vote yes on 27. you are watching getting answers. we always ask experts your questions at 3:00 to get answers for you in real time. today a stunning report says san francisco's homeless population is growing leaps and bounds, hitting 20,000 this year. a reporter with our media partner at the san francisco standard will dive into why and what to do. but first, a big day full of news and education in california. students are about to get more support in financial literacy and mental health. governor newsom announced $4.7 billion to increase access to

mental health services. >> what we are announcing is one component of our comprehensive strategy to systematically connect the dots and address the issue of mental health and behavioral health once and for all in this state. kristen: joining us live to discuss these new investments, as well as other education issues, is state superintendent of public instruction tony thurman. welcome back. >> thank you for having us on. kristen: of course. there is a lot to talk about. i want to start with the announcement. governor newsom cited a stunning figure. 284,000 youth have major depression? i know you have done a lot on student mental health. how did we get here? >> clearly, in the pandemic, we have seen a rise in depression as students are dealing with the trauma of the pandemic.

for black students, there is a doubling of the rate of depression and suicide. for all students an increase. also, for lgbtq+ students. young people are all experiencing trauma but with more mental health support we can support the needs of the students and help them be put in better positions academically. kristen: you brought up suicide. that is so sad. kids 10 to 18 have increased rates of suicide by 18%. two thirds of kids with depression get no treatment? >> part of the problem is there are not enough providers. whether it is a pediatrician or a waiting list for mental health resources. one of the things we are doing with our governor is to increase

the number of mental health counselors who are available to help kids. we are working on recruiting 10,000 mental health counselors just for schools. no other state has such an ambitious goal. some of the measures the governor talked about are things we can do right now to expand mental health services. a lot we can do to get more resources. we know that is critical. kristen: we all know kids whose parents say they cannot find a therapist. there is certainly a shortage. the training will do a lot, but also as part of that billion dollar investment, those are virtual mental health care platforms. talk about what that means. >> i know part of what the governor launched not long ago is an initiative that would create what i call the no wrong door way to get access to mental health. that means there are various

ways that can be supported in a one-on-one way, in person with a therapist. some folks like to be online. there are a lot of online platforms being provided for mental health. there is another new phone number anybody can call any of day to talk to a counselor. and there are several call centers across the state. 988, just call 988 or text 988 and you can be connected to a counselor that can help you immediately. this is part of the national suicide hotline but just for counseling in any way. these are call centers that will connect you if you need additional supports and services. in order to meet the need when there is limitation on the number of counselors, we have to use all different types of modalities to deliver support to our students. kristen: right. the shortage, let's talk about that. you are talking about training 10,000 mental health care workers for schools but we have

so many schools in california. typically, in one school you might have one or two if you are lucky dealing with hundreds of kids. sometimes the answer is referral. that can be very expensive and often times insurance does not cover it. how do we ensure there are enough free services to students? >> i do want to emphasize that our new program means we have scholarships up to $20,000 for anybody that wants to become a counselor. we can share the email for those interested. that is a brand-new scholarship. in terms of free services, there is the medical program. we are expanding the number of school districts that use medi- cal. they can be supported even if they do not have insurance. there is an initiative been approved called community schools. the governor talked about that

today. this provides wraparound supports at school. for billion dollars invested for community schools -- $4 billion dollars invested for community schools. mental health services, social services and all three. we are finding ways to deliver no cost supports to our students. kristen: your office made a major announcement to improve financial literacy. what does that mean and why is that important? >> it is amazing. over the years, what we call financial literacy is a way of teaching personal-finance to students. learning ways that they have awareness of not checking cash and balancing checkbooks. they learn in a more engaging way. learn about math and other concepts.

even the cal state university system will be requiring another requirement to enter called quantitative reasoning. if you take a financial literacy course, that counts. the state is offering schools $3.5 billion in grants they can use for financial literacy and training. we shared some partnership today where someone is offering $1 million to teachers to get grants, professional development in training. i think the man who runs the program, tim, shared that news. it will improve personal finances and keep them out of debt and make sure they learn important things about how to manage in the world. kristen: i always thought that to be so important. i think 27 states currently require high schools to offer financial literacy and only 15 require them to take it.

california is not on that list. but do you think that needs to change? do you think that should become a requirement? >> my anticipation is it will become a requirement the next few years. but it requires legislation. we said we would be willing to sponsor that as early as next year. some brought forward a bill to try to get this passed in california is not there yet, but this is a huge step. $3.5 billion to provide financial literacy and training. it helps to get us there. i think this is a great way to start so we actually have the requirement that will come through the law. that could be as soon as next year. kristen: there is a component for districts to apply and for teachers. is there also money to support districts that are thinking of hiring a personal-finance teacher or specialist? >> this grant from the state

will support every district. they will get some amount they can use for financial literacy. in the work we launched today means a handful of districts, like los angeles and san francisco, can get dollars to hire staff if the district is willing to spend the money. this grant would match that and they can hire staff to work on personal-finance and financial literacy. of course, there are grants, stipends, for teachers to go to professional training. a lot of times teachers have to do this on their own time. now they are offered a stipend to take the training so they can take time away from work to get this training to support our students. kristen: that's great. i could have used lessons on how to balance a checkbook in high school. it would have saved me trouble later in life. we will see when that can become a requirement, but a good start. don't go away. when we come back, we talk about how schools are getting ready how schools are getting ready for the new

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kristen: we are back on air with the state superintendent, tony thurman. thank you for joining us. we are talking about the latest issues in education as kids begin a new school year. by the way, ask your questions on the facebook live feed. let's talk about covid. we are starting the third school year with the pandemic. in the first two years, there was state money given to provide masks and tests. is that still available? or our students and districts more on their own? >> there is an amazing amount of support for our schools. our state legislature just gave a huge increase to school districts, 13% of the base

funding, to meet any need. on top of that, the state provided schools with what is essentially more than an $8 billion grant. schools have resources to keep kids safe. i have heard from any superintendents they provided rapid testing to families so they can test before school. then we know some but is sick and they can stay home and we can keep everyone safe. california school leaders are showing we know how to do this. we are going to hope for the best and try to keep everyone safe and learning. kristen: that is the goal. at one point, the state indicated there would be a vaccination requirement to go to school. that seems to have gone away. do you know what the vaccination rate in the k-12 population is statewide? i think only two thirds of 12 to 17-year-olds are vaccinated and one third of elementary school kids. >> if you ask most people,

especially those in public health, they would hope we would have a larger rate of young people who have the vaccine. i think we have seen the numbers drop as it relates to the vaccine. we encourage people that getting the vaccine is still a great way of keeping people safe from the most serious consequences covid can bring. it is important to help keep schools safe. shout out to all of our students. even when it is not a requirement, they are wearing masks and doing things that will keep them safe and keep schools open. we want to encourage everyone, get the vaccine. get a booster if you are eligible so we can keep everyone safe and keep our schools and businesses and community open. kristen: will there still be outreach through the schools to get kids vaccinated? >> many school district offer vaccines right on campus. it is debated whether or not there will be a

california that would allow teenagers to have the ability to make their own decisions about getting a vaccine. that is not the law of right now. you still have to have parental consent. but our schools are offering vaccine days on campus and outreach at community centers and health centers so we can keep everyone safe. kristen: i think you are talking about the state senator weiner's bill. we will see what happens. in the first two years of the pandemic the emphasis in terms of limiting school transmission is mainly on masking and social distancing. increasingly, experts are saying better air quality is key, not only for covid but a variety of reasons. it seems a lot of schools have not invested in upgrading air filtration. what are your thoughts on that? >> you are right. air purification systems, ventilation systems, all of these make a huge difference in minimizing the spread of covid.

it has been a while. i think it was a year ago we made major webinars and training opportunities for schools on how to utilize money we had given them for ventilation upgrades. i think schools are still figuring it out. we even did workshops on doing more outdoor classrooms so when we have cooler weather in the fall before the rainy season, we can do more outside as a way of keeping students safe. a lot of schools in san mateo county have really accelerated around outdoor classrooms. ventilation, fresh air, purifiers, all of these help. schools have dollars provided from the state to make these upgrades and we will keep providing technical assistance on how to do that. kristen: i know you are keeping a close eye on learning loss. that was accelerated by the pandemic. math and reading scores have fallen with half of the students not performing at grade level paired how do you address that?

>> we share the same concerns about the learning loss. we help all children learn to read by third grade. i am pleased to tell you we have secured $250 million to have literacy coaches and specialists at many schools, especially those with the greatest need around reading. we are going to make sure we make this a priority, work with families to do more outreach on the importance of reading. because if you learn to read, you can read to learn almost any subject. we are going to be improving literacy and biliteracy so they can learn more than one language. kristen: we talked in the last segment in the shortage of mental health care providers and support for students. i want to talk about the teacher shortage, which is pretty severe. san francisco unified tried to

fill 100 open positions. oakland 40 positions. some teachers are having to take on classes for which they do not have proper credentials. what do you intend to do to recruit and train more teachers? >> my heart goes out to the districts and teachers. we know that there are shortages across the state and the country. there are shortages in every workforce sector, not just education. we are working to recruit more. we are rolling out a public service announcement campaign about the importance of teaching and how we want to get more teachers. we are offering scholarships to those who want to get a teaching credential. we can provide $20,000 to anyone who wants to good teaching credential. we have a residency program where you can get a stipend while you are training under the tutelage of an experienced teacher and you can get the stipend while you learn. role in all of these programs out. we are putting the call out to teachers.

we have a lot of military bases in our state where folks are teachers or have a spouse who is a teacher. we are putting the call out to how we can get them. our governor has given an executive order that brings retired teachers back to the workforce. we are doing all we can to build up our workforce. kristen: there are so many balls in the air you are juggling. we appreciate you coming on the show to talk about the latest efforts. thank you. >> thank you. thank you for getting the word out. take care. kristen: coming up, the latest report on homelessness in san francisco. the shocking forecast and alarming disparities. i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. the three what? the three ps? what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price.

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our media partners at the san francisco standard have written an article on the report of homelessness in san francisco. joining us to talk about it is david. thank you for joining us. tell us about the count. it is federally required but skipped last year? >> it is required by the federal government in order for san francisco to receive funds for homeless services. the count is conducted in february and researchers follow-up in march to get more demographic data. that is what we got today. kristen: 20,000 homeless people this year. i think a few years ago it was some 7000. how do we get a threefold increase in such a short amount of time? >> actually, those are two different points. there is the point in time count, which is what this report was meant to refer to. but then there is they count how many people access the services

over an entire year. that number -- the last i had heard from the department of public health -- it was 18,000. this is not exactly a new number. it is not as if we increased from 7000 to 20,000 because that 7000 is in one night how many they are counting. kristen: thank you for clarifying. still, it is a pretty big increase. why did the crisis get so severe? >> right. so, we saw a big increase in the city's latino homeless population. the city attributes that to that community being hard-hit by covid. kristen: can you dive a little deeper into that in terms of the latino population? we are talking about 30% of the entire homeless population are latino. you talked about why they are more hard-hit but explain the factors. >> right.

actually, there are respondents they gave answers to why they are homeless. the majority said they lost their job or the main reason people gave. we also saw a large increase in unsheltered homelessness in district nine, which is the mission district. there have been some thoughts that district had been especially hard-hit. some of the other respondents gave answers like drug addiction or eviction. kristen: what about blacks, who make up 6% of the general population in san francisco? does the report say anything about that group? >> they are very much overrepresented in the homeless population. i think the number is about 30% of the city's total homeless population are black. that community has been a

sustained number reported over and over. we have not seen too much of a change in that from 2019. kristen: the data was collected a few weeks after mayor breed declared a state of emergency. did that affect the count? >> right. a lot of people were looking to see if there would be less homeless people in the tenderloin because of the efforts and how close it was to the count being collected. actually, there was a 5% increase in the tenderloin while some of the surrounding neighborhoods also saw an increase. it seems the efforts did not really impact how money people were living on the streets. kristen: so, if that didn't pay off immediately, what are the solutions being looked at? >> as it pertains to the city's latino population, the city is going to start investing in more spanish-speaking resources.

there is a lot of permanent housing units coming online between 2000 and 3000 in the next year. i think the department of homelessness is crossing their fingers and hoping those efforts make a big impact. kristen: is there any good news? are there areas of the city where homelessness went down? or are there any indicators something is working well? >> yes. we saw a big decrease in the bayview. we also saw a big decrease in people living in their vehicles in san francisco. i would like to celebrate those data points, but with this data, it is hard to tell whether those people found housing or whether they were pushed into another part of the city or another city

entirely. kristen: right. this is one data point and we will have to keep following the long-term to see where things progressed. thank you so much for your time and sharing the article with us. >> thank you for having me. kristen: you can check out more of the san francisco standard on their website. abc 7 will continue to bring you more segments featuring the standard's city focused journalism. remember, you can get our live newscast, breaking news, weather and more with the abc 7 streaming tv app. search abc 7 bay area and download it wherever you s

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getting answers. we will be here every week at 3:00 on air and on livestream. world news tonight with david mere is coming up next. tonight, the court battle over the fbi raid at mar-a-lago. the federal magistrate judge in florida who authorized the raid suggests today that he may unseal portions of the affidavit outlining the government's evidence. media outlets including abc news argue that the document should be made public. the affidavit explains in detail why the fbi wanted to search the former president's home and office, arguing a crime was likely committed. the justice department warning that making it public could damage the criminal case. terry moran is standing by. trump executive allen weisselberg pleads guilty to 15 felonies including conspiracy and criminal tax fraud. the trump organization's longtime cfo agreeing to testify

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