Parents, teachers, students and staff accuse LAUSD of ‘hoarding school's money’

This week, known as National Teacher Appreciation Week, many teachers and staff continue to express feeling unappreciated and undervalued by the second-largest school district in the nation, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). 

With signs that read “Don’t Cut Our Future,” “Support Our Students,” “Stop the Caravalho Cuts," "Hoarding money our students need” and “Give us Back Our Sanity,” among others, more than 200 students, staff and teachers from LAUSD gathered outside of the Board of Educationon Tuesday, May 8, to condemn the cuts happening once again at different schools in LAUSD. 

The rally, which was organized by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and Service Employees International Union Local 99 (SEIU Local 99), took place at LAUSD Headquarters located in Downtown L.A.

Their demand? For LAUSD and Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho to allocate some of their multi-billion dollar reserves into the school's basic needs, such as mental health experts, counselors, classroom support and having sufficient staff to maintain campus cleanliness and safety.

For the hundreds of people present at Tuesday’s rally, when LAUSD is sitting on a “projected $6.7 billion in reserves,” there is no excuse to cut staff and services in LAUSD schools. 

Today, the school district is sitting on more than $5 billion in reserves but this amount is expected to grow to $6.7 billion by the end of this fiscal year. In a district-wide memo released in March 2024, LAUSD announced they would be reserving 70%  of this year's budget carryover amounts for the next fiscal year (2024–25), a 20% jump from recent years. According to UTLA and SEIU Local 99, it has led to schools in the district facing buffet reduction, putting critical positions in danger. 

Despite the need for important resources, according to LAUSD, reserves have very limited flexibility in how they are spent.

For reference, much of the $4.9 billion budget reserve for 2022–23 was heavily restricted. Out of the $4.9 billion in reserves, $43 million were classified as “non-spendable” because of previous inventories and prepaid items. An additional $1.75 billion was also restricted by grantors or by law and $2.33 billion was already committed by the district’s board, making these funds completely unavailable. 

In addition, out of the multibillion-dollar reserve money, $427 million was also categorized as “assigned,” which meant that these were for resources intended to be used for specific purposes and an additional $239 million was also not available due to the state requirement to reserve 2% of the general fund for “economic uncertainty,” or emergency use. This only left a total of $140 million of funds not designated, committed or restricted. These funds could, in fact, be used but only at the district’s discretion. 

“Despite the substantial reserves at LAUSD's disposal, the district has failed to allocate sufficient funds to maintain current staffing levels and services for the next academic year. Moreover, they plan to reclaim an unprecedented portion of ‘carryover’ funds that schools rely on to address budget shortfalls,“ UTLA and SEIU Local 99 stated in a press release. 

According to UTLA and SEIU Local 99, the potential consequences for LA students in the next school year if these budget cuts persist include:

• Reduced access to mental health experts and counselors

• Diminished classroom support, particularly for students with special needs

• Fewer opportunities in arts, dance, music and elective programs

• Insufficient staff to maintain campus cleanliness and safety

• Decreased support for initiatives such as the Black Student Achievement Plan, English Language Learners programs and Community Schools

• Larger class size

“The district always prides itself on telling us as parents and as employees that they want to provide supportive, healthy environments, conducive to the academic and social-emotional achievement of our students. However, as the saying goes, it takes a village and they're cutting down that village tremendously and it’s impacting our students,” Jazmin Araujo-Vargas, an LAUSD special education assistant at Judith Baca Arts Academy, told CALÒ News. “I want  Superintendent Carvalho to start looking at employees and the workforce that services our students as human beings. They're not numbers on paper. When they write off these people, it trickles down to the students, employees and families. It makes giant impacts in our communities.”

Apart from being a special education assistant, Araujo-Vargas is also the parent of three students at LAUSD schools and a district-certified interpreter. She said that as a mother and a LAUSD employee, she has seen firsthand the way the budget cuts affect the classrooms she services, as well as hearing from her own kids the way the budget cuts have affected their own school and classrooms. “All three of my kids are students at LAUSD schools, and all three of them have similar concerns. Two are at an LAUSD elementary school, one is a senior in high school, and I find it interesting that they come and complain about the same things that I see in the school where I’m an assistant,” she said. 

Some of the similar concerns her kids have expressed to her are class sizes, campus aides and school supervision aides. 

“One of the concerns that I’ve heard from them is the problem of staff shortage, especially with building and in-ground workers and supervision aids. Schools are equipped with many restrooms, yet only a few of them are open throughout the day for students because there's not enough staff to supervise those restrooms,” Araujo-Vargas said. “Now, to me as a parent, that's a safety concern because all three of my children have expressed feeling unsafe on these campuses when going to the restroom because it has to be shared by multiple students of different grades. Why are we not fully staffing these places like restrooms, cafeterias, etc. so that our kids feel safe? So our kid doesn't have to hold their own natural necessities?” 

On a normal day, Araujo-Vargas works with the most vulnerable students at Judith Baca Arts Academy, located in South Central, L.A. As a special education assistant, she works in a classroom with kids with moderate to severe autism. 

She assists the teacher in her classroom with small group instruction and one-on-one services, both academic and behavioral, helps supervise during lunch and recess and also helps with school dismissals, getting students on and off the school’s buses. In addition to that, Araujo-Vargas also helps with toileting for kids who need assistance.

“At my campus right now, in my classroom, we are over the ratio of students; we are overcapped. We need more special education assistants, not just in the school I work in but throughout the district. Our teacher assistants have been reduced from six hours to three hours a day and the district just keeps giving a bunch of different reasons to our bosses as to why they can't budget for that position,“ she said.

Many parents, like Araujo-Varga, have contemplated taking their children out of the LAUSD because of the lack of funding and resources. “I thought about this especially in the pandemic,” she said. “During those years, I took full advantage of the online curriculum and the online program they had kids in. I didn't want them to return to school because, as an employee and even as a parent when I used to volunteer, I have seen many times classrooms not being sanitized. I can tell you that building and grounds workers are very short-staffed. They have many classrooms that they have to get through and they're given very few minutes to the cleaning of these classrooms. I was concerned during that time.”  

Enrollment in LAUSD schools has dropped by 100,000 students over the last eight years, from 639,337 in the 2015–2016 school year to 538,295 in the 2022–2023 school year.

“These reserves are intended to support critical student services that increase equitable access to learning,” LAUSD states on their website, but UTLA and SEIU Local 99 members and allies say this is not the reality they are seeing.  

Many do not understand why LAUSD is choosing to put away over 30% of the entire budget in reserves when the state only requires the district to save 2%. UTLA and SEIU Local 99 members say that with just a fraction of the projected reserves of 2024–25, LAUSD could maintain all existing school-site positions for next year if they were willing to. 

Blanca Gallegos, Communications Director at SEIU Local 99, told CALÒ News that budget cuts in schools and cuts to certain positions are already happening. 

SEIU Local 99 represents 30,000 education workers at LAUSD. Gallegos said SEIU Local 99 conducted a survey of their members and has been able to identify the most affected positions by these cuts will be those working as supervision aids, campus aids, teacher assistants and special education assistants. “These are really vital positions for the safety, health and well-being of students,“ she said. “We believe that the district has an obligation to provide a budget that works.”

Gallegos said formally and publicly that LAUSD has not announced cuts in hours and the pay of any LAUSD staff, teacher, or personnel, despite them happening now, a tactic she says has helped them deny and keep their hands clean. 

She said SEIU Local 9 found out about the cuts in hours and positions because some of their members called and notified them of what their respective school deans and principals were telling them. “Many of our members told us they were being called into by their principal's office and being told that there was [little to no] budget and that they needed to reduce their hours. Some [said] this was due to the raises UTLA and SEIU Local 99 were able to secure last year,” Gallegos said. “It was very blatant. Many members say they were basically pressured into self-reducing their hours. It was done in a very underhanded way. Through the collective bargaining agreement, the district needs to notify the union of any plans to change hours or working conditions, and they did not do that; instead, they went directly to workers and told them they had to reduce or risk losing their jobs.”

Gallegos called this “unlawful” and asked the district to provide evidence that these cuts are necessary.

Regarding this issue, LAUSD restated the district mission for students and staff in an email response to CALÒ News similar to those given to other outlets.

“Los Angeles Unified is committed to prioritizing investments that directly impact student learning and achievement,” an LAUSD spokesperson said Thursday. “We are exploring a multi-faceted approach that combines fiscal responsibility with strategic resource allocation. We will protect our workforce and the historic compensation increases that were negotiated, and we will protect programs for our students.”