Good grief, how can that even work? If I had gone a full one or two years without any math class, I would have lost the habit and floundered when it came time to take a math class again. Are they deliberately setting kids up to fail in California?
If I recall this is how my high school was ~20 years ago and almost everyone still took at least 3 years of math with what felt like the majority still taking 4.
Those are unusually lenient from what I've seen; my home school district [not in California] currently requires 4 years of English, 3 years each of math, science, and social studies, 2 each of PE and foreign language or fine arts, 1 year of economics/personal finance, and 4 electives. And apparently 1 course must be AP, IB or honors. As a matter of practice, you'd be expected to take 4 years of English, math, science, and social studies, and at least 3 of foreign language anyways (and indeed, there's an 'advanced degree' that has those requirements; it looks like 2/3 of students graduated with the 'advanced degree').