Months before the Los Angeles school board approved a $6.2 million contract with AllHere, an AI chatbot maker that is now being investigated by the FBI, top district leaders were invited to a meeting with its CEO and a consultant, who is a close friend and associate of schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

The Jan. 18, 2023, calendar invite for the gathering at the district’s downtown headquarters, billed as “AllHere Meeting,” was shared with The 74 by a former central office staffer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. 

The AllHere contract in question is widely believed to be connected to the high-profile raids on Carvalho’s home and district office in late February. 

The 74 has not received confirmation on whether the meeting took place or what specifically may have been discussed, but the invite suggests district administrators were consulting with AllHere principals five months before the contract was voted on.

It also calls into question public statements by Carvalho, who was placed on paid leave Feb. 27, that he . He said the education technology venture represented by his longtime friend and business associate Debra Kerr won the job based on legally mandated bidding. Kerr called the Jan. 18 meeting.

AllHere filed for bankruptcy in September 2024 and its founder and CEO, Joanna Smith-Griffin, was later arrested on charges of identity theft and defrauding investors. 

The 74 filed extensive public record requests with Los Angeles Unified School District in September 2024 for documents related to the AI chatbot contract, including all proposals, bids or submissions made by AllHere and any other companies vying for the work. The request also asked for documents detailing how the district evaluated AllHere’s qualifications and determined that the small Boston-based firm with little to no artificial intelligence experience was capable of carrying out the contract.

On Feb. 11, 17 months after those requests were filed and two weeks before the FBI raids, a senior paralegal in sent The 74 an email asking if we still wanted the documents.

Through his attorneys and a spokesperson, Carvalho since the FBI probe exploded into public view. The Los Angeles Times reported that he denied any wrongdoing, pointed out that “no evidence has been presented by prosecutors supporting any allegation that (he) violated federal law” and pressed to return to his job.

“Mr. Carvalho remains confident that the evidence will ultimately demonstrate that he acted appropriately and in the best interests of students,” said the statement that was issued through the spokesperson and the law firm of Holland & Knight, according to the Times. “We hope the school board reinstates him promptly to his position as superintendent.”

Kate Brody, the vice president of communications for , a 2,000-member LAUSD parent and educator advocacy group, sees the moment differently. Her group has called for an audit of all the education technology contracts entered into under Carvalho, saying they lack independent research into their efficacy and now is “the time to peel this whole thing back and take a look, not just at what’s going on with AllHere, but the inappropriate amount of access that all these companies have.”

“The evidence is increasingly clear that this technology is not really for the benefit of the students,” she told The 74. “Our big question has been for a long time — whose benefit is it for?”

Carvalho has not been accused of any wrongdoing and authorities have not provided details about the investigation. The warrants underlying the . 

In  after the Board of Education placed Carvalho on paid leave and named an acting superintendent, the district said that while it understood “the need for information, we cannot discuss the specifics of this matter pending investigation.”

Kerr could not be reached for comment and attorneys for  Smith-Griffin did not respond to requests for comment. District spokesperson, Britt Vaughan, could not be reached for comment.

Kerr and Carvalho

Federal agents also . Her ties to Carvalho go back to his days leading the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, a period of time in his prominent career that is also now reportedly under investigation. According to , grand jury subpoenas have been issued seeking records from the district’s inspector general and a fundraising foundation overseen by Carvalho while he was the Miami schools chief.

Kerr was a key player in executing the failed contract between AllHere and the nation’s second-largest school district. In addition to her being in a position to call senior staff to a meeting at district headquarters, according to the calendar invite, Kerr’s son Richard, a former AllHere account manager who began working for the company in 2022, told The 74 in September 2024 he pitched AllHere to LAUSD school leaders.

Among The 74’s long-unanswered public records requests were any conflict of interest disclosure forms filed by AllHere, its employees, third parties involved in the contract or LAUSD personnel.

The location listed on Kerr’s hourlong invite to discuss AllHere was the office of LAUSD’s longtime chief spokesperson Shannon Haber, who has since retired. Other invitees included senior advisor of communication Bích Ngọc Cao, senior director of engagement and partnerships Antonio Plascencia Jr.. and director of development and civic engagement Sara Mooney. 

Mooney is also the former executive director of the , the district’s separate fundraising arm includes Carvalho. Attempts to reach Haber and the other meeting invitees, which also included Vaughan, the district spokesperson, and marketing director Lourdes Valentine, were unsuccessful.

Earlier calendar entries shared with The 74 show Carvalho had an hourlong meeting scheduled with Kerr and someone identified only as “SN” on Oct. 21, 2022, about eight months after he took the $440,000-a-year job in Los Angeles. The meeting was scheduled for 12:30 p.m. at a place “to be determined.”

In 2022, Kerr was busy consulting for and promoting AllHere in multiple Florida cities, according to . She also did consulting work for Rethink Ed, a New York-based company that provides social-emotional and wellness resources. In May 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national school shutdowns, to support students with autism and other related disabilities during remote learning. 

“We appreciate partners like Rethink Ed which assist us in empowering these very deserving students with a variety of innovative and helpful tools to successfully engage in distance learning,” Carvalho said in a statement when the Miami-Dade contract was announced.

Roughly two years later, when Carvalho was leading LAUSD, the firm

Other calendar entries shared with The 74 show that right before the scheduled meeting with Kerr that October Friday, Carvalho had back-to-back interviews lined up with reporters from The Wall Street Journal and Politico. Later that day, he was scheduled to attend a retirement dinner for Michael Hinojosa, the former Dallas schools superintendent, at the Ravello restaurant at the Four Seasons in Buena Vista Lake, Florida, near Orlando.

Two days before Carvalho was due back in Florida for that celebration, the a $1.89 million contract to provide text-messaging support to students struggling with attendance, academics and social-emotional issues. The SMS tool was a precursor to its AI-powered chatbot. 

Carvalho told the Los Angeles Times he had getting the three-year deal in Miami although the newspaper reported that the bidding process began while he was still in charge. 

Two years later, in November 2024, the district would move with Miami-Dade schools for a period of three years after the ed tech company abandoned its contract.

The 74 filed public records requests on Sept. 13, 2024, asking for copies for all of Carvalho’s daily calendars going back to his first date of employment at LAUSD. The district has yet to produce them.  

AllHere then gone

Also invited to the Jan. 18, 2023, meeting set up by Kerr was AllHere’s Smith-Griffin, who six months after landing the L.A. schools deal was charged with defrauding investors of nearly $10 million.

Her case, which involves allegations of securities and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, is being heard in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The Harvard graduate and former middle school math teacher  pleaded not guilty in December 2024. Conferences on her case were postponed three separate times in 2025 to allow the parties time to work on a possible disposition. The last was a 60-day adjournment on Sept. 25, 2025, and there’s been no activity in the file since then.

By the time Smith-Griffin was arrested at her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, in November 2024, the company she founded in 2016 had been forced into bankruptcy, unable to pay its debts, including a disputed $630,000 commission claimed by its largest creditor: Kerr.

Carvalho and Smith-Griffin spent considerable time together in the spring of 2024, appearing at multiple ed tech conferences touting “Ed,” their sunny chatbot that was seen as catapulting LAUSD into the K-12 AI vanguard. They said communicating with Ed would provide an unprecedented level of support, accelerating learning and strengthening well-being for students and families, many of whom were still struggling from the pandemic. 

“He’s going to talk to you in 100 different languages, he’s going to connect with you, he’s going to fall in love with you,” Carvalho raved at the April 2024 ASU+GSV conference in San Diego. “Hopefully you’ll love it, and in the process we are transforming a school system of 540,000 students into 540,000 ‘schools of one’ through absolute personalization and individualization.”

None of that materialized for the district, whose enrollment has since and which is now and

After AllHere shuttered and a former company manager-turned-whistleblower told The 74 that students’ private data  was not properly protected in the push to launch Ed, Carvalho vowed to investigate. He promised a task force of outside experts who would dig into what went wrong with the AllHere contract and determine how the district could strengthen its bidding process to avoid future debacles.

Carvalho told the Los Angeles Times in July 2024, he expected. Some 19 months later, there’s been no further news or shared task force findings. The district’s independent inspector general’s office launched its own investigation around the same time. 

However, the office’s and reports to the Board of Education make no mention of AllHere. In 2024, the IG opened a total of 62 cases, closed 54 and identified nearly $2.5 million in waste. In 2025, it opened 38 cases and closed 43, including some from previous years, though none appear to have involved AllHere. No financial waste was identified in 2025. 

Inspector General Sue Stengel at the end of 2025 after three years. The office did not respond to a request for comment. 

Equally elusive is what happened to Ed or the underlying tech tool for which LAUSD paid AllHere $3 million out of its $6.2 million contract. Although it’s been reported that school officials said the district was not financially harmed in the contractual fallout, and it received the services and products it spent several million dollars to acquire, it’s difficult to substantiate that.

When Carvalho unveiled Ed at a major March 20, 2024, celebration attended by Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, he said the chatbot would be in 101 elementary, middle and high schools as part of a pilot program. By the fall, Ed was supposed to go districtwide. 

Much later, that reported group of Ed testers had been “to a small number of schools (that) tried it out, each with a sample of students and parents.” In July 2024 after the district “unplugged” Ed in the wake of AllHere’s demise, that it was “hard to find students, teachers or other staff who have used any part of the system since its official launch.” 

Absent human interactions with Ed, the district has been slow to produce documentation from AllHere of services rendered. Among the public records sought by The 74 in September 2024, which LAUSD now appears ready to provide, are “purchase orders, invoices, and payments records related to any and all goods and/or services provided by AllHere.” 

Staff reporter Amanda Geduld contributed to this report

The Los Angeles Unified School District board has voted to place Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on paid administrative leave, two days after the FBI raided his San Pedro home and district headquarters and searched a residence in Florida. 

While on leave, Carvalho will continue to receive pay, with a  of $440,000. And Andres Chait, who has served as LAUSD’s chief of school operations, will step in as acting superintendent, effective immediately. The length of Carvalho’s leave, which is pending investigation, has not been disclosed. 

The board’s nearly 8-hour-long  began Thursday evening, and the closed session meeting was recessed until 12:30 Friday. The final vote, which came in at about 3:45 p.m., was unanimous.

“This is a very challenging time,” Board President Scott Schmerelson said at the board meeting following Friday’s announcement. “And I want you to know that the board believes in you, supports you, and knows that you will all continue to do your very best to support the students and families of the district.”

Carvalho hasn’t made any public comments since the FBI raids. The agency has also not released further information on the investigation, and the search warrant affidavits remain sealed. Carvalho has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

So far,  have connected the raids to the company AllHere Education, with which both LAUSD and Miami-Dade County Public Schools had entered into agreements.

Three months after Los Angeles Unified rolled out Ed, an AI chatbot developed by AllHere, the company’s founder and CEO, Joanna Smith-Griffin, left. She was later arrested and charged with securities fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Meanwhile, the property searched in Southwest Ranches, Florida, in Broward County, reportedly belongs to Debra Kerr, whose records show is an AllHere contractor and maintained ties with Carvalho. According to The 74, her son, Richard Kerr, pitched the now-defunct AI company to LAUSD.   

“We must strive for stability and continuity so that every school can stay focused on teaching and learning and on building on the meaningful gains the district has made in recent years,” said Yoli Flores, the president and CEO of Families in Schools. 

“At the same time, we acknowledge that public discourse around our schools is inevitably shaped by broader political dynamics. It is essential that investigations and public actions be grounded in evidence and fairness.”

Chait has worked in the district since 1998, starting out as a teacher at Queen Anne Place Elementary School. He has since worked as an assistant principal and principal. He went on to serve as a field director, the administrator of operations for LAUSD’s Local District Northeast from 2015 to 2019, encompassing roughly 120 schools, and eventually the local district superintendent and chief of school operations. 

“Chait is a highly regarded leader and educator, and we are lucky to have him step in seamlessly to oversee our schools,” Schmerelson said in a written statement. “Over the past several years, our educators and students have made enormous strides, and we expect that progress to continue unimpeded.”

He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from UC Berkeley and a master’s in education administration from Cal State Los Angeles.

“I am humbled by the Board’s confidence in appointing me to serve as Acting Superintendent during this critical time,” Acting Superintendent Andres Chait said. “Our focus remains clear: to ensure stability, continuity, and strong leadership for our students, families, and employees.”

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After a four-hour closed session on Thursday, the Los Angeles Unified School District board recessed without announcing a decision on whether Superintendent Alberto Carvalho may be placed on leave a day after the FBI raided his residence and the district’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters.

The session will continue on Friday at 12:30 p.m.

Carvalho’s employment was the single item addressed during the closed-door special board meeting. Only a few members of the community spoke during public comment, and the room remained largely empty and quiet.

Board members were not available for interviews, and Carvalho wasn’t seen.

“The District continues normal operations across all schools and offices. We are grateful to our dedicated employees, families, and students for their steady focus and commitment to our school communities,” the district board wrote in a  released shortly after Thursday’s closed session ended.

The federal investigation involves financial matters related to Carvalho himself, rather than the district, the Los Angeles Times reported.

If the board decides to place Carvalho on leave, it remains unclear who the board might appoint as interim superintendent.

Several districts have picked associate superintendents to serve as interim after placing their superintendents on leave amid active investigations.

As of 8 p.m. Thursday, Carvalho has not made any public comment. Further information on Wednesday’s raids has not been released.

“We expect LAUSD to provide full transparency and clear communication to educators, school staff, and the public,” United Teachers Los Angeles, the district teachers union, said in a statement to EdSource.

“UTLA educators and our school communities have long raised concerns about LAUSD rapidly increasing spending on education tech and outside contractors, while investment in classrooms and educators has declined.”

A critical time for the district

LAUSD’s leadership shakeup comes at a critical time, as the district navigates budget challenges, potential strikes and the impacts of federal actions.

“We feel that this moment really calls for clear, strong leadership,” said Nicolle Fefferman, a longtime LAUSD educator and cofounder of the Facebook advocacy group Parents Supporting Teachers. “And we want our elected school board members to make certain that that is what they are prioritizing.”

Fall out with AllHere

Media reports so far have connected Wednesday’s raids with the company AllHere Education, which LAUSD entered into a $6.2 million professional services contract on July 1, 2023. Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where Carvalho previously served as superintendent, had also  with the company in the fall of 2022.

Los Angeles Unified initiated the  of its chatbot Ed, which was developed by AllHere, in March 2024. It was  to serve as a “personal assistant” for students — capable of reminding them about assignments and exams, and informing them about cafeteria menus and bus schedules.

But three months later, the company’s founder and CEO Joanna Smith-Griffin left the company. Most employees were furloughed, and Smith-Griffin was arrested in November 2024 and charged with securities fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

In July 2024, Carvalho announced a  to conduct a review of what went wrong with the rollout. But its progress and outcomes don’t appear to have been publicly disclosed.

The home searched by the FBI in Southwest Ranches, Florida, in Broward County, is reportedly the residence of Debra Kerr, who is listed as an AllHere contractor in records related to the company’s bankruptcy case and who has ties with Carvalho from his time as superintendent in Florida. Her son, Richard Kerr, is a former employee of the now-defunct AI company who told The 74 in 2024 that he pitched LAUSD on AllHere.

Parents Supporting Teachers is calling for the district to place Carvalho on administrative leave.

“It’s always been this lingering worry and this example of a theme of the lack of transparency and accountability that we recognize in the district,” Fefferman said.

A storied past

In January 2025, the same parent group called for Carvalho’s removal following a “chaotic and dangerous scramble for families and staff” in the wake of the Palisades Fire.

Carvalho’s contract was  in October, maintaining a salary of $440,000.

After serving as superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools for 14 years, Carvalho took over as LAUSD’s leader in 2022. His start at the district began as students returned to physical classrooms from virtual learning due to Covid-19. As a result of the pandemic, he has focused on reducing chronic absenteeism and curbing pandemic learning losses.

But despite LAUSD’s  in standardized test scores and efforts to improve student attendance, his time as the district’s leader has been riddled with controversies — from alleged  of arts funding to a  of cyberattacks and data breaches.

More recently, he has also received praise and backlash for  the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. And last month, the district was  for allegedly discriminating against white students, which the U.S. Department of Justice recently sought to join.

“It is our hope that the investigation resolves quickly so that the school district can focus on its core mission of educating our children. While we understand the importance of full cooperation with any investigation, we also cannot overlook or undermine the work that Superintendent Carvalho has led to support our students, educators, and the district as a whole,” said Evelyn Aleman, the organizer of the parent group Our Voice/Nuestra Voz.

“Education is the foundation that builds stability and lifts families out of poverty— we must stay focused on that mission and our students’ success.”

The FBI raided the office and home of Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on Wednesday morning, a move that shocked the Los Angeles and state education communities.

U.S. Justice Department officials said judicially approved search warrants were executed at the district headquarters in downtown Los Angeles and Carvalho’s San Pedro residence, according to published reports. A residence in Southwest Ranches, Florida, was also searched.

Federal officials said nothing Wednesday about a possible investigation. Carvalho was the superintendent of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida for 14 years before taking the job in Los Angeles in 2022.

Carvalho has not made any public statements as of 6 p.m. Wednesday.

In a , Los Angeles Unified officials said, “We have been informed of law enforcement activity at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters and at the home of the Superintendent. The District is cooperating with the investigation and we do not have further information at this time.”

A source familiar with the school district, who spoke to EdSource on the condition of anonymity, said the raids involved a failed artificial intelligence company, AllHere, that the district contracted with for a chatbot called Ed meant to aid students.

 have also reported that the raids and possible investigation centered on the district’s relationship with AllHere.

LAUSD entered into a $6.2 million professional services contract with AllHere to begin on July 1, 2023, for an initial two-year term. The contract had three one-year renewal options, according to district documents. District investigators began a probe a year later after learning the chatbot put students’ personal information at risk, The 74 reported at the time.

The company has also contracted with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, but Carvalho has denied involvement in that contract, the Los Angeles Times reported.

LAUSD began its rollout of Ed, the chatbot, in March 2024, with initial implementation set to begin with  that the district had identified as being its lowest-performing. District board members, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass were in attendance at the inauguration of Ed, along with partners from various universities and businesses.

Three months later, Joanna Smith-Griffin, AllHere’s founder and CEO, left the company, and most employees were furloughed. In Nov. 2024, Smith-Griffin was  in North Carolina and  in New York with securities fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Her case remains open.

Carvalho was hailed as a rising leader ushering in a new era for Los Angeles Unified when he took over the district. He was reappointed last year and is paid more than $440,000 in salary, with his contract set to expire in 2030.

Carvalho “is the leading urban superintendent in the nation,” Dean Pedro A. Noguera of USC’s Rossier School of Education said on Wednesday. “He is a proven leader. If Carvalho’s career is over, “the timing for the district is terrible” as it goes through layoffs and a fiscal crisis, Noguera said.

Los Angeles Unified and Carvalho have been repeatedly in the crosshairs of the federal administration during Trump’s second term.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently sought to join  filed by the 1776 Project Foundation, which sued the district in January, claiming discrimination against its white students.

 singles out LAUSD’s Predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, or other Non-Anglo program, which was established to curtail the effects of school segregation.

“Students attending non-PHBAO schools are denied and directly blocked from these benefits because of the racial composition of their school attendance zone, which detrimentally impacts the quality of the educational experience and directly damages these students,” the lawsuit alleges.

Carvalho has also maintained outspoken support of immigrant students and families, including those who are undocumented. He has  that he migrated from Portugal to the United States as an undocumented teenager. LAUSD passed a resolution in the 2016-17 school year declaring itself a sanctuary district, and the board reaffirmed that status in a resolution passed late 2024.

EdSource reporter Emma Gallegos and data journalist Daniel J. Willis contributed to this report.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is weighing layoffs that could reshape classrooms across the nation’s second-largest school district. 

The district’s board at next week’s meeting is expected to decide whether to cut jobs, as it faces a projected $191 million deficit in the 2027-28 school year if it keeps spending at its current pace. The deficits in LAUSD and other districts are driven largely by the loss of Covid relief funds, declining enrollment and rising costs.

Meanwhile, labor unions throughout the state are pushing many districts for pay raises and other changes, such as increased health care contributions in their next contracts.

“Where you need to cut then is the classroom,” he said. “Because you need fewer classrooms, you need fewer teachers, fewer aides, fewer of folks that are at the sites directly serving kids.”

Los Angeles Unified is not alone among California’s school districts facing financial pressures. The  must close a deficit or face state receivership.  plans to implement job cuts to address its budget shortfall. 

“Large and small districts, urban, suburban and rural alike, are experiencing similar constraints,” reads an open  from superintendents of eight California districts, demanding the state restructure the way it funds schools. “When nearly every school system in California is facing the same challenges, it is clear that the issue is not isolated decision-making, but the sustainability of the funding model itself.” 

The superintendents who sent the letter, including LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, cited ongoing challenges, such as enrollment declines.

LAUSD’s enrollment declined more than 3% to 389,000, down from roughly 402,500 between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 academic years. That outpaced both the state and country, according to a at January’s Committee of the Whole meeting. 

About 90% of LAUSD’s budget is spent on personnel. Fine said that with so much of the money being spent on staffing, it would be nearly impossible to balance the budget on the remaining funds. 

“Our priority will be to protect students, protect programs, protect schools, and, to the extent possible, protect workforce,” Carvalho said at a Roundtable discussion with reporters in late January. “And within that priority, the protection of workforce begins with school sites. That is the balance that we want to establish, leading to the necessary fiscal solvency that we must continue to observe.” 

If LAUSD moves forward with job cuts, laid-off employees would be notified by March 15, per state law.

Weighing in the potential cuts, LAUSD is expecting a $191 million deficit for the 2027-28 academic year, though several factors are at play, including the final governor’s budget. The district also said it plans to move forward with roughly $150 million in reductions to its central office. 

The current fiscal challenges come after two years of diminishing reserves to help replenish a multi-billion-dollar deficit. While the district teacher’s union has pointed to $5 billion in reserves as of July, LAUSD is expecting to burn through it in three years. 

“The danger in just trimming 5% here, 10% there is it leaves you sometimes with incomplete programs,” Fine said. “It may leave you with the inability to actually turn things into practice.” 

The school board was originally expected to vote on the layoffs Tuesday, but postponed its regular meeting to Feb. 17 to allow for better preparation and engagement. The meeting’s comes after LAUSD unions issued a  asking that the vote be delayed and presented instead at a stand-alone meeting. 

Ongoing labor actions 

The discussion of layoffs comes as United Teachers Los Angeles, or UTLA, the union representing roughly 35,000 teachers,  a strike if a labor agreement isn’t reached. Meanwhile, SEIU Local 99, which represents roughly 30,000 workers, including special education assistants, cafeteria workers and custodians, is in the midst of a strike authorization vote. 

Before mediation began with UTLA in January, LAUSD said its bargaining proposals would cost $4 billion over a three-year contract, while SEIU Local 99’s would cost $3 billion through 2027-2028. 

LAUSD’s most recent  to SEIU Local 99 would increase wages by 13% over the next three years — starting with a 10% increase this year. Before mediation, the district offered UTLA a 4.5% raise and 1% bonus over two years. 

UTLA says that isn’t enough. With Los Angeles’ high cost of living, teachers are struggling financially, the union says. A showed that money is particularly important for Gen Z Black and Latino teachers in the district; a quarter of whom said they would leave their careers in education in search of a higher-paying job.

“I’m a third-year teacher. I have a master’s degree from UCLA, which is the premier education school in the country, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck. And I’m still unable to even think about one day owning a home,” said Jon Paul Arciniega, a 29-year-old social studies teacher at Edward R. Roybal Learning Center in the Westlake area.  

“I still live at home,” Arciniega said. “And if I want to think about things like getting my own place, starting a family, buying a home, right now, all of that seems untenable.” 

Uncertainty ahead 

Sandy Meredith, a psychiatric social worker covering 42 district schools, said she hopes a strike won’t be necessary, both because of the financial strain it would place on colleagues like Arciniega and because schools play a critical role in students’ daily safety. 

But at the same time, she said they’re struggling to support students — 20% of whom require mental health services — without the district providing the support and wages they see as critical to their success. She expressed frustration with the size of the district’s reserves, particularly when teachers and staff like her pay out of pocket to provide basic resources, such as toilet paper, for students. 

“I feel like I’m on an airplane,” she said, “and I’ve been told ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t give you a mask to put on first. But go ahead and take care of the child.’ ” 

Strikes are nothing new in Los Angeles Unified. UTLA last went on strike in 2019, leading to a historic  with 6% pay raises, smaller class sizes and investments in community schools. Four years later, in 2023, SEIU Local 99 went on strike, which resulted in a 30% wage increase. 

But teachers and staff say this year comes with much higher stakes. 

Members of UTLA’s leadership say educators and school staff play a bigger role beyond the school walls.  

“We’re dealing with families’ anxieties. Are they not being able to come to school because of their housing insecurity? Is there trauma with this addition of the ICE raids? There’s concerns about safety,” said Margaret Wirth, a pupil services and attendance counselor who supports all of LAUSD’s Region South. “Is my child safe? For the child, is my parent safe? There’s a lot of different factors that make everything more heightened.”

Pupil service and attendance counselors like Wirth help reduce chronic absenteeism. She said layoffs will mean her caseloads will increase. 

But at the same time, Fine said if a district is going to move forward with layoffs, the earlier, the better.  

“The earlier you cut, the better off you are, and you’re also not dangling this black cloud over your staff and the community,” Fine said. “You get the discussion done, you forecast your gap right, and you make a decision on how to close that gap all at once, and everybody knows what the plan is.” 

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Wielding chainsaws, they helped the 97-year-old former Colorado governor clear out fallen timber this year to make a path for some four wheelers. 

“They just enjoyed the working relationship back then, and they enjoy the friendship now,” Romer said in a recent interview. 

But when they finish the day’s projects, it’s not unusual for the group to relax over wine and cheese and trade war stories about Romer’s tenure. Under his leadership, the district saw several years of steady gains in reading on both and . Fighting bureaucracy and a powerful teachers union, he required elementary schools to use Open Court, a phonics-based program that embraced what is known today as the science of reading. The district trained teachers to use it and hired reading specialists to make sure they stuck to the curriculum. 

“For six years, we concentrated on that. It was the most important thing we did,” Romer said. But the teacher’s union chafed against the program’s rigid design and eventually demanded over the curriculum. “They didn’t want us to be screwing around in classrooms. They wanted the door shut. We forced those doors open.”

Nearly 20 years later, those stories have a new relevance as reading scores are once again on the rise. The current superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, has taken a similar, top-down approach to literacy with a program from curriculum provider Amplify. District leaders say they’ve learned from the past about the dangers of a lockstep approach to teaching reading, but some wonder whether teachers are getting the support they need. 

Tackling a new curriculum is “not an easy shift, and the ongoing support is needed,” said Francisco Villegas, chief academic officer at the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit that manages 20 high-need schools in the district. “There are fewer dollars, and that likely will have implications for what the district is able to provide.” 

The Partnership schools adopted the Amplify program in 2018-19 and began to see in English language arts on the state test. Since 2022, seven of the Partnership’s 11 elementary schools have seen double-digit increases in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards. At a in September, Carvalho called the Partnership a “terrific incubator” that influenced the district’s curriculum choices. 

But systemwide, leaders are to balance the budget and layoffs are expected. Compared to the Open Court years, training on the reading curriculum districtwide is more “hit or miss,” said Maria Nichols, president of the district’s principals union. LAUSD offers opportunities, both online and in-person, for professional development. School leaders, however, often don’t know which courses teachers have taken or whether they’re using what they’ve learned, she said. “We are PD rich and implementation poor.”

‘On the same page’

Romer’s team implemented Open Court at a time when was pouring millions into training to teach reading. A $133 million from the U.S. Department of Education provided even more. Nearly all of the district’s 12,000 elementary school teachers participated in and many completed follow-up sessions throughout the year.

“It was phenomenal,” Nichols said. “We were treated as professionals. There was a lot of money back then.”

Former board members, among Romer’s annual visitors, said Open Court was a way to ensure all students, in an urban district where kids often change schools, would receive strong instruction. Marlene Canter, who served on the board from 2002 through 2008, said that regardless of teachers’ level of experience or the college they attended, “everybody would be on the same page.”

For some teachers, that played out literally. Many found Open Court . There was a specific set of cards with letter sounds to post on the wall and a recommended U-shaped classroom layout that, according to a teacher guide, left “a large open space on the floor for whole-group and individual activities” and provided “an easy ‘walk-around’ for the teacher.” Critics viewed the , deployed to ensure teachers followed the curriculum, as “Open Court police” ready to catch them veering off script. 

“They took my fun and creativity away,” former teacher Stuart Goldurs complained in a . “I became an instructional robot.” 

Ronni Ephraim, who served as Romer’s chief instructional officer, said the change upset some teachers. The district asked them to replace storybooks that had been favorites in their classrooms for years with Open Court phonics-based “readers,” workbooks and classroom libraries. Despite the objections, the district saw struggling schools improve and outpace the state. 

“I don’t think top-down is bad,” Ephraim, now a consultant, said about curriculum choices. “I think the board and the superintendent have to believe in it, and then they have to make sure that everybody is prepared to teach it as designed.”

‘Big disconnect’

Critics said the program was ineffective with English learners. Over time, performance flatlined, and the district replaced Open Court with a program. 

Rob Rucker is among the LAUSD teachers who worked for the district during the Open Court years and is now adjusting to Core Knowledge Language Arts. A third grade teacher at 135th Elementary School in Gardena, one of several small cities within the district’s boundaries, he said some novice teachers valued Open Court’s structure. They didn’t yet have enough experience to write lesson plans of their own.

“I actually liked Open Court,” he said. “It was very straightforward and easy for teachers to understand.”

The Amplify program still covers the basic skills students need to decode words and recognize parts of speech. It’s also what reading experts describe as a knowledge-building curriculum. The units introduce students to early civilizations, like the Vikings in Scandinavia, and science content, such as the solar system and animal habitats.

That’s where Open Court fell short, said Nichols, with the principals’ union.

“When we tested kids, they could read beautifully,” she said, “but they couldn’t understand what they were reading.”

For a student population like LAUSD’s, with 86% living in poverty and one in five still learning English, strengthening kids’ knowledge of the world is “going to be the real game changer,” said Barbara Davidson, president of StandardsWork, a think tank, and executive director of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. Since 2015, the campaign has been a leading voice for integrating history, science and the arts into reading curriculum. 

Rucker said his students were already familiar with stories like “Alice in Wonderland” and “Aladdin,” so it wasn’t hard to keep them interested in a lesson on classic fairy tales. Getting them to relate to lessons on ancient Rome has been more challenging.

According to a district spokesperson, “the goal is to ensure that every school has access to the literacy expertise and coaching capacity it needs.” But other than a two-day training from Amplify, Rucker said he hasn’t had any additional support on how to implement the program, he said. He thinks his school would benefit from an English language arts coordinator teachers could lean on when they need someone with more experience, but because of enrollment loss, many schools have lost administrative positions. 

Some teachers feel Amplify is out of reach for struggling students, leading them to patch in other materials to make the material more relevant. 

During a recent lesson on early American irrigation systems, Kareli Rodriguez, who teaches at Stoner Ave. Elementary School on the west side of town, used pictures and videos to help her fifth graders grasp the idea. Excitement over the Dodgers’ successful World Series run helped her pique kids’ interest in a passage on Yankees’ relief pitcher Mariano Rivera.

But it’s “not realistic,” she said, for teachers to get through a lesson in the recommended 90-minute time slot with so many students working below grade level. A district coach modeled a lesson for the teachers last school year, Rodriguez said, but she couldn’t finish it in time either.

“I think that’s a big disconnect that the district needs to understand,” she said. “It’s definitely rigorous, but most of the students are always playing catch up.”

Still, like most other schools in the district, Stoner Avenue saw improvements in reading. Fifty-two percent of fifth graders met or exceeded expectations, compared to 41% last year. 

Literacy advocates hope those gains will convince leaders — as Romer did with Open Court — to stick with Amplify. “Our push is going to be to say, ‘You got to stay the course,’ ” said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a nonprofit that for research-backed teaching materials. Her group breaks down the science of reading for parents so they’ll know how to talk to teachers about the curriculum and help their kids at home.

District leaders gathered in October to celebrate the district’s recent improvement. Outside the auditorium at Maywood Elementary School, as students rushed back to class after lunch, Deputy Superintendent Karla Estrada took a moment to talk about lessons learned since the Open Court years, like taking feedback from teachers.

The district, she said, wants them to follow the Amplify curriculum “with integrity” while recognizing they often have to make decisions in the moment, depending on their students. 

“They let me know where something is not quite what they want,” she said. “But no curriculum is going to do everything for you.”

The schools have mostly reopened after prolonged closures, using temporary classrooms. But the fires, which killed dozens and left thousands homeless, have chopped enrollment by half at some of the affected schools.

“Families went with schools that weren’t impacted by the fires,” said Bonnie Brimecombe, principal of Odyssey Charter-South, which was destroyed in the Eaton blaze. “And then we have other people that are just nervous about coming back [because] it’s a lot to see and be a part of.”

Odyssey South, located in the Altadena area of Los Angeles, reopened on three temporary campuses from January to June of last year including a Boys and Girls Club, an office in Old Town Pasadena, and classrooms at the nearby ArtCenter College of Design.

By fall, the main campus reopened in a school building that was formerly used by another charter, but many families chose other schools or left the area, with enrollment falling to 183 from 375. 

Despite the trauma, students were resilient, improving test scores and good classroom behavior, said Brimecombe. 

“It’s just a complete surprise at how well the kids have gone through this process,” she  said. “The kids are happy, the kids are smiling, they are learning, they are fine. The kids are happy, happy to be back together.”

Still, enrollment challenges persist, and the school has had to let go of a handful of teachers and teaching assistants. The school’s original building felt more like home, Brimecombe said, but kids who have stayed at the school are thriving.

Odyssey South has put new supports in place for students’ including an on-site counseling team that was expanded this year to increase access for students.

The school also brought in art therapists to run a series of sessions with different grade levels, and a counseling team that visits classrooms for structured sessions on topics that surface for specific age groups.

Teachers have also increased the number of field trips at the school to give students “happy situations” and positive experiences away from the fire-affected environment, Brimecombe said.

Odyssey South was able to maintain its previous levels of programming this year but may have to make cuts next year if current funding levels don’t persist, Brimecombe said.

That’s largely a matter of enrollment, since Odyssey South, like other public schools in LA., receives its funding on a per-pupil basis. With half of the school’s students gone, the future is uncertain.

Still, the principal is hopeful.

“Families are coming back,” Brimecombe said. “They’re just not back yet.”Enrollment problems also persist in the Palisades, where three schools were burned, said LAUSD school board member Nick Melvoin, who represents the area.

Palisades Charter High is holding up the best, with about 2,500 students, down from about 2,900 pre-fire. Marquez Elementary has about 130 students, a little less than half of pre-fire enrollment. Palisades Elementary has about 300 students, down by about 100 from pre-fire levels.

Students returned to Marquez Elementary into portable, temporary buildings in the fall. Palisades High students are returning to their school building on Jan. 27, and Palisades Elementary students continue to attend school at their co-location site at Brentwood Science Magnet.

New, rebuilt facilities for all three schools should be completed by fall 2028, “but all three schools are kind of a slightly different journey from now until then,” said Melvoin.

“The families that have been displaced, that are in other parts of L.A. and the country, are either coming back eventually or not,” he said of enrollment drops. “Some families who were not satisfied with the co-located option or didn’t want to be back in the Palisades just yet because of environmental concerns, are still in other schools.”

The district is giving flexibility in where families choose to enroll, said Melvoin, who expects enrollment in the displaced schools to improve.

“We’re going to have some new enrollment for the coming months, as people realize like, ‘Oh, I’m moving back to my house,’ or ‘my insurance money ran out, and so now I’m back in the Palisades,’ and there’s only a few schools that are open,” said Melvoin.

Besides environmental concerns, Melvoin said, families that are staying away due to a lack of infrastructure in the fire-scorched area, and because of trauma.

“The burn scar is still there,” he said. “You’re still driving past a number of destroyed buildings and houses. There are just some families who aren’t ready to put their kids back there yet.”

Many families are hopeful because schools are returning, construction is visible, and some businesses are coming back, said Allison Holdorff Polhill, a district director who works in Melvoin’s office and longtime Palisades resident who lost her home in the fires.

Virtually all residents were under‑insured, and there is still a strong need for federal money, grants and loans to cover rebuilding gaps, said Holdorff Polhill, and people are frustrated by slow government planning and being scattered in rentals or forced into assisted living.

“Every single friend’s home burned to the ground,” said Holdorff Polhill. “People are still traumatized by what happened.”

LAUSD has set aside $604 million for the full rebuilding of the impacted areas in the Palisades, including the three burned schools, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said.

The money will provide for the full rebuilding of Marquez Elementary, which was destroyed, plus new buildings and improvements to existing ones at Palisades Elementary, where about 60% of the campus was burned.

At Palisades High, about 30% of classrooms were destroyed and the remainder are being rebuilt. 

The school is famous for being a popular filming location for Hollywood movies such as Carrie, Freaky Friday, and Teen Wolf, and for notable alumni including J.J. Abrams and will.i.am.

Pali High students have been attending classes in a former Sears department store building while construction is underway to repair fire damage. 

The school’s campus is scheduled for reopening when work is completed later this month. 

Carvalho said the district is still working to recover about $500 million of the expected construction costs from insurance companies.

“The rest we will seek FEMA reimbursements, which we believe we are absolutely legally entitled to,” Carvalho said. “We hope that the federal government will not play games, political games as we seek these reimbursements.”

In addition to these investments, the district will spend in excess of a billion dollars, all funded through Measure US, a $9 billion bond referendum approved by voters in 2024, to build higher levels of fire resilience at schools across the district.

“That means anything from replacement of filtration systems, the acquisition of air purifiers, new filtration systems for schools, HVAC systems, and replacement of roofing structures and windows with materials that withstand fires,” Carvalho said.  

LAUSD has installed more than 230 air quality sensors on school buildings, covering every campus in the district, Carvalho said.

The sensors detect nauseous fumes, particulate matter in the air, and also measure temperature and wind speed, enabling school officials to make emergency decisions in case of fires, he said.

“Prevention is the best solution for fires,” said Carvalho. 

The district recently reignited its dormant nonprofit, the , hiring a new executive director to court dollars from corporations and foundations. The effort has brought in some $26 million so far, including from well-known players in L.A. entertainment and business, on its way to a $100 million goal for the foundation’s first five years. 

A renewed focus on raising private money for school districts across the country comes as student needs are growing and leaders worry about shifting federal policy, education philanthropy officials said. 

“What’s occurring right now is that those that don’t have them are forming foundations, or reforming them if they’ve gone dormant,” said Mike Taylor, head of the National Association of Education Foundations, who said he’s been fielding calls since the summer from school districts looking to navigate the uncertainty around federal funding and leverage community resources.

In Los Angeles, the initial fundraising push has helped families impacted by last year’s wildfires and supported the district’s neediest schools.

“I want to level the playing field,” said Sadie Stockdale Jefferson, who came in to lead the LAUSD foundation this summer after serving in a similar role for Chicago Public Schools and running a University of Chicago think tank focused on public education. “We’re taking the best of what we know works to improve education and ensuring those initiatives reach the schools and classrooms that need them the most.”

A major initial focus of the foundation will be on what LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho calls “priority schools,” with lagging academic performance and the highest student needs in a district that educates everyone from the wealthy elite to families experiencing homelessness or poverty.

Jefferson recently saw a breakdown of private support to district schools by region and said she realized: “The disparity is shocking,” adding she wants foundation money to primarily support campuses without their own parent-run fundraising efforts. 

The philanthropic money is still a drop in the bucket in the district’s more than . But it represents a potential new revenue stream at a time when LAUSD continues to shed students and run a deficit. 

Carvalho is looking to the foundation to support students in ways the district can’t, like sending homeless students off to college with a new laptop, or providing emergency cash to families impacted by the wildfires. “Sometimes the need is acute,” Carvalho said, with foundation money typically being deployed quickly and with less bureaucracy. 

Many of the needs Carvalho ticked off as foundation priorities are those students face outside the classroom. But he said he’s also open to private money supporting the district academically, particularly in the priority schools. District support for priority schools involves teacher coaching, strengthening curriculum and providing tutoring. 

“Government dollars will only go so far, and there are unmet needs that often foundations can address and support,” Carvalho said.  

The foundation has also taken on music education, riding off the popularity of “The Last Repair Shop,” an Oscar-winning short film about the highly skilled team that keeps scores of district-owned instruments working for LAUSD students. Jefferson said she’s hoping to replicate a sponsor-a-school program she ran in Chicago, offering businesses a way to directly help local schools. 

Using private money for public education can be controversial, particularly when funders are seen as exerting too much pressure or pushing for school reforms like charter schools.

Carvalho and others involved in Los Angeles’s fundraising say they’re aiming to avoid that tension as they address critical needs in the district of 400,000 students. 

Of the nation’s 13,000 school districts, around 6,000 have foundations, the majority volunteer-run, Taylor said. The focus of district foundations has evolved, he said, from being thought of as a vehicle to buy extra books or classroom materials. The needs and challenges have deepened since the pandemic. Philanthropic money now goes toward building partnerships for workforce development, supporting teacher retention and addressing student mental-health challenges, Taylor said.

LAUSD’s foundation has recruited board members from local business, education and philanthropic organizations.

Board Chairman Michael Fleming, the president of the David Bohnett Foundation, said he was drawn to the role after hearing Carvalho’s vision for an organization that could move fast and target specific goals, including investing in the priority schools. 

He’s also committed to bridging the divide between public and private funding. “There is this innate distrust sometimes between a government entity and philanthropy, and vice versa,” Fleming said. “They each see the world very differently and say: ‘You don’t understand the way we operate.’ I think that’s false.”

Enthusiasm for private investment in public school districts has fallen in and out of favor over the decades. Initial waves of corporate and foundation money aimed to revolutionize education.  

“When things don’t dramatically get better, the energy and resources and attention ebb,” said Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus at Columbia’s Teachers College who has followed education philanthropy. Many private foundations doubled down on charter schools, which then made school districts wary of partnerships. In Los Angeles, a nonprofit launched by LAUSD leaders in the 2010s later merged with an entity that backed charters, putting it at odds with the district it initially set out to help. 

Henig sees today’s philanthropists more focused on supporting strong school leaders, rather than looking to fundamentally disrupt the way education is delivered. 

That shift makes sense to Erica Lim, a senior program officer at the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Broad, along with the foundations of “Two and a Half Men” co-creator Chuck Lorre and L.A. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, to the LAUSD foundation to support its priority schools.

Lim said she was encouraged by the stability Carvalho has brought to LAUSD since he joined in 2022 after a string of short-tenured leaders. The former Miami-Dade Public Schools superintendent now has a contract to keep him in the L.A. job until at least 2030.

“We’re not looking to backfill or solve really systemic budget issues,” Lim said. “That’s for district leaders to solve.” Instead, Broad wants its investments to help kick-start new initiatives or scale programs that show promise. 

Carvalho said the district won’t be turning to philanthropy to fund core areas of the budget. That said, he could see the foundation being used as a stopgap if, for instance, the federal government cut off longstanding funding to support English language learners. “That would be a legitimate support from the foundation,” Carvalho said, “Which could be a likely scenario in the months to come.”

In reviving the foundation, Carvalho changed the bylaws to give himself less power over its board, a move he saw as helping ensure its independence. Jefferson works with the LAUSD Education Foundation board to direct funds, with district input. 

Fleming, the board chair, said he’s looking for the foundation to outlast the many prior attempts and avoid drama. “We simply want to get resources for the schools and for students,” he said. “That’s it.” 

Duque, who has taught at the award-winning, urban planning-themed LAUSD in West Hollywood for 18 years, was one of four teachers named as finalists by the state education department for the 2026 California Teachers of the Year in October. She was the only LAUSD teacher to receive the honor.

Duque works hard to create a free-flowing vibe in her first-grade classroom to promote the creativity of her students, describing the scene as the “best kind” of messy.  

“It’s a place where my students are able to wonder, to be curious, to take risks, to be able to make things with their hands and minds,” said Duque, who has been a teacher in Los Angeles Unified since 2000. 

“It’s a place where you can tell learning is happening,” she said of her classroom. 

The veteran teacher’s freewheeling approach is apparent in her classroom but there’s a method to the mayhem. Everything her students do is somehow tied back to the school’s theme of urban planning and urban design, topics Duque admits could be heady for her 6-year-old students, were it not for her approach to the subjects, which links them to kids’ everyday lives. 

On a recent school day, students in Duque’s class were drawing pictures of designs for a new community space in Griffith Park after she noticed a news report about the city’s struggle to repurpose the area .������

Students drew pictures of their ideas for the space, coloring construction paper using markers and drawing their visions for forests and lazy rivers that could be installed in L.A.’s historic park.  

In subsequent parts of the project, Duque said, students will create three-dimensional models of their ideas for the part using recycled materials such as cardboard and paper.  

“We’re making an arcade that’s called Fun Time, and then we put a petting zoo next to it called Pig Pig,” said Ben, a student in Duque’s class, who was working on a drawing with a few classmates. “I wonder if it will really happen.”

Duque often pulls ideas for lessons from real-life events in L.A., finding the sprawling and diverse city offers no shortage of inspiration for classroom activities tied to urban planning. 

“I just keep my eyes and ears to the news, and I just see what’s happening in our community, and I just get ideas from there,” she said. 

A favorite lesson from a few years ago was based on an experience the teacher had while walking her dog in Griffith Park, when a coyote approached the two and nearly attacked Duque’s pet. 

are common in L.A. and such experiences aren’t unusual, but this event inspired Duque to create a lesson for students to create outfits for pets to repel predatory coyote attacks.

Students created costumes for pets that featured things known to deter coyotes, such as flashing lights. One student liked the project so much she created a picture book about the lesson with her parents, a copy of which Duque keeps displayed on the wall in her class. 

“It’s another example of how I really look at what’s in our city, what’s in the news, and what’s relevant to kids and our lives,” the teacher said. 

Duque’s relentless curiosity and enthusiasm make her a natural leader among her colleagues at Rosewood, said the school’s principal, Linda Crowder.

“She is a lifelong learner,” Crowder said. “She gets something and she runs with it.”

LAUSD’s chief financial officer in an interview last week said declining enrollments and the end of pandemic relief funds have forced the district to take cost-cutting measures.  

Schools have already been notified of how much they will have to cut from their budgets. The cuts will go into effect starting in August. 

LAUSD officials in June had predicted a $1.6 billion deficit for the 2027-28 school year. But an updated version of the budget  last week eliminates the deficit by using reserve funds plus cost-cutting measures over the next two years. 

The planned cuts to school budgets will begin in the 2026-27 school year, with school consolidations and staffing reductions planned for the following school year, said LAUSD Chief Financial Officer Saman Bravo-Karimi. 

“We have fewer students each year, and in LAUSD that’s been the case for over two decades,” Bravo-Karimi said. “That has a profound impact on our funding levels. Also, we had the expiration of those one-time COVID relief funds that were very substantial.”  

The district recently contracted with the consulting firm Ernst and Young to create models for closing and consolidating schools. While school officials wouldn’t say which schools or how many would be closed, the district has clearly been shrinking. 

Enrollment last year fell to 408,083, from a peak of 746,831 in 2002. Nearly half of the district’s zoned elementary schools are half-full or less, and 56 have seen rosters fall by 70% or more. 

Bravo-Karimi said in the current school year the district will spend about $2 billion more than it took in from state, local and federal funding. The trend of overspending is expected to continue next year and the year after that, he said.

The district’s board in June approved a three-year budget plan that included a $18.8-billion budget for the current school year. The plan delayed layoffs until next year, and funded higher spending in part by reducing a fund for retirees’ health benefits. 

According to , the district will save:  

• $425 million by clawing back funds that went unused by schools each year 
• $300 million by reducing staffing and budgets at central offices 
• $299 million by cutting special funding for schools with high-needs students
• $120 million by cutting unfilled school staffing positions
• $30 million by consolidating schools  
• $16 million by cutting student transportation 

Bravo-Karimi said the district gets virtually all of its money through per-pupil funding from the state. Since enrollment in the district has fallen steadily for decades, and then sharply since the pandemic, funding is down significantly, he said.

Most zoned L.A. elementary schools are almost half empty, and many are operating at less than 25% capacity. Thirty-four schools have fewer than 200 students enrolled; a dozen of those schools once had enrollment over 400.������  

The drops have prompted LAUSD leaders to talk about closing or combining schools, a controversial step that other big U.S. cities  or considering. 

Bravo-Karimi said the district would assess the needs of communities and the conditions at local schools before it makes any decisions about school closings or consolidations. 

“That process needs to play out before any decisions are made about potential consolidation of school facilities,” he said.

Bravo-Karimi said other factors, including ongoing negotiations with labor unions, and changes to state funding, will further impact the district’s budget in the coming months. 

Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab and Research Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, said the cuts planned for LAUSD are “relatively mild” compared to overall size of the district’s budget and cuts being considered at other  and the rest of the country. 

“I don’t think the people in the schools are going to notice that there’s a shrinking of the central office or that they’re using reserves,” said Roza. “Unless you’re one of the people who loses their transportation or if you’re in one of the schools that gets closed.” 

But, Roza said, many of the cuts taken by LAUSD can only be made once, and the district still faces profound changes as enrollments continue to fall and downsizing becomes more and more necessary. 

“This really should be a signal to families,” said Roza of the planned cuts in the district’s latest budget. “After several years of really being flush with cash, this is not the financial position that LA Unified is going to be in moving forward.” 

LAUSD Board Member Tanya Ortiz-Franklin, who represents LAUSD’s District Seven, which includes neighborhoods such as South L.A., Watts and San Pedro, said the district will work to shield kids from the impact of budget cuts. 

But, Ortiz-Franklin said, the district hired permanent staffers with one-time COVID funding, and now some of those staffers will have to be let go. 

Still, LA Unified has made strong gains since the pandemic, she said, and the district must work hard to preserve its upward trajectory despite financial headwinds. 

“We would love to share good news, especially this time of year,” said Ortiz-Franklin. “But the reality is, it is really tough.” 

School leaders across LAUSD received preliminary budgets for the next year over the last few weeks, said Ortiz-Franklin. Some schools in her district are facing cuts of up to 15%, forcing them to make tough decisions on which staffers to keep and who to let go. 

Several hundred additional layoffs will be announced in February, she said, when the district makes another assessment of staffing needs. 

“We don’t know the total number yet, and we don’t know which positions yet,” said Ortiz-Franklin.

This school year, the Los Angeles school district has lost more than 13,000 immigrant students, mostly Hispanic, school officials said, with students fleeing in the months since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stepped up activity in Los Angeles in March.

The nation’s second-largest district now enrolls about 62,000 English learners, according to new figures obtained by The 74, down from more than 75,000 immigrant students in the 2024-25 academic year.   

“Some children are just choosing not to go back to school, especially those who are immigrants,” said Evelyn Aleman, founder of , a parents’ group which advocates for L.A.’s Spanish-speaking and low-income families. “That’s because they know that immigrant children have been arrested or detained by ICE.”

In the 2018-19 academic year, the district enrolled more than 157,000 English learners.  The downward trend of these students represents a stunning turnaround for a district that in 2003 was nearly half immigrant kids. It comes amid a districtwide decline in enrollment.  

L.A. is not the only city seeing declines in immigrant enrollment since ICE cracked down. Denver, Miami and San Diego have also . 

Since January, school officials, municipal leaders and state lawmakers have sought to present a brave face against the immigration crackdowns promised by President Donald Trump. Even before the ICE raids began, they issued guidance and rolled out tools and policies, and proposed legislation to limit federal immigration enforcement.

But the fear of ICE became real for many families, Aleman said, after federal agents in April showed up at two LAUSD schools seeking ‘access’ to young students. 

The federal agents’ school visits — with as many as four appearing at one time looking for information on children in grades one through six — were considered the first reported cases of Homeland Security authorities attempting to enter a U.S. school. 

School staffers turned the agents away in both cases, but outside of school grounds at least two LAUSD students have been arrested and held by ICE, Aleman said.  

“It isn’t because they don’t want to be in school,” said Aleman. “A big concern for families is that they’re going to be separated [by ICE]. Rather than see that, many are choosing to self-deport, or children who are high schoolers are choosing not to return.”

Instead, Aleman said, kids are staying home where they feel safe, or in some cases going to work outside their homes.  

According to LAUSD figures, the drop in immigrant students this year means LAUSD now enrolls about half as many of those kids as it did before the pandemic. 

Besides the ICE raids, factors including rising housing prices, falling birth rates and a tight local economy have also contributed to the exodus of immigrant students, said LAUSD Board Member , who represents , which includes neighborhoods such as South L.A., Watts and San Pedro.  

“People are having less children, and traditionally, in Latino families, there are more children. So that’s one area,” said Ortiz-Franklin. “And, obviously, the in Los Angeles is ridiculous.”

Recent fears around immigration enforcement and the future of public assistance, such as SNAP benefits, are also likely driving down immigrant populations, Ortiz-Franklin said. 

shows the immigrant students in 2003 accounted for about 45% of enrollment, with more than 325,000 English learners enrolled there. Since then, the number of immigrant students has fallen sharply.

But the ICE raids that began in L.A. this year have given immigrant families more reason to be concerned about sending their kids to school — or leave the city entirely. 

To bolster immigrant students’ sense of safety, LAUSD officials have established ‘perimeters of safety’ around campuses and instructed school staffers to refuse ICE agents entry, unless warrants are displayed.

The district has created its safe zones around schools by warning families to stay away when volunteer sentries spot ICE agents nearby. A free legal defense fund has been created for families facing enforcement.

Other measures include free busing to class, legal clinics for families, and remote lessons for when all else fails.

In a statement, a district spokesperson said LAUSD’s overall enrollment “continues to reflect a long-term downward trend observed across large urban districts in California and nationwide.” 

“Multiple factors contribute to these shifts, including declining birth rates, changes in housing affordability, and family migration patterns,” the spokesperson said. “In addition, increased federal immigration enforcement efforts have had a chilling effect in many communities.”

LAUSD officials and researchers said it’s difficult  to pinpoint where immigrant families are going when they leave. During the pandemic, L.A. superintendent Alberto Carvalho said some of these families had left the state for Texas and Florida for economic reasons.

Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education Pedro Noguera said LAUSD will face challenges in attracting more immigrant families, even with the measures to protect students from ICE raids.

“They’re taking a lot of extra steps to try to reassure the population, but it’s limited as to what they can do,” Noguera said.  “It’s a combination of several trends, all heavy at once, that is producing this significant decline,” adding LAUSD may soon have to make tough choices due to its shrinking class sizes.

Smaller class sizes have already prompted district leaders to consider measures such as closing schools or converting unused campus buildings for housing. 

Overall enrollment in LAUSD’s massive, 1,500-school system has cratered since its peak in 2002, when 746,831 students attended classes. This school year the district  enrolled 392,654 students, a drop of roughly 4% from last year’s count of 409,108, school officials said.

Enrollment this term has also failed to hit targets set during the budget process earlier in the year, indicating the losses are steeper than officials expected.

Julien Lafortune, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said such declines are impacting districts around the state, of immigrant students.

“The growth of Los Angeles and other districts was driven by a lot of immigrants coming in, and then, on average, having more kids than the average native-born person,” he said. “Now, we’re seeing kind of the inverse of that. Kind of a bust after the boom.”

At 6:50 a.m, the parent on carpool duty would set out westward toward the San Fernando Valley, often cutting the workday short to reverse the commute eight hours later. One dad even rented space at a coworking location to minimize the drive.

The destination: Portola Middle School in Tarzana, one of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s few magnet schools with a program specifically for highly gifted students. 

“We were going with traffic both ways,” said Tira Franco, a mom of three who feels lucky that her now-seventh grader landed a spot in the school. But while the boys in her eight-seat minivan spent the trips quizzing each other in math, she quickly grew exhausted. “In L.A., just five miles could take you like an hour.”

Enduring gridlock on “the 405” and other major thoroughfares is part of life in the nation’s second-largest city, and it’s a price that many families are willing to pay to get their children in a preferred school. This year, the kids ride a bus as part of the district’s efforts to services. Students who attend magnets and other schools of choice in the sprawling, 700-square-mile district are among those who get priority for a ride. That means the boys get up even earlier to meet the bus. 

District leaders in recent years have tried to take some of the pain out of the process by offering choice fairs, a centralized application website and more busing options. But many still find the experience stressful, time-intensive and stacked against low-income families.

“The kids who get a better quality education in the district are the children of parents who are resourceful, who are able to navigate this very complicated formula,” said Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities in Schools Los Angeles, a dropout prevention program that serves students in 15 schools across the metro area. Children whose parents can manage that system are going to get “the best teachers, best equipment and best experience. Unfortunately, that is not always close.”

Over a third of LAUSD students participate in district choice, officials said. During this year’s , which closes Nov. 14, parents can pick from a wide range of options that include not just magnets, but dual-language programs and district charter schools. Families can also request permits to attend a school outside their zone. But that process is time-consuming, and lower-income families often lack the luxury of weeks to research school performance and plot potential routes.

found that Latino students, English learners and kids from low-income families were underrepresented in magnet programs, which were designed to create more integrated schools. White and Asian students were also overrepresented in affiliated charters — some of the highest-achieving schools in the district. 

“There are parent groups in West L.A. that organize information sessions [on choice], but West L.A. is a relatively advantaged area,” said Christopher Campos, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago who has in LAUSD. The single application portal, where parents can request transportation, has made the process “a bit easier. …I still think it’s a pretty daunting task.” 

‘Valley parents’

For some parents, the process began on a clear Thursday evening in October as they searched for a parking space near a middle school in the San Fernando Valley. Inside the gates, families strolled from booth to booth on the lawn to learn about the district’s array of magnet schools. 

There’s Northridge Middle with a special lab for exploring careers in medicine, Robert Frost Middle with a gifted music conservatory and Mulholland Middle, where students in the junior police academy can study crime scene investigation, or law and government. Inside the auditorium, the Louis Armstrong Middle jazz band performed their version of the Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein,” an instrumental rock hit from the early 1970s.

“Valley parents want to stay in the valley,” LAUSD Board President Scott Schmerelson said as he greeted principals and magnet school coordinators, who were busy handing out fliers, buttons and other promotional items. He paused at the display table for Nobel Charter Middle in Northridge, which features a magnet program combining STEM with the arts. 

“Here’s Nobel. Always overenrolled. Very popular.”

One parent grabbed his attention to suggest organizers set up booths by regions in the valley — east, west and north. “The valley is huge,” she said.

She makes a good point, Schmerelson said.

shows that providing transportation increases the likelihood that families will take advantage of school choice, a district spokeswoman said. Officials use social media, websites and other communication channels to inform families that bus service is available. The district is “clustering stops where demand is highest,” the spokeswoman said, but leaders also “continually review ridership data and feedback to explore ways we can improve access.” 

Choice options have increased in recent years as the district seeks to leaving for independent charters or private schools. There are over 330 magnet programs, compared to 217 a decade ago. Enrollment decline, which is hurting the district in many ways, has had the effect of opening up more space in many sought-after schools. Students who end up on a waiting list for their first choice are now coming off the list sooner, said Song Lee, LAUSD’s coordinator of student integration services.

But word of events like the fair don’t always reach the parents they were designed for.

“If I would have known about the fair, that would have been helpful,” said Dulce Valencia, a mom of three whose twin daughters are currently part of the Spanish-English dual-language program at San Fernando Elementary School. She has to decide on a middle school for her girls and is considering charters.

Multiple options can confuse parents, Campos found when he held some information sessions regarding another district program called “zones of choice.” Instead of attending their neighborhood middle or high school, students living within one of 17 zones can choose from a menu of specialized schools with themes like global studies, performing arts or social justice.

“A lot of families thought they were showing up to a session about magnet programs,” he said. “They actually were not interested in any of the zones of choice schools, but they were just getting overwhelmed with information.” 

‘Have your phone ready’

Once parents secure their child a seat, they still have to figure out how to get there.

“I tell parents, ‘Have your phone ready so you can map out where the school is and you can see if it’s feasible for you,’ ” said Grace Lee, who has two young boys in the district. She also works in the office at Gault Street Elementary, her neighborhood school, and fields questions from parents about choice. 

For Lee, calculating the best routes to school in L.A. calls to mind , the uproarious “Saturday Night Live” sketch where characters in exaggerated “Valley girl” accents rattle off shortcuts to circumvent the ubiquitous L.A. traffic.

“If you live in L.A. you get it,” Lee said. 

When her oldest son got into Oliver Wendell Holmes Middle, north of her Lake Balboa neighborhood, she applied for transportation. But the bus stop was almost as far west as the school was north. She decided it was just easier for her husband to drive him on his way to the office.

Working at a Title I school in the majority Latino district, Lee worries that many families don’t even complete the choice application. 

“The people who are in the know, their kids are already fine,” she said. “Their test scores are generally fine.”

Twenty years ago, Lois André-Bechely, a professor emerita at California State University, Los Angeles, wrote in that parents with flexible schedules stood a better chance of taking advantage of public school choice in L.A. She identified transportation as one of the obstacles. 

“Parents who have cars and can arrange time to drive their children to and from school will have more choice options than parents who do not have such advantages,” she wrote. 

The city’s offers free bus and train passes, but some students on public buses and L.A.’s routes don’t always reach the areas they live in. A recent showed that it can take four times longer to reach a destination by train than by car.

Now retired, André-Bechely no longer conducts research. But as a grandmother, she still hears about parent’s experiences at soccer games and birthday parties. 

“Parents still have to be strategic when applying to school choice programs,” she said in an email. “Some school choice issues I identified have not gone away.”

For several years, philanthropies like the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation that guided parents, especially low-income families, through the school choice maze. Their efforts emphasized independent charters, but groups like Speak UP and Parent Revolution, which later folded into other nonprofits, helped LAUSD families as well.

“Los Angeles used to have a robust ecosystem of nonprofits empowering parents and challenging the status quo,” said Ben Austin, a former state education board member who founded Parent Revolution. During the pandemic, he pulled his children out of LAUSD and enrolled them in a charter school. When Eli Broad passed away in 2021, other funders didn’t fill the vacuum, he said. “Eli was such a magnetic leader that when he died, much of the local and national education donor engagement in L.A. died along with him.”

Many families researching options still rely on Facebook and other informal networks, but experience with the process doesn’t necessarily make it easier. With a fifth grader preparing for middle school, Franco, the school choice commuting veteran, is once again weighing school options.

“I’m trying to get her into a great program for next year, and I still have a million questions,” she said. “Why do I have a million questions if I’ve already been through this before?”

A painter prepped the side of a classroom building at the school for a new mural — smiling dragons in caps and gowns, and the district slogan: “Ready for the World.” On a patch of pavement sat a mini outdoor library featuring a small seating area, an umbrella for shade and a cart full of books.

She hopes the features prompt visitors to ask, “Who’s the principal here?” But the progress at 135th, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, goes much deeper. Chronic absenteeism is down to 13%, from 17% in 2024. Over the past two years, the percentage of students meeting state standards in English language arts has climbed from 25% to 37%. In math, it grew from 26% to 34%.

The changes, along with the formation of a STEM lab and the addition of afterschool Boys and Girls Clubs, were enough to convince Daveyeon Shallowhorn, the school’s plant manager, to pull his two kids out of a nearby Catholic school and enroll them in 135th.

“I just see different things being offered that I don’t usually see,” he said.  

Districtwide, leaders are celebrating the highest-ever performance on California’s state test. But the strong gains in math, reading and science, at every grade level, weren’t limited to wealthier, or high-performing magnets. They were evenly distributed across some of the district’s most challenging, high-poverty schools, like 135th.

Some say Superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s centralized approach to steering the nation’s second-largest district is lifting performance at schools that languished near the bottom for years. The seven-member school board, which hired him in 2021, reaffirmed their confidence in his leadership last month, to renew his contract for another four years. But others say there are likely multiple explanations for the boost. The question is whether the positive trends will continue in a city where the powerful has a history of resisting top-down programs.

“If Carvalho is seeing gains, that means our students are gaining,” said Jose Luis Navarro, a former principal in the district who now coaches school leaders. For now, United Teachers Los Angeles is unhappy that a recently adopted budget didn’t include raises. Nevertheless, Navarro urged the union to embrace Carvalho’s agenda. “You’ve already tried fighting every superintendent for the last 40 years. Just try working with one and see what happens.”

The improvements came in spite of wildfires that wiped out part of the city, a crackdown on undocumented students and a federal government trying to on blue California. 

“Our kids, our students persevered,” Carvalho, who declined to be interviewed, said at his back-to-school address in late July. “They, in fact, soared.”

But while students from all racial groups improved, significant gaps remain. At least two-thirds of white and 74% of Asian third-graders met or exceeded expectations in reading, compared to 37% of Latino students and 31% of Black students. 

“We will redouble our efforts. We will redouble our commitment,” he pledged at an Oct. 10 press conference at Maywood Elementary. 

‘Smaller numbers’

Experts say the recent achievement growth among the district’s neediest students is likely a cumulative effect of several initiatives, including a more uniform approach to instruction, extra help for kids who are the furthest behind and a concentrated focus on the most troubled schools. 

But Carvalho has “generally good instincts about what works,” said Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California. The district adopted a research-based literacy curriculum, has over 10,000 teachers in the science of reading and has spread some of those to math instruction. “It seems the district is investing in quality curriculum and supporting teachers to use it.”

As scores go up, however, enrollment continues to dwindle. Over the past five years. LAUSD has lost .

But that factor could be working in the district’s favor. That’s because for now, LAUSD, unlike , has , leaving some schools with more staff per student.

“You already have built-in small group instruction with smaller numbers,” said Nery Paiz, principal of Glen Alta Elementary School, east of downtown. With an enrollment of about 100, his average class size is about 19 students, he said. 

shows that such “pronounced” declines can sometimes lead to increases in test scores. found that enrollment loss doesn’t immediately translate into funding cuts, freeing up more resources for schools in the short term. LAUSD’s $18.8 billion budget, adopted in June, increases spending for majority-Black schools, arts programs and support for LGBTQ students.

‘No secret sauce’

Some in the district say the uptick in scores would have happened without Carvalho, whom they dismiss as a slick media personality.

“We’re far enough away from the lockdowns that teachers have been able to recover, and students have been able to recover,” said Nicolle Fefferman, a veteran high school social studies teacher in the district. “There is no secret sauce to teaching.”

She helps lead an advocacy group, Parents Supporting Teachers, whose members are far less enamored with Carvalho than when he arrived in early 2022. The district’s failed experiment with a $6 million AI chatbot has drawn accusations of misspending. Officials discontinued use of the tool when the company went under. Others argue he to close schools during the fires, relying on guidelines that failed to account for multiple fires burning across the region and filling the air with . 

Some parents say students have in school and are unhappy with Carvalho’s move to roll out an online program called . To Fefferman, the digital lessons and assessments represent “overtesting,” which the teachers union has traditionally opposed. UTLA didn’t respond to requests for comment, but Maria Nichols, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, the principals union, said i-Ready has created “friction” between school leaders and teachers who object to the program.

The increase in scores is worth celebrating, she said, but said it came “on the backs of the [principals] who are working 60 hour weeks.” Her union joined with UTLA and SEIU Local 99, which represents non-teaching employees, outside schools Sept. 16. All three are currently in negotiations with the district over salaries and working conditions. 

Board President Scott Schmerelson, who has the union’s support, said such concerns are to be expected. It’s a “general rule” to complain about the superintendent “no matter what he says, no matter what he does,” he said. But he called the “grumbling” minimal. 

He’s particularly enthusiastic about the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan, a $175 million initiative that provides schools serving Black students additional counselors, cultural activities and field trips. Former Superintendent Austin Beutner proposed the program in early 2021 to reduce achievement gaps. Under Carvalho, it continues to expand, in spite of challenges from who say it discriminates against students of other races. 

Since last year, students in Black Student Achievement Plan schools have seen slightly more growth in reading and math than the district as a whole. 

The additional resources have “helped [Black students] a lot, not only academically but emotionally,” Schmerelson said. “I think they feel important. I think they feel respected.”

‘Nothing short of remarkable’

With high expectations, the board voted unanimously to hire Carvalho in late 2021. At the time, Pedro Noguera, dean of education at the University of Southern California, likened the award-winning superintendent’s arrival to“LeBron coming to the Lakers.” The board trusted that Carvalho’s success leading the Miami-Dade schools for 14 years would follow him to the West Coast. 

But efforts to overcome COVID learning loss and rise above pre-pandemic performance began a year earlier, with schools still locked down. Most students wouldn’t set foot in classrooms for another year. 

Beutner used COVID relief funds to launch Primary Promise, a highly popular effort to target extra instruction to struggling readers, including English learners, students in foster care and others most likely to fall further behind because of school closures. 

In 2021, a Boston-based consulting group that designed the model “nothing short of remarkable.” On average, students began the year reading five words correctly per minute. Some couldn’t read at all. After 10 weeks, they were close to reaching the goal of 21 words per minute.

Julie Navarro, who is married to Jose, worked on the program as a reading specialist at Panorama City Elementary in the San Fernando Valley, where she said teachers were eager to share materials and ideas with each other. 

“It was seriously the most positive collaboration I’ve ever been a part of,” she said. Primary Promise teachers attended monthly training that she described as “well-planned, thorough and research-based.” 

Then Carvalho , arguing that with relief funds drying up, it was unsustainable to keep paying instructional aides to staff the program. The renamed Literacy and Numeracy Intervention expanded services into higher grades, drawing criticism from who said the emphasis on the early grades was what made it effective. Beutner and Ray Cortines, also a former superintendent in the district, called the move .

“I had never seen teachers who were willing to die on the hill of an LAUSD program,” Fefferman said. “As a high school teacher, I was like ‘Yes, please make sure they can read by third grade.’ ” 

In Julie Navarro’s view, educators who lead the intervention work are sometimes “pulled in multiple directions” and the program has “less integrity” than the original. But Panorama, she said, is an example of staying true to the model of giving students small group instruction and consistently tracking their progress.

The school has seen double digit increases in reading and math since 2022 and was on this year’s list of . With many families facing financial hardship and newcomers navigating language and cultural barriers, Julie described the population as “the most-challenged families I’ve ever seen all at one school. In spite of their situation, they were growing.”

‘Kids know their data’

Close attention to student data was a hallmark of the Primary Promise program. Carvalho expects the same level of monitoring districtwide with i-Ready. The platform, Schmerelson said, helps teachers know whether to “slow down” the pace of learning for students who are struggling or move kids ahead.  

On a bulletin board in a second grade classroom at 135th Elementary, students’ initials are clustered into four color-coded groups — from blue for exceeding standards in i-Ready down to red for being two grade levels behind. Some argue that “data walls” if they’re not among the high-achievers. But Tanya Ortiz-Franklin, the school board member whose district includes the school, believes the practice motivates students to work hard. 

“Kids know their data and teachers know their data,” she said. “They are using it to move instruction. That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do for years.” 

Her region encompasses 175 schools that stretch from the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro — the busiest container terminal in the U.S. — to the historic Black neighborhoods south of downtown. They include Maya Angelou Community High School, one of Carvalho’s 121 “priority schools,” where he takes a more hands-on approach to tracking data and staffing schools with extra counselors and academic coaches. 

“I spend 90% of my time dealing with 10% of the schools,” Carvalho said at a conference at  Harvard University in September. “They are accountable directly to me.” 

The schools have some of the poorest achievement and attendance rates in the district, and in Maya Angelou’s case, a high rate of community violence. In 2019, the listed the high school among those with at least 50 homicides within a one-mile radius over a five-year period. In 2023, a stray bullet during a football game at the school.

“Being an inner-city school, it’s very easy to focus on the negative aspects that happen here. That’s the low hanging fruit,” said Principal Jose Meza. That’s why he encourages staff and students to “flood” social media platforms with positive news, like a poetry night for newcomers, and the 13 students admitted to Berkeley and the University of California Los Angeles this year.

“Embracing our roots and honoring our heritage,” the school posted on Instagram for Hispanic Heritage Month, with a reel of students dancing, sampling food and displaying artwork.

But in trying to make students feel welcome and safe inside the fence that surrounds the school, Meza has also tightened up the academic program. He reassigned counselors to students by grade level, rather than grouping them alphabetically. The change allows ninth graders to get extra support as they adjust to the demands of high school.

He gives students a double dose of Algebra I each day if they need it, and moved credit recovery courses to the regular school day instead of afterschool or on Saturdays when they’re less likely to come. His students have posted gains in state scores the past two years, but two-thirds of 11th graders still don’t meet expectations in language arts and over 80% are failing math.

“Half of our students are coming in below grade level,” he said “That doesn’t mean we’re going to treat them as such. We’re going to have expectations that are aligned to the standards.”

Carvalho aims to create more consistency in teaching across the district, but he’s choosing math and reading programs based on the experience of schools that tested programs and found them to be effective with high-need students, said Rick Miller, CEO of CORE Districts, a network of nine large systems in the state, including LAUSD.

Illustrative Math, now being phased in districtwide, is one example. Teachers at Jordan High School, in a densely populated neighborhood of housing projects and small homes, were among the first to use the program. 

On a Monday morning earlier this month, 10th graders in Luis Lopez’s geometry class opened their workbooks to a new lesson on congruent shapes. They chatted with classmates about the set of rectangles on the page before Lopez stepped in to remind them of vocabulary words like “vertices” and “corresponding.” The curriculum is structured so that students grapple with new concepts and work together on problems before teachers deliver a full lesson. 

“When we were going to school, especially in math, it was ‘I will model. I’m the teacher and now … you’ll just do 100 problems,’ ” said Principal Alex Kim. This curriculum, he said, flips that process while also ensuring the tasks focus on grade-level material.

The program has gained popularity in other districts. The New York City Public Schools saw a decline in scores after implementing the curriculum in hundreds of schools. But two , one in Missouri and one in Maryland, found that students using Illustrative Math outperformed those who didn’t. At Jordan, a quarter of 11th graders met expectations in math, compared to less than 4% two years ago.

‘Historic generational implications’

To some former LAUSD parents, the improvements are too little, too late.

They are cynical about any post-pandemic rebound, saying that the district contributed to learning loss by staying closed almost until the end of the 2020–21 school year. 

“I don’t think LAUSD should get credit for putting out a fire that it was responsible for lighting,” said Ben Austin, a longtime Democratic political adviser and former member of the state school board. “My daughters didn’t go to school for 18 months, along with all the other kids in LAUSD. That obviously had historic generational implications.”

California’s sluggish reopening affected students statewide, but what angered some LAUSD parents the most was the teachers union’s influence over remote instructional time during school closures. In March 2021, The 74 reported that the union negotiated a reduced, six-hour school day despite district officials saying they didn’t want to “shortchange the students.” The revelation came during a lawsuit, against the district and the union.

The agreement promises 45 hours per year of high-dosage tutoring to 100,000 students who are the furthest behind as well as summer school for up to 250,000 students in the district who were affected by the extended closures.

During the 2020-21 school year, Judith Larson said her daughter’s remote classes often “ended well before they were supposed to” or that teachers used the sessions to collect homework assignments rather than provide live instruction. Her daughter lost so much ground in math that last year, as a junior in high school, she scored at a sixth grade level. In English, she was two years behind and losing hope that she would be able to attend the University of California Los Angeles, her dream school. Now a senior, she’s made progress, but still struggles in math. 

“She is working hard to bridge the gap,” her mother said. “I am hoping that the high-dose tutoring … will help her get there.”

As with schools nationwide, the pandemic worsened longstanding achievement gaps in LAUSD. There’s still a 30 percentage point difference between poor students and those from wealthier families in reading and math. 

“There’s a long way to go,” and “with each year, progress gets harder,” Miller said. But as a former state education official, he never expected LAUSD to outperform the state. “They were too big.”

This year, LAUSD’s growth exceeded the state’s and California’s other large school districts. During the press event at Maywood Elementary, state Superintendent Tony Thurmond was on hand to mark the achievement. He organized a webinar so other districts in the state could “hear some of the stories about what has created that success.”

Speaker after speaker stepped to the podium to share in what one board member called a “watershed moment” for LAUSD. Drawing a few chuckles, Carvalho paused to note that Thurmond had to slip out early and “give some love to other lower-performing districts.” 

L.A. Unified surpassed pre-pandemic math, reading and science levels on 2024-25 state test scores released Thursday and closed the gap with the rest of California, even as the state’s test scores rose overall.

District officials attributed the increases to tactics such as targeted funding for struggling schools, small group instruction, tutoring and using the phonics-based science of reading.

But disparities remain. 

While LAUSD students narrowed achievement gaps between Black, Hispanic; and white and Asian students, inequities persist, with 68.9 percent of white students meeting reading standards compared to 41 percent of Latino students, who make up most of the district’s enrollment. Overall, 53.3 percent of the district’s 540,000 students are still not reading at grade level, compared to 51.2 percent of the entire state. 

The district also continues to face challenges including falling enrollment, financial troubles and threats from the federal government.  

Still, officials celebrated the increases across the state and in L.A. Unified in particular.

“This is a proud moment,” said Governor Gavin Newsom at a press conference with LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho held inside the Alexander Science Center School in Exhibition Park, a neighborhood in the south region of L.A., where many students are low income. “We’re not only moving in the right direction; we’re leading in that respect.”  

L.A. Unified students made big gains in reading on the exams, outpacing those made by the state as a whole, and achieving a 46.5% reading proficiency level on 2024-25 Smarter Balanced assessments, up from 43.1% the previous year and 44.1% in 2018-19.

Likewise, 36.8% of LAUSD students achieved math proficiency on the 2024-25 state exams, up from 32.8% the previous year and 33.5% in 2018-19.

Statewide, reading proficiency rose to 48.8% and math proficiency rose to 37.3%. LAUSD, a huge and diverse urban school district, historically underperforms the state overall and serves a higher percentage of higher-needs students. 

“Los Angeles Unified is having a very special moment in history, one without precedent,” said Carvalho. “Today, we celebrate the fact that we can proudly say that as Los Angeles goes in terms of education, so goes the state of California.”  

Carvalho said the district’s early adoption of approaches aligned with the science of reading helped boost students’ test scores. Newsom cited  he signed Thursday to promote the use of phonics-based techniques for teaching reading in all California schools.

As the largest school district in California, LAUSD’s new test scores helped lift those of the state overall and capped a string of positive metrics for the district. Carvalho, who boasted of L.A. Unified’s progress in his opening of schools address, just reupped his contract with the district to remain superintendent for another four years.

In an interview with reporters on Wednesday, Carvalho explained that the district’s improvement was not only due to using the science of reading, but also to tactics that targeted increased funding at underperforming schools, providing needier students with extra tutoring and supplemental training for teachers.

“We outperformed last year’s already improved performance,” said Carvalho, “with Black, Latino, low income, poor kids, students with disabilities, performing better than pre-pandemic levels.”

Black students showed the strongest gains overall on the Smarter Balanced assessments, and Latino students also made larger gains compared to both white and Asian kids in reading and math on the exams.

LAUSD Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Karla Estrada said LAUSD’s improvements were also the result of the district’s deployment of small group instruction, wraparound social services, and efforts to boost attendance.

Carvalho said the district is already looking to redouble those efforts.

“We are already examining and analyzing and detailing over the practices that we believe produce these results, and refining the approach to actually accelerate the rate of improvement that we’ve seen,” Carvalho said. “This is strategic. It is deliberate. I believe it settles a number of contentious unknowns of the past.”

Former LAUSD board member David Tokofsky, who consults with districts and labor groups on policy and operations, said LA Unified’s latest test scores are impressive, but the district and the state can still do better to achieve stronger results.

“The gap between Black and brown kids and white and Asian kids continues to be expansive,” said Tokofsky of the new scores. “The good news is the gap between the state scores and the district scores has been reduced to near nothing.”

This year the giveaways were held in classrooms, amid fears that crowds of Hispanic families out in public would prompt an ICE raid.

“We’ve had to modify how we do things,” said Omar Torres, senior director of civic engagement for the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles. “We’re not just getting fear from folks that may be undocumented. Folks that are documented are also scared.”

The fear of being caught up in an ICE dragnet and separated from family and home is palpable in this city, where one in three residents were born outside the U.S. and three-quarters of students identify as Hispanic.

But along with the worry and anxiety is the determination to stay and succeed.

It’s a drama unfolding in the schools of Los Angeles, where educators have taken unprecedented steps to shield kids from federal seizure or deportation by using every legal method at their disposal.

Working with community groups and unions, L.A. Unified has created safe zones around schools by warning families to stay away from campus when volunteer sentries spot ICE agents nearby.

Two LAUSD schools have to agents who came asking for children without warrants. A free legal defense fund has been created for families facing enforcement.

Two weeks into the school year, LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the new tactics, which also include free busing to schools, legal clinics for families, and remote lessons for when all else fails, are working so far.  

“We prepared for this,” said Carvalho last month. “The training that we went through with every single member of our workforce has paid off. We’ve been successful at protecting our kids.”

It’s because of those supports, Carvalho said, that L.A. Unified has been able to achieve higher attendance rates this year than last so far.   

But the situation is still frightening and perilous in the nation’s second largest public school district, the superintendent said, at least for many of its families who are, as the superintendent was once, undocumented immigrants. 

And as a result, he said, enrollment is falling, almost certainly in part because some families have chosen to self-deport.  

L.A. Unified Board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who representsdiverse neighborhoods, such as South L.A., Watts and San Pedro, said families have taken up the various services offered by LAUSD to address immigration crackdowns.

And despite the tension over immigration, the new year is rolling out easily in many ways, Ortiz Franklin said. Start-of-year academic assessments and other typical school operations have gone smoothly, she said.

“There’s a lot of joy and celebration and excitement about the start of a new school year,” she said. “It sort of gets hidden in all of the concerns about immigration enforcement — which are absolutely valid and concerning and fearful for a lot of people.”    

Many L.A. Unified families have attended the district’s weekly workshops offering instruction on how to handle encounters with immigration agents, said Ortiz Franklin. 

Busing programs offered by the district that are intended to help kids get to class without encountering ICE agents have also seen some pickup, she said, with at least 300 households so far taking advantage of the special door-to-door transport service.

It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the 85,000 kids who use LAUSD busing on the district’s typical routes. But Ortiz Franklin said the district’s supports have helped create a sense of safety, enabling more kids to attend class.

Online courses offered by the district saw a bump early in the year, she said, but since then, has fallen to roughly where it was last year, she said. 

Pushing those families to leave the United States is the goal of federal immigration authorities, who have offered money and plane tickets to encourage the departure of undocumented migrants in L.A. and around the country.

In response to questions about actions at and around LAUSD schools this year, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said agents do not target students at campuses.

“ICE is not going to schools to make arrests of children,” said the senior official. “Officers would need secondary supervisor approval before any action can be taken in locations such as a church or a school. We expect these to be extremely rare.”

Online reporting has put average daily attendance in the district at around 95%. Some officials said that’s a relatively strong figure this early in the year, but the district press office ignored a request for a breakdown of specific figures.

Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education Pedro Noguera said measures taken by LAUSD to protect students from immigration enforcement have helped create a sense of confidence among families. 

“The district is doing everything they can to keep the school safe, and I think that’s the reason why attendance has stayed high,” he said.  

L.A. Unified’s tools to protect students from ICE are relatively robust, said Noguera, and other districts around the country, including Denver and New York, are considering or have already enacted similar measures. 

Despite those steps, Noguera said that the fears of many LAUSD families are well founded. Benjamin Guerrero Cruz, a rising senior at Reseda Charter High was detained by ICE in August while he was out walking his dog in this neighborhood away from school.

Lizzette Baccera, a former teacher of Guerrero Cruz, said last week that the teen was still being detained. 

In addition to pursuing his education at Reseda, Guerrero Cruz, 18, was active in soccer and helped take care of his younger family members, according to an created for the teen. 

DHS officials said Cruz emigrated from Chile and overstayed his visa by more than two years. He is now facing removal proceedings, according to DHS.  

In an emailed statement, a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security said investigators would continue to search for undocumented children in Los Angeles and around the country.

The official said 450,000 unaccompanied minors entered the U.S. illegally over the past four years. ICE Homeland Security investigations have located 13,000 of those children so far, according to the DHS official. 

“In many situations, the only last known address ICE has for a child is the last school they attended,” the DHS official said. “In cases where a special agent visits a school, it would be for a wellness check on the child, not to make an arrest.” 

But when ICE agents have visited schools in Los Angeles, their actions have prompted public displays of opposition. Students pressured Carvalho to fight ICE harder at a recent board meeting. Demonstrators last month rallied at LAUSD headquarters.  

Three days before school began in August, federal agents detained a 15-year-old boy with disabilities at gunpoint at Arleta High School, in what they later said was a case of mistaken identity. The agents left live ammunition on the sidewalk outside the school, according to the superintendent.   

Evelyn Aleman, founder of Our Voice, a parents’ group which advocates for L.A. Unified’s low-income and Spanish-speaking families, said the immigrant students of Los Angeles and their families are resolved to stay in LAUSD schools regardless of ICE. 

“They’re determined to have access to that American dream,” said Aleman.

But this year is different. 

This year, the CEO of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy is worried immigration agents with guns are coming for her kids.

“There are so many threats to kids getting to school due to ICE raids,” said Abich. “The fear of going to school or being out on the street is definitely real.”

But in charter schools like Camino Nuevo, and the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation; and where three quarters of kids are Latino or Hispanic, one thing is on the mind of nearly every educator and ahead of the first day of classes Thursday.

“We consistently get families calling us when they see ICE in the neighborhood,” said Abich. “They call the school and say ‘Can you please warn people. There’s ICE in the neighborhood, they need to stay home.’ ”

Federal immigration raids in Los Angeles that ramped up in the spring and accelerated again toward the end of June scared families away from school, depressing attendance in summer programs, school leaders and district officials said.

The immigration raids, and the fear they sow, are just another huge challenge for a district already struggling to recover from in January that burned entire neighborhoods and two LAUSD schools.

That’s all on top of other challenges facing the district, such as cratering enrollment, shrinking budgets, districtwide mental health problems and an from the pandemic.  

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho offered a hopeful take on the challenging school year ahead in his opening address last week, where he highlighted the resilience of the district in the face of adversity.

But at a press conference near district headquarters with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Monday, Carvalho said federal agents with guns near a school in a case of mistaken identity – and pleaded with immigration authorities to halt enforcement around L.A. Unified schools.   

“We are appealing to the better senses of those who have the power to eliminate trauma from the streets of our community,” he said.

From district headquarters to classrooms and school offices, L.A. Unified parents, teachers and kids have said they’re afraid for their safety amid the increasing immigration raids taking place across the city.

Leaders from city hall to the LAUSD school board have responded with pledges to keep schools safe.

Last week plainclothes immigration agents outside of Arlita High School drew their guns and detained the 15 year-old student with disabilities who was visiting the campus with his family. 

The boy, who attends another LAUSD school, was quickly released by the agents after they determined he was not who they sought, he said. 

The school’s principal said the agents left behind some bullets on the sidewalk, which school police recovered, according to LAUSD officials. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for the federal Customs and Border Protection said that the agents were conducting a “targeted operation” in search of a Salvadoran national and suspected MS-13 pledge with prior criminal convictions in the broader vicinity of Arleta.

“Allegations that Border Patrol targeted Arleta High School are FALSE,” the CBP statement said.  

Carvalho said the district would respond to the incident by creating more “safe zones” around campuses before and after school.

Carvalho will send central and regional office staff across the school system on the first day of school to patrol the streets around schools. The local teachers union and other groups are also participating.

With the effort, the district’s so-called “safe passage zones” will be expanded from about 40 schools to more than 100. The district has more than 1,500 schools and education centers scattered around L.A.

For Abich, the Camino Nuevo Charter Academy network of schools, has operated in L.A. ‘s heavily immigrant MacArthur Park neighborhood for more than two decades, the raids dominate the horizon.

The ICE raids are unprecedented, she said, and terrifying for families who are deathly afraid of tactics, such as the as a work vehicle, which happened in a Home Depot parking lot less than a half-mile from one of her schools.   

“What’s top of mind for me now is daily attendance for students,” said Abich. “All of us were sort of working towards getting students in their seats ready to learn.”

But now, she said, immigration raids are threatening that goal in the new year. Attendance in Camino Nuevo’s summer school programs was down by half this summer, Abich said, due to families fear of ICE.

LAUSD officials also said district-run summer programs saw drops in attendance.

Carvalho said the new school safe passage zones and school police patrols will occur at campuses in neighborhoods targeted by immigration enforcement.

The district also has created a fund to provide general help for families, including legal assistance, said Carvalho.

Mayor Bass said the Los Angeles Police Department will help in the effort to protect schools and will not assist with immigration enforcement.

“The school police and the Los Angeles Police Department have a strong working relationship and will continue to share information as appropriate as needed,” she said.

In interviews, school board members said that the district was doing everything it can to protect kids and families from immigration raids, but that they worry attendance could suffer in the new year.

“With all the terrible things happening with ICE and parents fearing sending your kids to school, I think we are really preparing ourselves and our kids and their parents for this new school year,” said LAUSD School Board President Scott Schmerelson.

Schmerelson said the district’s shrinking enrollment and attendance are chief concerns, and fear among families could worsen those problems.

But, he said, the fact that two L.A. Unified schools turned away immigration agents in April, shows that schools are in fact safe havens for students. “We’re standing strong and standing tough, and protecting our kids,” Schmerelson said.

Board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who represents , which includes neighborhoods such as South L.A., Watts and San Pedro, said the district created  a new on its web site with valuable information for families.

Ortiz Franklin said the district has made strong academic progress in recent years, as evidenced by recent test scores showing the some pre-pandemic benchmarks in literacy and math.

Now those gains are threatened by headwinds including the ICE raids, trauma from the fires of January and shrinking budgets, said Ortiz Franklin. But she hopes that L.A. Unified will get kids to school by providing free bus transportation to any student who requests it.

“We have every confidence that our schools are the safest place for kids to be and the best place for them to be to be prepared for their future, and we recognize that there’s real fear around getting to and from campus,” she said. “We are doing as much as we possibly can.”

Evelyn Aleman, founder of , a parents’ group which advocates for L.A. Unified’s low-income and Spanish-speaking families, said families are scared of possible immigration raids but appreciate the steps taken by the district to protect students.

“Families are afraid of two things. They continue to have fear and anxiety over the raids,” said Aleman. “And the other concern is the children not wanting to go to school for not being able to find their parents when they come home.”

But, Aleman said, L.A. Unified has helped to address those fears with transportation to school, safe zones in schools, and the offer of remote lessons for children who do not want to leave their homes.

“LAUSD has really taken this on to provide a robust package of resources, information and support for the families,” she said.

Los Angeles Unified superintendent Alberto Carvalho struck a defiant tone in his back-to-school address Tuesday, pitting the district against federal authorities while praising its resilience from recent wildfires and the pandemic.

Three weeks before half a million L.A. Unified students return to classes, Carvalho used the annual speech to preview new initiatives and set the tone for the coming school year threatened by political, operational and financial headwinds.

In the face of historic natural disaster and a “volatile federal landscape,” Carvalho said the district is “not defined by what comes at us,” and highlighted some of the district’s . 

“We don’t fear pressure. We don’t shrink from scrutiny,” he said. “In fact, we’ve got more resilience than Taylor Swift has eras.” 

Already facing budget cuts this year, LAUSD is also looking at the potential loss of more than $120 million in federal funding as part of a contested $6.8 billion education funding freeze that could impact some of the district’s most vulnerable students, including kids with disabilities and those living in poverty. 

Carvalho took shots at the Trump administration, accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of both being clueless and intentionally undermining U.S. democracy.  

“If Washington had a model for federal funding, it would be ‘if I can’t spell it out, defund it,’ ” quipped Carvalho. “And my friends, judging by their vocabulary, we should all be very, very afraid, for it is limited.”

One of the nation’s most visible superintendents and on social media, Carvalho is entering his third year running the nation’s second largest school district, having already hit some important benchmarks, including academic goals set by the board.

But L.A. Unified faces some especially tough circumstances this coming year.

Federal immigration agents visited two schools in search of undocumented minors during a series of raids in L.A. around the close of the last school year, setting off fear and depressing school attendance in the majority Hispanic district.  

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids roiled a district already pulverized by the worst wildfires in Los Angeles history, which occurred in January and February and displaced thousands of students, many of whom still lack stable housing.  

LAUSD also faces headwinds such as budget cuts, falling enrollment and stubborn problems with school climate and achievement gaps, all serious challenges that could threaten its future.

Yet Carvalho on Tuesday emphasized the positive in at the glitzy Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown L.A. near the district’s headquarters, where he spoke before hundreds of LAUSD principals and administrators in a production worthy of Tinsel Town, complete with a from the rapper will.i.am, who bashed the recent immigration raids in L.A. 

A student mariachi band from James Garfield High School played a mariachi version of the national anthem. Costumed dancers from Fairfax High School performed selections from Wicked.

“Public education stands at a crossroads. The challenges are real and so is the urgency,” said Carvalho,who name-checked Beyonce and quoted Tupac in his 80-minute presentation.

“But we will not lose our way,” said Carvalho. “We will continue to build better schools and a better future.”  

In the face of the possibility of more ICE action, Carvalho said the district would continue to maintain “safe zones” at schools where students will be protected from immigration enforcement.

Additionally, Carvalho said, LAUSD will offer extra remote classes and bussing to families who ask for it.

Even with budget cuts this year and looming cuts to come, Carvalho announced more than 40 new programs underway in the district, including a new push to deliver mental health services to students, a new online enrollment system for incoming families, and a new effort to deploy air-quality monitoring stations at schools.

After posting gains on state exams earlier this year, Carvalho on Tuesday also revealed LAUSD’s latest Smarter Balanced Assessments, districtwide tests of English, math and science that rose across all tested grades for the second straight year, and surpassed results from before the pandemic.  

Calling a new high watermark, Carvalho said two years of incremental gains at every tested grade level should provide clear solid evidence of the strength of the district in the face of challenges like the pandemic, immigration raids and wildfires.

Districtwide, 46.5% of students met or exceeded grade level standards in English Language Arts in tests conducted in April and May. In math, the figure was 36.7%. For the first time ever, 11^th grade students exceeded literacy standards, and across all subjects and grade levels, students showed significant growth in scores.

LAUSD Board President Scott Schmerelson highlighted those results in his remarks at Carvalho’s opening speech.

“Despite the many challenges we have faced, we’ve also seen significant progress,” said Schmerelson. “Our graduation rates continue to increase, as has our students’ achievement.” 

As federal immigration officials carry out mass arrests in Los Angeles and President Donald Trump unilaterally calls in the military to confront protesters — prompting civil unrest across the country this week — the city’s school chief vowed to . 

• L.A. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced  around high school graduations, my colleague Ben Chapman reports. 
  
• “Our schools are places of education and inspiration, not fear and intimidation,” Carvalho, once an undocumented immigrant himself, said while announcing an order for school police officers to “intervene” against any Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents should they attempt to detain or arrest anyone at school functions. “Many of us here are immigrants or children of immigrants.”   
  
• Some parents in the district — which enrolls an estimated 30,000 immigrant students — said they planned to  due to immigrant enforcement fears. 
  
• In April, Carvalho  who paid visits to two L.A. elementary schools to conduct “wellness checks” on unaccompanied minors who came to the country without their parents. 

For students graduating high school this spring, the anti-immigrant climate has raised , including worries about their ability to pursue college or job-training programs.

They’re coming for the youth: The 74’s Jo Napolitano reported this week on the  in New York, Massachusetts and other states, and the pain that followed. 

• “For other communities, this is a wake-up call,” immigrant rights activist Adam Strom said. “The unimaginable is happening in communities like their own, to students not so different from the kids in their own classrooms.”
• Among them is 9-year-old Mártir García Lara, an L.A. fourth grader who was deported to Honduras with his father. The father and son were detained by immigration officials when they showed up to a routine immigration hearing. | 
•  who arrived in the U.S. as unaccompanied  minors have been taken into federal custody following “welfare checks” like the ones at L.A. schools. 
• The Trump administration has said  they believe are now “slaves, sex slaves or dead.” Immigrant rights advocates say  to deport the adults around them. 

In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis ordered the state labor department to  after it received a subpoena from the Trump administration, a whistleblower lawsuit alleges.

In the news

A ‘misconfiguration,’ kept under wraps: BoardDocs, a software tool used by thousands of school boards to publicize meetings and store confidential information, suffered a technical glitch that exposed the sensitive records of school districts nationally, I revealed this week. Multiple districts that are BoardDocs customers said they were unaware of the incident until I contacted them and, in several instances, received confirmation only after reaching out directly to parent company Diligent. | 

• Nineteen-year-old Matthew Lane pleaded guilty in Massachusetts federal court for his role in a recent cyberattack on education technology behemoth PowerSchool, which led to a data breach exposing the personal information of millions of students, parents and teachers globally. | 

David Hogg, an outspoken survivor of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, said he will not run again for vice chair of the Democratic National Committee after he faced fierce pushback for funding the campaigns of candidates running against sitting lawmakers in primary races. | 

New Jersey schools place children with disabilities in separate educational settings away from their nondisabled peers at the highest rate in the country, potentially in violation of a federal law that affirms the children’s right to learn in general ed classrooms “to the maximum extent possible.” | 

Following outcry, the U.S. Naval Academy has reversed its decision to scrap from its library 381 books that mentioned diversity, equity and inclusion. |

My colleague Linda Jacobson reported in depth this week on a California mom whose three-year crusade against a school district that supported her child’s social transition from female to male is at the heart of the Trump administration’s forceful effort to clamp down on educators who withhold changes in students’ gender identity from their parents. | 

Aggressive enforcement despite layoffs: Trump’s pick to lead civil rights enforcement at the Education Department, Kimberly Richey, said at a Senate hearing last week she is “always going to advocate” for the office even as the administration guts its staff. | 

• “If I am confirmed, the department will not stand idly by while Jewish students are attacked and discriminated against,” Richey said. “We will stop forcing schools to let boys and men into female sports and spaces,” she continued, referring to inclusive school policies that allow transgender students to participate in school athletics and use restrooms that align with their gender identities. | 

The Supreme Court announced it would not consider a case that challenged Maryland’s ban on semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 and imposed 10-round limits on gun magazines, rules that were implemented in response to the 2012 mass elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. | 

Firearms deaths among children have surged since a 2010 Supreme Court decision gave states more control over gun laws, a new study finds. | 

ICYMI @The74

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What was supposed to be a day of celebration for students at Gratts Learning Academy for Young Scholars turned into one of chaos as immigration enforcement in and around Los Angeles — along with subsequent protests and attempts to quash them — reportedly left some of their relatives too fearful to attend the elementary school’s graduation.

Gratts is in the city’s Westlake District, where immigration raids Friday led to a showdown between demonstrators and law enforcement agencies that persisted throughout the weekend. Altogether,  were arrested in the L.A. area. In Downtown Los Angeles, near Westlake, the sight of blazes on several blocks — after riot police lobbed flashbang rounds at crowds, and protesters set off fireworks and torched cars — called to mind the wildfires that ravaged the region at the start of the year.

President Donald Trump on Sunday deployed the National Guard in this deeply blue city that opposes his mass deportations policy, a move that critics — including former Vice President Kamala Harris — argued intensified confrontations between protesters and the authorities. Commuters driving to work on Monday morning saw what remained of the clashes — self-driving Waymo cars burnt to crisps and graffiti tagged all over downtown businesses and buildings.

Schools are still reeling from the raids and the unrest, with commencement ceremonies set to continue this week.

Officials acknowledge that many families in the district — which includes an estimated immigrant students — plan to sit out commencement because of concerns about immigration enforcement. LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho described that decision as “a heartbreak” during a news conference Monday.

“I’ve spoken with parents who’ve told me that their daughter will be the first in their family to graduate high school, and they’re not going to be there to witness it because they have a fear of the place of graduation being targeted,” Carvalho said. “What nation are we? Who in their right mind would accept that reality?”

Fears have been stoked by unfounded rumors such as the one that emerged on Friday that an immigration raid took place at Gratts’ graduation. “The claims that immigration enforcement activity arrived at the school and during the event are false,” an LAUSD spokesperson told The 19th.

The superintendent, an immigrant from Portugal who was formerly undocumented, said the district is taking steps to protect each graduation site, whether on or off campus. The school police will “establish perimeters of safety” around graduation locations and intervene if any federal agency tries to disrupt the ceremonies, Carvalho said.

“We’ve instructed our principals to not create lines, to not restrict access,” he said. “As soon as [families] come, they will enter the venues where the graduations are taking place, reducing the risk for them while on the street waiting to get in. We also have authorized the principals to allow parents to remain at the venue for as long as it takes should there be any immigration enforcement action around the area where the graduations are taking place.”

School police will also remain on site well after the ceremonies end to allow parents to exit safely. And, in limited capacities, the district will create opportunities for families to watch their children graduate via Zoom.

Carvalho said that the recent raids and unrest happened at the worst possible time, given that over 100 graduation ceremonies will be taking place throughout LAUSD Monday and Tuesday, the last day of school. Still, he said the district is prepared to protect students, staff and families.

“Every child has a constitutional right to a public education,” he said. “Therefore, every child and their parent has a right to celebrate the culmination of their educational success.”

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the woman-led labor union representing Los Angeles Unified educators, has also spoken out against the immigration enforcement that took place in Los Angeles last week.

“The ruthless targeting of hard-working people by ICE and law enforcement agencies is not only unjust but cruel,” the union said . “They are using violence and scare tactics to detain people who are simply trying to live and support their families. We will not stand for this.”

On Monday, United Teachers Los Angeles organized a rally to stand up for immigrant communities and to protest the arrest of union leader David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – United Service Workers West and SEIU California. Huerta was arrested Friday while observing an immigration raid at a Los Angeles garment factory. He has been charged with felony conspiracy to impede officers and could face up to six years in federal prison if convicted.

“We need more people to continue to be loud about these attacks by ICE,” the Los Angeles teachers’ union said. “History has taught us that we cannot afford to stand idly by while our community members are being ripped away from their schools, homes, neighborhoods and workplaces.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, also expressed her outrage over Huerta’s arrest, the detainment of immigrant workers and Trump’s decision to mobilize the National Guard against protesters.

“It is no coincidence that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained David Huerta and raided the site of a known worker center — and we, alongside the entire labor movement, are demanding his and others’ immediate release,” Weingarten said in a statement. “The assault on Los Angeles contradicts all this country stands for. We are a nation made stronger by immigrant workers, stronger by the unions that represent them, and stronger by the rule of law.” Huerta was released from custody Monday afternoon.

Kamala Harris criticized the violent repression of mostly peaceful protesters in Los Angeles, singling out Trump for his role in the unrest that ensued. Harris has lived in L.A.’s Brentwood neighborhood since marrying Doug Emhoff in 2014, though she was largely based in Washington, D.C., as vice president.

“Los Angeles is my home, and like so many Americans, I am appalled at what we are witnessing on the streets of our city,” . “Deploying the National Guard is a dangerous escalation meant to provoke chaos. In addition to recent ICE raids in Southern California and across our nation, it is part of the Trump administration’s cruel, calculated agenda to spread panic and division.”

The White House, meanwhile, took aim at the protesters, as well as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats.

“Radical left lunatics are taking to the streets of Los Angeles — law enforcement, at police cruisers, , and freeways — because the Trump administration is removing violent criminal illegal immigrants from their communities,” the White House said in a statement Monday. “Democrats like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass should be thanking President Trump for stepping up and leading where they refused — and for ridding their streets of criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and gangbangers.”

Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, sued the Trump administration Monday over , arguing that doing so infringed on the state’s sovereignty.

Los Angeles school leaders say they’re prepared for the Trump administration to escalate immigration enforcement, including on campuses. In January, Trump lifted restrictions on immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations,” including schools, churches and hospitals. The policy change has led parents across the country to pull children out of class. During Carvalho’s address on Monday, he said that two federal vans were parked near schools.

“No action has been taken, but we interpret those actions as actions of intimidation, instilling fear that may lead to self-deportation,” he said. “That is not the community we want to be, that is not the state or the nation that we ought to be.”

LAUSD is urging parents or guardians who see immigration activity to contact their school or call the district’s Family Hotline: (213) 443-1300.

was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of . .

He said his parents were worried too, wondering “what is Marco going to do now?”

The 16-year-old started to consider the school’s Esports program at the suggestion of a friend. With aspirations of becoming an electrical engineer, the pairing felt right. His parents agreed. 

“To be an electrical engineer, you need to know your way around technology,” Sanchez said. “And the video game aspect has been a part of my life since I was young, so it’s a great course to take if you want to go to college.”

Sanchez’s experience is one the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) wants to highlight as the district shifts toward integrating technology into the classroom. One way they’ve done it is through last month’s .

That’s when, early on a recent Saturday morning at the SoLA Beehive in South Los Angeles, the district brought together about 700 students from across the city for the first-ever LAUSD Secondary Esports Championships for middle and high school Esports programs. 

The event began with remarks from LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who said, in an interview with LA School Report, the district must be innovators of technology in schools while still maintaining a balance of protecting students and keeping them engaged. 

“We do not want technology to rob time from something else, nor do we want technology to enslave the mind of the child,” said Carvalho. “We teach students the responsible use of technology and the important concept of digital citizenship.”

The safe and responsible use of technology and social media has been at the forefront of Carvalho’s mind this year, with the deployment of  for students.

Carvalho said the responsible use of technology and digital citizenship is also taught in LAUSD’s first-of-its-kind curriculum built around ESports.

Debuting in the fall as a high school career and technical education class, the course ESports 1 – later to be joined by ESports 2 – will prepare students for careers in game development, streaming and content creation, among other skills. 

Carvalho said the course, which will be available at select LAUSD high schools, is meant for workforce development, as gaming has become a $6 billion industry.

The curriculum was built in cooperation with a math teacher and ESports coach at Chatsworth Charter High School and culminates with students learning how to build a computer.

Carvalho said ESports clubs and programs are engaging students in around 40 schools across the district, and nearly 400 students are engaged in these types of activities. 

The district’s program is the largest in the country, said Carvalho, who aims to expand it to include all schools in the coming years.

While the ESports curriculum has not come to all LAUSD campuses, its  have traveled to dozens of schools across the district to introduce topics like robotics, game design and sound design to students beyond regular instructional hours.

The district’s esports competition debut in March also included breakout sessions where students learned how to use 3D printers, fly drones, build computers and produce music. 

Learning sessions were also provided to educators on how to best integrate the curriculum into their classrooms and provide students with information on how Esports applies to higher education and potential careers.

Sanchez said the program at his school has taught him skills no other class has to this point, like the hierarchy of needs, technology development and computational systems.

He said these skills will help him reach his goal of becoming an engineer. He hopes other kids feel the same way.

“I’d say give it a shot,” Sanchez said. “It’s a really fun experience; you make new friends, meet new people, and there are a lot of opportunities that come with it.”

Marco Sanchez Sr, Marco’s father, agreed.

“He’s right there, growing with [the program], so I’m totally on board,” Sanchez Sr. said. “This is the way of the future.”

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

“Everyone is very nice to me, and I feel like I belong here,” said Alan, a third grader. “I feel like I am a part of this family.”

In a city with and a school district , this scrappy elementary school stands out. 

Nearly all the kids who attend Figueroa come from poor families and many have disabilities or are learning English. 

Often kids from such backgrounds struggle in school, but the students at Figueroa Street are making progress. 

In reading, the school saw a 14% increase in students in 2024 who met state standards from the previous year. In math, Figueroa saw a 12% jump from the year before. 

Teachers and students say that’s because everybody in the school is like family. The school achieved a 92% average attendance rate so far this academic year, up from 85% the last year. 

This, while the district itself is still crawling out from under sky-high chronic absenteeism rates. 

“I think it’s getting people to love their community,” said Principal Shawn Peyatt, who has worked at Figueroa, previously as a teacher, for more than 30 years. 

“At the end of the day, school’s a way out,” said Peyatt. “School is going to make a difference.” 

Teachers at Figueroa Elementary say the rise in student test scores is linked to school culture.

“People work together well here, and we look out for each other, and it’s nice – you feel supported here,” said Julie Harrington, a third grade teacher, who has been working at the school for 23 years. 

“Most of our teachers have been here for many years,” said assistant principal Frank Sanchez. “We’ve all been waiting for the right leader to come on board and just take us there.”

Prior to Peyatt’s leadership, a classroom designated for “emotionally disturbed” students often saw fights that spread to other parts of the school.

“It was a dumping ground for behavior,” said Peyatt. “Really what you were seeing was it was all Black boys, but they weren’t emotionally disturbed. They just probably had some tough times.” 

After much back and forth, Figueroa Street Elementary was eventually able to get the district to end the program. Things began to look up. 

While in training to become a principal, Peyatt made attendance her top priority, instituting one program after another to keep students in school. 

“They say it takes three days to make up one day out, which means you never make-up,” said Peyatt. “Attendance is the first thing.”

During the pandemic, the previous principal, Peyatt and Sanchez viewed themselves as “essential workers,” going to students’ houses if they did not join online classes, delivering chargers, notebooks, pencils and holding fundraisers for families struggling to pay rent.

After an initial dip post-pandemic, the school received $38,000 in funding for attendance improvements and used the money to implement new programs in hopes of getting students back on track. 

Working with the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, an organization that partners with Los Angeles Unified to target high-need schools, Figueroa hired an English and math coach. 

Coaches work with teachers, providing feedback on lessons and serving as an extra teaching resource.

The Partnership was first introduced to the school 15 years ago. In addition to teacher training and curriculum development, it serves as a mediator between Figueroa and the school district. 

“They gave us the control to be able to bring in our own people, our own teachers,” said Sanchez. “That was a big turning point.”

After the pandemic, the school also created an attendance award system, hosting a pizza party for classes that achieved full attendance and providing students with points towards the school gift shop for good behavior. 

If students are absent for two or more days, administrators will go to their house to check on them. 

“This year we decided to incentivize parents,” Peyatt said. “We’re doing raffles for parents that have kids of excellent attendance.”

Instead of expecting students to ace every test, teachers look instead for their ability to improve. 

Leticia Hurtado, a third-grade teacher at Figueroa, said teachers do this by “allowing [students] to struggle, allowing them to make mistakes.” 

The kids know teachers at Figueroa will help them through.

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

With at least seven school buildings reduced to rubble, Los Angeles Unified School District is scrambling to relocate displaced students.

The work of photojournalists who braved the fires and their aftermath captures haunting images of what was left behind — the charred frame of a school bus, precious preschoolers’ artwork — and what has been lost forever. 

LAUSD officials the nation’s second-largest district will reopen all but seven schools that were destroyed, badly damaged or immediately threatened by flames. 

Questions about the district’s reopening remain, including unresolved challenges about where displaced students will attend school, how they will get there, and whether remote learning will be offered.

Dozens of smaller districts within Los Angeles County also reopened, with the , where the Eaton fire has destroyed at least five campuses and remains mostly uncontained. 

At a , LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the schools slated to reopen are safe to resume instruction after the district last week closed all campuses amid the largest and most destructive fires in LA history.������

LAUSD schools will operate on modified schedules without extracurricular activities, he said, and special allowances will be made for students and staff who miss classes.

“Students and our workforce will come back having witnessed and experienced a level of disruption not paralleled in the history of our community,” said Carvalho. “We will embrace our work with empathy, flexibility and patience.”  

The historic L.A. area fires that began last week have killed at least 25 people and destroyed or damaged more than 12,000 buildings. LAUSD began closing schools last Wednesday as fires in the city intensified, fueled by strong Santa Ana winds. At least 340 district staff have so far lost their homes in the blazes, Carvalho said.

As of Monday, the had burned nearly 24,000 acres, destroying many homes and businesses in iconic Los Angeles neighborhoods, including Pacific Palisades and Malibu. The , located on the city’s east side, had burned more than 14,000 acres in the neighborhoods of Pasadena and Altadena, and is only 33% contained.  

on Monday, bringing the possibility of renewed growth of existing fires and the creation of new ones as local and out-of-town firefighters battle the deadly blazes.

Famed Palisades High School, which was also badly damaged in the fires, will not reopen this week, Carvalho said. Two additional schools in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that have been completely burned, Palisades Charter Elementary and Marquez Charter Elementary, will be relocated to other campuses later this week. In all, more than 2,000 students enrolled at the three schools have been displaced, he said. 

Carvalho said the district is still working out logistics, such as the possibility of providing transportation for displaced students.  

Marquez Charter Elementary will be relocated to Nora Sterry Elementary, about nine miles away. Palisades Charter Elementary will be relocated to Brentwood Science Magnet, about five miles away. 

Four other LAUSD schools located in areas that were under mandatory evacuation orders Monday remain closed. Those schools include Canyon Charter Elementary, Kenter Canyon Charter Elementary, Topanga Charter Elementary, Lanai Road Elementary and Paul Revere Middle School. 

Carvalho said those schools would reopen as soon as fire conditions allowed. He did not say where or if those students will report to class in the meantime.������ 

Two additional LAUSD schools that were also threatened by fires could also be closed if conditions worsen, officials said. 

On Monday morning, blue skies overlooked Nora Sterry Elementary, which is preparing to welcome displaced students from Marquez Charter Elementary later this week, as teachers and staff scrambled to get ready for the first school day there.

As cars pulled up to drop off students, teachers and staff ran into the building to prepare for a busy week. A school nurse held onto her lunch as two district employees loudly backed up a truck to unload supplies.

One mom, walking with her hand tightly clenched to her son, expressed gratitude that the school was reopening. “We live in the neighborhood. It helps that he has something to do,” she said.

David Tokofsky, a former LAUSD educator and board member turned consultant, said the district’s response to the fires is a work in progress. He said district officials should have notified families sooner of last week’s school closures and of the plan to reopen Monday. 

“Normally, the district is at its absolute best operationally in crisis,” said Tokofsky, who counts fires, earthquakes, floods, the coronavirus and the AIDS epidemic among the disasters he’s experienced while working in the district.  

Still, the district’s performance in the face of the ongoing fires can’t really be assessed so soon, Tokofsky said. Challenges facing LAUSD, including trauma, lost instructional time and logistical matters such as student transportation are still ongoing, he said, and the fires that have already engulfed the city may flare up again and bring even more unprecedented destruction.������  

“Nothing compares to this,” said Tokofsky. “We need teamwork and real, concrete action.”

All Los Angeles Unified School District campuses were closed Thursday after four historic blazes engulfed the city earlier in the week, killing at least five people and injuring many others. 

At least three LA Unified schools, including the famed in the Pacific Palisades, as well as Marquez Charter School and Palisades Charter Elementary School, which are all in the same area, were completely destroyed, said LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. 

Schools in other districts in LA county . 

At a visit to a school food pantry where workers and volunteers were providing meals to displaced children in Glassell Park, ashes blanketed the ground and smoke covered the sky, Carvalho said the nation’s second largest district would remain closed through the end of the week.

He did not say when schools would reopen.

“The entire community is still under red alert,” Carvalho told reporters during the visit to Sonia Sotomayor Art & Sciences Magnet school. “Schools are shut down. There are absolutely no activities.”

More than 600,000 students across Los Angeles were without classes due to the closure of LAUSD and at least two dozen other smaller districts in LA county because of the fires. 

Carvalho said LA Unified officials were working to provide and printed lessons to families but widespread power outages and poor air quality continued to hamper distribution efforts.  

It was unclear if the district planned to offer remote classes such as those during the pandemic.  

LAUSD was for students who depended on school meals at eight campuses across the city on Thursday and officials planned to double the number of sites offering free food on Friday.  

The district was also offering access to mental health services for , families and students in need of support.  

As fires continued to burn across LA, many families were evacuated from their homes. Others faced hardships including dangerous levels of smoke that contributed to toxic air quality. Piles of ash and debris still covered many streets and buildings, while burnt and abandoned cars choked roads in some of the city’s hardest-hit areas.    

Residents who visited the food pantry at Sonia Sotomayor said they were grateful for the meals provided there by LAUSD. Parents there also expressed appreciation for online learning materials provided by the district. 

But Leni Lam, a mother of three from Atwater Village who visited the pantry Thursday, said the emotional fallout from the fires would be more difficult to overcome. 

As power outages continued and Lam worked to clean ash and debris from her home while caring for her children and her disabled husband, she hoped LAUSD would reopen schools as quickly as possible. 

Lam said her children were still recovering from the “nightmare” of online learning during the pandemic and that LAUSD should resume in-person instruction as soon as it’s safe.   

“My kids are pretty resilient, and they’re really strong,” said Lam. “But emotionally and socially, like they’ve been set back.” 

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who came to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant from Portugal, said this week the nation’s second largest district is preparing for the incoming administration’s planned mass deportations.

The district has begun mandatory training for staff in how to respond if federal immigration officers appear at or nearby schools, Carvalho said, and has produced ‘know your rights’ cards to be distributed to students, with directions on how to behave if approached by immigration agents.

But LAUSD can only do so much to combat the fear and anxiety felt by the district’s immigrant families, the superintendent said Monday at a press conference to discuss the measures.

“No child of any age should face that awful, disturbing condition,” said Carvalho. “That is why we’ve created safe spaces in our schools for our students to come together.”

Since 2017 LAUSD has had a policy to not voluntarily cooperate with immigration enforcement actions by federal agencies and in November school board members to reaffirm LA Unified’s status as a sanctuary district.

School officials do not collect or share information about the immigration status of students and their families, Carvalho said, and federal agents will be denied access to schools unless they possess proper judicial warrants.

President-elect Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has promised to begin his second administration with widespread federal enforcement action to remove undocumented people from US cities, possibly with help from the military.

LAUSD officials do not keep records of students’ immigration status. About 15% of the district’s students are English language learners, and about 13% of students speak Spanish as their primary language.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, about students enrolled in California public schools are undocumented. Nearly in California have at least one undocumented parent, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.

The Department of Homeland Security designates schools as where immigration enforcement should be avoided. Federal enforcement action at schools was limited in the first Trump administration.

But the president-elect has vowed to step up enforcement in his second term.

Evelyn Aleman, founder of Our Voice, a parents’ group which advocates for LA Unified’s low-income and Spanish-speaking families, said immigrant families in LA are living in fear of what may come when Trump takes office.

Even those here legally are concerned their immigration status could be rescinded, Aleman said.

“Right now, there’s a lot of anxiety and fear in our communities,” said Aleman. “We don’t really know what’s going to happen, and it’s that uncertainty that makes everyone so nervous.”

Aleman said even the threat or presence of immigration enforcement near schools is enough to discourage students from attending classes.

When federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in 2017 after he dropped his daughter at school, Aleman said, immigrant families in the area stopped sending their kids to class.  

Immigrant families use text messaging and social media to warn each other of the presence of ICE agents in their neighborhoods, said Aleman.

For weeks, she said, immigrant families in Los Angeles have been meeting via Zoom, over the phone and in person to discuss what to do if enforcement ramps up when the president-elect takes office.

Meanwhile, state officials in California are also preparing protections for immigrant families.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta in December issued for how districts can comply with state law limiting state and local participation in federal immigration enforcement. he also published in case of contact with federal agents.

California lawmakers are also preparing new statutes. introduced in the state assembly last month would inhibit federal immigration agents’ access to schools. Another in the state senate would establish a “safe zone” of one mile around campuses.

Ana Mendoza, a senior staff attorney at American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and director of the organization’s , said that such efforts can offer real protections to immigrant students.

“Even though immigration enforcement happens in California, the federal government can’t come in and ignore the guardrails, violate due process and do what it wants,” said Mendoza. “The state can protect its citizens from federal government abuse, and individuals can also protect their rights.”