like Jeanette MacDonald and Alan Ladd, and important people such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. It was a popular stop for motorists on the recently completed Redwood Highway. During its early days, some guests flew to the hotel in small airplanes, using the road for a landing strip. My sister had hoped to see her favorite movie stars, but the closest we came to seeing a celebrity was serving a guest who looked like Clark Gable.

Mother bought our bus tickets, round trip to San Francisco with layovers at Benbow, for $6.26 each, and two white uniforms at $1.98 apiece. We packed our beige and blue striped cardboard suitcases and caught the Greyhound bus for Southern Humboldt County.

All my life I had looked out for my little sister, and, at seventeen I felt responsible for her. Betty would not be sixteen, the legal age for employment, until October, and I think should have had a work permit, but the Benbow sisters who ran the hotel did not question this. Help was so hard to get during the war that they were glad to have us, with or without a work permit.

After a two-hour ride from Eureka, the Greyhound bus pulled up in front of the inn, brakes hissing, diesel engine rumbling. We took our suitcases from the overhead racks and stepped down into the hot sunshine. The bus left in a cloud of exhaust. The inn loomed before us. We carried our suitcases up the curved steps to the main lobby. One of the Benbow sisters, a large woman with black hair, probably in her fifties, emerged from a little office and informed us the help did not use the front entrance. She showed us the servants’ entrance at one corner of the ground floor basement level that housed a post office, storerooms and a kitchen where the workers ate.

Miss Benbow then led us up the servants’ narrow stairs to the third-floor attic. Bellboys and maintenance men lived in a building on the bank of the Eel River, a few hundred yards from the inn. She showed us to our room tucked up under the roof with a slanted ceiling and a dormer window looking out over the curved driveway, and gave us towels and sheets and blankets to make up the two single beds. She pointed out the bathroom and the laundry, where we were to do our personal laundry by hand. Then she went back downstairs.

The other girls living in the attic crowded into our room, laughing and talking. I recognized Shirley Sweet and Winnie Hogue from Humboldt State College, but I did not know the other girls, and now I can’t remember their names except for Georgeanne, whom we called “George the Girl.” That night when we went to bed, I felt a big hole in the center of my mattress made by some sort of small animal, maybe a pack rat. I shivered and curved my body around the hole, not sure it would be all right to ask for another mattress.

The eldest Benbow sister, slender and gray, supervised the dining room. Meals were included in the room fees of $15.42 per day on the American plan. No menus or sales slips. We memorized the menu and the daily changes, and recited it to the guests. Orders were not written down. I found that if I looked directly at the person ordering, I could remember everything, including drinks: coffee, hot tea, iced tea, or milk, and cream, sugar or lemon for coffee or tea. We were all underage, and were not allowed to serve alcohol.

Guests wore nice, casual clothing in the dining room. Coats and ties were not required. Although the Benbow sisters ate in the dining room at the table closest to the kitchen called “the family table,” people working at the inn did not eat in the dining room. We had our own cook in the basement kitchen. The day that country sausage patties were served, I sat next to a gardener, gnarled and worn from working hard all his life, who told me not to eat the sausage as it had spoiled in the hot weather. I didn’t eat it and told Betty not to eat it, either.

Once in a while, a guest would ask if we thought something on the menu was good. At first, I honestly told them we didn’t get to eat the dining room food. Later, I learned to say it was all very good. The chef personally made his specialty for dinner, miniature baking powder biscuits served in small Pyrex pie plates, piping hot, right out of the oven, an individual plate of hot biscuits for each table. More, if they wanted them. The guests raved about the biscuits, but I wondered why. All my life, my mother had made biscuits. Even I could make biscuits.

The stairway from the lower kitchen to the main floor rose steep and narrow, with room for only one person at a time. One day as I climbed to the main floor, one of the workmen followed me. He noticed the heels of my white socks had been mended. In our house, nothing was wasted, and my mother spent evenings with a full darning basket. She mended socks by slipping a darning egg inside the sock so the hole could be supported, and sewed cotton embroidery thread back and forth across it one way, and then in a basket weave across the other way, making an even patch. When we reached the main floor, the man laughed and asked me who had darned my socks. I thought of the hours my mother had worked. Close to tears I said. “My mother.”

A small soundproof room about ten feet wide separated the kitchen from the dining room. One set of swinging doors led to and from the kitchen, and another set of swinging doors led to and from the dining room, effectively insulating the kitchen noises from the guests. Soiled table linens were deposited in a large bin built into one side of this room. Shelves above the bin held clean silverware and linens.

Tray service with heavy silver dish covers took some practice to handle. Silver coffee and teapots added to the weight of the trays. We learned to scrunch down, get one shoulder under the tray and then stand straight up. balancing the load with one hand. In our free hand, we carried a tray stand and pushed the swinging doors open. Traffic had to keep to the right or we would have had collisions with loaded trays. One day as Betty came through the swinging door her heavy tray became unbalanced and crashed to the dining room floor. She dissolved into tears. Unruffled, the eldest Benbow sister called a bellboy to clean it up. She took Betty back into the kitchen to repeat the order for the chef. Miss Benbow handled the disaster so smoothly, she must have had some experience with crashed trays.

The number of waitresses fluctuated, but there were usually eight. We worked a three-split shift, six days in a row with the seventh day off. However, there were not always enough girls to do this, so sometimes we worked straight through our day off.

The day started at 6:30 with breakfast, but we were not all needed at that hour, so we took turns with only one or two going early. The rest of the girls arrived in the dining room at 8 a.m. When breakfast was over at 10 a.m., two girls stayed to put fresh linens and heavy silver place settings on the tables. Then we were free until noon, when we started the second part of our split shift — lunch between 12 noon and 2 p.m.

After serving lunch, two girls stayed to put clean linen and silver on the tables, and we were free until dinner from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., the last part of our three-split shift. Again, two girls stayed late to reset the tables. When it was Betty’s and my turn to stay late, we sang in two-part harmony the songs we had always sung at home while doing dishes, except that at home with another sister to help, the harmony had been three-part, like the Andrews Sisters, a popular wartime trio. We sang songs of the forties that Bing Crosby sang, such as “The San Fernando Valley” or “I’m an Old Cowhand” and other oldies from the twenties and thirties like “Blue Skies” or “It Had to Be You.”

An unidentified fellow employee takes a break.

We soon learned the rules at Benbow Inn. No fraternizing with the guests. The lobby and broad staircase to the second floor rooms were for guests only. We used the servants’ stairway that went from the basement to the third-floor attic. Canoes and swimming were available on the lake for guests, but we were forbidden to go there. If we wanted to swim, we walked down a dusty gravel road and swam in the river. One of the waitresses had a Model A Ford. Once in a while, in our off hours, we piled into her car and headed for Richardson Grove, a few miles south of Benbow, and a special place for teenagers during the ‘40s. Young people and families from all over Humboldt County camped among the old growth redwoods, where outdoor dances were held in a pavilion under the trees. The Eel River lazed along in the hot sun beyond the shaded grove.

A sweet old lady, whom we were told had been coming to the Inn for years, always tipped 10 cents. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, the girl serving her table could count on a ten-cent tip. One evening I waited on the man who looked like Clark Gable. He left a fifty-cent tip.

Betty and I had babysat for a neighbor in Eureka who gave us matching shorts and blouse outfits made from a cotton tropical print fabric of deep red palm trees and red-and-yellow thatched huts. The cropped blouses tied in front, leaving a bare midriff, a World War II fashion. We wore our new outfits one day when we all planned to go to Richardson Grove, and waited at the bottom of the the entrance steps for the other girls. Clark Gable’s look-alike walked down the stairs with his friends, stared at us, laughed and said, “Where’d you get those outfits? A fire sale?” His companion, a pretty blonde woman dressed in cream-colored silk slacks and blouse, her make-up perfect with bright red lipstick drawn outside the lip line the way movie stars did, laughed too. My face burned. I didn’t know what a fire sale was, but I knew it wasn’t good. 1 turned around, ran back up four flights of stairs, changed into something else and gave my wild tropical print outfit to Georgeanne. The guest’s comment didn’t bother Betty. She continued to wear her outfit all summer.

One night, Betty slipped out with the other girls and the boys to paddle the canoes around forbidden Benbow Lake, oars muffled, giggles stifled. Since I was responsible for my younger sister, I was afraid she would get into trouble and be sent home. Betty had always been more daring than I. From the shadows of the garden, I watched in agony while they all floated around in the moonlight. After an eternity, they drifted back and tied up the canoes, grinning, giggling and stumbling over each other in the dark. To my great relief, they did not get caught.

Betty and I had agreed to work at the Benhow Inn until the second week in August, when we planned to take the Greyhound bus to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit our aunt. We had worked hard most of the summer and wanted to see our cousins and shop for school clothes in San Francisco. The night before we were to leave, I went to the office to pick up our pay. The Benbow sister in charge of payroll, the same one who had shown us the servants’ entrance that first day, refused to give me our money. They were short- handed. We had already worked eight days in a row, with no time off. Maybe she thought if she didn’t pay us, we would have to stay on a while longer, but our aunt and cousins were expecting us in San Mateo the next evening. I went into the soundproof room between the kitchen and the dining room and tried to figure out what to do.

The elder Benbow sister happened to walk through the little room and found me crying into the laundry bin. I blurted out my problem. She went to her sister and got our money for me, but she didn’t know we had worked through our day off. We never did get paid for that extra day — a little more than $4 each — not much now, but a small bonanza to us then and worth about forty- one dollars apiece in 2005.

Betty and I waited in the sun with our cardboard suitcases when the Greyhound bus pulled into driveway of the hotel the next day. When we reached San Francisco, we had to go to another terminal to catch the bus to San Mateo. During World War II, everybody carpooled, and we hailed a nearly full cab. The driver said he could squeeze in two more. He got out of the cab to put our suitcases into the trunk, and I nearly dropped mine on his toes. The Benbow Inn guest who had tipped me fifty cents, the man who had laughed at my “fire sale” outfit, the one who looked like the movie star, Clark Gable, reached for my suitcase. We both stopped short. Then we laughed, and he put my suitcase into the trunk.

We piled into the cab. Betty on my lap, and reached the other terminal in time to catch our bus to San Mateo.

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The story above was originally printed in the Summer 2005 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.

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Press release from the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury:

The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury has released the third report of their 2023-2024 term, entitled Humboldt County Custody & Corrections Facilities.

By law, every year the Grand Jury must inspect any jails or prisons in the county. Traditionally we have not limited our inspections to custodial facilities, and this year is no different. Between October 2023 and January 2024, we toured and inspected:

• The Humboldt County Animal Shelter
• The Sempervirens Psychiatric Health Facility
• The Humboldt County Juvenile Detention Center
• The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Eel River Conservation Camp
• The Humboldt County Correctional Facility
• The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Coroner - Public Administrator facility.
• The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Work Alternative Program – Sheriff’s Farm

At every facility we saw a persistent problem: short staffing. Positions have been “frozen” by the county, leaving jobs unfilled for the foreseeable future. Positions that are already allocated and funded have vacancy rates as high as 37%. Several facilities are using mandatory overtime to help close the gap. Despite this the state and county staff were pleasant, helpful, and demonstrated dedication to their jobs.

Many of the facilities are old, some dating from the 1950s, but all of them were clean and orderly. There are some important deferred maintenance issues that should be fixed, the most urgent being the leaking and damaged roof at the Humboldt County Animal Shelter. The leaking roof was also documented in last years Grand Jury report.

Taken as a whole, these facilities appeared to be fully functional despite the challenges they face.

If you want to serve your community in a unique way that could improve local government, this is your opportunity. Applications to serve on the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury can be found at https://humboldtgov.org/510/Civil-Grand-Jury. Additional information provided by the Civil Grand Jurors Association of California can be found at https://cgja.org/.

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DOCUMENT: HCCGJ Report: Custody and Corrections

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PREVIOUSLY in 2023-24 Civil Grand Jury Reports:

• In First Report of the Year, Grand Jury Recommends Civilian Oversight Board for the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office
• Civil Grand Jury: Humboldt County Pays Too Much in Rent and Should Probably Consolidate Services Whenever It Can Afford to Do So

Nearly 3.7 million students and 667,000 newborns in California have money invested in a savings account to help pay for college. But most families don’t know the money is there.

Citlali Lopez, a second-year psychology student at Sacramento State, found out a few months ago she had $500 sitting in a California Kids Investment and Development Savings Program (CalKIDS) account. Although she’s been eligible to use the funds since she graduated high school in 2022, she had no idea until her sister, who works at a nonprofit that supports low-income students with scholarships and financial aid, told her to check her eligibility. Lopez was skeptical at first, but found she was eligible and registered her account.

“I was just really surprised that I was able to get some extra help,” she said.

Financial aid had been top of mind for her and guided her decision to go to Sacramento State. She plans on using the money to finish general education classes over the summer if financial aid will not cover it.

Citlali Lopez is a second-year student at Sacramento State University and a beneficiary of the state’s CalKIDS program. May 9, 2024. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters

So who gets money? Under CalKIDS, all babies born in California receive a sum. Babies born between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023 received $25 deposits, and all babies born after July 1, 2023 receive $100 deposits.

As part of the program, all low-income first grade students receive a one-time deposit of $500. First-graders who are in foster care receive an extra $500 and homeless first-graders receive $500 more, totalling $1500 for some students. All the accounts are tax-free, and the money is invested whether or not families claim their accounts.

Additionally, the state spent $1.8 billion in the 2021-22 budget to provide a one-time deposit to all low-income students in grades 1 through 12 in 2022.

Yet, of the 4.3 million student accounts created, only 313,445 accounts have been claimed by families, meaning they have registered online and seen the amount in their accounts. Only 6.3 percent of newborn accounts have been claimed and 7.4 percent of student accounts have been claimed as of March 2024.

The state is slowly building awareness about college savings

CalKIDS is run by a three-person team led by Julio Martinez, the executive director of the Scholarshare Investment Board, an agency within the State Treasurer’s Office. It administers the state’s 529 college savings accounts, which allow families to invest money tax free to cover education related expenses in the future. The team is responsible for creating the accounts, notifying families about the accounts and explaining what CalKIDS can provide to families.

“With these programs, it takes time to kind of build brand awareness, and also to break down the skepticism that often exists when you get a letter in the mail that says you have free money,” Martinez said. CalKIDS staffers go to college fairs and financial aid nights and host online informational sessions to reach families and students.

The state allocated $22 million in the 2022 and 2023 budgets to market the program. In Los Angeles, Riverside, Fresno, and Sonoma counties, CalKIDS program info is sent to all families that request a birth certificate, according to Joe DeAnda, the director of communication at the State Treasurer’s Office. During the first three months of this year, registration in the newborn program has more than doubled, from 20,608 to 42,312 newborns.

In April, CalKIDS began targeting high school seniors, through social media, email and direct mail, according to DeAnda. By May, the number of claims among high school seniors increased by 74%. They have partnered with school districts, such as Hawthorne School District in Los Angeles County, where 87% of seniors have claimed their accounts.

Still, most of the funds for marketing CalKIDS remain unused. The 2023-24 California state budget reappropriated $8 million to CalKIDS for a statewide media campaign, and the Scholarshare Investment Board is currently soliciting proposals for marketing services, which were anticipated to start on April 1, but have not begun.

“If families are not aware of this program, then it’s not going to have the impact that we think it’s going to have,” Martinez said.

The fact that many families don’t start thinking about college until high school is one cultural obstacle that college savings programs like CalKIDS run up against, says Willie Elliott, a professor of social work and founder of the Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion at the University of Michigan.

“So, we can’t expect that we put one of these programs in place, and, instantly, people get it and start functioning in that way,” Elliott said.

Elliott has helped develop state and local college savings programs in Pennsylvania, New York City and Washington, D.C. He says that enrollment is not the best measure of success of programs like CalKIDS, especially this early on in the program.

“What you have in place in California is the infrastructure and now you have to do the work of making communities aware,” Elliott said.

He suggests that creating a culture around college savings through programs like CalKIDs will lead to positive outcomes. Those include increased account enrollment, more family conversations about going to college, and generally less stress for families who will be hopeful for their children’s future.

The conversations about college are as important as the amount of money actually in the account, Elliott said. Elliott’s research has shown that low-income students with a college savings account are three times more likely to attend college and four times more likely to graduate than students without an account.

A screenshot of the CalKIDS website. Image via CalKIDS

Amanda Cook, a mother of six who has four children eligible for CalKIDS, is the homeless student advocate at Marysville Joint Unified School District in Yuba County, where she works to support homeless students and help them graduate. She said a lot of the families she works with don’t have college at the top of their mind because they’re thinking about urgent concerns like where they will sleep.

She said if schools were able to register students, it would be helpful for the families she supports. She also said training for school staff and counselors on the program as well as outreach from California Health and Human Services would help build awareness for schools and families.

CalKIDS joins local programs investing in students’ education

For many students, CalKIDS can be coupled with one of more than a dozen local child’s savings account programs in California. Launched in 2010 by then-mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newson, Kindergarten to College was the first program in the country to include automatic and universal enrollment.

Over the last 14 years, the program has been able to refine its outreach efforts to meet the needs of San Franciscans, said Amanda Fried, the chief of policy and communications at the San Francisco Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector. Students are eligible no matter their documentation status and can easily make cash deposits into their accounts.

“People have so many things on their plate, and so many competing priorities, and I think a huge mistrust of the financial system, which is totally warranted,” Fried said. “So this program just kind of eliminates so many barriers for families.”

The program’s five-person team hosts weekly online office hours in English and Spanish, texts resources and reminders to parents and trains teachers and counselors as school ambassadors to explain the program and answer questions. Students take field trips to Citibank to make deposits into their accounts, so they can physically contribute to their futures.

“We really have an intentional focus on schools where typically students are much less likely to go to college. That’s where we focus our in-person resources,” Fried said. ”We’re on the ground at those schools, talking to families constantly.”

Oakland Promise has a child’s savings program that starts in kindergarten, also called Kindergarten to College, alongside a program for newborns for Medi-Cal eligible families called Brilliant Baby. Veena Pawloski, the chief program officer at Oakland Promise, said they use community-based organizations to act as enrolling partners.

Can college savings accounts help combat poverty?

The aim of college savings programs like CalKIDS is not for money deposited by the state to grow enough to pay for college entirely. Rather, the program intends to ease some of the burden of college costs and help students create a college-bound identity.

Last year, UCLA opened the CalKIDS Institute in partnership with the state to boost outreach as well as research the program’s reach and which demographics they should be targeting based on enrollment. The institute’s director, Nayiri Nahabedian, said that, ultimately, the point of all these programs is to make college seem like an attainable goal for students and show them that the state, their community and their family believe that they can pursue higher education.

“CalKIDS made me realize more how much people are willing to help students,” said Lopez, the Sacramento State student.

“For a lot of students [the money] can make the difference between deciding to go and not deciding to go. It can be the difference between having a laptop and not having a laptop, having WiFi at home and not having WiFi at home,” Martinez said.

Recent graduates walk up the Hilmer Lodge Stadium ramp, while students take selfies after recieving their associates degrees at Mt. San Antonio Community College’s 75th commencement ceremony, on June 11, 2021. Pablo Unzueta for CalMatters

In addition to registering, students can connect their CalKIDS account to a ScholarShare 529 account where families can contribute their own money, which is invested. Six percent of claimed student accounts and 35% of claimed newborn accounts have been connected to a ScholarShare 529 account. According to Martinez, families have, on average, $2,890 in their Scholarshare 529 account connected via their CalKIDS account.

Evelyn Garcia Romero, a senior at Calistoga Junior-Senior High School, did not know before talking to CalMatters that she could add her own money into a Scholarshare 529 that has accrued $32 in addition to the original $500 deposit.

“I feel like every cent counts and makes a difference,” said Garcia Romero, who plans on using her CalKIDS money and future savings to go to law school. “So, having an extra $500 would be so helpful and will definitely encourage me to attend college even more.”

Resources

• See if you or your child is eligible
• Claim your CalKIDS account
• Get answers to frequently asked questions
• Contact CalKIDS for help

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Munis is a fellow with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

The Calmatters Ideas Festival takes place June 5-6! Find out more and get your tickets at this link.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

California’s utilities regulator adopted new rules for community solar projects on Thursday, despite warnings from clean energy advocates that the move will actually undercut efforts to expand solar power options for low-income customers.

The state’s biggest utility companies advocated for the new rules.

Community solar projects are generally small-scale, local solar arrays that can serve renters and homeowners who can’t afford to install their own rooftop solar panels. They are one part of the state’s overall strategy to eventually run the power grid entirely by renewable energy.

The California Public Utilities Commission’s 3-1 ruling preserves and expands programs that will allow any ratepayer to subscribe to a pool of projects and receive a 20% rate reduction, said Commission President Alice Reynolds. But it also reduces future compensation for solar providers and residents.

The commission calculates the benefits derived from distributed, small-scale solar power projects, which provide a ‘service’ by sending clean energy to the power grid and reducing transmission costs by serving nearby communities. Solar developers are compensated for the value of the benefit their project provides.

The formula adopted essentially reduces the value of distributed small scale renewable energy in the future, providing less of an incentive for new community solar projects to be built.

In the near term, the subsidies and incentives that help promote community solar installation will remain in place, paid for by a recent $250 million federal grant California received under the Solar For All program.

One of the concerns for solar advocates is what happens after that pot of funding runs out and the financial incentive to develop solar evaporates.

“The foundations of a sustainable program should not be built on one-time money,” said Derek Chernow, Western Regional Director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access.

While California has been a leader in promoting solar energy and advocating for an electric grid running carbon-free, the state’s efforts to encourage smaller solar projects has been lackluster. One example of a missed opportunity that critics point to is not requiring community solar projects to have battery storage systems that would allow power to flow after the sun sets.

“We are not done here today, ” Reynolds said, adding the programs can be modified and improved in the future.

With electric bills soaring for many Californians, she also was critical of the impact of “cost shift,” the idea that the subsidies provided to community solar projects are costs borne by all ratepayers. It’s a fundamental fairness argument that the commission has applied in other proceedings, to justify reducing subsidies.

But changing or reducing the subsidies and other incentives to a still-maturing industry, advocates argue, will result in fewer solar installations, ultimately cutting out low-income ratepayers from the benefit of renewable energy. Community access solar programs are supposed to ensure that at least 51% of the energy derived from the projects serve disadvantaged customers.

Late last year the commission overhauled incentives for owners of apartment buildings, schools and businesses that install solar panels. Those regulations were another in a string of recent decisions the commission has taken to reduce financial incentives for rooftop solar. In late 2022, the commission reduced payments to homeowners who sell excess power from newly installed solar panels on single-family homes.

Advocates have been bemoaning what they say is California’s lagging clean energy leadership and criticizing Gov. Newsom, who last week delivered a keynote speech at the Vatican Climate Summit, for not holding the state’s powerful utilities and oil companies to account.

The commission’s community solar decision was quickly added to the list of what critics say is a concerning pattern of backtracking on critical renewable energy policies.

“The CPUC’s recent series of decisions threatens to unravel California’s clean energy progress,” said the Solar Energy Industries Association in a statement. “It’s past time for Governor Newsom and state leaders to reign in the commission before it inflicts more damage on customers and the state’s clean energy economy.”

As it had in earlier closely-watched decisions, the commission heard from a myriad of organizations, including the solar industry and environmental justice groups, advocating for programs that would expand access to clean energy and reduce power bills.

There was scant public comment during the morning hearing but at least two state legislators voiced their opposition to the proposal. Assemblymember Christopher Ward noted that the updated proposal had only been released this week and decried it as “fatally flawed.”

“This does not reflect the intent of the bill,” Ward, a Democrat from San Diego, told commissioners, referring to legislation he authored that required the commission to review its rules. The unintended result of Thursday’s decision, he said, would be to discourage new projects.

An aide to Sen. Josh Becker, a Menlo Park Democrat, read a letter from the lawmaker saying that experts doubt the policies will expand access to clean energy.

In extensive remarks, Commissioner Darcie Houck outlined several concerns about the decision, including her view that it didn’t go far enough to benefit ratepayers in low-income communities. Much of the commissioner’s dissent centered on provisions that she said will disincentive adoption of solar and won’t allow for a “ just and equitable energy transition.”

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The CalMatters Ideas Festival takes place June 5-6! Find out more and get your tickets at this link.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.