Media Coverage

One 82-year-old man was stuck in a powerless wheelchair for 36 hours, and an 84-year-old woman was up all night without machines to keep her heart working.

Pasadena Unified has reached a settlement that will spur changes to its special education programs for students with behavioral and mental health disabilities. A key feature of the settlement includes a comprehensive report from an independent expert who will audit the school’s existing programs and recommend, then oversee changes for the next five years to ensure they are made according to the settlement’s terms.

Inmates in California jails and prisons will no longer face medical copays as a barrier to treatment

Assembly Bill 1128, authored by Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris has been signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. This bill will expand access to the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) by consolidating the responsibility of licensure functions within the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS).

Homeless people in California convicted of drug crimes or charges such as indecent exposure or defecating in public could be sentenced to treatment instead of jail time under a proposed ballot measure.

Less than a week after utilities shut off power to hundreds of thousands of customers up and down California, experts and regulators are beginning to assess what went wrong and what the future portends.

Two members of the county Board of Supervisors are calling for a review of best practices within county jails in the wake of a six-month investigation by The San Diego Union-Tribune into the growing number of inmate deaths.

The end for George Gallegos came on April 21, 2018, when the 55-year-old inmate succumbed to acute pneumonia and severe dehydration while locked up in the San Diego Central Jail. Three months earlier, Gallegos had been a patient at Metropolitan State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Los Angeles.

The report Friday in The San Diego Union-Tribune about the unusually high rate of inmate deaths in county jails depicts a Sheriff’s Department that knows it has a problem but can’t stop it. Since 2009, the year Bill Gore became sheriff, 140 inmates have died — from poor health, suicide, overdoses and homicide. One hundred fifteen were awaiting trial.

More than 130 people have died in San Diego County jails since 2009, the year Bill Gore took over as sheriff. That’s an average higher than one inmate per month, every month, over the past 10 years

When it comes to calculating the suicide rate of jail inmates, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department prefers a different approach than one widely used by experts, oversight groups and federal agencies such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Stephen’s teachers started sending him to the separate room when he was in first grade.

Now 10, Stephen has been diagnosed with autism and anxiety. His mom said that when he got frustrated and behaved in ways teachers found disruptive – breaking pencils, blurting out or crumpling paper – educators swiftly removed him from the classroom, sending him to a room where he would sit the rest of the day without access to school work.

More than two years after an independent audit raised alarm bells about special-ed classes, youth advocacy groups don’t see change coming without legal action

There is an anonymous mass grave at the Russian River Cemetary in Ukiah, for the unclaimed remains of patients who died at the Mendocino State Hospital in Talmage, which was open from 1893 to 1972. Monday was the 17th annual Remembrance Day Ceremony for the unknown number of people buried all across California, some in mass graves like the one in Ukiah, and some in small neglected cemetaries.

On Tuesday, four advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Sacramento City Unified School District of running “an unlawful school system that results in modern-day segregation and mistreatment of students with disabilities, particularly Black students with disabilities.”

he Sacramento City Unified School District was hit with a lawsuit filed by advocacy groups over allegations that the school district is discriminated against students with disabilities. According to the suit, the district “segregates students with disabilities and denies them the opportunity to be educated alongside their peers.”

A coalition of nonprofit advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against the Sacramento City Unified School District, alleging that the district discriminates against students with disabilities, especially black students.

A coalition of nonprofit advocacy groups, on behalf of the Black Parallel School Board and three students, filed a lawsuit Sept. 5 against the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD), Superintendent Jorge A. Aguilar, and others. 

The Sacramento City Unified School District faces allegations of “flagrant discrimination” against students with disabilities.

Sacramento City Unified School District is being sued by advocacy groups who claim the district is discriminating against students with disabilities.