Sergio Garcia is quick to the scene. He puts on a scuffed firefighter jacket, grabs an oxygen mask and crouches down on hot concrete to start chest compressions on a dummy body. 

At the Los Angeles Unified School District’s career technical education showcase, under an outdoor canopy in blistering Southern California heat, the fire academy student demonstrates CPR to other students who might also be interested in joining. 

Sergio represents one of 23 high schools and six middle schools that showcased a range of career technical education at L.A. Unified, including 15 comprehensive three- or four-year programs that prepare students for industries through real-world experience. The showcase, held last month at the , a private health equity foundation, featured student projects, live demonstrations and skill-based challenges, is part of the district’s “Dream It, Achieve It!” initiative that pairs students with local industry leaders.

“With my degree, I’d rather know I’m going to help people,” said Sergio, a senior and fourth-year deputy chief at the fire academy at Banning High School who is on track to earn a fire science degree at a technical college. “Although it is very physically demanding, the fact that you’re doing good in this world is a bigger gift than anyone could ever ask for.”

Building technical and team-building skills 

At another canopy at the showcase, students cheered a remote-controlled battle of two robots, vying for the prize of a 3D-printed bot, while Madelynne Arevalo helped set up a mini flight simulator. Madelynne, a senior at Fremont High School in Los Angeles, is in the robotics program and is designing a rocket launch for her aerospace engineering project.

“We also compete with other high schools, and the competitions are really fun,” Madelynne said. “I’m really proud of all the models (we made), even if they’re not the final ones we end up using.”

Madelynne remembers designing an elevator system in a robot she worked on for a competition. Although she and her team chose a more time-efficient robot for the event, she said she learned how to develop new technical and team-building skills in a high-stakes environment. 

“It was a lot of our own ideas and a lot of collaboration,” Madelynne said, “and I thought that even if it doesn’t work, at least the process was nice.”

In recent years, L.A. Unified has significantly expanded career technical education to about 435 pathways, from engineering and technology to business and construction, serving nearly 40,000 students. About 1,000 students completed internships in the 2024-2025 school year, and CTE programs have about a 97% graduation rate. 

“CTE careers are the fastest growing careers in the United States, more than students going to a four-year university,” said Jaime Medina, a firefighter and teacher in L.A. Unified’s firefighting program. 

Israel Urbina, a junior at Washington Preparatory High School in Los Angeles, is a third-year student in the photojournalism program. At the showcase, he displayed a photo in which he manipulated light to create different designs, objects and shapes, including one that spelled out his name. 

“Right now, my thing in photography is light painting,” Israel said. “I did a video about it in my photography class, and it’s about all my light paintings and the different ones I’ve done and the different people I’ve done it with.”

Ken Kerbs, a photojournalism teacher at the school, described Israel as nearly an “expert” on light painting. Through years of honing techniques related to perspective, reflections, texture, light and shadow, Kerbs said most of his students leave the program with greater curiosity about the world and a sharper eye for detail. 

“What that says to me is that teaching them the basics is to be sensitive and have a different sensibility about their environment,” Kerbs said. “That’s what makes me come to school in the morning.”

Blessed Thomas-Hill, a senior at Washington Prep, worked with Israel on a film about light painting and wrote poetry for the film’s narrative. She said she chose the photojournalism program because of Kerbs, who helped teach her to be more comfortable expressing herself.  

“I’m an introvert, and talking with people, I really struggle with that a lot,” Blessed said. “I got to know a lot of great friends this year. I’ve got to get closer to more people. It’s made me more sociable.” 

Students ‘rise to the occasion’ 

Blessed said she wants to be an artist and plans to incorporate photography in her personal art. She remembers a field trip to Cal State Northridge, where she learned about a photographer’s protest of immigration raids through his photos of L.A. communities, which inspired her to commit to art. 

“It’s really inspiring in a way because it shows that you’re not just alone in your community,” Blessed said. 

Madelynne said she plans to continue studying robotics and will pursue a college degree in biomedical engineering. Because she had not committed to robotics until her senior year, she felt she was behind many students who had started coding in middle school. 

“At first, I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t think I was smart enough to do something as complicated as engineering,” Madelynne said, adding that the robotics program led her to Girls Build, a club where girls learn to code and build machines together. 

“Spreading the positivity around has helped me believe more in myself,” she said. 

Sergio, the Banning High fire academy student, said he initially struggled with how physically demanding his training was, but that he learned to build speed and strength with each simulated fire alarm drill. 

“I’ve also learned that when it comes to rising to an occasion, I rise to that occasion. Whether it be someone’s in trouble, I help protect people,”  he said. “This academy has brought out leadership in me, the discipline, the social skills that I wouldn’t have learned any other way.” 

Sergio said he also plans to become certified as a diesel mechanic, because the firefighting program has allowed him to combine two of his interests.  

“I love the whole firefighting part, but I’ve also always loved working on cars. I figured if I’m going to be a mechanic, I might as well do it for a better cause,” Sergio said. “Working on fire engines, so when those firefighters go out and save those lives, I can say I helped with that.”

This story was originally published on EdSource.

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.”

This was originally published on .

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.” 

This was originally published on .

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. 

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.”

But look at the odds you face if you’re not white or Asian. In L.A, only 3% of Hispanic elementary students and 4% of Black students attend a school where 7 of 10 kids are reading at grade level. This shocking data comes from the California Department of Education.

My organization, Available to All, is a nonprofit watchdog that defends equal access to public schools. Our analysis of state data shines a light on the 456 zoned elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the K-5 or K-6 schools that are the default assignment for hundreds of thousands of L.A. children. Over 190,000 children attended these schools in 2023-24, the last year for which data is available. Of these 456 schools, only 39 have 70% of their students reading at grade level. At 105 of these schools, fewer than 30% of kids are reading proficiently.

What is absolutely crucial to understand is that discrepancies of this size can exist only if a government entity enforces them. Imagine for a moment two post offices. At one, 70% of letters and packages get delivered as promised. It’s not great, but we’ll call it pretty good. At the other post office, 3 out of 4 packages get lost or damaged, and only 25% arrive on time and in their original condition.

As soon as this data became public, people would stop going to the bad post office. Hundreds of people would drive to the pretty good post office, even if it was much farther away. Long lines would form outside the door. The bad post office would have to improve or face an empty lobby.

So the question is this: How does LAUSD enforce these discrepancies? How does it prevent tens of thousands of families from lining up outside the doors of those few elementary schools where most of the kids can read? The answer is attendance zones. The district draws a meandering line around each elementary school, determining who is and who isn’t allowed to attend.

The problem is, of course, that these coveted schools are located in some of the priciest parts of town. The lines typically encircle expensive single-family homes that are on large lots. What’s more, the home prices in these zones are distorted because the house comes with exclusive access to a desirable public school. “I know it sounds expensive,” the real estate agent will say, “but if you buy a home in this zone, you won’t have to pay for private school.”

These are quasi-private schools for wealthy Angelenos, but they’re operated on the public’s dime. Our research has shown that Los Angeles is one of many cities where coveted elementary schools have attendance zones that from the 1930s. Once again, families in less wealthy areas are boxed out, especially African-American and Hispanic kids, as well as working- and middle-class people of all races.

What’s incredible is that such exclusivity is possible in a system that has so many half-empty schools. f of L.A.’s elementary schools — 225 of 456 — have seen enrollment drop by more than 50% in the last 15 years. You would expect that, with so much overcapacity, families would have their pick of public schools.

Even the highest-performing schools are below their full capacity. In the 39 elementary schools with over 70% of kids reading at grade level, enrollment is down by over 7,000. That’s 7,000 seats that could be available to students who are currently assigned to failing schools, often within a mile or two.

California’s 1994 requires the district to make open seats available to students who live outside school attendance zones. But LAUSD has treated this policy as voluntary, as recently as 2018 that it is their choice whether to report open seats. Thus, these 39 schools reported only 58 open seats for this school year — less than 2% of what we’d expect to see based on their historical enrollment.

Of the 39 high-performing elementary schools, 15 of them are “affiliated conversion charters,” meaning they are operated by LAUSD but don’t have to participate in Open Enrollment. However, they are required by the state’s charter school law to hold a lottery for any open seats.   My organization called each of these schools, and 14 indicated that they could not accept any applicants from outside the zone, since they were “full.” But, again, these schools are well below their historical peak enrollment and should have at least 2,589 seats available.

The hard truth is this: Principals in these high-performing, zoned schools do not seem to want to make their open seats available to children outside the zone. Doing so might threaten the exclusive nature of the school, and that exclusivity is exactly what families are paying for when they take out their oversized mortgages.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. In the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has abolished attendance zone assignments. Test scores are up, as are graduation rates and college enrollment. In California, the state legislature ended geographic assignment for community colleges in the 1980s. In the years after this reform, enrollment rebounded after years of decline. Today, the community college system is a crown jewel of the state, championed by Republicans and Democrats alike.

America was built on the idea that even a kid from the wrong side of the tracks can go on to become a business owner, a doctor, a politician, a professor or a general in the military. History has proven that to be true. But here in the 21^st century, middle-class and low-income kids are blocked from fulfilling their potential, locked out of the best public schools — even ones that their families’ tax dollars pay for. It’s not fair, it’s not just,and it’s time to make a change.

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 story was originally published by . for their newsletters.

More than 250,000 students in Los Angeles Unified will be eligible for extra tutoring, summer school and other academic help after the district settled a class-action lawsuit alleging that its remote learning practices during the pandemic were discriminatory.

The , filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, was announced Wednesday by the law firm representing families who said their children fell disastrously behind during the Covid-related school shutdown in 2020-21.

“After five years of tireless advocacy on behalf of LAUSD students and families, we are proud to have secured a historic settlement that ensures students receive the resources they need to thrive,” said Edward Hillenbrand, a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. “This critical support will help pave the way for lasting educational equity.”

Los Angeles Unified had no comment on the case because the settlement has yet to be approved by the court. A hearing is set for December, although the settlement goes into effect immediately.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Los Angeles and nearly every other school district in California closed for in-person learning from March 2020 through fall 2021. Students attended classes virtually, and most fell behind academically. after schools reopened. Chronic .

In fall 2020, a group of families whose children were languishing during remote learning sued Los Angeles Unified, saying the district wasn’t doing enough to ensure students were receiving an adequate education.

One parent, Akela Wroten Jr., said that his second-grade daughter was behind before the pandemic and became even more lost during remote learning. She struggled with reading and never got the extra attention she needed because teachers weren’t assessing her progress.

Another parent, Vicenta Martinez, said her daughter didn’t get any instruction in spring 2020, in part because she never received logon information for remote instruction and the school never followed up. When she finally did access remote classes, the lessons were short and teachers offered little feedback.

“LAUSD’s remote learning plan fails to provide students with even a basic education and is not preparing them to succeed,” the lawsuit alleged.

The suit singled out an agreement between the district and its teachers union that said teachers would only be required to work four hours a day, wouldn’t have to give tests and weren’t required to deliver live lessons — their lessons could be asynchronous, or recorded beforehand. In addition, the agreement said the district wouldn’t evaluate or monitor teachers during that time.

United Teachers Los Angeles supports the settlement, saying it provides more assistance for students while leaving teachers’ “hard-won contractual rights” intact and avoiding “unwarranted judicial interference” in the district.

The union also noted that student test scores have recovered significantly since the pandemic..

The plaintiffs argued that the district’s policies discriminated against low-income, Black, Latino, disabled and English learner students, because those were the students least likely to have adequate support to succeed in remote learning. Those student groups also comprise the vast majority of students in the district, the nation’s second-largest.

The settlement requires the district to offer a host of academic support, including summer school and after-school tutoring, to the 250,000 students who were enrolled in L.A. Unified during the pandemic and are still with the district. Among those students, 100,000 who are performing below grade level will be eligible for 45 hours of one-on-one tutoring every year through 2028.

This article was and was republished under the license.

The Los Angeles Unified School District saw an increase in the number of patients, including students and their families, receiving medical, dental and behavioral health services at expanded wellness centers, according to a new  by the Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health. 

The district’s 17 wellness centers and three school-based health centers served nearly 55,000 patients during the 2023-24 school year — an increase of 9% from the previous year — with more than half of student-age patients between 14 and 19 years old. Nearly 7,500 patients visited a wellness center or school-based health center for behavioral health services, a nearly 25% increase compared to the prior year. 

“When students have access to quality healthcare, they have greater opportunities to succeed,” said Maryjane Puffer, executive director of the L.A. Trust, in the report. “The Wellness Centers and SBHCs (school-based health centers) continue to be lifelines for students and families.” 

The centers provide comprehensive behavioral health services such as mental health assessments, substance use evaluations, developmental screenings and psychotherapy. Of the patients who were between the ages of 6 and 19, 27% were receiving psychotherapy at an L.A. Unified wellness center. 

About a tenth of the children age 6 to 19 also received a mental health diagnosis, including for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and attention deficit disorders. More than a third of those diagnoses were of “other disorders,” including autism, disorders related to severe stress, and developmental disorders, which increased from the 2021-22 school year. 

“These numbers reflect growing trust in the services and a deepening understanding of the connection between health and academic success,” Puffer said. 

Students also received primary care services, preventative services such as medical screenings, flu and measles vaccinations, testing for sexually transmitted infections, contraceptive management, referrals to substance use treatment and dental exams. 

The report also indicated that 37% of patients 6 to 19 years old were diagnosed as overweight or obese, an increase of 7% from the previous year. Nearly half of all patients who were seen were also diagnosed as overweight or obese.

“The data also underscores ongoing challenges, including rising obesity rates and persistent behavioral health needs,” Puffer said. “These findings fuel our commitment to expanding innovative solutions such as dental-medical integration, mental health interventions, and partnerships that promote healthier lifestyles for students.” 

This was originally published on .

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.

Four days after a 15-year-old with a disability was mistakenly detained and  outside of Arleta High School, the first day of the new school year in the Los Angeles Unified School District seemed normal. 

Students at Arleta High walked through the school’s annual red carpet on Thursday as music played and cheerleaders performed. Teachers, like Nicole Patin, greeted them while passing out flyers in English and Spanish to parents and red cards detailing what to do if stopped or detained by an ICE agent. 

Close friends and former colleagues joined in to welcome the students, including some of Patin’s former students. 

“It was actually even emotional, because they just decided to show up,” said Patin, who also serves as chair of the school’s United Teachers Los Angeles chapter. “People that, at one point, were dear friends that had worked, people that were retired, they all came out to help us kick the year off in the right way.” 

Similar sentiments reigned across Los Angeles Unified as students returned to school, district officials said during a press conference at Gardena High School. 

And amid heightened immigration fears, district Superintendent Alberto Carvalho touted a 92% attendance rate districtwide — two percentage points higher than last year, a direct result of outreach that included more than 11,000 phone calls and 1,000 home visits. 

“We’re very proud of you, and I just want to echo our happiness and congratulations on all the things that you’ve done today, and we know that you’re not going to stop, that this will be a continuation,” State Superintendent of Instruction Tony Thurmond said at the press conference. “The state of California and our office will continue to support you in your work.” 

The district’s Region South had the lowest rate of attendance, which Carvalho suspected was due to the area being home to more Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity and parents’ fears. He did not disclose the number. 

In response to current immigration activity, he said the district would ramp up its program — where school and district staff knock on the doors of families and encourage students to return to the classroom — from a quarterly to a monthly activity. 

He also said that following a 300-student increase, or 7% uptick, in virtual academy enrollment last week, about 200 families changed their minds and reenrolled their children in one of LAUSD’s regular, in-person campuses “as a result of increased trust and confidence specific to the protection protocols.” 

“[Today] was a great day of joy, of happiness, of community that was celebrated by students, parents and staff alike,” Carvalho said. 

“The fear is real, that the anxiety is undeniable, that the concern in the minds and hearts of parents is strong. But many parents told us that the steps we took [involving several tiers of protection and safety zones surrounding schools] … created an environment where parents believed that the best place for their children would be the schoolhouse.”

ICE activity close to home

ICE activity took place on Tuesday, near several schools, but no closer than two blocks away. 

The schools were: 

• Danny J. Bakewell Sr., Primary Center and Bret Harte Preparatory Middle School in Region South 
• Mendez High School, Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts and Castelar Elementary School in Region East 
• Victory Boulevard Elementary and STEAM Magnet in Region North 

Everyone involved was quick to communicate and respond, and “no impact was seen or felt by these schools as a result of these federal actions in the neighborhood,” Carvalho said.

The superintendent also said the district is working actively with two impacted families. One is the family of an 18-year-old Reseda High School student who was detained while walking his dog and is currently in a detention center in Los Angeles. 

Carvalho said the boy’s mother told him, “My son is in a small space with 40 men, most of them, if not all of them, much older than he is. He is 18 years old, but he’s a kid. He has not been exposed to anything in his life. He drinks water once a day. The food is insufficient.” 

The second involved a student who was taken to a detention center in Texas but has since been released. 

“Armed men in hoods with masks jumping out of vehicles with militarized vests with long guns in hand. … It’s shocking for most adults,” Carvalho said. “Think for a second about the impact that this has on impressionable young children. … I’m a father. I would not want my child to witness that.” 

He and school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin urged families to contact their school’s principal if they need help with transportation. 

Carvalho said they have so far met the needs of more than 300 families who have requested special accommodation, including modifications of bus routes and potential door-to-door services. 

“In some ZIP codes in our country, the children will never witness [detentions]. Never,” Carvalho said. “And then there are kids in [other regions who] walk to school. Blocks. … Can we spare, beyond politics, policy and legalities, can we spare our children from that trauma?”

At school

Patin, the Arleta High School teacher, said attendance remained strong on her campus and in her classrooms. 

“Our campus is very secure. Our office is locked. … There’s no strangers or people just dropping in or having access to our campus,” she said. “That’s really never been that way. But we’re especially vigilant now.”

And while the overall energy was positive, she said the immigration raids have impacted students. 

Many, she said, had watched violent interactions on social media and feared for themselves or family members. 

“When class started, they wanted to talk about all of the people that were out in front of school and the reporters. They had questions,” she said. “They also wanted to share their own perspective on the experience and what they were feeling. So, we all allowed for that.” 

More LAUSD students stayed home this summer than usual, Patin said. And many were happy to meet up with their peers after months of being apart. 

Twelfth grader Andry Estrada was among them, happy to leave home at 6:30 a.m. and greet his classmates as a member of the marching band and as the secretary of the school’s Associated Student Body. He said he was excited to be reunited with his classmates, some of whom had stayed home toward the end of the 2024-25 academic year for fear of immigration enforcement. 

“I was definitely excited to see my teachers again and build new relationships and friendships that I haven’t been able to reach in the summertime,” Estrada said. “It’s overall been a great day.”

This story was originally by EdSource.  for their daily newsletter.”

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.” 

The nation’s second-largest school district in June approved a $18.8 billion budget, avoiding layoffs by tapping into retirement money for teachers. School officials said it was necessary after the end of federal COVID relief money, and less state funding tied to falling enrollment. 

LAUSD’s school board passed the budget unanimously. But the influential union that represents 35,000 teachers and educators in LAUSD, , wasn’t happy. 

The union opposed the new financial plan because it doesn’t anticipate the UTLA is pushing.

“Stability means staffing that is experienced, familiar, and trusted,” said UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz at a board meeting in June. “We need a budget that raises salaries. We need to recruit and retain educators.”

UTLA has been fighting for increased salaries for years — and the union scored a , with a contract that raised teachers’ pay by 21% on average. However, that contract expires in 2025, setting up another round of tough negotiations. 

Carvalho said he sympathized with the teachers’ union, but LAUSD has never received the federal and state money it needs. “Those are the culprits,” Carvalho said. 

Carvalho said he would not allow any furloughs or layoffs this year. But he and the board will reconsider staffing cuts when they take up the budget again in December, he said. 

“No one is losing their job. But we do have a problem for FY27, and we will be revisiting this issue,” said Carvalho.

Meanwhile, Joseph Williams, Executive Director for the non-profit Students Deserve and a partner with the Police Free in LAUSD Coalition, said the groups opposed the district’s new budget because it contains funding for school police. 

“We are definitely of the opinion that absolutely no educational positions should be touched before every single police position is eliminated,” Williams said. 

Some demands from Williams’ groups and the teachers union were realized in the new budget.

For example, UTLA’s Myart-Cruz urged Carvalho to make funding cuts to district operations and off-campus consultants in order to preserve funding for teachers. 

Carvalho made moves to honor that wish, reducing central operations funding by $200 million. 

The district then redirected that money to projects supported by the union and community groups such as Williams’.

Myart-Cruz and others had asked the district to fund projects including the Black Student Achievement Plan, student centers, early education, LGBTQ+ support groups, and arts in schools. 

Several weeks after students returned to Canyon Charter Elementary School following the Los Angeles fires in January, a second grade student at the school cried as his teacher packed up an absent friend’s belongings.

“What are you doing with this stuff?” the student asked, his grief ongoing, and mounting.

Katje Davis said it was difficult to explain that his friend was displaced by the Palisades fire and had to move to another school.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“This loss was hard,” Davis said. “But … we’re good teachers here. And we’ve figured out how to put the kids first.”

The second grader was one of hundreds who left the Los Angeles Unified School District, which lost two elementary schools to the fires, and the Pasadena Unified School District, which encompasses Altadena, and was the hardest hit.

And as the academic year comes to an end, teachers, administrators and experts have stressed that schools in areas affected by fires have remained a key source of stability, despite campuswide adjustments to a new normal and the ongoing grief expressed by students, many of whom lost their homes, pets and communities. Five months after the fires, students were back on track, making progress academically and emotionally.

“Schools provide a sense of continuity and safety for children,” said Pedro Noguera, the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education. “And, that’s why it’s so important to be in school.”

‘Nothing like Covid’: Returning to normalcy

Despite losing some schools to the fire, Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified were relatively quick to bring students back and resume classes at their new locations. Many students returned by the end of January.

The schools that burned down were relocated to new campuses, so students could stay with the same campus community, classroom, classmates and teachers.

Parents at Canyon Charter Elementary were concerned about environmental risks, according to Davis, and many kept their kids home until the district completed a Soil and Indoor Air Dust Report in late March.

In the months following the Eaton and Palisades fires, students who lived in impacted communities dealt with different circumstances and missed varying amounts of instruction. Some initially seemed happy to be back with their teacher and classmates; others struggled emotionally.

“This is nothing like Covid — because at Covid times, everybody was in the same boat,” Davis said. Her school was in a unique position — they were the closest to the burn zone but did not perish. They also didn’t have running water until mid-March.

Wendy Connor, a veteran first grade teacher at Marquez Charter Elementary School, which did burn down in Palisades, said the initial days and weeks after they resumed in January at Nora Sterry Elementary were geared toward students’ emotional well-being.

Teachers started marking tardies in mid-February, she said, and she tried to cover only the essential parts of each lesson.

“We’re reading a story. We’re writing. We’re practicing spelling and writing sentences and things like that,” Connor said in an interview with EdSource in February. “But, we’re just not doing it for as long as we normally would. If there’s five questions for them to answer, maybe I’ll just have them do three.”

As the weeks rolled on and students started to settle into their new environments, Connor said she felt she had been able to steer her first graders back into a more normal school day.

By May, most of the kids at Marquez Charter Elementary had settled down and were happy at their new location, Connor told EdSource.

“There’s been some stories of a few different students from different classrooms whose parents wanted them to go to a different school … and the kids just refused to go. They wanted to stay at Marquez.”

The efforts at Pasadena Unified have yielded some surprising results, according to Julianne Reynoso, Pasadena Unified’s assistant superintendent of student wellness and support services.

Although 10,000 of the district’s 14,000 students were evacuated from the Eaton fire, the district’s diagnostic assessments show that the number of students performing at or above grade level in math and reading across elementary and middle school has increased between the August/September and March/April assessment periods.

Specifically, the number of elementary students who performed at mid- or above-grade level rose 15 percentage points in math and 14 percentage points in reading.

Among middle schoolers, math scores rose by 11 percentage points and 6 percentage points in reading.

An LAUSD spokesperson said in an email to EdSource that they do not have any data measuring the impacts of the Palisades fire on students at Palisades Charter Elementary and Marquez Charter Elementary.

A changing landscape

In the final weeks of the spring semester, the school day looked similar to what it was before the fires, with one notable exception. Connor’s class is a lot smaller. Only 12 of her 20 students came back, and she made the most of the smaller class size.

“When you have 20, you have to run around to like six different kids that need your help. When it’s only 12, it’s like two kids,” Connor said. “And then we end up with extra time in the afternoon, and we’re starting to do some more coding activities … [and] other enrichment-type activities.”

At least 89 students left Los Angeles Unified due to the fires, according to a district spokesperson, while Pasadena Unified lost roughly 420 students.

“We did have families that left us,” Reynoso said. Other families maintained long-distance commutes to keep their kids in the same district school. “But what’s interesting about it is that they said, ‘We’ll be back. This is just temporary for us,’ I hope that’s true.”

But the fires, coupled with fears around immigration enforcement, also led to an uptick in the district’s rate of chronic absenteeism.

At the same time, Reynoso said Los Angeles Unified unexpectedly gained 263 students. She speculates that this could be the result of a California executive order allowing students who were affected by the fires to attend schools in other districts.

But every fire is different.

According to Noguera from USC, many communities in Santa Rosa and Paradise that suffered losses after fires returned and rebuilt. However, he cautioned that a large-scale return of families might be less likely in Los Angeles.

“Not everybody who was there will come back or can afford to come back,” he said. “It’s a process that’s going to take time, and we will only know, with time, how it all comes together.”

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 . .

The district made progress this year with , Carvalho said during the home visit last month, but officials could not say how much progress was made exactly in reducing chronic absenteeism, defined as missing more than ten percent of the school year.  

“Our approach is we support, we’re not about penalizing,” said Carvalho of the strategy being employed in getting chronically absent kids to class. “Two years ago, we were in a different position … [but] conditions have improved dramatically.” 

Carvalho said the number of chronically absent students is slowly dropping closer to pre-pandemic levels, in part because of the district’s push to personalize its efforts to bring individual students to class, with well-known tactics like his house visits. 

Los Angeles isn’t the only place struggling with persistent attendance issues. A  found that chronic absenteeism nationwide rose over 10% from 2019 to 2024, peaking in 2022 at 28% of students. 

The same report said the national percentage of students with good attendance fell sharply between 2019 and 2023, compounding the problem. 

More and more research, in fact, is suggesting that higher levels of chronically absent students could become the new normal. 

In L.A., chronic absenteeism remains a problem. At the beginning of the school year,  of all students in the nation’s second-largest district were missing class enough to be deemed chronically absent. 

That’s an improvement from the years following the COVID-19 shutdowns in the district, when nearly half of all students were chronically absent, the worst the problem ever got in LA Unified’s history. 

Carvalho said it’s gotten better because he and the district’s attendance team got personal in their approach, tailoring efforts to individual families, and knocking on the doors where kids had repeatedly missed school. 

Attendance counselors, school principals, and sometimes Carvalho himself have visited with thousands of families personally each school year since then, and talked to parents about why their kids are missing class. 

They offer solutions, like free busing or new school uniforms, or whatever could help. The tactic is a standard tool for LAUSD, one that Carvalho and district attendance workers and officials trumpet as a reason for their success. 

But chronic absenteeism has been a serious problem for years in L.A. More than 32% of L.A. Unified students were considered chronically absent for the 2023-2024 school year, the latest year for which the data exists.  

That’s well above the historic norms, but still an improvement from the abysmal previous years. Los Angeles Unified had 36% of students consistently missing class in 2022-2023, and just over 45% of students in 2021-22. 

Fallout from COVID-19 remains the main thing parents and educators blame for the historically high numbers. 

During Carvalho’s last at-home visit of the year, the mother of a chronically absent student said that since the pandemic she’s been confused over when to keep her sick home from class. 

At the start of the 2024-2025 school year, Carvalho said annual incremental gains will be how the district digs itself out. 

That plan appears to be working, he said in May, with last year seeing a dip and district officials expecting 2024 to have even lower numbers. 

LAUSD officials told the LA School Report that chronic absenteeism data for the 2024-2025 school year has not been finalized, so they could not quantify the gains. 

Still, Rudy Gomez, the director of iAttend,  program, said in an interview that the district has made progress fighting chronic absenteeism. 

“We have had some significant gains in chronic absenteeism, although we still have a lot of work to do,” said Gomez. “But we’ve seen some major gains, all across the board.”

Speaking at a press conference at LAUSD headquarters, Carvalho also said the district would offer transportation to graduation events, shorten lines outside venues, and provide temporary shelter for attendees in case of immigration action by ICE at or near graduation venues.

The district was examining steps it could take to ensure immigrant students can participate in summer school classes that start next week without threat of arrest, including expanded busing and more virtual classes, Carvalho said.

“Our schools are places of education and inspiration, not fear and intimidation,” Carvalho said. “Many of us here are immigrants or children of immigrants.”   

The actions come as the Trump administration has ramped up actions against immigrant students across the country. 

More than 100 graduation-related events are scheduled across L.A. schools on Monday and Tuesday, which is the last day of class before LAUSD lets out for summer break.

Carvalho, who is a Portuguese immigrant and outspoken critic of the immigration policies of President Donald Trump, said some L.A. families were afraid to attend graduation ceremonies, fearful they could be targeted by federal immigration agents. 

He said schools and families remain on high alert after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in L.A. last week arrested in raids across the city.

The federal immigration enforcement actions in Los Angeles last week included arrests at local businesses, but not at schools, and prompted widespread and sometimes violent protests that began on Friday and continued through Monday, with dozens of arrests.

LAUSD does not track students’ immigration status. According to the city’s teachers’ union the district immigrant students, and a quarter of those students are undocumented. 

LA Immigrant families have grown more concerned as the Trump administration has stepped up immigration crackdowns in L.A. and beyond.  

In April, federal immigration agents were denied access to two LAUSD elementary schools after the agents sought to contact five students at those schools, who were identified by federal authorities as minors who arrived unaccompanied at the border.

Carvalho said he has instructed LAUSD school police to “intervene” against any ICE agents who may be attempting immigration enforcement at school graduation events, but he declined to provide additional details.

“Every single graduation site is a protected site,” Carvalho said. “I have directed our own police force to redouble their efforts and establish perimeters of safety around graduation sites, [and] to interfere, intervene and interfere with any federal agency who may want to take action.”

He said he had spoken with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom about the actions he was taking. Reps for Bass and Newsom didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.   

The LAUSD school board, Newsom and Bass have all backed Carvalho in standing against federal immigration enforcement. The LAUSD school board has issued a series of resolutions stating that for immigrant students.

Carvalho said on Monday that last week two ICE vehicles were spotted near two LAUSD elementary schools. The ICE agents didn’t visit the schools, Carcalho said, but they did frighten the children inside. 

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

The board unanimously last month — and now the district is putting together a preliminary plan, with a deadline of February, 2026 to produce a package of new parental benefits.

Board Member , who represents , which includes neighborhoods such as South L.A., Watts and San Pedro, is the sponsor and a co-author of the resolution.

She said it’s about time the nation’s second-largest district treats its workforce of more than 70,000 employees, including thousands of working moms like her, more fairly.

“Parents are spending the vast majority of their paycheck on rent and childcare, and a little bit left over for food and gas and other bills,” said Ortiz-Franklin, a former LAUSD teacher who has two young children. “It’s really affecting people’s livelihood.”

The resolution, which was co-sponsored by board members Karla Griego and Kelly Gonez, includes provisions for the district to support family planning, pregnancy, parental leave and childcare. 

The district is beginning with a demographic study to determine which employees have families, or are planning to, and identify areas of need. The study will also assess the costs of expanding leave for new parents.

The district has contracts with unions that govern pay and benefits for its employees and is  currently negotiating a new contract with the city’s teachers union, which is also for parents.

Ortiz-Franklin said new parents who work for L.A. Unified currently face an impossible choice: pay for childcare for their family or pay other household expenses. The cost of high-quality childcare in L.A., she said, exceeds the income of many LAUSD employees.

She said teachers and other LAUSD workers are ineligible for the state’s disability insurance program, which offers partially paid leave of up to 16 weeks for new parents. Teachers and other LAUSD employees are exempt from the state’s family leave programs because the district’s benefits programs predated those of the state. 

Often, Ortiz-Franklin said, district employees have to use their limited sick days to take parental leave, leading many teachers and other school staffers to time their pregnancies so they give birth during the summer months, when they are off anyway.

In addition to calling for leave for pregnant employees, the resolution also calls on LAUSD to:

• Provide more access to reproductive healthcare, including fertility treatments.
• Create dedicated spaces for lactation at all district schools and offices.
• Help employees enroll their children in LAUSD schools near where they work.

LAUSD officials are now working on a plan to provide these new benefits, Ortiz Franklin said, with some of the new services coming online in the current school year.

Maya Suzuki Daniels, a teacher at San Pedro High School and a mother to a kindergartner and an infant, said the district needs to do more to support working parents like her.  

Suzuki Daniels said she’s spent up to $1,600 a month for childcare, putting financial stress on her family while she’s trying to work full time and raise young children.

“I exhausted all of my sick time, and I now am paying for their child care through personal loans,” Daniels said, “which I’m told is very typical and normal for a working teacher. That sucks.”

“,” a 36-page report published by  a nonpartisan nonprofit led by Tim DeRoche, an author and parent who lives in Los Angeles, draws on official attendance data for LAUSD’s zoned elementary schools for the years 1995 to 2024. 

Among the 456 LAUSD elementary schools examined in the report, enrollment is down 46% from their peak over the last two decades, while over half of these schools have seen enrollment decline by over 50%. 

The decline has left a lot of open space in 39 high-performing schools, but that doesn’t mean LA students are filling them, according to DeRoche’s analysis. In fact, he and his team found nearly 7,000 empty seats in the sought-after schools. 

DeRoche said that leaves a lot of empty seats at those schools and others like them.   

For example, high-scoring Ivanhoe Elementary in Silverlake enrolled 432 students in 2024, down from its peak of 467 students, leaving 35 empty seats, according to DeRoche’s analysis. Overland Elementary in West L.A. enrolled just 488 students, down from its peak of 557. Lanai Road Elementary in Encino had ten empty seats, according to the report. 

Under state law, traditional district schools are required to offer available seats to any LAUSD student who lives outside of the school’s attendance zone. 

LAUSD officials disputed the findings and methodology of “Crisis in the School House,” saying its use of peak enrollment to measure school capacity is inaccurate, because those schools were overcrowded then. 

DeRoche admitted his measurements were imperfect but said the gist of his analysis stuck.

Given the fact that most kids in L.A. attend lower-performing schools, and that the district is  with no end in sight, DeRoche  to open those high-performing schools up by reassessing enrollment zones.

“We’re trying to work for a system in which there’s more equitable access to these really coveted public schools, and it’s not based on your wealth,” said DeRoche, who  on U.S. attendance zones.

DeRoche’s critique of admissions comes as LAUSD is contracting. Since the pandemic, the district has lost more than 70,000 students. Current enrollment sits at 408,083, down from a peak of 746,831 in 2002.

Decades of shrinking classes recently prompted L.A. school board president Scott Schmerelson to say district leadership needs to start talking about closing or combining schools, something that some other big U.S. cities are already doing.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has countered with a proposal to close down unused parts of school campuses while keeping schools operational, a tactic LAUSD is already deploying at some campuses.  

“Crisis in the School House” focuses in part on a group of L.A.’s two-dozen top-scoring traditional district elementary schools. 

The report’s analysis of enrollment data for last year shows those schools had room for at least 4,306 more students. In addition, the report found almost 3,000 additional seats in district-run charter schools. But just four district schools reported only 58 open seats in the district’s Open Enrollment system for incoming students, DeRoche said.

The upshot is that kids, including those most in need, are shut out of good schools, said DeRoche, something he’s seen happen in  around the country.

Like those of other districts, Los Angeles schools post uneven scores on state exams, with lower-income, mostly minority schools earning lower marks. This matters, said DeRoche, because it perpetuates cycles of poverty and hands an unfair advantage to the wealthy.

Of the 456 LAUSD neighborhood elementary schools in DeRoche’s study, just 39 managed to get 70% or more of students reading at grade level. In those 39 schools, 45% of the students were white, while the other 417 schools in the study were only 7% white. 

In an interview, LAUSD’s senior executive director of strategy and innovation Derrick Chau said DeRoche also failed to account for important programs that are serving district students, such as magnet schools.

“We do have programs that have been and continue to be in high demand,” said Chau. “The reality is, as a system, we are recalibrating across the board on how to deal with changing enrollments.”

Chau said the district is pursuing a number of tactics to boost enrollment in schools and also ensure seats in sought-after schools are distributed in a fair and equitable manner.

“I think we just need to readjust our system to make sure that we look at those programs, replicate them, and bring them to more students,” he said.