Downey, California

Tuesday's local elections in Osceola County, Florida, brought new leadership to St. Cloud's city council and the county commission, while several incumbents in Osceola and Kissimmee held their seats. Turnout reached 56% of registered voters, up from about 40% in the 2022 midterms. In St. Cloud, Alex Rodriguez won the open Seat 5 council race, while Ken Gilbert secured a second term unopposed. On the county commission, Democrat Mary Downey won the open District 4 seat, and incumbent Viviana Janer easily defended District 2 against a Republican challenger.

In Kissimmee, Commissioner Janette Martinez won a second term in a runoff, and interim Mayor Angela Eady, who took over after Mayor Jackie Espinosa's suspension amid fraud charges, won her own race in August.

California's statewide graduation rate reached 87.9% in the 2025-26 school year, the highest in ten years, according to the California School Dashboard released by the state Department of Education. Chronic absenteeism fell to 18.3%, down from a pandemic-era peak near 30%, but remains above pre-pandemic levels. Suspension rates dipped slightly to 2.8%, continuing a gradual multi-year decline.

Despite the overall gains, disparities persist: Black, Native American, Pacific Islander and Hispanic students, along with foster youth, homeless students, English learners and students with disabilities, continued to face higher rates of absenteeism and suspension than statewide averages. The statewide graduation figure was also dragged down by two troubled charter schools, including Highlands Community Charter, which recently filed for bankruptcy amid a $180 million funding dispute. College readiness metrics improved modestly, with more graduates meeting CSU/UC entrance requirements and earning distinctions like the State Seal of Biliteracy. Officials and education experts called the trends encouraging but said deeper, more targeted interventions are still needed to close persistent gaps.

An analysis from Real Clear Wire examines why smaller, independent municipalities in South Los Angeles County — including Paramount, Downey, South Gate, and Bellflower — have outperformed the city of Los Angeles on crime, infrastructure, and civic services, despite facing similar economic headwinds. Local officials attribute the gap to responsive, apolitical governance, contracted services, and short distances between residents and city hall, rather than ideology or big-budget programs.

The piece frames this as evidence of "devolution," a broader national shift of population and trust away from large metro cores toward suburbs, exurbs, and smaller governing units, alongside parallel trends in education such as rising homeschooling, charter schools, and religious schooling. It contrasts this grassroots, localized model with both progressive centralization efforts in big cities and expansive federal power under the Trump administration, arguing that smaller-scale institutions — family, neighborhood, and local government — better rebuild civic trust and democratic participation than centralized bureaucracies or emerging AI-driven economic models.