Recent News

As the October 1 start of the Federal fiscal year approaches, a showdown is in progress over efforts to pass a short-term continuing resolution or face a shutdown of many Federal government functions. Despite the cheery attitude of House Republicans who passed their version of a Continuing Resolution last week (217-212) along a party line vote, the real drama will be in the Senate where they will need 7 Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold.

Colleagues,

A new school year is upon us with all of the excitement and transitions that come with the start of new beginnings. For those unique challenges coordinators, administrators and teachers in IB world schools face, The California Association of IB World Schools (CAWS) is here to help and support you. As California’s IB sub-regional association, we strive to provide our members a range of services to address an array of school needs, from university recognition to professional development to governmental relations.

As of early-Saturday afternoon, the regular 2025 legislative session has come to an end. Rarely in our team’s collective history can we recall an end to the legislative year that was as contentious as this year (maybe only in 2019, when a protester threw human blood in a menstrual cup onto the California Senate Floor during the final night of session).

This year, two major issues created tension and fireworks on the final night: charter school reform and addressing antisemitism in schools. 

In the final days and hours of the 2025 session, the Legislature also sent bills to Governor Newsom dealing with 60 day-subs, banning ultra-processed foods in schools, immigration enforcement at schools, and online age verification of children, among others.

Over the past week, we have been working with the Governor’s office and attorneys with the California Department of Justice and Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office, providing expertise on budget process and impacts to local education agencies (LEAs) as they prepared the litigation that was filed today in Federal District Court.

Dear Colleagues,

Our recent roundtable, hosted by Kelsey Day, Senior Manager IB, was a successful collaboration that effectively clarified the purpose of the Programme Development Plan. Kelsey's clear and concise explanations of how the plan unlocks continuous improvement were valuable to both experienced and new IBCs.
We hope that her slides are serve as a helpful resource for both attendees and those who were unable to participate.

Updating your School A-G list: This is the time to work with your school and

district to ensure your school A-G list accurately reflects your Middle Years

Program, Diploma Program and Career Program course offerings for 2025-2026.

Open for full content.

CAWS is excited to be partnering with WE Help Two to make twice the difference through their funky sock fundraising program.

There is no upfront cost to the program and schools can keep up to 50% of the total sales.

Socks can be sold online and/or We Help Two can send a box of socks to your school at NO UPFRONT COST! That means schools will only have to pay for the inventory sold. Leftover packs are sent back and schools will be invoiced for what was sold. 

The service focus for 2025-26 will be raising funds for the fire and flood victims in California. Schools will also be able to select their own cause or one of the three international programs offered by We Help Two. 

Open for details:

May 2 was the deadline for policy committees to act on bills that have been tagged with a cost. Bills that fail to pass out of their policy committee today are effectively dead for the year. This week’s deadline forced hearings on several highly contentious bills related to charter schools and literacy instruction, among others, which we discuss below.

Now that we have a sense of bills that are moving forward, and in many cases with more clarifying language, we want to provide you with a summary of some of the major education-related bills that are still moving through the process in the areas of:

While it seems like news out of the federal government is changing daily, there have been a few recent updates of particular interest to California and K-12 schools that we wanted to highlight.

Trump threatens to cut California’s federal funding as tensions escalate with the state

We understand that not everyone could attend Chad's engaging and informative session on the "Insights on CP, Let's Talk About It." To ensure you don't miss out on the valuable information shared, we are pleased to provide you with a copy of his slides. We hope these materials serve as a helpful resource.

The UC A-G Course Management Portal is now open for course submissions and updates. This is the time to work with your school and district to ensure your school A-G list accurately reflects your Middle Years Program, Diploma Program and Career Program course offerings for 2025-2026.

Yesterday President Trump signed several executive orders advancing policies of the new administration and overturning executive action President Biden had taken. Though some of these might be slowed or stopped by lawsuits challenging their legality, many could have impacts on education programs and funding (all executive orders are posted here). With assistance from our colleagues at the Committee for Education Funding in Washington D.C., we wanted to list these in one document with links so you would have the text available for your review. In the coming weeks and months, we will keep you posted on the details and implementation issues involved with many of these that have the most significant impacts on TK-12 schools in California. The Executive Orders include:

The Schoolwide IB project has worked with over 100 schools across the US and Canada to support the development and implementation of a school defined plan that opens access and grows student participation and success in the IB Diploma Programme and Career-related Programme.

This is a recording by International Baccalaureate of our event for those of you unable to attend or wish to hear it again.

Thank you to our participants.

As a follow up to the immigration resources for California schools we shared with you in early December, we wanted to make sure you also have access to student and community immigrant and immigration resources released yesterday afternoon by Attorney General Rob Bonta.