Ramon C. Cortinez School of Visual and Performing Arts in downtown Los Angeles was empty March 16, 2020 as Los Angeles Unified School District shut down school buildings. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Updated, March 17

L.A. Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner in a letter to families late Monday announced that the district at this time is unable to open 40 family resource centers as initially planned, as “state and local health and public safety officials cannot assure us it will be safe for the children and adults.” There will instead be 60 “grab & go” food centers open weekdays from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. starting on Wednesday, with each child allowed to take home two “nutritious meals.”

Speaking to the first day in general, Beutner wrote: “It wasn’t perfect and we can expect more bumps along the way, but teachers got up extra early, all of us did our best, and students continued to learn. And we will work to make it better.” Updated information on specific food center locations, instructional and parent resources can be found here.

Los Angeles and about half of California’s school districts woke up Monday to a jarring reality: an unprecedented mass closing of schools in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.

“It’s been pretty hectic,” Alma Castillo, an L.A. Unified high school junior from South Central Los Angeles, wrote to The 74 on Monday. Some students “are concerned, while some are considering this a long break. … I’m personally kind of freaking out.”

L.A. Unified, the nation’s second largest school district with about 480,000 students, announced Friday it was closing schools for at least two weeks and reverting to online and television-based learning. By Saturday night, the L.A. County Office of Education had confirmed all 80 school districts in the county would be shuttered Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom then stated on Sunday that 51 percent of California’s school districts — serving 80 to 85 percent of the state’s children — had temporarily closed.

“The public health crisis created by the coronavirus is not something any of us could’ve reasonably expected to happen,” L.A. Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner said Friday in announcing the closure. “We are in uncharted waters as we work to prevent the spread of the illness.”

L.A. County as of Monday had 94 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Statewide counts Monday afternoon stood at 375.

The move to close schools in California’s largest district for two weeks was “probably the most difficult decision any of us on the board have had to make,” board vice president Jackie Goldberg said. “It affects so many people and it affects so many children and affects so many people who have jobs that they are fearful of losing if they have childcare issues.”

About 80 percent of the district’s children rely on free or reduced-price meals and more than 17,000 qualify as homeless. A mass closure of schools means setting up meal distribution systems, transitioning to remote learning, addressing inequitable student access to internet and technology, and ensuring families unable to take time off from work still have a place for their children to go, among other logistics.

Though sources contacted by The 74 backed the district’s choice to close schools, they said it’s already shaping up to be a far from optimal situation.

While L.A. Unified is prepping to open 40 family resource centers and 20 food pickup sites across the district starting Wednesday, for example, it wasn’t clear on Monday how the district was getting meals to students in need before then.

“We are worried that today and [Tuesday] children who depend on a meal at their school will not be able to access a healthy meal,” said Aurea Montes-Rodriguez, executive vice president of Community Coalition, which serves families in south L.A.

Parent Ben Austin said Monday he and his wife are “beginning to feel some responsibility to step into a quasi-teaching role,” and are navigating how to explain this drastic transition to their elementary- and middle school-age daughters, who attend a local district and charter school in west L.A., respectively.

“The really challenging balance to strike is how to convey the right lessons and urgency to keep our kids safe while simultaneously not traumatizing them,” he said on a call. In the background, 10-year-old Eloise and 13-year-old Fiona called out that they “missed their friends” and already “don’t like online school.”

Castillo, the L.A. Unified junior who’s also a member of United Way’s Young Civic Leaders Program, is largely concerned about “whether we are running out of resources,” especially relating to laptops and hotspots.

“I don’t have WiFi,” she said.”I hope LAUSD notices this issue and sees how many students need to access internet at home.”

When sent questions relating to logistics and planning, a district spokeswoman responded that “we are still working on details … [and are] hard at work.” She directed The 74 to monitor lausd.net for updates.

What we know about how service rollout is working

Starting Wednesday, there will be 20 “grab & go” food centers and 40 family resource centers across the more than 700-square-mile district, running from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays to offer services such as counseling and health services for students and families, meals and access to books, computers and instructional materials. They will be staffed by a mix of Red Cross volunteers, L.A. County employees and district staff, such as administrators, nurses, classroom teachers, security aides, school police and counselors.

Staff participation is “100% voluntary” and comes with a $100 stipend “in addition to your usual pay” for 6-hour shifts, according to the district. All center visitors will have their temperatures taken with forehead thermometers when they arrive, and students will be instructed to wash their hands.

“Children will be able to have a warm meal, engage with their peers and pursue their different studies. And they’ll be safe,” Beutner said during Friday’s announcement.

A district letter to families Sunday said the openings of these centers “will be subject to the continuing guidance of state and local health and public safety authorities that it is appropriate to do so and that all students and staff will be safe.” A list of the food pickup sites and 40 resource centers was not posted on the district’s website as of 3 p.m. PT Monday, though District 6 school board member Kelly Gonez wrote on Twitter that afternoon that officials will “share the list as soon *as it is finalized.*”

https://twitter.com/Kelly4LASchools/status/1239638834477813760?s=20

Community Coalition’s Montes-Rodriguez emphasized the importance of pushing out critical information “through all of the local television networks … through the communication mediums our families are relying on” as soon as information is available. “We need to be over-communicating” with the community, she said.

Another major transition for the district is rolling out a combination of online and television-based learning. Teachers will utilize tools like L.A. Unified’s learning management system, Schoology, for lessons and activities. District officials used emergency spending authority to buy $10 million worth of additional Google Chromebook-like devices for about 150,000 district students who do not have computers at home; those are expected to be distributed at some point this week.

Charter Communications and Comcast are offering free internet service for 60 days and open WiFi hotspots for public use (see their plans here). The district estimates that about 25 percent of families in L.A. Unified don’t have internet access.

Especially for those who may not have immediate access to online materials, free, educational daytime programming began Monday for each grade level on the following channels:

• Pre-K – 3rd grade on PBS SoCal
• Pre-K – 12th grade on KLCS
• 9th – 12th grade on KCET

Elementary broadcasts include shows like Sesame Street, while middle and high school feature programs like NOVA and Shakespeare Uncovered. More information is available here.

Learning regression, however, remains a central concern.

“We are so concerned about the loss of learning time for young people,” especially those from disadvantaged families, Montes-Rodriguez said. “Think about families that have three to five children in one household. Parents will have to figure out how to connect those five children, how to structure their days. And that’s just something unprecedented.”

As L.A. Unified and others prepared for these kinds of provisions over the weekend, Gov. Newsom refrained from demanding statewide closure of schools, leaving it as a local decision.

Governor @GavinNewsom and state health officials provide an update on the state’s response to #COVIDー19. https://t.co/XfeGbgdA2F

— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) March 15, 2020

“It’s one thing to say you have a plan, it’s another to actually deliver on that plan,” Newsom said at a press briefing in Sacramento Sunday night, not speaking directly to any one district. “I’m deeply concerned about [students’] health and I’m deeply concerned about their safety and I’m deeply concerned about their parents’ inability to go to work.”

CDC guidance released Friday was wary of short-term closures, noting that schools that close prematurely and for shorter periods of time — like two weeks, as L.A. Unified has decided for now — “will be unlikely to stem the spread of disease or prevent impact on the health care system, while causing significant disruption for families, schools.”

Newsom did, however, sign an executive order Friday affirming that schools will be paid for days they shut down to prevent further spread of the coronavirus. California schools’ funding from the state is determined by their average daily attendance.

As of Monday, all public schools in 35 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had been closed, according to Education Week. After holding out for days because of the district’s critical role as a social safety net for children and in keeping the adult population working, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday that New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest district with 1.1 million students, would be closed at least until April 20.

The two biggest districts face many of the same challenges in serving vulnerable student populations, but also some distinct differences. New York City schools must reach more than double the number of students but across a much smaller geographic area — about 300 square miles — compared to the sprawling 700-plus square miles that L.A. Unified encompasses.

To track all closures nationwide, see Education Week’s map. To follow L.A. Unified specific updates, go to lausd.net.

LASR contributor Mikhail Zinshteyn contributed to this report

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.

Jackie Goldberg and Scott Schmerelson, two current board members vying for re-election. Goldberg seemed poised to win Tuesday’s primary outright as of Wednesday, while Schmerelson is likely headed for a runoff in his board district. (Getty Images)

*Updated March 6

At least two competitive L.A. Unified school board races are likely headed to a November runoff following the most heated and costly primary season on record and a campaign that once again became a proxy fight over the future of charter schools.

As of early Friday, no one candidate in Districts 3 or 7 had reached the more than 50-percent vote threshold needed to avoid a runoff, though teachers union-backed incumbent Scott Schmerelson and labor organizer Patricia Castellanos were leading in those respective districts. George McKenna’s District 1 seat was unchallenged, and Jackie Goldberg, the District 5 incumbent and teachers union ally who swept last year’s special election, was poised to win outright.

Candidate tallies remained fairly unchanged in both Wednesday and Thursday updates, despite the county clerk’s office counting about 40,400 additional ballots across the four races in those two days. County officials as of early Friday afternoon weren’t able to provide an estimate for how many remained uncounted for the board races specifically; the number of outstanding ballots across all races jumped to 802,380 Thursday night as the county began processing vote-by-mail ballots dropped off on Election Day.

Whether the future board will lean more toward supporting charter school growth or reining it in was a central focus of the primary — with the potential stakes even higher now that recent changes to state law have given local school boards more authority to deny petitions for new charters. The expansion of charters, which are publicly funded, independently run and often not unionized, fueled last year’s teacher strike in L.A. and continues to engulf local politics, often pitting school choice proponents against those who say charters siphon students and needed funds away from traditional public schools.

Board members not up for re-election this year were all previously endorsed by the California Charter Schools Association Advocates, though that hasn’t always married them to strictly pro-charter agendas. Union-backed candidates need to win all four races in this election to form a majority on the board.

What could be a reckoning of sorts for school choice in L.A. also comes as the district projects nearly depleted savings by 2021-22 and continues to grapple with how to close achievement gaps for black, Latino, low-income and other underserved students. The district assumed complete oversight responsibility of its special education system in January for the first time in more than 20 years as well. Whoever is on the board is charged with overseeing a roughly $8 billion budget and setting district policy and agendas.

• Read more: First-time California science test results reveal wide achievement gaps for black and Latino students, dismal scores for the state’s English learners

The high-stakes nature of this year’s primary translated to a record $8.45 million in outside donor spending in the nation’s second-largest school district, according to the latest available city ethics commission data. It also produced more negative advertising than seen before, with pro charter-run campaigns that largely targeted union-backed incumbents Schmerelson and Goldberg. Charter supporters, namely the California Charter Schools Association Advocates and local businessman Bill Bloomfield, outspent United Teachers Los Angeles and the local education workers union 4-1 leading up to Tuesday’s primary.

Candidates backed by UTLA, however, appeared to have an early advantage as results trickled in Tuesday into Wednesday.

In District 5, Goldberg, who’s been critical of charters and won last year’s runoff election by a landslide, appeared poised to win with 56.43 percent of the vote, after weathering nearly $745,000 in negative campaign advertising paid for by Bloomfield. Christina Martinez Duran, an educational consultant who considers herself a better fit to represent the predominantly Latino district, trailed by about 13 percentage points.

Districts 3 and 7 are unlikely to yield winners. In District 3, incumbent and UTLA pick Schmerelson held 42.02 percent of the vote— shy of the majority threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Schmerelson was the target of negative CCSAA-backed advertising, and was separately called out in recent weeks by Speak UP, a parent organization that supports charters and other forms of school choice. The group drew attention to his previously holding and inaccurately reporting investments in corporate tobacco giant Altria, which has a 35 percent stake in Juul Labs, the controversial vaping product manufacturer that the school district is currently suing. Schmerelson, who voted in favor of the lawsuit, said his stockbroker made that investment without his knowledge, and that he’s since sold it.

Schmerelson’s potential contender isn’t locked in yet. Marilyn Koziatek, a staffer at Granada Hills Charter High School and the only candidate the California Charter Schools Association Advocates formally endorsed this cycle, has 31.70 percent of the vote. CCSAA had funneled nearly $2.7 million into supporting her campaign and opposing Schmerelson’s as of Feb. 26. Nonprofit founder Elizabeth Bartels-Badger had 26.28 percent.

In a call Wednesday night, Schmerelson’s campaign manager Brent Smiley said they had anticipated a runoff situation. “With three people in the race, it almost always goes to a runoff,” he said. “We’re thrilled that Scott is in first by a good, strong margin, and have every expectation” of winning in November if a runoff materializes.

A runoff looks similarly certain in District 7. Five candidates are vying to replace Richard Vladovic, the current board president who’s termed out this year. UTLA-backed Patricia Castellanos was leading with 26.50 percent of the vote, positioning her to secure the first runoff slot. The second-highest vote getter was Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who works with Partnership for LA Schools, with 23.57 percent.

While spending for elections has seemingly become a show of might between charter and union allies, candidates like Ortiz Franklin emphasized to LAist recently that the school board’s role and how it operates is more nuanced.

“A school board member,” Ortiz Franklin said, “really needs to serve all of their students, all of their schools, all of their communities, regardless of model [charter or district-run school], well. … The overwhelming majority [of students] are and will continue to be in our traditional schools.”

• Read more: LA Unified candidate says voters should apply restorative justice practices — how to make things right for all students — to the upcoming election

No candidate in a competitive race had declared victory as of Friday morning PT.

Voter turnout was well above the 10.7 percent turnout for last March’s primary election for District 5, likely due in part to the Democratic presidential primary driving more voters to the polls. Average turnout across the four board races as of Thursday evening was about 20.5 percent of eligible voters, using voter registration data from Political Data.

The largest turnouts were seen in Districts 3 and 5, where roughly 22.9 percent and 23.5 percent of eligible voters respectively cast ballots as of late Thursday tallies.

Schmerelson’s campaign manager on Wednesday predicted a substantial number of outstanding votes were still coming in. “Just in talking to different campaigns that are going on, the feeling was that with an active Democratic primary, we should see” increased turnout. He’d added, though: “We just don’t know. … with the really long lines, I would imagine that there were many who decided not to vote in the end.”

The county is still counting same-day registration ballots along with provisional and vote-by-mail ballots received on Election Day. This includes vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on Election Day that arrive by Friday, a spokesman said.

Another update was scheduled for Friday afternoon PT.

CSU Board of Trustees meet in their chamber. (CSU)

California State University overwhelmingly decided Wednesday to move forward with a new admissions requirement, but will delay making formal alterations to state regulations until the consequences of the change are studied.

Until last week, the CSU Board of Trustees were expected to cast votes on Wednesday either greenlighting or rejecting a controversial addition to admissions standards: Requiring applicants to take a fourth year of high school math/quantitative reasoning to be eligible to apply to the system’s 23 campuses. The change would go into effect in the fall of 2027, with the current class of fifth-graders.

Facing continued pushback from advocates and state officials, however, the CSU Chancellor’s Office last week put a “phased” option on the table. The new proposal asked trustees to approve the plan establishing the new requirement by fall 2027, but delayed a formal vote until spring 2022. That vote to amend the California Code of Regulations, which governs the university system, would follow a third-party independent analysis on how high schoolers’ access to the CSU would be impacted, particularly for low-income students of color.

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, whose nearly nine-minute speech just before the vote captivated the chamber, supported adding the requirement while acknowledging the complexity of the situation. The CSU is the largest four-year public university system in the country, with about 481,000 students.

“Let us accept that there is risk — that many students could be impacted negatively — but let us accept that there’s a greater risk to not take bold action to try and support our students,” he said.

• Read more: With less than half of LAUSD’s prospective graduates eligible for California State University system, college trustees eye adding another requirement

The implementation timeline can be “extended” or “halted” if the policy “is resulting in unintended consequences,” according to the proposal. It’s wasn’t clear what kind of consequences would be needed to delay the new requirement.

“We cannot accept that the disparities in preparation that exist today … must be the destiny” of marginalized students, said Loren Blanchard, CSU’s executive vice chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs who helped present the proposal. He added: “Actions speak louder than words.”

The board of trustees’ educational policy committee approved the plan unanimously Wednesday morning. The full board passed it soon after, with 20 voting yes, one opposing and one abstaining.

As with past debates leading up to the vote, Wednesday’s discussions underscored a continuing schism among advocates and officials on how best to tackle educational inequity. Many districts, including L.A. Unified, already struggle with access to the CSU system. Less than half of the state’s Class of 2018 — about 41 percent — met CSU’s current eligibility standards, which require a C or better in three math courses: Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II.

Speakers Wednesday expressed varying levels of confidence in the latest iteration of the proposal, though there seemed to be widespread support for having an independent analysis.

• Read more: Equity advocates push back at CSU hearing on new admissions requirement: “We’ll just be re-creating the same systemic inequities that already exist”

CSU officials and some trustees reiterated that a fourth-year math/quantitative reasoning course would expand marginalized students’ access to more rigorous coursework, especially those needed in more lucrative STEM-related fields. There are also benefits, they said, of taking quantitative reasoning-based courses, such as personal finance, statistics and computer science, which center on problem-solving and critical thinking. The proposal lists 27 states with at least one “public comprehensive university” that has similar existing requirements.

A handful of trustees gave their express backing. “It’s just intuitive,” said trustee Jack McGrory. “Why don’t we want to make our students more successful by requiring four years [of math/quantitative reasoning]?” Another, Christopher Steinhauser, highlighted the success he’s seen in his own Long Beach district since it adopted a similar requirement about six years ago.

State Superintendent Thurmond later cautioned against what he saw as an oversimplification of the issue of inequity. “Let us not fool ourselves that just by doing this, we’ll close the gap.”

Across the aisle, some advocates Wednesday revived concerns that the change could block more black and Latino students from the CSU — especially those from low-income families — because of existing disparities in who has access to math and quantitative reasoning-related courses. The statewide shortage of STEM teachers has also been a recurring talking point.

About 15 members of the public came forward prior to the vote to applaud the CSU’s decision to pump the brakes. A few continued to speak in opposition altogether.

“I truly appreciate the recognition that any change in admissions should meet a much higher bar of proof and evidence before making a change that affects all Californians,” said Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity.

“While I believe that black and brown teens are capable of any and everything, one thing we must acknowledge is that if they are not being led and accepted into our institutions, then the system needs to take accountability for failing them, not the other way around,” a representative for Students For Quality Education at Cal State-LA added.

CSU officials have stressed that there will be multiple ways to satisfy the requirement, including taking a math, science or quantitative reasoning course, certain Career and Technical Education classes or pursuing dual enrollment courses at a local community college. The CSU intends to form a “steering” committee for stakeholders to give ongoing feedback, and will work with pre-K-12 districts to expand curricula in subjects that align with the requirement, according to the proposal. The system also committed $10 million over the next four years to double the number of STEM teachers that the CSU produces.

There would be an automatic exemption provided “during the initial implementation of the requirement” for students with course limitations at their high schools, the proposal states.

Even with the proposal’s “safety valves,” at least four trustees Wednesday expressed lingering hesitations before ultimately voting “yes.”

“I’m not yet convinced when we make the assertion that quantitative skills [in high school] is going to close the equity gap,” said trustee Silas Abrego. “The issues of closing the equity gap are not based on one year of quantitative reasoning skills.”

TrusteeLillian Kimbell questioned districts’ capacity — and even their willingness — to meet the requirement. She mentioned L.A. Unified in particular. “At the end of the day, I don’t know that we have the power to make L.A. Unified school district, the largest school district in California, provide the courses students will need,” she said.

• Read more: Exclusive: Less than 25% of LAUSD seniors last year took the type of math/quantitative reasoning class California State University wants to make a requirement

The 74’s own analysis in November found less than a quarter of seniors at L.A. Unified took a fourth-year math/quantitative reasoning course in 2018-19. An estimated 46 percent of the district’s Class of 2019 met current CSU admissions requirements.

“I commend and thank the chancellor and Cal State Board of Trustees for responding thoughtfully to our community of children and youth advocates. We are partners in preparing our young people for career and life,” a staffer speaking for L.A. Unified school board member Monica Garcia told trustees Wednesday. Garcia co-sponsored a resolution last June opposing CSU’s proposal.

The chancellor will submit a progress report to the board in March 2021, and then a final report by January 2022 that will include the findings from the independent analysis, where the CSU stands on growing the number of qualified STEM teachers, and steps taken to increase awareness on the new requirement across communities, among other things.

• Read more: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.

Until this month, the nation’s second-largest school district had unique court-ordered mandates to improve and expand services for its nearly 62,000 special education students, stemming from a 1996 legal settlement. In 2003, the agreement was modified to include a third-party “independent monitor,” who meticulously reviewed and published annual reports on L.A. Unified’s compliance in 18 areas — such as whether students with disabilities receive all of the services mandated in their Individualized Education Program and how often they were subject to out-of-school suspensions.

The so-called consent decree governing special education formally ended Dec. 31, following an agreement reached in August with the lawsuit’s original plaintiffs. For district officials and some disability advocates, the decision is recognition of having met “nearly all” of the consent decree’s mandates. Officials added that there’s now flexibility to shift L.A. Unified’s focus to working on its compliance with the state’s special ed performance targets, and to continue building local-level supports that cater to “the individual needs of our students.”

“The most exciting part about this is this chapter of our work will be guided by educators and parents rather than lawyers,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said Wednesday. He added that the district is “not leaving compliance behind, because that’s a big part of the work.”

While there is optimism from some parents that the decree’s end will spur fresh conversations about how to best serve students with disabilities, it remains unclear for many how the district intends to hold itself accountable for serving these students, who make up 13.6 percent of L.A. Unified’s enrollment.

“Parents are deeply worried that when the oversight is lost, it will be that much harder for students with special needs to achieve success in LAUSD,” one parent told the school board’s special education committee in September.

There is still work to be done, as independent monitor David Rostetter wrote in his final Dec. 13 report. Thousands of special education students are reportedly receiving less than 70 percent of their required services. Many of L.A. Unified’s more than 1,100 district schools remain out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, with about one in five lacking an accessible main entrance. And academic outcomes for students with disabilities are trailing statewide averages: In 2018-19, 11.81 percent of all L.A. Unified students with disabilities met or exceeded state English standards, while 9.41 percent met or exceeded them in math. State averages for this group, comparatively, were 16.26 percent and 12.61 percent.

Higher standards for these students —and more expansive teacher trainings — would ensure those “closest to students with special needs have the information and support they need and can work together to better serve these kids,” said Lisa Mosko, a mother of two children with learning disabilities and Speak UP’s director of special education advocacy. “We need to raise the bar.”

Progress and a change in focus

While L.A. Unified struggled to check certain boxes under the consent decree, the independent monitor’s report acknowledges marked progress in several areas:

● The percentage of students with disabilities receiving out-of-school suspensions was at its lowest ever in 2019 — 1.1 percent, compared to 14.1 percent during the 2004-05 school year. The report credits this in part to L.A. Unified’s decision to ban willful defiance suspensions in 2013.

Read more: California has voted to expand its ban on “willful defiance” suspensions. A look at how an even more expansive 2013 reform has played out in L.A. Unified

● About 60 percent of students with mild to moderate disabilities are currently spending the majority of their day in general education classes, a percentage district officials note has been “steadily increasing.” (Some parents dispute whether inclusion in general ed is always beneficial).

● The district is fulfilling 99.9 percent of the requests it receives to translate students’ IEPs into a language other than English within 30 days — up from 8 percent at the start of the decree. Nearly 22 percent of students are English learners.

● The district has seen “tremendous success” in combating implicit bias in special ed evaluations. As of 2019, 92.5 percent of black students classified as “emotionally disturbed” met the legal criteria for that special ed identification. In 2004-05, it was only 2.7 percent, according to Disability Rights California.

“LAUSD has come an incredibly long way,” David German, an attorney who represented the advocates and parents who sued, told Speak UP. Ending the consent decree “means they’re complying with their obligations under federal law. They got up to the baseline, which was a big deal.”

L.A. Unified had been one of the few districts in California held to a special education consent decree.

Moving forward, L.A. Unified is “intensify[ing] its efforts” to meet and track its compliance with 14 state performance indicators, a district spokeswoman said— many of which overlap with the now-retired consent decree requirements. L.A. Unified is not on-target with about half of the state’s performance indicators, according to data shown in a Sept. 19 committee presentation.

A chart from a September board committee presentation showing how many of the consent decree’s 18 target areas (left) overlap with the state’s indicators (right). (L.A. Unified)

Beutner was hesitant to detail specific ways the district’s priorities are shifting, saying, “each of these [state] measures are somewhat narrow; [the district is] looking at the bigger picture.” He and other officials did note that a central focus continues to be placing more students with disabilities in the least restrictive learning environment, alongside peers in general ed classes.

“We are making a big push as a school district to put all of our resources closer to schools and the communities they serve,” Beutner said.

It’s not yet known how much money L.A. Unified will get from the state in 2020-21; Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his latest budget proposal this month, earmarking nearly $900 million in services for students with disabilities. L.A. Unified in 2019-20 budgeted about $1 billion of its nearly $8 billion general fund for special education.

Read More: LAUSD approves $7.8 billion budget for next year: Here’s what it means for high-needs students, lowest-performing schools and district finances

As the district transitions, Mosko has stressed her disenchantment with the state’s special education standards to officials. They’re subpar, she says, considering research that 80 to 85 percent of special education students can “meet the same achievement standards as other students if they are given specially designed instruction” and supports. The state’s academic goals as of 2018-19 were for 15.9 percent or more of students with disabilities to be proficient in English and at least 13.6 percent to be proficient in math.

“I would like to see a more aggressive stance [by the district] in terms of, ‘We should be at 80 percent. How do we get there?’” she said. “I want to see more urgency.”

Anthony Aguilar, chief of Special Education, Equity and Access, confirmed Wednesday that the district is “taking an extra look at our academic achievement. … Even though we’ve made some positive gains, we recognize that we need to accelerate.”

Lisa Mosko speaks at Sept. 19 special ed committee meeting.

Read More: Teacher Spotlight: Napa Street’s Polly Buller-Ulm on encouraging parents of special-needs students to ‘dream big’ for them

District 3 board member Scott Schmerelson, who chairs the board’s special ed committee, said he “absolutely” supports the district’s choice to home in on compliance with state indicators. While he initially questioned whether the district had “the systems in place, the people in place” post-consent decree to continue prioritizing obligations like fulfilling students’ IEPs, his concerns were assuaged after discussions with district officials, he said.

“I’m very confident that we will continue to monitor all of these services,” he said.

Accountability moving forward

Parents seemed less confident at another public hearing in September, where they expressed fears about the loss of the independent monitor.

“My concern is once oversight is removed … the schools have implicit bias to protect themselves from liability, to protect their general funding,” one parent said. “They are also on time constraints, so that they cannot take the time to hear my concerns day in and day out.”

The independent monitor hosted hearings like these for community members twice a year, and published public, yearly reports, often chock-full of data and upward of 40 pages long. When asked if L.A. Unified will continue both of those practices, Beutner said the district “intends to continue to share information on progress toward all goals” and to host public forums in both the local communities as well as in the central offices.

Pulling from current staff, L.A. Unified also recently assembled a 17-person Compliance and Performance Monitoring Legal Services Department to help “oversee internal monitoring processes to ensure that programs and services operate in a manner that promotes program accessibility, equity and compliance,” the district spokeswoman said.

Funds that had been paying for external oversight will be “available to support the internal oversight” of special ed services, she added. There’s been discrepancies on the cost of the oversight: Beutner in an interview with the Los Angeles Times last summer estimated $3 million to $5 million a year. The independent monitor put the cost in recent years at “less than $800,000 on average.”

Looking at the state’s special education indicators, they don’t appear to address some areas where the independent monitor said L.A. Unified needs continued work. A few examples, with the district’s responses:

● A decline in the number of qualified providers. The percentage of special ed teachers with a special education credential has been decreasing since 2013-14, from 96.4 percent that year to 84.9 percent as of June 2019. The district didn’t offer any plans to remediate this, stating “the issue of qualified teachers is one of statewide and perhaps national concern … due to factors such as retirements and declining number of teachers entering the workforce.”

● Accessibility. Making schools accessible to all students has been “one of the least successful parts of reform” to L.A. Unified’s special ed system, the report states. While the school board in 2017 passed a three-phase plan to make all schools accessible, the report notes that the first phase alone runs through 2025, and reportedly requires an extra $1 billion on top of the $600 million the board allocated.

The district emphasized that accessibility and “ADA-related goals” will be a continued focus, in accordance with federal law.

Board member Scott Schmerelson speaks at Sept. 19 special ed committee meeting.

Schmerelson said board members will “make sure that our legal department is following through on any complaints that parents may have about services being received or not received, and acting on it immediately.”

He believes “everything should be done at the school site.” Local district superintendents, their special education administrators and school principals especially, he said, should be overseeing whether students receive all of their required services and working to remediate parents’ complaints in lieu of legal action.

Parents with complaints are urged to use their principal as “the first point of contact,” the district spokeswoman said. She noted the Division of Special Education also fields concerns and complaints through its call center and Complaint Response Unit. Parents can use the California Department of Education’s complaint process as well.

Mosko, the parent and Speak UP advocate, said the Division of Special Education has been “very responsive when I request information.” She said she’s been “heartened” by recent leadership there and “they seem to be prioritizing transparency of information more.”

Mosko said she will continue to advocate, especially on the “systemic issue” of not enough teachers being trained to properly serve students with disabilities. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, she noted, doesn’t require special education teachers to know federal law as it pertains to students’ IEPs. And general education teachers, at most, might take one or two “very general courses” on special ed.

The district has increased funding to provide for more professional development opportunities, Beutner said. Specific amounts can’t be shared until district schools are given their initial budgets in mid-February.

Ultimately, it’s “a bottom-up transformation” that will make all the difference, Mosko said. “If people on the ground don’t have the information and the training and the knowledge … all you get is a bunch of lawsuits and a bunch of kids lost in the system.”

Firefighters allow parents into the school where 17 children and nine adults were treated for jet fuel exposure at Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy, California, on Jan. 14. (Photo by Scott Varley/MediaNews Group/Torrance Daily Breeze via Getty Images)

L.A. Unified schools on Wednesday opened as normal with communities still processing an emergency jet fuel dump the day prior that inflicted minor injuries on dozens of adults and children across six schools — five of them elementary schools.

“We came out and we were playing, and the airplane was outside and we thought it was rain,” recounted Park Avenue Elementary sixth-grader Josue Burgos to the LA Times. “But then we knew it was throwing gas on us, and everybody started to run.”

A Shanghai-bound Delta Air Lines flight out of LAX had to make an emergency return to the Los Angeles airport around noon Tuesday, citing engine problems, and during its descent discharged fuel over a 5-mile swath above and around southeast Los Angeles. First responders treated about 60 people, at least 20 of them children, for skin or upper respiratory irritation. No one was transported to the hospital.

“It’s not an experience we want for our students or any of us,” Park Avenue Elementary principal Ramona Garcia said at a Wednesday morning news conference, where she thanked local response teams. Two classes had been on the playground when the jet fuel rained down. “I feel very tired, but thank God that everybody is fine.”

WATCH #LIVE: LAUSD Superintendent @AustinLASchools holds news conference after Delta plane dumps fuel near schools on approach to LAX https://t.co/9oYILXPkGL https://t.co/6vilqL63mh

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) January 15, 2020

Directly hit schools were Park Avenue Elementary in Cudahy, 93rd Street Elementary in Green Meadows and Jordan High School in Florence-Firestone, the district confirmed Wednesday. Emergency responders also went to Tweedy and San Gabriel Avenue elementary schools in South Gate and Graham Elementary in Florence-Graham.

Local officials at the conference, held at Park Avenue Elementary, said they didn’t anticipate any lingering or serious health concerns from the fuel dump. Cyrus Rangan, with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, acknowledged that there are “unknowns,” though, in terms of the environmental impacts.

Tuesday’s incident “was quite unprecedented,” Rangan said. “Nothing like this has ever really happened before [here].”

This is a Delta flight appearing to dump fuel over a primary school before landing in LA this morning.

70 firefighters and paramedics are on the scene assessing those affected. @9NewsAUS

pic.twitter.com/XzWCuS4hPc

— Charles Croucher (@ccroucher9) January 14, 2020

Fuel dumping is very rare and is used only in case of emergencies or if pilots have to reach a safe landing weight, which was reportedly the case with Tuesday’s flight. Many questions remain, however, especially following the public release Wednesday of radio conversations between the pilot and air traffic control, where the pilot initially stated that a fuel dump wasn’t necessary. Federal regulations direct planes to dump fuel over designated unpopulated areas and at higher altitudes if possible.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the matter.

The affected schools reopened Wednesday thanks to what Rangan deemed “above and beyond” efforts by the district to clean the schools in tandem with the County of Los Angeles Fire Department Health Hazardous Materials Division and the Delta Airlines Environmental Compliance Department. This included washing all outdoor lunch tables, outdoor play equipment, drinking fountains and playground surfaces, and activating air-conditioning systems throughout the night for ventilation.

L.A. Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner tried to assure community members that everything was “back to normal.” “Students are safe, staff are safe,” he said.

To “put things in perspective,” he also noted that about 165 lives had been at risk on the Delta plane, which landed safely. “We’re grateful that Delta was able to get the plane back on the ground,” he said. “It is unfortunate it happened not just in a school community, but in all of the school communities that were impacted.”

The scene of Park Ave Elementary School in #Cudahy where children were exposed to fuel being dumped by plane. @latrafficgal @NBCLA pic.twitter.com/t6uZE71TNT

— Katherine Picazo (@KatNBCLA) January 14, 2020

The accident still rattled many in the local community.

“Planes cannot dump anywhere,” local resident Rosana Yancor told NBC Los Angeles. “Has to be another solution.”

“I was shocked and angered,” board member Jackie Goldberg, whose District 5 seat includes Park Avenue Elementary, said in a statement Tuesday. “I will continue to advocate for our Park Avenue Elementary School family, and provide updates when more information is available. I am sorry our school community had to go through this very scary incident.”

A plane returning to LAX dumped jet fuel over nearby elementary schools, injuring 44 people including at least 20 children https://t.co/K49xNxd72u pic.twitter.com/oWFJPmhHBQ

— Tom Houlehan (@Tom_Houlehan) January 15, 2020

Some have pointed out that southeast Los Angeles County, which holds some of L.A.’s most impoverished communities, is not new to environmental injustices. A toxin-emitting battery recycling plant operated in the area until five years ago, according to the LA Times, and Park Avenue Elementary itself closed for eight months in the 1990s because “tar-like petroleum sludge began to seep up from the ground.”

“Why is it always our communities having to deal with the brunt of these issues?” Cudahy Mayor Elizabeth Alcantar told the Times.

A few commenters on ABC7’s Facebook live stream of Wednesday’s conference voiced similar frustrations.

“I couldn’t imagine this happening in any other type of neighborhood,” one said.

Another wrote: “Wonder if fuel would have been dropped over a more affluent area?”

Children cover their noses and mouths as they leave Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy on Jan. 14. (Photo by Scott Varley/MediaNews Group/Torrance Daily Breeze via Getty Images)

The district declined to answer questions from The 74 on whether L.A. Unified is considering filing a lawsuit against Delta Air Lines, or if it’s aware of parents who intend to do so. Dana Debel, Delta’s managing director of state and local government affairs, declined to comment at Wednesday’s conference on the hows and whys of the incident prior to hearing from the Federal Aviation Administration’s investigation, but said the company is “here” for the schools and local community.

“We worked through the night with LAUSD … to make sure all the schools were safe and available to open this morning for all the students,” she said. “We are going to continue to be here to partner with the community, not just with the school district, but the community at large, to make sure we are addressing the needs of this community going forward.”

Debel added that Delta has created a hotline number at 1-800-441-5955 with “dedicated” bilingual agents ready to answer any questions or concerns community members might have. Delta is also in touch with local officials, such as the Cudahy mayor’s office.

L.A. Unified in a Wednesday news release said it will continue to provide timely updates at lausd.net, KLCS-TV and on all social media platforms. Families can also call the district’s hotline at 213-443-1300.

2019 Hamilton High School graduation (Hamilton High School via Instagram)

As the country’s largest four-year public university considers adding a fourth-year math/quantitative reasoning requirement to its admissions standards, new data obtained by The 74 shows less than a quarter of L.A. Unified seniors last year took such a class.

About 23.5 percent of seniors — or 8,472 of 36,124 — were enrolled in a fourth-year math/quantitative reasoning course during the 2018-19 school year, according to the district’s Office of General Counsel. The California State University system, which spans 23 campuses and serves some 481,000 students, will decide in the coming weeks whether to tack on this type of elective class to its admissions requirements for prospective freshmen, starting in fall 2027 when current fifth-graders enter college.

That more than 75 percent of seniors in the state’s largest school district were not enrolled in what could become a required CSU admissions course elicited serious concerns from advocates already worried about college access and readiness among L.A. Unified graduates, less than half of whom were on track to be eligible for CSU admissions last year under the current standards.

This should be “raising alarm bells for everyone,” said Elisha Smith Arrillaga, executive director of the Education Trust-West. “We need to have a serious conversation as a state about who has access to college and who doesn’t.”

Data also revealed that of the 35 math/quantitative reasoning courses L.A. Unified counted in 2018-19, all were math, with at least 80 percent listed as precalculus or calculus. This, advocates added, underscores the likely hurdles districts will face offering additional courses to all of their students — especially classes other than math. CSU in its proposal has touted the possibility of students taking quantitative reasoning courses, such as statistics, computer science or personal finance, to fulfill the requirement.

These findings speak to the necessity of having data-driven policy, said Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity. CSU’s proposal, which purports that the “majority of California students already meet the proposed requirement,” leans on data limited to students who applied to the Cal State system or who are already currently enrolled. This, advocates argue, discounts students who want a college education but who are already struggling to meet the bar for admissions.

“Why do we have to rely just on CSU data and public records requests to get this kind of information?” Siqueiros asked in response to The 74’s findings. “That is no good way to make very significant policy changes or admissions changes to the CSU.”

• Read More: With less than half of LAUSD’s prospective graduates eligible for California State University system, college trustees eye adding another requirement

James T. Minor, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor and senior strategist who presented the official proposal to trustees, said he “would find it difficult to believe” that L.A. Unified students don’t have access to courses beyond math that would satisfy the prospective requirement.

Under the proposal, he noted, students could also complete certain CSU-approved science or Career and Technical Education courses, or enroll in a qualifying class at a local community college. There would also be an automatic waiver for students at under-resourced schools who still don’t offer permissible courses by the 2027 rollout, though a formal provision and parameters haven’t been fleshed out yet.

Minor added that he disagrees with advocates’ tying CSU’s proposal to the systemic college readiness challenges statewide and in districts like L.A. The proposal’s focus, he said, is mainly on students already prepped to attend CSU, and whether it’s reasonable to ask those students to take an additional course to boost their preparedness.

If “nothing changed, LAUSD would still have the same circumstance — that a very high percentage of their students would not be meeting [the] requirements,” he said. “Is that a major challenge for public education in the state of California? Absolutely. Should we be working on that challenge? Absolutely. But it’s beyond the scope of this proposal.”

Still, CSU officials reason that the additional admissions requirement would promote equity, in part by expanding marginalized students’ access to more rigorous pre-college coursework and opportunities in STEM-linked fields. They’ve also touted the benefits of quantitative reasoning-based courses in teaching problem-solving and critical thinking.

The system’s Board of Trustees, which ramped up conversations on the proposal over the summer and has the power to approve the change, is discussing it again Wednesday morning, with an official vote delayed to January.

Existing barriers in L.A.

Students in districts like L.A. already confront glaring disparities in college access. Less than half of L.A. Unified’s Class of 2019 cohort — a projected 46 percent — was eligible to apply to the CSU under current admissions standards, which require a C or better in three high school math courses: Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II.

If that percentage holds, it would mark a slight dip from the prior two years, though it still sits above above the 43 percent statewide average publicly available for 2018. About half of California school districts don’t align their graduation requirements to CSU admissions standards, like L.A. Unified does.

The district has also cited concerns with procuring the funds to implement such a proposal. L.A. Unified has been walking a financial tightrope; it lost a June bid for a $500 million annual parcel tax and continues to struggle to rein in deficit spending and adopt balanced budgets that appease county overseers.

“We’re strong supporters of rigor, and we do want to prepare our students for a four-year university. However, we also know that that takes time. It takes money. It takes communication. It takes capacity,” said Katherine Trejo, a former L.A. Unified student who now manages United Way of Greater Los Angeles’s Young Civic Leaders Program.

Both Trejo and college sophomore Mariel Mendoza said they attended high schools in L.A. that only offered one fourth-year math/quantitative reasoning course.

For Trejo, who graduated from a downtown L.A. high school in 2012, it was an AP Calculus class. Her pilot school, unlike most other district schools, required that fourth year. So she took it first semester senior year — failed — and was forced to retake precalculus before graduating.

Mendoza’s Koreatown high school, which she graduated from in 2018, offered an AP statistics course. Students including herself avoided the class, though, she said, because they didn’t feel prepared to take on the advanced material.

The dearth in course diversity and many students’ unawareness of college admissions standards was “heartbreaking,” Mendoza said. In the case of the latest 2018-19 data out of L.A. Unified, it’s unclear whether low enrollment in those fourth-year classes was mainly attributable to capacity issues because of teacher shortages, or if it was also due in part to students choosing not to take them.

“I’m a student of color, and coming from a school like mine [that didn’t have a lot of resources] — we want to have the opportunity to attend a four-year college,” she said. Mendoza is attending both California State University-Los Angeles and Los Angeles City College part-time, majoring in business with plans to be an accountant.

• Read More: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

L.A. Unified has made some strides in getting students college-ready, Trejo noted. About 16 percent of the district’s 2018 graduates enrolled in the CSU system, for example, up from about 12.5 percent in 2014. But even L.A. Unified officials themselves say there is still considerable work to be done to ensure more minority and low-income students have access to postsecondary education.

L.A. Unified’s school board passed a resolution in June opposing CSU’s proposal, claiming it would “further exacerbate barriers to accessing the CSU system” and “ignores the real challenges of limited quantitative course offerings and teachers required to meet such a requirement.” Now-former Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson acknowledged at that board meeting that, “I don’t know that we are necessarily prepared” to teach a fourth year to all students, citing “the staffing requirements, the partnership requirements” that would be needed to “move forward elegantly.”

Kelly Gonez, a district board member who spoke out against the proposal at a CSU public hearing in August, continues to be disenchanted by the university system’s solution to creating equity.

“The change will disproportionately impact our students with the highest needs, including underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation students,” she wrote in a statement Thursday to The 74. “I appreciate the CSU’s effort to strengthen the transition to college, but we can build better pathways without denying opportunities for our most marginalized students.”

• Read More: Equity advocates push back at CSU hearing on new admissions requirement: “We’ll just be re-creating the same systemic inequities that already exist”

Seeing the data differently

Part of the discord surrounding the proposal is rooted in differing opinions about its scope — whom it ultimately affects, and what data matters as it moves forward.

From CSU’s perspective, the proposal is “concerned with CSU-bound students,” Minor, the assistant vice chancellor and senior strategist, said. “[We’re trying to discern]: Among the students who will arrive to the CSU, who are meeting the [current] requirements, and is it reasonable to ask them to take one additional course to strengthen their preparation for college success?”

From that angle, the data in the proposal tell a more optimistic story. A reported 93 percent of the 126,071 regularly admitted fall 2018 applicants would have met the prospective requirement, according to information acquired through CSU’s recent data-sharing agreement with the California Department of Education. That trend held up fairly well across racial lines, with 88 percent of African-American applicants and 91 percent of Latino applicants having already taken a course that could count.

For L.A. Unified specifically, a reported 91 percent of the 15,169 regularly admitted students in fall 2018 would have met the suggested new standard.

When asked whether there was any intention to conduct further research to glean high school-level data, Minor responded affirmatively but provided no details, calling the idea of amassing statewide high school data “sort of a false setup.”

“We have to have reasoned discussions. … Not simply impassioned, sort of emotional pleas based on worry about what might happen in the future,” Minor said. “I think we all collectively have to have the courage to go forward.”

Advocates, for now, remain unconvinced and say they will continue their opposition. The Campaign for College Opportunity and Ed Trust-West plan to be at Wednesday’s meeting, urging trustees to press pause on the measure.

If it moves forward, “We plan to galvanize all the forces,” Siqueiros said.

Nicole Ochi, lead attorney for Public Advocates, asks the L.A. Unified school board to reject the LCAP at an Oct. 1 meeting.

The California Department of Education is being asked once again to intervene in a legal complaint that charges L.A. Unified and its county overseers with failing to ensure that high-needs students receive the more than $1 billion annually they are due in state funding.

Public Advocates and the Covington & Burling LLP law firm — acting on behalf of two district parents — appealed to the state Friday after the district last month roundly dismissed charges made in the groups’ July complaint that it doesn’t transparently document how $1.14 billion in annual state funding earmarked for low-income students, English learners and foster youth is resulting in improved services for those students.

L.A. Unified “has willingly accepted the disproportionately greater increase in funds it has received as a result of its high need student population relative to other districts,” the appeal read. “In return, LAUSD must meet the same transparency and engagement requirements as all other districts.”

Including the $1.14 billion, L.A. Unified receives more than $5 billion annually from the state’s education funding formula. If the state, which initially declined to get involved, steps in, it could force the district to continue reworking its recently approved LCAP (Local Control Accountability Plan) for the current 2019-20 year. The LCAP is a behemoth document that all California districts are required to submit annually to outline their goals and actions for boosting student outcomes over a three-year period.

The school board tepidly passed the latest version of its LCAP Oct. 1, after district officials produced two revised iterations last month in response to the legal complaint. The deadline for approval by the L.A. County Office of Education is Oct. 8.

Only one board member refused to greenlight the LCAP, expressing earnest concern with parents’ inability to understand the document. Some 25 people spoke solely on the LCAP agenda item at the Oct. 1 meeting, many of them parents pleading with board members to reject it and implement a more robust parent engagement process.

“All [speakers] are talking about is the lack of transparency and training for parents to become partners. I don’t understand — this is the fourth year I’ve heard the same story,” Scott Schmerelson said. “Something is very, very wrong.”

● Read more: In new legal complaint, parents say LAUSD is failing to ensure high-needs students are getting the funding they deserve

Some of the unresolved issues cited in a memo leading up to the appeal:

● The continuing practice of “bundling multiple, separate, and often unrelated programs” under a single umbrella category in the LCAP that “prevents stakeholders and the public from seeing how much money is spent on each program.”

● Failure to accurately document expenditures. According to a Public Advocates memo, the district changed the wording of a $238 million expenditure in the latest LCAP from an “increase in salaries for teachers of high-need students” to “Additional Teachers” without any explanation. In another case, the memo says planned expenditures for English learners tripled from $7.8 million to $22.9 million between the two LCAP updates last month, but “none of these radical shifts were explained.”

● The lack of a “meaningful community engagement process.” L.A. Unified offered a five-day window for public feedback in mid-September on the 274-page document.

Nicole Ochi, lead attorney for Public Advocates, acknowledged in a call Friday the challenge L.A. Unified faces in rendering the information accessible — making ongoing pressure from advocates necessary, she said.

“It is hard for a district the size of LAUSD to completely transform things in a short amount of time, especially if they don’t have the processes in place to do that, and they don’t have a culture necessarily to do that,” Ochi said. “I’m not surprised that despite their efforts it still falls short — but I think the continued advocacy and pressure will hopefully result in those changes happening.”

Lausd Final (Text)

The same parties have taken the district to task before. Along with ACLU of Southern California, they last sued L.A. Unified in 2015 for allegedly misallocating $450 million annually in funds designated for high-needs students. They won, with the resulting 2017 settlement prompting a $150 million payout over three years to 50 of the district’s highest-needs schools.

Next steps in this latest case remain unclear, however, until the state education department responds. It “received the appeal and [is] in the process of reviewing it,” a spokeswoman confirmed in an email Monday. She added that the state has 60 days to issue a decision.

The district on Monday also confirmed it had received the appeal late Friday and said it was reviewing it before deciding on next steps.

A promise to do better next time

In the July legal complaint, L.A. Unified’s LCAPs — past and present — were described as so “opaque” and “rife with fundamental errors” that they not only fail to identify how high-needs students are benefiting from targeted funding, but also “undermine basic notions of transparency and equity and thwart meaningful efforts at local engagement and accountability.”

● Read more: LAUSD approves $7.8 billion budget for next year: Here’s what it means for high-needs students, lowest-performing schools and district finances

Public Advocates and Covington & Burling LLP had asked the state to intervene immediately, circumventing regular procedure. But because the county Office of Education had until Oct. 8 to approve the district’s 2019-20 LCAP, it was re-routed to the district and the county first.

L.A. Unified proceeded to produce two updated versions of its LCAP in September: one on Sept. 12 and another on Sept. 20. Public Advocates said in a statement that the updates “provided more detailed descriptions of services, reflection of effectiveness, and disaggregation of expenditures.” It added, however, that even the latest LCAP remains “legally deficient,” appearing to “wordsmith its way out of fundamental transparency and accountability problems.”

District officials, while noting a few corrections, dismissed arguments of legal deficiency in a formal Sept. 20 response. They argued that “with a district as large as LAUSD,” addressing all services at a “granular” level would “make the LCAP unnecessarily cumbersome and inaccessible to the public.” It added that since the LCAP is reformatted every three years — with the 2019-20 document the last in the most recent three-year cycle — next year made more sense for implementing any significant structural changes.

“The District felt it would be inappropriate to substantially restructure its actions in the third and final year of its three-year LCAP, but may make such changes for the 2020-23 LCAP,” the statement read.

LAUSD Response to Public Advocates LCAP (Text)

The appeal to L.A. Unified’s formal response, filed Friday, called the district’s legal assertions “erroneous.” It asks the state to “deem LAUSD’s September 20, 2019 Board-approved amended LCAP fundamentally deficient and order LAUSD to further revise its 2019-20 LCAP.” The parties also hope the appeal will result in “more clarification, for LAUSD and for other districts as well, about how to interpret the law,” Ochi added.

While they hope the LCAP is revisited, Ochi acknowledged that it’s possible that the state might just “order [LAUSD] to stop doing these things going forward.”

A prescription to “do better next time” was an overarching theme of the Oct. 1 board meeting. Board members approved the Sept. 20 version of the LCAP in a 6-1 vote, despite all of them expressing some level of wariness about the document’s existing deficiencies.

● Read more: ‘Voters are tired of you’: A week after parcel tax defeat, LAUSD parents rail at district leaders during 2019-20 budget hearing

“We do have a new opportunity to reset [with the next three-year cycle] ….which is ultimately why I’ll support it, though somewhat reluctantly,” board member Nick Melvoin said at the meeting. He added that, “If next year’s LCAP isn’t a more user-friendly and visionary document, I’ll be voting ‘no’ … [But] if we deny the LCAP at this late stage, funding for our most vulnerable students that we’ve heard a lot about will be put in jeopardy, as will our entire budget.”

Board member Kelly Gonez said similarly. “While I don’t feel great,” she said, “I don’t know that voting ‘no’ solves any of the problems that are raised.”

As California this month expanded a statewide ban on suspending younger students for defiant behavior, lessons on how this increasingly sweeping school discipline reform may play out can be found in Los Angeles, which barred such suspensions on an even broader scale six years ago.

Previously in California, “willful defiance” suspensions were not permitted in grades K-3. Beginning in July 2020, under the new state law, they will be prohibited for students in both traditional and charter schools from kindergarten to eighth grade. Expanding the suspension ban to the older grades was contentious, as was the use of the subjective term “willful defiance,” defined in state code as “disrupt[ing] school activities or otherwise willfully def[ying]” authority. It can include the use of cell phones in class, wearing a hat and even chewing bubble gum.

Los Angeles Unified was the first California district to ban suspensions for disruptive behavior in 2013 and did so in an even more comprehensive way, covering all public schools in grades K-12. Local officials and advocates reflecting this week on the district’s policy shift six years later called it “a huge step” forward in reforming school discipline. They touted a drastic drop in suspensions — a more than sixfold decrease in district schools between 2011-12 and 2017-18 alone — resulting in thousands more instructional days for students. This is especially notable for students of color and those with disabilities, who have historically been disproportionately suspended in school.

“We have come far with tackling school discipline, moving away from punitive consequences and treating our students with respect, love and compassion,” school board member Mónica García, who led the formal proposal for the ban, wrote in a Sept. 12 email.

But advocates added that it is just that: a step. The larger “culture shift” away from school discipline and toward de-escalation and positive interventions, they said, is still very much a work-in-progress. The district in 2018-19 set aside more than five times as much funding for school police than for restorative justice programming in its $7.5 billion operating budget. And racial disparities in suspensions have remained — widened, in cases — since the ban passed, according to state education department data.

“LAUSD has to do more,” said Amir Whitaker, a staff attorney with ACLU of Southern California. “We just have to see more priority in support for the students.”

“The right direction”

Advocates all cited the ban’s principal victory as the drop in suspensions and the corresponding hike in instructional days for marginalized students.

A year before the ban in 2011-12, L.A. Unified doled out 17,595 suspensions at district schools— more than a quarter of which were for “willful defiance,” according to education department data. By 2017-18, the most recent year of verified state data, that total had plummeted to 2,796.

“The district has made tons of progress” when looking at those numbers, said Victor Leung, senior staff attorney with ACLU SoCal. “The ban really did its job in dramatically reducing the number of suspensions throughout the district.”

Suspensions at charters within L.A. Unified boundaries also dropped from 8,974 in 2011-12 to 3,627 in 2017-18, although these schools continue to suspend students at a higher rate than traditional schools — about 2.3 percent versus 0.6 percent, respectively.

Suspensions cost students learning days, which research shows can hinder their academic achievement and increase their chances of dropping out. And marginalized students — black and brown students and those with disabilities — often pay the highest price. The year before the ban passed, black pupils at L.A. Unified were losing about 25.5 instructional days to suspensions per 100 students. Despite making up about 9 percent of the district population, they represented 28.6 percent of those being suspended.

The math now tallies to about 4 days lost per 100 black students — a heartening development for equity advocates like Aurea Montes-Rodriguez.

“Students are staying in school, which puts them in a much stronger position to have an opportunity to complete, and be successful in, their academic experience,” said Montes-Rodriguez, executive vice president of Community Coalition, one of the central advocacy groups that campaigned for the 2013 ban.

Similar to the debate surrounding the statewide measure, there were early concerns in L.A. that eliminating these suspensions would embolden unruly students and disrupt classroom instruction for other students. Current board president Richard Vladovic had supported the ban as an experiment, saying in 2013 he would be “the first to stop it” if it proved disruptive to learning. Vladovic was unavailable for comment this week. The local teachers union also didn’t respond to LA School Report’s request for comment. Its parent organization, the influential California Teachers Association, hasn’t affirmatively supported or opposed the latest state-level ban, though it’s said suspensions should be used as a last resort and that districts must provide sufficient resources for alternative discipline programs.

One student from Garfield High School in East Los Angeles told the school board at a July 2 meeting that he’d seen improvements in school climate since the ban passed.

“As a student, I feel that the school environment has changed,” he said. “I feel it’s changed for the better. I feel it’s become safer for students; they no longer have to fear about penalties for superficial infractions: wearing a hat, chewing gum, having earbuds in. Instead of punishing them and taking time away from their education, students are allowed to stay in class.”

The percentage of middle and high schoolers feeling some degree of safety in L.A. Unified schools was about 90 percent in 2018-19, according to the district’s annual school experience survey — the highest it’s been in at least seven years.

At the July 2 meeting, the board passed a resolution backing the state’s expansion of the ban, which is now permanent for grades K-5 and runs through 2025 for grades 6-8. Last week, Superintendent Austin Beutner also voiced his support for the statewide measure, known as Senate Bill 419.

“Since 2013, when Los Angeles Unified adopted the School Climate Bill of Rights, we have established restorative justice programs and other non-punitive strategies to promote positive behavior and ameliorate issues that might otherwise lead to a suspension,” Beutner said in a statement. “Senate Bill 419 will support our work to keep students in school where they have the opportunities to succeed.”

“Slow progress”

Paired with that optimism, though, is recognition that there’s more work to do. Advocates expressed concerns with potential inaccuracies in discipline reporting, lingering racial biases in schools and insufficient funding for positive intervention efforts.

Whitaker said he’s heard reports of teachers or administrators pulling students from class but just not marking it down, which he deems “counterproductive.” At some schools, he added, suspensions are down but referrals to law enforcement are up.

And black students, at the least, are still being suspended at higher rates than their white peers. Between 2011-12 and 2017-18, the number of black students in district schools being suspended fell from 5,037 to 1,004. Yet they made up a growing proportion of the suspensions: 35.9 percent in 2017-18 versus 28.6 percent in 2011-12.

Comparatively, suspensions for white students, who have similar enrollment numbers to their black peers, fell — from 1,258 in 2011-12 to 163 in 2017-18 — but so did their share of suspensions, from 7.1 percent to 5.8 percent.

• Read More: Even as California’s student suspension rate fell by more than a third since 2011, the ‘discipline gap’ for blacks remains as wide as ever

“What you’re seeing is the slow progress,” Montes-Rodriguez said. “There are still systemic issues or racial biases within the district and our schools where black students are being profiled or disciplined in harsher ways than other students.”

A fundamental part of successful school discipline reform, advocates noted, is a “culture shift” away from zero-tolerance policies and toward restorative justice. Restorative justice focuses on training school staff to de-escalate conflicts and rebuild relationships and trust with students who act out rather than throwing them out of class.

When L.A. Unified approved the ban in 2013, it also promised to provide restorative justice training to all district schools by 2020. Sixty-five percent of schools have completed restorative justice training so far, and “all schools will be considered fully trained” by the end of 2019-20, district spokeswoman Shannon Haber wrote in an email Friday.

But from anecdotal reports, Leung said he doesn’t believe the training is “on track.”

“The district hasn’t invested enough staff or resources or training to ensure that it’s implemented with fidelity across the district,” he said. “We know a lot of people who haven’t heard of it, don’t think it’s on their campuses, and we’ve heard others who say for their campus, what restorative justice has meant so far is just the district head office providing a binder of materials and telling them to read it.”

In 2018-19, the district allocated $11.03 million in targeted school spending on restorative justice, compared with the $57.8 million it set aside for school police. That discrepancy reveals a continuing “mis-priority” in the district, Whitaker said.

Restorative justice includes “everyone, down to the groundskeeper and the custodian and the nurses,” he said. “It takes a significant investment and there’s no shortcut around it.”

Spending in 2019-20 was less clear. No police funding information was specified in the latest budget. District spokeswoman Barbara Jones wrote in an email Tuesday that the “overall budgeted expenditures for School Police was reduced in 2019-20 because some of the administrative costs were moved to the Central Office,” but couldn’t provide a spending amount.

Restorative justice funding didn’t decrease in 2019-20, but nearly $9 million was moved to the Student Equity Needs Index “to provide schools with more autonomy in how to fund implementation of the practices,” spokeswoman Haber said. The index is a ranking system that distributes designated funds to schools based on a variety of factors, such as local gun violence, asthma rates and chronic absenteeism.

“We need to constantly review and re-evaluate the needs of our schools and also allow for more local control so that schools are getting the services that best serve them,” García, the board member, said Sept. 12 in talking about the student needs index. “We don’t support a one-size-fits-all model.”

Like others, she acknowledged that the district is still learning years after the ban started.

“There is always more room for growth,” she said. “Change is good — no progress ever came about by keeping things the same.”

Correction: L.A. Unified’s 2019-20 budget did not cut funds for restorative justice, it moved them to a different part of the budget. An earlier version of the story was unclear about the funding’s status this school year.

New L.A. Unified student board representative Frances Suavillo is sworn in on Sept. 3. (L.A. Unified)

High school senior Frances Suavillo has always believed education is a right and not a privilege.

She’s seen firsthand when it’s not. Born and raised in the Philippines until she was 9 years old, Suavillo saw deep-seated educational inequity in the Southeast Asian island country — how “money dictated who went to school and who didn’t,” she said. And in the years since she moved to the U.S. in 2010, that reality has only strengthened her resolve to lift and empower all students.

Suavillo, who attends Carson High School in Los Angeles, was sworn in Sept. 3 as L.A. Unified’s fifth student school board member since the board voted to revive student participation in 2014. Thirty-nine Associated Student Body representatives from 22 high schools across the district elected Suavillo to the seat in April, over six other finalists. She is replacing Class of 2019 graduate Tyler Okeke to represent more than 600,000 students: roughly 486,000 from traditional schools and more than 138,000 attending charters.

“At the end of the day, it all boils down to students,” Suavillo said. “The student board member gives that platform to students to take their own education into their own hands.”

Student representatives in L.A. Unified serve in an advisory role only, but can propose resolutions like any other member.

Former L.A. Unified student board member Okeke made waves in April, for example, when he brought a resolution asking the district to study whether it’s possible to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections. The resolution passed and is under review.

Suavillo doesn’t take the role lightly. Her first priority, she said, will be to ensure that the district is catering to and supporting English learners, who make up a quarter of the student body. Suavillo was an English learner for a year when she first enrolled in L.A. Unified nine years ago.

“I want to make sure that students have positive role models who look like them and who have had similar experiences,” she said. “I am excited about what is ahead.”

Frances Suavillo being sworn in on Sept.3. (L.A. Unified)

Student board members aren’t commonplace, especially at behemoth districts like L.A. Unified. At least four of the country’s 10 largest districts have a student board member, according to information available on their websites. The other three are all in Florida — Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Broward County Public Schools and the School District of Palm Beach County.

Suavillo chatted with The 74 this summer about her passions, aspirations, how she intends to connect with students, and her favorite Netflix binge. The interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

The 74: Tell me a bit about what education was like for you in the Philippines.

Suavillo: I was fortunate enough to go to a private school in the Philippines, but I know so many people who went through a public school education. And even in public school education, you had to pay for everything. Nothing was ever as acceptable as it is here in the United States.

What are your aspirations post-high school, and how does this position tie into that?

I’ve wanted to be a diplomat for so long. I want to be able to represent the country and help out with international affairs and public relations [mainly on immigration and education]. And being the student board member for L.A. Unified is a huge stepping stone for that future career goal. I’ll be able to improve my public speaking skills, be able to connect and network with different people that I’m not always exposed to. And that’s so important if I want to be able to make connections with people who are from completely different sides of the world.

Is your goal to go to college? Any top choices?

Yes. I want to be able to attend Harvard University, which is a big dream. I’m actually studying economics there right now; I’m in Boston for the summer. It gives me college credits, and can also qualify for high school credit.

Frances Suavillo on Harvard University’s campus this summer. (Frances Suavillo)

You’re going to be a new face for a lot of students. So in the spirit of that, what are some fun facts about you?

● Student group involvement: I’m part of the California Scholarship Federation [at Carson High School], and I’m also part of a club called Share the Love Club, which helps the homeless in the L.A. area. (Suavillo will remain president of both in 2019-20. She founded Share the Love).

● Favorite place to eat this summer: Cane’s Chicken Fingers. I’ve been wanting to try it and I put it off for so long, but I finally tried it in Boston and I’m in love with it.

● Favorite TV show on Netflix: I binge-watch Netflix seasons in a day. When the new Stranger Things came out, I was done in I think 14 hours.

● Favorite sport to play or watch: I’m a big fan of volleyball, especially high school volleyball for the Carson High team. The boy’s volleyball team is incredible — they won the city championship last season, and I’m so proud.

● Biggest role model: My great-great-aunt. She basically raised my dad in the Philippines and she helped raise us. She’s the reason why I am who I am today.

Tell me a little bit about your passion topics. What types of things can we expect to hear you talking about as a school board member?

I want to dedicate my time trying to help the English learner program, once being a part of it myself when I first moved to the United States. It’s very close to me. Even though [I was in the EL program] a short amount of time, it was my first real experience with the U.S. public school system, so my first memories tied in with the U.S. was the EL program.

What are you hoping to accomplish for English learners?

I want to help make sure that the EL program caters to what the EL students need in order to succeed.

One thing that I learned from current English learners is that [they] find it more beneficial for them to be included in regular English classes, rather than a class that is designed for English learners only. Being surrounded by people who speak the same language as they do gives them the incentive to continue to speak in their native tongue rather than practicing their English skills. It’s an idea that I want to bring up to the board.

● Read More: English learners in California remain at the bottom of state test scores with only a hint of progress — and it’s even worse in Los Angeles

What do your peers think about the current system, and what do they want you to focus on as a student board member?

Many of my friends who are now experiencing the college life, a lot of them come back and say that they feel like they are at a disadvantage — like they’re unprepared. I would like to bring that information to the board’s attention, to work to strengthen the college readiness programs that we already have through feedback from past L.A. Unified graduates. To see where our programs lack and where they need additional support to help students be college-ready.

I can say with confidence that I’ll make sure that they’re heard.

● Read More: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

How do you intend to conduct outreach and make sure that — to the best of your ability— you have a sense of what the student body cares about?

I’m fortunate enough to have many resources for that. In L.A. Unified we have a Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council, which includes students from both middle school and high school now. And they’re kind of my advisors as well. I know that I can come to them and have them give me their 100 percent honest opinion about certain topics and certain concepts that I may want to pursue and bring up to the board. There’s also the email for the student board member [studentboardmember@lausd.net], where people can email me their opinions and their concerns and I can always look through that and try to reach out to as many as I can. And of course I have my own peers in my own school and the schools surrounding me that are easily accessible to me.

You’re a high school student. You have homework, exams, college prep. What’s the time commitment of this job, and how do you intend to maintain life balance?

From what Tyler Okeke told me, it takes a lot of dedication, commitment and passion. So I expect it to take a lot of my time as well. But [district officials] always tell me that my education comes first, so they’ve let me know that I don’t have to stay for the whole duration of the meeting. I know it’s going to be difficult having to juggle being a high school senior with all of the academic pressures of your senior year, and all the social pressures of senior year as well, and now this being added on to my plate. But I know that I’m doing this for a reason. I’m not someone who would choose to do something and then not put in 110 percent effort.

(Reporter’s note: An end-of-year meeting on June 18 lasted a staggering eight hours. Typically, school board meetings are around four or five hours.)

What’s some of the best advice you’ve received from a student board member?

The biggest thing that Tyler told me that stuck with me is, “Speak from your heart and do things that you’re passionate about and that you can honestly say you’re proud to do.” I think he did a great job with that in his year, and I can only learn from him. He’s incredible, and he’s a friend now to me. He’s done nothing but support me and guide me through it.

Frances Suavillo with last year’s student board representative, Tyler Okeke. (L.A. Unified)

California State University – Long Beach campus. The system’s Board of Trustees met in Long Beach on Aug. 29 for a public hearing on the new admissions requirement proposal. (California State-Long Beach website)

A California State University proposal to add an admissions requirement drew both interest and fervent criticism at a public hearing in Long Beach last week, highlighting the discord among education pundits and community members on how to fix educational inequity in the state.

At question during the more than four-hour Board of Trustees committee hearing was whether the 23-campus system — the country’s largest four-year public university with 481,000 students — should mandate a fourth year of quantitative reasoning for prospective students. A quantitative reasoning course largely centers on problem-solving using math-based skills. A high-level math class, certain science courses or an elective with “a quantitative reasoning foundation,” such as personal finance, could all qualify, along with some Career and Technical Education courses.

The requirement, if approved later this year, wouldn’t roll out until 2026, when this year’s fifth–graders graduate high school. Three math courses— Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II — are already a must for CSU admissions.

• Read more: With less than half of LAUSD’s prospective graduates eligible for California State University system, college trustees eye adding another requirement
  

There was a general consensus among experts and public speakers on the importance of teaching students quantitative reasoning skills such as critical thinking, which has real-world applications. There was also agreement on the need to remedy the state’s STEM teacher shortage and to expand marginalized students’ access to more rigorous coursework in those fields, which typically employ a predominantly white and Asian workforce.

Opinions diverged, however, on whether the proposal and its suggested timeline is the best path forward — especially with a lack of evidence that a new requirement wouldn’t bar more underserved students from the CSU system. A study presented by Education Trust-West and The Campaign for College Opportunity at the Aug. 29 hearing found that CSU would lose nearly one quarter of previously eligible black high school graduates and nearly one-fifth of previously eligible Latinx students if trustees adopted the proposal. The data only measured the repercussions of requiring an additional math or science course, not the other potential electives that could also satisfy the requirement.

“While as a former science teacher I absolutely support an effort to increase opportunities in STEM for underrepresented students, there are other collaborative and proven ways that CSU can help strengthen those pipelines without denying opportunities for our most marginalized students,” said L.A. Unified board member Kelly Gonez, the first of nearly 50 speakers to address the trustees. An estimated 46 percent of L.A. Unified’s Class of 2019 cohort was eligible to apply to the CSU and University of California systems.

Kelly Gonez speaks at the CSU hearing on Aug. 29.

• Read more: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities
  

The already more selective UC system is not a part of this proposal.

Proponents of the requirement emphasized the seven-year rollout period and CSU’s commitment to partnering with districts to help craft their curriculum and provide professional development assistance. Others touted academic benefits. Senior CSU strategist James T. Minor also noted that the system is pursuing a data-sharing agreement with the California Department of Education that “would give further clarity and precision to what school districts and what high schools more specifically have the greatest resource needs” meeting the fourth-year requirement. He added that the new admissions standard would include a waiver for students whose schools didn’t offer qualifying courses.

Don Havenhill, a teacher on special assignment in the Corona-Norco Unified School District in Riverside County, applauded the proposal, saying the extra year would also help students retain math-based skills.

“Any teacher will tell you that any time off is very destructive to a student and their ability to perform and move forward,” he said, adding that, “I’ve witnessed time and time again too, teachers that are in shock at what students can accomplish when given the proper conditions.”

But at least two former CSU students, including M’Cheala Lewis, told trustees the proposed requirement would’ve likely barred them from attending.

“Even three years [of math] was difficult,” said Lewis, a college prep advisor with BLU Educational Foundation and a recent graduate of Cal State-San Bernardino. “And even if I did, in fact, want to complete more quantitative reasoning, there was a lack of access. With this requirement, you would not be looking at a CSU graduate, advisor or future English professor.”

The majority of speakers expressed some level of apprehension with the proposal. An overarching concern was scant data on California schools’ capacity to provide quantitative reasoning courses to all students, and the proposal’s potential repercussions on underserved communities. A few also questioned whether a heightened emphasis on quantitative reasoning would diminish students’ access to humanities courses. Donna Tang, education equity coordinator at Asian Americans Advancing Justice- LA, worried that lower-income areas would still have unequal access to quantitative reasoning classes.

“Who actually had coding and personal finance as an elective in their schools?” said Tang, who got her undergraduate degree at Cal State-Long Beach. “If we’re being honest, only privileged schools will have these classes and electives, and this is not equitable.”

Elisha Smith Arrillaga, Ed Trust-West’s executive director, asked trustees for more time, more research and more conversations with school districts and their communities.

“A plan is only as good as the associated goals and accountability with that,” she said. “If we move too quickly, we’ll just be re-creating the same systemic inequities that already exist, which is exactly what we’re heading toward right now.”

Trustees, including Peter J. Taylor, Wenda Fong and Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana, asked ample questions during the hearing — for example, whether a seven-year rollout is enough time and specifics on how schools would be identified for support. At least one trustee member, Silas Abrego, suggested applying the brakes.

“It’s a lot better to have a new policy with support from the grassroots people in order to make it successful,” Abrego said. “I would suggest to the committee that we look into finding a way to being more inclusive in developing this proposal, even if we have to postpone it.”

While CSU Chancellor Timothy White or the trustees could opt to table the proposal in the future, it is moving forward for now, CSU spokeswoman Toni Molle confirmed in an email Tuesday. A formal version of the proposal — which will address feedback from the public hearing — will be brought to the full 25-member Board of Trustees for further discussion and “refinement” during the Sept. 24-25 meeting, she said.

The earliest the proposal could come to a vote is in mid- November.

L.A. Unified’s nearly half-a-million district students are headed back to school on Tuesday for the 2019-20 year.

While students were away, district officials and advocates began laying the groundwork for the upcoming year’s priorities. On the heels of a failed parcel tax bid, L.A. Unified will continue clamoring for more funding and proposing initiatives that officials hope will build public trust.

The district is also following a contentious state university proposal to alter admissions requirements, while charter advocates target state bills that could restrict local charter expansion.

Here are some of the top storylines on our radar as school starts back up:

1. A tax, take 2?

Another attempt at a local funding measure is possible as L.A. Unified continues to seek new “desperately needed” revenue after a proposed $500 million annual parcel tax failed at the polls in June, Superintendent Austin Beutner said in an Aug. 13 interview with LA School Report.

The district in March or November 2020 hopes “to put out a proposition again in front of voters to increase funding for public education,” Beutner said, noting that it’s not yet decided whether the initiative would be a local measure or part of a broader statewide push. L.A. Unified has already expressed support for Schools and Communities First, a statewide November 2020 ballot measure that would increase commercial property taxes, some of which would go to public schools.

Beutner has repeatedly said new revenue is needed to sustain the three-year teachers’ contract the district signed in January, ending a six-day strike. The district is also looking to address insufficient annual per-pupil funding ($16,000 in L.A. compared to $29,000 in New York, Beutner pointed out). While the district’s $7.8 billion budget is balanced through 2021-22, its surplus is projected to drop from $837 million this year to $10.5 million in 2022.

L.A. Unified

The district intends to collaborate with United Teachers Los Angeles on future funding efforts, Beutner said, adding that, “We all need to work together.” Education Dive reported last week that UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl was unaware of renewed efforts to pass a ballot measure.

2. New transparency efforts amid splintered parent trust

Parents as early as this fall could be able to directly compare schools with one another. L.A. Unified is considering rolling out a rating system for public schools and privately run charters that would rate schools on a scale of 1 to 5 — 1 being the lowest — based largely on student improvement on state standardized tests, low suspension rates, graduation rates and chronic absenteeism prevention efforts, the L.A. Times reported last week.

Board District 4’s Nick Melvoin told the Times that the system could be in effect by October. It isn’t a sure-fire thing yet, however: There is criticism that simplified ratings are unfair, and the concept has mixed support from school board members and Beutner.

Transparency is a priority this year, Beutner told LA School Report — especially as parents in recent months have blasted the district for being opaque about its spending and how its investments are translating to a better education for kids. Parents spoke out passionately at school board meetings in June and even filed a now-pending legal complaint in July.

“We have a long way to go to rebuild — or build — trust,” Beutner said. “It starts with transparency.”

In that spirit, Beutner said the district in September will also publish a document “which will show where every dollar goes.” There isn’t “a firm date as to when this will be released,” a district spokeswoman wrote in an email. She didn’t respond to a question asking whether this is tied to reporting requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act or goes beyond the mandates of the federal K-12 education law.

● Read more: Parton: School-Level Spending Data Is Coming Under ESSA. Here Are 5 Things States Must Focus on When Creating Their New Report Cards

3. Two local districts try “communities of schools” model to empower principals, families

Local District East and Local District South — two of L.A. Unified’s six local districts — are piloting Beutner’s recently unveiled “The Work Ahead” plan. The plan entails restructuring local districts into six “communities of schools,” which officials say shifts power away from the traditional centralized bureaucracy and prioritizes principal, teacher and family engagement. It aims to take busy work, such as compliance and facility issues, off of principals’ hands, and give schools more budget flexibility to address students’ personalized needs, among other changes.

Local District East, for example, has close to 96,000 students across 151 schools, while Boyle Heights, one of Local District East’s school communities under the new model, includes 22 schools serving about 23,000 students.

Color-coded communities of schools in LD East and LD South. (L.A. Unified)

L.A. families in these local districts can expect their principals to play a more active role in the community — even small gestures like greeting students at the door every morning, Beutner said. He added that administrative offices are now located within those communities as well, making it easier for parents to voice concerns and “know our staff, our administrators on a first-name basis.” Parents are encouraged to confirm with their child’s school where their community’s office is.

Expanding this plan across all six local districts will take “months and years, not days and weeks,” Beutner acknowledged. But “we think it’s the right direction.”

When asked how success will be measured and who will be held accountable, Beutner said, “We expect to see an acceleration, improvement in test scores, we expect to see attendance get better, we expect to see graduation get better.” He noted that “distributed leadership” comes with “distributed accountability.” District leaders will set up objectives with schools and have “constant progress monitoring” along the way, he said.

Read more in depth about the plan here.

4. Charter school restrictions pending at state level

Charters, which serve more than 138,000 students within L.A. Unified boundaries, don’t all have the same Tuesday start date as traditional schools. You can refer to the directory on this site to find individual school websites with more information.

California Charter Schools Association spokeswoman Brittany Parmley said Thursday that a main priority for charter advocates going into 2019-20 is battling two pieces of state charter legislation — AB 1505 and 1507. AB 1505, the more controversial of the two, would grant local districts more discretion to approve or deny new charter petitions and narrow the existing appeals process for denied applications. AB 1507 would close a loophole in the state’s current charter policy that allows some districts to boost their budgets by approving charter schools outside their boundaries.

California charter school regulations pass Senate Education Committee after marathon session and intervention by Gov. Newsom

Both bills passed the state Assembly in May and were under review by the state Senate’s Appropriations Committee as of Monday. The bills would need to be approved by the full Senate before the session ends Sept. 13. Gov. Gavin Newsom would have until Oct. 13 to either approve or veto the legislation.

5. State university system considers new admissions requirements

The California State University’s Board of Trustees will continue considerations this fall to add a fourth year of “quantitative reasoning” to the 23-campus system’s admissions requirements by 2026. A quantitative reasoning course largely centers on problem-solving using math-based skills, such as statistics and personal finance.

About one in six L.A. Unified graduates attend a CSU system school for their first year. While proponents say the extra prerequisite would help students build a stronger learning foundation before college, L.A. Unified board members and local equity advocates worry it would instead bar more marginalized students from attending.

Access already isn’t universal, with less than half of L.A. Unified’s class of 2019 cohort — a projected 46 percent of more than 34,000 students— eligible for the current CSU system.

A public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for Aug. 29, with a vote anticipated in November. Read more about the proposal and what people are saying here.

Other syllabus items to know:

● New student voice: L.A. Unified’s newest student board member, Carson High School’s Frances Suavillo, will be sworn in on Sept. 3. Keep a lookout for LA School Report’s profile on Suavillo that week.

● Pending legal complaint: The district has to respond by Sept. 20 to a legal complaint filed by two parents in July that claims L.A. Unified has failed to ensure that high-needs students are receiving the more than $1 billion annually they are due in state funding.

● Special education: Court-ordered oversight of L.A. Unified’s special education program is ending Dec. 31 with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ approval, the district announced in a Monday news release. The district’s special education services have been monitored by a federal judge since 1996, following a class-action lawsuit. The news release says the district “will continue monitoring progress in its special education programs,” though it wasn’t immediately clear what accountability will look like.

● Housing homeless on district property: L.A. Unified’s school board last November voted to study the possibility of using district property to house homeless students and their families, despite split public opinion. A district spokeswoman said Friday that staff “is currently finalizing the report,” which the resolution had initially requested be done by May.

● New safety policy: The school board in June voted to eliminate a contentious random search policy by July 2020. In preparation for that, the district is “in the process of establishing a task force of internal and external stakeholders who will be meeting in the coming weeks to explore and develop an alternative policy to keep students safe,” the spokeswoman said. The task force “will invite parent and student participation.”

● Student voting rights: Board members approved a resolution in April directing L.A. Unified officials to study whether it’s possible to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in board elections. A special task force “has been developed to study this, and an update is scheduled to be provided to the Board later this fall,” the spokeswoman said.

*This article has been updated to include the news that court-ordered oversight of L.A. Unified’s special education program is ending this year.

San Pedro High School foster student Skye Carbajal speaks before the L.A. Unified school board in April about the Foster Youth Achievement Program. (L.A. Unified)

*Updated July 29

The Foster Youth Achievement Program has changed Skye Carbajal’s life. So the foster student left school early one day in late April to tell the L.A. Unified school board just that.

Standing at the podium during an April 23 meeting, Carbajal recounted her accomplishments since she’d joined the program two years ago: She’s attended a foster youth summit in Sacramento. Honed networking skills. Won a $20,000 scholarship for college.

“Without [my counselor], I would be without guidance,” Carbajal, who is heading into her senior year at San Pedro High School, told the board. “Without [my counselor], a year ago I would not have been able to talk to you today. I wouldn’t have the confidence to.”

Now, the five-year-old program, which focuses on foster youth school attendance, educational achievement and social-emotional well-being, is being restructured, despite vigorous opposition from foster youth advocates. The district is combining five specialized student programs together — including the Foster Youth Achievement Program and the Homeless Education Program — which officials say will streamline counseling services for L.A. Unified’s highest-need pupils by placing counselors at specific school sites, cutting down on travel time typically spent driving to schools across the district.

While district officials say intensive care for L.A. Unified’s nearly 8,700 foster youth is “not changing,” the program will no longer have its own designated counselors come August. It also remains unclear how many foster youth will stay with their previous counselor.

There are “no savings” from making these changes, district spokeswoman Barbara Jones wrote in an email on July 16. She confirmed that none of the 154 counselors across the five programs have been laid off.

The planned consolidation has sparked concerns among several advocacy groups, whose leaders have told school board members in at least three public meetings since April that the new model would bloat counselor caseloads, “dilute” services and upend current relationships between foster youth and their counselors. Such dilution was cited in a formal parent complaint filed July 11 that claims L.A. Unified and its county overseers are not ensuring that more than $1 billion a year in targeted state funding is going to high-needs students — including foster youth.

• Read more: In new legal complaint, parents say LAUSD is failing to ensure high-needs students are getting the funding they deserve

Foster youth are considered one of the most vulnerable student populations. In California, they post some of the lowest academic scores, attendance and high school graduation rates of any student group attending public schools — though those numbers have been rising at L.A. Unified. Foster youth can face challenges such as emotional trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, frequent school moves and an absence of healthy, trusting relationships.

“We’ve shared [with the district]… how impactful it has been to have this dedicated team to focus all of their expertise and all of their work for the success” of those students, Ruth Cusick, an education rights lawyer for Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm that’s advocating against the change, told LA School Report. “We’re very concerned about the level of support students who are foster youth will experience under the new model.”

• Read more: The State of America’s Foster Care Students: How the Every Student Succeeds Act Is Designed to Better Understand and Support These 430,000 Kids

Explaining the new model

The district is blending five separate programs — the Foster Youth Achievement Program, Homeless Education Program, Group Home Scholars Program, Juvenile Hall/Camp Returnee Program and Attendance Improvement Program — into a single “specialized” program, Pia Escudero, executive director of L.A. Unified’s Student Health and Human Services, told LA School Report.

That means counselors across those district-wide programs will now be pooled together and placed into local school networks, where they’ll serve the cumulative needs of foster youth, homeless students and students who have gone through the juvenile justice system.

There will be 150 masters-level counselors “out in the field” serving 29,056 students as of July 25, according to district counts. There are 8,668 students in the Foster Youth Achievement Program, 19,526 in the Homeless Education Program, 811 in the Group Home Scholars Program and 1,048 in the Juvenile Hall/Camp Returnee Program, which serves students who have been released from juvenile detention centers and are on probation.

(Some students are double counted in the data if they’re enrolled in more than one of the programs. The 29,056 students is the unduplicated count. The numbers “fluctuate and are based on the current enrollment,” Jones said.)

Last year, comparatively, the Foster Youth Achievement Program had about 80 counselors assigned to schools, according to the district. The Homeless Education Program, which Escudero said serves students in various housing scenarios who don’t all require intensive levels of care, had 19 counselors with no specific student caseloads in 2018-19.

A few goals of the restructuring, Escudero said, are to “reduce duplication of services” — which can happen when a student is enrolled in various programs that all have different counselors — and to “maximize the staff relationship with students in schools.”

Previously, counselors “spent a lot of time in their cars, finding parking, traveling from school to school,” she said. “We’re going away from a model where a principal may have four or five counselors coming on campus to work with specific children, to really having this one person” attending to their needs. This streamlining, she added, will include placing one counselor with students from the same family.

These counselors will also track their assigned students’ attendance using a new data integration system. L.A. Unified continues to identify attendance as an area where improvement is critically needed. Chronic absenteeism rates have inched up in recent years, with 15.1 percent of district students missing 16 or more days of school in 2017-18. The district loses about $62 million in funding annually from chronic absenteeism, Jones said.

• Read More: With Nearly 8 Million Students Chronically Absent From School Each Year, 36 States Set Out to Tackle the Problem in New Federal Education Plans. Will It Make a Difference?

Although the programs are being combined, funding for each remains the same, Jones said. The Foster Youth Achievement Program is budgeted at about $15 million for the 2019-20 year.

Some staff, such as those working with “high-end homeless populations for emergency services,” will remain in their roles separately, Escudero said. There wasn’t a staff count available.

Advocates’ take: ‘A pretty untenable plan’

Advocates have sounded the alarm about the size of counselor caseloads under the new model.

As the Foster Youth Achievement Program merges into this larger program, the number of counselors serving foster youth at the school level is growing by 88 percent, from about 80 to 150 counselors. But the number of students being served is simultaneously swelling more than 230 percent, from nearly 8,700 foster youth to some 29,000 students across all of the programs.

The highest counselor caseload assigned as of July was 147 students, Escudero said. Estimates of the Foster Youth Achievement Program’s average caseload before the restructuring vary; advocates cited a roughly 70-student caseload in 2018-19, while a May report in The Chronicle of Social Change, citing L.A. Unified staff, put the number at 60 foster students per counselor at the high school level and 100 at the middle school level.

For advocates like Jessenia Reyes, the manager for educational equity at Advancement Project California, a central concern is a dilution of services for foster youth as counselors juggle more students and their individualized needs. “Whole child care does not happen when we reduce quality time” for students, she told the board at a June 11 meeting.

Public Counsel’s Cusick agrees. “We think it’s a pretty untenable plan to ask our counselors to serve all of these different [group] needs,” she told LA School Report.

• Read More: 200 Students, Parents & Educators Spent Two Years Thinking About How to Support the Whole Child. Here Are 6 Things They Found 

When asked about advocates’ concerns with caseloads, Escudero said it’s more complex than an average ratio. Counselors’ caseloads will reflect the level of student need within a school network, she said; a larger caseload, for example, would include many non-foster students who don’t require extensive attention. While all foster youth will continue to receive the highest-level of care available, there will be triage for the other student groups to identify the scope of their needs, she said.

Many district-identified homeless students “are doubled up with family members, some of them are living in garages and other types of housing” and don’t meet the federal definition of homeless, Escudero said. “Many of them do not need intensive services … [We’re focusing on]: Who is not coming to school? Who has had a report of not being on track to graduate?”

Still, many advocates are questioning why the district is fixing a system they don’t see as broken.

Foster youth attendance at L.A. Unified has been improving while the graduation rate is rising. Between the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years alone, the percentage of foster students with 96 percent or better attendance rose from 49.3 percent to 55 percent. The graduation rate also rose, from 47.2 percent to 52.1 percent — the largest jump of any student subgroup that year.

• Read more: ESSA Says State Report Cards Must Track How Many Students in Foster Care Are Passing Their Reading & Math Tests and Graduating High School. Only 16 Do
  

Foster achievement reporting is now mandated under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015. L.A. Unified will also start producing reports that include the number of district students in foster care, how often they change schools and how they are doing academically, socially and emotionally after the 2019-20 year, thanks to a May resolution from board member Kelly Gonez.

Advocates have touted the role of “consistent” adult support in foster youth’s successes. Some pleaded at meetings this year to keep students with their current counselors.

Counselor Traci Williams addresses the board on April 23, standing next to one of her foster student’s caregivers. (L.A. Unified)

“The value in this program has to do really with connections built between counselor and student and caregiver,” Traci Williams, a Foster Youth Achievement Program counselor, told the board in April. “And without us remaining in the structure that we are currently, that relationship will likely dissolve.” Williams declined to provide further comment to LA School Report with the realignment “already in progress.”

Carbajal, who is one of Williams’ students, also spoke to the importance of these connections. “I have built a relationship with her that has helped me through so many difficult times,” she said — dealing with social workers, going to court. “Foster youth like me and so many others deserve the consistency and support that the [Foster Youth Achievement Program] offers.”

Escudero said the district is in the process of doing assignments now, and “if there’s a specific counselor that has a relationship with a specific school for a long time, we’re trying to honor those assignments.” She added that there “absolutely” will be professional development for counselors. “My hope is once [counselors] get their assignment we can dig into … providing very thorough support to children,” she said.

In an email to LA School Report, board member Gonez said her team is monitoring the restructuring — and encouraging conversations between the district and the community.

“We can and should have collaborative conversations with community stakeholders about how to best ensure our programs are responsive to the needs of students and our schools,” she said. “My office has been working closely with our District staff, as well as partner organizations, to monitor the progress of those conversations.”

*This article was updated to correct the percentage increase in counselor caseloads.

California State University, Fullerton students move in on August 23, 2018. (Mark Rightmire/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

The California State University system this week is considering a new admissions requirement for incoming freshmen — a development that’s sparked opposition from L.A. Unified, where less than half of the prospective graduates are eligible to apply under current standards.

CSU’s Board of Trustees on Tuesday will review an informal proposal to add a fourth year of “quantitative reasoning” to admissions requirements across the system’s 23 campuses. A quantitative reasoning course largely centers on problem-solving using math-based skills; a high-level math class, certain science courses or an elective with “a quantitative reasoning foundation,” such as statistics and personal finance, could all qualify, according to the proposal. Three high school math courses— Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II — are already a must for CSU admissions.

System advocates say the extra prerequisite, which wouldn’t be implemented until 2026, would ensure more students build a strong learning foundation before college and have a wider array of career opportunities. Some other public university systems, such as Arizona State and Texas State, have adopted a similar requirement.

CSU is “the people’s university, and we want to provide as many options as possible,” said Susan Holl, a mechanical engineering professor at the Sacramento campus and chair of the CSU Academic Senate committee that has proposed the change. “We’re trying to fling the doors wide, bring everyone in and say, ‘You can do this.’”

There would be exemptions in certain scenarios, the proposal states. The University of California system, which is already more selective, is not a part of the proposal.

L.A. Unified and various advocates, however, view the move as a threat to equity rather than a vehicle for opportunity. The district school board rejected the idea outright in a June 18 resolution, stating that L.A Unified does not have the teaching capacity to meet the requirement. Officials said they also fear adding another prerequisite would further restrict college access for minority students, who already face pervasive equity gaps in school.

As a state, “we haven’t made the investment [in students, schools]. And to move the goal post is something that we object to,” board member Mónica García, who authored the resolution, told board members.

In-state schools like the CSU — the state’s largest public university system — are a popular option for California students. About 1 in 6 L.A. Unified graduates enrolled there in 2018, according to third-party data provided by the district. But access isn’t universal.

● Read More: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

Less than half of L.A. Unified’s Class of 2019 cohort — a projected 46 percent of more than 34,000 students— are eligible for the current CSU system, according to a district spending plan updated on June 28. A cohort refers to the number of students who entered as freshmen four years ago and should be on-track to graduate, though not all are.

The latest projection marks a drop from the 50 percent estimated in June 18 board meeting materials. If the percentage estimate holds, it would drag L.A. Unified’s progress back to 2016-17 levels. LAUSD is still above the statewide average, with about 43 percent of the Class of 2018 cohort eligible for CSU system schools.

The district declined to explain the percentage drop. It cited a pending legal complaint filed with the state education department July 11 on behalf of two parents demanding more district transparency on how more than $1 billion in state funding allocated annually for high-needs students is being spent.

● Read More: In new legal complaint, parents say LAUSD is failing to ensure high-needs students are getting the funding they deserve

Tuesday’s CSU trustees’ meeting, which will be live-streamed here starting at 10 a.m., is for discussion only. A public hearing is scheduled for Aug. 29, with a vote on the measure not expected until November. Advocacy organizations like The Education Trust-West said they’re going to keep a close watch to make sure the proposed change is fully vetted.

“What they’re proposing would be a serious and pretty substantial addition,” said Elisha Smith Arrillaga, Ed Trust-West’s executive director. “It’s really important to be sure the details of the proposal, and the impact it would have, are publicly discussed.”

‘I don’t know that we are necessarily prepared’

At the June 18 board meeting, then-Chief Academic Officer Frances Gibson raised doubts about the district’s capacity to respond when asked about the proposed CSU requirement.

While L.A. Unified does offer an optional fourth year of math/quantitative reasoning at all traditional high schools, “I don’t know that we are necessarily prepared” to teach a fourth year to all students, said Gibson, who stepped down from her position last month. She cited “the staffing requirements, the partnership requirements” that would be needed to “move forward elegantly.”

The district was unable to provide data before publication on how many of its 92 traditional high schools have the staffing and resources to teach all students a fourth year of math/quantitative reasoning. About 71 percent of L.A. Unified’s 56 alternative and continuation high schools do not have any students enrolled in a fourth year, according to district data.

Board member Jackie Goldberg told LA School Report a large concern for her is the acute shortage of STEM teachers statewide. “I don’t know if we have enough math teachers,” Goldberg said. “I know we’d make every effort, but that’s been a struggle for us, period, having nothing to do with a fourth year [requirement].”

L.A. Unified has “No resources identified to fund any additional costs” associated with the CSU proposal, according to a budget impact document. The district is struggling financially, losing a recent bid for a $500 million annual parcel tax and finalizing a controversial last-minute budget that sidestepped a potential county takeover.

CSU Reso Operational Impact (Text)

Considering these limitations, the proposal “seems a bit tone deaf,” now-former student board member Tyler Okeke told board members. “I think that ideally [the bar should be raised for students] … but we don’t have the resources to support that at this moment.”

Holl emphasized the six-year transition period should the proposal pass.

“What we’ve done is try to put on notice all the school districts, that we are there to help them,” she said. “We have a really long lead time.”

Holl said CSU would bear responsibility for ensuring districts were ready to meet the new standard. The system would help districts craft their curriculum and provide professional development assistance, for example. CSU “is also working to meet the ongoing need for additional teachers in STEM fields,” according to the proposal.

Even then, there would be an exemption “for any student who could not fulfill the requirement because of a lack of resources at their high school,” the proposal states. Some Career and Technical Education courses or appropriate dual enrollment courses at a local community college could also be used to meet the requirement.

Advocates like Ed Trust-West’s Arrillaga are leery of waivers, however, because it’s “an acknowledgment that there are inequities in the system” that have yet to be addressed.

“For us, it’s a really problematic and troubling response,” Arrillaga said.

Holl sees a new requirement as “180 degrees from limiting access” for students.

Part of closing the equity gap, she said, is increasing students’ access to coursework that could spark and nurture career interests. There are disparities in access as is: 65 percent of African-American students and 76 percent of Latino students coming into the CSU system have taken four or more years of math, for example, compared with 80 percent of white peers and 84 percent of Asian peers.

Credit: California State University system

“Honest and truly, I think the state of California needs more engineers. More physicians. More nurses. More math and science teachers,” said Holl, who’s taught in the CSU system since 1980. “This is something I have been pushing because I want more students to be aware of these fabulous opportunities — and the way they become aware is by taking more interesting and exciting courses.“

It’s also about preparedness for college-level courses. Nearly 70 percent of first-year CSU students who’d completed four or more years of high school math passed a quantitative reasoning course in 2017-18, compared to fewer than half of students who’d completed only three years, according to meeting materials.

There is proof of success in at least one California district: Long Beach Unified. The district implemented a mandated fourth year of quantitative reasoning six years ago, and has seen a hike in student eligibility for the CSU and UC systems from 39 percent to 56 percent.

“It was like [the saying], ‘The rising tide lifts all boats,’” Holl said. “When you raise expectations, these students are amazing.”

‘There are too many barriers’

Advocates agree that students are tenacious and rise to the challenge. But many, like Linda Vasquez of the Campaign for College Opportunity, worry that a new requirement would “erode” the gains made so far in expanding college access.

“Every time [students] meet [universities’] standards, our universities raise the bar on them,” Vasquez, the campaign’s senior public affairs director, told the board last month.

Starting with the Class of 2016, L.A. Unified’s curriculum is fully aligned with CSU and UC system admissions requirements. This means all students have to take 15 “A-G” college preparation courses — English, math, science, foreign language and other core electives — to graduate. About 51 percent of California districts similarly mandated A-G completion as of 2017, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

The needle has moved incrementally as a result. In 2011, before the realignment, only 26 percent of L.A. Unified students were on track to meet CSU and UC eligibility standards. By 2016-17, 46 percent of students who entered that graduating class as freshmen and 60 percent of those who actually did graduate qualified. In 2017-18, it inched up to 47.9 percent and 61.9 percent, respectively.

It remains unclear whether progress backslid in 2018-19. District spokeswoman Shannon Haber confirmed that the 46 percent for the Class of 2019 cohort is the latest and most accurate estimate.

L.A. Unified enrollment in CSU schools has increased overall, too. About 16 percent of district graduates in 2018 went to CSU system schools, up from about 12.5 percent in 2014, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that collects data from colleges and universities. 

But it’s still far from where the district wants to be.

The district remains well below its goal of 100 percent of graduates being eligible for the CSU and UC systems by 2023. And there are still gaping disparities in college readiness across student groups, especially among foster youth, English learners and students with disabilities.

There is also a nearly 30-percentage-point difference between students who are eligible to graduate from L.A. Unified and those who are eligible for CSU and UC schools. Students must get a C or better in each course to satisfy CSU/UC system eligibility requirements — but a D is accepted to graduate from L.A. Unified.

“Most students think that they’re able to graduate from high school, and think, ‘If I’m graduating high school, I should be able to go to college,’” said Desiree Martinez, a former L.A. Unified student and associate director of organizing for Students For Education Reform LA. “Then, senior year, it’s devastating to find out that’s not the case.”

That reality is reason enough to hit pause, said Jennifer Cano, director of education programs and policy at United Way of Greater Los Angeles. United Way is a district partner in college-readiness initiatives.

“There are enough barriers to having kids emerge college and career ready, A-G ready, as is,” she said. “So until we see improvements there and a steadier pipeline in, it wouldn’t be wise.”

For Holl, it seems to boil down to people having the same end goal, but different paths for getting there.

“Change is hard for people,” she said. “It makes people fearful because what we’re proposing is a different way of creating access, I think.”

LAUSD parent Ana Carrion speaks to a reporter after the complaint was filed. (Photo: Nicole Ochi/Public Advocates)

*Updated July 23:

The California Department of Education on Monday declined to directly intervene, and sent the legal complaint to L.A. Unified and the L.A. County Office of Education to “promptly investigate.” The district and the county have until Sept. 20 to respond. See the CDE letter here.

A June 28 version of L.A. Unified’s LCAP, which included changes made without public input, is also no longer on the district’s website. A district spokesperson could not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Public Advocates spokeswoman said in an email Tuesday that the June 18 LCAP is the one that is now in effect.

Initial post:

L.A. Unified and its county overseers have failed to ensure that high-needs students are receiving the more than $1 billion annually they are due in state funding, a new legal complaint claims.

So the complaint, filed Thursday on behalf of two L.A. Unified parents, is asking the state to force the district to be more transparent in its budget and spending plans.

The Public Advocates and Covington & Burling LLP law firms filed the complaint with the California Department of Education. The two firms, along with ACLU of Southern California, last sued the district in 2015 for allegedly misallocating $450 million annually in funds designated for high-needs students. They won, with the resulting 2017 settlement prompting a $150 million payout over three years to 50 of the district’s highest-needs schools.

It’s unclear what impact the new complaint could have, as the state has yet to respond.

The complaint cites “fundamental” transparency concerns in particular with L.A. Unified’s 2018-19 and 2019-20 Local Control and Accountability plans.

California districts are required to submit “LCAP” plans annually that outline their goals and actions for boosting student outcomes and provide evidence that state funding is generating increased or improved services for pupils. L.A. Unified receives more than $5 billion from the state’s education funding formula each year, about $1.1 billion of which is earmarked for increasing or improving services for low-income students, English learners and foster youth.

However, the complaint claims L.A. Unified’s LCAPs are so “opaque” and “rife with fundamental errors” that they not only fail to identify how high-needs students are benefiting from this designated funding, but also “undermine basic notions of transparency and equity and thwart meaningful efforts at local engagement and accountability.”

● Read more: LAUSD approves $7.8 billion budget for next year: Here’s what it means for high-needs students, lowest-performing schools and district finances

L.A. Unified’s LCAPs “seem to be getting worse over time,” said John Affeldt, lead counsel for Public Advocates, which he called one of the most active groups in California helping districts implement the state’s funding formula. “Most districts, we see them getting better” the longer the state’s funding formula has been in effect. But in L.A., “Now we can’t even see what you’re doing. So we need you to come to the table’” and explain.

Among the accusations listed in the complaint:

● That the district submitted a revised, updated LCAP to the county on or around June 28 — 10 days after the school board approved it in tandem with the 2019-20 budget — without required public notice and dialogue. (See Exhibit 6 of the complaint filing for highlighted changes between the June 18 and June 28 versions).

● That the district’s LCAPs “bundle” information on services being provided into broad categories, “which prevent the public from seeing what specific actions the district is undertaking, how much is spent on each and whether the actions can be legally justified.”

● That the district reported $340 million in expenditures designated for high-needs students in 2017-18 that the complaint states was not explained or accounted for, and therefore might have been misappropriated.

LAUSDcomplaint (Text)

The complaint is asking the state department to declare the June 28 LCAP “invalid,” deem the June 18 LCAP “fundamentally deficient” and order L.A. Unified to “wholly revise” the LCAP as soon as possible so that it clearly identifies each service and action, their respective costs and their justifications for “properly serving high need students.”

It’s further asking the department to “order [the L.A. County Office of Education] to approve that LCAP only if it satisfies” legal standards. The county is co-cited in the complaint because it’s tasked with reviewing and approving the district’s LCAP each year.

When asked if one of the complaint’s goals was financial reparations from the district, Affeldt said that, “First and foremost, we need clarity.”

“There may be some questionable practices going on,” he said, “but we won’t know for sure until we have clarity.”

Ana Carrion, one of the parents behind the complaint (the other is Elvira Velasco), told LA School Report through a Spanish translator she and other parents were inspired to take legal action after they struggled to understand the LCAP’s contents and felt the district was failing to engage them in the process. It was especially personal because her 12-year-old son qualifies as a low-income student who receives extra funding under the state’s formula.

“We were seeing this lack of accountability, lots of money at stake, and [we] didn’t understand how the whole thing worked exactly,” said Carrion, whose son attends a school in District 1. “What I would really like to see from this complaint is equity for kids, for the kids who are of high [need] in the district. And a real transformation in the schools for them.”

● Read more: ‘Voters are tired of you’: A week after parcel tax defeat, LAUSD parents rail at district leaders during 2019-20 budget hearing

The complaint comes weeks after parent outrage with the 2019-20 LCAP and new budget boiled over at two school board meetings in June. The district’s bid for its first parcel tax also floundered last month, with many opponents citing waning public trust.

With the complaint filed, the next step will be getting the state department’s response of whether it will intervene. Affeldt said that’s normally within 10 business days of the complaint’s filing.

While a complaint like this would typically be filed first with the district and county, doing so, the complaint stated, would “be futile,” as the county failed to act on concerns expressed last year. If the state declines to step in, though, Affeldt said they would file directly with the district and county, which would then have 60 days to investigate and provide a response.

An L.A. Unified spokesperson wrote in an email Thursday that the district “received the complaint this morning, and we are currently reviewing it.” The county similarly confirmed Friday morning that it “has received the complaint and it is currently under review.”

Affeldt can’t predict the state’s actions, he said. But he’s hopeful.

“I’m confident we have a strong complaint,” he said.

L.A. Unified board members Jackie Goldberg and Richard Vladovic speak at the June 18 meeting. (Photo: L.A. Unified)

*Updated June 25

L.A. Unified board members passed the 2019-20 budget and accountability plan on Tuesday — but not before acknowledging that they are “unintelligible” documents that provide little insight into specific program and funding changes as the district looks to the next school year.

“None of the documents add up to anything you can count on,” board member Jackie Goldberg said, noting that she’d read “virtually every page” on three different occasions. “We need a new budget document that is useful, not only for us, but all of the public.”

The $7.8 billion operating budget and Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) —a three-year plan updated annually that outlines the district’s goals and actions for improving student outcomes — have to be adopted by July 1, per state law. Because of the looming deadline, board members said they’d approve both documents now and spend this year exploring ways to improve them. The board’s approval came one week after parents blasted district leaders for the documents’ lack of transparency.

Board member Scott Schmerelson cast the sole “no” vote on the budget.

L.A. Unified struggled to get its fiscal house in order this year, receiving threats of a possible fiscal takeover by the county because of its shaky finances. The approved budget now shows L.A. Unified operating in the black for three years — a sharp departure from a March budget update that estimated the district’s ending balance in 2021-22 would fall $749 million short of required reserve levels if new revenues, such as a hoped-for parcel tax, didn’t materialize. Voters resoundingly defeated the tax earlier this month.

‘Voters are tired of you’: A week after parcel tax defeat, LAUSD parents rail at district leaders during 2019-20 budget hearing

Before casting those votes during the marathon eight-hour session, the board also voted 4-3 to sunset the district’s contentious random student search policy by July 2020, following more than an hour of passionate testimony from parents, students and the community. Members approved a resolution as well opposing the California State University system’s recent proposal to add a fourth year of math or quantitative learning to admissions requirements. Speakers backing the resolution said CSU’s proposals would further limit college access to high-needs students.

● Read more: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

Board member Richard Vladovic said moving forward, there should be multiple sessions scheduled during the year to parse the upcoming year’s budget. L.A. Unified should “look at the outcomes we want in the district, and then we plan backwards,” he said.

LA School Report reviewed the budget, LCAP and other sources to try and discern what’s changing or staying the same from 2018-19 to 2019-20. Here’s what we know — and don’t know — about what to expect next year for high-needs students, teacher contract promises, lowest-performing schools and parent engagement efforts.

Funding and programs for high-needs students

Some key highlights:

1. Student Equity Needs Index (SENI) 2.0.

The district budget has set aside $262 million in 2019-20 to distribute funding to schools based on their rank in L.A. Unified’s revised Student Equity Needs Index, or “SENI 2.0.” The index considers school type — elementary, middle or high school — and factors such as asthma rates and injuries from gun violence, rather than just academic performance or income levels, when deciding where to channel the most money.

Next year’s SENI 2.0 allotment marks a sizable jump from the $25 million that was appropriated using the updated index in 2018-19. It’s not necessarily new money, however: the district told KPCC last year that it was distributing more than $240 million to schools using its old equity index.

How different factors are weighted in the SENI 2.0 index. (L.A. Unified)

All district schools except early education centers and those for adult education will get funding through SENI, with schools ranking higher on the index receiving more. For example, an elementary school determined to be in the “lowest” SENI rank category could receive up to $386 extra per pupil, while a “highest” rank school could get $725 per pupil.

Breakdown of SENI funding based on school level and rank. (L.A. Unified)

The district’s LCAP confirms that no schools in 2019-20 will receive “less funding” through SENI 2.0 than they did in 2018-19. Schools next year will also have more flexibility over how they spend their SENI funds, so they can better “address locally determined needs” for their most vulnerable students, such as English learners.

2. English learners.

The district will continue to implement its Master Plan, which includes growing its dual-language programs, expanding the state Seal of Biliteracy award to the fifth and eighth grades, and “providing targeted supports for newcomers,” district spokeswoman Barbara Jones wrote in an email. L.A. Unified recently implemented a strategy to develop individualized reclassification plans for English learners, with the hope of switching them to a “Fluent English Proficient” categorization before they enter middle school.

The goal is to have 22 percent of English learners reclassify in 2019-20 — the same goal as in 2018-19. About a quarter of L.A. Unified’s roughly 486,000 students are English learners.

See which schools offer dual language programs here. New programs are marked.

New help for LAUSD’s English learners: Individualized plans seek to boost graduation and reclassification rates

3. Special education students.

It was unclear to LA School Report from the budget and LCAP how programs and services are changing for special education students. A hearing on L.A. Unified’s special education plan and budget— which increased from $994 million to $1.03 billion for 2019-20 — was one of the last items on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, and generated no board discussion. The district serves more than 60,000 special-needs students.

Jones said four new schools — Vernon City, San Antonio and Hope elementary schools and Gage Middle School — are joining a pilot program that’s testing “inclusive practices,” which “means that students with disabilities are educated with their non-disabled peers to the maximum extent possible,” she said. The program started in 2014-15 and had 50 school sites participating by 2018-19, according to the LCAP.

January’s teachers contract also called for the creation of a task force to study special education teacher caseloads, though a start date wasn’t included.

4. Foster youth.

A key service for L.A. Unified foster youth, the Foster Youth Achievement Program,” is “not changing” in 2019-20, Jones said— though some advocates say that’s not entirely true.

The program focuses on boosting foster youth’s academic performance, largely through employing foster youth counselors. Jones said “the goal for next year is to provide local, integrated, specialized support services,” and ensure “that our students in foster care continue to be served effectively and consistently.”

The district has more than 7,000 students in foster care. The 2019-20 budget allocated about $15 million toward the program— a slight bump from roughly $14.1 million in 2018-19.

However, at least six state and local advocacy groups, such as Advancement Project California and Children’s Defense Fund — California, claimed at two board meetings this month that the program is in fact being “restructured” in 2019-20 so that counselors initially dedicated to foster youth will now also serve homeless students, youth exiting the juvenile justice system and other at-risk groups at designated school sites. They said this will more than double the number of students assigned to each counselor, from about 70 students to about 150. That data came from calculating the number of foster youth versus counselors in 2018-19 and comparing it to updated caseload breakdown sheets that the district reportedly provided to counselors in May, advocates told LA School Report.

The district will “say they’re trying to do a whole-child approach that’s more integrated at the school site,” Ruth Cusick, an education rights lawyer for Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm that’s also following this development, told LA School Report. “That’s why we’ve shared the unique needs of foster youth and how impactful it has been to have this dedicated team to focus all of their expertise and all of their work for the success” of those students.

● Read more: ESSA Says State Report Cards Must Track How Many Students in Foster Care Are Passing Their Reading & Math Tests and Graduating High School. Only 16 Do

5. Funding from one lawsuit ends — and another is in its last year.

The Reed Investment Schools Program is “discontinued” as of June, according to the LCAP. The program — based on a 2014 settlement — has provided 37 middle schools and high schools across the district (listed here) additional supports to improve staff retention and student outcomes, such as assistant principals, extra counselors, mentor teachers, special education support providers and “unique” professional staff development opportunities.

This staffing has cost L.A. Unified about $26.8 million annually, according to the budget.

In 2019-20, Reed schools will be “receiving SENI 2.0 funding instead of receiving staffing and professional development,” Jones said. So while those positions will no longer be mandated, school leaders will have “flexibility” to utilize that SENI funding to retain staff hired through the Reed program if they choose to do so.

Meanwhile, 50 high-needs “innovation schools” (a list can be found here) will receive their last year of mandated extra funding following a 2015 lawsuit against the district. L.A. Unified has given about $50 million a year to these schools since 2017-18 to support new and expanded programs and services for low-income, English learner and foster students. ACLU of Southern California has noted, however, that only 38 percent of the $50 million allocated in 2018-19 was used. L.A. Unified will reabsorb any money that isn’t spent by June 30, 2020.

6. Miscellaneous and districtwide.

The district is lowering the minimum student enrollment required to receive a middle school assistant principal for counseling services. In 2019-20, middle schools with 700 or more students enrolled will get that assistant principal, compared to the 800-student threshold in 2018-19. There is no change at the elementary and high school levels.

Arts programs, such as dance, general music and film, also appear to be unchanged going into 2019-20. See the programs offered at each L.A. Unified school here.

Teacher contract promises

The latest teachers contract, which was signed after the January strike and runs through 2021-22, is fully covered in the 2019-20 budget. Here are the additions expected:

● Average class sizes in grades 4 through 12 will be reduced by one student, bringing them back down to 2014-17 teachers contract levels. Average class sizes will be further reduced by an additional two students at 75 “targeted high needs” elementary schools and 15 middle schools. English and math classes in middle and high schools are also now capped at 39 students, per the contract. The cap pre-strike was 46 students, the teachers union has said.

● 150 new nurse positions. Where these nurses are placed will depend, for example, on how many students at a given school have diabetes or other “health-related issues,” Jones said. She added that campuses with athletic teams may also qualify for a school nurse based on the programs’ size.

● 41 new library positions in secondary schools. There won’t be a full-time librarian at every secondary school with a library this year, but the goal is to have one in each by the start of the 2020-21 year, Jones said.

● 17 new counselor positions. Their placements will be determined to “maintain a secondary school counseling services ratio of 500:1,” Jones said.

A list of specific school sites receiving these support staff does not appear available yet.

There are no raises scheduled for 2019-20. Under the contract, teachers received a 3 percent raise retroactive to 2017-18 and another 3 percent in 2018-19.

● Read more: With High School Counselors Badly Outnumbered, Innovative Nonprofit Steps In to Offer Smart College Advising to Low-Income Students Across the Country

● Read more: A look into the LAUSD, UTLA contract deal ending the 6-day teacher strike

Supports for lowest-performing schools

The district states in its LCAP that the following resources are being provided this summer and during the 2019-20 school year for “Comprehensive Support & Improvement (CSI)” schools — the 110 schools within L.A. Unified boundaries that were identified by the state early this year as struggling to adequately serve students.

1. Summer programs. The district is offering a four-week program that includes “focused academic intervention in English Language Arts or mathematics for academically at­-risk students in grades K­-8,” according to the LCAP. There is also a 24-day summer program for high schoolers running currently from June 19 to July 24 to “recover credits and make progress toward graduation.”

More information is available here and here.

2. Title I Intervention Program. School sites will receive per pupil funding from the federal program that benefits high-poverty schools, allowing them flexibility to focus on math, English language arts or credit recovery based on students’ individual needs.
3. Social-emotional learning. L.A. Unified advisors or staff will identify and grow “age-appropriate” programs that —among other things — help students manage their emotions, establish positive relationships and set goals.

Of the 110 identified schools, 88 are district schools and 22 are charters. You can search for your school here or within this EdSource database.

For the first time in six years, California names its lowest-performing schools — & here are the 110 district and charter schools in LAUSD that require intervention

Parent engagement efforts

Responding to a question about parent frustration over the current budget and LCAP, Jones said the district has “committed to … a more transparent process for the next school year.” She added later that Superintendent Beutner plans to meet with central parent committees such as the District English Learner Advisory Committee and Parent Advisory Committee quarterly “at a minimum” in 2019-20.

He’s met with them three times since becoming superintendent in May 2018, she noted.

For parents interested in getting more involved, 2019-20 also marks the first full year that parents can volunteer at a school without paying a $56 fee for fingerprinting and background checks after the board voted to waive the fee last November. More information available here.

● Read more: LAUSD ends fees for parent volunteers

*This article was updated on June 24 to clarify that while next year’s SENI 2.0 allotment marks a sizable jump from the $25 million appropriated in 2018-19, the district had already been giving comparable funding to schools using its old equity index. Scott Schmerelson’s “no” vote was also added.

*This article was updated on June 25 to add more information on advocates’ concerns about the Foster Youth Achievement Program, a quote from Public Counsel’s Ruth Cusick and the annual cost of the Reed Investment Schools Program.

Parent Luz Maria Montoya addresses the L.A. Unified school board on Tuesday. (L.A. Unified)

*Updated June 17

Parents blasted L.A. Unified officials at a school board hearing this week — one even bursting into tears — offering an angry glimpse into the fractured trust between the community and the district just one week after voters overwhelmingly rejected a new parcel tax.

Many of the more than 20 speakers at Tuesday’s four-hour session expressed ongoing frustration with the ambiguity of L.A. Unified’s $7.8 billion operating budget and Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), a three-year plan updated annually that outlines the district’s goals and actions for improving student outcomes. Tuesday’s meeting was the first since L.A. Unified’s bid for a $500 million-a-year “Measure EE” parcel tax failed at the polls, and was also the first time the finalized 2019-20 budget and the LCAP were formally presented to the public. The board will vote on both next Tuesday.

“All of the voters are tired of you,” parent Luz Maria Montoya said in Spanish. “We don’t know what work you are doing.”

Some parents said district documents don’t clearly explain changes to student programs and services for next year. Others added that there isn’t transparency or robust “monitoring” of how L.A. Unified’s expenditures, such as professional development and training for teachers and principals, yield actual results for students. Montoya, for example, called district services for English learners and special education students “an embarrassment.” A few also accused L.A. Unified officials and principals of keeping parents out of budget and policy discussions — treating them “as sheeps, as herds,” as one speaker said— rather than welcoming them to the table as a partner.

“We have a lot of barriers” to knowing what’s going on, said parent María Daisy Ortíz, who addressed the board in Spanish. “We want to work with you, not against you. But respect us. … No one returns the wasted time to our children.”

Parent María Daisy Ortíz waves around district documents during Tuesday’s school board hearing on the budget and LCAP.

Ortíz had brought parts of the 112-page LCAP plan with her, noting that much of it feels like a “copy and paste” job. She waved the papers in the air, her voice rising. “Please don’t deceive us with false data that are doctored, because truly, that is why Measure EE did not pass,” she said.

Juanita Garcia, a grandmother of three children with special needs, broke into tears when recounting the difficulty she’s had getting help and answers from the district after one of them was injured in January. “Up to today I have not received a report,” she said in Spanish. “Is that what we call accountability and responsibility?”

District 4 Board Member Nick Melvoin addressed the lack of public trust at Tuesday’s meeting, peppering in some concerns of his own.

“I’ve asked ad nauseum for a document showing changes [to programs or investments] and have not received anything for months,” Melvoin said. “We’re not showing how this budget reflects our shared values or strategies for improving outcomes.”

Melvoin also acknowledged Tuesday that he didn’t think the budget presentation helped quell ongoing skepticism of “how we can balance our budget every year and yet cry poverty.” Melvoin’s comment was underscored by the 2019-20 budget showing the district operating in the black for the next three years despite ongoing threats beginning late last summer that deficit spending could force a county fiscal takeover if L.A. Unified began dipping into mandated reserves.

In addition to the frustrated comments of parents during the public hearing, two district-wide parent advisory groups — the District English Learner Advisory Committee and Parent Advisory Committee — offered more formal feedback to the board on the LCAP’s six goals. They are: 100 percent graduation, proficiency for all, 100 percent attendance, parent, community and student engagement, ensuring school safety and basic services.

Some of the key suggestions included:

● Having a strategic plan for how English learners will catch up on instruction time lost during January’s six-day teacher strike.

● More counselor focus on A-G requirements, which students need to meet to be eligible to apply to the state’s public four-year universities.

Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

● Attendance incentives that celebrate not only students with the highest attendance, but those who are “most improved.” “The kids at the end of the [attendance] spectrum, we really need to boost them up,” Parent Advisory Committee chair Paul Robak said.

● Making parent workshops accessible via Skype to boost access.

Superintendent Austin Beutner agreed with parents Tuesday that, “We have to become better program evaluators … focused on what the students’ achievement is in the schools.” His office sent out a statement during the meeting calling for “a new approach” to the LCAP.

In response to a question from LA School Report on why the parent committee presentations and public comment were scheduled only a week before the budget vote, a district spokeswoman said in an email that the two parent advisory committees held 11 total meetings “from January to June, and comments from those meetings were shared with the Superintendent a month ago. Feedback from [both] was incorporated in the LCAP, specifically the continuation of desired programs and the increase in school site autonomy and staffing.”

While parents have voiced concerns about transparency, accountability and parent engagement for years, the 2019 teacher strike and resounding parcel tax defeat could signal that the district and the board need to pay closer attention to stakeholders’ concerns as they campaign for more investment in the schools. The parcel tax’s demise, as observers have noted, was a reminder that the outpouring of support during January’s teacher strike is not unconditional — especially when it comes to money.

Los Angeles voters roundly defeat parcel tax, leaving LAUSD on shaky financial footing

Even without the tax revenue, the latest budget shows sufficient revenues for the next three years. That’s a sharp departure from a March budget update that projected the district’s ending balance would fall $749 million short of required reserve levels by 2021-22 if voters didn’t approve the tax. The district now estimates having a $10.5 million surplus in 2022. School officials said they managed that swing in their projections without the parcel tax money after finalizing some health care savings, receiving a state waiver that excuses L.A. Unified from paying penalties for its administrator-teacher ratio and enacting other budget realignments.

By projecting that it won’t dip into its mandated reserve in the next three years, L.A. Unified no longer appears to be under direct threat of a county takeover. Fiscal experts installed in January by the county Office of Education will stay with the district in an advisory-only role until at least December, Chief Financial Officer Scott Price told the board Tuesday.

Chief Financial Officer Scott Price presents the 2019-20 budget to the board.

But it’s not an all-clear. L.A. Unified still projects it will continue spending about $500 million more a year than it takes in. On top of signing a teacher contract in January that it can’t fully afford, it also faces growing pension contribution costs and declining enrollment — an estimated 14,656 fewer students next year — that lowers its state funding.

Down the line, upcoming health care and labor contracts could increase spending and push 2021-22 budget projections back into the red, a district spokeswoman confirmed in an email to LA School Report Wednesday.

At Tuesday’s meeting, President Mónica García said she “loved” the idea of “a weekly or monthly budget conversation so that more people understand the full picture.” Newly elected member Jackie Goldberg also suggested compiling public feedback on different parts of the budget in the months leading up to the final version.

When Goldberg served on the board three decades ago, members would “pick a different topic [within the budget] each month in March, April and May and invite the public — all our labor partners, everybody — to come and say, ‘What you’re doing with the budget is this,’ or, ‘We’d rather you do that,’” Goldberg said. “That helped encourage people to feel like there was much more transparency.”

Speaker Juan Godinez hopes any progress forward will be sincere.

“If we are partners, let’s have parent engagement because the district wants it,” he said. “Not because a law tells you to have it.”

This story was updated on June 17 to correct the misspelling of Nick Melvoin’s name.

LAUSD special education teacher Gloria Ramirez at Wednesday’s news conference after Measure EE’s defeat, with Mayor Eric Garcetti, left, Superintendent Austin Beutner, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl.

One day after voters overwhelmingly rejected a $500 million-a-year parcel tax, Los Angeles city and school leaders sent a message to voters: We’ve heard your concerns. And we’re going to keep fighting to fund our schools.

“This is just the beginning of our fight,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said as he launched into Wednesday’s news conference. “When I took on this challenge just about a year ago, I knew it would not be easy. Decades of underfunding, strained relationships with those who work in schools, not enough progress in helping all students succeed and a lack of trust by many in the community. This can’t be fixed overnight.”

About 54 percent of Los Angeles voters on Tuesday voted “no” on Measure EE, which would have taxed residents within L.A. Unified boundaries 16 cents per square foot of developed property to fund L.A. schools and secure the lower class sizes and additional nurses, counselors and librarians promised in January’s $840 million teacher contract. But the district couldn’t sway opponents who doubted the district’s accountability with new money and demanded reform first.

Tuesday’s results marked “the lowest percentage of voters in support of a school district parcel tax within the last five years,” Vote No on EE spokesman Matt Klink tweeted Wednesday, citing the California Taxpayers Association. The measure needed 66.7 percent approval.

• Read more: Los Angeles voters roundly defeat parcel tax, leaving LAUSD on shaky financial footing

• Los votantes de Los Ángeles rechazan rotundamente el impuesto a las parcelas, dejando al LAUSD en una situación financiera complicada

Beutner said those who fought for the tax are resolved, however, to “get back up and keep moving forward,” with the next step being “to take the fight to Sacramento” and lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state legislature for more funding.

With more than 40 people behind him at the podium, Beutner thanked a slew of colleagues and Measure EE advocates and cheerleaders, including:

• Union leaders from United Teachers Los Angeles, Service Employees International, the Teamsters, Building Trades, Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, School Police and the California School Employees Association.

• Community organizations including Community Coalition, InnerCity Struggle, SCOPE, Korean Resource Center, Power California, CHIRLA, Great Public Schools Now, Speak Up and Parent Revolution.

• The charter school community “whose schools serve kids and communities with great needs.”

• The business and philanthropic community. “You helped make clear the children in our schools are your employees of the future and the future of Los Angeles rests in their hands.”

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl — whom Beutner introduced as his “partner in this work,” shaking hands with him at the podium — also acknowledged that the Measure EE campaign faced various roadblocks.

“We knew when we began this that there were aspects that made this an uphill climb,” Caputo-Pearl said. “A tight timeline that we needed to do to try to get resources to our students as quickly as possible. Many of the most affected people — students and undocumented parents — not being able to vote.

“But we did it anyway,” he continued. “And I would do it anyway again.” He echoed Beutner in saying, “We’re ready to keep the fight going. The battle for the soul of L.A. … is just beginning.”

Mayor Eric Garcetti, who played a key role in cementing January’s teacher contract, even went so far as to call the day “historic … a moment in which you see the reflection of the face of our city.”

“On a day which I know we’re supposed to be down, I can’t help but still be extremely hopeful,” Garcetti said. Those who supported Measure EE “collectively believe that education is something we collectively have to own. … [This is] a new chapter of finding what we agree on first instead of what we disagree on first.”

He added: “Absolutely, I’ll leave it up to the analysts, to the political professionals to analyze what happened last night. But I’ll tell you this: This coalition is something I am proud to have been a part of long before January, to have strengthened this year through this measure, and to keep marching forward with together.”

The parcel tax’s downfall sparked a question during the follow-up Q&A as to whether L.A. Unified would be able to submit a budget to the county by the July 1 deadline that fulfills the county’s requirements. County overseers have threatened a takeover if L.A. Unified can’t prove its solvency over the next three years.

“By law, we have to make sure that we can get through the next three years with the resources that we think we’ll have,” Beutner said. “And we’ll be able to do that.”

Heads up, @lacoeinfo: "We will be able to do it." — @LAschools Superintendent @AustinLASchools tells the post-vote news conference that #LAUSD will be able to meet its financial obligations for the next three years. pic.twitter.com/lPrSxiIyUw

— LA School Report (@LASchoolReport) June 5, 2019

Wednesday was a day of reflection across L.A. Unified and in the broader education community. Here are some of the highlights of reactions and takeaways from Tuesday’s election:

— “We heard you, Los Angeles. You want more conversation. You want more evidence that change and skin is in the game. … Friends, we must be learners.” — Board President Mónica García at Wednesday’s news conference

— “Today is a hard day, but educators face and overcome obstacles every day. … We will pick up the pieces and fight even harder, because our students deserve it.” — Special education teacher Gloria Martinez at Wednesday’s news conference

— “I intend to show up [for the kids]. We intend to be back again, and to try to be more persuasive.” —  School board member George McKenna at Wednesday’s news conference

— “Despite this campaign falling short, I sincerely hope that the historic coalition that came together to support this effort — a partnership between labor and charter schools, the district and the city, parents and community advocates — doesn’t collapse in the face of a setback, but rather doubles down on our efforts to support our schools. Let’s ensure that yesterday is not the end, but just the beginning of a united front — one that must turn our eyes to Sacramento and Washington to demand that they invest in our district’s students. It is also incumbent on this coalition to learn the lessons from yesterday’s defeat — most notably that voters believe L.A. Unified needs to do more to reform and improve outcomes for kids in addition to seeking increased investment.” — Statement by school board Vice President Nick Melvoin

— “The Los Angeles County Office of Education is disappointed that Measure EE did not pass. … While progress has been made and actions have been taken to improve the district’s fiscal condition, the County Office of Education remains concerned with the continued use of one-time funding to cover ongoing expenditures. Put simply, LAUSD needs to stop spending more than it receives from the state and federal government, which it does every year. The County Office team is committed to continuing to work with LAUSD as they develop the district budget for 2019-20.” — L.A. County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo in an email to LA School Report  

— “We are deeply disappointed that Los Angeles voters did not support efforts to increase education funding for L.A. kids. Our parents worked very hard to pass this, and we will not give up efforts to lift California from its abysmal position near the bottom of states in education funding. I know that we can do better, and our kids deserve more.” — Speak UP founder and CEO Katie Braude, via Speak UP

— “We’ve had some pretty big battles over charter schools in the last six months, and it’s worth noting that the voters were watching. And what they saw was a battle over a technocratic school model — not a battle over educational quality. This was a battle about politics and not kids. … It was simply scapegoating one category of public schools in order to serve another. That may serve some narrow political interest groups, but it certainly doesn’t serve kids.” — Ben Austin, executive director of Kids Coalition

— “What the resounding vote shows is that the business community needs to have an important role in these conversations and not be treated as an afterthought. We are committed to sitting down with the district to help figure out what’s next. … But it’s not just a money question. There are larger, reform-related questions that the district frankly is failing to address that need to be front and center before we request to open up the pocketbook again.” — Matt Klink, spokesman for Vote No on EE campaign

— “California’s public education system is in desperate need of more funding, which is why CCSA supported Measure EE. While we are disappointed with today’s results, we will continue to find common ground in our fight for more equitable funding for all public school students in Los Angeles and across the state.” — Statement by Myrna Castrejón, president and CEO of the California Charter Schools Association

— “We are deeply disappointed with the results of yesterday’s special election. Measure EE provided an opportunity for Los Angeles voters to demonstrate an investment and commitment to our students and teachers. … E4E-Los Angeles will continue to uplift the voices of our members in their schools, district and union to ensure that more funds are generated for our highest-need students.” — Statement by Ama Nyamekye, executive director of Educators for Excellence-Los Angeles

— “The main lesson I would say is that education policy cannot be determined based on what we read off Twitter. The national conversation about teachers and teacher pay does not reflect what voters actually do. … All that disconnect played out in the election yesterday.” — Chad Aldeman, senior associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners

— “It leaves Mr. Beutner without a clear mission moving forward. He was seen as someone who was going to contain costs and bring more efficiency to the system. Since the teacher strike is over, and Measure EE [didn’t] pass, it’s not quite clear what particular strength he has.” — John Rogers, professor of education, UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, to EdWeek

Measure EE Fails: The Challenges Facing Los Angeles Unified School District Students and Schools Are Now Even Greater #measureee #education https://t.co/SK2GEpxJoi pic.twitter.com/QgBEiws9Bw

— Families In Schools (@FamsInSchools) June 5, 2019

https://twitter.com/longdrivesouth/status/1136295665208684544

I heard from a lot of people who said something like this…. https://t.co/B8Wb4aAZq9

— Susan Shelley (@Susan_Shelley) June 5, 2019

Yesterday's #MeasureEE election result was disappointing, but what's not disappointing is that our community is taking bold steps to build the civic power necessary to create real transformation in South LA.

That's what keeps this movement going and we must continue fighting. pic.twitter.com/hEBIaxld2H

— Community Coalition (@CoCoSouthLA) June 5, 2019

The defeat of #MeasureEE was a huge victory for taxpayers. Jon Coupal will discuss what this victory means today during the 2:00 o’clock hour on the @johnandkenshow https://t.co/4wsYRC7xTk

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) June 5, 2019

We are disappointed that #MeasureEE did not pass. This would have provided over $500M in funding annually to public schools in Los Angeles. https://t.co/onLssDOTTj @LASchools

— KIPP LA Public Schools (@KIPPLASchools) June 5, 2019

Mayor Eric Garcetti announces January’s teacher strike deal, with union President Alex Caputo-Pearl, left, and  Superintendent Austin Beutner. All were banking on Measure EE to help pay for that contract. (Photo: Mayor Eric Garcetti Twitter page)

*Updated June 5

Los Angeles voters decisively defeated a parcel tax that would have sent $500 million a year to schools, according to unofficial results by the county registrar.

Measure EE, which would have charged residents within L.A. Unified boundaries 16 cents per square foot of developed property for 12 years, fell more than 20 percentage points below the 66.7 percent voter threshold required for the tax to pass. About 45.7 percent of the 304,321 voters who cast ballots as of Tuesday night approved the measure, while 54.3 percent opposed.

Voter turnout stood at 12.2 percent of the district’s 2.5 million registered voters — slightly above average for special elections and surpassing last month’s school board race.

As the polls closed Tuesday night, United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl told a group of parcel tax supporters in Boyle Heights that Measure EE marked a win for public education whether it passed or failed. “The city of Los Angeles is talking about what it, as the city, can do for public schools,” he said.

L.A. Unified — along with UTLA — had touted the tax as indispensable for securing the lower class sizes and additional nurses, counselors and librarians promised in this winter’s $840 million teacher contract, which district officials say is unsustainable with current revenue levels. Opponents of the tax cited concerns about poor accountability and oversight of taxpayer money.

“Achieving a two-thirds vote is a high bar for a reason, but the fact that we got 54 percent of the vote just shows how thoroughly wrong Measure EE was,” Matt Klink, a spokesman for the Vote No on EE campaign, told LA School Report Wednesday morning.

We did it!!! 100% of precincts reporting. 54%N 46%Y. We did it. #VoteNoOnEE

— Vote No on Measure EE (@NoOnMeasureEE) June 5, 2019

The district now has to send its 2019-20 budget to county overseers by July 1 — without a new local revenue source. The county has threatened a takeover if L.A. Unified can’t prove its solvency over the next three years. District projections show L.A. Unified spending $577 million more than it will take in next year alone and falling some $700 million in the red by 2021-22.

Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County’s superintendent of schools, wrote in a statement to LA School Report Wednesday that the L.A. County Office of Education “is disappointed” that Measure EE did not pass. “Put simply, LAUSD needs to stop spending more than it receives from the state and federal government,” the statement read, adding that, “The County Office team is committed to continuing to work with LAUSD as they develop the district budget for 2019-20.”

• Read more: ‘Very much’ the same thing: LAUSD continues to struggle to stay afloat as it waits for new revenue, latest financial report shows

While L.A. Unified anticipates millions in savings through reductions in central office and health care costs, Measure EE’s defeat leaves the district on shaky financial footing as it prepares for next school year.

What happened?

Passing Measure EE was always an uphill battle.

Parcel taxes aren’t commonplace. Only about 9 percent of school districts — most clustered in the Bay Area — have passed or renewed parcel taxes in the past five years. Measure EE would have been L.A. Unified’s first parcel tax. The only other one that made it to the ballot failed in 2010. Parcel taxes are unique to California, primarily serving as a fallback for cash-strapped districts that aren’t getting enough funding from the state.

Measure EE proponents hoped the car honks, picketing and social media love that marked January’s six-day teacher strike would translate to an outpouring of support for the tax. February polling had found more than 80 percent of respondents saw some level of need for more investment in L.A. Unified. “Residents and voters are more inclined to support the school district today than any time in the past,” Fernando Guerra, a Loyola Marymount University professor, told LA School Report last month.

The “Yes on EE” campaign had enjoyed high-profile backing from Mayor Eric Garcetti — an instrumental figure in getting the teacher contract approved — and at least four Democratic presidential candidates. It out-fundraised the opposing “No on EE” campaign almost 5-to-1, with more than $9.3 million in outside expenditures, according to city ethics commission data.

But it wasn’t enough to convince residents who didn’t trust the district to be a good steward of the parcel tax money.

There was ample skepticism that the $500 million flowing into L.A. Unified’s general fund annually would be spent on ballooning employee pension and health care costs instead of in the classroom. There was dissatisfaction with the proposed nine-member independent oversight committee, which was outlined in a school board resolution that critics said could have been easily ignored. And there was frustration with low achievement scores in the district despite taxpayers’ past investments — five construction bonds totaling $20.6 billion since 1997, for example. The Measure EE tax would have cost most homeowners between $100 and $450 per year.

#MeasureEE lost very, very badly. Wrong year, #LAUSD. The economy is good, but you totally misread the anger of the voting public.

— Carol May (@ridgeley) June 5, 2019

The lesson of ##MeasureEE’s defeat is not to give up on @LASchools. It’s to reflect then chart a #KidsFirst path forward. Bring together business, unions, reformers, parents, students & teachers. Build a broad coalition to fund #LAUSD and reimagine public education.

— Ben Austin (@iambenaustin) June 5, 2019

• Read More: Exclusive: Less than half of LAUSD’s Class of 2019 are on track to graduate eligible for California’s public universities

In a recent poll of 400 L.A. Unified potential voters, 44.3 percent said they didn’t think district students “get a high-quality education.” About 36 percent said they did.

Source: Probolsky Research

“We could give them $500 million a year or $5 billion a year, and they still have no plan on how to fix themselves,” Valley Industry and Commerce Association President Stuart Waldman told LA School Report in April.

Legal challenges during the campaign further muddied the water. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in early May filed a lawsuit claiming Superintendent Austin Beutner had altered the parcel tax language after the school board approved it — a change that the organization believed could subject a larger proportion of residents’ properties to the tax.

The same organization also filed a complaint in late May alleging that L.A. Unified’s Measure EE advertisements broke campaign finance rules.

What’s next?

L.A. Unified by July 1 must submit its 2019-20 budget to the county. That budget needs to show the district with a “rainy day” minimum reserve of at least 1 percent of its total expenditures for each of the next three years. If it doesn’t, the county has said it would consider installing a fiscal adviser with “stay and rescind power.” This means he or she could rewrite budgets and overturn school board decisions — but could not change union contracts.

Less immediately, the district will now also have to find another avenue for covering the third year of the teacher contract, which is slated to cost $228 million.

Chief Financial Officer Scott Price told the school board in March that “we need to increase revenues.” While Measure EE was L.A. Unified’s most immediate shot at new funding, the district has been trying to save money. Its planned central office reductions will save $85.8 million over two years, and a newly implemented Medicare plan will shave $50 million a year off L.A. Unified’s more than $1 billion yearly health care bill. The district is anticipating some extra funding as well from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state budget, though that budget isn’t final yet.

L.A. Unified will also once again ask the state to waive a $105 million penalty on districts that have too many administrators compared with teachers, and pursue potential real estate sales or leasing opportunities that could generate $100 million, Price noted at the March board meeting.

Jackie Goldberg, the newest board member, told LA School Report before her election that reviewing the budget was one of her top priorities. “I’m going to sit down with the budget folks and tell them what I understand the budget to be and hear what they think it is, so that we can begin to reconcile some of the differences of opinion about what state the budget’s in,” she said.

L.A. Unified could try for another parcel tax down the line. If it’s during a main election year, like 2020, voter turnout could be higher. There is also a statewide “Schools and Communities First” split roll tax initiative on the ballot in November 2020. If approved by voters, it would tax commercial and industrial property according to their market value, raising an additional $6 billion to $10 billion a year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. An estimated $1.4 billion would be allocated to K-12 schools and community colleges in L.A. County.

“We’re going to keep going forward” if we fail on EE, Beutner had told LAist before Tuesday’s vote. “Because we have the broadest, deepest, most diverse coalition in support of public education in a generation.”

* This article has been updated to include comments from Vote No on EE spokesman Matt Klink and L.A. County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo, and to add the link to the Spanish translation. 

Alameda Unified and West Contra Costa Unified school district headquarters.

*Updated June 3

If L.A. Unified’s proposed $500 million annual parcel tax passes Tuesday, it would be uncharted territory for the country’s second-largest school district.

L.A. Unified has never had a parcel tax. They aren’t commonplace, with about 9 percent of school districts — most clustered in the Bay Area — passing or renewing parcel taxes in the past five years. Parcel taxes are unique to California, often serving as a fallback for cash-strapped districts that aren’t getting enough funding from the state.

The proposed tax, known as Measure EE, would charge residents within L.A. Unified’s boundaries 16 cents per square foot of developed property annually. Measure EE is estimated to cost most homeowners between $100 and $450 per year, while placing the largest tax burden on businesses and corporations.

Revenue from the tax would help pay for the $840 million contract that L.A. Unified agreed to after January’s teacher strike. And while the tax language doesn’t include relief for crippling employee pension and health care liabilities, new revenue could ease some of the fiscal pressure on the district, which is burdened by deficit spending and facing the threat of a county takeover if it can’t rightsize its budget. But the parcel tax’s passage is far from guaranteed. There’s been debate over whether the tax language is clear enough about its promised uses, and opponents are unconvinced that there will be sufficient accountability over how the money is spent and robust oversight guiding the entire process.

$500M annual parcel tax unlikely to pass if low voter turnout trend persists, poll shows

Insight into whether parcel taxes are the revenue cure school districts hope for can be gleaned from two other districts — Alameda Unified and West Contra Costa Unified — whose taxes are similar to the one L.A. Unified would levy. In one district, residents say the tax saved essential school programs from being gutted. The other district’s experience is more mixed, with some residents claiming that mismanagement and minimal oversight have corroded public trust around the tax initiative. Here’s what happened:

ALAMEDA UNIFIED

Alameda Unified’s 32 cent- per-square-foot parcel tax has been “the best of the worst we could hope” for since it first passed in 2011, district parent Sarah Olaes said. It’s staved off cuts to student services, though it doesn’t add extra frills.

The district, which sits on an island in the San Francisco Bay, enrolls about 9,600 students. Its parcel tax generates about $12 million annually for schools — 3 percent of that for local charters — making it Alameda Unified’s second-largest revenue source. It equates to $575 a year on average for residential properties, according to the district.

There is a maximum cap of $7,999 per parcel. It has survived two separate legal challenges.

The tax wasn’t meant to expand school offerings. Rather, it safeguarded basic line items as the district faced “pretty drastic” cuts after the 2008 recession, district spokeswoman Susan Davis said. High school sports, elementary music classes, some AP courses and five instructional days were on the chopping block. Three elementary schools were at risk of closure. The district was also looking at a possible 32-to-1 student-teacher ratio in grades K-3, Olaes said.

Funding “is never enough, but [the tax] stopped these terrible cuts from happening, which would’ve made a huge difference to the quality of [my kids’ education],” said Olaes, who has a seventh-grader and senior in the district and has been heavily involved in campaigns for the tax.

The extra funds have kept those elementary schools’ doors open and preserved programming, the district confirmed. Class sizes for K-3 do not exceed the maximum 25-to-1 ratio. Sports teams are getting their uniforms and football helmets, balls and nets.

Music is integrated into the curriculum at Earhart. 3rd graders now singing a song about barometers ("Nothing beats a barometer for fun!") btw, AUSDNews loves barometers, too. pic.twitter.com/BeikFQ9160

— Alameda Unified (@AUSDNews) February 28, 2018

Because educational programs “are run by people,” Davis said, “the vast majority” of the revenue, about 93 percent, goes toward paying employee salaries and benefits. That’s not explicitly clear in the tax language, which lists 11 categories and respective percentage breakdowns for how the money should be allocated.

Paying for salaries is different from raises, though, Alameda Education Association President Judith Klinger said.

“We don’t pass parcel taxes to try and increase salary; it’s really more just to keep the doors open,” Klinger said, adding, “If you care about public education, you’ve got to pay for it.”

The district refrained from weighing in on how the tax has translated to academic gains, if at all.

Voters renewed the tax in 2016 with a nearly 75 percent approval margin. The tax, currently running from 2018 to 2025, “sailed through,” said Carrie Hahnel, who chairs the parcel tax oversight committee and also works for the advocacy nonprofit, The Education Trust-West. Residents “can see the direct connection between their investment and the services.”

It isn’t a silver bullet, however. Like other districts, Alameda Unified is struggling to support a growing population of special education students and cover rising pension costs. The district’s roughly 550 teachers — who won a 4.5 percent raise this year— remain among the lowest paid in Alameda County, with a starting salary of about $52,000. Alameda Unified in 2017-18 also approved more than $3.5 million in budget cuts, including rolling back extended kindergarten hours and inching high school class sizes closer to the 35-to-1 maximum student-teacher ratio.

The district posts annual staff and oversight committee reports on parcel tax revenue and expenditures. Hahnel described the relationship between the 10-member committee and the district as “very healthy and positive.” But she acknowledged that the committee’s role “is minimal.” Oversight committees like the one in Alameda are not mandated by state law for parcel taxes.

“We don’t actually perform audits, we have not visited the school sites,” Hahnel said. “… I can ask a lot of questions, and I can get answers. And [district officials] do feel accountable to provide answers. But they don’t necessarily feel compelled to change what they’re doing as a result.”

WEST CONTRA COSTA UNIFIED

West Contra Costa Unified’s parcel tax was harder to review. The district did not follow through on seven interview requests made by LA School Report. A few district residents interviewed, however, decried that the funds are mismanaged and oversight is lackluster.

West Contra Costa Unified, which serves about 28,000 district students in the East Bay area, passed the first iteration of its 7.2 cents per-square-foot parcel tax in 2004. There have been three approved renewals since, with the latest version in effect from July through 2027. The tax generates about $9.7 million a year, with a $108 average tax bill for a 1,500-square-foot property. Since 2016, a growing portion of the revenue —12.6 percent as of January — is designated for local charters.

The district became synonymous with financial hardship after becoming the first school system to be taken over by the state after declaring bankruptcy in 1991 (it resumed control after paying off its debts in 2012). Since then, it continues to combat “declining enrollment, increased contributions to [retiree benefits] and other benefits, and growing special education expenses,” district spokesman Marcus Walton wrote in an email.

The current tax’s stated purpose is to “improve” the quality of education by protecting core academics, preparing students for college and the workforce and providing smaller class sizes, among other things. That’s translated to most of the tax revenue — three quarters of this year’s $9.7 million, for example — going toward salaries and benefits for employees, such as athletic coaches, librarians and counselors. Teachers last year won a 15 percent raise by 2020; Walton wrote that the raises “were not dependent on the parcel tax revenue,” but that tax revenue “technically” can go toward the cost.

Students in Mrs. Heathcoat's second grade class at Highland Elementary School working on reading and literacy. #wholechildwholecommunity #LearningEveryDay #literacy pic.twitter.com/xeq7X4s06Z

— West County Schools (@WCCUSD) March 4, 2019

United Teachers of Richmond President Demetrio Gonzalez, who advocated for the parcel tax’s renewal in 2016, said the district’s commitment to funding librarians and counselors is essential. “We’re seeing in large urban settings like Richmond and L.A. that we’re in very large need of support staff,” he said. Gonzalez added that he does wish “we could increase the [tax] amount and put in more to things like the class sizes piece, or community schools” — two areas he says the parcel tax isn’t covering currently.

Parent Erin Moody, whose daughter is a sophomore who transferred to a local charter school, is frustrated that she hasn’t seen improvements in the classrooms. She described the district as poorly run, repeatedly “coming to the well” for taxpayer money.

“A lot of us are tired of money getting misspent,” Moody said. She added that West Contra Costa Unified has mismanaged its numerous school construction bonds as well, further eroding trust. But she still voted for the latest parcel tax.

“What do you say? That you don’t want the children to have the money?” she said. “It’s very upsetting.”

Another point of concern is a seeming lack of oversight. The district’s now nine-member oversight committee “was on hiatus most of 2017-18 at the request of the Board,” Walton wrote. Prior to that, he added, “the committee was unable to reach a quorum in order to conduct business” — which helps explain the absence of annual reports on the school district’s website. Walton noted that a report covering 2016-18 is anticipated in June.

The oversight committee’s job is often “frustrating” and “thankless,” said Susan Pricco, a Contra Costa Taxpayers Association board member who said she’s seen the school board ignore correspondence from the oversight committee.

While Gonzalez, the union head, said he agrees “we can do a better job at holding the district accountable,” he added that charters, which don’t fall under the district’s purview, ”need to be equally transparent.” Oversight committee meeting minutes from November revealed none of the charters that received parcel tax revenue in 2016 and 2017 submitted audit reports “with the required schedule.” Walton wrote in an email that audits have since been “completed and submitted” — conflicting with Gonzalez saying that it’s an ongoing issue.

There is no “one answer” to making things right, Pricco said. But she was clear on this point: “We want to support our students. We want to support our teachers. But don’t screw around with our tax money.”

That sentiment is almost certainly shared by L.A. Unified taxpayers, who soundly rejected the district’s earlier attempt to pass a parcel tax in 2010. Whether they have been persuaded in 2019 to see the tax as more of a benefit than a burden will be clear by Tuesday, when two-thirds of voters will have to vote “yes” in order for it to pass.

Polls in L.A. Unified are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday. To find your polling location and other voter resources, click here. For more coverage of L.A.’s proposed tax, see here:

● $500M annual parcel tax unlikely to pass if low voter turnout trend persists, poll shows

● June’s parcel tax to fund schools takes center stage after Jackie Goldberg’s LAUSD board win

● ‘No plan on how to fix themselves’ — Business leaders say LAUSD is undeserving of $500M parcel tax after years of little reform and accountability

● Whether for or against a parcel tax, parents and advocates want more money for schools — but they don’t yet trust LAUSD to be a ‘good steward’

● ‘Very much’ the same thing: LAUSD continues to struggle to stay afloat as it waits for new revenue, latest financial report shows

● The L.A. teacher strike may be over, but observers warn there’s no ‘clear path forward’ for how the school district can afford its new contract

This article has been updated to include the context of parcel taxes’ rarity across California school districts.

Source: Probolsky Research.

L.A. Unified’s proposed $500 million annual parcel tax is unlikely to pass next week if low voter turnout trends continue, a new independent poll finds.

The poll, conducted by Probolsky Research, shows that if June 4’s special election sees “high” turnout, or 17 percent of the district’s 2.5 million eligible voters, the parcel tax could be on the cusp of meeting the two-thirds majority required to pass. But with a “low” turnout of 8 percent — which falls just below the reported turnout for the recent Board District 5 school board race — the odds decrease.

The Measure EE tax would charge residents within L.A. Unified boundaries 16 cents per square foot of developed property, generating an estimated $6 billion over 12 years for district schools. The tax’s supporters, who include district officials, the teachers union and Mayor Eric Garcetti, see Measure EE as a necessary investment in the public schools. L.A. Unified also can’t currently afford its $840 million teachers contract — signed after January’s strike — and has to fix its grim budget projections to appease county overseers who have threatened a fiscal takeover.

The tax proposal has attracted a swath of vocal advocates and opponents. Yet there’s been scant publicized polling on resident sentiment leading up to the vote, said Adam Probolsky, the polling firm’s president. The last poll of likely L.A. voters on a parcel tax was conducted in February on behalf of the district.

“When we see this vacuum, this data void [on] something that so many people really care passionately about … we really think the public should know about it, see it, be able to digest it,” Probolsky said. He noted that the polling was done in the public interest and that the organization, which is nonpartisan and isn’t linked to any Measure EE campaigns, did not receive funding for the poll from an outside source.

Probolsky Research conducted the poll on May 16 and May 17 with 400 likely L.A. Unified voters who were identified with “random sampling methodology to ensure that the demographic proportions of survey respondents match the composition” of likely voters, according to the poll’s stated methodology. Half of the respondents were interviewed by phone; half took an online survey. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 5 percentage points for results based on the full sample. (Read more about how the poll was conducted here.)

The takeaways

If 17 percent of registered voters in L.A. Unified cast a ballot, 61.8 percent would likely vote “yes” and 32 percent would vote “no,” the poll found. But 6 percent were a “firm unsure” — making a “yes” vote attainable if campaigning leading up to the election sways the bulk of undecided voters to approve the measure.

If only 8 percent of voters turn out, polling predicted that the best-case scenario for the parcel tax — if all of the “unsure” voters got on board — would be a 62.5 percent approval rate. This would fail to meet the 66.7 percent threshold.

Source: Probolsky Research

An earlier February poll conducted on the heels of the teacher strike found 72 percent and 69 percent of L.A. Unified residents approved a 16 cent per square foot parcel tax in higher and lower turnout cases, respectively.

Fernando Guerra, a professor and founding director of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, which conducts the L.A. Votes exit poll, agrees that turnout is paramount to the tax’s success. Special elections typically draw 10 percent or less of eligible voters because they don’t line up with regularly scheduled elections.

“Residents and voters are more inclined to support the school district today than any time in the past, so that bodes well,” he said, citing an LMU survey. “All it is is about turning out the vote.”

Next week’s election is likely to attract more voters than a school board race because a parcel tax has “a very direct impact” on individuals, Guerra said. But he added that the parcel tax is still facing “a double degree of difficulty” as a special election.

“There needs to be an incredible effort to inform voters, No. 1 that there’s an election happening, and then obviously for the proponents, to inform them of the importance of voting ‘yes,’” he said.

Board President Mónica García told LA School Report earlier this month that this was the primary focus of L.A. Unified’s information campaign. The district’s job “is to make sure that our school community [is] having a conversation about impact, [about] ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on EE,” she said. “What is it? What does it mean? How does it impact the world of choices?”

Newly seated school board member Jackie Goldberg has also made Measure EE her main focus since her board win. She promoted it on election night and at her swearing-in ceremony.

● Read more: June’s parcel tax to fund schools takes center stage after Jackie Goldberg’s LAUSD board win

There have been impassioned arguments for and against the tax. Some of that energy draws from local exasperation with the low achievement scores plaguing the district. When the poll asked the same people who had weighed in on the parcel tax whether they believe students attending L.A. Unified schools get a high-quality education, 44.3 percent said “no” while 35.8 percent responded “yes.” The remaining 20 percent were unsure or refrained from answering.

Source: Probolsky Research

Many of those who said they are voting “yes” see new taxpayer revenue as instrumental in moving the needle. “Education requires and deserves a lot more support at this point in time,” one potential voter told Probolsky Research.

“It takes money to do everything great,” another Measure EE backer said.

Some of those polled who voted no, however — the vast majority of whom denounced any more taxes in general — said it wasn’t their job to fix the district. “We’re putting out more money than we should be for the education that the kids are getting now,” one respondent said.

“I think L.A. Unified School District is poorly run, poorly managed, and I’m not voting for it,” another stated. This belief mirrors one of the major arguments of the Vote No on EE campaign, which is spearheaded by business and taxpayer organizations who say the district is unaccountable and are demanding reform before further investment in the school system.

Yusef Robb, the campaign manager for Yes on EE, had not seen the poll and declined to comment on its findings. But he emphasized that there’s strong support for the tax.

“LAUSD politics can be quite dramatic and quite divisive, but on Measure EE there is unity amongst all quote-unquote sides for this measure, because it’s not a political statement,” Robb said. “It’s about investing in the basics of our education system.”

The low turnout trend

The latest example of the lower turnout trend in local special elections was the May 14 runoff for school board, where 9.2 percent of Board District 5’s more than 314,000 registered voters cast ballots, according to the county’s election certification on Friday.

Turnout for that race was lower in predominantly minority, lower-income neighborhoods —a general election trend that’s exacerbated by special elections. For example, in the northern part of Board District 5, which is whiter and more affluent, turnout stood at about 10 percent, compared to 4.2 percent in the southern part of the board district, which is almost entirely Latino and lower income, according to initial precinct-by-precinct data.

Across L.A. Unified, at least 4 in 5 students are from low-income families. Nearly three-quarters are Latino.

Suggestions to boost turnout in local elections have included allowing 16-year-olds and undocumented residents to vote in L.A. Unified’s elections and curtailing campaign habits of targeting people who already vote consistently.

There are also steps already being taken. L.A. County in March 2020 will start using “vote centers” instead of neighborhood polling places and offer same-day voter registration. L.A. Unified will line up its elections with even-year primary and general elections next year as well.

Guerra said he believes the most effective way to increase turnout and empower voters is to just never hold special elections — period.

“We need to do a much better job in creating elections that matter and getting rid of the obstacles to participate,” he said. “Having too many elections dilutes that effort.”

Read more of our coverage relating to the parcel tax:

● June’s parcel tax to fund schools takes center stage after Jackie Goldberg’s LAUSD board win

● ‘No plan on how to fix themselves’ — Business leaders say LAUSD is undeserving of $500M parcel tax after years of little reform and accountability

● Whether for or against a parcel tax, parents and advocates want more money for schools — but they don’t yet trust LAUSD to be a ‘good steward’

● ‘Very much’ the same thing: LAUSD continues to struggle to stay afloat as it waits for new revenue, latest financial report shows

● The L.A. teacher strike may be over, but observers warn there’s no ‘clear path forward’ for how the school district can afford its new contract