Two weeks before the January 14, 2021 release of California’s new consolidated guidance governing the reopening of K-12 school campuses for in-person learning, a representative of Governor Gavin Newsom reached out to the state’s private school leaders. The Governor wanted to know the private school community’s thinking about the possible inclusion of private schools…

The horrific shootings took place on a Saturday – the Jewish sabbath, or Shabbat.  April 27, 2019 also happened to be the eighth-and-final-day of Passover, which meant that the Chabad of Poway synagogue was filled with worshipers when the 19-year-old assailant entered the premises and began firing.  Minutes later, one congregant lay dead, and…

It was the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl who famously maintained that there are but two meaningful categories of persons: the decent and the indecent. While Frankl’s insight is no less true today than when he wrote of it in his 1946 work, Man’s Search for Meaning, contemporary sensibilities are cheapening…

Last year, California enacted a law requiring schools (public and private) that issue pupil identification cards to students in any of grades 7-12, inclusive, to print the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline telephone number on either side of the cards.  The measure, SB 972, authored by State Senator Anthony Portantino, won passage in both…

A strange thing happened – or, I should say, didn’t happen – to AB 218 on its way through the California State Assembly.  Bills deemed to impose non-negligible costs upon the state are generally heard before an Appropriations Committee in each house.  AB 218, a measure that would open a three-year window for…