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KQED reporter \u003cspan data-rich-links='{\"per_n\":\"Adhiti Bandlamudi\",\"per_e\":\"abandlamudi@kqed.org\",\"type\":\"person\"}'>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/span>introduces us to three different families and tells us what they’re doing to get by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7984879777&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">How We Get By | KQED\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12081761/in-the-bay-area-raising-kids-comes-with-compromise\">In the Bay Area, Raising Kids Comes With Compromise\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Episode transcript\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted. Having a kid is no small choice, and having a kid in the Bay Area means compromise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:00:17] We’ve gotten really good at balance transfer credit cards to kind of make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:25] For many families in the Bay, having kids means something’s gotta give. Maybe it’s longer commute times just to have more space or stacking the kids up in bunk beds to live closer to friends and parks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:00:41] We definitely explored leaving San Francisco. I looked at going back to school to change careers. We looked at moving back to Canada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:53] So today, as part of KQED’s How We Get By series, we’ll meet three families with kids to hear about what they’re doing to make it in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:01:15] I feel like this story really hits the nail on the head when it comes to affordability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:01:32] Raising children is really, really expensive, but when you try to do so in one of the most expensive regions in the world, how does that happen? And I wanted to understand how parents were making it work. If you look at data over the past decade, it’s really interesting because the number of students enrolled in public schools in the Bay Area gradually goes down. But at the same time, if you look like the median home price, that ticks up. And what’s also interesting is that you see enrollment numbers in those Central Valley school districts rise as Bay Area families move out there to raise their kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:22] So how exactly are families making it work here? What did your reporting find?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:02:29] You know, I went around the Bay Area in search of parents who were trying to make it work, and the resounding theme that I heard was that people had to compromise on something. Whether they were compromising on space, on walkability, commute times, on the prospect of home ownership or on affordability itself, there was a compromise that people had to make in order to live here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:01] Let’s get into it then and talk about some of the sacrifices that people have been making in order to have kids here. I know you talked to families that were making sacrifices around their physical space and giving up space as opposed to looking for more of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:03:22] We talked to Logan Truman, who lives in the inner sunset with his wife, Heidi, and their two sons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:03:30] I’ve been here for 17 years now, and I moved here from Alberta, Canada. So I’m not a native, but yeah, I’ve come to call San Francisco home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:03:40] The interesting thing about their situation is that the four of them live in a studio apartment in the inner sunset, which sounds like a cramped living situation, and it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:03:51] So my wife works for UCSF. So when she first moved to San Francisco, she found a little studio apartment and it was super convenient for her. And then I moved down and then eventually two boys came along and it just was easier to stay and make it work than to try and figure something else out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:04:13] It’s in a walkable neighborhood, there are busses, there’s bike paths, there’s so many amenities nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:04:22] And were within two blocks of Golden Gate Park. And so when they were little, I would put them into the stroller and into Golden Gate park every day. That was our backyard, that was our playground. That’s where we went to play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:04:38] The way that they make it work is that they turned a walk-in closet into the boys’ bedroom. They have like these bunk beds that are in a walk in closet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:04:52] When we started having the children, I built a wall bed so we can flip that up during the day and have living room space. And then at night, we pull the wall bed down and it becomes a bedroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:05:06] It does mean that they have had to compromise on space. Logan was saying that if he wants to buy a new jacket, he’s got to actively think about whether they have space for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:05:19] We live without a microwave and we don’t have a dishwasher and we have to go without a lot of the appliances that make sometimes life simpler or I guess easier you might say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:05:37] But they don’t accumulate a lot of stuff because there’s just not space for it. But the benefit of that is that it has allowed them to spend money on experiences as opposed to on physical things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:05:50] And it’s kind of nice not owning stuff. Sometimes stuff can begin to own you. So we save our money. We like to take vacations and holidays. I want to, it’s a big world out there. And I wanna show the boys what there is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:06:07] And he feels like it’s more environmentally friendly too, because they’re just consuming less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:13] I do wonder, though, as their kids grow older and, I mean, bigger, if there might be more pressure over time to find more space for their family and if that’s something they think about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:06:29] I think it’s something that he and his wife, they think about it, they revisit that idea, but I think for now it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:06:38] As we explored all these different options, nothing really felt right. And so we decided that we were happy here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:06:49] Their lack of space has actually led to them shifting the way that they think about things and about these conventional ways that we think about living.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:07:03] Like, if we can do whatever we want whenever we want, I don’t think it makes us better people. I think it is good for us to endure, you might say, kind of hardships. And so, to be able to live without and not have all my wants met is, I think, it makes me a better person. I hope it makes a better a person. I want to be a better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:37] So you talked about giving up on space, and I know you actually also talked with a family who is giving up other amenities, like walkability. What does that mean?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:07:50] A person who exemplifies that is this woman who I spoke to named Aparna Simmons and her husband Andy Simmons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:07:57] We met on Hinge in February 2019. Yeah, our first date was at a, it like, where was it? Oh, Taqueria Vallarta in the mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:08:07] They were living in San Francisco in Cole Valley. They had gotten married and they were like, okay, the next step is home ownership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:08:14] I mean, we definitely wanted more space. We wanted like a yard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:08:18] We knew we’d be spending more time at home, so I think having a place that when we’re at home we can really just enjoy it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:08:26] So they looked for a home that they could afford and their budget was to buy something for under a million dollars, which is practically impossible to do in San Francisco. They ended up finding a home in Redwood Heights in Oakland and it worked out really well for them because they found the house with space and a pool and great views of the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:08:53] Just really fell in love with it and like the cabinets and the green and all of that and like the pool obviously so yeah we just we really liked it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:09:01] And it all worked out really well, because around the time that they moved in, Aparna learned that she was pregnant. But the thing that I heard Aparna say is that, you know, she was like, we had to compromise on walkability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:09:17] The view is great, but I would probably prefer something more accessible, like Bart, something with like, yeah, coffee shops nearby, than even the view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:09:28] You have to drive everywhere to get anywhere. And it’s okay because we have a lot of friends. But, you know, she was like, I can’t walk down to a little town square where there might be things happening. I have to ride there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:09:43] When we were in Cole Valley, it was super close. We were able to walk wherever. But Laurel, that whole area in MacArthur is probably a 20-minute walk, but it’s hilly, so it takes longer. And it’s just a little bit too far to go quickly on a lunch break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:00] Eventually, they’d like to look for another house, and when they do, walkability is going to be one of their top priorities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:10:09] I realized like that is something we really want in our next place. Um, like there’s things here that we’re like, okay, this isn’t as important actually, and we prefer having it be like walkable instead. So I feel like we’re learning what we, what we like and don’t like, or like what we can live without and what we want permanently in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:34] Like even after a person settles in a place, like walkability is something that they still want. Like so many people want walkability and the fact that it’s hard to find and that that’s an expensive feature is significant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:48] Yeah, kind of a luxury, it sounds like, for families. Totally, yeah. Coming up, why one family in the North Bay is spending nearly half of their income on housing. We’ll be right back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:20] So, Adhiti, you just talked about two different families who it sounds like are making a lot of adjustments and compromises, but are still making it work here in the Bay Area. But what about families who are struggling to make it work? Did you talk to anyone?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:11:39] Yeah, I mean, I think that most of the families who I spoke to were struggling on some level to kind of just keep up with the high cost of living. But one family that kind of comes to mind is Kate Knuttel and her partner, Matt Quisenberry. They live in American Canyon with their four children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:12:00] Me and my partner have been together for, I think it’s gonna be 10 years this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:05] A few years ago, they were living in Vallejo. They were living in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:12:15] And we really enjoyed it. Enjoyed Vallejo, but we did not enjoy the school district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:23] Unfortunately, they didn’t feel like their kids could really play outside in the in the streets And what’s more is that Matt actually grew up in American Canyon, which is a city just north of Vallejo really and he has family here\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:12:38] So we’re like, let’s get them into, you know, the school that your dad volunteers at and does, you know, it was like, it’s very like family oriented.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:46] So when they were looking to move, this was in 2021, 2022, they considered buying a house. And what they find is that the mortgage is more expensive than what they would be paying in rent and what they could afford to pay in rent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:13:03] That mortgage with 20,000 down, like we were still looking at 35 to $4,000 a month. We were like, wow, yeah, actually we can’t afford that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:13:11] The interest rates go back up again, and then Kate learns that she’s pregnant with their fourth child. They end up moving to American Canyon, but into a rental. It’s a three bedroom, two bath. So now they’ve got a little bit more space, but it’s still really, really expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:13:33] It was like a Hail Mary. We were like, wow, it’s $3,000 a month we were paying. I think at the time maybe $2,100, maybe a little bit more for our spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:13:47] They spend almost 50% of their income towards rent and living costs. They are spending more than they make, and they’re living in debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:14:01] It’s expensive and we’ve gotten really good at balance transfer credit cards to kind of make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:14:10] They charge their expenses to 0% credit cards and pay them off as they go, but they are living paycheck to paycheck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:20] I mean, that’s so interesting. It’s like you were talking earlier about these families who are compromising on things like physical space and walkability, but it sounds like for Kate and her family, their compromise is literally affordability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:14:30] Exactly, exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:32] What does Kate tell you about what that is like for them? She said that it’s really stressful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:14:46] And as the kids, big kids get older, like there’s more expenses, you know, braces. Oh, there’s this amazing New York, DC trip I really wanna go on and we wanna give them all these amazing opportunities, but we’re just like, okay, how are we gonna make this work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:15:01] Time, you know. Part of the reason why they’re there in this situation is because their youngest daughter Chloe is too young to go to school, but she’s only three years old. So they have to pay for her daycare, but her day care is a thousand dollars a month. And that’s just to send her part time. So Kate has to stay home part of the week so she can take care of of her daughter. And then she can work the other part of the week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:15:33] So just kind of waiting for that to be done because hopefully that’ll bring back a couple of, you know, a couple thousand dollars back in our pocket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:15:43] And she’s told me that, at times, it feels like she’s drowning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:15:51] And, you know, credit scores are still good. We’re good now, but life has gotten expensive. And so we’ve found ourselves like, oh, Chloe fractured her arm. Oh, you, we got into, you two, both of our cars need to be in the shop. Now we’re like back in debt again. You know, and that’s where we’re at now. It’s like, maybe we’d have a little more, you know spending money or saving money or money to put in our kids’ college funds, but instead we’re just slowly chipping away at debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:16:20] And I think that that is a reality that a lot of Bay Area families live in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:27] Yeah, it sounds like there’s not a lot of room for error there, and I have to imagine not a lotta room either to be thinking about their ultimate dream, which was to buy a home. Exactly, exactly. I mean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:16:42] It’s actually really interesting because we see this in the data. There’s an online platform called Lending Tree and they released a study earlier this year which showed that nationwide, people who have a mortgage pay more every month, pay 37% more every months than people who rent. And the place where that gap is the widest is the San Francisco Bay metro area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:14] It seems like there’s always gonna be, have to be a trade-off if you decide to have kids here. I imagine there are folks who are also compromising on things like their commutes. Yeah, I guess it seems like these trade-offs and these compromises are not new, but they just seem even more pronounced here in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:17:34] Yeah, I think that’s true. I think when I first started reporting this story, I assumed to find more people who were like, well, we’re choosing to not have children, and that’s because we can’t afford it. But I actually found less of those stories. I actually find that people do want to have kids, but if they want to have kids they’ll just move outwards where they can afford to have children. Or they’ll choose to have fewer kids. I know that this story sounds really dire and sad because families are kind of struggling to make it work, but I also found a lot of hope because the thing is that even though there aren’t so many families in the Bay Area, the families that are there really show up for each other. There are so many opportunities for community here in the bay area if you are trying to start a family. That is really beautiful because it almost is like… We know it’s so expensive and we need a village and people are creating that village. They’re making it work.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Raising kids is expensive, and doing so in the Bay comes with compromises. Whether it’s with space, commutes, or affordability, having a kid here means something’s gotta give. KQED reporter \u003cspan data-rich-links='{\"per_n\":\"Adhiti Bandlamudi\",\"per_e\":\"abandlamudi@kqed.org\",\"type\":\"person\"}'>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/span>introduces us to three different families and tells us what they’re doing to get by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7984879777&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">How We Get By | KQED\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12081761/in-the-bay-area-raising-kids-comes-with-compromise\">In the Bay Area, Raising Kids Comes With Compromise\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Episode transcript\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted. Having a kid is no small choice, and having a kid in the Bay Area means compromise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:00:17] We’ve gotten really good at balance transfer credit cards to kind of make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:25] For many families in the Bay, having kids means something’s gotta give. Maybe it’s longer commute times just to have more space or stacking the kids up in bunk beds to live closer to friends and parks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:00:41] We definitely explored leaving San Francisco. I looked at going back to school to change careers. We looked at moving back to Canada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:53] So today, as part of KQED’s How We Get By series, we’ll meet three families with kids to hear about what they’re doing to make it in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:01:15] I feel like this story really hits the nail on the head when it comes to affordability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:01:32] Raising children is really, really expensive, but when you try to do so in one of the most expensive regions in the world, how does that happen? And I wanted to understand how parents were making it work. If you look at data over the past decade, it’s really interesting because the number of students enrolled in public schools in the Bay Area gradually goes down. But at the same time, if you look like the median home price, that ticks up. And what’s also interesting is that you see enrollment numbers in those Central Valley school districts rise as Bay Area families move out there to raise their kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:22] So how exactly are families making it work here? What did your reporting find?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:02:29] You know, I went around the Bay Area in search of parents who were trying to make it work, and the resounding theme that I heard was that people had to compromise on something. Whether they were compromising on space, on walkability, commute times, on the prospect of home ownership or on affordability itself, there was a compromise that people had to make in order to live here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:01] Let’s get into it then and talk about some of the sacrifices that people have been making in order to have kids here. I know you talked to families that were making sacrifices around their physical space and giving up space as opposed to looking for more of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:03:22] We talked to Logan Truman, who lives in the inner sunset with his wife, Heidi, and their two sons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:03:30] I’ve been here for 17 years now, and I moved here from Alberta, Canada. So I’m not a native, but yeah, I’ve come to call San Francisco home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:03:40] The interesting thing about their situation is that the four of them live in a studio apartment in the inner sunset, which sounds like a cramped living situation, and it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:03:51] So my wife works for UCSF. So when she first moved to San Francisco, she found a little studio apartment and it was super convenient for her. And then I moved down and then eventually two boys came along and it just was easier to stay and make it work than to try and figure something else out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:04:13] It’s in a walkable neighborhood, there are busses, there’s bike paths, there’s so many amenities nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:04:22] And were within two blocks of Golden Gate Park. And so when they were little, I would put them into the stroller and into Golden Gate park every day. That was our backyard, that was our playground. That’s where we went to play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:04:38] The way that they make it work is that they turned a walk-in closet into the boys’ bedroom. They have like these bunk beds that are in a walk in closet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:04:52] When we started having the children, I built a wall bed so we can flip that up during the day and have living room space. And then at night, we pull the wall bed down and it becomes a bedroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:05:06] It does mean that they have had to compromise on space. Logan was saying that if he wants to buy a new jacket, he’s got to actively think about whether they have space for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:05:19] We live without a microwave and we don’t have a dishwasher and we have to go without a lot of the appliances that make sometimes life simpler or I guess easier you might say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:05:37] But they don’t accumulate a lot of stuff because there’s just not space for it. But the benefit of that is that it has allowed them to spend money on experiences as opposed to on physical things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:05:50] And it’s kind of nice not owning stuff. Sometimes stuff can begin to own you. So we save our money. We like to take vacations and holidays. I want to, it’s a big world out there. And I wanna show the boys what there is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:06:07] And he feels like it’s more environmentally friendly too, because they’re just consuming less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:13] I do wonder, though, as their kids grow older and, I mean, bigger, if there might be more pressure over time to find more space for their family and if that’s something they think about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:06:29] I think it’s something that he and his wife, they think about it, they revisit that idea, but I think for now it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:06:38] As we explored all these different options, nothing really felt right. And so we decided that we were happy here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:06:49] Their lack of space has actually led to them shifting the way that they think about things and about these conventional ways that we think about living.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Logan Truman \u003c/strong>[00:07:03] Like, if we can do whatever we want whenever we want, I don’t think it makes us better people. I think it is good for us to endure, you might say, kind of hardships. And so, to be able to live without and not have all my wants met is, I think, it makes me a better person. I hope it makes a better a person. I want to be a better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:37] So you talked about giving up on space, and I know you actually also talked with a family who is giving up other amenities, like walkability. What does that mean?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:07:50] A person who exemplifies that is this woman who I spoke to named Aparna Simmons and her husband Andy Simmons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:07:57] We met on Hinge in February 2019. Yeah, our first date was at a, it like, where was it? Oh, Taqueria Vallarta in the mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:08:07] They were living in San Francisco in Cole Valley. They had gotten married and they were like, okay, the next step is home ownership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:08:14] I mean, we definitely wanted more space. We wanted like a yard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:08:18] We knew we’d be spending more time at home, so I think having a place that when we’re at home we can really just enjoy it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:08:26] So they looked for a home that they could afford and their budget was to buy something for under a million dollars, which is practically impossible to do in San Francisco. They ended up finding a home in Redwood Heights in Oakland and it worked out really well for them because they found the house with space and a pool and great views of the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:08:53] Just really fell in love with it and like the cabinets and the green and all of that and like the pool obviously so yeah we just we really liked it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:09:01] And it all worked out really well, because around the time that they moved in, Aparna learned that she was pregnant. But the thing that I heard Aparna say is that, you know, she was like, we had to compromise on walkability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:09:17] The view is great, but I would probably prefer something more accessible, like Bart, something with like, yeah, coffee shops nearby, than even the view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:09:28] You have to drive everywhere to get anywhere. And it’s okay because we have a lot of friends. But, you know, she was like, I can’t walk down to a little town square where there might be things happening. I have to ride there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:09:43] When we were in Cole Valley, it was super close. We were able to walk wherever. But Laurel, that whole area in MacArthur is probably a 20-minute walk, but it’s hilly, so it takes longer. And it’s just a little bit too far to go quickly on a lunch break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:00] Eventually, they’d like to look for another house, and when they do, walkability is going to be one of their top priorities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aparna Simmons \u003c/strong>[00:10:09] I realized like that is something we really want in our next place. Um, like there’s things here that we’re like, okay, this isn’t as important actually, and we prefer having it be like walkable instead. So I feel like we’re learning what we, what we like and don’t like, or like what we can live without and what we want permanently in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:34] Like even after a person settles in a place, like walkability is something that they still want. Like so many people want walkability and the fact that it’s hard to find and that that’s an expensive feature is significant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:48] Yeah, kind of a luxury, it sounds like, for families. Totally, yeah. Coming up, why one family in the North Bay is spending nearly half of their income on housing. We’ll be right back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:20] So, Adhiti, you just talked about two different families who it sounds like are making a lot of adjustments and compromises, but are still making it work here in the Bay Area. But what about families who are struggling to make it work? Did you talk to anyone?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:11:39] Yeah, I mean, I think that most of the families who I spoke to were struggling on some level to kind of just keep up with the high cost of living. But one family that kind of comes to mind is Kate Knuttel and her partner, Matt Quisenberry. They live in American Canyon with their four children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:12:00] Me and my partner have been together for, I think it’s gonna be 10 years this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:05] A few years ago, they were living in Vallejo. They were living in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:12:15] And we really enjoyed it. Enjoyed Vallejo, but we did not enjoy the school district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:23] Unfortunately, they didn’t feel like their kids could really play outside in the in the streets And what’s more is that Matt actually grew up in American Canyon, which is a city just north of Vallejo really and he has family here\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:12:38] So we’re like, let’s get them into, you know, the school that your dad volunteers at and does, you know, it was like, it’s very like family oriented.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:46] So when they were looking to move, this was in 2021, 2022, they considered buying a house. And what they find is that the mortgage is more expensive than what they would be paying in rent and what they could afford to pay in rent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:13:03] That mortgage with 20,000 down, like we were still looking at 35 to $4,000 a month. We were like, wow, yeah, actually we can’t afford that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:13:11] The interest rates go back up again, and then Kate learns that she’s pregnant with their fourth child. They end up moving to American Canyon, but into a rental. It’s a three bedroom, two bath. So now they’ve got a little bit more space, but it’s still really, really expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:13:33] It was like a Hail Mary. We were like, wow, it’s $3,000 a month we were paying. I think at the time maybe $2,100, maybe a little bit more for our spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:13:47] They spend almost 50% of their income towards rent and living costs. They are spending more than they make, and they’re living in debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:14:01] It’s expensive and we’ve gotten really good at balance transfer credit cards to kind of make it work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:14:10] They charge their expenses to 0% credit cards and pay them off as they go, but they are living paycheck to paycheck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:20] I mean, that’s so interesting. It’s like you were talking earlier about these families who are compromising on things like physical space and walkability, but it sounds like for Kate and her family, their compromise is literally affordability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:14:30] Exactly, exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:32] What does Kate tell you about what that is like for them? She said that it’s really stressful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:14:46] And as the kids, big kids get older, like there’s more expenses, you know, braces. Oh, there’s this amazing New York, DC trip I really wanna go on and we wanna give them all these amazing opportunities, but we’re just like, okay, how are we gonna make this work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:15:01] Time, you know. Part of the reason why they’re there in this situation is because their youngest daughter Chloe is too young to go to school, but she’s only three years old. So they have to pay for her daycare, but her day care is a thousand dollars a month. And that’s just to send her part time. So Kate has to stay home part of the week so she can take care of of her daughter. And then she can work the other part of the week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:15:33] So just kind of waiting for that to be done because hopefully that’ll bring back a couple of, you know, a couple thousand dollars back in our pocket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:15:43] And she’s told me that, at times, it feels like she’s drowning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Kate Knuttel \u003c/strong>[00:15:51] And, you know, credit scores are still good. We’re good now, but life has gotten expensive. And so we’ve found ourselves like, oh, Chloe fractured her arm. Oh, you, we got into, you two, both of our cars need to be in the shop. Now we’re like back in debt again. You know, and that’s where we’re at now. It’s like, maybe we’d have a little more, you know spending money or saving money or money to put in our kids’ college funds, but instead we’re just slowly chipping away at debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:16:20] And I think that that is a reality that a lot of Bay Area families live in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:27] Yeah, it sounds like there’s not a lot of room for error there, and I have to imagine not a lotta room either to be thinking about their ultimate dream, which was to buy a home. Exactly, exactly. I mean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:16:42] It’s actually really interesting because we see this in the data. There’s an online platform called Lending Tree and they released a study earlier this year which showed that nationwide, people who have a mortgage pay more every month, pay 37% more every months than people who rent. And the place where that gap is the widest is the San Francisco Bay metro area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:14] It seems like there’s always gonna be, have to be a trade-off if you decide to have kids here. I imagine there are folks who are also compromising on things like their commutes. Yeah, I guess it seems like these trade-offs and these compromises are not new, but they just seem even more pronounced here in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:17:34] Yeah, I think that’s true. I think when I first started reporting this story, I assumed to find more people who were like, well, we’re choosing to not have children, and that’s because we can’t afford it. But I actually found less of those stories. I actually find that people do want to have kids, but if they want to have kids they’ll just move outwards where they can afford to have children. Or they’ll choose to have fewer kids. I know that this story sounds really dire and sad because families are kind of struggling to make it work, but I also found a lot of hope because the thing is that even though there aren’t so many families in the Bay Area, the families that are there really show up for each other. There are so many opportunities for community here in the bay area if you are trying to start a family. That is really beautiful because it almost is like… We know it’s so expensive and we need a village and people are creating that village. They’re making it work.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "san-jose-teen-charged-with-murder-of-2-year-old-cousin",
"title": "San José Teen Charged With Murder of 2-Year-Old Cousin",
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"headTitle": "San José Teen Charged With Murder of 2-Year-Old Cousin | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>A San José teenager has been charged with the murder and assault of a 2-year-old who \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12080197/south-bay-toddler-dies-in-foster-care-after-alleged-sexual-assault\">died in Santa Clara County’s embattled foster care system\u003c/a> earlier this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 18-year-old was charged Monday with murder for allegedly killing his foster brother, Jaxon Juarez, and assaulting him repeatedly, according to the District Attorney’s Office. The counts add to other sexual assault charges already brought in the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>District Attorney Jeff Rosen said Monday that while the suspect, who was a minor at the time of Juarez’s death, is currently being tried in juvenile court, he has moved to have the case transferred to the adult criminal division. The juvenile court judge overseeing the case will decide on the motion, Rosen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The rape and murder of a child are two of the most serious crimes that we prosecute. These crimes should be heard in our most serious criminal courts,” he told reporters following the suspect’s first court appearance on Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jaxon had been under the care of a relative, Bridget Michelle Martinez, the mother of the teen suspect, for just a few weeks before he died in the hospital on April 9. His “small, bruised and battered body” was found by San José police officers days earlier, on Easter Sunday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The District Attorney’s office said evidence showed that after he was placed in the home in February, Jaxon had been repeatedly physically and sexually assaulted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080614\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080614\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-09-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-09-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-09-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-09-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">District Attorney Jeff Rosen speaks outside the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in San José on April 20, 2026, where prosecutors announced charges against a San José teen accused of killing his 2-year-old foster brother, Jaxon Juarez. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Martinez’s son, who is Jaxon’s cousin, was initially charged with multiple counts of sexual assault, including forced sodomy. During Monday’s short, emotional hearing, new rape and murder charges were added to the case. Among the assault charges, the suspect is accused of putting a hair tie around Jaxon’s neck, causing significant injury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While no official cause of death has been announced, the DA’s office said it does have preliminary indications, but did not elaborate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He did not deserve this,” said Evangeline Dominguez-Estrada, a friend of Jaxon’s late mother, who was at the hearing on Monday. “He deserved to be protected. He deserved to be cared for. Every child deserves that. They need us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jaxon is the third child who has died while under the care of the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services in the last several years. The department has been subject to state oversight since 2023, when two other young children died under its supervision. Critics have accused the department of prioritizing family reunification over child safety, though in recent years, it’s been recognized for making progress under a corrective action plan that aims to rebalance focus between reunification and safety.[aside postID=news_12080399 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-04-KQED.jpg']The DA’s office said it is still investigating whether it might bring charges against anyone else in connection with Jaxon’s death, both inside and out of the county agency. Martinez was briefly arrested but released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is not the first time that this has happened,” Rosen told reporters after Monday’s hearing. “People in the public, and myself as the DA, would like to know who is responsible criminally, civilly, morally, ethically, systemically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why are horrible and tragic crimes happening to children in the care and custody of the Department of Family and Children’s Services over and over and over again?” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosen’s comments come after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12080399/south-bay-toddler-placed-with-woman-convicted-of-child-endangerment-before-death\">revelations about Martinez’s criminal history\u003c/a> last week renewed scrutiny of the department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to court and police records, Martinez had a prior felony conviction for child endangerment, which prohibits the Department of Family and Children’s Services from placing a child in her care, even in an emergency, per the county’s own policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martinez was convicted of felony child endangerment and a misdemeanor DUI in 2014, when she was found with “red watery eyes, slurred speech and a strong odor of an intoxicating beverage” while driving her 1-year-old daughter. At the time of her arrest, her license was suspended due to a prior DUI conviction in 2011. She was also charged with another DUI in 2020 in Stanislaus County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear if the Department of Child Services knew of the charges against Martinez. The county did not explain how Jaxon came to be placed under her care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080617\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12080617 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-23-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-23-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-23-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-23-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sign says, “Justice for Jaxon” outside the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in San José on April 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When he was born, Jaxon lived with his mother, Brianna Burton, and his father, Albert Juarez. Burton died of alcohol abuse last year, and he was placed in the county’s custody. Jaxon then lived with a foster family before he was transferred to a maternal grandparent near Sacramento for six months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there, the grandparent had to bring the boy to the South Bay for regular visits with his father, a requirement that prevented the grandparent from continuing to serve as a guardian. In February, Jaxon was transferred to live with Martinez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riley Wallace, Jaxon’s aunt, said she and family members in Arizona had asked the court to allow Jaxon to live with them, but were denied because of the distance from Jaxon’s father.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is completely unacceptable,” Wallace told KQED last week. “They did not protect a child, and that’s their job, that’s what they took the child for, to protect him. And they failed him so terribly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080616\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12080616 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-20-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-20-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-20-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-20-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A crowd listens to District Attorney Jeff Rosen speak outside the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in San José on April 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said they were told they’d need to wait for Jaxon to be put up for adoption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Wallace, the family plans to sue the agency, saying Jaxon never should have been placed with Martinez. The Department of Family and Children’s Services is already facing a lawsuit by the grandfather of another young child, 6-year-old Jordan Walker, who died in 2023. He was stabbed to death by a relative in a home in San José that August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is not a one-off. It’s the third time, and that’s just murder,” Rosen said. “We’re not talking about the other children under the care of the Department of Family and Children’s Services who have been abused sexually and physically in the last few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think there’s important questions to ask officials at the highest level in the county,” Rosen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080613\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12080613 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-01-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-01-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-01-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-01-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zariah Garduno (left) and Ethan Guadamuz wait outside the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in San José on April 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Both the San José Police Department and the Department of Family and Children’s Services are investigating Jaxon’s case, and the county has asked the state’s Department of Social Services to conduct its own independent investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martinez’s son is due back in court on May 21 to be appointed an attorney. According to Rosen, it could be months before the judge determines whether to grant the DA’s office request to transfer the case to adult court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Outside the courtroom on Monday, Dominguez-Estrada and a high school classmate of the suspect were among a group calling for him to be tried as an adult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This should be in the court where people can see, and it’s open to the public,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jgeha\">\u003cem>Joseph Geha\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/aaliahmad\">\u003cem>Ayah Ali-Ahmad\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Jaxon Juarez was in foster care and had been placed with relatives just weeks before he died this month.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A San José teenager has been charged with the murder and assault of a 2-year-old who \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12080197/south-bay-toddler-dies-in-foster-care-after-alleged-sexual-assault\">died in Santa Clara County’s embattled foster care system\u003c/a> earlier this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 18-year-old was charged Monday with murder for allegedly killing his foster brother, Jaxon Juarez, and assaulting him repeatedly, according to the District Attorney’s Office. The counts add to other sexual assault charges already brought in the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>District Attorney Jeff Rosen said Monday that while the suspect, who was a minor at the time of Juarez’s death, is currently being tried in juvenile court, he has moved to have the case transferred to the adult criminal division. The juvenile court judge overseeing the case will decide on the motion, Rosen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The rape and murder of a child are two of the most serious crimes that we prosecute. These crimes should be heard in our most serious criminal courts,” he told reporters following the suspect’s first court appearance on Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jaxon had been under the care of a relative, Bridget Michelle Martinez, the mother of the teen suspect, for just a few weeks before he died in the hospital on April 9. His “small, bruised and battered body” was found by San José police officers days earlier, on Easter Sunday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The District Attorney’s office said evidence showed that after he was placed in the home in February, Jaxon had been repeatedly physically and sexually assaulted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080614\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080614\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-09-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-09-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-09-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-09-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">District Attorney Jeff Rosen speaks outside the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in San José on April 20, 2026, where prosecutors announced charges against a San José teen accused of killing his 2-year-old foster brother, Jaxon Juarez. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Martinez’s son, who is Jaxon’s cousin, was initially charged with multiple counts of sexual assault, including forced sodomy. During Monday’s short, emotional hearing, new rape and murder charges were added to the case. Among the assault charges, the suspect is accused of putting a hair tie around Jaxon’s neck, causing significant injury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While no official cause of death has been announced, the DA’s office said it does have preliminary indications, but did not elaborate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He did not deserve this,” said Evangeline Dominguez-Estrada, a friend of Jaxon’s late mother, who was at the hearing on Monday. “He deserved to be protected. He deserved to be cared for. Every child deserves that. They need us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jaxon is the third child who has died while under the care of the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services in the last several years. The department has been subject to state oversight since 2023, when two other young children died under its supervision. Critics have accused the department of prioritizing family reunification over child safety, though in recent years, it’s been recognized for making progress under a corrective action plan that aims to rebalance focus between reunification and safety.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The DA’s office said it is still investigating whether it might bring charges against anyone else in connection with Jaxon’s death, both inside and out of the county agency. Martinez was briefly arrested but released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is not the first time that this has happened,” Rosen told reporters after Monday’s hearing. “People in the public, and myself as the DA, would like to know who is responsible criminally, civilly, morally, ethically, systemically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why are horrible and tragic crimes happening to children in the care and custody of the Department of Family and Children’s Services over and over and over again?” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosen’s comments come after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12080399/south-bay-toddler-placed-with-woman-convicted-of-child-endangerment-before-death\">revelations about Martinez’s criminal history\u003c/a> last week renewed scrutiny of the department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to court and police records, Martinez had a prior felony conviction for child endangerment, which prohibits the Department of Family and Children’s Services from placing a child in her care, even in an emergency, per the county’s own policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martinez was convicted of felony child endangerment and a misdemeanor DUI in 2014, when she was found with “red watery eyes, slurred speech and a strong odor of an intoxicating beverage” while driving her 1-year-old daughter. At the time of her arrest, her license was suspended due to a prior DUI conviction in 2011. She was also charged with another DUI in 2020 in Stanislaus County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear if the Department of Child Services knew of the charges against Martinez. The county did not explain how Jaxon came to be placed under her care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080617\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12080617 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-23-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-23-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-23-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-23-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sign says, “Justice for Jaxon” outside the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in San José on April 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When he was born, Jaxon lived with his mother, Brianna Burton, and his father, Albert Juarez. Burton died of alcohol abuse last year, and he was placed in the county’s custody. Jaxon then lived with a foster family before he was transferred to a maternal grandparent near Sacramento for six months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there, the grandparent had to bring the boy to the South Bay for regular visits with his father, a requirement that prevented the grandparent from continuing to serve as a guardian. In February, Jaxon was transferred to live with Martinez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riley Wallace, Jaxon’s aunt, said she and family members in Arizona had asked the court to allow Jaxon to live with them, but were denied because of the distance from Jaxon’s father.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is completely unacceptable,” Wallace told KQED last week. “They did not protect a child, and that’s their job, that’s what they took the child for, to protect him. And they failed him so terribly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080616\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12080616 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-20-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-20-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-20-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-20-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A crowd listens to District Attorney Jeff Rosen speak outside the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in San José on April 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said they were told they’d need to wait for Jaxon to be put up for adoption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Wallace, the family plans to sue the agency, saying Jaxon never should have been placed with Martinez. The Department of Family and Children’s Services is already facing a lawsuit by the grandfather of another young child, 6-year-old Jordan Walker, who died in 2023. He was stabbed to death by a relative in a home in San José that August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is not a one-off. It’s the third time, and that’s just murder,” Rosen said. “We’re not talking about the other children under the care of the Department of Family and Children’s Services who have been abused sexually and physically in the last few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think there’s important questions to ask officials at the highest level in the county,” Rosen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080613\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12080613 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-01-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-01-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-01-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260420-SCCDAANNOUNCEMENT-01-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zariah Garduno (left) and Ethan Guadamuz wait outside the Santa Clara County Juvenile Court in San José on April 20, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Both the San José Police Department and the Department of Family and Children’s Services are investigating Jaxon’s case, and the county has asked the state’s Department of Social Services to conduct its own independent investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martinez’s son is due back in court on May 21 to be appointed an attorney. According to Rosen, it could be months before the judge determines whether to grant the DA’s office request to transfer the case to adult court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Outside the courtroom on Monday, Dominguez-Estrada and a high school classmate of the suspect were among a group calling for him to be tried as an adult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This should be in the court where people can see, and it’s open to the public,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jgeha\">\u003cem>Joseph Geha\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/aaliahmad\">\u003cem>Ayah Ali-Ahmad\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "south-bay-toddler-placed-with-woman-convicted-of-child-endangerment-before-death",
"title": "South Bay Toddler Placed With Woman Convicted of Child Endangerment Before Death",
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"content": "\u003cp>Santa Clara County’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12022256/santa-clara-county-social-workers-demand-more-staffing-support-in-troubled-agency/\">embattled child protection agency\u003c/a> placed a 2-year-old boy in foster care, where \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12080197/south-bay-toddler-dies-in-foster-care-after-alleged-sexual-assault\">he died this month\u003c/a>, with a relative despite the woman’s prior felony conviction for child endangerment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just weeks after coming under the care of Bridget Michelle Martinez, the boy, Jaxon Juarez, died in a hospital on April 9. Authorities charged Martinez’s then-17-year-old son with six counts of sexual assault of Juarez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A felony child endangerment conviction prohibits the county’s \u003ca href=\"https://ssa.santaclaracounty.gov/departments/department-family-and-childrens-services\">Department of Family and Children’s Services\u003c/a> from placing a child in her care, even in an emergency, according to the county’s own policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Family members of the toddler are outraged and said they plan to sue the agency because he never should have been allowed to be placed in the home, given her record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is completely unacceptable,” Riley Wallace, Jaxon’s aunt who lives in Arizona, said. “They did not protect a child, and that’s their job, that’s what they took the child for, to protect him. And they failed him so terribly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080418\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080418\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03-1152x1536.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jaxon, a 2-year-old South Bay boy who died while in Santa Clara County’s foster care system after allegedly being sexually assaulted, is seen in this photo provided by his aunt. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Riley Wallace)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s unclear how Juarez came to be placed with Martinez, and the county did not explain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Steve Baron, a member of the county’s Child Abuse Prevention Council and a child welfare expert, said the agency should be reviewing any policies or procedures that could have led to such an oversight and making changes immediately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Were they aware of those records? And if not, why not? Because they should have been,” Baron said, adding that he was speaking for himself and not the council.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they were aware of those records, and they placed the child there anyway, what was their rationale for doing that in the light of those records, which indicated that there might be a safety issue?” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The county said this week that both enforcement and the Department of Family and Children’s Services are investigating the case, and the county has asked the state’s Department of Social Services to conduct its own independent investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, the county said this is a “deeply concerning case,” and vowed there will be transparency. “The county is committed to swiftly investigating every aspect of this horrific tragedy and publicly sharing the results of these investigations when available and to the extent allowable by law,” the statement said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The revelations are renewing scrutiny of the agency, which has been under state oversight following the deaths in 2023 of two other young children under its supervision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State and child safety experts have recognized the county for making progress under a corrective action plan, including by attempting to rebalance its prior focus on family reunification with the safety of children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even as Baron credited the agency for its work to make changes, he called what happened to Juarez “a horror story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s critical that whatever placement they decide, the first consideration should be, is it safe? And are the people there capable of meeting this child’s needs?” Baron said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to police and court records, Martinez was stalled in the right lane of San Tomas Expressway in Santa Clara on Saturday night, April 26, 2014, when police officers pulled over to check on her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The arrestee had red watery eyes, slurred speech and a strong odor of an intoxicating beverage,” a police summary said. Martinez’s one-year-old daughter was in the car.[aside postID=news_12080197 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/GettyImages-1679222216.jpg'] She was later charged with felony child endangerment and misdemeanor DUI, including aggravating factors such as a blood alcohol content of 0.15% or more. At the time of her arrest, she was driving with a suspended license, which stemmed from a prior DUI conviction in 2011, court records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She pleaded no contest to the charges later that year and was sentenced to probation with an order that she not be allowed to drive with a child in the car unless she was sober.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In July of 2014, less than three months after the charges were filed against her, records show that court officers successfully petitioned to change the conditions of her release while awaiting hearings, because she “falsified an alcohol monitoring test by having her juvenile son take her alcohol test,” filings show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martinez was also charged with a DUI in 2020 in Stanislaus County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Jaxon was born, he lived with his mother, Brianna Burton, and his father, Albert Juarez, according to Wallace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wallace said Jaxon’s mother passed away last year due to alcohol abuse, and around the same time, the county took custody of the child. Jaxon lived initially with another foster family, Wallace said, before being placed with his maternal grandfather near Sacramento for six months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Due to the distance from the boy’s father in the South Bay, where the county agency required the grandfather to bring the boy regularly for visits, Jaxon’s grandfather was unable to continue serving as a guardian, Wallace said. Jaxon was transferred in late February to live with Martinez, a cousin of Albert Juarez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wallace said her family in Arizona asked the county to let Jaxon live with them, but they were turned down due to the distance from Jaxon’s father and told they’d need to wait for Jaxon to be put up for adoption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wallace said her family would have taken him “in a heartbeat” and provided a good home for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have the room. We have the capability of taking him,” she said. “With this case, nothing made sense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martinez’s son, charged with sexual assault, is set to appear in juvenile court on Monday, April 20. Martinez was also arrested earlier this week, but as of Friday afternoon, she was no longer in custody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Jaxon Juarez died just weeks after being placed with Bridget Martinez.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Santa Clara County’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12022256/santa-clara-county-social-workers-demand-more-staffing-support-in-troubled-agency/\">embattled child protection agency\u003c/a> placed a 2-year-old boy in foster care, where \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12080197/south-bay-toddler-dies-in-foster-care-after-alleged-sexual-assault\">he died this month\u003c/a>, with a relative despite the woman’s prior felony conviction for child endangerment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just weeks after coming under the care of Bridget Michelle Martinez, the boy, Jaxon Juarez, died in a hospital on April 9. Authorities charged Martinez’s then-17-year-old son with six counts of sexual assault of Juarez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A felony child endangerment conviction prohibits the county’s \u003ca href=\"https://ssa.santaclaracounty.gov/departments/department-family-and-childrens-services\">Department of Family and Children’s Services\u003c/a> from placing a child in her care, even in an emergency, according to the county’s own policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Family members of the toddler are outraged and said they plan to sue the agency because he never should have been allowed to be placed in the home, given her record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is completely unacceptable,” Riley Wallace, Jaxon’s aunt who lives in Arizona, said. “They did not protect a child, and that’s their job, that’s what they took the child for, to protect him. And they failed him so terribly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080418\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080418\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260416-Jaxon-Folo-03-1152x1536.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jaxon, a 2-year-old South Bay boy who died while in Santa Clara County’s foster care system after allegedly being sexually assaulted, is seen in this photo provided by his aunt. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Riley Wallace)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s unclear how Juarez came to be placed with Martinez, and the county did not explain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Steve Baron, a member of the county’s Child Abuse Prevention Council and a child welfare expert, said the agency should be reviewing any policies or procedures that could have led to such an oversight and making changes immediately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Were they aware of those records? And if not, why not? Because they should have been,” Baron said, adding that he was speaking for himself and not the council.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they were aware of those records, and they placed the child there anyway, what was their rationale for doing that in the light of those records, which indicated that there might be a safety issue?” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The county said this week that both enforcement and the Department of Family and Children’s Services are investigating the case, and the county has asked the state’s Department of Social Services to conduct its own independent investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, the county said this is a “deeply concerning case,” and vowed there will be transparency. “The county is committed to swiftly investigating every aspect of this horrific tragedy and publicly sharing the results of these investigations when available and to the extent allowable by law,” the statement said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The revelations are renewing scrutiny of the agency, which has been under state oversight following the deaths in 2023 of two other young children under its supervision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State and child safety experts have recognized the county for making progress under a corrective action plan, including by attempting to rebalance its prior focus on family reunification with the safety of children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even as Baron credited the agency for its work to make changes, he called what happened to Juarez “a horror story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s critical that whatever placement they decide, the first consideration should be, is it safe? And are the people there capable of meeting this child’s needs?” Baron said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to police and court records, Martinez was stalled in the right lane of San Tomas Expressway in Santa Clara on Saturday night, April 26, 2014, when police officers pulled over to check on her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The arrestee had red watery eyes, slurred speech and a strong odor of an intoxicating beverage,” a police summary said. Martinez’s one-year-old daughter was in the car.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> She was later charged with felony child endangerment and misdemeanor DUI, including aggravating factors such as a blood alcohol content of 0.15% or more. At the time of her arrest, she was driving with a suspended license, which stemmed from a prior DUI conviction in 2011, court records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She pleaded no contest to the charges later that year and was sentenced to probation with an order that she not be allowed to drive with a child in the car unless she was sober.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In July of 2014, less than three months after the charges were filed against her, records show that court officers successfully petitioned to change the conditions of her release while awaiting hearings, because she “falsified an alcohol monitoring test by having her juvenile son take her alcohol test,” filings show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martinez was also charged with a DUI in 2020 in Stanislaus County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Jaxon was born, he lived with his mother, Brianna Burton, and his father, Albert Juarez, according to Wallace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wallace said Jaxon’s mother passed away last year due to alcohol abuse, and around the same time, the county took custody of the child. Jaxon lived initially with another foster family, Wallace said, before being placed with his maternal grandfather near Sacramento for six months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Due to the distance from the boy’s father in the South Bay, where the county agency required the grandfather to bring the boy regularly for visits, Jaxon’s grandfather was unable to continue serving as a guardian, Wallace said. Jaxon was transferred in late February to live with Martinez, a cousin of Albert Juarez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wallace said her family in Arizona asked the county to let Jaxon live with them, but they were turned down due to the distance from Jaxon’s father and told they’d need to wait for Jaxon to be put up for adoption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wallace said her family would have taken him “in a heartbeat” and provided a good home for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have the room. We have the capability of taking him,” she said. “With this case, nothing made sense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Martinez’s son, charged with sexual assault, is set to appear in juvenile court on Monday, April 20. Martinez was also arrested earlier this week, but as of Friday afternoon, she was no longer in custody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "measles-san-francisco-baby-mmr-vaccines-international-travel-children-outbreak",
"title": "San Francisco Confirms First Measles Case Since 2019, in an Unvaccinated Infant",
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"headTitle": "San Francisco Confirms First Measles Case Since 2019, in an Unvaccinated Infant | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>San Francisco public health officials on Wednesday announced the city’s first \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/measles\">measles case\u003c/a> since 2019, saying that an unvaccinated infant was exposed to the virus while traveling internationally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The infant, who is younger than 12 months old, became infectious after returning to San Francisco and is currently recovering at home, the city’s Department of Public Health said in a statement. The case was confirmed on Monday evening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All members of the infant’s household are reportedly vaccinated, the release said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is battling one of its worst measles outbreaks since 2019, with 39 confirmed cases this year as of noon Monday, before the San Francisco case was confirmed, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization/measles.aspx\">latest data \u003c/a>available from the state’s Department of Public Health. No deaths have been reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month alone, nine related cases were reported in Placer and Sacramento counties, where officials said Wednesday that at least 19 cases have been confirmed amid an ongoing outbreak, including an exposure at a pediatric care setting. An outbreak is three or more related cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rise in measles in the Golden State overlaps with a national resurgence of the preventable disease. In 2025, the U.S. reported its highest number of measles cases in 30 years, driven mostly by large outbreaks in Texas and South Carolina. The country declared measles eliminated in 2000, but that status is now at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jump straight to:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#WhencanbabiesgetanearlydoseoftheMMRvaccine\">When can babies get an early dose of the MMR vaccine?\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#ImplanningtotravelsoonHowworriedshouldIbeaboutmeasles\">I’m planning to travel soon. How worried should I be about measles?\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>The virus, which is highly contagious, can cause serious illness and death. It spreads easily through the air when an infected person breathes, talks or coughs, and it can linger in the air for up to an hour. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose and pink eye, followed 2-4 days later by a rash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine are 97% effective at stopping illness, officials said. The standard MMR vaccine schedule involves two doses: the first at 12-15 months old and the second at 4-6 years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069165\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069165\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/MeaslesAP.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1485\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/MeaslesAP.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/MeaslesAP-160x119.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/MeaslesAP-1536x1140.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A nurse prepares a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine at the Andrews County Health Department on April 8, 2025, in Andrews, Texas. \u003ccite>(Annie Rice/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco’s health officer, highlighted the risk as a reason to get vaccinated at any age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is incredibly important to get the MMR vaccine, as measles is one of the most infectious diseases in the world,” Philip said. “If you and your family are traveling internationally, make sure everyone is up to date with the MMR vaccine and is aware of the symptoms of measles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"WhencanbabiesgetanearlydoseoftheMMRvaccine\">\u003c/a>Why is measles so dangerous for babies and children?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Measles is preventable with the combined MMR vaccine, and vaccination against the disease has been part of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html\">routine childhood immunization\u003c/a> for decades. (There’s also a combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella, or MMRV, vaccine, but it’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html\">only licensed\u003c/a> for use in children 1-12 years old.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/symptoms/complications.html\">Babies and young children are especially at risk from measles\u003c/a>, but because the measles vaccine is routinely recommended only for children 12 months and older, infants younger than 12 months of age — like the San Francisco child currently infected with measles — are especially vulnerable to infection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10813255\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-10813255 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-400x267.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-1440x960.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-960x640.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Because the measles vaccine is routinely recommended only for children 12 months of age and older, babies are especially vulnerable to infection. \u003ccite>(Jeremy Raff/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For this reason, health officials usually \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11981370/why-are-bay-area-health-officials-warning-about-measles\">advise parents\u003c/a> of infants to reach out to their child’s health care provider before any international travel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents intending to travel internationally with an infant \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/plan-for-travel.html\">may be able to secure an early MMR vaccination for children as young as 6 months old\u003c/a> due to the measles risk they may face abroad if unvaccinated.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"ImplanningtotravelsoonHowworriedshouldIbeaboutmeasles\">\u003c/a>I’m traveling internationally soon. How aware should I be of measles?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Travelers are advised to stay up-to-date on the global locations where measles outbreaks are currently taking place. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/global-measles-vaccination/data-research/global-measles-outbreaks/index.html\">The CDC has a dashboard of these countries\u003c/a>, which include India, Angola, Indonesia and Pakistan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyone who is unvaccinated (or just doesn’t have “adequate evidence of immunity”) and planning to travel internationally in the coming weeks and months — even if not to a country with a current measles outbreak — can get \u003ca href=\"https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/level1/measles-globe\">an emergency two-dose course of the vaccine\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Domestic travelers should also know that there are \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html\">measles outbreaks taking place in other U.S. states\u003c/a>, including South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Florida.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Returning travelers should watch for any \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/signs-symptoms/index.html#:~:text=Signs%20and%20symptoms,-Seek%20care%20immediately%21\">symptoms of measles \u003c/a>for a total of three weeks after arriving back home.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>If I’m vaccinated, could I still get measles?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Six years of living with COVID-19 have taught us that being vaccinated against a virus doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t get infected with that virus.[aside postID=news_12073722 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/03/GettyImages-1718981175_qut-1020x681.jpg']The COVID-19 vaccine, for example, does somewhat reduce your chances of being infected — although the\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/ncird/whats-new/5-things-you-should-know.html\"> CDC said \u003c/a>that “protection against infection tends to be modest and sometimes short-lived” — but it also means you’re much less likely to get severely ill if you do get infected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the measles vaccine \u003cem>is \u003c/em>incredibly effective at protecting against infections, the\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/questions.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html\"> CDC said\u003c/a>, and two doses of the measles vaccine are “about 97% effective” at preventing measles if you’re exposed. (One dose is “about 93% effective.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for why “about three out of 100” people vaccinated against measles will still get measles after exposure — also known as breakthrough cases — \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/questions.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html\">the CDC said \u003c/a>that experts “aren’t sure why” and that this could be due to the responsiveness of an individual’s immune system to the vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But the good news is, fully vaccinated people who get measles seem more likely to have a milder illness,” the CDC said — and fully vaccinated people “seem also less likely to spread the disease to other people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>If I’m up-to-date on my measles vaccines, do I need a measles booster?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>No. The CDC’s longtime advice says: If you had two doses of measles vaccine as a child according to the U.S. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/questions.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html\">vaccination schedule\u003c/a>, the CDC considers you “protected for life” and you “do not ever need a booster dose.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But given that measles can be fatal to some people — and serious impacts from an infection can appear\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/03/17/nx-s1-5328765/measles-outbreak-health-risk\"> years later \u003c/a>— even those who’ve had their MMR vaccine may be concerned about how protected they still are against the disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A simple blood test known as a “titer test” is a way medical professionals can see how much immunity a person still has against a disease like measles.\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12073722/2026-measles-cases-mmr-vaccine-how-to-get-titer-test-immunity-antibodies-extra-dose\"> Read more about how to check your measles immunity and who might need an extra MMR vaccine.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Because the measles vaccine is routinely recommended only for children 12 months of age and older, babies are especially vulnerable to infection. Here’s what to know.",
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"title": "San Francisco Confirms First Measles Case Since 2019, in an Unvaccinated Infant | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>San Francisco public health officials on Wednesday announced the city’s first \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/measles\">measles case\u003c/a> since 2019, saying that an unvaccinated infant was exposed to the virus while traveling internationally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The infant, who is younger than 12 months old, became infectious after returning to San Francisco and is currently recovering at home, the city’s Department of Public Health said in a statement. The case was confirmed on Monday evening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All members of the infant’s household are reportedly vaccinated, the release said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is battling one of its worst measles outbreaks since 2019, with 39 confirmed cases this year as of noon Monday, before the San Francisco case was confirmed, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization/measles.aspx\">latest data \u003c/a>available from the state’s Department of Public Health. No deaths have been reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month alone, nine related cases were reported in Placer and Sacramento counties, where officials said Wednesday that at least 19 cases have been confirmed amid an ongoing outbreak, including an exposure at a pediatric care setting. An outbreak is three or more related cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rise in measles in the Golden State overlaps with a national resurgence of the preventable disease. In 2025, the U.S. reported its highest number of measles cases in 30 years, driven mostly by large outbreaks in Texas and South Carolina. The country declared measles eliminated in 2000, but that status is now at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jump straight to:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#WhencanbabiesgetanearlydoseoftheMMRvaccine\">When can babies get an early dose of the MMR vaccine?\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"#ImplanningtotravelsoonHowworriedshouldIbeaboutmeasles\">I’m planning to travel soon. How worried should I be about measles?\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>The virus, which is highly contagious, can cause serious illness and death. It spreads easily through the air when an infected person breathes, talks or coughs, and it can linger in the air for up to an hour. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose and pink eye, followed 2-4 days later by a rash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine are 97% effective at stopping illness, officials said. The standard MMR vaccine schedule involves two doses: the first at 12-15 months old and the second at 4-6 years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069165\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12069165\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/MeaslesAP.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1485\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/MeaslesAP.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/MeaslesAP-160x119.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/MeaslesAP-1536x1140.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A nurse prepares a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine at the Andrews County Health Department on April 8, 2025, in Andrews, Texas. \u003ccite>(Annie Rice/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco’s health officer, highlighted the risk as a reason to get vaccinated at any age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is incredibly important to get the MMR vaccine, as measles is one of the most infectious diseases in the world,” Philip said. “If you and your family are traveling internationally, make sure everyone is up to date with the MMR vaccine and is aware of the symptoms of measles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"WhencanbabiesgetanearlydoseoftheMMRvaccine\">\u003c/a>Why is measles so dangerous for babies and children?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Measles is preventable with the combined MMR vaccine, and vaccination against the disease has been part of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html\">routine childhood immunization\u003c/a> for decades. (There’s also a combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella, or MMRV, vaccine, but it’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html\">only licensed\u003c/a> for use in children 1-12 years old.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/symptoms/complications.html\">Babies and young children are especially at risk from measles\u003c/a>, but because the measles vaccine is routinely recommended only for children 12 months and older, infants younger than 12 months of age — like the San Francisco child currently infected with measles — are especially vulnerable to infection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10813255\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-10813255 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-400x267.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-1440x960.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/12/measles-960x640.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Because the measles vaccine is routinely recommended only for children 12 months of age and older, babies are especially vulnerable to infection. \u003ccite>(Jeremy Raff/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For this reason, health officials usually \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11981370/why-are-bay-area-health-officials-warning-about-measles\">advise parents\u003c/a> of infants to reach out to their child’s health care provider before any international travel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents intending to travel internationally with an infant \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/plan-for-travel.html\">may be able to secure an early MMR vaccination for children as young as 6 months old\u003c/a> due to the measles risk they may face abroad if unvaccinated.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"ImplanningtotravelsoonHowworriedshouldIbeaboutmeasles\">\u003c/a>I’m traveling internationally soon. How aware should I be of measles?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Travelers are advised to stay up-to-date on the global locations where measles outbreaks are currently taking place. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/global-measles-vaccination/data-research/global-measles-outbreaks/index.html\">The CDC has a dashboard of these countries\u003c/a>, which include India, Angola, Indonesia and Pakistan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyone who is unvaccinated (or just doesn’t have “adequate evidence of immunity”) and planning to travel internationally in the coming weeks and months — even if not to a country with a current measles outbreak — can get \u003ca href=\"https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/level1/measles-globe\">an emergency two-dose course of the vaccine\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Domestic travelers should also know that there are \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html\">measles outbreaks taking place in other U.S. states\u003c/a>, including South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Florida.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Returning travelers should watch for any \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/signs-symptoms/index.html#:~:text=Signs%20and%20symptoms,-Seek%20care%20immediately%21\">symptoms of measles \u003c/a>for a total of three weeks after arriving back home.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>If I’m vaccinated, could I still get measles?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Six years of living with COVID-19 have taught us that being vaccinated against a virus doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t get infected with that virus.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The COVID-19 vaccine, for example, does somewhat reduce your chances of being infected — although the\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/ncird/whats-new/5-things-you-should-know.html\"> CDC said \u003c/a>that “protection against infection tends to be modest and sometimes short-lived” — but it also means you’re much less likely to get severely ill if you do get infected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the measles vaccine \u003cem>is \u003c/em>incredibly effective at protecting against infections, the\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/questions.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html\"> CDC said\u003c/a>, and two doses of the measles vaccine are “about 97% effective” at preventing measles if you’re exposed. (One dose is “about 93% effective.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for why “about three out of 100” people vaccinated against measles will still get measles after exposure — also known as breakthrough cases — \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/questions.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html\">the CDC said \u003c/a>that experts “aren’t sure why” and that this could be due to the responsiveness of an individual’s immune system to the vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But the good news is, fully vaccinated people who get measles seem more likely to have a milder illness,” the CDC said — and fully vaccinated people “seem also less likely to spread the disease to other people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>If I’m up-to-date on my measles vaccines, do I need a measles booster?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>No. The CDC’s longtime advice says: If you had two doses of measles vaccine as a child according to the U.S. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/questions.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html\">vaccination schedule\u003c/a>, the CDC considers you “protected for life” and you “do not ever need a booster dose.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But given that measles can be fatal to some people — and serious impacts from an infection can appear\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/03/17/nx-s1-5328765/measles-outbreak-health-risk\"> years later \u003c/a>— even those who’ve had their MMR vaccine may be concerned about how protected they still are against the disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A simple blood test known as a “titer test” is a way medical professionals can see how much immunity a person still has against a disease like measles.\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12073722/2026-measles-cases-mmr-vaccine-how-to-get-titer-test-immunity-antibodies-extra-dose\"> Read more about how to check your measles immunity and who might need an extra MMR vaccine.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, hamburgers and fries are all staples of children’s menus in restaurants across the country today — an easy, appealing choice for the young ones at the table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Helen Zoe Veit, associate professor of history at Michigan State University, said that in the 1930s, those foods weren’t common menu items.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You see a lot of lamb. You see a lot of spinach. You see prunes,” Veit said. “And the idea was this is normal kids’ food back then.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her new book, \u003cem>Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History\u003c/em>, Veit argues that kids used to be much more adventurous eaters than they are today. But a mixture of lifestyle and parenting changes, marketing and the rise of processed foods has made American children very selective eaters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The real mission behind the book is to get a more expansive sense back into our culture of what kids are capable of liking,” she said recently on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101913144/why-are-american-kids-such-picky-eaters\">KQED’s \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>\u003c/a> program. “Far from the myth that we have that, ‘OK, maybe you could force your kid to hatefully accept these foods.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078821\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12078821 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/FrenchFriesGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/FrenchFriesGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/FrenchFriesGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/FrenchFriesGetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A mixture of lifestyle and parenting changes, marketing and the rise of processed foods has made American children very selective eaters, according to Helen Zoe Veit, associate professor of history at Michigan State University \u003ccite>(Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“To get us back toward this idea of teaching kids to love diverse foods. To get actual, authentic pleasure and a much bigger sense of pleasure back into kids’ food,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Forum\u003c/em> spoke to Veit and UC Davis pediatrician Dr. Erik Fernandez y Garcia about how children became such picky eaters — and what parents can do to encourage more adventurous eating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim: So, how \u003cem>did\u003c/em> American children use to eat? Has it always been like this?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit:\u003c/strong> Americans, in general, in let’s say the 19th century, ate so much more diversely than we do today in terms of species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They ate an incredible variety of plant species, a lot more heirloom varieties, wild plants, lots more animal species than we do — all sorts of different kinds of birds, and fish, and shellfish and organ meats. And the crucial thing is that children, with very few exceptions, generally ate what their parents were eating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The even more crucial part is that they weren’t just eating the food. Everybody agreed they liked it. There was a broad idea that kids love to eat. They’re naturally omnivorous.[aside postID=forum_2010101913144 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2026/03/PICKY.jpg']When we think today why did kids eat more broadly in the past, we usually make two assumptions. One is scarcity. We imagine, “OK, there wasn’t enough food to go around, so kids were forcing down hated foods as the only alternative to starvation.” Or we might imagine it was harsh discipline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the fascinating thing from history is that, really, neither is true. Now, that being said, hunger is important. And there were plenty of people in the past who were poor. There were desperately poor people in America, and poor kids, by all accounts, ate eagerly. However, middle-class kids, children of the wealthiest families, farm children who were living in situations of abundance, they were eating eagerly, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were doing more chores, they were walking more, they were spending more time outside, and they weren’t snacking much. Snacks were logistically hard. Before you had plastics, highly processed food, and refrigerators, there wasn’t a whole lot of edible food available between meals. So kids showed up to meals with really big appetites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m not advocating for a return to some of the child labor practices that were going on. But certainly, probably, there are lots of kids who would be happier if they were moving around more during the day. We know exercise is important for all of us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How would you characterize kids’ eating habits \u003cem>today\u003c/em>? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>Many parents are just trying to do the best they possibly can to feed their kids. They want their kids to be happy, they want to please their children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they’ve gotten a lot of marketing messages and other messages. There are a lot of myths swirling about children’s foods, that to please our kids, we have to feed them a pretty narrow range of foods. There are a lot of products in the supermarket that are geared specifically toward kids. Children’s food has become its own genre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The irony for me is that so much of modern kids’ food is actually about displeasure. It’s about helping kids avoid all of these foods that they’re supposedly incapable of liking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do you think modern parenting influenced these kinds of habits?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>Parenting around food is so hard today. For many families, it’s the hardest thing about parenting. And that’s not something I say lightly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that is because parents have been put in this impossible position. On the one hand, they’ve been told, “Be so careful about talking to your kids about food. Never push them to eat anything in particular. Kids are natural rebels. If you push them to eat something, they will develop lifelong aversions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078825\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12078825 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/kideatingchickennuggetsgetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/kideatingchickennuggetsgetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/kideatingchickennuggetsgetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/kideatingchickennuggetsgetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the previous generations, kids were acquiring taste as soon as they were learning to eat, according to Helen Zoe Veit, associate professor of history at Michigan State University. \u003ccite>(Tang Ming Tung/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[Or] “If you pushed them to a particular quantity, they’ll never develop a sense of authentic fullness, and that will lead to overeating and maybe obesity.” Or, “If you make food too emotional or too stressful, that could lead to disordered eating, even eating disorders.” Parents are so scared about doing the wrong thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But at the same time, they’re told kids’ health is actually really important. Childhood obesity rates are rising. Children are developing these chronic diseases in childhood, such as type 2 diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, all of these things that in the past were rare. Parents feel paralyzed. They don’t know what to do. They feel stuck. A lot of parents today have the sense that children need special, separate meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do processed meals come into the mix? How did that influence how kids eat?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>The flood of highly processed foods into many American homes in the mid-20th century is another big factor in establishing new expectations for how easy it might be for children to like foods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, if you hear that something’s an acquired taste, we think that means it’s an adult food. That’s synonymous with adulthood for us. In the previous generations, kids were acquiring taste as soon as they were learning to eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But once highly processed foods enter American homes, it’s clear that there are lots of foods kids don’t have to acquire the taste for. They like them instantly. And so it becomes less of a natural part of many families’ lives to try to teach kids to like food over an extended period of time. At the same time, psychologists start telling parents that it’s psychologically risky to talk to your kids too much about what they should eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marketing played a huge role. Marketing just was shamelessly directed at kids in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, even in ways that today we’d probably be a little uncomfortable with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why is there this emphasis on children’s food needing to be bland?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit:\u003c/strong> Back in the 19th century, a lot of children got sick and died. The number one cause of death was epidemic disease. But the number two cause was unrefrigerated food and food poisoning.[aside postID=news_12078168 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251031-SFMARINFOODBANK-11-BL-KQED.jpg']But the problem was that back in the 19th century, before the last part of the century, Americans didn’t know about germs. They didn’t know about viruses, microbes, contagion. They didn’t understand how this worked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was this group of reformers saying, “It must be the food.” The very fact that children were such broad eaters, they didn’t see that as fabulous back then. These reformers said, “I think it’s all this diverse food, this over-stimulating food.” It’s what we today would see as pseudoscience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was this real advocacy campaign to encourage parents to feed their children blander food. Now, not a lot of parents listened back in the 19th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These were relatively fringy ideas, but they started to catch on much more broadly in the early 20th century. By then, it was less about preventing child death, since germ theory was being established and mortality rates were falling. But it was more about protecting children’s supposedly vulnerable stomachs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How does the taste of the food come into play? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>It’s almost hard as a cultural historian to say this, but I do think deliciousness matters. So, on the one hand, highly processed food is flooding into Americans’ homes [in the mid-20th century.] It’s been designed in laboratories to be really palatable, to be salty, sweet, fatty, melty, crunchy, to have all of these properties that we really love at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cooking styles had changed. So a lot of the vegetables were frozen or canned, or even the ones that were nominally fresh, they’d been shipped across the country or sometimes the world. They’d been stored for long periods of time. They weren’t as flavorful or fresh as the vegetables enjoyed in previous generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12054031\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12054031\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250827-CLIMATERESILIENTCHILDCARECENTER-19-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250827-CLIMATERESILIENTCHILDCARECENTER-19-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250827-CLIMATERESILIENTCHILDCARECENTER-19-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250827-CLIMATERESILIENTCHILDCARECENTER-19-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students learn how to cut vegetables for a salad at the North Bay Children’s Center in Novato on Aug. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I do think cooking can be a really important tool. Now, of course, that leads to all sorts of other questions, like time. Do we have time to cook? How are our work-life balances structured? How are families structured? Who is doing this work? It also leads to things like, do we know how to cook in the first place?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the many things that I think could help with pickiness and maybe with life in general is if we reintroduced cooking classes to public schools. This is another thing that used to happen in the past. Of course, it used to be pretty gendered through home economics programs, at least in the mid-20th century. But we could reimagine public education to include this, maybe most basic of life skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How is this an American phenomenon — and is it spreading?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>There’s so much to learn from other countries. Now, that being said, pickiness is spreading around the world. Where our highly processed food supply goes, so do ideas about children’s pickiness. And so also goes rising child obesity rates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there are still lots of places where you can find totally non-picky children. I actually just heard recently from a pediatrician who works in Harlem, and he works with a lot of children of West African immigrants there. And he says they arrive in the U.S. with fabulous diets. They love vegetables. They love all sorts of diverse foods. And they have pretty healthy BMIs. They’re tall. And then, within just a few years of being exposed to standard American children’s food, we see the same kind of health problems that we see with other kids. They adopt this highly palatable, more processed diet, and other problems ensue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So what can you do to prevent picky eating before it occurs?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia: \u003c/strong>There’s a lot of fear that parents have around the types of foods that they can start their kids on, following this idea that there are certain textures and purees that are safer for kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I think that that misunderstanding of child physiology and anatomy of what they can handle leads them to restrict the types of foods that they’re having when they first begin to be able to have solid foods, which for us is generally around six months of age when they can hold their head up nice and straight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12006360\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2121px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12006360 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2121\" height=\"1414\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171.jpg 2121w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2121px) 100vw, 2121px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Parents can help picky eaters develop broader tastes by introducing a variety of flavors early — from pureed meats like chicken, fish and beef to soft, chewable foods such as corn on the cob or avocados that build familiarity and oral skills. \u003ccite>(d3sign/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So one way to avoid it is to start at that time, introducing lots of different tastes, textures — things that you prepare at home for yourself as an adult and let kids have at it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[For my kids], there were some things that we did puree, and we started pretty early introducing them to different types of meats: chicken, fish, beef, pureed. But we also integrated things that they could chew on, that had flavor, had taste. But they couldn’t necessarily [eat] given their lack of teeth and jaw strength. You can gnaw pretty well on a corn cob, for example. Or on a bagel that’s frozen. These types of things stimulate the chew reflex. It activates a lot of the developing taste buds. So they can have a mix of both pureed stuff and things that are chewable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia:\u003c/strong> I think that feeding and learning to eat a broader array of varied foods is very developmental. And as kids grow and as they learn, there are influences from society and from our families that can help direct that to the outcome that we want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this case, we want them to eat varied food. So if we’re sitting at the table at our set times, it’s a positive thing. It’s an enjoyable thing, it’s time you get to spend with your family, people are making positive comments about the food that they’re enjoying, and all of that positivity and all that positive feedback, of course, will lead to them enjoying food in general.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How about for neurodivergent children who may have barriers to certain textures and colors?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia:\u003c/strong> That is a very, very real cause. There’s celiac disease, there’s allergies to foods, you can have a lot of different gastrointestinal problems. Kids with chronic illnesses have a limited appetite. There are children who have difficulty with the oral motor function, or how they swallow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And personality: some kids are just more rigid. And there’s neurodiversity. I think that all of these different things we have to work through and determine if that is a cause. And then if it’s something like that — which is a very small percentage of the kids who have picky eating — we would ask for help from our developmental specialists, our nutritionists, and there are different techniques that people whose kids have these different conditions can follow to make sure that they have a nutritious, balanced food intake that also is varied but it does take some special interventions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11930253\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1600px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11930253 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85.jpg\" alt=\"Trays of apples and orange slices.\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1142\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85-800x571.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85-1020x728.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85-1536x1096.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Apples and orange slices rest in trays for student lunch at the Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School, in Essex Junction, Vermont on June 9, 2022. \u003ccite>(Lisa Rathke/AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>ARFID stands for Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. It is an eating disorder that was identified in 2012. It’s vital that if a child is really struggling to eat, parents seek medical help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But some of our explanations for pickiness or problem eating, especially when they relate to things like texture or color, as a historian, I will just note that you don’t really see those historically. No one in the past thought children had issues around color. If they were talking about color, they were saying things like, “Add spinach and tomatoes because that bright color contrast will be so appealing to young children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now this, again, doesn’t mean there aren’t biological aspects of what’s going on. Some children come out of the womb much pickier than others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[But in many cases,] training and practice. We don’t think about this with children’s food a lot, but when given repeated multiple positive exposures, it turns out — certainly history suggests — that children can get used to vastly more interesting things than we think today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What is an indicator that this could be a more serious issue that could use intervention?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia:\u003c/strong> When you were talking about ARFID, one of the things that defines that is significant weight loss or inability to eat a varied enough diet to keep kids from having the nutritional, the broadness of nutritional intake that they need to grow normally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents need to ask themselves often, “Why are they so concerned that their child is picky?” And the answer to that will often lead us to determine whether or not it’s a warning sign of something biomechanical or biological.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What are some shifts that you would like to see?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>I think one of the deepest is parents having confidence that kids are actually capable of learning to like broad foods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And of course, some of the comments from earlier, I just want to emphasize, if your child is having trouble eating, seek medical advice. This is crucial. There could be allergies, intolerances or other issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what we see when we look across the world or in the American past is this stunning diversity of foods that kids used to genuinely enjoy. And if we can re-inject that confidence into parenting, I think that’s probably the biggest single tool that parents have — when presenting their kids with food, talking with them about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11927059\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11927059\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jasmine Cuevas talks with her four children during dinner at their home in East Palo Alto on March 30, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Another thing, too, is that parents have been told, “Don’t talk to your kids about health because health is boring. Don’t push any particular food because that will make a child hate it.” There’s no good evidence for that. There’s lots of evidence in the past that when parents enthusiastically promoted the foods they liked to eat, it helped kids learn to like them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can enthusiastically talk about the foods you love to eat. And you don’t have to hold back. Kids are capable of learning to like spicy foods, garlicky foods, fermented foods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you do if your kid is \u003cem>already\u003c/em> a picky eater?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>From history, for most humans, there weren’t alternative meals. It wasn’t possible to create this alternative meal before refrigeration, highly processed foods or microwaves. And I know it’s so uncomfortable for parents because we’ve been told you’ll mess your kids up. But the idea that there’s one meal and that’s what there is, and if you don’t eat it, the consequence of not eating is hunger. This is not hunger as punishment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Again, you have deep confidence that they can learn to like this food, but it’s a consequence of you not eating this beautiful family meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re comfortable having that kind of structure when it comes to seat belts, or tooth brushing, or going to school. We’re comfortable with the idea that some things kids just have to do. That could be a step toward getting your children to learn to love those foods again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia:\u003c/strong> Every family, again, has their own tolerances and their own approach to parenting and behavior change. Because that’s what we’re talking about: behavior change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Avoiding negative feedback for things that we don’t like is much less effective than giving positive feedback when the behavior that we want happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re going to have alternate foods, those should be foods that you choose as alternate foods. So if you cook a meal and the child doesn’t like it, you can give them an alternative, but that is one that the parent chooses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "KQED’s Forum spoke to experts about how American children became such picky eaters — and what parents can do about it.",
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"title": "Is Your Kid a Picky Eater? Here’s What to Know | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, hamburgers and fries are all staples of children’s menus in restaurants across the country today — an easy, appealing choice for the young ones at the table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Helen Zoe Veit, associate professor of history at Michigan State University, said that in the 1930s, those foods weren’t common menu items.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You see a lot of lamb. You see a lot of spinach. You see prunes,” Veit said. “And the idea was this is normal kids’ food back then.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her new book, \u003cem>Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History\u003c/em>, Veit argues that kids used to be much more adventurous eaters than they are today. But a mixture of lifestyle and parenting changes, marketing and the rise of processed foods has made American children very selective eaters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The real mission behind the book is to get a more expansive sense back into our culture of what kids are capable of liking,” she said recently on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101913144/why-are-american-kids-such-picky-eaters\">KQED’s \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>\u003c/a> program. “Far from the myth that we have that, ‘OK, maybe you could force your kid to hatefully accept these foods.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078821\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12078821 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/FrenchFriesGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/FrenchFriesGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/FrenchFriesGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/FrenchFriesGetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A mixture of lifestyle and parenting changes, marketing and the rise of processed foods has made American children very selective eaters, according to Helen Zoe Veit, associate professor of history at Michigan State University \u003ccite>(Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“To get us back toward this idea of teaching kids to love diverse foods. To get actual, authentic pleasure and a much bigger sense of pleasure back into kids’ food,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Forum\u003c/em> spoke to Veit and UC Davis pediatrician Dr. Erik Fernandez y Garcia about how children became such picky eaters — and what parents can do to encourage more adventurous eating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim: So, how \u003cem>did\u003c/em> American children use to eat? Has it always been like this?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit:\u003c/strong> Americans, in general, in let’s say the 19th century, ate so much more diversely than we do today in terms of species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They ate an incredible variety of plant species, a lot more heirloom varieties, wild plants, lots more animal species than we do — all sorts of different kinds of birds, and fish, and shellfish and organ meats. And the crucial thing is that children, with very few exceptions, generally ate what their parents were eating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The even more crucial part is that they weren’t just eating the food. Everybody agreed they liked it. There was a broad idea that kids love to eat. They’re naturally omnivorous.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When we think today why did kids eat more broadly in the past, we usually make two assumptions. One is scarcity. We imagine, “OK, there wasn’t enough food to go around, so kids were forcing down hated foods as the only alternative to starvation.” Or we might imagine it was harsh discipline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the fascinating thing from history is that, really, neither is true. Now, that being said, hunger is important. And there were plenty of people in the past who were poor. There were desperately poor people in America, and poor kids, by all accounts, ate eagerly. However, middle-class kids, children of the wealthiest families, farm children who were living in situations of abundance, they were eating eagerly, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were doing more chores, they were walking more, they were spending more time outside, and they weren’t snacking much. Snacks were logistically hard. Before you had plastics, highly processed food, and refrigerators, there wasn’t a whole lot of edible food available between meals. So kids showed up to meals with really big appetites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m not advocating for a return to some of the child labor practices that were going on. But certainly, probably, there are lots of kids who would be happier if they were moving around more during the day. We know exercise is important for all of us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How would you characterize kids’ eating habits \u003cem>today\u003c/em>? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>Many parents are just trying to do the best they possibly can to feed their kids. They want their kids to be happy, they want to please their children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they’ve gotten a lot of marketing messages and other messages. There are a lot of myths swirling about children’s foods, that to please our kids, we have to feed them a pretty narrow range of foods. There are a lot of products in the supermarket that are geared specifically toward kids. Children’s food has become its own genre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The irony for me is that so much of modern kids’ food is actually about displeasure. It’s about helping kids avoid all of these foods that they’re supposedly incapable of liking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do you think modern parenting influenced these kinds of habits?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>Parenting around food is so hard today. For many families, it’s the hardest thing about parenting. And that’s not something I say lightly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that is because parents have been put in this impossible position. On the one hand, they’ve been told, “Be so careful about talking to your kids about food. Never push them to eat anything in particular. Kids are natural rebels. If you push them to eat something, they will develop lifelong aversions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12078825\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12078825 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/kideatingchickennuggetsgetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/kideatingchickennuggetsgetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/kideatingchickennuggetsgetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/kideatingchickennuggetsgetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the previous generations, kids were acquiring taste as soon as they were learning to eat, according to Helen Zoe Veit, associate professor of history at Michigan State University. \u003ccite>(Tang Ming Tung/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[Or] “If you pushed them to a particular quantity, they’ll never develop a sense of authentic fullness, and that will lead to overeating and maybe obesity.” Or, “If you make food too emotional or too stressful, that could lead to disordered eating, even eating disorders.” Parents are so scared about doing the wrong thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But at the same time, they’re told kids’ health is actually really important. Childhood obesity rates are rising. Children are developing these chronic diseases in childhood, such as type 2 diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, all of these things that in the past were rare. Parents feel paralyzed. They don’t know what to do. They feel stuck. A lot of parents today have the sense that children need special, separate meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How do processed meals come into the mix? How did that influence how kids eat?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>The flood of highly processed foods into many American homes in the mid-20th century is another big factor in establishing new expectations for how easy it might be for children to like foods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, if you hear that something’s an acquired taste, we think that means it’s an adult food. That’s synonymous with adulthood for us. In the previous generations, kids were acquiring taste as soon as they were learning to eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But once highly processed foods enter American homes, it’s clear that there are lots of foods kids don’t have to acquire the taste for. They like them instantly. And so it becomes less of a natural part of many families’ lives to try to teach kids to like food over an extended period of time. At the same time, psychologists start telling parents that it’s psychologically risky to talk to your kids too much about what they should eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marketing played a huge role. Marketing just was shamelessly directed at kids in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, even in ways that today we’d probably be a little uncomfortable with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why is there this emphasis on children’s food needing to be bland?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit:\u003c/strong> Back in the 19th century, a lot of children got sick and died. The number one cause of death was epidemic disease. But the number two cause was unrefrigerated food and food poisoning.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But the problem was that back in the 19th century, before the last part of the century, Americans didn’t know about germs. They didn’t know about viruses, microbes, contagion. They didn’t understand how this worked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was this group of reformers saying, “It must be the food.” The very fact that children were such broad eaters, they didn’t see that as fabulous back then. These reformers said, “I think it’s all this diverse food, this over-stimulating food.” It’s what we today would see as pseudoscience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was this real advocacy campaign to encourage parents to feed their children blander food. Now, not a lot of parents listened back in the 19th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These were relatively fringy ideas, but they started to catch on much more broadly in the early 20th century. By then, it was less about preventing child death, since germ theory was being established and mortality rates were falling. But it was more about protecting children’s supposedly vulnerable stomachs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How does the taste of the food come into play? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>It’s almost hard as a cultural historian to say this, but I do think deliciousness matters. So, on the one hand, highly processed food is flooding into Americans’ homes [in the mid-20th century.] It’s been designed in laboratories to be really palatable, to be salty, sweet, fatty, melty, crunchy, to have all of these properties that we really love at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cooking styles had changed. So a lot of the vegetables were frozen or canned, or even the ones that were nominally fresh, they’d been shipped across the country or sometimes the world. They’d been stored for long periods of time. They weren’t as flavorful or fresh as the vegetables enjoyed in previous generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12054031\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12054031\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250827-CLIMATERESILIENTCHILDCARECENTER-19-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250827-CLIMATERESILIENTCHILDCARECENTER-19-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250827-CLIMATERESILIENTCHILDCARECENTER-19-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250827-CLIMATERESILIENTCHILDCARECENTER-19-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students learn how to cut vegetables for a salad at the North Bay Children’s Center in Novato on Aug. 27, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I do think cooking can be a really important tool. Now, of course, that leads to all sorts of other questions, like time. Do we have time to cook? How are our work-life balances structured? How are families structured? Who is doing this work? It also leads to things like, do we know how to cook in the first place?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the many things that I think could help with pickiness and maybe with life in general is if we reintroduced cooking classes to public schools. This is another thing that used to happen in the past. Of course, it used to be pretty gendered through home economics programs, at least in the mid-20th century. But we could reimagine public education to include this, maybe most basic of life skills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How is this an American phenomenon — and is it spreading?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>There’s so much to learn from other countries. Now, that being said, pickiness is spreading around the world. Where our highly processed food supply goes, so do ideas about children’s pickiness. And so also goes rising child obesity rates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there are still lots of places where you can find totally non-picky children. I actually just heard recently from a pediatrician who works in Harlem, and he works with a lot of children of West African immigrants there. And he says they arrive in the U.S. with fabulous diets. They love vegetables. They love all sorts of diverse foods. And they have pretty healthy BMIs. They’re tall. And then, within just a few years of being exposed to standard American children’s food, we see the same kind of health problems that we see with other kids. They adopt this highly palatable, more processed diet, and other problems ensue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So what can you do to prevent picky eating before it occurs?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia: \u003c/strong>There’s a lot of fear that parents have around the types of foods that they can start their kids on, following this idea that there are certain textures and purees that are safer for kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I think that that misunderstanding of child physiology and anatomy of what they can handle leads them to restrict the types of foods that they’re having when they first begin to be able to have solid foods, which for us is generally around six months of age when they can hold their head up nice and straight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12006360\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2121px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12006360 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2121\" height=\"1414\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171.jpg 2121w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1226633171-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2121px) 100vw, 2121px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Parents can help picky eaters develop broader tastes by introducing a variety of flavors early — from pureed meats like chicken, fish and beef to soft, chewable foods such as corn on the cob or avocados that build familiarity and oral skills. \u003ccite>(d3sign/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So one way to avoid it is to start at that time, introducing lots of different tastes, textures — things that you prepare at home for yourself as an adult and let kids have at it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[For my kids], there were some things that we did puree, and we started pretty early introducing them to different types of meats: chicken, fish, beef, pureed. But we also integrated things that they could chew on, that had flavor, had taste. But they couldn’t necessarily [eat] given their lack of teeth and jaw strength. You can gnaw pretty well on a corn cob, for example. Or on a bagel that’s frozen. These types of things stimulate the chew reflex. It activates a lot of the developing taste buds. So they can have a mix of both pureed stuff and things that are chewable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia:\u003c/strong> I think that feeding and learning to eat a broader array of varied foods is very developmental. And as kids grow and as they learn, there are influences from society and from our families that can help direct that to the outcome that we want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this case, we want them to eat varied food. So if we’re sitting at the table at our set times, it’s a positive thing. It’s an enjoyable thing, it’s time you get to spend with your family, people are making positive comments about the food that they’re enjoying, and all of that positivity and all that positive feedback, of course, will lead to them enjoying food in general.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How about for neurodivergent children who may have barriers to certain textures and colors?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia:\u003c/strong> That is a very, very real cause. There’s celiac disease, there’s allergies to foods, you can have a lot of different gastrointestinal problems. Kids with chronic illnesses have a limited appetite. There are children who have difficulty with the oral motor function, or how they swallow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And personality: some kids are just more rigid. And there’s neurodiversity. I think that all of these different things we have to work through and determine if that is a cause. And then if it’s something like that — which is a very small percentage of the kids who have picky eating — we would ask for help from our developmental specialists, our nutritionists, and there are different techniques that people whose kids have these different conditions can follow to make sure that they have a nutritious, balanced food intake that also is varied but it does take some special interventions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11930253\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1600px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11930253 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85.jpg\" alt=\"Trays of apples and orange slices.\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1142\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85-800x571.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85-1020x728.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/10/ap22167671296428_custom-69436829a3251414dd4eda942942bc4d31ccbb0f-s1600-c85-1536x1096.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Apples and orange slices rest in trays for student lunch at the Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School, in Essex Junction, Vermont on June 9, 2022. \u003ccite>(Lisa Rathke/AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>ARFID stands for Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. It is an eating disorder that was identified in 2012. It’s vital that if a child is really struggling to eat, parents seek medical help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But some of our explanations for pickiness or problem eating, especially when they relate to things like texture or color, as a historian, I will just note that you don’t really see those historically. No one in the past thought children had issues around color. If they were talking about color, they were saying things like, “Add spinach and tomatoes because that bright color contrast will be so appealing to young children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now this, again, doesn’t mean there aren’t biological aspects of what’s going on. Some children come out of the womb much pickier than others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[But in many cases,] training and practice. We don’t think about this with children’s food a lot, but when given repeated multiple positive exposures, it turns out — certainly history suggests — that children can get used to vastly more interesting things than we think today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What is an indicator that this could be a more serious issue that could use intervention?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia:\u003c/strong> When you were talking about ARFID, one of the things that defines that is significant weight loss or inability to eat a varied enough diet to keep kids from having the nutritional, the broadness of nutritional intake that they need to grow normally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents need to ask themselves often, “Why are they so concerned that their child is picky?” And the answer to that will often lead us to determine whether or not it’s a warning sign of something biomechanical or biological.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What are some shifts that you would like to see?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>I think one of the deepest is parents having confidence that kids are actually capable of learning to like broad foods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And of course, some of the comments from earlier, I just want to emphasize, if your child is having trouble eating, seek medical advice. This is crucial. There could be allergies, intolerances or other issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what we see when we look across the world or in the American past is this stunning diversity of foods that kids used to genuinely enjoy. And if we can re-inject that confidence into parenting, I think that’s probably the biggest single tool that parents have — when presenting their kids with food, talking with them about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11927059\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11927059\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/RS54940_009_KQED_JasmineCuevasFamily_03302022-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jasmine Cuevas talks with her four children during dinner at their home in East Palo Alto on March 30, 2022. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Another thing, too, is that parents have been told, “Don’t talk to your kids about health because health is boring. Don’t push any particular food because that will make a child hate it.” There’s no good evidence for that. There’s lots of evidence in the past that when parents enthusiastically promoted the foods they liked to eat, it helped kids learn to like them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can enthusiastically talk about the foods you love to eat. And you don’t have to hold back. Kids are capable of learning to like spicy foods, garlicky foods, fermented foods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you do if your kid is \u003cem>already\u003c/em> a picky eater?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veit: \u003c/strong>From history, for most humans, there weren’t alternative meals. It wasn’t possible to create this alternative meal before refrigeration, highly processed foods or microwaves. And I know it’s so uncomfortable for parents because we’ve been told you’ll mess your kids up. But the idea that there’s one meal and that’s what there is, and if you don’t eat it, the consequence of not eating is hunger. This is not hunger as punishment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Again, you have deep confidence that they can learn to like this food, but it’s a consequence of you not eating this beautiful family meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re comfortable having that kind of structure when it comes to seat belts, or tooth brushing, or going to school. We’re comfortable with the idea that some things kids just have to do. That could be a step toward getting your children to learn to love those foods again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fernandez y Garcia:\u003c/strong> Every family, again, has their own tolerances and their own approach to parenting and behavior change. Because that’s what we’re talking about: behavior change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Avoiding negative feedback for things that we don’t like is much less effective than giving positive feedback when the behavior that we want happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re going to have alternate foods, those should be foods that you choose as alternate foods. So if you cook a meal and the child doesn’t like it, you can give them an alternative, but that is one that the parent chooses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "california-invested-big-in-transitional-kindergarten-how-one-school-is-making-the-most-of-it",
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"content": "\u003cp>In Kristi Fowler’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/transitional-kindergarten\">transitional kindergarten\u003c/a> classroom, 4-year-olds learn math by counting steps as they jump and by sorting objects by shape or color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They can skip-count by 10s to get up to 100 and recognize patterns in a numerical sequence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“\u003c/em>I used to think that TK [students] were just babies, and they can’t do that kind of stuff,” Fowler said. “They can, and they love it, and they’re excited to do it, and they’re really good at it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting these students to learn through play is one goal at Yokayo Elementary School, where Fowler works, in the North Coast city of Ukiah. Another is to ensure the skills they gain in TK will last throughout elementary school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The district is one of dozens in California hoping to maximize the benefits of transitional kindergarten, which this year became \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11989955/what-to-expect-when-enrolling-your-child-in-transitional-kindergarten\">free and available for all 4-year-olds across the state\u003c/a>. Gov. Gavin Newsom called the \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/how-california-is-expanding-transitional-kindergarten/\">$15 billion rollout\u003c/a> “a huge opportunity to invest in our kids and their future” and narrow the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2026/kindergarten-readiness-varies-widely-by-income-new-data-shows-cities-are-stepping-in-to-help/\">gap in kindergarten readiness\u003c/a> — such as the ability to socialize, pay attention and regulate emotions — between kids from lower-income and higher-income families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the enthusiasm for TK is tempered by concerns that the investment won’t pay off if the program’s benefits fade over time. Studies have shown that children who attend preschool start kindergarten with a measurable advantage over classmates who didn’t participate, but those gains seem to disappear by roughly the third grade. In Tennessee, a multi-year study found that 4-year-olds who attended a public pre-kindergarten program fared worse academically by the time they reached sixth grade than those who didn’t participate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076149\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076149\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-04-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-04-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-04-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-04-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students work on a math question in their second grade class with teacher Yadira DeLuna at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah on Jan. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/education/early-childhood-education-pre-k/california-legislature-newsom-transitional-kindergarten-budget-research\">doesn’t have a plan to evaluate\u003c/a> the effectiveness of universal TK. And while the California Department of Education has guidelines on \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/psfoundations.asp\">what students should learn, \u003c/a>there is no mandated curriculum — leaving TK programs potentially vulnerable to repeating the pitfalls in Tennessee’s program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some districts are seeking out best practices to avoid the same fate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Ukiah Unified, a high-poverty school district where a large percentage of its 5,800 students are in foster care or are English learners from Spanish-speaking households, administrators are determined to ensure the TK students are set up for success later on. They’re supporting an initiative at Yokayo Elementary, where teachers emphasize learning math skills in TK and building on what students know as they move to the next grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school is focusing on math because more than 60% of California students \u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2025/california-students-struggle-math-english/742613#:~:text=%E2%80%9CProficient%20is%20a%20pretty%20high,and%20transparency%20from%20the%20state.\">are not proficient in the subject\u003c/a>, and studies show that students’ early math skills predict their academic achievement in middle and even high school.[aside postID=news_12052609 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/240520-TKParentsDilemma-32-BL_qed.jpg']“If they don’t get that foundation, then it’s a house of cards,” said Deborah Stipek, an expert on early childhood and elementary education at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. “And as they make an effort to learn more advanced math, it falls apart because they don’t really have that basic understanding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students are forced to reach too high when they start a new grade, they can feel lost and frustrated. If they repeat something they already know, they can lose interest in learning, Stipek said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Yokayo, teachers from TK to third grade get together to align their curriculum and standards to ensure students make academic progress from one grade to the next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a type of collaboration that might seem intuitive, but that runs counter to the way schools are typically organized. Teachers usually talk to their colleagues from the same grade level and follow pre-designed lesson plans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steven Kellner, director of district leadership and state policy for the nonprofit California Education Partners, said that creates a “herky-jerky” learning experience for students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“‘Kindergarten’s this way and first grade’s that way,’ and they have nothing to do with each other,” he said of districts’ typical approach. “Transitional kindergarten is great, but if it’s not connected to the other grades, it’s not super helpful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ed Partners, which is dedicated to improving student outcomes in under-resourced districts, is helping dozens of school districts across the state develop what it calls “preschool through third grade coherence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076152\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076152\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-13-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-13-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-13-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-13-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students run during gym class at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah on Jan. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The nonprofit pairs \u003ca href=\"https://centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/math-project/\">university experts\u003c/a> with teams of teachers, principals and school district leaders to share math teaching strategies that work across the early elementary school years. The teams receive ongoing coaching to improve the way they teach math, based on how much progress students make between the beginning and end of each school year. Stipek is an advisor to the nonprofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yokayo Elementary is in the third year of implementing this strategy. In Fowler’s classroom, for example, students play a game called “How many ways?” where they’re asked to represent the number 4 and share their reasoning with classmates. Some students drew four dots or four hearts, while others wrote their names four times on the whiteboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time they get to second grade, in teacher Yadira De Luna’s classroom, they’ll perform the same task but with increasing difficulty. One recent morning, she asked her students to show multiple ways to represent the number 175. Some drew 175 circles or bars, while others filled their sheet of paper with as many addition or subtraction formulas they could think of that end in 175.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This exercise lets students see that there is more than one way to get to the right answer. It also encourages them to articulate their reasoning in front of their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076151\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076151\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-10-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-10-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-10-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-10-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Principal Dana Milani speaks with second grade students about a math question in their class at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah on Jan. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“By allowing them to play with numbers and to look at patterns and to see what they look like in the real world, that’s where you’re going to get that love of math,” said Dana Milani, the school’s principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Milani spent 15 years teaching fifth grade at Yokayo Elementary before switching to administration. She said having transitional kindergarten at her school has made her appreciate the opportunity to nurture young children’s love of learning, while being careful not to stifle it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not making [math lessons] too long, we’re not having them get to where they’re like, ‘Ugh, do we have to do math again?’” she said. “It’s this really fun time where they get to use problem-solving skills. When you’re 4, problem-solving is a big deal, and if they can figure out how to problem-solve socially, they can do it academically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers say engaging in math activities early on teaches young kids cognitive skills (like memorizing and organizing) that can be applied to other areas of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076150\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076150\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students work on a math question in their second grade class with teacher Yadira DeLuna at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah on Jan. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Recently, \u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2026/clarifying-transitional-kindergartens-curriculum-keeps-kids-playing/751419\">the state proposed redefining transitional kindergarten\u003c/a> in official documents to clarify that, instead of using a “modified kindergarten curriculum,” TK instruction should prioritize play as a form of learning. The California Department of Education also encourages school districts to align \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/p3/#:~:text=Successful%20P%2D3%20alignment%20requires%20cross%2Dsector,families%2C%20and%20continuity%20of%20pathways.\">preschool to third grade\u003c/a> teachings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with no standard statewide curriculum, Stipek said she’s heard a variety of stories about what goes on in TK classrooms — from a “drill and kill” approach, where “all the kids do is sit and do worksheets” to the “incredibly wonderful, playful learning that’s going on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said one reason Tennessee’s Pre-K program failed kids was that it rigidly focused on knowing letters and numbers, instead of exploring learning through interaction and play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An evaluation of the fully expanded program would help California state leaders and educators figure out how to fine-tune TK, Stipek said. So far, the Legislature has not committed funding for a study.[aside postID=news_11989955 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/240520-TKPARENTSDILEMMA-07-BL-KQED-1020x680.jpg']In the meantime, the Ukiah Unified School District plans to track its students’ progress from this first year of universal TK, and Ed Partners will evaluate the districts that implemented preschool through third grade alignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The district’s superintendent, Deborah Kubin, said so far, TK seems to be working. Ukiah Unified used its state funding to add a new building and playground just for 4-year-olds on Yokayo’s sprawling campus. Each of the two spacious classrooms has a teacher and a teacher’s aide, and classes are capped at no more than 20 students to ensure the kids get the attention that they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students who attended the program when the district began offering it scored 7% higher on their third grade assessments last year than students who didn’t go to TK.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Launching the program “definitely has been a challenge, but as we’re seeing in our results, the students are doing better,” Kubin said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parent Katie Sims said at the beginning of the school year, her son, Sawyer, had a hard time transitioning from a small day care to Fowler’s classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But once he settled in, he did have a great experience with the teachers,” Sims said. “He absolutely loves going to school now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TK wasn’t an option when her older son, who’s in seventh grade, began his educational journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My youngest son is going to have an easier transition into kindergarten and actual academics, versus my older son, who just got kind of thrown in and didn’t know what to expect,” Sims said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In Kristi Fowler’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/transitional-kindergarten\">transitional kindergarten\u003c/a> classroom, 4-year-olds learn math by counting steps as they jump and by sorting objects by shape or color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They can skip-count by 10s to get up to 100 and recognize patterns in a numerical sequence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“\u003c/em>I used to think that TK [students] were just babies, and they can’t do that kind of stuff,” Fowler said. “They can, and they love it, and they’re excited to do it, and they’re really good at it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Getting these students to learn through play is one goal at Yokayo Elementary School, where Fowler works, in the North Coast city of Ukiah. Another is to ensure the skills they gain in TK will last throughout elementary school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The district is one of dozens in California hoping to maximize the benefits of transitional kindergarten, which this year became \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11989955/what-to-expect-when-enrolling-your-child-in-transitional-kindergarten\">free and available for all 4-year-olds across the state\u003c/a>. Gov. Gavin Newsom called the \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/how-california-is-expanding-transitional-kindergarten/\">$15 billion rollout\u003c/a> “a huge opportunity to invest in our kids and their future” and narrow the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2026/kindergarten-readiness-varies-widely-by-income-new-data-shows-cities-are-stepping-in-to-help/\">gap in kindergarten readiness\u003c/a> — such as the ability to socialize, pay attention and regulate emotions — between kids from lower-income and higher-income families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the enthusiasm for TK is tempered by concerns that the investment won’t pay off if the program’s benefits fade over time. Studies have shown that children who attend preschool start kindergarten with a measurable advantage over classmates who didn’t participate, but those gains seem to disappear by roughly the third grade. In Tennessee, a multi-year study found that 4-year-olds who attended a public pre-kindergarten program fared worse academically by the time they reached sixth grade than those who didn’t participate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076149\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076149\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-04-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-04-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-04-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-04-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students work on a math question in their second grade class with teacher Yadira DeLuna at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah on Jan. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/education/early-childhood-education-pre-k/california-legislature-newsom-transitional-kindergarten-budget-research\">doesn’t have a plan to evaluate\u003c/a> the effectiveness of universal TK. And while the California Department of Education has guidelines on \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/psfoundations.asp\">what students should learn, \u003c/a>there is no mandated curriculum — leaving TK programs potentially vulnerable to repeating the pitfalls in Tennessee’s program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some districts are seeking out best practices to avoid the same fate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Ukiah Unified, a high-poverty school district where a large percentage of its 5,800 students are in foster care or are English learners from Spanish-speaking households, administrators are determined to ensure the TK students are set up for success later on. They’re supporting an initiative at Yokayo Elementary, where teachers emphasize learning math skills in TK and building on what students know as they move to the next grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school is focusing on math because more than 60% of California students \u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2025/california-students-struggle-math-english/742613#:~:text=%E2%80%9CProficient%20is%20a%20pretty%20high,and%20transparency%20from%20the%20state.\">are not proficient in the subject\u003c/a>, and studies show that students’ early math skills predict their academic achievement in middle and even high school.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“If they don’t get that foundation, then it’s a house of cards,” said Deborah Stipek, an expert on early childhood and elementary education at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. “And as they make an effort to learn more advanced math, it falls apart because they don’t really have that basic understanding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students are forced to reach too high when they start a new grade, they can feel lost and frustrated. If they repeat something they already know, they can lose interest in learning, Stipek said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Yokayo, teachers from TK to third grade get together to align their curriculum and standards to ensure students make academic progress from one grade to the next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a type of collaboration that might seem intuitive, but that runs counter to the way schools are typically organized. Teachers usually talk to their colleagues from the same grade level and follow pre-designed lesson plans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steven Kellner, director of district leadership and state policy for the nonprofit California Education Partners, said that creates a “herky-jerky” learning experience for students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“‘Kindergarten’s this way and first grade’s that way,’ and they have nothing to do with each other,” he said of districts’ typical approach. “Transitional kindergarten is great, but if it’s not connected to the other grades, it’s not super helpful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ed Partners, which is dedicated to improving student outcomes in under-resourced districts, is helping dozens of school districts across the state develop what it calls “preschool through third grade coherence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076152\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076152\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-13-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-13-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-13-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-13-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students run during gym class at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah on Jan. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The nonprofit pairs \u003ca href=\"https://centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/math-project/\">university experts\u003c/a> with teams of teachers, principals and school district leaders to share math teaching strategies that work across the early elementary school years. The teams receive ongoing coaching to improve the way they teach math, based on how much progress students make between the beginning and end of each school year. Stipek is an advisor to the nonprofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yokayo Elementary is in the third year of implementing this strategy. In Fowler’s classroom, for example, students play a game called “How many ways?” where they’re asked to represent the number 4 and share their reasoning with classmates. Some students drew four dots or four hearts, while others wrote their names four times on the whiteboard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time they get to second grade, in teacher Yadira De Luna’s classroom, they’ll perform the same task but with increasing difficulty. One recent morning, she asked her students to show multiple ways to represent the number 175. Some drew 175 circles or bars, while others filled their sheet of paper with as many addition or subtraction formulas they could think of that end in 175.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This exercise lets students see that there is more than one way to get to the right answer. It also encourages them to articulate their reasoning in front of their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076151\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076151\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-10-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-10-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-10-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-10-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Principal Dana Milani speaks with second grade students about a math question in their class at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah on Jan. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“By allowing them to play with numbers and to look at patterns and to see what they look like in the real world, that’s where you’re going to get that love of math,” said Dana Milani, the school’s principal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Milani spent 15 years teaching fifth grade at Yokayo Elementary before switching to administration. She said having transitional kindergarten at her school has made her appreciate the opportunity to nurture young children’s love of learning, while being careful not to stifle it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not making [math lessons] too long, we’re not having them get to where they’re like, ‘Ugh, do we have to do math again?’” she said. “It’s this really fun time where they get to use problem-solving skills. When you’re 4, problem-solving is a big deal, and if they can figure out how to problem-solve socially, they can do it academically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers say engaging in math activities early on teaches young kids cognitive skills (like memorizing and organizing) that can be applied to other areas of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076150\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076150\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260106-PREVENTINGPRESCHOOLFADEOUT-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students work on a math question in their second grade class with teacher Yadira DeLuna at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah on Jan. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Recently, \u003ca href=\"https://edsource.org/2026/clarifying-transitional-kindergartens-curriculum-keeps-kids-playing/751419\">the state proposed redefining transitional kindergarten\u003c/a> in official documents to clarify that, instead of using a “modified kindergarten curriculum,” TK instruction should prioritize play as a form of learning. The California Department of Education also encourages school districts to align \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/p3/#:~:text=Successful%20P%2D3%20alignment%20requires%20cross%2Dsector,families%2C%20and%20continuity%20of%20pathways.\">preschool to third grade\u003c/a> teachings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with no standard statewide curriculum, Stipek said she’s heard a variety of stories about what goes on in TK classrooms — from a “drill and kill” approach, where “all the kids do is sit and do worksheets” to the “incredibly wonderful, playful learning that’s going on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said one reason Tennessee’s Pre-K program failed kids was that it rigidly focused on knowing letters and numbers, instead of exploring learning through interaction and play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An evaluation of the fully expanded program would help California state leaders and educators figure out how to fine-tune TK, Stipek said. So far, the Legislature has not committed funding for a study.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In the meantime, the Ukiah Unified School District plans to track its students’ progress from this first year of universal TK, and Ed Partners will evaluate the districts that implemented preschool through third grade alignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The district’s superintendent, Deborah Kubin, said so far, TK seems to be working. Ukiah Unified used its state funding to add a new building and playground just for 4-year-olds on Yokayo’s sprawling campus. Each of the two spacious classrooms has a teacher and a teacher’s aide, and classes are capped at no more than 20 students to ensure the kids get the attention that they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students who attended the program when the district began offering it scored 7% higher on their third grade assessments last year than students who didn’t go to TK.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Launching the program “definitely has been a challenge, but as we’re seeing in our results, the students are doing better,” Kubin said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parent Katie Sims said at the beginning of the school year, her son, Sawyer, had a hard time transitioning from a small day care to Fowler’s classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But once he settled in, he did have a great experience with the teachers,” Sims said. “He absolutely loves going to school now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TK wasn’t an option when her older son, who’s in seventh grade, began his educational journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My youngest son is going to have an easier transition into kindergarten and actual academics, versus my older son, who just got kind of thrown in and didn’t know what to expect,” Sims said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "the-navy-jet-generations-of-san-francisco-kids-played-on",
"title": "The Navy Jet Generations of San Francisco Kids Played On",
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"headTitle": "The Navy Jet Generations of San Francisco Kids Played On | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Dennis O’Neill was a kid growing up in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\"> San Francisco\u003c/a>, his world largely consisted of several blocks to either side of his home. In one direction was his school, Saint Cecilia’s, and in the other was Carl Larsen Park, which had all the usual fun and games plus something a little extra special — a real Navy jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was fantastic, I have to say,” O’Neill said. “I still remember. I’m 64 years old. I remember specifically sitting in that cockpit and being a pilot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he’s certainly not the only one. Every time a picture of the Larsen Park plane gets posted to history groups on Facebook, the comments blow up with hundreds of people fondly remembering playing on the jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was a meeting place, after school,” O’Neill remembered. “‘Meet at the airplane.’ That was common. And when you started getting girlfriends or hanging out with girls, that was a safe place to hang out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each kid who played in Larsen Park remembers \u003ca href=\"https://www.outsidelands.org/larsen_park_jets.php\">“their plane” clearly\u003c/a>, but over a period of 35 years, there were actually three different Navy jets in that park. The last one was placed in 1975 — and the nose of it was painted with shark’s teeth. It was there the longest and was known to many as “The Shark in the Park.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the plane our \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycurious.org\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> question asker, Aaron Van Lieu, played on when he was little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s some of my earliest memories,” said Van Lieu, who thinks he was 5 for 6. “My brother, dad and I we [went] there in the late 80s.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067017\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067017\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Van Lieu looks up at the Vought F-8 Crusader with Janet Doto at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Van Lieu remembers stopping at the park with his dad and brother as a treat after a Saturday morning spent going to open houses with his dad, who was a realtor. The jet was the kids’ reward for behaving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Playing tag, but there’s a jet involved, and hide and seek,” Van Lieu reminisced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But despite these fond memories, Aaron also remembers watching the jet slowly fall apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067018\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12067018 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Van Lieu looks at a display showing photos of the Vought F-8 Crusader from when it was located at Carl Larsen Park in San Francisco, and its removal from the park at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Little by little, the wings and parts of the jet just started falling off and disappearing,” Van Lieu said. “And then, eventually, it was kind of like this skeleton.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then one day it was gone. Aaron has spent the better part of 30 years wondering where it landed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He wants to know: “What happened to the jet and why did it get taken out — aside from being covered in graffiti? I just wanna know where it went from there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How did a Navy jet end up in Larsen Park in the first place?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Larsen Park opened in 1926 after Danish immigrant and Tivoli Cafe owner Carl Larsen donated the land. At the time, the concept of a playground was fairly new. \u003ca href=\"https://savingplaces.org/stories/how-we-came-to-play-the-history-of-playgrounds/\">They came into fashion at the turn of the century \u003c/a>when people started to realize that children weren’t just mini adults, but developing beings that learned through play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Kids were getting into trouble because they didn’t have enough to do in off-hours of school,” said Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days, every park had a Recreation Director who kept play equipment in their office, organized games and kept an eye on the kids when they were at the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076067\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1254\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED-1536x963.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children play on the first Larsen Park jet circa 1964. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of San Francisco History Center/San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first jet came to Larsen Park in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That period is called the jet age because we have rockets being developed,” Pollock said. “People want to go to the moon, and people started designing playground equipment to look like jet planes and rockets and things like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollock said even back then, San Francisco didn’t want to be like everywhere else. The general manager of Rec and Park at the time heard that there were surplus jets at \u003ca href=\"https://www.moffettfieldmuseum.org/\">Moffett Field \u003c/a>in Mountain View.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so that becomes our very first plaything in a playground, but it’s the real thing,” Pollock said. “Our kids were going to learn the real straight skinny on stuff, not some representation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They took the engine out of the jet, put it on a truck and dragged it up the freeway to the park with a California Highway Patrol escort. But once in the park, kids were hard on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076061\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076061\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1387\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED-160x111.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED-1536x1065.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The third and final Larsen Park jet, a 1956 F-8 Crusader, just before being removed from the park by Pacific Coast Air Museum volunteers. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Pacific Coast Air Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“About every 10 years, these jets had to be replaced because the kids wore them down so much,” Pollock said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second jet in Larsen Park came from the Alameda Naval Base and was placed in the park in 1967. But the longest tenured jet — the “Shark in the Park” our question asker loved — arrived in dramatic fashion in 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> article from Jan. 15, 1975, details its route:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A marine helicopter carrying a surplus Navy fighter in its sling, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning — after it had cruised under the Bay Bridge. The old F-8 Crusader was taken from Alameda Naval Air Station to the parking lot of the San Francisco Zoo. … The engineless plane will be used, as was its predecessor, as a giant toy in which San Francisco children may take flights of imagination.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After landing at the Zoo, workers towed the jet two and a half miles northeast, going up Sloat Boulevard and down 19th Avenue to Larsen Park. And there it stayed for 18 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by the early 1990s, the F-8 Crusader had seen better days, and city leaders were learning more about the hazards to kids that it posed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070945\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070945\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The jet play structure that replaced the Vought F-8 Crusader at Carl Larsen Park in San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When this first started, people weren’t thinking so much about safety,” Pollock said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But as the years went by, safety became a much bigger issue. It was found that the paint on these jets was lead-based, and it was being discovered in later years that this was toxic to children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1993, city leaders had the Navy take the jet back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larsen Park was without a jet for 22 years. In 2015, Larsen Park playground got a makeover, and community leaders insisted that the new play structure look like a jet plane. It’s no longer the real deal, but kids still like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So, what happened to the Shark in the Park?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Jim Mattison used to commute from Santa Rosa to a job in Daly City. When he was idling in traffic on 19th Avenue, he’d look over at Larsen Park and see the plane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I look over there, and I say, ‘What’s the city gonna do to that piece of junk? That looks terrible,’” Mattison remembered. “And it’s just the irony that 30 years later, guess what I’m doing?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Retired from the workforce now, and an Air Force veteran, Mattison is a volunteer at the \u003ca href=\"https://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/\">Pacific Coast Air Museum (PCAM)\u003c/a>, where the Shark in the Park ended up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067090\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067090\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jim Mattison, the Pacific Coast Air Museum volunteer responsible for restoring the Vought F-8 Crusader, talks to Aaron Van Lieu about the restoration process at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The way he tells it, San Francisco leaders were bugging the Navy to take the plane away because it was hazardous. Then, the Navy basically begged the museum to take the F-8 Crusader off their hands, promising that if they did, more aircraft might come the museum’s way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like to say this was the catalyst,” Mattison said. “This started our association with the Navy. We developed a really close association because we started getting more and more assets. So that’s how we wound up becoming a museum, because we took this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the museum has an impressive set of aircraft to visit at its open-air site. Some planes flew during War War II, Korea and Vietnam. They have a plane that was one of the first responders to the 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001. Each volunteer has their favorites — often related to the branch of the military where they served.[aside postID=news_12074947 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/260221-SUNNYSIDECONSERVATORY00252_TV-KQED.jpg']“We are not a velvet rope air museum,” Mattison said. “We encourage people to touch them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the F-8 Crusader first arrived at the museum in 1993, a crew did a ton of work to reverse some of the things San Francisco Rec and Park had done to make the plane safer for kids. Park workers had filled the body of the plane with concrete to prevent kids from crawling through it — the PCAM crew had to jackhammer it out. And, the body of the plane had been buried in the sand — another safety measure to soften the landing when kids fell off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The entire section of the fuselage where the engine and all the internal components were was filled with sand,” said Guy Crow, a PCAM volunteer who worked on the plane when it first arrived. “About seven yards of sand we scraped, swept, shoveled, vacuumed. And it took us a couple of weeks to get it all out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That original team got the plane looking presentable and painted it with the telltale shark mouth for which it was known. They even had T-shirts made up with “Shark in the Park” on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after more than two decades on display in the field at the museum, the weather had taken its toll on the F-8. Museum staff removed it from the display in 2012 and started revamping it once again in 2014.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We treat [them like] they’re full-size model airplanes,” Mattison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mattison’s team removed still more sand, fixed the rudder and reskinned the wings and flaps, patched the fuselage and gave it a new paint job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067024\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067024\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Museum visitor Michael Wilkins reads about the F-5E Tiger II at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I chose to paint it in the Marine Corps colors,” Mattison said. “That was the last squadron it flew out of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The F-8 Crusader was built in 1956 as a “supersonic dayfighter. It was fast. I think it was [one of] the first Navy aircraft that achieved a thousand miles an hour. It’s very maneuverable, and the pilots loved flying it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our question asker, Aaron Van Lieu, accompanied me on the trip to the museum. He remembered the jet immediately, although he said it looked bigger than he remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just a rush and flush of emotions and memories,” he said. “I’m on top of the world, being able to see it again. ‘Cause I’ve always wondered what happened to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Pacific Coast Air Museum is open \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/visit-us/#hours_admin\">\u003cem>Thursday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> It’s\u003c/em> \u003cem>located at the Charles M Schulz — Sonoma County Airport, off Airport Boulevard on the corner of N. Laughlin Road. and Becker Boulevard.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Things were different for San Francisco kids back in the 1960s and ’70s. For one, there was a lot more freedom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>In those days, there were no cars parked on the street for the most part. And there were kids everywhere. You know, there were six or seven kids on my block. My name’s Dennis O’Neill. I grew up on 18th Avenue from about 1963 to 1980.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Dennis and the other neighborhood kids spent a lot of time at nearby Larsen Park. It’s right on busy 19th Avenue at Vicente Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>We were seven or eight. And our parents, you know, allowed us to cross 19th Avenue, the highway, on a green light and go to the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Back then, every city park had a park director. They would organize games, keep an eye on the kids and maintain play equipment. But Larsen Park also had something that made it extra special. A real Navy jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>It felt like an actual jet landed in Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And wow, was that jet beloved by the neighborhood kids!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>It was fantastic, I have to say. I still remember. I’m 64 years old. I remember specifically sitting in that cockpit and being a pilot, you know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: Our question asker this week, Aaron Van Lieu, also spent a lot of time at the plane in Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu:\u003c/strong> It’s some of my earliest memories. My brother, dad and I were going there in the late ’80s, like ’88-’89. So I was like 4, 5, 6.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Over a period of 35 years, there were actually three different Navy jets in that park. The last one was placed in 1975, and the nose of it was painted with shark’s teeth. It was there the longest and was known to many as “The Shark in the Park.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the plane Aaron remembers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Playing tag, but there’s a jet involved. And hide and seek and you know, just running around it. My dad, you know, trying to explain what certain things were because for a long time the canopy was there, and you could see inside of it, and it had all the gauges and stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>But Aaron also remembers how the jet slowly started falling apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Little by little, the wings and parts of the jet just started falling off and going and disappearing. So, and then eventually it was like kind of like this, like skeleton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And then, one day, it was gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aaron has spent decades wondering what happened to that jet that he loved so much. He even credits it, in small part, with his love of aviation and a short stint as a flight attendant. He wants to know:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>What happened to the jet, and why did it get taken out, aside from being covered in graffiti? So I just wanna know where it went from there, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And, I want to know who thought a jet in a playground was a good idea in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Bay Curious editor and producer, Katrina Schwartz, always the pragmatic one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>A real fighter jet has to be one of the most expensive pieces of playground equipment ever!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> So, I did a little math, and the plane cost about 2 million to build originally, which is nearly $24 million today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of pickleball\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Our modern obsessions on display at the park are a little more mundane … and a lot less expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Pickleball sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The near constant pop and thwack of the very popular pickleball courts has been the soundtrack to Larsen Park since they opened in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I visited with Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, to learn a little more about this park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>So Carl L Larsen is a Danish immigrant who was a cafe owner in downtown San Francisco. He owned the Tivoli Cafe and he was quite a large landowner in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Larsen gave the city a parcel of land to create a park before this west side neighborhood was even fully built. The park opened in 1926. Bisected by Vicente Street, one side had tennis courts and playground equipment and the other side had an open field and a swimming pool, now called Sava Pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>He, as a developer, certainly had the vision that San Francisco was going to grow and that things would grow to be what they are today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>At this point, playgrounds were a fairly new idea. They only came into fashion in the early 1900s as a tool to keep kids off the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>Kids were getting into trouble because they didn’t have enough to do in off hours of school. Yeah, they had their playgrounds within the schools, but those were closed when school was not open.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The first Navy jet came to Larsen Park in 1958. It was during the Cold War and people were obsessed with going to the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video 1: \u003c/strong>In October 1957, the world entered the Space Age. At that time, a multistage rocket took off from Russia – Sputnik 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video 2: \u003c/strong>More and more teenagers are giving up rock and roll for Rocket Rolls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>People want to go to the moon, and so it becomes a very popular kind of thing that people started designing playground equipment to look like jet planes and rockets and things like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Space exploration was a national obsession. But you know, San Francisco, it had to approach the trend a little differently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>There was surplus jet down at Moffat Field in Mountain View and that it could be had for a song. It just had to be brought to San Francisco. So that becomes our very first plaything in a playground, but it’s the real thing. Our kids were going to learn, you know, the real straight skinny on stuff, not some representation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It’s easy to forget that back then, San Francisco was a Navy town. The city was surrounded by Naval stations and there were jets like this one in playgrounds in Bayview, Sunnyvale and San Leandro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as any parent knows, kids are hard on stuff. Even military grade materials were no match for their grubby little hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>About every 10 years these jets had to be replaced because the kids wore them down so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The \u003cem>second\u003c/em> jet in Larsen Park came from the Alameda Naval Base and was placed in the park in 1967. But the longest tenured jet — the “shark in the park” our question asker loved — arrived in dramatic fashion eight years later, in 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Newspaper read: \u003c/strong>A marine helicopter carrying a surplus Navy fighter in its sling, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning — after it had cruised under the Bay Bridge. The old F-8 Crusader was taken from Alameda Naval Air Station to the parking lot of the San Francisco Zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They then towed the jet two and a half miles northeast … going up Sloat Boulevard and down 19th Avenue to Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Newspaper read: \u003c/strong>The engineless plane will be used, as was its predecessor, as a giant toy in which San Francisco children may take flights of imagination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And there it stayed, delighting generations of children … for 18 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock:\u003c/strong> When this first started, people weren’t thinking so much about safety, but as the years went by, safety became a much bigger issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The first two planes were propped up, with ladders to climb into the cockpits. Kids would crawl on the wings, fall off and break arms and legs. And, the metal was sharp — many a kid got a nasty gash playing on the jets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>Not only that but it was found that the paint on these jets was lead-based and it was being discovered in later years that this was toxic to children. It was decided in 1993 to remove the last of the three jets. And so we were without a jet for a very long time in this park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>After 22 jetless years, Larsen Park got an all new playground in 2015, one complete with a play structure that looks like a jet. It may not be the \u003cem>real\u003c/em> thing, but kids still like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the shark in the park was removed, it was a hunk of junk. The wings were gone, the nose ripped off and it was covered in graffiti.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>My last memory of it is being like a skeleton. So I would hope that it was maybe fixed a little bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It was in that forlorn state that Aaron, our question asker, last saw the plane. Until I met up with him at the Pacific Coast Air Museum to show him what had become of it. That’s coming up, after this short break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor Message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Aaron Van Lieu has always wondered what happened to the jet in San Francisco’s Larsen Park that made such an impression on him as a child. And it turns out, its new home isn’t too far away, at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>OK, we ready?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>I guess so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>All right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Aaron and I meet up at the museum and hop in a golf cart for a quick tour with Janet Doto, an Airforce veteran and volunteer here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>These are the two top gun aircraft, the F-14 Tomcat and then the F-18 Viper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>The Tomcat was one of my favorite jets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Dotto:\u003c/strong> Oh, it’s a beautiful jet. My favorite’s the F4, but yeah, I’m partial. 23 years in the Air Force, you can’t love a navy aircraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The museum is a small but mighty operation. Almost all outdoors, they have 37 restored aircraft. One plane fought in WWII, another was a first responder to the 911 attacks and of course, parked out on the tarmac they’ve got the Shark in the Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>And there she is, the F-8.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>This one right here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>That’s the one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Whoa!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Is it how you remember it looking?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Yeah, very much. Yeah, the canopy, it actually looks bigger than I remember.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>That’s probably because there’s more of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This F-8 jet is the very one that generations of San Francisco kids played on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>Aaron, okay, I’m Jim Mattison. I’m the crew chief. And I’m proud to say I’m responsible for how this came out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jim is also an Air Force veteran and volunteer. But his memories of the Shark in the Park go way back to when he used to be stuck in traffic on 19th Avenue, commuting to Daly City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>I look over there, and I say, What’s the city gonna do to that piece of junk? That looks terrible. And it’s just the irony that 30 years later, guess what I’m doing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jim and his team have lovingly restored this 1956 F-8. The paint scheme is mostly gray with accents of red and navy blue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>I chose to paint it in the Marine Corps colors. Why? Because that was the last squadron it flew out of. And this was such an amazing paint scheme, I saw that and thought, I know what I want to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Navy basically begged the museum to take the plane. San Francisco officials wanted the dangerous eyesore gone, especially because by the 90s, the Navy’s presence in the Bay Area had waned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>They got a big crane and a low boy truck. Dug it out of the sand, took it apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And like so many jets before it, put it on a truck and drove it up to Santa Rosa\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>And then just like a model airplane, put it all back together. My teammate, he was working on the belly. And every once in a while, he’s busy banging and drilling holes. He’d get a face full of Larson Park sand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The museum initially didn’t want to take this plane, but now, it’s one of the most popular attractions. Many visitors who remember playing on the F-8 as kids never knew much about what the jet did before it became playground equipment. That history is something Jim is passionate about sharing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>This was designed as a supersonic day fighter for the Navy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It would land on incredibly short runways … just 500 feet … on floating aircraft carriers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>And it was fast. Very maneuverable and the pilots loved flying it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>I’m curious, Aaron, what do you think now that you’ve seen it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>There’s been a rush and flush of emotions and and memories, you know. I’m on top of the world being able to see it again, really. ‘Cause I’ve always wondered what happened to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And if you remember playing on this jet and have always wondered what happened to it … the Pacific Coast Air Museum is waiting for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was Bay Curious editor and producer, Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can still play on some real Navy equipment if you go to Lincoln and 45th Avenue Playground in Golden Gate Park. There’s a blue boat there that was donated by the Navy … and it’s the real deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Are you loving having more Bay Curious episodes in your podcast feed? If so, you can get even more Bay Curious in your life via the Bay Curious newsletter! Head to our website to sign up. As always, at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BC is made in SF at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone at team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Cleared for takeoff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Dennis O’Neill was a kid growing up in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\"> San Francisco\u003c/a>, his world largely consisted of several blocks to either side of his home. In one direction was his school, Saint Cecilia’s, and in the other was Carl Larsen Park, which had all the usual fun and games plus something a little extra special — a real Navy jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was fantastic, I have to say,” O’Neill said. “I still remember. I’m 64 years old. I remember specifically sitting in that cockpit and being a pilot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he’s certainly not the only one. Every time a picture of the Larsen Park plane gets posted to history groups on Facebook, the comments blow up with hundreds of people fondly remembering playing on the jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was a meeting place, after school,” O’Neill remembered. “‘Meet at the airplane.’ That was common. And when you started getting girlfriends or hanging out with girls, that was a safe place to hang out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each kid who played in Larsen Park remembers \u003ca href=\"https://www.outsidelands.org/larsen_park_jets.php\">“their plane” clearly\u003c/a>, but over a period of 35 years, there were actually three different Navy jets in that park. The last one was placed in 1975 — and the nose of it was painted with shark’s teeth. It was there the longest and was known to many as “The Shark in the Park.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the plane our \u003ca href=\"http://www.baycurious.org\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> question asker, Aaron Van Lieu, played on when he was little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s some of my earliest memories,” said Van Lieu, who thinks he was 5 for 6. “My brother, dad and I we [went] there in the late 80s.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067017\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067017\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-02-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Van Lieu looks up at the Vought F-8 Crusader with Janet Doto at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Van Lieu remembers stopping at the park with his dad and brother as a treat after a Saturday morning spent going to open houses with his dad, who was a realtor. The jet was the kids’ reward for behaving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Playing tag, but there’s a jet involved, and hide and seek,” Van Lieu reminisced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But despite these fond memories, Aaron also remembers watching the jet slowly fall apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067018\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12067018 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-03-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Van Lieu looks at a display showing photos of the Vought F-8 Crusader from when it was located at Carl Larsen Park in San Francisco, and its removal from the park at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Little by little, the wings and parts of the jet just started falling off and disappearing,” Van Lieu said. “And then, eventually, it was kind of like this skeleton.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then one day it was gone. Aaron has spent the better part of 30 years wondering where it landed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He wants to know: “What happened to the jet and why did it get taken out — aside from being covered in graffiti? I just wanna know where it went from there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How did a Navy jet end up in Larsen Park in the first place?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Larsen Park opened in 1926 after Danish immigrant and Tivoli Cafe owner Carl Larsen donated the land. At the time, the concept of a playground was fairly new. \u003ca href=\"https://savingplaces.org/stories/how-we-came-to-play-the-history-of-playgrounds/\">They came into fashion at the turn of the century \u003c/a>when people started to realize that children weren’t just mini adults, but developing beings that learned through play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Kids were getting into trouble because they didn’t have enough to do in off-hours of school,” said Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early days, every park had a Recreation Director who kept play equipment in their office, organized games and kept an eye on the kids when they were at the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076067\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1254\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED-160x100.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-03-KQED-1536x963.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children play on the first Larsen Park jet circa 1964. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of San Francisco History Center/San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first jet came to Larsen Park in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That period is called the jet age because we have rockets being developed,” Pollock said. “People want to go to the moon, and people started designing playground equipment to look like jet planes and rockets and things like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pollock said even back then, San Francisco didn’t want to be like everywhere else. The general manager of Rec and Park at the time heard that there were surplus jets at \u003ca href=\"https://www.moffettfieldmuseum.org/\">Moffett Field \u003c/a>in Mountain View.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And so that becomes our very first plaything in a playground, but it’s the real thing,” Pollock said. “Our kids were going to learn the real straight skinny on stuff, not some representation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They took the engine out of the jet, put it on a truck and dragged it up the freeway to the park with a California Highway Patrol escort. But once in the park, kids were hard on it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12076061\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12076061\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1387\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED-160x111.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260311-Jet-Playground-Archival-01-KQED-1536x1065.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The third and final Larsen Park jet, a 1956 F-8 Crusader, just before being removed from the park by Pacific Coast Air Museum volunteers. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Pacific Coast Air Museum)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“About every 10 years, these jets had to be replaced because the kids wore them down so much,” Pollock said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second jet in Larsen Park came from the Alameda Naval Base and was placed in the park in 1967. But the longest tenured jet — the “Shark in the Park” our question asker loved — arrived in dramatic fashion in 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> article from Jan. 15, 1975, details its route:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A marine helicopter carrying a surplus Navy fighter in its sling, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning — after it had cruised under the Bay Bridge. The old F-8 Crusader was taken from Alameda Naval Air Station to the parking lot of the San Francisco Zoo. … The engineless plane will be used, as was its predecessor, as a giant toy in which San Francisco children may take flights of imagination.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After landing at the Zoo, workers towed the jet two and a half miles northeast, going up Sloat Boulevard and down 19th Avenue to Larsen Park. And there it stayed for 18 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But by the early 1990s, the F-8 Crusader had seen better days, and city leaders were learning more about the hazards to kids that it posed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070945\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070945\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260123-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-01-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The jet play structure that replaced the Vought F-8 Crusader at Carl Larsen Park in San Francisco on Jan. 23, 2026. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When this first started, people weren’t thinking so much about safety,” Pollock said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But as the years went by, safety became a much bigger issue. It was found that the paint on these jets was lead-based, and it was being discovered in later years that this was toxic to children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1993, city leaders had the Navy take the jet back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larsen Park was without a jet for 22 years. In 2015, Larsen Park playground got a makeover, and community leaders insisted that the new play structure look like a jet plane. It’s no longer the real deal, but kids still like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So, what happened to the Shark in the Park?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Jim Mattison used to commute from Santa Rosa to a job in Daly City. When he was idling in traffic on 19th Avenue, he’d look over at Larsen Park and see the plane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I look over there, and I say, ‘What’s the city gonna do to that piece of junk? That looks terrible,’” Mattison remembered. “And it’s just the irony that 30 years later, guess what I’m doing?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Retired from the workforce now, and an Air Force veteran, Mattison is a volunteer at the \u003ca href=\"https://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/\">Pacific Coast Air Museum (PCAM)\u003c/a>, where the Shark in the Park ended up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067090\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067090\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-04-KQED-1-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jim Mattison, the Pacific Coast Air Museum volunteer responsible for restoring the Vought F-8 Crusader, talks to Aaron Van Lieu about the restoration process at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The way he tells it, San Francisco leaders were bugging the Navy to take the plane away because it was hazardous. Then, the Navy basically begged the museum to take the F-8 Crusader off their hands, promising that if they did, more aircraft might come the museum’s way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like to say this was the catalyst,” Mattison said. “This started our association with the Navy. We developed a really close association because we started getting more and more assets. So that’s how we wound up becoming a museum, because we took this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the museum has an impressive set of aircraft to visit at its open-air site. Some planes flew during War War II, Korea and Vietnam. They have a plane that was one of the first responders to the 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001. Each volunteer has their favorites — often related to the branch of the military where they served.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“We are not a velvet rope air museum,” Mattison said. “We encourage people to touch them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the F-8 Crusader first arrived at the museum in 1993, a crew did a ton of work to reverse some of the things San Francisco Rec and Park had done to make the plane safer for kids. Park workers had filled the body of the plane with concrete to prevent kids from crawling through it — the PCAM crew had to jackhammer it out. And, the body of the plane had been buried in the sand — another safety measure to soften the landing when kids fell off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The entire section of the fuselage where the engine and all the internal components were was filled with sand,” said Guy Crow, a PCAM volunteer who worked on the plane when it first arrived. “About seven yards of sand we scraped, swept, shoveled, vacuumed. And it took us a couple of weeks to get it all out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That original team got the plane looking presentable and painted it with the telltale shark mouth for which it was known. They even had T-shirts made up with “Shark in the Park” on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But after more than two decades on display in the field at the museum, the weather had taken its toll on the F-8. Museum staff removed it from the display in 2012 and started revamping it once again in 2014.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We treat [them like] they’re full-size model airplanes,” Mattison said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mattison’s team removed still more sand, fixed the rudder and reskinned the wings and flaps, patched the fuselage and gave it a new paint job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067024\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067024\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JET-PLAYGROUND-MD-10-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Museum visitor Michael Wilkins reads about the F-5E Tiger II at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I chose to paint it in the Marine Corps colors,” Mattison said. “That was the last squadron it flew out of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The F-8 Crusader was built in 1956 as a “supersonic dayfighter. It was fast. I think it was [one of] the first Navy aircraft that achieved a thousand miles an hour. It’s very maneuverable, and the pilots loved flying it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our question asker, Aaron Van Lieu, accompanied me on the trip to the museum. He remembered the jet immediately, although he said it looked bigger than he remembered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just a rush and flush of emotions and memories,” he said. “I’m on top of the world, being able to see it again. ‘Cause I’ve always wondered what happened to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Pacific Coast Air Museum is open \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/visit-us/#hours_admin\">\u003cem>Thursday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> It’s\u003c/em> \u003cem>located at the Charles M Schulz — Sonoma County Airport, off Airport Boulevard on the corner of N. Laughlin Road. and Becker Boulevard.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Things were different for San Francisco kids back in the 1960s and ’70s. For one, there was a lot more freedom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>In those days, there were no cars parked on the street for the most part. And there were kids everywhere. You know, there were six or seven kids on my block. My name’s Dennis O’Neill. I grew up on 18th Avenue from about 1963 to 1980.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Dennis and the other neighborhood kids spent a lot of time at nearby Larsen Park. It’s right on busy 19th Avenue at Vicente Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>We were seven or eight. And our parents, you know, allowed us to cross 19th Avenue, the highway, on a green light and go to the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Back then, every city park had a park director. They would organize games, keep an eye on the kids and maintain play equipment. But Larsen Park also had something that made it extra special. A real Navy jet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>It felt like an actual jet landed in Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And wow, was that jet beloved by the neighborhood kids!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dennis O’Neill: \u003c/strong>It was fantastic, I have to say. I still remember. I’m 64 years old. I remember specifically sitting in that cockpit and being a pilot, you know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Olivia Allen-Price: Our question asker this week, Aaron Van Lieu, also spent a lot of time at the plane in Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu:\u003c/strong> It’s some of my earliest memories. My brother, dad and I were going there in the late ’80s, like ’88-’89. So I was like 4, 5, 6.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>Over a period of 35 years, there were actually three different Navy jets in that park. The last one was placed in 1975, and the nose of it was painted with shark’s teeth. It was there the longest and was known to many as “The Shark in the Park.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the plane Aaron remembers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Playing tag, but there’s a jet involved. And hide and seek and you know, just running around it. My dad, you know, trying to explain what certain things were because for a long time the canopy was there, and you could see inside of it, and it had all the gauges and stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>But Aaron also remembers how the jet slowly started falling apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Little by little, the wings and parts of the jet just started falling off and going and disappearing. So, and then eventually it was like kind of like this, like skeleton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>And then, one day, it was gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aaron has spent decades wondering what happened to that jet that he loved so much. He even credits it, in small part, with his love of aviation and a short stint as a flight attendant. He wants to know:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>What happened to the jet, and why did it get taken out, aside from being covered in graffiti? So I just wanna know where it went from there, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And, I want to know who thought a jet in a playground was a good idea in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Bay Curious editor and producer, Katrina Schwartz, always the pragmatic one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>A real fighter jet has to be one of the most expensive pieces of playground equipment ever!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> So, I did a little math, and the plane cost about 2 million to build originally, which is nearly $24 million today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of pickleball\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Our modern obsessions on display at the park are a little more mundane … and a lot less expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Pickleball sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The near constant pop and thwack of the very popular pickleball courts has been the soundtrack to Larsen Park since they opened in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I visited with Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, to learn a little more about this park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>So Carl L Larsen is a Danish immigrant who was a cafe owner in downtown San Francisco. He owned the Tivoli Cafe and he was quite a large landowner in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Larsen gave the city a parcel of land to create a park before this west side neighborhood was even fully built. The park opened in 1926. Bisected by Vicente Street, one side had tennis courts and playground equipment and the other side had an open field and a swimming pool, now called Sava Pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>He, as a developer, certainly had the vision that San Francisco was going to grow and that things would grow to be what they are today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>At this point, playgrounds were a fairly new idea. They only came into fashion in the early 1900s as a tool to keep kids off the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>Kids were getting into trouble because they didn’t have enough to do in off hours of school. Yeah, they had their playgrounds within the schools, but those were closed when school was not open.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The first Navy jet came to Larsen Park in 1958. It was during the Cold War and people were obsessed with going to the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video 1: \u003c/strong>In October 1957, the world entered the Space Age. At that time, a multistage rocket took off from Russia – Sputnik 1.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Archival video 2: \u003c/strong>More and more teenagers are giving up rock and roll for Rocket Rolls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>People want to go to the moon, and so it becomes a very popular kind of thing that people started designing playground equipment to look like jet planes and rockets and things like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Space exploration was a national obsession. But you know, San Francisco, it had to approach the trend a little differently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>There was surplus jet down at Moffat Field in Mountain View and that it could be had for a song. It just had to be brought to San Francisco. So that becomes our very first plaything in a playground, but it’s the real thing. Our kids were going to learn, you know, the real straight skinny on stuff, not some representation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It’s easy to forget that back then, San Francisco was a Navy town. The city was surrounded by Naval stations and there were jets like this one in playgrounds in Bayview, Sunnyvale and San Leandro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as any parent knows, kids are hard on stuff. Even military grade materials were no match for their grubby little hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>About every 10 years these jets had to be replaced because the kids wore them down so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The \u003cem>second\u003c/em> jet in Larsen Park came from the Alameda Naval Base and was placed in the park in 1967. But the longest tenured jet — the “shark in the park” our question asker loved — arrived in dramatic fashion eight years later, in 1975.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Newspaper read: \u003c/strong>A marine helicopter carrying a surplus Navy fighter in its sling, flew under the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday morning — after it had cruised under the Bay Bridge. The old F-8 Crusader was taken from Alameda Naval Air Station to the parking lot of the San Francisco Zoo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>They then towed the jet two and a half miles northeast … going up Sloat Boulevard and down 19th Avenue to Larsen Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Newspaper read: \u003c/strong>The engineless plane will be used, as was its predecessor, as a giant toy in which San Francisco children may take flights of imagination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And there it stayed, delighting generations of children … for 18 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock:\u003c/strong> When this first started, people weren’t thinking so much about safety, but as the years went by, safety became a much bigger issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The first two planes were propped up, with ladders to climb into the cockpits. Kids would crawl on the wings, fall off and break arms and legs. And, the metal was sharp — many a kid got a nasty gash playing on the jets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Christopher Pollock: \u003c/strong>Not only that but it was found that the paint on these jets was lead-based and it was being discovered in later years that this was toxic to children. It was decided in 1993 to remove the last of the three jets. And so we were without a jet for a very long time in this park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>After 22 jetless years, Larsen Park got an all new playground in 2015, one complete with a play structure that looks like a jet. It may not be the \u003cem>real\u003c/em> thing, but kids still like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the shark in the park was removed, it was a hunk of junk. The wings were gone, the nose ripped off and it was covered in graffiti.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>My last memory of it is being like a skeleton. So I would hope that it was maybe fixed a little bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It was in that forlorn state that Aaron, our question asker, last saw the plane. Until I met up with him at the Pacific Coast Air Museum to show him what had become of it. That’s coming up, after this short break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor Message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Aaron Van Lieu has always wondered what happened to the jet in San Francisco’s Larsen Park that made such an impression on him as a child. And it turns out, its new home isn’t too far away, at the Pacific Coast Air Museum in Santa Rosa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>OK, we ready?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>I guess so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>All right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Aaron and I meet up at the museum and hop in a golf cart for a quick tour with Janet Doto, an Airforce veteran and volunteer here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>These are the two top gun aircraft, the F-14 Tomcat and then the F-18 Viper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>The Tomcat was one of my favorite jets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Dotto:\u003c/strong> Oh, it’s a beautiful jet. My favorite’s the F4, but yeah, I’m partial. 23 years in the Air Force, you can’t love a navy aircraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The museum is a small but mighty operation. Almost all outdoors, they have 37 restored aircraft. One plane fought in WWII, another was a first responder to the 911 attacks and of course, parked out on the tarmac they’ve got the Shark in the Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>And there she is, the F-8.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>This one right here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>That’s the one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Whoa!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Is it how you remember it looking?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>Yeah, very much. Yeah, the canopy, it actually looks bigger than I remember.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Janet Doto: \u003c/strong>That’s probably because there’s more of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>This F-8 jet is the very one that generations of San Francisco kids played on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>Aaron, okay, I’m Jim Mattison. I’m the crew chief. And I’m proud to say I’m responsible for how this came out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jim is also an Air Force veteran and volunteer. But his memories of the Shark in the Park go way back to when he used to be stuck in traffic on 19th Avenue, commuting to Daly City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>I look over there, and I say, What’s the city gonna do to that piece of junk? That looks terrible. And it’s just the irony that 30 years later, guess what I’m doing?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Jim and his team have lovingly restored this 1956 F-8. The paint scheme is mostly gray with accents of red and navy blue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>I chose to paint it in the Marine Corps colors. Why? Because that was the last squadron it flew out of. And this was such an amazing paint scheme, I saw that and thought, I know what I want to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The Navy basically begged the museum to take the plane. San Francisco officials wanted the dangerous eyesore gone, especially because by the 90s, the Navy’s presence in the Bay Area had waned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>They got a big crane and a low boy truck. Dug it out of the sand, took it apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And like so many jets before it, put it on a truck and drove it up to Santa Rosa\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>And then just like a model airplane, put it all back together. My teammate, he was working on the belly. And every once in a while, he’s busy banging and drilling holes. He’d get a face full of Larson Park sand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>The museum initially didn’t want to take this plane, but now, it’s one of the most popular attractions. Many visitors who remember playing on the F-8 as kids never knew much about what the jet did before it became playground equipment. That history is something Jim is passionate about sharing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>This was designed as a supersonic day fighter for the Navy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>It would land on incredibly short runways … just 500 feet … on floating aircraft carriers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Mattison: \u003c/strong>And it was fast. Very maneuverable and the pilots loved flying it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>I’m curious, Aaron, what do you think now that you’ve seen it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Aaron Van Lieu: \u003c/strong>There’s been a rush and flush of emotions and and memories, you know. I’m on top of the world being able to see it again, really. ‘Cause I’ve always wondered what happened to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>And if you remember playing on this jet and have always wondered what happened to it … the Pacific Coast Air Museum is waiting for you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was Bay Curious editor and producer, Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can still play on some real Navy equipment if you go to Lincoln and 45th Avenue Playground in Golden Gate Park. There’s a blue boat there that was donated by the Navy … and it’s the real deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Are you loving having more Bay Curious episodes in your podcast feed? If so, you can get even more Bay Curious in your life via the Bay Curious newsletter! Head to our website to sign up. As always, at \u003ca href=\"http://baycurious.org\">BayCurious.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BC is made in SF at member-supported KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone at team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Cleared for takeoff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "california-officials-demand-ice-return-family-to-us-after-arrest-and-deportation",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california\">California\u003c/a> officials and immigration attorneys are calling on the U.S. government to return a Bay Area mother and her two young children, one of whom has severe disabilities, after they were detained in San Francisco and deported this week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, 28, and her two sons, who are 4 and 6 years old, were arrested on Tuesday as she attended a routine asylum check-in appointment in the city, state Superintendent Tony Thurmond said during a press conference on Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said at the time of their detention, the 6-year-old, who is deaf, did not have his hearing aids and remains without access to necessary medical devices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are calling for the immediate return of this young man and his family,” Thurmond said. “This is a student who needs access to medical devices, hearing aids, and he needs to be in a program where he can receive support and care — not in some detention center, not in some cell living in squalor and poor conditions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nikolas De Bremaeker, an attorney with Centro Legal De La Raza, said that in the days since their arrest, advocates have been trying to locate the family and have been misled about their whereabouts by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12075687\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12075687 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260306-CHILD-DEPORTATION-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260306-CHILD-DEPORTATION-02-KQED.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260306-CHILD-DEPORTATION-02-KQED-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260306-CHILD-DEPORTATION-02-KQED-1152x1536.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rodriguez Gutierrez’s two sons, who are 4 and 6 years old. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Centro Legal de la Raza)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We were told at every point that the family was at a different location, and even up to last night when I spoke with ICE, they told me a different location than where they actually were,” he told reporters. “This is no way for a democracy to work. This is a complete obstruction of access to council.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Friday, De Bremaeker said he was able to speak with Rodriguez Gutierrez and confirm that she and her sons were deported to Colombia. Gutierrez migrated to the U.S from Colombia four years ago. She had no criminal record, according to De Bremaeker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>De Bremaeker said that when they were arrested, another family member was located outside of the ICE office on 478 Tehama St. in San Francisco with the medical equipment that Rodriguez Gutierrez’s son needed, but was prevented from delivering it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s inhumane, it’s illegal, and it’s unconstitutional for this to happen,” he said Friday, adding that sign language in Colombia is different from the American Sign Language that the young student had been learning here. The child attends the California School for the Deaf in Fremont, and had been homesick on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s incredibly cruel to rip a child, as they are thriving and not only using the assistive devices that they need … out of this incredibly brave and strong progress that he has made,” De Bremaeker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Friday, Thurmond called on Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, President Donald Trump’s newly announced nominee for Homeland Security secretary, to demand the family’s return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Lesly did exactly what the government asked of her — she showed up to a scheduled immigration check-in in good faith and instead was taken away into custody along with her children,” said Jeannette Zanipatin, director of policy, advocacy and litigation at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “That is not enforcement. It is plain cruelty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/aaliahmad\">\u003cem>Ayah Ali-Ahmad\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are calling for the immediate return of this young man and his family,” Thurmond said. “This is a student who needs access to medical devices, hearing aids, and he needs to be in a program where he can receive support and care — not in some detention center, not in some cell living in squalor and poor conditions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nikolas De Bremaeker, an attorney with Centro Legal De La Raza, said that in the days since their arrest, advocates have been trying to locate the family and have been misled about their whereabouts by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12075687\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12075687 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260306-CHILD-DEPORTATION-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260306-CHILD-DEPORTATION-02-KQED.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260306-CHILD-DEPORTATION-02-KQED-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/260306-CHILD-DEPORTATION-02-KQED-1152x1536.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rodriguez Gutierrez’s two sons, who are 4 and 6 years old. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Centro Legal de la Raza)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We were told at every point that the family was at a different location, and even up to last night when I spoke with ICE, they told me a different location than where they actually were,” he told reporters. “This is no way for a democracy to work. This is a complete obstruction of access to council.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Friday, De Bremaeker said he was able to speak with Rodriguez Gutierrez and confirm that she and her sons were deported to Colombia. Gutierrez migrated to the U.S from Colombia four years ago. She had no criminal record, according to De Bremaeker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>De Bremaeker said that when they were arrested, another family member was located outside of the ICE office on 478 Tehama St. in San Francisco with the medical equipment that Rodriguez Gutierrez’s son needed, but was prevented from delivering it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s inhumane, it’s illegal, and it’s unconstitutional for this to happen,” he said Friday, adding that sign language in Colombia is different from the American Sign Language that the young student had been learning here. The child attends the California School for the Deaf in Fremont, and had been homesick on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s incredibly cruel to rip a child, as they are thriving and not only using the assistive devices that they need … out of this incredibly brave and strong progress that he has made,” De Bremaeker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Friday, Thurmond called on Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, President Donald Trump’s newly announced nominee for Homeland Security secretary, to demand the family’s return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Lesly did exactly what the government asked of her — she showed up to a scheduled immigration check-in in good faith and instead was taken away into custody along with her children,” said Jeannette Zanipatin, director of policy, advocacy and litigation at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “That is not enforcement. It is plain cruelty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/aaliahmad\">\u003cem>Ayah Ali-Ahmad\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "venezuelan-dance-group-in-the-bay-area-keeps-culture-alive-for-a-new-generation",
"title": "Venezuelan Dance Group in the Bay Area Keeps Culture Alive for a New Generation",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported for K Onda KQED, a monthly newsletter focused on the Bay Area’s Latinx community. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/newsletters/k-onda\">Click here to subscribe\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent Sunday afternoon in a Campbell dance studio, Michille Paulin and Carolina Meneses were busy trying to explain to a group of young kids their roles in a dance routine based on El Calypso de Callao, a festival from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12068663/a-really-confusing-moment-bay-area-venezuelans-struggle-to-make-sense-of-us-attack\">Venezuela\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dancers will wear a lot of gold for the performance, the women tell the children, because the routine celebrates El Callao, a city in Venezuela where people from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad moved to work in gold mines centuries ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Are they millionaires?” one child asks, astonished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh yes,” Meneses replies. “There’s a lot of gold in El Callao.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lesson was part choreography, part history and culture class. Paulin and Meneses are co-founders of Dulce Tricolor, a group they founded in 2019, focused on teaching traditional folk dances from Venezuela.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071043\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071043\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-22-JL-012526-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-22-JL-012526-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-22-JL-012526-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-22-JL-012526-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carolina Meneses (center) speaks with a student during morning lessons at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The group’s mission of celebrating Venezuelan culture feels even more relevant now, as the country’s political woes are making headlines with the U.S. government’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069211/after-maduros-capture-venezuela-faces-old-u-s-shadows-and-uncertain-future\">capture of the country’s leader\u003c/a>, Nicolás Maduro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been in the U.S. for 23 years, and I feel that I’m very well acculturated to the U.S., but I miss my roots, I miss my traditions, I miss my country,” said Paulin, 46.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was a way to keep it alive for me, for my kids, for our community and then most importantly to share with the Bay Area what Venezuela is. And to make sure that everybody knows that we are more than what they see these days on the news.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071041\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071041\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-12-JL-012526-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-12-JL-012526-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-12-JL-012526-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-12-JL-012526-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students participate in youth morning lessons at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The future of Venezuela is unclear, but its political and economic instability has plagued the South American nation for nearly two decades, forcing a quarter of the population to emigrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Americans have little understanding of the Venezuelan people or culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Venezuelan diaspora in the Bay Area is relatively small. An estimated 770,000 Venezuelan natives lived in the United States in 2024, with 3%, or about 23,000, in California, according to the Migration Policy Institute.[aside postID=news_12069211 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2254673550.jpg']I wanted to find out more about the Venezuelan community in the Bay Area, so I reached out to Paulin to learn about Dulce Tricolor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group, formed in 2019, obtained nonprofit status and now has about two dozen members who perform at events all over the Bay Area, including an annual Christmas showcase in December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group is divided into age groups — ages 4 to 7, 8 to 15, and 15 and up — that practice every Sunday at a dance studio tucked away in a strip mall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After moving to the Bay Area in 2017, Paulin struggled to expose her three kids to Venezuelan culture here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Although we speak Spanish at home and we eat arepas and all the stuff, having something more structured was better,” Paulin said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seven years ago, she was shopping in a grocery store when a woman overheard her speaking, recognized her accent and invited her to join a WhatsApp group for Venezuelan women in the Bay Area. That chance encounter led to the formation of Dulce Tricolor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071039\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071039\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-01-JL-012526-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-01-JL-012526-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-01-JL-012526-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-01-JL-012526-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students participate in morning lessons for youth ages 4 to 7 at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell, California, on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I have friends from everywhere, but being close to Venezuelans gives me a special fulfillment I get out of being with people that speak the same language and the same culture,” Paulin said. “It was very exciting to find this group.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Paulin and Meneses, preserving and sharing Venezuelan traditions has been a lifeline in their adopted homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It has been amazing because at first there were not too many Venezuela people,” said Meneses, who left Venezuela in 2010 and now lives in Campbell. “In these last few years, a lot of people that came from Venezuela and that is good for one part, but it’s not for another part because a lot of people are leaving our country for the situation. But, also, we have been building a very beautiful community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I asked the young dancers what they took from being part of Dulce Tricolor, they said things like “confidence,” “community,” and a “fun time with my friends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071042\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071042\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-15-JL-012526-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-15-JL-012526-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-15-JL-012526-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-15-JL-012526-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carolina Meneses, left, and Michelle Paulin, center, instruct youth during morning lessons at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Watching the kids practice reminded me of the years I spent learning and performing traditional Mexican folklorico dances when I was in elementary school. Looking back, those were some of the most formative experiences of my childhood because they reinforced pride, appreciation and understanding of my Mexican roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s empowering to not just be exposed to a cultural tradition, but to embody it and act as a representative.[aside postID=arts_13986280 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/012026_BadBunnyBayArea_GH_019_qed.jpg']The group’s next performance is slated for March 1 at Fuego Sports Bar in Sunnyvale that will feature music, live performances, food and a community forum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea, Paulin said, is to combine tradition and celebration with taking time for Venezuelans to process the current moment with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"background-color: transparent\">“We don’t know what the future will bring. We don’t really know if the future will be better or not, based on what happened recently,” Paulin said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The event is about “giving that space for people to express, let the feelings flow, because it’s conflicting right now. Some people are happy, some people are not happy, people are stressed, some are feeling many different things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day I visited the group’s rehearsal, a group of adults assembled in the back parking lot to practice for the March 1 event. They wanted to play the music live, even though they are amateur musicians, and were horrified when they realized my recorder was on while they played.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12072923\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12072923\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/DulceTricolor-14-JL-012526_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/DulceTricolor-14-JL-012526_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/DulceTricolor-14-JL-012526_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/DulceTricolor-14-JL-012526_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Samantha Leon, 4, reacts during morning youth lessons at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell, California, on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Among the songs they plan to play are “Mis Ilusiones,” about hope for a better future, and “Venezuela,” which Paulin described as an unofficial national anthem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paulin said hearing the music of her homeland gives her hope that, despite the uncertainty of the current moment, there might be a time soon when more Venezuelans can hear it in person at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I still have the hope that things are going to change,” she said. “The way we feel that we support Venezuelans at home, being here in the U.S., is by keeping Venezuela alive and making sure that people don’t only listen to the bad side of the news, but also to know what Venezuela was, and hopefully will be soon enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Dulce Tricolor, a Bay Area Venezuelan dance group founded in 2019, teaches children traditional folk dances while preserving culture, building community and offering a sense of home amid Venezuela’s ongoing political and economic crisis.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported for K Onda KQED, a monthly newsletter focused on the Bay Area’s Latinx community. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/newsletters/k-onda\">Click here to subscribe\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent Sunday afternoon in a Campbell dance studio, Michille Paulin and Carolina Meneses were busy trying to explain to a group of young kids their roles in a dance routine based on El Calypso de Callao, a festival from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12068663/a-really-confusing-moment-bay-area-venezuelans-struggle-to-make-sense-of-us-attack\">Venezuela\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dancers will wear a lot of gold for the performance, the women tell the children, because the routine celebrates El Callao, a city in Venezuela where people from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad moved to work in gold mines centuries ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Are they millionaires?” one child asks, astonished.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh yes,” Meneses replies. “There’s a lot of gold in El Callao.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lesson was part choreography, part history and culture class. Paulin and Meneses are co-founders of Dulce Tricolor, a group they founded in 2019, focused on teaching traditional folk dances from Venezuela.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071043\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071043\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-22-JL-012526-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-22-JL-012526-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-22-JL-012526-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-22-JL-012526-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carolina Meneses (center) speaks with a student during morning lessons at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The group’s mission of celebrating Venezuelan culture feels even more relevant now, as the country’s political woes are making headlines with the U.S. government’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069211/after-maduros-capture-venezuela-faces-old-u-s-shadows-and-uncertain-future\">capture of the country’s leader\u003c/a>, Nicolás Maduro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been in the U.S. for 23 years, and I feel that I’m very well acculturated to the U.S., but I miss my roots, I miss my traditions, I miss my country,” said Paulin, 46.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was a way to keep it alive for me, for my kids, for our community and then most importantly to share with the Bay Area what Venezuela is. And to make sure that everybody knows that we are more than what they see these days on the news.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071041\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071041\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-12-JL-012526-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-12-JL-012526-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-12-JL-012526-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-12-JL-012526-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students participate in youth morning lessons at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The future of Venezuela is unclear, but its political and economic instability has plagued the South American nation for nearly two decades, forcing a quarter of the population to emigrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Americans have little understanding of the Venezuelan people or culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Venezuelan diaspora in the Bay Area is relatively small. An estimated 770,000 Venezuelan natives lived in the United States in 2024, with 3%, or about 23,000, in California, according to the Migration Policy Institute.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I wanted to find out more about the Venezuelan community in the Bay Area, so I reached out to Paulin to learn about Dulce Tricolor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group, formed in 2019, obtained nonprofit status and now has about two dozen members who perform at events all over the Bay Area, including an annual Christmas showcase in December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group is divided into age groups — ages 4 to 7, 8 to 15, and 15 and up — that practice every Sunday at a dance studio tucked away in a strip mall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After moving to the Bay Area in 2017, Paulin struggled to expose her three kids to Venezuelan culture here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Although we speak Spanish at home and we eat arepas and all the stuff, having something more structured was better,” Paulin said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seven years ago, she was shopping in a grocery store when a woman overheard her speaking, recognized her accent and invited her to join a WhatsApp group for Venezuelan women in the Bay Area. That chance encounter led to the formation of Dulce Tricolor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071039\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071039\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-01-JL-012526-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-01-JL-012526-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-01-JL-012526-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-01-JL-012526-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students participate in morning lessons for youth ages 4 to 7 at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell, California, on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I have friends from everywhere, but being close to Venezuelans gives me a special fulfillment I get out of being with people that speak the same language and the same culture,” Paulin said. “It was very exciting to find this group.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Paulin and Meneses, preserving and sharing Venezuelan traditions has been a lifeline in their adopted homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It has been amazing because at first there were not too many Venezuela people,” said Meneses, who left Venezuela in 2010 and now lives in Campbell. “In these last few years, a lot of people that came from Venezuela and that is good for one part, but it’s not for another part because a lot of people are leaving our country for the situation. But, also, we have been building a very beautiful community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I asked the young dancers what they took from being part of Dulce Tricolor, they said things like “confidence,” “community,” and a “fun time with my friends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071042\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071042\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-15-JL-012526-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-15-JL-012526-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-15-JL-012526-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DULCETRICOLOR-15-JL-012526-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carolina Meneses, left, and Michelle Paulin, center, instruct youth during morning lessons at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Watching the kids practice reminded me of the years I spent learning and performing traditional Mexican folklorico dances when I was in elementary school. Looking back, those were some of the most formative experiences of my childhood because they reinforced pride, appreciation and understanding of my Mexican roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s empowering to not just be exposed to a cultural tradition, but to embody it and act as a representative.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The group’s next performance is slated for March 1 at Fuego Sports Bar in Sunnyvale that will feature music, live performances, food and a community forum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea, Paulin said, is to combine tradition and celebration with taking time for Venezuelans to process the current moment with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"background-color: transparent\">“We don’t know what the future will bring. We don’t really know if the future will be better or not, based on what happened recently,” Paulin said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The event is about “giving that space for people to express, let the feelings flow, because it’s conflicting right now. Some people are happy, some people are not happy, people are stressed, some are feeling many different things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day I visited the group’s rehearsal, a group of adults assembled in the back parking lot to practice for the March 1 event. They wanted to play the music live, even though they are amateur musicians, and were horrified when they realized my recorder was on while they played.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12072923\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12072923\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/DulceTricolor-14-JL-012526_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/DulceTricolor-14-JL-012526_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/DulceTricolor-14-JL-012526_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/DulceTricolor-14-JL-012526_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Samantha Leon, 4, reacts during morning youth lessons at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell, California, on Jan. 25, 2026. \u003ccite>(Josie Lepe for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Among the songs they plan to play are “Mis Ilusiones,” about hope for a better future, and “Venezuela,” which Paulin described as an unofficial national anthem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paulin said hearing the music of her homeland gives her hope that, despite the uncertainty of the current moment, there might be a time soon when more Venezuelans can hear it in person at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I still have the hope that things are going to change,” she said. “The way we feel that we support Venezuelans at home, being here in the U.S., is by keeping Venezuela alive and making sure that people don’t only listen to the bad side of the news, but also to know what Venezuela was, and hopefully will be soon enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "universal-child-care-in-california-is-feasible-uc-and-stanford-experts-say",
"title": "Universal Child Care in California Is ‘Feasible,’ UC and Stanford Experts Say",
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"headTitle": "Universal Child Care in California Is ‘Feasible,’ UC and Stanford Experts Say | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>The soaring cost of child care has recently led states like New Mexico to offer universal child care and cities like New York and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069711/san-francisco-expands-child-care-subsidies-to-tackle-affordability-issues\">San Francisco to expand\u003c/a> free and low-cost child care to income-eligible families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could it be done in California?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In two papers published Friday, researchers say, in short: Yes. The state could build upon \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/california-funding-trends-for-early-care-education-programs/\">its ongoing investments in child care\u003c/a> and work toward universal care for infants and toddlers, aged three and under.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cost could reach up to $21 billion per year to subsidize all families, but it would generate as much as $23 billion in economic output — essentially paying for itself — by allowing mothers of young children to rejoin the workforce, according to an analysis by the \u003ca href=\"https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/economics-market-early-childhood-care-and-education-california#15\">Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is not considering the many other benefits that accrue to the children themselves, to families and to society from having a robust, high-quality, well-functioning early childhood care and education market,” said Chloe Gibbs, a policy fellow at the institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.childcareaware.org/price-landscape24/\">Child care prices went up 29%\u003c/a> across the country from 2020 to 2024, according to Child Care Aware of America, a national network of child care resource and referral agencies. The prices outpaced overall inflation as increased demand for care collided with a worsening shortage of child care workers, \u003ca href=\"https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2025/october-2025-the-great-exit.html\">according to the business firm KPMG\u003c/a>, which noted that women with young children are increasingly working part-time, missing work or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12061802/how-are-child-care-costs-affecting-the-lives-of-bay-area-families-you-told-us\">leaving the labor force entirely\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071641\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1998px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071641\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1998\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed.jpg 1998w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1998px) 100vw, 1998px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A child care business owner holds one of the younger children attending her home daycare in Manteca on Oct. 8, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Affordability concerns are front and center for American households, and that also means there is a political and policy window of opportunity to take strides,” said Neale Mahoney, an economics professor and director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Economists call child care an example of a market failure because the cost of providing care exceeds what families can afford to pay, resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Child care for infants and toddlers is harder to come by and costs the most because babies require constant attention. Providers must maintain a low caregiver-to-child ratio, which limits capacity, but have a hard time retaining workers. Policy experts say subsidies can help close the gap between what parents can afford and what it actually costs to provide high-quality care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, Stanford economists estimate that California could subsidize infant and toddler care for low- and middle-income earners at a cost of between $4 billion to $8 billion per year, or between $12 billion to $21 billion to scale the subsidies to all families.[aside postID=news_12069711 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260115-SFCHILDCARESUBSIDIES00057_TV-KQED.jpg']A universal “zero to three” child care program could allow more than 100,000 mothers of young children to join the workforce, they said. Stanford coordinated the publication of its policy brief with another by researchers at the University of California that outlines ways to build up the child care system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpip.uci.edu/files/briefs/zero-to-three.pdf\">paper by two early childhood policy experts\u003c/a> at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley lays out more than a dozen suggestions to build a child care system that works for families and child providers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They include consolidating more than a dozen funding streams for child care and simplifying eligibility rules to make it easier for child care providers to enroll families; making Head Start centers eligible for state funding so they can serve more children; cutting fees and easing zoning restrictions to get child care facilities up and running faster; and setting up a comprehensive online portal where families can find the kind of child care they need and providers can respond to market demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>We don’t have anybody that’s looking out across California [for child care needs] the way we look at where we should build schools or where we should put bus stops or post offices,” said Jade Jenkins, a professor at UC Irvine’s School of Education. “If we provide families information in this online marketplace to make finding child care as easy as it would be to register for yoga … we could meet families where they are at and draw providers in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said modernizing child care information is one of several low-cost fixes the state can undertake to prepare for expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas called California’s cost of living “the single biggest threat to our future” and set up a select committee to focus on child care costs. He said now that California has fully expanded transitional kindergarten, also known as TK, to offer a free year of schooling for all 4-year-olds, it’s time for the legislature to focus on helping families afford child care for the youngest kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071645\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A day care worker hugs a child in a playroom at her child care facility in San José on Oct. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The committee held three hearings last year but has yet to propose any solution. At a hearing held in Los Angeles, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article312533574.html\">only one of 13 members of the committee showed up\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the most recent hearing in December, Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who co-chairs the committee, told KQED that more time is needed to investigate which model of child care expansion works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been working on this ever since I came [to the legislature] in 2016, and I can see that we’ve got more work to do, but we got to do it right, and we just can’t be slapstick,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the quick buildout of TK led to \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/education/early-childhood-education-pre-k/transitional-kindergarten-public-preschool-affluent-income-report\">unintended consequences\u003c/a>, including the closure of private or nonprofit-based preschools that lost their 4-year-old students to publicly-funded schools and struggled to pivot to serving younger kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8658266/dc85b370721c\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"900\" height=\"500\" style=\"overflow:hidden\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aguiar-Curry said New Mexico could offer universal child care because it has a smaller population and can draw on oil and gas profits to fund the initiative. That’s harder to do in a big state like California, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll see how they roll that out,” she said. “I hope that they’re successful and I hope we can all learn from their lessons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email message Thursday, Aguiar-Curry said she looks forward to digging into the new reports. In the meantime, she said she’ll keep working with the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom to follow through on promises to raise reimbursement rates for child care providers participating in the subsidy system and fund up to 200,000 subsidized child care slots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those steps will make a real difference for families across the state, and we’re going to keep pushing to bring costs down,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Economists estimate that a universal child care system for California families with kids under the age of 3 could cost up to $21 billion but would contribute as much as $23 billion in economic output.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The soaring cost of child care has recently led states like New Mexico to offer universal child care and cities like New York and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069711/san-francisco-expands-child-care-subsidies-to-tackle-affordability-issues\">San Francisco to expand\u003c/a> free and low-cost child care to income-eligible families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could it be done in California?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In two papers published Friday, researchers say, in short: Yes. The state could build upon \u003ca href=\"https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/california-funding-trends-for-early-care-education-programs/\">its ongoing investments in child care\u003c/a> and work toward universal care for infants and toddlers, aged three and under.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cost could reach up to $21 billion per year to subsidize all families, but it would generate as much as $23 billion in economic output — essentially paying for itself — by allowing mothers of young children to rejoin the workforce, according to an analysis by the \u003ca href=\"https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/economics-market-early-childhood-care-and-education-california#15\">Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is not considering the many other benefits that accrue to the children themselves, to families and to society from having a robust, high-quality, well-functioning early childhood care and education market,” said Chloe Gibbs, a policy fellow at the institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.childcareaware.org/price-landscape24/\">Child care prices went up 29%\u003c/a> across the country from 2020 to 2024, according to Child Care Aware of America, a national network of child care resource and referral agencies. The prices outpaced overall inflation as increased demand for care collided with a worsening shortage of child care workers, \u003ca href=\"https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2025/october-2025-the-great-exit.html\">according to the business firm KPMG\u003c/a>, which noted that women with young children are increasingly working part-time, missing work or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12061802/how-are-child-care-costs-affecting-the-lives-of-bay-area-families-you-told-us\">leaving the labor force entirely\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071641\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1998px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071641\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1998\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed.jpg 1998w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/251008-CHILDCARE-DISCRIMINATION-MD-05_qed-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1998px) 100vw, 1998px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A child care business owner holds one of the younger children attending her home daycare in Manteca on Oct. 8, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Affordability concerns are front and center for American households, and that also means there is a political and policy window of opportunity to take strides,” said Neale Mahoney, an economics professor and director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Economists call child care an example of a market failure because the cost of providing care exceeds what families can afford to pay, resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Child care for infants and toddlers is harder to come by and costs the most because babies require constant attention. Providers must maintain a low caregiver-to-child ratio, which limits capacity, but have a hard time retaining workers. Policy experts say subsidies can help close the gap between what parents can afford and what it actually costs to provide high-quality care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, Stanford economists estimate that California could subsidize infant and toddler care for low- and middle-income earners at a cost of between $4 billion to $8 billion per year, or between $12 billion to $21 billion to scale the subsidies to all families.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A universal “zero to three” child care program could allow more than 100,000 mothers of young children to join the workforce, they said. Stanford coordinated the publication of its policy brief with another by researchers at the University of California that outlines ways to build up the child care system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cpip.uci.edu/files/briefs/zero-to-three.pdf\">paper by two early childhood policy experts\u003c/a> at UC Irvine and UC Berkeley lays out more than a dozen suggestions to build a child care system that works for families and child providers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They include consolidating more than a dozen funding streams for child care and simplifying eligibility rules to make it easier for child care providers to enroll families; making Head Start centers eligible for state funding so they can serve more children; cutting fees and easing zoning restrictions to get child care facilities up and running faster; and setting up a comprehensive online portal where families can find the kind of child care they need and providers can respond to market demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“\u003c/strong>We don’t have anybody that’s looking out across California [for child care needs] the way we look at where we should build schools or where we should put bus stops or post offices,” said Jade Jenkins, a professor at UC Irvine’s School of Education. “If we provide families information in this online marketplace to make finding child care as easy as it would be to register for yoga … we could meet families where they are at and draw providers in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said modernizing child care information is one of several low-cost fixes the state can undertake to prepare for expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas called California’s cost of living “the single biggest threat to our future” and set up a select committee to focus on child care costs. He said now that California has fully expanded transitional kindergarten, also known as TK, to offer a free year of schooling for all 4-year-olds, it’s time for the legislature to focus on helping families afford child care for the youngest kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071645\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12071645\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/231002-ChildCareLaborMovement-011-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A day care worker hugs a child in a playroom at her child care facility in San José on Oct. 2, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The committee held three hearings last year but has yet to propose any solution. At a hearing held in Los Angeles, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article312533574.html\">only one of 13 members of the committee showed up\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the most recent hearing in December, Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who co-chairs the committee, told KQED that more time is needed to investigate which model of child care expansion works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been working on this ever since I came [to the legislature] in 2016, and I can see that we’ve got more work to do, but we got to do it right, and we just can’t be slapstick,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the quick buildout of TK led to \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/education/early-childhood-education-pre-k/transitional-kindergarten-public-preschool-affluent-income-report\">unintended consequences\u003c/a>, including the closure of private or nonprofit-based preschools that lost their 4-year-old students to publicly-funded schools and struggled to pivot to serving younger kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8658266/dc85b370721c\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"900\" height=\"500\" style=\"overflow:hidden\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aguiar-Curry said New Mexico could offer universal child care because it has a smaller population and can draw on oil and gas profits to fund the initiative. That’s harder to do in a big state like California, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ll see how they roll that out,” she said. “I hope that they’re successful and I hope we can all learn from their lessons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email message Thursday, Aguiar-Curry said she looks forward to digging into the new reports. In the meantime, she said she’ll keep working with the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom to follow through on promises to raise reimbursement rates for child care providers participating in the subsidy system and fund up to 200,000 subsidized child care slots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those steps will make a real difference for families across the state, and we’re going to keep pushing to bring costs down,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "steer-clear-of-ai-companion-toys-for-kids-another-advocacy-group-warns",
"title": "Steer Clear of AI Companion Toys for Kids, Another Advocacy Group Warns",
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"headTitle": "Steer Clear of AI Companion Toys for Kids, Another Advocacy Group Warns | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Three voice-activated, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/artificial-intelligence\">AI-powered\u003c/a> toys tested by Common Sense Media researchers raised concerns that they were designed to engineer emotional attachment with young children and collect private data, according to the nonprofit’s report released Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The warning is the latest in a string from consumer advocates about the risks posed to children by artificial intelligence, including in the form of toys like stuffed animals or brightly colored plastic robots that act as chatbots, conversing and telling stories to children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unlike traditional toys, these devices present a range of new harms,” Common Sense Media researchers wrote in their \u003ca href=\"https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ai-ratings/ai-toys\">report\u003c/a>, which tested the Grem, Bondu and Miko 3 toys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The children’s advocacy group recommended that parents not give AI companion toys to children 5 and younger, and it warned parents to exercise “extreme caution” even with children 6 to 13 years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the group’s December survey of 1,004 parents of children ranging from infants to age 8, nearly half of parents have purchased or are considering purchasing these toys or similar ones for their children. The products are sold by major retailers like Walmart, Costco, Amazon and Target. One in 6 parents told Common Sense they have already purchased one, and 10% said they “definitely plan to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070893\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070893\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-2000x1333.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hyodol, the world’s first AI-based companion robot dolls, are being exhibited in the South Korean pavilion at the Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona, Spain, on April 2, 2024. Created by a South Korean company, these dolls are designed to serve as social companions for the elderly and have been commercialized in several countries.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Common Sense Media is not usually in the business of saying, don’t use technology entirely,” said Robbie Torney, head of AI & digital assessments for Common Sense Media. “We really want to trust parents and empower them to make the best choices for their kids. But for under-5 children in particular, our testing showed a set of risks that are really a big developmental mismatch for where these young children are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Common Sense Media researchers tested the toys by creating child accounts for “users” ages 6 to 13, putting them through both everyday use and sensitive scenarios. Their team, including child development experts, evaluated everything from voice recognition and content accuracy to privacy practices, parental controls and whether the toys’ responses were developmentally appropriate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the toys are marketed as educational, more than a quarter of their responses in testing weren’t child-appropriate, the Common Sense report found. They included problematic content related to drugs, sex and risky activities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our testing did show that these companies have put tremendous effort into guardrailing their chatbots,” Torney said. But “chatbots don’t understand context. They can’t make determinations about what a child actually means. If you ask about self-harm and then ask for dangerous chemicals, many of these devices will refuse the self-harm question, but won’t make the connection that dangerous chemicals might enable self-harm.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ritvik Sharma, chief growth officer at Miko, based in Mumbai, India, wrote that “child safety, privacy, and healthy development are foundational design requirements — not afterthoughts.” He also said the company was unable to reproduce the behaviors cited by Common Sense Media researchers “under normal operation,” sharing videos that showed Miko redirecting away from potentially problematic questions.[aside postID=news_12069286 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/OpenAI.jpg']“Miko’s conversational experience is powered by a proprietary, child-focused AI system developed specifically for young users, rather than adapted from general-purpose AI models,” Sharma added. “This allows us to evaluate responses for age suitability, emotional tone, and educational value before they reach a child.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Redwood-City-based Curio Interactive, which makes Grem, said the company’s toys “are designed with parent permission and control at the center.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Over a two-year beta period, we worked with approximately 2,000 families to develop a multi-tiered safety system that combines constrained conversational scope, age-appropriate design, layered filtering and refusal mechanisms, and continuous real-world monitoring, with safeguards enforced at multiple points in the interaction,” the spokesperson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Torney said parents need to ask themselves how much they trust the internet-connected companions not to cross developmentally appropriate lines into psychologically damaging territory when there’s no meaningful product safety regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the characteristics of under-5 children is that they have magical thinking, and what’s sometimes referred to as animism, the belief that objects may be real. They think about them differently than older children do,” Torney said. He acknowledged magical thinking can continue into later childhood as well, “which is why we’re still encouraging that extreme caution.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Common Sense Media report comes after an \u003ca href=\"https://fairplayforkids.org/pf/aitoyadvisory\">advisory published in November\u003c/a> by the children’s advocacy group Fairplay strongly urged parents not to buy AI toys during the holiday season. The advisory was signed by more than 150 organizations, child psychiatrists and educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some of the new AI toys react contingently to young children,” wrote UC Berkeley professor Fei Xu, who directs the Berkeley Early Learning Lab. “That is, when a child says something, the AI toy says something back; if a child waves at the AI toy, it moves. This kind of social contingency is known to be very important for early social, emotional and language development. This raises the potential issue of young children being emotionally attached to these AI toys. More research is urgently needed to study this systematically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to be exceptionally cautious when introducing understudied technologies with young children, whose biological and emotional minds are very vulnerable,” UCSF psychiatry and pediatrics professor Dr. Nicole Bush wrote. “While AI has the capacity for tremendous benefit to society, young children’s time is better spent with trusted adults and peers, or in constructive play or learning activities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070888\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1484px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/ai-toys-ss-5.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070888\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/ai-toys-ss-5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1484\" height=\"492\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/ai-toys-ss-5.png 1484w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/ai-toys-ss-5-160x53.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1484px) 100vw, 1484px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A chat between a Common Sense Media tester and Miko 3, an AI toy. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Common Sense Media)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, Common Sense Media and OpenAI announced they’re backing a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069286/openai-and-common-sense-media-partner-on-new-kids-ai-safety-ballot-measure\">consolidated effort\u003c/a> to put a measure on this November’s ballot in California that would institute AI chatbot guardrails for children. That effort is now in the signature-gathering stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A legislative measure that Common Sense backed, covering much of the same territory, was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12059714/newsom-vetoes-most-watched-childrens-ai-bill-signs-16-others-targeting-tech\">vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom\u003c/a> at the end of last session. In his veto message, Newsom expressed concern that the bill could lead to a total ban on minors using conversational AI tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“AI is already shaping the world, and it is imperative that adolescents learn how to safely interact with AI systems,” he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, state Sen. Steve Padilla, D-San Diego, introduced \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB867\">Senate Bill 867\u003c/a>, which would establish a first-in-the-nation four-year moratorium on the sale and manufacture of toys with AI chatbots embedded in them, “until manufacturers have worked out the dangers embedded in them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to put the brakes on AI toys until they are proven safe for kids,” Padilla wrote in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Three voice-activated, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/artificial-intelligence\">AI-powered\u003c/a> toys tested by Common Sense Media researchers raised concerns that they were designed to engineer emotional attachment with young children and collect private data, according to the nonprofit’s report released Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The warning is the latest in a string from consumer advocates about the risks posed to children by artificial intelligence, including in the form of toys like stuffed animals or brightly colored plastic robots that act as chatbots, conversing and telling stories to children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unlike traditional toys, these devices present a range of new harms,” Common Sense Media researchers wrote in their \u003ca href=\"https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ai-ratings/ai-toys\">report\u003c/a>, which tested the Grem, Bondu and Miko 3 toys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The children’s advocacy group recommended that parents not give AI companion toys to children 5 and younger, and it warned parents to exercise “extreme caution” even with children 6 to 13 years old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the group’s December survey of 1,004 parents of children ranging from infants to age 8, nearly half of parents have purchased or are considering purchasing these toys or similar ones for their children. The products are sold by major retailers like Walmart, Costco, Amazon and Target. One in 6 parents told Common Sense they have already purchased one, and 10% said they “definitely plan to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070893\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070893\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-2000x1333.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/GettyImages-2126123060-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hyodol, the world’s first AI-based companion robot dolls, are being exhibited in the South Korean pavilion at the Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona, Spain, on April 2, 2024. Created by a South Korean company, these dolls are designed to serve as social companions for the elderly and have been commercialized in several countries.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Common Sense Media is not usually in the business of saying, don’t use technology entirely,” said Robbie Torney, head of AI & digital assessments for Common Sense Media. “We really want to trust parents and empower them to make the best choices for their kids. But for under-5 children in particular, our testing showed a set of risks that are really a big developmental mismatch for where these young children are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Common Sense Media researchers tested the toys by creating child accounts for “users” ages 6 to 13, putting them through both everyday use and sensitive scenarios. Their team, including child development experts, evaluated everything from voice recognition and content accuracy to privacy practices, parental controls and whether the toys’ responses were developmentally appropriate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the toys are marketed as educational, more than a quarter of their responses in testing weren’t child-appropriate, the Common Sense report found. They included problematic content related to drugs, sex and risky activities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our testing did show that these companies have put tremendous effort into guardrailing their chatbots,” Torney said. But “chatbots don’t understand context. They can’t make determinations about what a child actually means. If you ask about self-harm and then ask for dangerous chemicals, many of these devices will refuse the self-harm question, but won’t make the connection that dangerous chemicals might enable self-harm.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ritvik Sharma, chief growth officer at Miko, based in Mumbai, India, wrote that “child safety, privacy, and healthy development are foundational design requirements — not afterthoughts.” He also said the company was unable to reproduce the behaviors cited by Common Sense Media researchers “under normal operation,” sharing videos that showed Miko redirecting away from potentially problematic questions.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Miko’s conversational experience is powered by a proprietary, child-focused AI system developed specifically for young users, rather than adapted from general-purpose AI models,” Sharma added. “This allows us to evaluate responses for age suitability, emotional tone, and educational value before they reach a child.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Redwood-City-based Curio Interactive, which makes Grem, said the company’s toys “are designed with parent permission and control at the center.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Over a two-year beta period, we worked with approximately 2,000 families to develop a multi-tiered safety system that combines constrained conversational scope, age-appropriate design, layered filtering and refusal mechanisms, and continuous real-world monitoring, with safeguards enforced at multiple points in the interaction,” the spokesperson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Torney said parents need to ask themselves how much they trust the internet-connected companions not to cross developmentally appropriate lines into psychologically damaging territory when there’s no meaningful product safety regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the characteristics of under-5 children is that they have magical thinking, and what’s sometimes referred to as animism, the belief that objects may be real. They think about them differently than older children do,” Torney said. He acknowledged magical thinking can continue into later childhood as well, “which is why we’re still encouraging that extreme caution.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Common Sense Media report comes after an \u003ca href=\"https://fairplayforkids.org/pf/aitoyadvisory\">advisory published in November\u003c/a> by the children’s advocacy group Fairplay strongly urged parents not to buy AI toys during the holiday season. The advisory was signed by more than 150 organizations, child psychiatrists and educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some of the new AI toys react contingently to young children,” wrote UC Berkeley professor Fei Xu, who directs the Berkeley Early Learning Lab. “That is, when a child says something, the AI toy says something back; if a child waves at the AI toy, it moves. This kind of social contingency is known to be very important for early social, emotional and language development. This raises the potential issue of young children being emotionally attached to these AI toys. More research is urgently needed to study this systematically.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to be exceptionally cautious when introducing understudied technologies with young children, whose biological and emotional minds are very vulnerable,” UCSF psychiatry and pediatrics professor Dr. Nicole Bush wrote. “While AI has the capacity for tremendous benefit to society, young children’s time is better spent with trusted adults and peers, or in constructive play or learning activities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070888\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1484px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/ai-toys-ss-5.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070888\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/ai-toys-ss-5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1484\" height=\"492\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/ai-toys-ss-5.png 1484w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/ai-toys-ss-5-160x53.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1484px) 100vw, 1484px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A chat between a Common Sense Media tester and Miko 3, an AI toy. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Common Sense Media)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, Common Sense Media and OpenAI announced they’re backing a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12069286/openai-and-common-sense-media-partner-on-new-kids-ai-safety-ballot-measure\">consolidated effort\u003c/a> to put a measure on this November’s ballot in California that would institute AI chatbot guardrails for children. That effort is now in the signature-gathering stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A legislative measure that Common Sense backed, covering much of the same territory, was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12059714/newsom-vetoes-most-watched-childrens-ai-bill-signs-16-others-targeting-tech\">vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom\u003c/a> at the end of last session. In his veto message, Newsom expressed concern that the bill could lead to a total ban on minors using conversational AI tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“AI is already shaping the world, and it is imperative that adolescents learn how to safely interact with AI systems,” he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, state Sen. Steve Padilla, D-San Diego, introduced \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB867\">Senate Bill 867\u003c/a>, which would establish a first-in-the-nation four-year moratorium on the sale and manufacture of toys with AI chatbots embedded in them, “until manufacturers have worked out the dangers embedded in them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to put the brakes on AI toys until they are proven safe for kids,” Padilla wrote in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "a-generation-orphaned-by-war-ukrainian-children-grow-up-amid-loss-and-recovery",
"title": "A Generation Orphaned by War: Ukrainian Children Grow Up Amid Loss and Recovery",
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"headTitle": "A Generation Orphaned by War: Ukrainian Children Grow Up Amid Loss and Recovery | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://Tune%20in%20to%20Forum%20to%20understand%20how%20the%20war%20in%20Ukraine%20is%20shaping%20lives%20%E2%80%94%20and%20the%20future.\">\u003cem>Listen to the Jan. 22 edition of Forum to understand how the war in Ukraine is shaping lives — and the future\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kyiv, Ukraine — They say time helps to heal, but months have passed, and Alina Skytsko still struggles to talk about Nov. 2, 2024 — the day her mother was killed in the Russian shelling of Kherson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were nine explosions that night. Alina, her two cousins and her mother were hiding in a bathroom in Alina’s grandmother’s house when, in a flash, everything was covered in dirt and dust. Wounded in both legs, the 16-year-old shielded her mother, not realizing she had already died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly four years after Russia’s invasion, which reached its anniversary in February, thousands of children in Ukraine have been orphaned, many wounded, displaced or thrust into adult roles as caregivers and witnesses. As the fighting drags on, their lives unfold across hospitals, courtrooms and temporary homes, revealing the long-term human cost of the conflict far from the front lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This reporting draws on interviews with orphaned Ukrainian children in Kyiv, Odesa and Uzhhorod, many of whom witnessed their mothers being killed by Russian forces. From Kherson to Kramatorsk to Mariupol, their lives trace the war’s long aftershocks — a generation forced to recover, testify and raise siblings long before adulthood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russian forces have also been accused of forcibly removing Ukrainian children from occupied territories and transferring them to Russia or Russia-controlled areas. Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine’s Humanitarian Research Lab say more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been deported, with just over 1,200 returned, and warn the true number may be higher. The lab has documented thousands of children placed in institutions, foster care or adoptive families, often cut off from Ukrainian language and identity, as relatives search for them across borders and through courts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070607\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12070607 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine2-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An orphan boy hugs a soft toy as he waits on a train after fleeing the town of Polohy, which has come under Russian control, before evacuating on a train from Zaporizhzhia to western Ukraine, on March 26, 2022, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. \u003ccite>(Chris McGrath/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Alina is one of about 2,000 Ukrainian children orphaned by the war, according to SOS Children’s Villages, a Vienna-based nongovernmental nonprofit that supports children without parental care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alina’s recovery and rehabilitation remain long and difficult. Books and online school classes no longer interest her. Both of her legs are skin and bones from the injuries. Another surgery is scheduled soon at Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, Okhmatdyt. On New Year’s Eve, she wished the war would end, that she would walk again and maybe return to her war-torn hometown on the Black Sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We met Alina on her hospital ward in September. The night before the interview, she said she woke to the howling air-raid sirens. Her father helped her into a wheelchair, and they took the elevator to the basement. Hospital staff treat air alerts seriously, after the Russian missile strike in July 2024 destroyed several Okhmatdyt buildings, killing two people and injuring 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alina said her wounds were painful. A nerve was damaged in her right leg, and shrapnel tore a piece of muscle from it. Her shoulder was still sore and might also require surgery. A metal plate had been removed from her right arm. She had dyed her hair purple.[aside postID=news_12066997 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/UkraineGetty1.jpg']“That is life now. It’s hard to think of the future,” Alina said, shaking her head. She is relearning to walk on her thin, wounded legs, one step at a time. She wrote “loser” on her cast, then corrected “s” to “v.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Questions about the future annoy her. There was only one thing that clearly made her happy, she said: music. “I am a music lover. Music helps. I prefer rap — the heavier the better,” she told us with a modest smile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November, hospital volunteer Natalia Zabolotna helped arrange Alina’s monthlong rehabilitation at the Koziavkin center in Truskavets, where Alina took her first steps. Wearing a hat with two furry ears, she likes to sit outside in her wheelchair, scrolling through social media or enjoying the rare sunshine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Alina hopes she will be able to walk better after the next surgery,” Zabolotna said in an interview. “We offered Alina psychological aid, but she firmly rejected it. For now, Alina sees the world mostly out of the hospital window.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sixteen-year-old Kateryna Iorhu knows what Alina is going through. She was wounded in a Russian bombing and witnessed her mother’s death on April 8, 2022, when a ballistic missile with a cluster munition warhead exploded over a train station in Kramatorsk, according to a Human Rights Watch report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kateryna, who goes by Katia, and her sister, Yulia, keep a picture of their smiling mother holding a plastic cup of tea, taken minutes before the blast as they waited for an evacuation train. The explosion killed and wounded dozens. Katia tried to crawl to her mother across ground covered with victims’ bodies, but could not — she was badly wounded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For weeks, Katia would not talk to anybody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070589\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070589\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/KatiaUkraineGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1444\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/KatiaUkraineGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/KatiaUkraineGetty-160x116.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/KatiaUkraineGetty-1536x1109.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hospital patient Kateryna Iorhu from Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, during the celebration of the 130th anniversary of the National Children’s Specialized Hospital “Okhmatdyt,” Kyiv. \u003ccite>(Volodymyr Tarasov/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I totally understand Alina not wanting to talk to a psychologist about her loss, her wounds,” she said. “But she should know that at some point it helps to make friends with the right psychologist, who she’d be able to watch animations with or discuss books, or play and chat about everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specialists said the details of such tragedies may fade over time. “We try not to bother the orphans until they are willing to speak with us,” said Valentyna Lutsenko, a senior doctor at Okhmatdyt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lutsenko met Katia and Yulia in 2022, months after their mother was killed. Katia did not speak then. She moved through the hospital in a wheelchair or sat in her ward making bracelets of beads for doctors and nurses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We later met with the sisters in Kyiv’s Botanical Garden with their aunt and grandmother. With help from volunteers and private donors, Katia and Yulia, 11, live in a rented three-room apartment. Katia attends a design college in Kyiv, where she studies composition and painting and she ranks at the top of her class. Painting calms her, she said.[aside postID=news_12047685 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/UkraineMahjong1.jpg']But fear returns at night. “We don’t have a bomb shelter near our house, so we were just sitting on the floor in the corridor all night,” Katia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since losing their mother, Yulia has spent hours online playing Roblox. To get Yulia away from screens, the family enrolled her in aikido classes. “Right now, it’s too slippery to go out — the roads are covered in ice — and we also have bad nights of shelling,” Katia said in an interview earlier this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Programs and safe spaces outside the home, such as those offered by the Chabad Orphanage in Odesa, provide support for children coping with trauma. When we visited the Mishpacha Children’s Home, a Chabad-run institution that provides care for Jewish orphans in late September, Chaya Wolff, Mishpacha’s director, was playing with children on the playground, then mediated a dispute among teenagers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children from across Ukraine come to the orphanage to learn Hebrew, observe Shabbat customs and live as siblings. Two children, ages 2 and 4, chased each other on the playground. According to Wolff, their father had nearly killed their mother after returning from the front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their sister Sarah left this month to attend school in Israel. “Hopefully, the war in Israel is over soon,” Sarah, 16, said. “My parents abandoned me when I was 5. I feel for the children who lost their parents in this war in Ukraine. One day, I hope to become a teacher here and help Ukrainian children learn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some Ukrainian children, the war has meant not only the loss of parents, but also being uprooted and taken far from home by Russian forces. Ilya Matviyenko was 10 when his mother, Natalia, was mortally wounded during shelling in Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine on March 20, 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070612\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070612\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine4.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine4-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Civilians gather at the train station to be evacuated from combat zones in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, in eastern Ukraine on April 6, 2022. Civilians search to board the first available train headed west. \u003ccite>(Andrea Carrubba/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We were walking across our courtyard when a missile blew up nearby. We were both badly wounded,” Ilya told us during a September interview in Uzhhorod in Western Ukraine, the city he now calls home. “I believe that many more people should know what happened to us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His mother pulled him into a neighbor’s house. There was no hospital or doctor nearby. Ilya held his mother, listening to her hoarse breathing. She died in his arms and was buried in the yard the next morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ilya suffered wounds to his hip and legs. Russian forces took him across the front line to Russia-occupied Donetsk, where he spent nearly a month alone in a hospital. His grandmother, Olena, traveled through four countries to bring Ilya to Kyiv, carrying him out because he was too weak to walk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weeks later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Ilya at Okhmatdyt and gave him an iPad. His case drew attention as one of the first Ukrainian children to be returned from occupied territory after Russia’s full-scale invasion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070609\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070609\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine3-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A view of the scene after over 30 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a Russian attack on a railway station in eastern Ukraine on April 8, 2022. Two rockets hit a station in Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region, where scores of people were waiting to be evacuated to safer areas, according to Ukrainian Railways. \u003ccite>(Andrea Carrubba/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ilya now calls his new role “diplomatic.” He and his grandmother have traveled across Europe and to the United States. The war, his loss and his wounds have made him seem older than his years. Now 13, Ilya has new friends in Uzhhorod. They play in the courtyard, and Ilya likes football.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My friend Eldar already has a mustache — me too. I’m 5 feet tall, already taller than my grandmother,” he said proudly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ilya was among the orphans who testified at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, telling the world about atrocities in Ukraine. He told us he hoped to meet with President Donald Trump later this year. He sees his role as an “ambassador for Ukrainian children” wounded or orphaned in the war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a major mission, but I’m not getting carried away,” he said. “I’m just doing what needs to be done. I think it’s important to share this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elsewhere in Uzhhorod, near the banks of the Tysa River, there is a popular cafe called Lypa. We met there with Viacheslav Yalov, 21, and his three siblings in September.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067007\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067007\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Viacheslav Yalov, second from left, poses with three of his siblings — from left, Olivia, Nicole and Tymur. After losing their mother to a Russian shelling in Donetsk when he was 18, Viacheslav became the legal guardian of his four younger siblings. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Mykhailo Melnychenko)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Viacheslav’smother died from injuries sustained during shelling in the town of Verkhniotoretske in the Donetsk region in March 2022. She was 37. Viacheslav, who was 18 at the time, was left to care for his four younger brothers and sisters. He managed to evacuate himself and the children as the town came under attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His struggle did not end there. Viacheslav went through several court proceedings to win custody of his siblings. “Because the most important thing for me was to keep my family together. I’m doing this for our mother. She always did everything and anything for us,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After fleeing the Donetsk region, the family moved through Lviv, Kyiv and Dnipro, and finally Uzhhorod. For now, it is the safest place in the country, and Viacheslav works to protect his siblings’ sense of peace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His brother, Danil, is now over 18 and studies in Kyiv. Viacheslav cares for the younger three: sisters Nicole and Olivia and brother Timur.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067008\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067008\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_1-scaled-e1765582964804.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Viacheslav Yalov hugs his sister, Olivia, one of the four siblings he has cared for since their mother was killed in a Russian shelling in Donetsk. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Mykhailo Melnychenko)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nicole loves dancing, especially jazz and funk, but said she wants to become a lawyer. Olivia plays the piano and has learned \u003cem>The Pink Panther\u003c/em> and several Michael Jackson songs. Viacheslav plans to enroll Timur in robotics classes.[aside postID=forum_2010101912711 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/02/Image-from-iOS-16.jpg']Before the invasion, Viacheslav studied medicine and completed two of three years of training to become a paramedic. He now works several jobs to support his family and volunteers with a charity, but his focus remains on his siblings. They have lunch together once a week. On Sundays, they share what they didn’t have time to talk about during the week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They are all I have, and they are my motivation to keep going,” he said, gesturing to his siblings as they ate pastries and fruit tea. “Times are tough for everyone right now. There’s no time to sit around and complain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want the best not only for myself, but also for others,” he continued. “Ukraine will need to be rebuilt. The country will need young people who want to do something.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Maria Kostenko is a freelance journalist who has worked with CNN since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, researching and reporting on the war. She and the CNN Worldwide Ukraine team received the Dupont Columbia Award for broadcast, documentary and online journalism. She is an \u003c/em>\u003cem>International Women’s Media Foundation\u003c/em>\u003cem> grantee this year.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Anna Nemtsova is The Daily Beast’s Eastern Europe correspondent and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Her Ukraine reporting has also appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, USA Today and Politico. She is a recipient of the Persephone Miel Fellowship and the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award, and is an IWMF grantee this year.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://Tune%20in%20to%20Forum%20to%20understand%20how%20the%20war%20in%20Ukraine%20is%20shaping%20lives%20%E2%80%94%20and%20the%20future.\">\u003cem>Listen to the Jan. 22 edition of Forum to understand how the war in Ukraine is shaping lives — and the future\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kyiv, Ukraine — They say time helps to heal, but months have passed, and Alina Skytsko still struggles to talk about Nov. 2, 2024 — the day her mother was killed in the Russian shelling of Kherson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were nine explosions that night. Alina, her two cousins and her mother were hiding in a bathroom in Alina’s grandmother’s house when, in a flash, everything was covered in dirt and dust. Wounded in both legs, the 16-year-old shielded her mother, not realizing she had already died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly four years after Russia’s invasion, which reached its anniversary in February, thousands of children in Ukraine have been orphaned, many wounded, displaced or thrust into adult roles as caregivers and witnesses. As the fighting drags on, their lives unfold across hospitals, courtrooms and temporary homes, revealing the long-term human cost of the conflict far from the front lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This reporting draws on interviews with orphaned Ukrainian children in Kyiv, Odesa and Uzhhorod, many of whom witnessed their mothers being killed by Russian forces. From Kherson to Kramatorsk to Mariupol, their lives trace the war’s long aftershocks — a generation forced to recover, testify and raise siblings long before adulthood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Russian forces have also been accused of forcibly removing Ukrainian children from occupied territories and transferring them to Russia or Russia-controlled areas. Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine’s Humanitarian Research Lab say more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been deported, with just over 1,200 returned, and warn the true number may be higher. The lab has documented thousands of children placed in institutions, foster care or adoptive families, often cut off from Ukrainian language and identity, as relatives search for them across borders and through courts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070607\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12070607 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine2-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An orphan boy hugs a soft toy as he waits on a train after fleeing the town of Polohy, which has come under Russian control, before evacuating on a train from Zaporizhzhia to western Ukraine, on March 26, 2022, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. \u003ccite>(Chris McGrath/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Alina is one of about 2,000 Ukrainian children orphaned by the war, according to SOS Children’s Villages, a Vienna-based nongovernmental nonprofit that supports children without parental care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alina’s recovery and rehabilitation remain long and difficult. Books and online school classes no longer interest her. Both of her legs are skin and bones from the injuries. Another surgery is scheduled soon at Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, Okhmatdyt. On New Year’s Eve, she wished the war would end, that she would walk again and maybe return to her war-torn hometown on the Black Sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We met Alina on her hospital ward in September. The night before the interview, she said she woke to the howling air-raid sirens. Her father helped her into a wheelchair, and they took the elevator to the basement. Hospital staff treat air alerts seriously, after the Russian missile strike in July 2024 destroyed several Okhmatdyt buildings, killing two people and injuring 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alina said her wounds were painful. A nerve was damaged in her right leg, and shrapnel tore a piece of muscle from it. Her shoulder was still sore and might also require surgery. A metal plate had been removed from her right arm. She had dyed her hair purple.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“That is life now. It’s hard to think of the future,” Alina said, shaking her head. She is relearning to walk on her thin, wounded legs, one step at a time. She wrote “loser” on her cast, then corrected “s” to “v.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Questions about the future annoy her. There was only one thing that clearly made her happy, she said: music. “I am a music lover. Music helps. I prefer rap — the heavier the better,” she told us with a modest smile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November, hospital volunteer Natalia Zabolotna helped arrange Alina’s monthlong rehabilitation at the Koziavkin center in Truskavets, where Alina took her first steps. Wearing a hat with two furry ears, she likes to sit outside in her wheelchair, scrolling through social media or enjoying the rare sunshine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Alina hopes she will be able to walk better after the next surgery,” Zabolotna said in an interview. “We offered Alina psychological aid, but she firmly rejected it. For now, Alina sees the world mostly out of the hospital window.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sixteen-year-old Kateryna Iorhu knows what Alina is going through. She was wounded in a Russian bombing and witnessed her mother’s death on April 8, 2022, when a ballistic missile with a cluster munition warhead exploded over a train station in Kramatorsk, according to a Human Rights Watch report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kateryna, who goes by Katia, and her sister, Yulia, keep a picture of their smiling mother holding a plastic cup of tea, taken minutes before the blast as they waited for an evacuation train. The explosion killed and wounded dozens. Katia tried to crawl to her mother across ground covered with victims’ bodies, but could not — she was badly wounded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For weeks, Katia would not talk to anybody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070589\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070589\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/KatiaUkraineGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1444\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/KatiaUkraineGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/KatiaUkraineGetty-160x116.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/KatiaUkraineGetty-1536x1109.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hospital patient Kateryna Iorhu from Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, during the celebration of the 130th anniversary of the National Children’s Specialized Hospital “Okhmatdyt,” Kyiv. \u003ccite>(Volodymyr Tarasov/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I totally understand Alina not wanting to talk to a psychologist about her loss, her wounds,” she said. “But she should know that at some point it helps to make friends with the right psychologist, who she’d be able to watch animations with or discuss books, or play and chat about everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specialists said the details of such tragedies may fade over time. “We try not to bother the orphans until they are willing to speak with us,” said Valentyna Lutsenko, a senior doctor at Okhmatdyt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lutsenko met Katia and Yulia in 2022, months after their mother was killed. Katia did not speak then. She moved through the hospital in a wheelchair or sat in her ward making bracelets of beads for doctors and nurses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We later met with the sisters in Kyiv’s Botanical Garden with their aunt and grandmother. With help from volunteers and private donors, Katia and Yulia, 11, live in a rented three-room apartment. Katia attends a design college in Kyiv, where she studies composition and painting and she ranks at the top of her class. Painting calms her, she said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But fear returns at night. “We don’t have a bomb shelter near our house, so we were just sitting on the floor in the corridor all night,” Katia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since losing their mother, Yulia has spent hours online playing Roblox. To get Yulia away from screens, the family enrolled her in aikido classes. “Right now, it’s too slippery to go out — the roads are covered in ice — and we also have bad nights of shelling,” Katia said in an interview earlier this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Programs and safe spaces outside the home, such as those offered by the Chabad Orphanage in Odesa, provide support for children coping with trauma. When we visited the Mishpacha Children’s Home, a Chabad-run institution that provides care for Jewish orphans in late September, Chaya Wolff, Mishpacha’s director, was playing with children on the playground, then mediated a dispute among teenagers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children from across Ukraine come to the orphanage to learn Hebrew, observe Shabbat customs and live as siblings. Two children, ages 2 and 4, chased each other on the playground. According to Wolff, their father had nearly killed their mother after returning from the front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their sister Sarah left this month to attend school in Israel. “Hopefully, the war in Israel is over soon,” Sarah, 16, said. “My parents abandoned me when I was 5. I feel for the children who lost their parents in this war in Ukraine. One day, I hope to become a teacher here and help Ukrainian children learn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For some Ukrainian children, the war has meant not only the loss of parents, but also being uprooted and taken far from home by Russian forces. Ilya Matviyenko was 10 when his mother, Natalia, was mortally wounded during shelling in Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine on March 20, 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070612\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070612\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine4.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine4-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Civilians gather at the train station to be evacuated from combat zones in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, in eastern Ukraine on April 6, 2022. Civilians search to board the first available train headed west. \u003ccite>(Andrea Carrubba/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We were walking across our courtyard when a missile blew up nearby. We were both badly wounded,” Ilya told us during a September interview in Uzhhorod in Western Ukraine, the city he now calls home. “I believe that many more people should know what happened to us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His mother pulled him into a neighbor’s house. There was no hospital or doctor nearby. Ilya held his mother, listening to her hoarse breathing. She died in his arms and was buried in the yard the next morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ilya suffered wounds to his hip and legs. Russian forces took him across the front line to Russia-occupied Donetsk, where he spent nearly a month alone in a hospital. His grandmother, Olena, traveled through four countries to bring Ilya to Kyiv, carrying him out because he was too weak to walk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weeks later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Ilya at Okhmatdyt and gave him an iPad. His case drew attention as one of the first Ukrainian children to be returned from occupied territory after Russia’s full-scale invasion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12070609\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12070609\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/Ukraine3-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A view of the scene after over 30 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a Russian attack on a railway station in eastern Ukraine on April 8, 2022. Two rockets hit a station in Kramatorsk, a city in the Donetsk region, where scores of people were waiting to be evacuated to safer areas, according to Ukrainian Railways. \u003ccite>(Andrea Carrubba/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ilya now calls his new role “diplomatic.” He and his grandmother have traveled across Europe and to the United States. The war, his loss and his wounds have made him seem older than his years. Now 13, Ilya has new friends in Uzhhorod. They play in the courtyard, and Ilya likes football.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My friend Eldar already has a mustache — me too. I’m 5 feet tall, already taller than my grandmother,” he said proudly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ilya was among the orphans who testified at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, telling the world about atrocities in Ukraine. He told us he hoped to meet with President Donald Trump later this year. He sees his role as an “ambassador for Ukrainian children” wounded or orphaned in the war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a major mission, but I’m not getting carried away,” he said. “I’m just doing what needs to be done. I think it’s important to share this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elsewhere in Uzhhorod, near the banks of the Tysa River, there is a popular cafe called Lypa. We met there with Viacheslav Yalov, 21, and his three siblings in September.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067007\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067007\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Viacheslav Yalov, second from left, poses with three of his siblings — from left, Olivia, Nicole and Tymur. After losing their mother to a Russian shelling in Donetsk when he was 18, Viacheslav became the legal guardian of his four younger siblings. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Mykhailo Melnychenko)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Viacheslav’smother died from injuries sustained during shelling in the town of Verkhniotoretske in the Donetsk region in March 2022. She was 37. Viacheslav, who was 18 at the time, was left to care for his four younger brothers and sisters. He managed to evacuate himself and the children as the town came under attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His struggle did not end there. Viacheslav went through several court proceedings to win custody of his siblings. “Because the most important thing for me was to keep my family together. I’m doing this for our mother. She always did everything and anything for us,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After fleeing the Donetsk region, the family moved through Lviv, Kyiv and Dnipro, and finally Uzhhorod. For now, it is the safest place in the country, and Viacheslav works to protect his siblings’ sense of peace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His brother, Danil, is now over 18 and studies in Kyiv. Viacheslav cares for the younger three: sisters Nicole and Olivia and brother Timur.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067008\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067008\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/Viacheslav_Yalov_1-scaled-e1765582964804.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Viacheslav Yalov hugs his sister, Olivia, one of the four siblings he has cared for since their mother was killed in a Russian shelling in Donetsk. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Mykhailo Melnychenko)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nicole loves dancing, especially jazz and funk, but said she wants to become a lawyer. Olivia plays the piano and has learned \u003cem>The Pink Panther\u003c/em> and several Michael Jackson songs. Viacheslav plans to enroll Timur in robotics classes.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Before the invasion, Viacheslav studied medicine and completed two of three years of training to become a paramedic. He now works several jobs to support his family and volunteers with a charity, but his focus remains on his siblings. They have lunch together once a week. On Sundays, they share what they didn’t have time to talk about during the week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They are all I have, and they are my motivation to keep going,” he said, gesturing to his siblings as they ate pastries and fruit tea. “Times are tough for everyone right now. There’s no time to sit around and complain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want the best not only for myself, but also for others,” he continued. “Ukraine will need to be rebuilt. The country will need young people who want to do something.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Maria Kostenko is a freelance journalist who has worked with CNN since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, researching and reporting on the war. She and the CNN Worldwide Ukraine team received the Dupont Columbia Award for broadcast, documentary and online journalism. She is an \u003c/em>\u003cem>International Women’s Media Foundation\u003c/em>\u003cem> grantee this year.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Anna Nemtsova is The Daily Beast’s Eastern Europe correspondent and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Her Ukraine reporting has also appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, USA Today and Politico. She is a recipient of the Persephone Miel Fellowship and the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award, and is an IWMF grantee this year.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
"airtime": "SUN 9pm-10pm",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"id": "here-and-now",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/hiddenbrain.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
"subscribe": {
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Hidden-Brain-p787503/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510308/podcast.xml"
}
},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
"imageAlt": "KQED Hyphenación",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/xtTd",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id73801135",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
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},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Political Breakdown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"subscribe": {
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/572155894/political-breakdown",
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