Projected on the whiteboard are clip art images of a gold coin and a pot of gold against a rainbow background. St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, and the students at the neighborhood school in Venice are getting ready. 

The story goes like this: A leprechaun has two pots of gold, each with ten coins in it. 

So far, so good. The students have seen this type of problem before. But their teacher, Adriana Mackavoy, adds a twist. In addition to the pots, the leprechaun has three extra coins. 

“I see those looks you guys are giving me,” says Mackavoy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.” 

With two pots of ten, plus three extra, how many coins does the leprechaun have? 

Compared to California’s , the multi-step problem is relatively complex for a kindergartner. But some students solve it quickly. A girl in a faux-sheepskin vest displays her worksheet, which consists of a drawing — two clusters of ten circles, with three on the side — and her answer: 23. 

Her tablemate, however, is stuck. 

He stares at the worksheet, his blond bangs in his face. He’s gotten most of the way there — he knows there are 20 gold coins in the pots. But the extra bit isn’t making sense. The school’s principal, who’s observing, kneels down to help, but at no point intervenes to show the boy how to solve the problem.

And that is quite intentional. 

Coeur d’Alene is one of 220 elementary and preschools at LAUSD in a nearly $6 million pilot math program called Cognitively Guided Instruction, or CGI. Administered through a partnership with the , CGI trains teachers to let student instincts guide math class, often resulting in hands-off instruction.

LAUSD’s 2022-26 calls for moving elementary and middle school students an average of 40 points closer to proficiency in math on the . 

And L.A. Unified’s continued investment in CGI comes as districts nationwide try to recover after math scores saw unprecedented declines during the pandemic.

The district would like to expand CGI. But there are doubts about the wisdom of making young learners with little math foundation solve new problems with minimal guidance. The debate echoes the over balanced literacy, an approach to reading instruction that basic skills like phonics. 

LAUSD board members are asking for evidence that CGI improves math achievement at pilot schools. So far, there isn’t any. In fact, as in all district elementary schools, math scores at CGI locations remain low. 

Beyond L.A. Unified, education researchers say that a student-guided approach like CGI, when taken to an extreme, can be for struggling learners than more explicit, step-by-step instruction.

“Is it fair to let some students flounder while other students succeed when we know that with just a little bit of teacher intervention or teacher modeling, all students could likely succeed?” said Sarah Powell, an associate professor of special education at the University of Texas-Austin who spends a lot of time with math students like the kindergartner at Coeur d’Alene. 

Powell is also the founder of an that seeks to raise awareness of research-based math instruction — much like the science of reading movement has done for literacy, resulting in to move away from balanced literacy.

There is evidence that CGI, which is primarily a teacher-training program, helps math teachers feel more confident and creative in their practice. Some research into its potential impact on student achievement is ongoing. But Powell points out that it’s hard to measure the effect of teacher training on student performance.

“It’s quite easy to impact the people that you directly work with,” she said. “But it’s much harder to see those results diffuse to another level of people, and many times that’s students.”

Other California schools also use CGI, including some in Riverside County and Downey Unified School District. The California Math Framework as one of seven “general instructional models” that teachers might use to help their students reach standards. CGI is also used in Florida schools, such as those in Okaloosa County and Lee County. 

At LAUSD, the program is extremely popular among teachers and administrators. By deemphasizing the rote memorization of facts and algorithms in favor of conceptual understanding, they say, CGI welcomes students who might otherwise come to dread math class. 

“CGI is a movement. You feel the passion right in people,” said LAUSD administrator of elementary instruction Carlen Powell at a January 26 before the school board’s curriculum and instruction committee.

“It’s not a religion, but it’s something,” she said. 

The nation’s second-largest school district, where just over a quarter of fifth-graders met or exceeded math standards in 2022 state testing, is considering bringing CGI to all its elementary schools at an estimated cost of $10.3 million. 

Board members, however, would like to see more data. Board president Jackie Goldberg and Tanya Ortiz Franklin have asked for a comparison between CGI and non-CGI schools. 

“I wouldn’t want to encourage growing the program if we can’t compare,” said Ortiz Franklin at a recent curriculum and instruction committee meeting. “Just looking forward to a little further analysis there.”

Research background and LAUSD data

CGI is based on research from the 20th century about how young students approach math operations.  

The program was articulated in a of in the 1980s and ‘90s. An involving 40 classrooms in Wisconsin showed a small positive effect on student achievement. A core intention of CGI, and one that today’s practitioners emphasize, is to empower young people to see themselves as good at math.

At LAUSD, CGI started at 10 schools in 2016 and has since expanded to 220 of the district’s nearly 600 elementary schools and preschools. Teachers and principals at participating sites receive year-round training in how to recognize children’s ideas about math and leverage them for problem-solving.

LAUSD administrators and board members have expressed interest in growing the program, but the division of instruction is waiting on data to justify further investment. 

The data they do have are basic and preliminary, and district officials caution that there’s not a causal relationship between CGI and test scores.

At schools that have been using the CGI approach for five or more years, 30.28% of students met or exceeded standards on the math portion of state tests. LAUSD officials declined to share specifics on that figure, but for the purposes of a rough comparison, in 2022, 37.23% of third graders, 30.7% of fourth-graders, and 25.24% of fifth graders in all LAUSD schools (excluding charters) the standard. 

“Thirty percent’s not that great,” conceded Frances Baez, LAUSD’s chief academic officer.

“But overall, L.A. Unified, and across the nation, there is a need to improve outcomes for students in math,” she added. “And so CGI is looking promising, but there’s more to be done in terms of revamping our math program.” 

The program’s promise, she said, is based on its popularity among teachers who use it and high appeal for teachers who don’t. “Schools that don’t have it are seeking it out,” she said.

Baez also said the district is waiting on a study from the Los Angeles Education Research Institute at UCLA, or LAERI, to decide whether the pilot is worth scaling. However, a representative from LAERI, which is not involved in administering the pilot, said the study is not yet sure to happen.

“We are currently exploring the feasibility of an evaluation,” wrote LAERI’s associate director Carrie Miller in an email. 

Beyond LAUSD, what does the research say? 

Decades of research into math instruction suggest that a more hands-off approach like what might be found in a CGI classroom is not the most effective way to teach when embraced at the expense of other teaching methods. 

The hands-off approach requires “extensive planning” from teachers, said Russell Gersten, a professor emeritus at the University of Oregon’s College of Education and executive director of the Instructional Research Group. 

But for “many teachers, it just doesn’t work, the implementation can just be problematic. And that’s been more or less the history of these approaches,” he said.

A 2008 published by the U.S. Department of Education found that explicit instruction involving “clear examples” and “extensive practice” had consistently positive effects for students who struggle with math. Other and have found that struggling math learners benefit from more explicit instruction as opposed to less. 

Depending on how LAUSD teachers implement their training, students at CGI schools might not receive that explicit instruction.

Robert Schoen, an associate professor of math education at Florida State University, appears to be the only researcher currently studying the effectiveness of CGI through large randomized controlled trials.

Since 2018, Schoen and his research teams have published four studies on the effects of CGI training on students’ math achievement. 

One found that the program had a potentially positive effect on first-grade achievement and a potentially negative effect on second-grade achievement, though neither were statistically significant. Two other significant positive effects on some grade levels, but not others. The fourth study found no significant effects. 

Schoen looks forward to producing more conclusive research, even if it doesn’t answer what he calls the “billion dollar question”: Determining the right balance between the open-ended and explicit instruction, and how to adjust it based on the situation. 

“I think everybody is trying to figure out, where’s that balance between intervening and telling versus staying back and letting [students] be where they are and on their own journey,” he said. 

At LAUSD, not all CGI classrooms are the same

Educators at LAUSD grapple with the question of balance too, and the result is that not all CGI classrooms look the same. 

The district’s chief academic officer Baez described CGI as a “supplement” to the district’s adopted elementary math curricula, Eureka and Illustrative Mathematics. 

That’s how Kiana Cotton, a second-grade teacher at Lovelia P. Flournoy Elementary, uses CGI. She uses the Eureka curriculum’s more structured approach as a way to build upon concepts her students might have explored during more open-ended, CGI-informed instruction at the beginning of the lesson.

“It’s going pretty good,” said Cotton. “I see the students taking ownership of the strategies. They get excited about coming up to present. They want to show their work.”

Other pilot sites, like Coeur d’Alene Avenue School, embrace the student-guided approach more tightly.

After the kindergarten class, The 74 visited a fourth- and first-grade lesson, which proceeded similarly.

The teacher presented the problem. The students worked on it independently. Some solved the problem — some quickly and creatively — while others were stumped. Then they conferred with their classmates. The teacher might have stepped in to guide a struggling student, but gave no explicit direction on how to solve the problem.

“We don’t really, like, push in and say, ‘This is how you do it: step one, step two, step three,’” said Danielle Grasso, Coeur d’Alene’s principal. 

The future of the CGI program

Were the LAUSD to expand the CGI pilot today, its main justification would be the huge popularity of the program among teachers and administrators. 

This enthusiasm was especially evident at a at which the school board’s curriculum and instruction committee heard from UCLA leaders and district administrators about the pilot. 

LAUSD principals spoke about CGI’s influence on teacher morale. CGI is “a mindset,” not “a curriculum,” said Christina Garcia of the Amanecer Primary Center. Cynthia Braley of Coldwater Canyon Elementary spoke about the pandemic’s damaging effect on student math performance, but said of CGI that “we just can’t live without it.” 

Board president Jackie Goldberg called the presentation “inspiring” and said she’d been recently impressed observing students solving problems at a CGI school — though, along with Ortiz Franklin, she did request more data. 

“We have people clamoring to be a part of the work,” said Carlen Powell, the administrator of elementary instruction. 

“The work,” said Powell, “speaks for itself.”

They sympathize with the workers. Some plan to join them on the picket line at LA Unified schools. 

But when it comes to union and district leaders, LAUSD parents are skeptical and angry.

SEIU Local 99, LAUSD’s 30,000-member union representing employees like custodians, bus drivers, and special education assistants, plans to strike next Tuesday through Thursday. In solidarity, United Teachers Los Angeles has asked its 35,000 members not to cross picket lines.

All district schools would shut down, affecting 420,000 students and their families.

Leaders from both unions say they are fighting for students. Better pay and working conditions, they reason, translate to a healthier learning environment. District leaders say the same. Closing schools during the work stoppage will keep students safe, they say, while refusing the unions’ full demands will safeguard the district’s financial health.

And then there are the families caught in the middle.  

“Anytime someone says, we are for the students, or students are first priority, and it’s all about the kids, I just have to take it with a grain of salt,” said Paul Robak, chair of LAUSD’s . “Because clearly, the ones who would lose most in any work slowdown of any union in the school district are the students.” 

The three-day strike would be the latest in four years of major disruptions across LAUSD, beginning with the six-day teachers strike in January 2019 and rolling through more than a year of fully remote schooling, during which and chronic absenteeism spiked. 

Parents sympathize with Local 99’s members. With an average salary of $25,000 a year, they struggle to make it in LA, and many are parents themselves. But they are also exhausted and fear the consequences a strike could have for their children and the district as a whole, especially after the pandemic kept district schools closed for a long time, and students’ academics and mental health suffered.   

They blame union and district leaders for the shutdown.

“It’s both the district’s fault and their labor partners’. They put parents in the middle of it,” said Christie Pesicka, a leader in the groups California Students United and United Parents LA.

Diana Guillen, chair of LAUSD’s , said a strike “violates kids’ rights” on the heels of the pandemic. “I think it’s an ethical failing from the unions,” she said, speaking in Spanish. 

Parents’ immediate concerns, however, are more basic. Where will working parents send their young children? How will students who depend on school-provided meals eat? After years of academic setbacks, how will students avoid further losses?

At a Wednesday press conference, LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district is partnering with community organizations to make food available at 60 locations across the city and to provide childcare. As for academics, students will receive homework packets to keep them occupied. 

The LA Times community groups and agencies, from the Boys and Girls Club of the Los Angeles Harbor to the LA County Department of Parks and Recreation, are preparing for an influx of students during the day.

Some students, whose parents fully support the striking workers, will spend at least part of the week on the picket line.

“When the teachers originally went on strike a couple years ago, I was all for it. My kids were out there marching,” said Yazmin Arevalo, whose 4th grader attends Gates Elementary in Lincoln Heights. “I would do it again…because they deserve it. If they haven’t been able to come to an agreement, then why not?” 

But she added other parents at Gates Elementary, who also supported teachers in 2019, felt betrayed when many of their children languished through remote schooling. This time, they’re wary of supporting striking workers. 

Based on recent messaging alone, Carvalho’s chief concern is the safety and wellbeing of students.

“We should not be depriving our students of an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to feel safe, or an opportunity to receive social and emotional support — and food,” he said at Wednesday’s press conference.

But that evening, at a massive joint rally held by Local 99 and UTLA that filled up Grand Park in front of Los Angeles City Hall, union members demonstrated their commitment to students in a way Carvalho, on his own, could never match. 

Among the thousands of rally participants, there were children everywhere. 

They clambered over playground structures, and held their parents’ hands as they threaded clusters of attendees. Some wore UTLA red, others SEIU purple. When UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz shouted over the loudspeaker, asking parents in the crowd to identify themselves, a wave of hands shot up. Local 99 often points out 43% of its members have school-age children.

Attending the rally was Jesus Flores, a special education assistant at 75th Street Elementary who’s worked in the district for 18 years. He spends six hours a day on the district’s clock and picks up extra work as an Uber driver. 

Flores has three kids, ages five, six, and eight, all at LAUSD schools. He considers striking a short-term sacrifice that’s in their long-term interest.

“At the end of the day, I’ll be thinking about my kids’ future,” he said. 

Next week, he and his wife, also a special ed assistant with the district, will be switching off on childcare duty. But he said he hopes the union and district will come together before Tuesday to work out a deal. 

“Let’s hope it doesn’t happen,” he said of the strike. Missing that pay “really does take a toll.”

The district meeting Local 99’s demands would mean a 30% wage increase for Flores and other union members, among other benefits.

So far, the district’s core offer includes three 5% wage increases, the first two retroactive, respectively, to July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022, and the third to take effect July 1, 2023.

UTLA, which is further behind in negotiations, is asking for a 20% raise over two years, part of its sweeping platform.

Local 99’s scheduled three-day strike is what’s known as an unfair practice charge strike, meant to protest by district officials. 

The union’s other weapon is an economic strike, which would last indefinitely, but is only legal once the state-facilitated negotiation process has been exhausted.

At the district’s Wednesday press event, Carvalho and board president Jackie Goldberg urged union leaders to meet them at the negotiating table before Tuesday, where they would be ready “24/7” to hash out an agreement that goes beyond what has already been offered. 

“I’m ready, willing, available to meet nonstop, day and night, with our labor leaders to avoid a strike by finding a solution where everyone is a winner, beginning with our kids,” Carvalho said. 

“We have more resources to put on the table. There is time.”

Information for families — including where they can pick up meals for their children during the work stoppage — can be found at this LAUSD website: . 

SEIU Local 99 over the weekend that it plans to hold a 3-day unfair labor practice strike to protest what it characterizes as harassment from LAUSD. The union will announce dates for the strike this Wednesday at a joint rally with the teachers union, UTLA. An on UTLA’s website says its members “are preparing for full solidarity once the [strike] dates are announced.” The rally will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Grand Park in front of L.A. City Hall. In addition, the LAUSD school board will meet Tuesday to discuss the labor negotiations in a special . 

The union representing LAUSD’s 30,000 school bus drivers, custodians, and other service workers took another step closer to a strike yesterday in a move that could lead to a shutdown of the nation’s second largest school district.

“We are canceling the extension of our current union contract,” said SEIU Local 99 executive director Max Arias at yesterday’s school board meeting. “This includes the no-strike provision.” 

The announcement follows a string of threats issued by Local 99 leaders in recent months, each one bringing the union closer, at least rhetorically, to a work stoppage. 

A representative for a coalition of 47 organizations also addressed the negotiations, presenting the board with a letter urging its members “to address the historic underinvestment in a group of workers — namely women of color — who have consistently demonstrated their commitment to the students and families of Los Angeles.”

In December, service workers rallied in front of LAUSD headquarters. In January and February, the union held a , which passed with 96% support. Now, by canceling the contract extension and its no-strike provision, the union opens the possibility a strike could occur even sooner than anticipated.

“We do not take this decision lightly,” said Arias. 

Ana Teresa Dahan, managing director of GPSN, spoke on behalf of the 47 organizations.

“We want to encourage an equitable resolution and believe in the Superintendent’s leadership to make that happen” said Dahan, quoting from the letter. 

The letter praises Local 99’s in-person work early in the pandemic and its advocacy to end and increase K-12 arts funding. Other signatories include Educators for Excellence Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health, and the Los Angeles Urban League. 

The union’s presence at the board meeting was part of a district-wide action on Tuesday — informational picketing at nearly 300 schools — calling attention to alleged unfair labor practices. In documents filed with the state labor board, the union alleges a variety of obstruction and intimidation tactics from district administrators during last month’s voting period to authorize a strike.

One charge describes a principal who, by continually popping into the staff lounge, would not allow union members to confer in private. Another describes an official who placed boxes in front of a bulletin board holding voting information.

In a Wednesday, LAUSD said it was “disappointed” in SEIU’s decision to cancel its contract extension, acknowledging a strike would “cause a significant disruption to instruction, and would adversely impact our entire system.”

A strike protesting these tactics — an unfair labor practice strike — could be called at any time. 

The union’s other weapon, an economic strike, can only be called once the state’s negotiating procedure has been exhausted. The union has moved closer in that direction as well. 

Arias said state-facilitated mediation has failed, leading to the step of fact-finding, during which a three-member panel reviews each side’s arguments and produces a non-binding recommendation. 

The district has “made some movements I want to commend them on,” Arias said in an interview, adding that during recent negotiations, LAUSD agreed to expand health benefits for teaching assistants and after school workers. 

But, he added, they haven’t come close to meeting the union’s core demand of a 30% wage increase as well as an hourly bump of $2, the latter proposed with the union’s lowest-paid members in mind. 

The average annual salary for union members is $25,000, and many are living paycheck to paycheck.

Three board members on Tuesday — Nick Melvoin,Tanya Ortiz Franklin, and board president Jackie Goldberg — wore purple, the color of SEIU. LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho showed up late, missing Local 99 president Conrado Guerrero’s two minutes of comment, which highlighted members’ work to prepare sack lunches and maintain facilities during the early pandemic. 

“How soon LAUSD forgets,” Guerrero said. 

When Arias made his announcement, some board members looked surprised, but Carvalho appeared unfazed, moving only to lift a small glass coffee mug to his lips.

Local 99 has the backing of United Teachers Los Angeles, whose board to support the service workers if they struck by not crossing the picket line.

On March 15, Local 99 and UTLA will hold a joint rally at LA City Hall. 

Last month, by unanimous vote, the 78-year-old representative of Board District 5 was elected president of the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education. She last held the position in , before moving on to stints in city and state politics and academia. 

In an interview with The 74, Goldberg discussed both long-term and immediate difficulties facing the district, saying that negotiations with the unions representing LAUSD’s teachers and service workers would be resolved “in the next four to six weeks.” Her statements echo superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s recent promises of “a multi-year contract” that will “offset the pressure of inflation for all our workforce.”  

Goldberg must also lead the board in deciding how to spend the district’s $14.3 billion in a way that addresses the emotional and academic impacts of the pandemic and prepares for a future of declining enrollment and swelling costs. 

Goldberg spoke with The 74 about these challenges, her goals for her one-year term as president, and her thoughts about superintendent Carvalho as he approaches one year on the job. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Are you confident that the budget you’re going to craft can accommodate demands from the labor unions? Let’s start with the service workers. 

…I am absolutely confident that we will conclude successful negotiations with all our bargaining units [including UTLA and SEIU Local 99], in probably the next four to six weeks — without any strikes or work stoppages… 

This board is very supportive of very good compensation packages because we know that the folks that have worked in our schools and in our offices have been through a lot of distress, and we want them to know that they are valuable to us and that they are the critical features of the district…There aren’t going to be any cuts to their benefits. That’s not where we’re looking. We need those people. The people at the schools are the only people who interact with children… 

All of those folks make schools a place of learning and safety for children and young people, and we’re not going to do anything, if we can possibly avoid it, that would lead to anybody thinking of, first, not working for us any longer, second, not helping us recruit for our vacancies, and third, for feeling the need for a work stoppage.

One thing the teachers are asking for is smaller class sizes. In order to achieve that, you would need to hire more teachers.

We’ve held class sizes down this whole year, with schools [that] lost enrollment not losing teachers unless they lost significant enrollment. So class sizes are actually smaller than they’ve been in recent years…I don’t think we will need to hire people to continue that because, unfortunately, in the entire state of California and in Los Angeles Unified, enrollment is declining. 

People are leaving because they can’t afford to live in the state. People are leaving because of immigration policies that have slowed immigration, which was a big part of our increase in population through the eighties and nineties and the beginning of 2000.

And also the birth rate in Los Angeles County is down considerably from what it has traditionally been. So all of those factors mean that we will have fewer students next year than we have this year…

Are you saying that natural demographic shifts will resolve that one point of tension between the district and the teacher’s union?

I doubt that it will ever resolve that point of contention. But I do think it will mean that the actual teaching experience for teachers in our system will be with significantly smaller class sizes than they have had when we were growing enrollment. 

I want to ask about enrollment decline. What is the board doing to make attending LA schools more attractive? 

It’s really done school by school, but we do a lot of things to make school more attractive. We have a very large sports program. We have a very large music program, and a growing music program. We have a very large arts program that is now beginning to grow again…We have festivals of cultural types all over the district. We have dual-language programs. We have programs with robotics. We have programs with STEM, we have programs with STEAM…

Are those making a dent in the enrollment decline?

I think so. We have a fairly significant number of schools in my board district with an increased enrollment this year. A lot of them in Southeast and South Gate. Huntington Park and Bell. Those schools are full and filling up. MACES Academy has a waitlist. Southeast Middle has a waitlist. 

There are different efforts being done regionally. There are different efforts being done at individual schools. And there are different efforts that the board is paying for, like extended transportation after school so that more students can participate in after school fun activities.

We’re coming up on a year since superintendent Carvalho came to the district. How would you say he’s doing?

Well, I think he’s doing pretty well. He will get a formal evaluation sometime in early February. We have a process we’ve developed and board members have been asked to review some materials and to rate him on certain issues, and all of that will be gathered at a closed session sometime in February…But I would say he has done some very important things very quickly. Certainly getting us a strategic plan, which the district has not had for many years…And very quickly when he came in, he set up ways to get feedback and information from the public…as well as staff…

He certainly has taken up the issues that are most important to this board, which are the social-emotional crisis in many of our schools, with many of our students, and some of our teachers. 

He also is pointing to real goals — specific, measurable goals in student achievement, and also how to support our personnel so they feel like this is the best place they ever wanted to work and to be able to help us recruit for still vacant positions… 

What are some areas for improvement for the superintendent?

I’m really not able to say that I have any at this moment…what he is doing is taking a look at not just the present, but the history and the future of this district…I have never seen a superintendent take a backward look at everything that has been going on as a way to understand how to move forward. 

It came out that [the cyberattack in September] started more than a month earlier than was disclosed by Carvalho…Is Carvalho trustworthy?

He’s trustworthy. He did what was necessary to protect this district. Making things public at a time earlier than he did would have endangered all of the efforts of the federal government, the state government, FBI, local police in trying to stop this. 

We are one of the very few districts that has been hit hard by this stuff that paid no ransom and managed very carefully to also protect all our payroll, for example. We lost nobody. They got no payroll information with all the Social Security numbers, for example. They got none of it. In fact, the only Social Security numbers they got were from the original place they broke in, which was Facilities. And that was with a few contractors.

There was some student information. Not Social Security numbers, but things like birth dates that were accessed. Right?

Yes. There were other smaller things — none of which, however, could prevent us from opening the schools, running the schools, paying people on time and appropriately. So I would say, considering what a terrible mess — and we’re not done with it, by the way. We still, every day, every week, every month have a series of checks that are being done…

I know a lot of one-time funding is going towards academic recovery efforts and there were these two acceleration days over winter break. Only about 9% of students in the district showed up. Do you see that as a success?

But about 65% of the ones that showed up were exactly the kids we were looking for. And we learned a lot. We learned that elementary kids are less likely to go to get help at a school they don’t regularly attend.

We learned that we should count on about half the students showing up — we figured that it would be 75% [of students who signed up]. We predicted wrong. In other words, we learn. So how we do the next two [acceleration days] in spring will be better.

How else should the district be tackling academic recovery in order to attract the students who didn’t show up for acceleration days?

We’re going to probably accelerate the amount of after school on your own campus with your own teacher support. That’s something we’re looking into for the following year. Saying…let’s see if we can do it two or three days a week all year long.

So, extended after school programs.

Extended after school, Saturday programs, additional teacher assistants we hope to hire to put into the classroom, so there’s a lower adult-to-student ratio. That makes for a lot of extra help for kids who are struggling. I spent 17 years teaching in Compton. I’m well aware of what it takes to make movement with kids who are struggling in school.

What about recovery for students with disabilities?…I’ve heard from a lot of parents and advocates that during [individualized education plan] meetings, the team is not bringing up compensatory education…Is that acceptable?

I have no idea if what you’re saying is accurate or not. So, without knowing that I can’t answer that question.

What specifically can the district be doing for students with disabilities, who are going to need way more than just some extra after school time?

Well, the [individualized education plan] will determine their individual needs and the district will meet them. That’s our goal. We don’t have any subordinate goal to that. We don’t say we’re going to try or anything else. We’re going to meet them. 

We had trouble meeting them [early in the pandemic] because, for example, all the kids that needed speech — most of the speech teachers went online. The parents didn’t want to do speech online. They wanted it in person, and we weren’t willing to require speech therapists to meet in students’ homes. So yes, they didn’t get it. You’re right. That was terrible. But it was a decision the parent made not to do that…

What we’re trying to do now is to overdose. So if [the students] were going to get [the services] once a week, we’re going to try to see if we can get it for them twice a week and things like that…

We’re going to try to figure out ways to deal with that loss, which has been extreme. No doubt.

How would you describe the district’s financial health?

Well, on the macro level, not good. On the micro level, fine. 

On the macro level, we, every year, spend more than we receive. And the two areas which bust our budget, is special education — which is about a billion dollars from the general fund that should not have to come from the general fund — and are benefits paid to retirees. Both the healthcare benefits that we pay to retirees and pension benefits that we pay part of and that the employee pays part of. Both of those put us in a long-term situation of having to ultimately…not be able to do what we have done for many, many decades, which is to pay the existing bills and to keep putting off some of the things that we haven’t yet figured out how to rectify.

The executive director of Great Public Schools Now, an advocacy organization, hoped the district would pick someone from the community, not an outsider from 2,700 miles away. But so far, the charismatic educator who led Miami-Dade for 14 years has won her over. She called his efforts to talk publicly about next year’s budget “refreshing” and applauded his move to add to the school calendar to tackle student learning loss. 

“He has shown bold and decisive leadership quite early,” she said. 

That sentiment is echoed by observers from union leaders to parent groups in the nation’s second-largest school system. Since he started, Carvalho has tried to rally the city around a district that is 100,000 students over the next decade. On social media, he plays the role of cheerleader and one-man hype machine, applauding student and celebrating this year’s graduates while pushing for more options to attract families. 

But for Carvalho, whose tenure began on Valentine’s Day, the honeymoon is likely to be short-lived.

Some worry that state test scores, due later this year, will reveal further pandemic-related decline. And with hemorrhaging enrollment, he’ll soon need to make tough calls about closing schools and moving staff. That could put him on a collision course with the district’s notoriously tough teachers union as it prepares for upcoming contract negotiations. 

Ben Austin, a long-time parent advocate in the district, said Carvalho “seems to have found his initial footing,” but added that the leader’s first big test will be at the bargaining table.

“He will have to defy history by navigating a labyrinth of powerful special interests in order to actually put the children of Los Angeles first,” he said.

As Carvalho prepares to release his vision for the district, he said he has spent many of his 14-hour days visiting nearly 70 schools and interacting with 6,000 students, employees and community members in an effort to present an accurate picture of the challenges ahead.

In a wide-ranging interview with The 74, he described LA’s educators and principals as committed but stymied by a system that hampers their ability to address problems ranging from teacher vacancies to broken air-conditioners.

“The connection between supervision, expectation and outcome is weak,” he said. “That’s where I think there is a significant vulnerability that we need to overcome.”

Financially, he’s negotiating conflicting realities. The district still has $2.5 billion in relief funds to spend. But Carvalho’s first budget will be aimed at preventing the system from falling off a so-called fiscal cliff in a few years when that money dries up. 

In April, he described the scenario as “Armageddon.” But during a May 17 board meeting, he offered a more positive spin, saying students should expect “enhanced” services.

“This is the right time to join LAUSD as a parent and employee,” he said. “No one should be thinking the sky is falling.”

Those words comforted board member Jackie Goldberg.

“We are not about to go under. We are not going to stop doing things for kids at schools,” she said. “We just have to find a way to restructure the budget so that as the money declines, it does not impact the things we care about most.”

‘Thorough’ reviews of closures

Some parents are already anxious about not knowing whether their child will need to move to a new school. Dena Vatcher, a parent in Los Angeles’s Westchester neighborhood, sends her younger son to Orville Wright Middle School STEAM Magnet, which now occupies a newly renovated site with a refurbished library and robotics lab. 

The district had tentative plans to relocate the school — which has a larger Black population than most L.A. middle schools — to Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnet, a high school campus. The charter schools now sharing that site would take over the Wright location.

The proposed switch didn’t sit well with Vatcher and other Wright parents who see it as a victory for charter schools that would get the upgraded facility. The plan appeared to be on a fast track until Carvalho came on board. In January, he , “This issue will be thoroughly reviewed.”

“He does know what’s going on, and has not greenlighted the move,” she said. “I’m encouraged that he came in and said, ‘We’re going to look at this.’ ”

During his tenure in Miami-Dade, Carvalho closed roughly 16 schools, he said. But he dislikes the option unless he can offer families something better in return. 

“If you close the school, you extinguish the only safe haven for kids in many neighborhoods. You shut down [what] may be the only playground … the only area where kids have connectivity,” he said. “Before you do that, you really need to check many boxes.”

At the same time, he takes issue with the state’s— and especially Los Angeles’s — practice of allowing charter schools to co-locate in buildings with traditional schools, which he calls “divisive.”

“Once you have five different schools in one single building with five principals and only one building facilities manager, it is a recipe for disaster,” he said.

While allows charters to occupy unused space in district schools, Carvalho said he wants to first look in his “own front yard and backyard” to reduce the friction.

‘Asking for a lot’

Carvalho’s team is also about to enter into contract negotiations with — a process that proved contentious under his predecessor, Austin Beutner.

The union is proposing a 20% raise over the next two years, smaller class sizes and $5,000 retention bonuses for counselors and other support positions. They argue that with roughly $3 billion in , now is not the time to be making cuts 

Those negotiations will “be a challenge for him,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of education at the University of Southern California, who has known Carvalho since he was an assistant chief in Miami. “They are a strong union, and they are asking for a lot.”

But Carvalho said many of their proposals, such as lowering class sizes and adding more counselors, “resonate” with him, and he expects to be able to “carve out common ground” as the process moves ahead. 

Leaders of UTLA did not respond to requests for an interview. But Nery Paiz, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents principals, likes what he’s seen from Carvalho so far.

“He’s no nonsense,” Paiz said. “He knows things that work because they have worked in the past.”

Carvalho has imported a process he used in Miami to address what he calls the district’s most “fragile,” low-performing schools. Principals and their supervisors meet with Carvalho and top district leaders to examine achievement data on a “dashboard,” discuss staffing needs and identify successful practices other schools can adopt.

“He’s very focused on the right stuff,” said Tanya Ortiz Franklin, a member of the district’s school board, who frequently visits classrooms with Carvalho. With shifting COVID rates, he had to make some tough early decisions about lifting a and delaying a . Even so, she added, “He prioritizes student outcomes. He doesn’t push them to the side because we’re in a pandemic.”

He has also taken personal responsibility for some students — more than 40 who were chronically absent during the pandemic — and donated $8,000 from his early paychecks to provide some with scholarships. One mother he contacted told him her daughter was in foster care and not to call again. A high school student who had been missing classes told him he takes care of two younger siblings who are also missing school.

The student told him: “‘I’m so sorry. Are you really the superintendent? Can you help me?’ ”

Carvalho said he’s limited in addressing housing costs that are pushing families out of Los Angeles and combating a homelessness problem that has become so pervasive, children are encountering “unclothed individuals” outside schools. 

He’s already from the Los Angeles City Council to relocate homeless encampments away from school grounds and child care centers. 

“Everybody keeps asking me, ‘What’s your solution for declining enrollment? What’s your solution for [kids in poverty]?’” he said. “Seven-year-olds don’t wake up one day in the morning and tell parents, ‘You know, I’m leaving L.A.’ The issues we’re dealing with are a reflection of economic conditions that exist in this community.”