Westminster School District Superintendent Dr. Gunn Marie Hansen has been named a 2026 EdTech All-Star in the Superintendent category by ClassLink and RTM Business Group. Hansen received the honor at the 2026 West Education Congress, held Oct. 4-6 in Santa Clara.

Since 2018, ClassLink and RTM have recognized EdTech All-Stars at RTM’s national Education Congress events, which bring superintendents and district leaders together to address challenges in K–12 education. The award honors education leaders whose work moves schools forward and makes a lasting impact on the people they serve.

With over 35 years in education, Hansen has focused her work on expanding access and removing barriers to learning. In announcing the award, ClassLink and RTM pointed to several initiatives she has led at Westminster School District, including a 1:1 take-home device program, enhanced campus safety systems, and classroom audio improvements that help create clearer, more accessible learning environments for students.

“I’m grateful to ClassLink and RTM for this recognition, which reflects the work of our teachers, technology staff, principals, and support teams,” Hansen said, in a news release. “To us, technology is not the goal. It is a bridge that helps students find their voices, connects families to their schools, and opens doors to opportunities that last far beyond eighth grade.”

The commitment to student-centered learning extends across the district’s programs from preschool through eighth grade, including its Spanish dual language immersion program and California’s first public Vietnamese dual language immersion program, as well as signature pathways in areas such as STEAM and robotics.

Joshua Butterfield, director of Education Services in the Castro Valley Unified School District, was also honored in the Instructional Leader category.

Butterfield brings more than 15 years of experience in education and district leadership to his role. Previously, at Pleasanton Unified School District, he helped expand student opportunities through initiatives including a CSU direct admissions program, expanded dual enrollment, an ethnic studies graduation requirement, and stronger student support systems. Throughout his career, he has focused on increasing access and creating meaningful pathways for student success.

Study: Phone ownership affects reading performance Phone ownership — not whether a student brings a phone to school — has been shown to affect reading comprehension performance on tests for third and sixth graders, according to new research.

School cellphone bans might seem like a good way to improve learning for elementary school children, but the research published in Behavioral Sciences shows that simply owning a cellphone correlates with worse reading comprehension. Whether a child brings the phone to school or not made no difference on the same metric, the team of UCLA psychologists and researchers found.

“We found that there’s no age at which you can give a child a phone that’s better or worse for reading comprehension, so it’s just having a phone at all,” said lead author and UCLA psychology professor Patricia Greenfield, in a UCLA news release. “That’s true in third grade, and it’s true in sixth grade.”

The study came about as researchers sought to answer the question: Do cellphones interfere with the concentration required to perform well on academic tests? They focused on determining whether the acquisition of a phone was negatively related to reading comprehension performance on tests for third and sixth graders.

To conduct the new study, researchers obtained approval to test children’s reading comprehension with and without phones on a group of culturally and linguistically diverse children in Antelope Valley public schools and Coptic Church schools in Los Angeles County. Phones were normally allowed in both types of settings.

The children — some who owned a phone and others who did not — read short passages. Some children had a phone with them at school, while others did not. Researchers then tested them on what they understood about each passage. Students also filled out a survey about their cellphone ownership and use.

The researchers found a statistically significant relationship between owning a personal cellphone and lower reading scores — children who owned cellphones had poorer comprehension than those who did not. This negative relationship between phone ownership and reading scores held for students who spoke English at home and those who did not. There was no difference in reading comprehension when phones were on desks or out of sight. The reported age at which a child acquired their first phone did not correlate with reading comprehension skill.

“The children who brought their phones to school had the same reading scores as children who did not have phones at school that day. So, it’s ownership of a phone, not the immediate presence of one, that correlates with poorer reading comprehension at the elementary school level,” said Greenfield.

The study found some good news for students who do not speak English at home. For students from non-English-speaking homes who had their own phone, reading comprehension was significantly better the earlier they started using their phone to text.

California’s first special district for childcare created The creation of the state’s first Childcare Special District is advancing after it received critical startup funding from the state.

On Sept. 2, Assemblymember Dr. Corey Jackson announced that he had successfully secured a historic $2 million state budget appropriation to fund California’s first-ever Childcare Special District. The Moreno Valley-Perris Childcare Special District represents a revolutionary shift in childcare policy, treating childcare as essential public infrastructure rather than a failing private market.

This $2 million investment provides the direct funding necessary to form, plan, and launch this district. It guarantees that the district can successfully navigate local agency formation (LAFCO) requirements and begin establishing services without requiring any mandatory contributions from local school districts and other stakeholders.

For families in the 60th Assembly District, this funding is a lifeline. Currently, Moreno Valley is a certified “childcare desert” where licensed childcare spaces are available for only 15 percent of children with working parents, leaving 85 percent of local families with no formal care options. The Moreno Valley-Perris Childcare Special District is designed to break this cycle by coordinating a local, mixed-delivery system authorized to provide universal care 24 hours a day, seven days a week to support the region’s commuting and non-traditional shift workers. “Securing this $2 million in startup funding is a monumental victory for the working-class families of Moreno Valley and Perris who have been trapped in a childcare desert for far too long,” said Assemblymember Dr. Corey Jackson, in a news release. By lowering the barrier to workforce participation and reducing “affordability anxiety” for young families, this landmark District is poised to trigger a virtuous cycle of economic upward mobility and long-term regional prosperity in the 60th Assembly District.